All the Rules of Heaven

by Amy Lane

  “Tucker!”

  Tucker turned as the spirits lost their coherence, drifted backward, drifted away.

  “Damie!”

  “Love you, man!”

  “You too!”

  And then, all together, they turned toward the still-hostile gathering beyond and created a wall.

  Tucker ran for freedom—ran for Angel, for his safety, for his acceptance, for his exasperation and kindness and his warmth and his worry—except he couldn’t run.

  He could barely see. The bubble disappeared, and his body threatened to fail, and he stumbled, pushing himself up, then looking behind him.

  The press of angry souls was right there, close enough he could see features—old, young, male, female, 1910, 1940, 2001…. Tucker turned away and thought of Angel, thought of the chance he might have with Angel that he’d never had with Damien, and pushed his body one more aching step, and another, and another, and he could hear them, feel them, the iciness of their clammy spirits teasing along his skin.

  “Angel!” he cried, thinking this couldn’t be the end. Even Damien got one last kiss. “Angel! Where are—”

  There was a dark fluttering sound and a great wind.

  Angel’s arms closed around Tucker’s shoulders, and then they were safe, wrapped in the softest cocoon imaginable, and Tucker was sobbing in Angel’s arms.

  “Shh, Tucker. I’m sorry. I couldn’t see you. I was there the whole time, but I just needed to see you.”

  And maybe he’d needed Tucker to see him too. “Angel, oh my God. It’s been the worst fucking day.”

  Angel’s laugh fractured, and Tucker could smell lavender and citrus, soaking through his hair. “I was so afraid for you,” Angel whispered. “But you were stronger than all of it.”

  “I had to be.” Tucker clung to him tightly, for once not asking questions. Outside their safe cocoon, a storm raged. Hundreds of angry souls were thundering around them. But in here, wherever here was, there were only the two of them, and they were touching.

  “I had to be,” Tucker said again, leaning his sore head against Angel’s chest. “I wanted to see you again so damned bad.”

  Angel’s featherlight kiss brushed his hair. “I wouldn’t want to exist in any world without you in it, Tucker. You need to stay.”

  “Sure,” Tucker said, so comfortable, so pain-free in the circle of Angel’s arms. “I’ll stay as long as I can.”

  He closed his eyes and saved the rest of his energy for clinging, and the storm weathered itself out.

  He barely managed to open his eyes when he heard his name called from outside the cocoon.

  “Tucker? Angel? Oh my God, Angel!”

  Tucker looked into Angel’s green eyes and smiled. “Sounds like Rae is okay,” he said happily. The cocoon unwrapped from around the two of them, and Tucker turned from Angel’s chest to see Josh and Rae, eyes enormous, walking over the blackened, twisted wire of the used-up trap.

  “Tucker, are you okay?”

  The pains all returned with a vengeance, and Tucker would have fallen to his knees, but Angel’s arms were tight around his chest. Tucker looked up into his face and smiled, even as Angel reached underneath him and cradled Tucker’s body against him like a child’s.

  Oh. He knew what that cocoon was now. Tentatively, he reached up past Angel’s shoulder and stroked the feathers over the smooth muscle that must have always been a part of his Angel.

  “Angel,” he said in wonder. “Look at that. You have wings!”

  “Oh Jesus,” Josh said. “That’s Angel. Now I see him, and he’s not even a ghost.”

  Tucker lost his hold on consciousness and slid into darkness, as safe and as comforted as he’d been since he was a teenager, when his mother was cooking breakfast for him and his father was downstairs and his best friend in the world was coming over to see a baseball game.

  Promises of Recovery

  NOBODY COULD tell him how he’d arrived at the hospital.

  “I don’t know,” the night nurse said for the thousandth time. “One minute this room was empty, the next minute you were bleeding in it. We didn’t see anything, don’t know anything. Do you have any idea how you received all of those injuries, sir?”

  They’d had to tell him he had a concussion three times.

  He managed to remember the broken nose, broken wrist, cracked ribs, bruised trachea, and blood loss from the head wound that wouldn’t quit.

  “I have no idea,” he said blandly. “One minute I was working in my house, the next minute I was here. It’s a mystery.”

  The nurse—in her late fifties and not particularly sympathetic—rolled her eyes. “The mystery is why anyone would want to save you. Now we’re pumping you full of sedatives, so would you go to sleep?”

  Short answer: no.

  He sat there in the darkness, letting the painkillers wash over him, grateful for them. But he couldn’t sleep.

  “Angel?” he whispered tentatively.

  Angel was immediately there, sitting on his bed. Tucker tried to see his wings, but they flickered in and out of his peripheral vision. “Yes, Tucker. Are you okay?”

  Tucker giggled to himself, very stoned. “Apparently I’m beat the hell up. But they say I’ll live.” He found the wings were clearest when he just looked at Angel’s face and didn’t try to see deeper. Perhaps when he forgot about the wings, they would materialize for real.

  It was possible: Angel’s hand on his was as real as anybody’s hand he’d ever held. “I was very worried.”

  Tucker squeezed his hand. “Me too. Angel, you’re going to stay with me, right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? I was going to before.”

  “Because, Angel, you’re not a ghost.”

  Angel’s feigned innocence was priceless. “I’m not? Oh no! What on earth could I be?”

  Tucker laughed anyway. “A pain in my ass!”

  “Not yet, but maybe someday,” Angel promised.

  “Oh my God, you’re making a dirty joke. I really am dead.”

  And then suddenly things were serious again. “Not dead, Tucker. You’re here. I’m here. We’re together.” He paused, as though looking for more information. “That’s important.”

  Tucker’s eyes closed, and finally the medication kicked in. “It’s the best thing in my life.”

  “I will not argue.”

  “Angel, could you lie behind me?” He was scared and tired and needy.

  “I was afraid you’d never ask.”

  Angel’s breath kept time with his own, and he fell peacefully asleep.

  DAKOTA ARRIVED the next day, in her khakis with a little notebook in her pocket. She was surprised to see Tucker, looking like hell, in a hospital bed.

  Angel disappeared at his back the minute she walked in. She squinted.

  “Was there just a…?”

  Tucker shook his head subtly, meeting her eyes. “If you can’t see him, he wasn’t there,” he told her. He watched her eyes widen and knew somehow that she knew.

  She put her notebook away and pulled up a chair. “Am I going to get a story from you?” she asked cautiously. “The nurses say you just woke up here.”

  Tucker shrugged. “That’s mostly the truth.”

  “Would I get a better story if I called Josh and Rae?”

  Oh hell. “I really hope you don’t,” he said honestly. “I mean… they’re nice folks. They certainly didn’t do this.” Well, technically, Josh had—but technicalities were often the furthest thing from the truth.

  Dakota sighed and stretched her feet out. “Does this have anything to do with that… that weird cloud over the graveyard clearing out? People have been seeing their dead grandparents all day. I had to answer six calls before this. They weren’t doing anything—just smiling and waving as far as I can tell—but coming across dead grandparents isn’t a usual thing in my job. I know. I asked.”

  “Were they happy to see their dead grandparents?” It was an important question. The release valve may have se
emed like a good idea, but if someone’s awful child-molesting grandfather was on the loose, Tucker might be back in the hospital again very soon.

  Or the graveyard. Also a possibility.

  “So far, yes. In fact we’ve had two newly discovered wills and one grandma who held her hand over her granddaughter’s belly and said, ‘Name her after me.’ The girl still lived at home—gee, weren’t her parents surprised.”

  Tucker laughed and then gasped. He couldn’t laugh that much yet. It still hurt.

  “So,” Dakota asked gently. “That you?”

  “I had no idea she was pregnant, and I swear I’m not the father.” Tucker kept a straight face, but Dakota laughed.

  “No. I think you’re probably taken by the invisible man behind you.”

  And Tucker’s composure broke. He laughed until the nurse popped her head in and threatened to sedate him, and Dakota stood to leave.

  “I’ll file you under dead grandmother,” she said dryly. Then she sobered. “But Tucker?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Next time you’re… having a dead grandmother moment, you can call me, okay? Whatever went down with you—and it looks bad—I would have believed you. I would have come.”

  Tucker swallowed. A friend. A true platonic friend. It was a gift. “Not many people would have,” he said, blinking hard.

  “Yeah, well, not many people scream ‘I’m gonna change my career’ during sex either. And you didn’t even bat an eyelash. In fact you looked relieved. I get the feeling you’ve done that for a lot of people. Is your, uh, invisible guy going to be okay with that?”

  Crap. “So far that gift seems to be laying low,” Tucker said, hoping. “Maybe, uh, dead grandmothers are my calling now.”

  She got close enough to cup his cheek. “I’m not sure which one I’d wish for you more. Dead grandmothers seem awfully hard on the body, but I’m not sure how good that other thing was for you either.”

  Oh, if not for Angel, she would have been a lovely companion.

  “I’ll take the dead grannies,” he said. “If nothing else, I seem to be getting a vacation out of it.”

  “Sure.” She kissed his forehead and left.

  Angel’s heat seeped again into his back. “I might not like her,” he said darkly.

  “She knows I’m taken.” Tucker closed his eyes, exhausted by the visit but glad she’d come.

  “Does she still want you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I like her very much.”

  “You are very jealous,” Tucker mumbled. “I really hope my other talent is laying low. I don’t see how that would work with you like this.”

  Angel grunted. “That’s not a rule you can break.” He took a deep, cleansing breath. “Dammit.”

  “No fucking people into epiphany right now. No fucking period. Just hold me, Angel. We’ll start there.”

  Angel nuzzled the back of his neck, and he smiled.

  A WEEK later, Josh Greenaway came and got him and brought him back to Daisy Place. While he’d been gone, the Greenaways had brought in an area rug and some bright drapes for his bedroom, as well as the club chair and the ottoman they’d talked about that day in Tucker’s apartment. They’d also set up an actual television on a dresser at the foot of his bed and had even—at Angel’s insistence, Rae said—replaced the mattress and pillow.

  Tucker looked at Squishbeans, curled in the center of his pillow, and thought they may even have fed his cat.

  Tucker ran his fingers over the worn leather of the club chair, touched. “Not to be ungrateful, Josh, but, uh, why?”

  “For saving me,” Josh said.

  Tucker shook his head. “I’m the one who put you in danger.”

  Josh shrugged. “I’m the one who put me in danger. I live with four psychics—well, five if you count Tilda. Wait—four, because Andy’s not living at home anymore. It doesn’t matter. My wife’s as witchy as they come, and I should have listened to her, and to you. I shouldn’t have gone in unprotected. Anyway, it wasn’t your fault, but you sure did go above and beyond to fix it.” Josh gave him an awkward hug, which Tucker returned gingerly. He hadn’t even felt the ribs break at the time, but boy, had he felt them for the last few days.

  “You all have been really nice to me,” Tucker said, embarrassed.

  “Consider us your family, Tucker,” Josh said. Then he pulled back and grinned. “Besides—you’ve already seen my wife’s tits. If you weren’t family, I’d have to kill you.”

  Tucker blushed and laughed. “I’ve seen her tattoo as well. I really must be family.”

  Josh grimaced and then made Tucker take his painkillers and go to bed.

  Angel appeared this time too.

  It took some doing, but Tucker managed to shove and shimmy until he could step out of his sweats and wriggle out of his T-shirt. There were no guarantees he and Angel could touch on any given day, but he wanted access to as much skin as possible. When he was done, he lay carefully on his side, facing the inside of the bed, where Angel stretched out, staring at him with the intensity he’d shown during Tucker’s stay in the hospital.

  Here, in the familiar surroundings of their one safe room, it disturbed Tucker in ways that hurt.

  “I’m not going to die just yet,” he said with a smile.

  Angel’s brow—usually clear like a child’s—knit sternly. “That’s not funny.”

  “And if I did, we’d still probably see each other. I mean, it’s a haunted house!”

  “No.” Angel’s lower lip trembled. “We wouldn’t. I don’t talk to the ghosts here, Tucker. I can only see them with your help. Who’s going to help me talk to you?”

  Oh.

  Tucker felt it then—the pull. Tight under his broken ribs, as real as it had always been. But it wasn’t leading him to the road, to a stranger, to an epiphany he could never share.

  It was leading him right here, to a realization he was a part of. To a place in his heart, a wisdom that must be shared or it would do neither of them any good.

  “Nobody,” he said, reaching out and smoothing his fingertips down the side of Angel’s freckled face. Stubble. He felt stubble under the soft skin of his fingers. “One life. We get one life. And no guarantees.”

  He saw it then—the shudder through Angel’s body that surprised him. A sob.

  “That is of no comfort.” He shuddered again.

  “You want comfort?” Tucker flattened his palm and ran it down Angel’s chest, which remained reassuringly hard under his hand. “I’ll give you comfort. Souls find peace—together. Like Sophie and Bridget. That’s comfort.”

  “But what if I don’t—”

  The pull intensified, and Tucker experienced a profound gratitude that, in this moment of his homecoming and Angel’s bleeding, they could touch.

  “Do you think you’re the only one?” he said, risking a kiss. Angel’s mouth opened under his, and he tasted human heat and human need. And the faintest bit of mint.

  “The only one what?” Angel whispered.

  “The only one who would break the rules of heaven?”

  Angel shuddered again, and Tucker pulled at Angel’s thigh until he lifted it and slung it over Tucker’s hips. Angel’s erection pushed against his abdomen, as real as Angel’s chest under his palms. The denim of his faded jeans rasped the tender skin of Tucker’s thighs.

  “What rules?”

  Tucker kissed down his neck and nibbled on his collarbone over the white T-shirt Angel habitually wore. “If I close my eyes, will you take off your clothes?”

  “Why would you need to…? Oh.”

  Tucker smiled, eyes closed, as the T-shirt and jeans melted again and he had access to Angel’s tiny nipples. Tucker lowered his head, and Angel arched his back, and ah… his skin had the faintest tang of salt and citrus.

  Even Angel sweat in bed.

  Tucker suckled his nipple, enjoying Angel’s whimpers, the arching of his naked body against Tucker’s, the smoothness of their bodies, skin to ski
n.

  “Tucker,” Angel gasped. He blatantly groped Tucker under his boxers, and Tucker knew what he would find.

  “You’re not even—”

  “I’m drugged, Angel,” Tucker breathed. “Painkillers. It’ll take a while. Now move so I can lick your other side.”

  Angel whimpered and rolled so Tucker could torment his other nipple. Angel cried out softly and tightened his fingers in Tucker’s hair. The tang of pain—the good kind, the urgent kind—helped Tucker’s erection along, and in a moment, they were cock to cock, separated by Tucker’s boxers.

  “Keep moving,” Tucker whispered. “While I can still taste you.”

  Angel didn’t argue, scooting up the bed until his erection fell, long and fat, even with Tucker’s mouth.

  Straight, pale as marble, hard, uncut, and without veins—Tucker filed this hidden part of Angel away for the moments they slid through each other like water. He stroked it, memorizing the hardness, and licked the head, savoring the texture.

  Angel’s noises became urgent, and Tucker licked him again.

  Moisture welled at the tip, clear, tinged faintly purple. Tucker licked and smiled. He should have known.

  “Tucker,” Angel pleaded. “Please. I don’t understand… it’s….”

  “Hold on.” Tucker licked him again, and Angel whimpered.

  “Please.”

  Tucker took his straight, perfect member all the way down his throat, then pulled back, using skills honed in a thousand encounters to send human desire burning through angelic veins.

  Angel’s flailing hand glanced off Tucker’s shoulder, and Tucker winced, then pulled back. “Hold on to the bedframe, sweetheart, and trust me.”

  “Tucker,” Angel sighed, and Tucker took him all the way down again. And again. Slow and hard, not teasing, not this time.

  Angel’s hips caught on before Angel’s brain, and he started arching and retreating, a slow fuck of Tucker’s mouth that roared arousal through Tucker’s veins like wildfire.

  Tucker wanted. He’d thought he remembered the joy of wanting when Angel’s hand had been stroking him, but this was harder, more painful, more necessary. Tucker needed to taste Angel’s pleasure. Angel could disappear at any moment, and Tucker needed the taste of his come, proof in his body that he had a lover, one who knew him, one who would do anything to protect him from pain.