Disclaimer: All characters belong to Joss Whedon and Twentieth Century Fox and are being used for non-profit entertainment purposes only. The story is mine.

Note: This is fanfiction for the Buffy the Vampire movie not the television show. Some of the events in this might differ from the movie in some respects but...I haven't seen the movie in a while and the book I have is based on the screenplay. It'll have to do.

Warning: This is a m/m romance. It is also a m/f romance. If same sex romance bothers you, then don't read it. There's nothing explicit in this fanfic, mostly just emotions and stuff like that.

Buffy blinked the sleep out of her eyes and glanced at the face on the pillow next to her.

"Pike," she whispered under her breath as she ran a have over his forehead. He looked so...so beautiful in the sunlight that was falling through the cheaply made blinds. And maybe beautiful wasn't the normal description for a guy but Pike filled it to a T.

In his sleep, he made a whining sound and his body trembled slightly under her hand. She knew that it was another one of his nightmares. She couldn't blame him. She'd been having them ever since the whole master, vampire thing that had gone down. It was just...It hurt to see him like this.

Benny's death had really shaken him up. Not that she could blame him on the front either. Losing your best friend was hard, especially when you had been the one to throw his body into the electrical station, burning him to bits.

At first the realization that, not only was Benny finally dead but that he had been the one to kill him, hadn't reached Pike. It had just sat in the middle of his brain like a giant toad, refusing to do anything, to move even an inch. Now it was slamming into him full blast, like a goddamned wrecking ball.

Buffy was trying her best to pull him through it but she didn't know is she was up to the task. Pike kept himself so tightly wrapped, so patched together in a veil of cement. It would take a very long time to get through that wall and touch the soul that lay, hidden, inside it. But by the time she got there, it could very well be too late and he would be gone for good.

Behind their lids, his eyes fluttered frantically and a moan escaped his dry, cracked lips. "Benny," Pike groaned, barely a whisper, filled with pain and betrayal. It made Buffy's eyebrows shoot up.

Did she hear what she thought she heard in that moan? No, couldn't be. That was just a little too out there. Sure Benny and Pike had been close, best friends, but they hadn't been THAT close. Had they?

All her doubts turned into lace-winged butterflies that flew straight into her stomach when Pike's hand came up and cupped her cheek. No worries here, she thought. None at all.

"Buffy?" he asked, pink tongue darting out to moisten his lips. God, how she wanted to feel that tongue against her skin.

Her fingers brushed across his face. It surprised her when he flinched a little. It also hurt a little. The butterflies turned into lions ripping chunks out of her intestines. "I'm here, Pike. You were having a bad dream. Want to talk about it?"

He pushed back and away from her lingering hands. The hand that had cradled her cheek was used to push the brown hair on his forehead back. "No, not really, Buff. Maybe later".

In a huff, she crossed her arms over her chest and sat up, looking him in the eyes. "You always say maybe later but then we never talk about it. We never talk about you. It's always about me and the slaying and where we should go next. I'm worried about you."

"There's no reason to be. I'm fine. Really".

"You're not fine!" she yelled at him, her hands running angrily through her hair, dark brown melting into bottled blonde. "You haven't been fine since Benny!"

Pike turned away from her, hanging his long, thin legs over the side of the bed. His shoulders slumped, lean and narrow under the white T-shirt. The sun played on the chiseled features of his face, the sharp jaw lines and rounded chin and stroked its fingers through his brown hair. "Don't talk about Benny."

With an exasperated sigh, Buffy kicked her foot up, sending the covers and sheets on the cheap hotel bed flying into the air like a group of migratory birds. She climbed to her feet on the mattress, looking down at his bent over shoulders and callused mechanics hands that were white from gripping his knees as though he'd pass out if he let them go. "Why the hell not?" she demanded, bouncing slightly on the bed. The springs gave a poor pathetic creak but she kept the shallow jumping up anyway. She had to do something to get rid of the excess energy.

One of his hands reached behind him, caught her ankle, and pulled, bringing her crashing down to the bed. "Because I don't want to," he answered simply, standing up and strolling over to the bathroom door. When he glanced back at her, Buffy was huddled into a shocked heap on the bed, her brown eyes wide in amazement. With a shake of his head, he stepped into the bathroom and closed the door behind him.

I can't believe he did that, Buffy thought as she watched him. Since when has he been that fast? Since when I have been that slow? I should have noticed his hand easily. I should have...God, this is getting weird.

***

Pike leaned against the tiled walls, feeling their coolness sink into his muscles, helping him to forget the pain, banish the hurting. Tears began to roll down his lean face, anyway, and he hastily turned the water on to cover the sobs he knew were coming.

Quickly, he chucked his clothes and slid into the hot water. His skin screamed at him, protesting the sudden change from cold to scalding but he didn't notice. There was too much on his mind right now to pay attention to such unimportant things as water temperature.

Besides, getting a slight scald from the water was nothing compared to being burned alive by electrical components. It was nothing like the spirit killing sight of seeing your best friend hold you down so that you die, truly die and have your soul set free from eternal damnation as a creature of the night. A little hot water wasn't anywhere near the pain of being changed against your will into something hideous, monstrous.

Therefore, Pike figured that the least he could do was burn himself with hot water for his penance. He wasn't ready to join Benny in the afterlife, not by a long shot. There was still too much to do down here in the real world. He was Buffy's new watcher. Somehow, when he had locked eyes with the old man, Merrick, as he was dying all the knowledge of Watcherhood had been transferred.

"I didn't ask for it," he muttered into the air, thick with rising steam. "I didn't want it at all. I'm not that type. I'm not."

The steam seemed to swirl into itself, forming a ghostly shape in the mirror, an image. "Pike," it whispered. "Pike."

His shook his head and lowered it into the water, feeling his pores open up from the intense heat. Then he lifted his face from the water and gazed at the mirror and the black haired young man who was watching him. "You're not real, Benny. You're dead."

"You killed me, Pike."

"You're a figment of my imagination."

Benny's dark eyes glowed for a second, filled with the laughter and joy that he had kept so well hidden, that he had only let Pike bring out. "Remember, Pike. Remember our talks?"

How could Pike not remember the talks? Benny would get some pot and then they'd sit in Pike's bedroom above the garage and just talk. Most of the time Pike did most of the talking, stunning his friend with profound comments on the universe and god and shit like that. It had been fun to see Benny watching him with wide, startled eyes, trying to take in every word he said without losing the high.

"Go away, Benny." He forced the words to leave his mouth. "Leave me alone." They bit into him, making his skin itch like a bee sting. He didn't want Benny to go. He wanted him to stay forever and ever and get more pot so they could talk again. But things couldn't be like that ever again because Benny was dead.

"You saved me, Pike." A smile stretched over the lips of the pale, slightly chubby face in the mirror.

Like a cherub, Pike thought. Benny's face. It always reminded me of some kind of really screwed up cherub.

"You killed me, Pike. You held me to your chest and I thought, I thought, Oh God, he still loves me. Because I was myself for a bit, Pike. I wasn't the vampire anymore. I wasn't soulless. At the very end, I was Benny again. I saw your face, my friend. I saw your eyes as you hugged me and then drove me backwards. I saw your unshed tears as I died. I saw..."

Pike grabbed the towel off the rack and stood up, pulling the harsh terrycloth around his waist. "Shut up!" he screamed. "Go away! You're not real! You're not real!"

The phantom flickered in the mirror, his large, dark eyes growing sad. "I saw you, Pike. I see you now. I know you. I know you."

"Pike?"

The steam drifted away as the door opened, lifting itself off the mirror and floating away into nothingness. Buffy stood in the open doorway, still in the long T-shirt she wore to bed, her hair ruffled and tousled. The sunlight shone through the windows behind her, lighting her up like an angel and when Pike noticed that he was in shadow, that the blackness crept to him, he started to scream.

***

Pike huddled in a small, wet ball in the middle of the queen size bed, his eyes two voids of liquid fear and amazement. Buffy stood at the foot of the bed, her arms crossed and laid against her chest, watching him intently, worry carved into her features.

"Look, I'm fine," he snapped.

She shook her head, strands of hair working their way loose from the ponytail. "I am so not buying that, Pike."

With something of an indignant snort, he tucked his feet under his body. "Fine, fine. Don't believe me. I don't care. Maybe we should just see how the little slayer does on her own."

"Don't start that."

"Why not?"

"Because this isn't about me, Pike. This is about you and that weird attitude you've been sporting ever since you killed Benny," Buffy shot back, brown eyes glowing with the taste of revenge.

Then she caught a glimpse of Pike's face. It was twisted in a grimace of pain and betrayal. His eyes were heavy with unshed tears and stared her down like she had just sentenced an innocent man to die. A puppy dog frown pulled his lips down and the shadows clung to his chiseled face, making him look pale and small.

After a moment, Pike looked away.

Licking her lips, Buffy walked around to the side of the bed and tried to peek at his face. He just kept avoiding her. "Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it."

"You meant it," he ground out from between his teeth and she thought she heard his breath catch in his throat.

"I didn't. Really."

Tears clung to his cheeks, which had gotten a lot hollower since they'd started traveling on the road. "You wouldn't have said it if you didn't mean it."

Damn, he knows me, she told herself. He knows me too well. Why don't I want to be known?

Slowly, she sat on the edge of the bed, her eyes memorizing the flaws in the dull green paint that covered the walls. "I guess I don't see the big deal, Pike."

"I killed my best friend, Buffy. I killed him! And you don't see why it's a big deal?"

"He was already dead, Pike." She turned around and took his chin in her fingers, forcing his head to move so that she could look him in the eyes. "He died way before the dance. They killed him. The vampires. Not you. You saved him. You set him free. He can rest because of you."

Pike jerked away from her grip as though it burned his skin. "Then why is he still haunting me?"

Buffy shrugged her shoulders, pulling them tightly to her body for a minute before releasing them. She knew what Pike meant. When she had first become the Slayer, first taken up her mantle as being the chosen one, the deaths had gotten to her, too. They had seemed to haunt her, follow her, and creep into her dreams at night along with the foul essence of Lothos until there was nothing for her but nightmares. She had gotten over all that. It was just a job. The only way to get through it was to think of it that way. That it was just a job and could only ever be a job. Nothing more. Nothing less.

"You just have to get used to it," she explained, knowing how flat and empty the words were even as she said them. There was no way to tell him, no words that could adequately describe how to get over the fact that your hands took life away, even if it was only the life of the undead who were stolen, soulless bodies.

"Maybe I don't want to get used to it," he ground out and his voice was like venom that wound itself into her veins and twisted her heart until her chest began to ache from it.

Memories licked at the back of mind forcing her to look back, to remember. The blood, dark red on her clothes on her hands, and the ball of guilt building, forming in her stomach. The tears pushing into her eyes. The tears that she held back and held back until they became a salt sea in her dreams that threatened to drown her. The recall of her first kill.

She shook her head at him, exhausted from the conversation and the boxes it unlocked. "Fine, Pike. Whatever." Then she turned, all grace retreating from her form, leaving her a sad, shaking slip of a girl in clothes too large for her with lean muscles and skin that had seen too much moonlight.

***

The darkness had hands that were small and smooth like velvet. Cushy soft and warm and full of comfort. Pike snuggled into the blackness of the shadows, pulling it around himself like a security blanket, relaxing into it. It reminded him of Benny.

Benny tracing his hands along the wood of Pike's guitar, his short, chunky fingers desperately trying to pick out a tune. A wayward half-smile on his round face as the tip of his tongue poked out from the left corner of his lips. His black hair falling into his face, curling a little at the ends, blocking his view of the strings and making shadows on his skin.

And Pike would be leaning up against the wall, watching Benny as he struggled to learn the chords, with just a hint of a smile of his face. Then he'd turn on the lamp and start to read, his best friend providing the background music he needed to relax. They'd sit there like that all night, neither one talking, Benny seated on the floor, the guitar in his arms, and Pike on the bed, his nose buried in a book of philosophy.

Those had been the best nights, the ones without any chatter to interrupt the mixing of spirits, the flowing of thoughts from one mind to another. It had just been the two of them together, protesting against the wrongs of the world, laying their souls open in the silence. No pot to weigh them down or lift them up, just the natural high of life and being together. They had been happy, blissfully happy, and yet they had understood that, if they were ever to speak of things, hidden things, then it would all tumble and collapse and grow foul and ugly like society, like the people who laughed at Benny and beat Pike up.

It was hard to think back on days before Benny.

Had there been days before Benny? Pike wondered and wasn't at all surprised when the answer appeared to be no.

No, Benny had made the days. Life before Benny was a blur of pain and hurt and the feeling that he was trapped, would be trapped for the rest of his life. Even after getting away from his drunken mother and his abusive stepfather, Pike hadn't felt free.

Free had come with Benny. Free was Benny.

And now that Benny was gone, the days seemed to be a big blur of guilt and pain, the feeling that it was all his fault.

Buffy couldn't make it better. She tried; he'd give her that. The girl did try. It wasn't her fault that she didn't know what to do, how to reach him. The walls he had built around his mind, his soul had not been breached by anyone but Benny. Pike had an odd feeling that no one would ever knock them down again because there was no one out there like Benny.

Pike rolled over, burying himself in the thick darkness. He thought he heard a voice, Benny's voice, say, "I love you, Pike. I love you."

***

Buffy sat on the edge of the bed and glared down at the sleeping form. He made her so mad sometimes. It was all she could do to keep from just up and leaving him, making her own way in the world. She didn't need him. Didn't need a Watcher whose knowledge had been a gift from a dying man.

But how could she leave him when he saw right through her, when those deep eyes peered at her and peeled the layers off her until she was just Buffy and nothing more? That wasn't a thing you just gave up. That was something you clung to and carried with you forever.

If you love something, set it free, and if it doesn't come back to you, then it was never meant to be. The words from an old saying marched across her mind, forcing her to listen to them and learn.

She shook her head. No, she thought. No, I don't want to leave him. I don't want to set him free. How can I? How can I just...leave him be? I need him too much. I love him too much for that.

A shudder claimed her body and she tightened her hands into fists on her lap. This was all getting to be too much. This feeling that threatened to consume her. This need. She had never needed anything as much as she needed Pike. It scared her. It made her want to run screaming from the room but it made her want to hug him at the same time.

When his fingers tightened on her hand, she screamed.

"Sorry," Pike murmured, looking at her, sleep clinging to his eyes, making him all the more beautiful, all the more fragile.

"It's okay. It's okay," Buffy assured him, "Just don't do it again, okay?"

***

He nodded and pulled away a bit, searching for space and the warm that had left his life with Benny. Small hands touched his back, soothing over the tight muscles, massaging them away. Thin, long fingered hands.

"Don't," he pleaded and shifted his body.

"What's wrong?" Her voice broke against the darkness, turning into so many glimmers of shatter light.

Benny's voice hardly made a dent in his perceptions when it washed up to him from the void of memory. The image flashed through his mind. The body of his best friend in his arms, one last hug before flinging him to his death and the look on Benny's face, that God-please-let-me-die-this-time look and the words that left his mouth. "Thank you, Pike. Thank you."

Tears suddenly ran like streams down his face, wetting his lips. "He's dead, Buffy."

An understanding sound, much like a wail of despair, floated from Buffy's throat. Then her hands tugged him upright on the bed so that he was sitting next to her, gazing into her bottomless brown eyes. She wrapped her arms around him, consoling him, comforting him. And so few people had touched him with affection that he just melted into her embrace, glad of it. "I know, Pike. I know," she whispered into his ear.

"I loved him, Buffy. I did. I really did. And now he's gone." The words lifted such a weight from his soul. He had loved Benny. He still loved Benny, always would. That wasn't the kind of thing that just left away. Love was forever. It was endless.

"I know." Buffy's voice seemed to shake a bit and he wondered what his words broke inside of her to make her sound so sad.

Pike remembered Benny's message, "You saved me", and thought about how it was just a long since forgotten favor. Because, once upon a forgotten innocent time, Benny had saved him.

Now was the time to left it go, though. No more uncalled favors. No more phantoms in the bathroom. No nights spent locked in utter torment and days as a zombie whose emotions were hidden by a thick, emotional wall.

Life was fleeting and in this business death seemed to be right around the corner. Too close for him to be brooding like this. Benny wouldn't want him miserable. Benny's mission in life had been to bring a smile to Pike's lips. He had said that once, when the two of them had been high on pot. The dark eyes, sparkling like the depths of the universe had turned to him and the Benny said, "Pike, my mission in life is to make you smile."

"How do you know?" Pike had demanded, plucking the strings of his guitar.

A warm smile on the cherubic face. "`Cause the stars told me."

"Well, Benny, I suppose you have to listen to what the stars say."

"Damned straight, Pike."

Silence around them.

"Benny?"

"Yeah, Pike?"

The guitar went silent, leaving an empty space in the night. "What do the stars say my mission in life is?"

A small laugh. "To live, Pike. To live."

End