*****

Pike woke up feeling wonderful. Sweaty, sticky, but wonderful. The scent of sweat, sugar, and something else was high in the air. He smiled a little as he felt Benny move at his back. Then he realized that he was naked.

//How could you forget already? You slept with your best friend last night. Three times.//

Oh, shit.

The night rushed back in a swirl of images, emotions, and sense memories. He remembered intense pleasure, friction, the feel of Benny's eyes, mouth, hands, and... love? on his skin. He had been happy and at peace then. In the cold light of morning and logic, he couldn't let it pass as easily.

//You settled this last night!

//I reserve the right to second-guess myself at any time.//

He also couldn't think about it right now. Getting out of bed and away from Benny felt like tearing a major piece of himself away, and that scared the hell out of him. But no matter what happened inside him, the rest of the world still existed, and he had to go to work. He took that thought as a focusing point to keep him moving. He had a routine to follow.

As Pike showered the night off his skin, he reflected on all the usual cliches of the morning after, especially the morning after your first. Some people didn't see it as loss of virginity unless... penetration was involved, but some people were idiots. Pike knew it had been sex and a deepening of whatever emotional bond they'd already shared.

His first. He didn't count groping by his cousin or his Mom's druggie friends. His mom had almost sold him to her pusher once, but Dad had done his one good deed in life and stopped that before it started, though more out of the thought of his son as his property than anything else. Pike certainly didn't count the night when Dad had been especially drunk and furious with him. The night Dad had exposed himself and started to stroke off before Pike's horrified eight-year-old eyes, asking him if he wanted this. "You a cocksucker, boy? Better not be. We tried to beat it out of my fucking pansy brother, but we finally had to put the little faggot in the loony bin. You want that, Pike?"

Pike was lucky that didn't put him off sex for good. He was also lucky that his homophobic father had never ever thought of expanding physical abuse into sexual. The physical had been bad enough.

And now here Pike was, having slept with his best friend, another guy.

His father had been right about something. Pike was a....

Pike eventually realized that he'd been leaning against the shower wall shaking and staring for a few minutes and turned off the water. //No, I still like girls too. For all that matters in my life right now.// Move on. Pike stepped out, toweled off, and wiped steam off the small mirror. He looked the same.

//We are the same. I'm still me; he's still him. I think.// But everything had changed too. How could he look at Benny's mouth and not remember-- Pike cut that thought off ruthlessly. He didn't have the time to jerk off this morning. //It's mainly the interaction thing that might change completely.// His cousin Chrissy would lay anything that moved, which made him wonder what her parents were like when no one else was around, and Pike remembered the contempt everyone treated her with. He didn't think he could bear it if Ben looked at him like that. //He wouldn't. He started it.//

//Yes, he did, didn't he?//

//No, he couldn't just have been friends with me hoping to get sex. It's been months!//

//You wondered why he would bother with you. Face it, you're marked for everyone to see. Dad saw it before you were old enough to know what sex was.//

//Shut up. I *saw* Benny last night.// Benny's eyes had been full last night and open. They had brimmed over with wonder, affection, as well as lust. For him.

//You wouldn't know love if it sucked your cock.//

//Shut up. I know what I saw.// Pike got dressed the rest of the way and put his boots on. Before he left, he crouched down by the bed and watched Benny sleep. Benny looked relaxed and deeply contented, sleeping with a big sloppy smile on his face. Then he woke up and felt around the bed until he opened his hazy eyes and focused on Pike.

"Where are you going?" he asked. Terror sparked in his dark eyes.

//Is that for me?// It stilled the voice. "To work, like I always do now." Pike had to let Benny know he wasn't abandoning him. Had to.

Benny grinned devastatingly, and his hand reached out to gently encircle Pike's wrist. "See you later."

Pike started to breathe again. That sentence and touch revealed so much of the future. He ruffled the messy hair and said, "You bet." //Told you.//

The hand stroked across the sleeve of Pike's coverall before returning to its owner. Pike felt even better knowing that Benny's eyes followed him as he left.

None of that stopped Pike from almost having a heart attack when John greeted him at work with a hearty, "You got laid last night, kid? Looks good on ya!"

******************************************************

Neither did it stop him from brooding over it later. Benny always said he thought too much, and Pike couldn't disagree. Suck on his chest, and he reacted like any other red-blooded American teen. Keep him on that wonderful endorphin rush, ditto. Give him time, and he could psych himself right back out.

//Okay, so the look on his face as I left said we're more than fuckbuddies. Good. I couldn't be in a relationship like that. So... what now? I mean... do we do... *this* again? Soon? Often?// Pike felt an unexpected low thrill in his stomach at the thought, but it was quickly squashed. //Oh God, he'll see my scars.//

Much of the damage--old cuts, bruises, bumps, broken bones, even some burns--had healed into invisibility, but some of it had been serious and obvious enough to scar. Ben had seen him shirtless before, but the remaining scars weren't in immediately obvious places. Dad may have been a redneck asshole, but he wasn't stupid. If he felt the need to mark his son, he did it carefully. The general public wouldn't notice the underside of Pike's upper arms, the insides of his knees, and a slice or two in his ass. The rest could be blamed on a clumsy, growing boy. The scars at the back of his neck had come from a night when Dad had lost control and whaled him with a beer bottle while he was down, but they didn't show up immediately anyway. You had to feel them.

Pike couldn't help wondering how Benny would react to what were very obviously cigarette burns. The very thought made him squirm with shame. //Benny, we need to talk.//

"Pike! Where the hell is your head?" Mike, his boss, yelled.

"On top of my neck unless you know something I don't."

"I couldn't even start. Go home."

"But I'm working. I need to work."

"Then I want your full attention on your job."

"Since when, boss?" John asked, getting a laugh from the other mechanics.

Mike sighed. "You can stay, Pike, but I want your mind on your work. I'm watching."

Pike grumbled to himself and threw his full attention to the five- year-old air conditioning unit he was working on.

******************************************************

Pike's apartment was empty when he opened the door. His heart plunged in despair until he realized with some relief that it was Thursday. Ben wouldn't be here for hours; it wasn't about being abandoned. The relief faded as he thought about it. //Argh! We *would* choose the night before he works late.// That left three and a half hours of Deep Thought before he could finally talk to Benny and get his fears allayed. //I hope.// A nap just wouldn't happen, and he didn't feel like having a joint.

Pike saw to his surprise that Benny had taken the sheets off the bed and rolled them up into a bundle, unless the laundry fairy had come calling. But the laundry fairy would have cleaned them and changed the bed too. Still.... //Somebody replaced my Benny with a changeling last night?// It would explain a lot. He smirked and put new sheets on. //Damn, that was nice of him, though.//

Now his bed looked neat, and the rest of the apartment didn't match it. It bothered Pike but gave him his project for the next three hours. //Great, get me laid, and I turn into... somebody else's mother?//

Maybe not. And he didn't feel any sting in the thought anyway.

He had burnt pizza cheese stuck in the toaster oven that would have endured to the end of civilization if left to itself. It would take a hell of a lot of strength to remove it. "You're going down," Pike said as he looked for the right cleaning products. He knew the former resident had left them somewhere.

By the time Pike heard a key in the lock, he was on his knees with the refrigerator out of the way so he could scrub away the crud that usually hid under it. You couldn't beat it for strenuous, mindless work. He sung along to Killing Joke's "Turn to Red" with the necessary Cockney accent and scoured the floor in time to the music. "The sky... has turned to grey / Bodies..." His rickety fan blew most of the acrid cleaning fumes away. Life wasn't bad.

Benny stopped and stared at Pike from the now open door, his key on the chain around his neck still in the lock. Pike took advantage of his shock to take a good look at him. Bucket of chicken and paper goodie bag in hand, horrible polyester uniform hanging off him, visor crimp disturbing the smooth line of visor-flattened black hair, he was the best thing Pike had seen all day. The stunned look gave way to amusement and something warmer, something that called to a similar warmth inside Pike.

//Okay, when did he fall in love with me? When did I fall in love with him? Shit, I'm clueless.// It had to be love or a close imitation. It felt really good.

Pike had achieved peace with it all. Now he just had to hope that he wasn't living in a dreamland built for one.

Benny put the food down on the kitchen table and crouched down next to Pike, coughing a little from chemical fumes. "What are you doing?" He didn't seem to know what to do with his hands; they kept moving and twisting. It looked like he fought a battle of touch-or-not-to-touch.

//He doesn't know how I'm dealing with it either. He's scared?// Pike smiled in as reassuring a manner as possible. "This isn't as crazy as it looks."

"Uh-huh?"

"When I'm stoned, I sometimes think this stuff is plotting against me."

"And that's not crazy? It's just... uhm...."

"Yeah? Tell me what it is, Ben."

"Well...."

"It's the crud that *lives* under the refrigerator. It was developing into a whole new species of life, and I murdered it." Pike leaned closer to him.

Benny still hung back and looked a bit concerned, skittish for Pike's sake. "Genocide. I can get behind that."

//Hope I'm reading him right, that he needs to see me be willing to make the next move.// Pike leaned a little closer still. "Pity me. I can't smell the food at all. I think I burnt out the inside of my nose."

Fingers twisting, glancing down, Benny looked shy. For once. "Pike, I've been thinking about you all day."

//Thank you!// "I've been thinking about you too."

Benny brightened in a flare of happiness. "Yeah?"

Pike stood and stretched to work the cramps out of his legs. "Yeah. I'm fine. I like this."

Benny stood with him. "I'm not going to make you do anything you don't want to do."

"Glad to hear it."

Pike pulled Benny in for a kiss. Experimental, a way of feeling out the boundaries. He hadn't known what he expected, but what he got made him melt. So soft and gentle, the kiss felt like they breathed together. Arms wrapped around him loosely but securely, a featherweight that stroked down his back and sides. Safe. His own arms came up, and his fingers danced down Benny's spine through cheap fabric. It struck him that Benny shouldn't smell like chicken grease, not at all, but he knew that his friend suffered the smell and uniform longer so his food would be still be hot when it got home. It made him smile. Besides, he didn't smell quite right either. Not now. There would be later.

In the absence of terror twitches, Pike pushed a little more, gripped a little tighter, teased Benny's silky lips with his tongue until he gained entrance. Heat sparked and ignited until Benny clutched Pike like in those night terrors, murmuring into his mouth. He clung, dizzy, spinning, holding on for his life. He knew he could with Benny, that Benny wouldn't go. They were dressed in dumpy uniforms, kissing over a torn linoleum floor that stank of Lysol, but it didn't matter at all. They were still who they were supposed to be, where they were supposed to be.

Benny broke away from the kiss first but didn't let Pike go. "Fuck. That was something," he gasped.

//Get it over with.// Pike moved one of Ben's hands to the back of his neck and settled it there. It felt odd against the scars, too sensitive, too something, and made him shiver. Benny's fingers lightly stroked across them, mapping their texture. "What's this?" Benny asked softly.

Better to know Benny knew than to wonder when he found them. "Scars. I have a lot of spots like that. I just wanted you to know, so they wouldn't surprise you."

"Your dad?"

"Yeah."

"Can I kill him for you?"

It sounded so serious, so intimate, whispered into his hair that Pike trembled for a new reason. "That wouldn't solve anything."

"Sure it would." Greatly daring, Benny kissed Pike's left eyebrow, the one with the jagged scar running through it. "This one too? I've been dying to know."

Pike laughed. "Actually, I got that when some kid accidentally flung a sharp rock at me."

"How the hell does someone--"

"It's a long story. A long, boring story. Most interesting thing about it is that I had to walk a mile home with blood gushing down the side of my face like I was a slasher victim. I wish I had a camera for some of the looks I got."

Seemingly fascinated by the texture, Benny stroked the scars on the back of Pike's neck again. "Does this hurt?"

"No, it's not pain. They're just oversensitive, but not quite in a good way...." Oversensitive for sure, because he knew by feel that Benny was caressing them with his thumb in soft back and forth sweeps. Jolts of not-quite-pain, not-quite-pleasure sparked, and Pike felt his knees going out from under him. He held on tighter.

"Should I stop?"

Pike tried to form words. "Uh. It feels almost good, but *wrong* good?"

"Stopping."

Pike didn't know if he should feel disappointed.

Benny nuzzled Pike's hair. "I don't know exactly how you think I should be reacting, but I'm not disgusted by the scars. They're part of you. I hate that someone hurt you like this, but that has nothing to do with how I feel about you, Pike. I have a few odd patches myself."

Pike felt a dash of suspicion in the wave of affection that swamped him. "How do you know exactly what to say?"

"I've been thinking about it for a while." Then Ben laughed. "Are you going to eat dinner at all?"

"Shit! It's going cold. I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

"Let me wash my hands first."

They ate by an open window away from the Lysol. Benny usually didn't eat Thursdays with Pike--he felt he spent enough time standing over it all day that he had no urge to make it dinner too-- but tonight he had a little, and they just shot the shit as usual over beer and fried chicken. They could still talk, even if an underlying tension thrummed through. Pike knew what it was; he'd never been so aware of Benny's physical self as he was now. For example, he'd never paid so much attention to his friend's hands before. Sex added a new undercurrent, one that appeared to make Benny wonder just as hard as he was if they were going to do it again tonight. It lent an added spice to the meal and talk, and Pike realized that he liked it.

"...so they were so desperate for someone who could do the register that they put me on front-line cashier. For the dinner rush!"

"Moving up in the world, Ben."

"I'm doing okay; the manager is standing nearby but not taking me aside at any point. An hour in, this wise-ass comes up to the counter and tells me that chickens don't have fingers. I told him the scientists at our labs say otherwise."

Pike laughed. "Thus ends your brief but glorious tenure as front- line cashier."

"Nope. The customer thought it was funny. If he'd started laughing, but I kept a deadpan face and said, 'No, really,' I might have been in deep shit, though." Benny reached into the bag and pulled out a plastic parfait cup full of... *something* red and beige and white.

"What the hell is that?"

Benny opened the lid and smirked. "Strawberry shortcake."

"I know what they call it, but what is it?"

Benny's smirk widened. "Strawberry sundae topping and vanilla soft-serve over a regular biscuit that's been mashed until it's unrecognizable."

"Regular. You mean with the salt and heavy butter."

"Yup." Benny took a big spoonful and shoveled it in. "Mmm. Yummy."

"That's grotesque. I can understand eating it if you don't know how they make it-- Wait, I still can't understand eating it."

"It's funky, but I like it. I like the way the salty butter and the oversweet strawberry flavors mix into something nature never intended. You can stop gagging."

"And they stick the label 'strawberry shortcake' on that."

"Yup."

"I'll show you a real dessert. Oh shit." Pike pulled out a parfait cup full of liquid vanilla and heavier fluid chocolate.

"That's a real dessert, huh?" Benny shook his head. "We left your sundae sitting too long. Next time, we eat the ice cream, then talk. Priorities."

"Sounds like a good plan, but this isn't a problem. I'll just get a soup spoon."

"Now who's disgusting?"

"For that, I'll slurp my ice cream extra loud." And he did, to Benny's very vocal and theatrical disgust.

******************************************************

Pike sat on the bed in the dark and listened to the water drumming in the shower. The urge to climb back in and do something with Benny surprised him. //Depraved on account of being deprived. Maybe I can work on that.// It looked like he had a lot to get used to.

Pike leaned back and had to shove a dripping lock of hair out of his face. He only wore his boxers and dogtags. Because it was hot. He tried to think of anything other than the way his heart was pounding once the water stopped.

The bathroom door opened, spilling light into the apartment, before Ben ran out and took a flying leap onto the bed, almost bouncing Pike off. He followed up that attack with tickling fingers.

"Son of a bitch!" Pike squeaked through gasping laughter. Kicking and beating Benny didn't do any good; the bastard was too focused on his work to notice.

Finally, Benny tickled him right off the bed. Thank God for the carpeting softening his fall, but Pike knew he'd have rugburn on his spine tomorrow, dammit. //Can't let him get away with this.//

"Pike? I'm sorry. You okay, man?" Benny asked. He couldn't see his friend on the floor.

Pike reached up, found Benny's wrist, and pulled, yanking him onto the floor. Then he unleashed his full tickling fury. "Mess with me, will you?"

"Stop! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Ben shrieked as he writhed helplessly.

"You *will* be."

Benny pulled Pike in for a kiss instead, which led to intensive necking. Pike saw how completely he'd been manipulated into relaxing but couldn't care much with his friend squirming under him and the stroking hands finally gripping his hipbones. Benny's damp skin shuddered under his caressing fingers.

There was no going back, and Pike didn't want to anyway.

"We don't have to do this every night if you don't want to," Ben gasped between kisses.

"I'll tell you when you have to stop." Pike grinned, knowing Ben could feel it against his skin. "Right now, I want you to quit talking and put that mouth to better uses."

"Yes, sir!"

***THE END***