"Carving"
a Pike & Benny joint
By Viridian5
10/19/00

RATING: NC-17; Pike/Benny. If m/m interaction bothers you, pass on by.
SUMMARY: Pumpkin stealing, jack-o'-lantern carving, half-assed trick-or-treating, and smut. Your usual Halloween treats.
DISTRIBUTION/ARCHIVAL: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: Hell, yes. Feedback can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com
DISCLAIMERS: Pike and Benny, from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer movie, belong to Joss Whedon, 20th Century Fox, and Kuzui Enterprises/Sandollar. I’m just dusting them off and letting them play. No infringement intended. Suing me would be a waste of time.
NOTES: Inspired by my own bout with Halloween pumpkin rituals. The album Pike plays is The Dancing Years by Shriekback, with "Nerve," "Nemesis (The Arch Deviant Mix)," and "Hammerheads" referenced.
Thanks to D'Sharon for read-through.
See the pumpkin face that inspired Benny's here.

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"Carving"
By Viridian5
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"I could just get you a pumpkin, Pike. For some weird reason, people are just leaving them outside, ripe for the picking."

Pike had just gotten out of his after-school job as a mechanic, and even though he’d showered he still smelled a bit like engine grease. "You had to say ‘ripe for the picking’? Benny, it’s the day before Halloween; of course people are putting out jack-o’-lanterns. But I don’t want pre-carved. If you carve it yourself, then it’s really yours. Get that look off your face."

Ben grinned. "I don’t have a look on my face."

"You know exactly what I’m talking about. I can see that look in your eyes."

"My eyes, my face... can you make up your mind?"

"You know."

"I’m just surprised to hear a serial killer motto drop from those sweet, innocent lips of yours."

"I didn’t think I could drop anything from my lips that would surprise you anymore." Pike shook his head. "Doing your own pumpkin means you get to bake the seeds too."

"Eviscerating your victim and eating its guts. As for doing it.... Pike, I never knew."

Pike punched Benny’s arm. "How are we going to do this?"

"You go in and select the pumpkin while I wait on the other side of the fence for the hand-off. Get us a big one."

"I can’t get too big a one. It has to go over the fence without dropping."

"Yeah, yeah."

"I don’t know about this."

"Like you said, it’s the day before Halloween. Pumpkin demand isn’t all that big after that even with Thanksgiving coming up. They’ll just go bad and get tossed away. We’re liberating a pumpkin that would go bad otherwise, since we don’t have the money to buy one."

"Uh-huh."

"Really."

"All right. The Pumpkin Liberation Front is on the move." Pike walked into the lot while Benny waited at the fence around the back. Pike seemed to take forever choosing one, but he did have a tendency toward perfectionism. Benny imagined all the candidates that got passed over for being too round, too tall, too short, too lumpy, too asymmetrical, too squishy.... Finally a big orange guy inched its way over the top of the fence.

"I’m here," Ben hissed. The pumpkin went up and over, with Benny catching it with some difficulty. Thing was heavier than it looked, just as Pike was stronger than he looked, and he’d gotten a fairly big one. Round and fairly symmetrical, of course. Pike could be so predictable sometimes.

"Got it?" Pike whispered.

"Yeah."

"Great. Heading out. Meet me a block down."

When they met up ten minutes later, Ben thrust out his pumpkin laden arms and said, "Success! Hey, what’s wrong? They didn’t give you any static on the way out, right?"

"No, nobody had a clue." Yet Pike looked deeply unhappy. "It’s nothing."

"No, what happened?"

"It’s stupid. The owner said I was trash on the way out. He didn’t even realize I took anything, and he probably wouldn’t have said it if I’d bought something, but-- It’s dumb. Forget it."

"Like hell."

Pike shook his head. "Forget it. I’m sorry I said anything. We have a pumpkin to do."

Okay, pumpkin carving. But later on Benny would find out where that fuck lived.

Benny sat back and smoked as he watched Pike set up for carving with a trash bag spread out on the rickety kitchen table, two bowls, a knife with a serrated edge, a large spoon, a marker, napkins, a candle, a lighter, and a stick of wood. The pumpkin’s bright, cheery orange looked out of place in the old, yellowing kitchen. The whole apartment seemed to be in the process of slowly turning into a sepia-toned photograph.

"You never did this?" Pike asked. He’d taken off his flannel shirt, leaving him in a black t-shirt. The look of anticipation on Pike’s face and the way he wiggled his fingers like some concert piano player warming up did funny things to Ben’s stomach.

"Not since I was five, and Mommy had some idea of holiday togetherness or some shit. She hated the mess and never let it happen again."

"The mess is part of the fun. Coy, Luther, and me used to have pulp fights if the pumpkins had enough goop in them for it. Aunt Karen threw a fit every time, but she let us get away with it."

"She helped you get away." Sometimes Benny thought about what might have happened to Pike if that aunt hadn’t kept him under observation for a night after his head injury and then given him money and a lift to the bus station. He figured he wouldn’t have Pike at all if she hadn’t. So Karen sure as hell had his vote of approval. Thinking that she let Pike have some happy childhood memories of family made her even cooler. Maybe there was some way of tracking her down and doing... something, even if Pike wouldn’t give up his family’s whereabouts.

Dumb to bring up stuff that depressed Pike, but this time Pike seemed to take "get away" as a thing about happily taking time off from his parents instead of running away from home. He just smiled almost dreamily. "Yeah. Hey, shotgun me?"

Benny took in a deep pull from his joint then leaned across the table to meet Pike’s open mouth. As they kissed, Ben exhaled, passing it along. Pike always closed his eyes for this, but Benny loved to see the few curling wisps of smoke that always escaped their joined lips. He licked Pike’s now closed mouth before settling back into his chair and watching his friend sort of concentrate on the smoke and the feelings it gave.

Finally Pike smiled, opened his eyes, pressed Play on his stereo’s cassette player, and picked up the knife. The first stab in looked difficult, making Benny wonder how hard and tough the skin was, but Pike sawed like an expert. No matter how many times he said Pike was predictable, Benny had to smirk at himself for the way watching Pike saw into something with a knife made him need to adjust himself. The gleam of metal and squirt of juices, the tense and release of arm muscles and tendons, the way Pike’s tongue occasionally peeked out to touch his bottom lip in concentration, and his total focus on what he did combined to make Ben so hard. He leaned further back and smiled, enjoying the torment.

Pike yanked the cap he’d made out by the stem in a spray of white seeds. "It’s like a fucking piñata," Benny said.

"This is great. Lots of seeds was what I hoped for. How about I remove this stuff, and you separate the seeds from the pulp."

"Gonna make me work.... Kidding, Pike. No need to wave the knife at me."

Benny enjoyed the messy work, actually, having a great respect for activities that left him wet and sticky. Making up for lost time. Pike’s hands, caked with bitter-scented orange goop and stringy pulp, came into his line of vision now and then to dump more seeds and goo. Pike softly sang along with the Shriekback album he had on, and even though he couldn’t sing worth a damn it was fun hearing him do lines like "Legs open / Eyes crossed / Pressing on the nerve / We all like that...." Cheery tune, though. He had funky ideas of party, happy, fun music.

Finally Pike had scraped the inside to a point he seemed to be happy with and Benny handed him the bowl of seeds. Pike set tinfoil down on a cookie sheet, then spread and salted the seeds on it. As he set the timer, Pike asked, "You wanna draw a face for me to carve out?"

Ben washed the gunk off his hands, then picked up the marker. "Hey, sure."

"Just try to keep structural stuff in mind when you design it. You don’t want me to punch too much shell out or the face will collapse in as the pumpkin starts to shrivel."

"One, you’re making this much harder than it should be. Two, who died and made you an engineer?" But Ben already had the marker uncapped and riding the pumpkin’s surface.

Once in a while he looked up from the psychotic yet goofy features he drew to look at Pike puttering around the oven. "Never thought I’d get a June Cleaver vibe off you," Benny said.

Pike flipped him the finger and said, "Yeah, I always imagined Ward was off smoking a joint somewhere. You almost done with that?"

"Don’t rush the artist."

"Keep in mind I have to try to carve this stuff out. Don’t make it too impossible for me."

"Done."

Pike laughed when he saw it. "Okay, I could use a challenge."

"What’s wrong with it?"

"The eyes, the nose, the mouth are all so round. Round is hard to do. Don’t worry about it." Pike stabbed the knife in again and started, while Benny watched and enjoyed. Now Pike occasionally punctuated his concentration with softly sung lines like "Priests and cannibals / Prehistoric animals / Everybody happy as the dead come home / Big, black nemesis / Parthenogenesis / No one move a muscle as the dead come home...." He had to blow his long bangs out of his eyes occasionally. His joint finished, Benny zoned out a bit on the steady ticking of the timer and the stroke of Pike’s knife as he pared slivers of pumpkin off.

As the scent of baking seeds started to fill the air, Ben kept getting this odd feeling. This really was home. He could sit only mildly buzzed and intensely turned on in this shithole of an apartment doing quiet, goofy things with Pike and be happy. Off-center domesticity seemed to appeal to part of him. Weird. He considered himself to be more of a "blow this shit up" type.

"C’mon, Pike, let me see it."

"Not done yet. I can’t carve and show the face off at the same time."

"Spoilsport."

"Reality."

Waiting made it better sometimes. Benny clamped his fist on his dick through his pants.

Finally Pike smirked and turned the pumpkin around. Carved, the face looked even more psychotic and off-center than what Benny had drawn. The left eye, left side of the roundish nose hole, and left side of the mouth all pulled up, following Benny’s original marker lines. Only a thin rim of shell separated the eye and nose on that side. Big parts of the shell had been punched out to reveal the insides.

"I love it," Benny said.

"Cool." The timer went off with a loud, annoying buzzing, so Pike threw his knife in the sink and pulled the cookie sheet of seeds out. After he got them onto a plate, he set it in front of Benny and went off to wash his hands. Ben took a pinch of seeds. Good. Maybe a little bit overcooked, but they tasted good--kind of salty and a little bit nutty--and they were hot. He had some more. But he couldn’t wait much longer.

Pike came back to put a candle in the pumpkin and use the long stick to light it. The crazy face flickered and beamed brightly in the dim kitchen. Pike blew out his stick and set the cap back on the pumpkin’s top, with candlelight glowing from the cap’s edges. The scent of sweetly singeing pumpkin flesh mingled with the warm baked seeds’ smell.

"Knife plus fire should make for a happy Benny," Pike said as he set the stick down and stood back to admire his work.

Benny put his arm around Pike and pulled him back against the long-waiting hard-on. "You could say that." He put his other hand down the front of Pike’s pants and squeezed, happy to find that Pike was already half-hard himself. At Pike’s moan, Benny asked, "Anyone ever tell you how sexy you look with a knife?"

"Other than you? No."

"Good." He pulled Pike over to the unmade bed and dropped them on it, thankful they’d taken off their combat boots ages ago since it saved time now. He needed in now. And Pike was obviously fine with that, because he stripped his pants and boxers off in record time, surpassed only by the speed Ben had his off in. Ben sucked and tongued his way down Pike’s dick, then balls, then into his ass.

Pike whimpered and writhed and relaxed under the attention. Once he would have been too scared and untrusting for this, but he’d come along so far since then. So far that he begged for it now, groaning, "Ben.... Ben, c’mon.... Please...." in a softer, harsher voice as his fingers desperately combed through Ben’s hair.

Like Benny needed anyone or anything to urge him on. He rummaged through the drawer with speed and no grace. Lube, then fast prep with fingers, with Pike pushing against him the whole while. Begging. Ben put the condom on and slid in, gliding in as slowly as he could stand. Not very. "You okay, Pike? I’d don’t think I can hold back very long," he gasped.

"Yeah... yeah, please.... Me neither. Go...."

Benny started to move fast and didn’t last long, not with the hot, tight grip of Pike’s muscles around his long-denied cock. He came hard, then quickly stroked Pike until he came too. They panted together for a while until Benny pulled out, cleaned them up, and stripped the rest of their clothes off. He grinned as the tape played Shriekback singing, "Shout, push, hammerheads / Bold and resolute / Marching, balancing, in too far to go back...." Naked, curled up together, they fell asleep under the glowing gaze of their psychotic jack-o’-lantern.

The woman at the door gave them an annoyed look. "What are you two supposed to be? And aren’t you a little old for trick-or-treating?"

Benny grabbed Pike by the shoulders and set his mouth full of big plastic teeth to Pike’s neck. "We’re a vampire and his victim," Benny lisped, words also muffled by how bulky the teeth were.

The woman sighed, dropped a small Snickers bar each into their bags, and closed the door in a hurry. "She gave us pity candy," Pike said as he squirmed out of Benny’s grip.

Benny spat his teeth out into his hand so he could talk. "You have a problem with that? It’s better than how we’re doing in the rest of this cheap, fucking neighborhood."

Pike gave Benny his Snickers. He hated peanuts and chocolate together. "Speaking of cheap... that has to be the cheapest, shittiest set of vampire teeth I’ve ever seen."

"You’re still complaining about the teeth?"

"They still suck."

"Aren’t vampire teeth supposed to suck?"

"You’re funny."

"These are supposed to glow in the dark."

"Maybe, after you put them directly under a light bulb for three days."

"What crawled up your ass and died? Daddy wouldn’t spring for a costume because he says that trick-or-treating is for kids. Fuck trick-or-treating! I just want people to give me candy."

"That is trick-or-treating."

"There is a difference. Trick-or-treating involves costuming. For me, a costume would just be a means to an end."

"Yeah, yeah."

"Maybe we’d do better if we just sent you up trick-or-treating."

"I have less costume than you do. I don’t even have a pair of teeth."

"But you’re cute, and I’m not."

"That doesn’t work the rest of the year."

Pike sounded depressed again instead of just cranky, and Benny needed to find out why he was in such a mood. "We could go up to the doors and genuinely say that if they don’t give us candy we’ll egg and toilet paper their homes."

"That’s just mean."

"Hey, everybody’s doing it."

"Exactly. Everybody’s doing it. Bunch of fucking wannabes misbehaving and begging for fun. I don’t think it’s even safe to stay out drinking tonight. We’d wake up somewhere covered in shaving cream and raw egg."

Got it. "This isn’t just about class warfare, is it. You miss home."

"You’re nuts. Okay, more nuts than I thought."

"No, I don’t mean you miss Junkie Mom and Drunken Dad with real beating action or any of your child abuser-to-be brothers. I mean your neighborhood and friends and shit."

Pike sighed. "Sometimes. Just on some of the holidays. Not like Labor Day or anything, just the family holidays."

"Your aunt and her kids."

"Yeah."

Downer. He needed to cheer Pike up. "It should be criminal to have to go to school the day after Halloween. November 1st is All Saints Day, right? We should get that off. What kind of bastard would refuse to give us All Saints Day as a holiday? I mean, it has all those saints...."

Pike smiled a little. "All that saintly goodness always goes unrewarded."

Benny put his arm across Pike’s thin shoulders. "Let’s go home. The hunting’s poor tonight, and since everybody’s out being what they’re not, let’s stay in and be what we’re not: well-behaved little school boys. I’ll make it worth your while."

"I thought you said well-behaved."

"Okay, we’ll be English boarding school boys."

Pike laughed. "Let the buggering begin, then."

3 a.m. Most of the wannabes should be off the streets by now.

Benny got out of bed and tucked the covers around Pike. Pike already had weird bruises showing up on his neck from where Benny had used the vampire teeth. At the time he’d been too busy moaning to complain about how cheesy they were. Wonder how he’d explain the marks to the people who’d ask. Benny bent down, kissed the warm skin, and wished he could turn on the light to better see the bruises. The light they always left on by the door so they wouldn’t kill themselves coming home late at night gave him only just enough light to see a little bit while crouching by the bed.

Pike sighed and began to move in ways that meant he was starting to wake up, so Benny pulled away. He had a mission.

He dressed in black and gray, then filled his backpack with toilet paper, cartons of eggs, cans of shaving cream, a pair of black pantyhose he could put over his head to make him impossible to identify. Rocks. He’d bring gasoline and matches, but the rocks already stomped the edge between an act that could be considered prankish vandalism and an act of harassment.

"Trash," huh? Benny might not have been able to do anything about Pike’s family, but he could show that asshole at the pumpkin place what it was like to be trashed.