and looked at the objects there with dead eyes and leaden limbs.
“I can’t finish this tonight.” When he had sex with someone, he would feel a drain, a pull, something bigger than the normal energy expenditure during coitus. It was one of the reasons he couldn’t hold down a job—it wasn’t just that he didn’t know when he’d be subject to someone else’s body, but he had to sleep off the hangover the next day.
This was worse.
“I’ll start work on the room tomorrow,” he promised, not that Angel had a vested interest in the remodeling. Tucker looked around at the old-fashioned wallpaper, which was starting to give him the creeps, and the dusty splinters of hardwood. “I’ll see if I can move the furniture out while I’m fixing stuff up. It’ll be a pain in the ass in the hallway, but then, you and me are the only ones who’ll be coming in.”
Angel nodded, looking as tired as Tucker, and then reached for Squishbeans.
The animal slipped right through her incorporeal hands.
“Oh dammit!”
Tucker found he had enough strength to laugh. “Don’t stress yourself, sweetheart. I can carry her.”
Tucker reached for the kitten, but instead of looking grateful, Angel glared.
“Are you being condescending because I’m a woman?”
Tucker was tired enough that he actually had to think about that one. “I’m not sure. I’m pretty sure it’s because you’re a ghost. And you’re being sort of cute.” He held out his hand and thought some more—it was a valid question. “I think if you were being cute as a man, I’d be just as condescending. Except, you know, I’d be thinking I was being playful.”
“Well, it sounded like you were being sort of a condescending prick,” Angel muttered, eyes narrowed. “This is a problem with incorporeality, not a problem with internal genitalia.”
Tucker did a slow blink, and then his head did a slow throb.
“Okay. Fine. I’ll examine my chauvinistic tendencies tomorrow, okay?”
“What are you going to do for the rest of the evening?” Angel asked plaintively, following him out the door.
“Oh God—is it only eight o’clock? This has been the longest day! Well, I’ve got my computer, and I’ve got a Netflix account. Do you have any preferences?”
“Netflix?” Angel said curiously. “What’s Netflix?”
Tucker laughed softly. “Wow. I think it’s time you learned about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And another guy named Angel. And a guy named Spike. I think this will make our evenings very pleasant together, you think?”
“Sure, Tucker,” Angel said, trusting as a child. “If you want to spend pleasant time together, I would love to be your companion.”
“That’s a little formal,” Tucker muttered, but still he led the way down the corridor with rooms (more rooms—oh my God, more rooms) flanking either side, then down the stairs. A companion. That was actually sort of nice. Margie, with her assumption that they were lovers, had missed the best part of that, really. Having Angel here meant he at least wasn’t alone.
True to his word, Tucker set up the computer on top of the dresser and turned them both so they could watch from the bed. He left Angel and the kitten watching the first episode and visited the shower, grateful for the modern, if basic, amenities of hot water and shampoo.
It would have sucked going to sleep wearing that fear sweat on his skin, especially if Angel was going to be sitting on the edge of the bed while he slept.
He paused for a moment to figure out why that should bother him. Was it, like Angel said, because she was a girl now?
But when he thought of Angel, he wasn’t really thinking about gender. He was thinking about his/her prissy little speech pattern and the gentleness that her weird agenda seemed to hide. He was thinking of green eyes, almost like a cat’s, watching a kitten with a sort of desperate affection.
He could, simultaneously, think about the sweep of blond hair across a pink cheek and the gruffness of stubble across the edge of a square chin.
Huh.
He’d been cheerfully bisexual since his first and second sexual encounters—but he’d never thought about this before. Was there a difference between bisexual and gender-transcendent?
He groaned as the water pounded his chest. No. He was not going to ponder this now—but he was going to mind whether he actually condescended to pretty, plump blonds, because Angel was right. If he only called her “sweetheart” when she looked like a Barbie doll, that should stop right now.
And he had so many things to think about—things