by Amy Lane
Tucker took a deep breath and tried to pull himself together. He wasn’t going to get drunk this time and wake up in a stranger’s bed, and the relief of that shook him to the core. He needed to remember how to be human again if he wanted to keep these people in his life.
“Thanks, kiddo. I’ll try to make sure that stays true.”
“Here.” She handed him a french fry. “This will help. It has salt.”
“That there,” said Josh, “is a kid who has never heard the word ‘hypertension’ in her life.”
Tucker managed a better smile this time. “Let’s hope she never will. Thanks, Coral. You’re right. Fries make it better.”
“Let me order you a milkshake,” Coral said wisely. “I can have the extra in the cup, and then we can both feel better.”
He was in the middle of his second milkshake when the bell over the door rang and a voice he hadn’t heard in weeks called out, “Tucker? Tucker, is that you?”
“Miz Fisher!” Jordan called out, waving. “Lookit you!”
Tucker looked over his shoulder and found his Foresthill welcoming committee, Dakota Fisher, standing in the doorway, resplendent in her sheriff’s deputy uniform, her blond hair pulled back into a ponytail.
Tucker didn’t feel a pop—not even a tingle—but he was glad to see her.
She strode up and made herself at home at their little table, and soon the kids were pumping her for information on her transition from schoolteacher to law enforcement, and did she really get to fire the gun at her hip?
Tucker finished off his cold fries and let the talk at the table wash over him, and that sense of dislocation, of unreality, vanished.
This here was healing time.
He was a human being, among his fellow human beings, and they were welcoming him into the fold.
THE GREENAWAYS lingered over pie and ice cream, but eventually they had to go. School was starting in a week, and apparently Rae had a list as long as her arm of stuff she needed to accomplish to get everybody to their destination in adequate clothing with enough food.
Tucker remembered his own mother saying much the same thing. Oh, she would have loved to have been a grandmother by proxy to the Greenaway kids.
Tucker and Dakota followed the family out, and Tucker was surprised to see that the sun was almost down. He’d been sitting in the Ore Cart for over two hours, shooting the shit and playing cheeseboxes on his place mat with Coral and Murphy.
His face hurt from smiling.
“So,” Dakota said, pausing by her cruiser and leaning on the door. “I’m actually off shift early and not too tired to do something with my life.” She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “Any plans?”
Tucker thought about it seriously—about taking a lover who was not part of the cosmic plan. It looked like the gods or whoever were giving him a break now, didn’t it? No pickups tonight, right? In fact, Tucker was the one who had been picked up by the lovely family, and he’d been made to feel special in their midst.
Maybe, as long as he hunted ghosts and told their stories like a good little empath, that chapter of his life would be over now.
The air whooshed out of his lungs as he realized the truth of that.
That chapter of his life could be over now. Perhaps his strengthening bond with Angel was what started the new one.
Damien.
How could he close out that entire chapter of his life if nobody heard the story? He didn’t want to tell that story to Dakota, not even for an enjoyable moment in bed. If the adult years of his life had taught him anything, it was that sex was easy. But real emotion, that was a currency that was hard to find and even harder to keep.
“I can’t,” he said softly, touching her cheek with his knuckle so she’d know he took the offer seriously. “I’ve got some business to finish at home.”
Dakota shrugged, obviously hurt but dealing. “Some other time?”
Would there be? He closed his eyes and tasted lavender and mint. And salt. “I wouldn’t rule it out,” he said with a wink.
She shrugged. “You already have. Later, Tucker. Call me if you need anything—anything not sex. I mean that.”
“Thanks.”
She climbed into her cruiser and pulled away, and Tucker got into the truck. He didn’t need a supernatural pull under his breastbone to know the only place to go was Daisy Place.
The person he needed to talk to was most undoubtedly at home.
HE LAUGHED as he pulled up because Angel’s face was pressed against the front window of the house, pale and wraithlike.
Tucker walked in through the kitchen. “Angel, ghosts like you give haunted houses a bad name.”
Angel materialized immediately, and Squishbeans came trotting in on his heels, as though they had been waiting together.
“Tucker?” He sounded uncertain, and Tucker managed a brief smile, hoping to calm his nerves.
Maybe calm Tucker’s too.
“I’m going to have a beer,” Tucker said, pulling one out of the fridge. “I left here feeling like I needed nothing in the world more than a drink. Or six. Or twelve. And I got milkshakes and hamburgers from the Greenaway children, which was fine. But damn, I need a beer.”
“Will it make you feel better?” Angel asked, and Tucker cast him a bleak glance.
“It would be nice if something did,” he said softly and then plopped down in the kitchen chair.
“Did you eat enough?” Angel made fretful gestures with his hands—even as a man, he had long-fingered, graceful hands. Funny how Tucker had never noticed that before.
“Yup. All the comfort food a man could ask for.” Tucker popped the cap and took a swig. He’d ordered imported, and yeah, that was good. “But not beer.”
“I was worried,” Angel said softly, sitting down across from him.
“I know you were, Angel,” Tucker said fondly. “It… you probably don’t know or don’t care, but it means a lot to me that you were looking out the window for me.”
Angel nodded, green eyes disturbingly perceptive. “You are not used to anyone waiting for your return.”
“Not since my parents died,” Tucker confirmed. He sighed and took another drink. “My power really kicked in right after they passed.”
“You were a teenager,” Angel said sadly. “That’s usually the time—”
“Yeah, I know. But this… this was different. My power was different. I mean, as a kid, you see ghosts or elves or whatever—but you figure that out. This was…. I was just walking by a McDonald’s, you know? And suddenly, I just had to have a soda. It was like I’d die if I didn’t.”
“The pull,” Angel whispered, leaning his chin on his hand. “You didn’t know what it was.”
Funny, how Angel talked about it—the pull—like it was a thing every empath should know about.
Tucker hadn’t.
“Nope. But I walked into that place anyway and ordered some nuggets and a coke. While I was waiting for my order, I had to pee. And damned if the clerk didn’t follow me into the bathroom and blow me.”
Angel’s chin fell off his hand. “I beg your pardon?”
“Sex. In the bathroom. It was my first time. He was cute and all, and I sure did like blowing him back. But a blowjob. In the bathroom. And when it was done, his life had changed. I mean, it worked out great for him—he got to come out, he learned something about himself, he got a blowjob. Go him! But me?” Tucker took another pull of bitterness. “I went back to my parents’ house, where the social workers let me stay as long as they visited once a week, and there was not a soul there who cared that I’d just gotten laid in a bathroom. Lucky me.”
“Oh, Tucker—”
“The second time, it was a woman in a car. That was uncomfortable.” His beer was empty. He stood up and grabbed another one. Hell, he wasn’t drinking on an empty stomach. He wasn’t even weeping on an empty stomach. He could polish off a six-pack tonight. Why the hell not?
“Did she have a… a reckoning?” Angel asked as T
ucker popped the top off the new bottle.
“Of course she did,” Tucker said, feeling expansive. “And so did the next one—a guy. And the next one. I’ve got a magic wang,” he said proudly, belching.
“I’ve seen it in action,” Angel said, the dryness of his voice hitting Tucker like ice. “It’s very impressive, Tucker, but what I think was at work in those cases was your soul.”
Tucker suddenly had a problem drinking his beer. “You think?” he said, suddenly needing the compliment so damned bad.
“Of course I do!” The softness of Angel’s presence brushed over the top of Tucker’s knuckles, and he closed his eyes against the sweetness of it. “You—your kindness, your bravery, your humor—those are much more important than your… your cock, Tucker. Even I can see that!”
“That’s kind,” he said, swallowing. “So very kind.”
“I’m not a kind being, Tucker. You need to know that.”
Tucker wanted to touch him back. “You’re kind to me,” he said. And then, because the moment demanded it, he added, “Damien was kind too.”
He actually heard Angel’s indrawn breath. “Are we going to talk about Damien now?”
Tucker cast a baleful look at the piles of boxes. “His baseball mitt is in there. Are you sure you don’t want me to just grab it and let our thing do its thing?”
“This isn’t about your gift, Tucker.” Angel’s voice fractured, and he wiped his face—his incorporeal face that was now gleaming with lavender mint tears.
“What’s it about? Why do I have to do this?”
“It’s about your heart!”
Angel’s voice rang in the small kitchen, and Tucker took a deep breath against the anger that threatened the moment.
They’d both know what the anger was masking anyway.
He took another breath, managing to push the fear down his throat, where it rumbled and growled, stalking his stomach with ulcerating claws.
Then Angel put his hands on Tucker’s, and faint heat under the coolness of Angel’s skin drove the animal of fear even deeper into his cave.
“Am I bleeding again?” he asked dryly. That was the connection, wasn’t it? Whenever Angel could touch him corporeally, it was because Tucker was sharing his blood, his humanness, with Angel.
“One of us is. Here.” Angel squeezed his hands. “You’re safe. Tell me the story, Tucker. I’ll see it, like I see Sophie and Bridget. I’ll know what happened in your heart, and not just the scary thing that’s in your mind.”
Tucker closed his eyes against Angel’s gaze and nodded. Then he turned his hands over, palm up, and squeezed Angel’s fingers.
Angel squeezed back.
“SO?”
Damien looked over as they walked and smiled. Tucker loved that smile—it was the one Damien had given him when they’d been playing ball in high school and Damien was pretty sure he was going to get a hit or when Tucker’s mother had packed him extra cookies and Tucker offered to share. It was the smile he’d given when Tucker had tripped in junior high and knocked over three desks, and Damien stood to help pick them up.
Damien had offered Tucker a quiet version of the smile the day Tucker’s parents had been buried because he knew Tucker would know it was all going to be okay.
“I had a dream,” Damien said, that secret, sharing smile twitching against his full lips. “You know. A sex dream.”
Tucker grunted. “Damien, I told you. I’ve got somewhere to go tonight.”
Damien nodded seriously. “I know. The pull. You told me. You’ll….” He grimaced. “You’ll still go. I mean, I’ll let you go in a minute. I just thought, you know. Instead of going straight to wherever, we could stop. Have a cookie or something. You know.” He bit his lip and his smile went shy. “Talk.”
Tucker’s whole body flooded with hope.
“Talk?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Damien turned into a local bakery, but not before licking his lips. “You know. A treat.” Run by a family of tree gnomes (or so Damien claimed), the place was cheerfully yellow, decorated with wind chimes from all corners of the globe. It had a patio that opened onto H Street and into the summer evening.
The pull under Tucker’s ribs was getting painful.
“I want to,” he said, shuddering against the ache. “But Damie, you gotta understand—it’s… I can feel it. Something bad’ll happen if I don’t.”
The disappointment on Damien’s face was acute.
“One cookie,” Tucker agreed rashly. “What’s one cookie?”
Damien’s smile amped up, his eyes sparkling. “I really want to kiss you,” he said softly. “I feel like I’ve been waiting my whole life.”
Tucker closed his eyes and said a prayer of thanks. “Me too.”
Damien bought them two cookies, the sugar kind with the thick layer of frosting, and two cartons of milk. Together they made their way outdoors and sat down underneath the wind chimes.
Tucker bit into a cookie, and sugar, butter, vanilla—all of the good things in life—suffused his senses. He tilted his head back and let them.
The pull hurt—denying it always hurt—but Tucker was outside with his best friend, and Damien might just want him as much as Tucker had yearned for Damien. The wind chimes sang above their heads, and for a moment, the world was a lovely place.
“That’s good,” he said, opening his eyes and grinning. “But I’m going to get fat.”
“No you won’t,” Damien laughed. “With your life? What you have to do every night? You get to control when you eat cookies or what you have for dinner. I say the gods owe you a break!”
Because Damien knew, didn’t he? Tucker had no secrets from Damie—he never had.
Tucker shrugged and took another bite of cookie, and j… right there. He felt it.
He felt the pop. He looked around frantically. His person. The person he was supposed to meet was here, but Tucker didn’t see him. He just felt this terrible, corrosive foreboding.
“Damie, I—”
“Here, you’ve got frosting on your nose,” Damien said, smiling whimsically. And then he stood up to walk around the table, probably to wipe the frosting off….
And his body pitched forward, lifeless, because his head… his face… oh God. Damien!
Tucker caught him, blinking against the blood spatter, and the report of the gun reached his ears. As he looked around frantically, the scream lodged in the back of his throat, crammed there by shock, by denial, he saw the shooter.
An average guy—blondish, weak chin, eyes swimming in misery and doubt. Tucker’s chest popped again and the killer raised the gun to his chin.
And pulled the trigger.
ANGEL WRAPPED strong arms around Tucker’s shoulders and rocked him gently while Tucker howled his grief and rage and guilt onto the kitchen table.
Innocent
ANGEL MANAGED to walk him to bed, but he was never sure how. Tucker stumbled, so lost in grief that he was easily led but unaware of where he was going.
They reached the bedroom, and Angel sat him down, helped him with his shoes, fumbled with the button of his cargo shorts, and finally laid him down, where he wept into his pillow while Angel draped over his body and whispered in his ear.
A part of Angel bore the secret shame that, in the midst of Tucker’s grieving, Angel enjoyed touching him very much.
Enjoyed his smell—sweaty and boozy, with hamburgers and french fries thrown in.
Enjoyed the way their fingers twined together and the way Tucker’s hair felt under Angel’s chin as he sobbed.
Most of Angel was lost in heartbreak with him.
What a terrible, terrible gift.
What a painful way to come of age.
Oh, Tucker. All of that, and you were alone?
As if in answer, Tucker’s voice, lost and shattered, filled the darkness. “Angel, don’t leave me, okay?”
“No,” Angel whispered. “I’ll stay, even if I have to break the rules of heaven. I promise.”
The air seemed to shimmer around them then, but maybe that was only Angel, recognizing that somewhere in the shadow of that promise lay the bones of truth.
Tucker wept some more, but the tears felt cleaner, gentler than they had, and Tucker rolled from his stomach to his side and faced Angel. Angel kept stroking his hair back from his face, and when Tucker leaned into the touch like Squishbeans, searching for more contact, Angel continued to stroke. Down his arm, across his chest, the skin soft over hard muscles. His waist was slender, his stomach concave, and when Tucker made a hissing sound, Angel snatched his hand back.
“It feels good,” Tucker said sleepily. “I… I have sex all the time, but nobody touches me like they know me.”
Angel yearned to know more of him.
He splayed his hand across Tucker’s stomach, stroking the soft skin, the fine hairs below his navel. Tucker sighed, a sex-saturated sound that Angel recognized from his “alone” time after he’d come across the green bottle, and Angel pushed against the shape forming in his boxer shorts.
“Yes,” Tucker whispered. “Angel, keep touching….”
Angel wrapped his hand around Tucker’s erection, squeezing, shuddering with the raw animal emotion of giving a human body pleasure, and Tucker arched against him.
“Please….”
Tucker hooked his hand around the elastic of his shorts and pulled down, and in the dark, Angel was assailed with the forbidden erotic landscape of Tucker’s naked body.
He wanted to lick, touch, nibble, penetrate—all of the aggressive sexuality he’d seen Tucker succumb to. He wanted to be that person.
Tucker stretched and hummed as Angel rubbed both palms against his thighs, and Angel pulled back on his own wants. Tucker had been made a puppet to the vagaries of fate for so long. Somebody needed to please him, and tonight, what Tucker’s bleeding soul needed was gentleness.
And selflessness.
And a touch that gave him the sweetness that had been missing from his pleasure from the very beginning.