All the Rules of Heaven

by Amy Lane

  “Okay, I think we have the necessities,” he said, grabbing one of the rags and the bucket of water. “Lotion would be nice. Lube would be better, but….” He shrugged and studied the moldings on the ceiling. Angel understood, sort of. Going downstairs and fetching the lubricant would be like admitting he was going to have a supernatural sexual experience.

  Angel could see how admitting it was going to happen would be far more disconcerting than the actual event. Or so she thought.

  “Okay,” Tucker said, shucking off his gloves and trying obviously not to make eye contact. “You promise—nothing violent?”

  There was need in his voice, and Angel scanned again, just to make sure.

  “Some of the participants were a little… enthusiastic,” she said delicately, and Tucker groaned.

  Tucker took another breath. “And nobody’s going to try to jump into my ship, right?”

  Angel stared at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you can read my thoughts and be there when I see these stories. That’s only a… a hop, skip, and a jump away from full possession, right?”

  Angel’s mouth dropped in horror. “A ghost taking over your body?” Ruth had never mentioned it—but then, Ruth hadn’t had Buffy as a primer either.

  “Well, yeah. I mean, mostly what I’ve experienced is like being in a movie with surround sound, but I’m a little worried here. Sex can be pretty overwhelming to the senses. Nobody’s going to try to take me over, are they?”

  Angel thought about it. “Well, no. I mean, I don’t think so. Tucker, that sort of thing takes sentience, right? When I opened the front door for you, I had to direct my… myself into your body. What’s going to happen here is just memories. Like you’ve been doing. Except there’ll be a lot more people. And everybody’s naked. And some of them are….” Her eyes widened. “Tucker, sometimes this bed had more than two or three people in it. And some of them used paddles!”

  “You’re killing me, Angel. Killing. Me. Enthusiastic. Great. Not just an orgy, a big rough sex orgy fucking around in my brain. Dear Penthouse Forum.”

  “You’re writing a letter now?”

  He let out a strangled laugh. “Note to self: Angel has spent over fifty years locked in an old house with my maiden aunt—the legitimization of porn is not a thing.”

  “I know what pornography is,” Angel said stiffly. “It is a terrible, demeaning, objectifying thing.”

  “Yeah, Angel, unless you’re horny and you don’t want to go out and hurt anybody’s feelings getting laid.”

  Angel gasped. “But… but you have no problem at all with promiscuous sex! The first morning I saw you, you were with some poor young woman who—”

  “Who was grateful for my presence,” Tucker said bitterly. “Angel, has it occurred to you that this whole ghost-hunting gig isn’t my first barbecue? That I’m used to being used by the powers that be?”

  “I don’t understand what that has to do with—”

  “Fuck it,” he snarled. “Let the hatesex orgy begin!”

  He put both bare hands on the edge of the bed as he stood and let out a gunshot of a gasp.

  “Holy mother of God.”

  Angel was forced to stand and watch as Tucker, both hands clenched tightly around the brass rail, began to shake, sweat soaking through his shirt—and his jeans—as he stood.

  An erection pushed hard against the placket of denim, and as Angel watched, Tucker yelped, the sound startling in the tense room. Before the sound faded away, a dark stain began to seep through his jeans, but it wasn’t over.

  Tucker moaned, and his erection remained, straining, probably uncomfortable, as Tucker shook, lost in the tumbling of body after body, the satiation of lust after lust assailing the mortal conduit who had voluntarily channeled them all.

  Angel pulled back from his consciousness, afraid of getting lost.

  Tucker moaned loudly in the throes of his second climax and fell to his knees, his hands never leaving the bed. He fell forward, his head making contact with the metal, and he screamed, the extra touch probably charging through his body like sexual electricity.

  This time, when he came, he whimpered.

  Angel had had enough. “Tucker, let go,” she said clearly, and his only response was a moan. “Let go! Dammit, Tucker, let go!”

  “No, no, no, no, no…,” he chanted, but much like with ordinarily powerful coitus, Angel couldn’t tell if this was “No, it feels too good!” or “No, I’m being violated or harmed!” In this case, it was probably both, and Tucker’s face was both blotchy and pale, swimming in sweat, and the veins in his forehead were popping with strain.

  “Tucker, let go!” Angel roared, and this time he did, slumping to the ground in a puddle. The first thing he did as he slid to the floor was fumble with his fly and thrust his hand in.

  Angel didn’t even have time to leave.

  Or that’s what she told herself.

  Because the truth was, if she’d had a body, it would have been in the same shape as Tucker’s. Swollen, sweating, aching, deep in her bones. Her sex felt swollen—but I don’t have genitals—and her breasts felt tender—but I don’t have breasts—and a place deep within her, in the core of her body, screamed for possession, for hard, sure, absolute touch.

  I am neither male nor female, and this is impossible!

  It was a scream in her head, a psychic cry for help, but nobody heard. Tucker let out a breathy prayer as climax hit him again, and Angel collapsed on the bed, trembling and locked in her imaginary body as she experienced a painful surge of arousal that should not have been possible, should not have affected her at all.

  By the time she could concentrate, could relegate her body construct to the back of her mind, Tucker was sobbing, one last painful orgasm being squeezed out of his body by his overwrought brain.

  For a moment there was silence, punctuated by Tucker’s dying sobs, his harsh breathing echoing off the walls, counterpoint to Angel’s own.

  She should not have been breathing at all.

  “Tucker?” she asked after a minute—or an hour.

  “Nunh.”

  “Can you move?”

  “No.” Unequivocal.

  “I’ll get you a pillow,” she said. And then, before she could ask herself if this was possible, she gathered Squishbeans in one hand and then….

  It worked.

  She picked up the pillow in her other hand and walked it to Tucker, bending to tuck it next to his ear before sitting, cross-legged, by his head.

  Tucker groaned and grabbed the pillow with what looked like the last of his strength—and his one clean hand.

  “Do you think we’ll have to do that with every bed?” he asked wearily, the sound of tears still in his voice.

  “Not all of the beds are still in the rooms,” Angel told him kindly. “And as for the rest….” She blew out a breath. “I’ll… I’ll screen them carefully. We can plan for that next time.”

  “Yeah, how about with Quaaludes?” Tucker asked dreamily. “Something to make it all slower. Less. Not as intense.”

  Angel brushed fingers through his hair and wondered, since Squishbeans was in her lap, if he could feel it. “If you can get a prescription, that would be good.”

  “Easier just to get someone to make me pot brownies.” He giggled, and the sound wasn’t quite sane. “God. Would that be better or worse on pot brownies?” With a choked sound in his throat, he rolled to his side and pulled his hand out of his pants. He wiped it on his T-shirt before tucking it under his cheek.

  “Angel?”

  “Tucker?”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I wish you couldn’t see me like this.”

  Oh. Oh no. He was embarrassed. “You did something really brave tonight, Tucker. I’m only sorry I couldn’t protect you better.”

  Tucker nodded, tears sliding from the corners of his eyes to his pillow.

  “That’s nice of you. You didn’t seem this nice when I first got here. I
like you nice. It must be the kitten.”

  “No,” Angel whispered, almost sure he’d fallen asleep. “It was that you wanted a kitten for yourself, and you picked one out for me.” She kept up the stroke through his hair, and he smiled and tilted his face into her touch.

  “Feels nice,” he murmured. “Real human touch. Not sexual. God, I miss it.”

  Angel gasped—but she didn’t pause. She kept up the motion, figuring it was soothing him as he slept. She was exhausted too, and she lost track of time. One moment she was running her fingers through Tucker’s hair, and the next, she was asleep as she sat, kitten on her lap, chin tucked against her chest.

  “BUT YOU took apart the bed! It’s in the hallway! Why would you do that if you’re not going to finish?”

  Tucker grunted and threw a knapsack with sandwiches and water bottles into the truck. “I wanted to get the bed out of the way so we didn’t have to… feel it anymore.”

  No other pieces of the puzzle of Sophie, Bridget, the monstrous father-in-law, and the mysterious brother had been found on the bed.

  But the aftermath of that touch had put Tucker out of commission for another day. Twelve hours after the brush, twelve hours after the bed. It was slowly dawning on Angel that having a more powerful empath was not always to their benefit. When Angel had been dealing with Ruth, they’d been able to get to the catharsis of the soul after a week or less—but not at this rate. Not with Tucker. Of course, Angel had openly admitted that she’d given Ruth the easiest of the jobs, but this one? This one wasn’t easy. There were too many pieces in motion with these objects and these ghosts, and some of them were too painful to touch more than once.

  “But why not finish with the room?” Angel asked almost desperately. Tucker looked so tired! His body moved slowly as he swung himself up into the cab, and as Angel materialized next to him, she felt a twinge of bitterness. Couldn’t he just do something human? Something physical and not empathic? Ruth used to garden, clean house, even, when she was younger, have friends over for cards. “Why can’t you spend a couple of days doing something normal?”

  Tucker grunted. “You’re the one with an agenda, Angel. Don’t get all upset with me now that I’ve jumped on the ‘let’s clear the ghosts the fuck out of here’ bandwagon!”

  “This is not good for you,” Angel said crossly, and was rewarded with one of Tucker’s manic little-boy smiles.

  “You sound like my mother!”

  Angel caught her breath. She knew Tucker’s mother and father had died fifteen years earlier in a car crash. Ruth had been devastated, and Angel had been… unaware. Unaware of human grieving and how hard it must have been for Ruth to exorcise other people’s ghosts when her heart was laden with the memory of her own people, whom she loved. Angel hadn’t wondered, then, why Ruth wouldn’t ask Tucker to come live with her. Now that she saw the extent of Tucker’s abilities, she thought she knew.

  If Tucker had come to Daisy Place when he was a young man, it would have destroyed him. He would have been trapped here, wretched and bitter, before his time.

  Ruth had kept him away, living on a stipend, to give him a chance to live, and whatever had happened to Tucker to make him so angry now, there were still deep pockets of kindness, like gold ore, and enthusiasm, buried like silver, in the mysterious caves of Tucker’s heart.

  “What did your mother sound like?” Angel asked softly. Suddenly it became imperative to know.

  “She was always telling me not to study so hard, to eat well, to remember my sweater. Don’t pet that strange dog. Don’t walk barefoot where there were stickers and bees. Don’t stand next to a draft. It was like my whole life she was giving me advice to protect myself, and then nothing could….” He swallowed.

  “Protect you from losing her,” Angel filled in. And then, because she couldn’t help herself, “What about your father?”

  Tucker let out a nostalgic laugh. “He… he was in awe of her, I think. She had me when she was forty, you know? By the time they passed away, they were in their fifties, and she just kept him running laps and eating kale, telling him, ‘Dammit, we waited long enough for him. I want to see my grandchildren!’” Angel could hear his grunt of pain across the cab of the truck. “That didn’t pan out for them, really, and they weren’t hip and young. But Dad followed her into anything. He told me again and again that when you found someone who made you your best person, you had to be grateful for them.” His face—pale from the two psychic encounters—lapsed into sorrow.

  Angel could not remember feeling crappier in fifty-five years of being an awful friend and a worse person.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wishing she had left it alone. “They sound like lovely people. I just… I didn’t mean to pull up the sad things in your heart.”

  Tucker cast her a watery grin and started the truck.

  “They’re good things too,” he admitted. “I think I needed to think about them right now. Taking apart that bed was—”

  “Not the greatest part of being human,” Angel said delicately.

  Tucker darted a glance at her, and his face colored charmingly. “No. Not that way. I mean, sex can be great, you know?” He didn’t wait for Angel to respond, which was good, because Angel had no frame of reference. “But not like that. It was all just so—” He shuddered, and his flush washed away. “—soulless. Children could have been conceived on that bed, but the onslaught of it all…. I did not need to be there.” He sighed, and she wondered if an actual woman could have smelled the embarrassment sweat rolling off of him. “You did not need to be there.”

  Angel couldn’t look at him when she said this. “You have nothing to be ashamed of.” He did not. He’d been caught in the throes of a supernatural vision. She’d stayed there—why? Because watching him orgasm was fascinating? Because he’d needed her?

  “You won’t look at me,” Tucker mumbled. “I mean, I know we’re only working partners, and you’re not even alive, but at least we were talking.”

  Oh.

  Oh hell.

  “I made you do it,” Angel said. “I made you mad and forced my… agenda on you, and you grabbed it, even though you knew it was going to be difficult. I am feeling the shame here, Tucker. I am not shaming you.”

  Tucker’s mouth quirked at the corners. “How about no shame for either of us, okay? If you can’t look at me, Angel, I’ve got no one…. Never mind. Just no shame.”

  “Now we sound like vampires,” Angel grumbled. And oh yes, she’d seen them around town.

  “There’re vampires here? I’ve seen a few in the city, but I didn’t know they’d be out here too!”

  “They come with the fairy hill,” she said sharply. “Which we do not—”

  “Yeah, yeah, we do not talk about. I understand.” Tucker’s humor seemed to be restored, and Angel took a deep breath.

  “Well, we shall check out the cemetery,” she conceded, “and see if there is anything to be done. And then you can go back home and rest—”

  “And you can catch up on Buffy,” he said with grim humor.

  “There must be a way for her and Angel to get back together,” Angel said tearfully. “There must!”

  “Well, sometimes it’s not your first love who’s your best love,” Tucker said thoughtfully, like this would mean something. “Sometimes it’s an unlikely person you meet later and have trouble being with in the beginning.”

  Angel narrowed her eyes. “If you’re giving me spoilers, I’ll hog Squishbeans for a week.”

  Tucker laughed. “No spoilers, I promise.”

  The atmosphere in the cab lightened for the five minutes it took to get to the cemetery, but Angel couldn’t help but wonder—who was Tucker’s first love who wasn’t his best love? It sounded like he knew.

  More importantly, who was the unlikely person he would meet later?

  HOW DREADFUL it was to be wrong.

  “Oh, Tucker. This is bad!”

  The ghost of an indigent miner swiped an angry hand against the wi
ndshield, leaving a swish of green like the mashed corpse of a big bug.

  “Right? Let’s get out, though, and see—”

  “What if they’re hostile?” Angel asked, because the cluster of ghosts whirling around the graveyard seemed to be truly massive.

  “Not right now. Watch. See? As we drive by, they’re fading away. They’re afraid of you.”

  “How do you know they’re not afraid of you?” Angel demanded, because it did seem he was right.

  “Because they didn’t do this when I drove by with Josh.”

  Oh Lord, there’d been mortals here. People passed this section of the property every day! “Did your friend see the ghosts?”

  “No,” Tucker said, and it wasn’t Angel’s imagination—he sounded a little sad. “He said it looked dark, so he’s not immune to it. But he didn’t see the random graveyard stretching into the hell dimension. He didn’t see what I see.”

  It must have been lonely to be so singular. Was this why Tucker knew so much about seeking out no-strings companions?

  “I see it too,” Angel told him and looked out the window stoically. She wished she didn’t. The swarms of the undead were parting before the truck, but Angel could make out plain farm women in cotton dresses, miners in overalls and thermal shirts, children in knee pants or dirty tunics. “These people couldn’t all have died here. Not even in the town, Tucker. There’s far too many of them!”

  “I know. It’s like the place—the graveyard in particular—just sort of sucked them in.”

  “Why would somebody lay a foundation like this?” Angel muttered. “I wondered that when I came, and I wonder that now. Why would someone create a property that is essentially a giant ghost trap?”

  “Don’t ask me,” Tucker muttered. “I’m just the hired muscle. Now I need you to get out first and come over to my side. They hate you, but they’re looking at me like they want to jump in my body and use it for a meat puppet, so, uh, yeah.” He shuddered, and Angel remembered their conversation before he grabbed hold of the bed frame. “Not doing that.”