The ex-con - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Author’s note: All characters are consenting adults (18+). All sexual acts depicted are consensual between the characters.

Chapter 1

The call came on a Thursday afternoon while I was still in the van, parked outside a two-story house in the suburbs with a trunk full of cleaning supplies.

I didn’t recognize the number. I almost let it go to voicemail.

“Ash?”

The voice was rougher than I remembered. Deeper. Like it had been scraped raw and never fully healed.

“Calum?”

“Yeah. It’s me.” A short pause. “Look, I know it’s been a while. I got out yesterday. I need a a steady address to stay. Six months minimum. I was supposed to stay with my cousin but that fell through last minute. I’ve got nowhere to go.”

I sat there with the phone against my ear, staring at the steering wheel.

Calum and I hadn’t spoken properly in almost two years. We used to run in the same circles when we were younger, even though he’s older than me. The same parties, same dumb nights, before he started hanging with a worse crowd and I started taking the cleaning business seriously. Then came New Orleans, the fight, the coma, the sentence. After that, silence. He and his friends beat a guy outside a clube. They were drunk, it was stupid, Calum was not a violent guy normally. 

“Where are you right now?” I asked.

“Bus station downtown. I’ve got a duffel bag and the clothes on my back. That’s it.”

I looked at the time. I had one more job scheduled, but it wasn’t urgent.

“Send me the address. I’ll come get you.”

He was standing outside the station when I pulled up, duffel bag at his feet, shoulders slightly hunched. Even from the car I could see the difference. The preppy boy who used to wear clean polos and expensive sneakers was gone. In his place was someone broader, harder. Longer hair, unshaven, the kind of solid muscle you only get from having nothing else to do but lift.

He opened the passenger door and got in without a word. The van suddenly felt smaller.

“Thanks,” he said after a minute. His voice still had that scraped quality. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I know.”

We drove in silence for a while. I could smell him — cheap prison soap, sweat, and something darker underneath. Every so often I glanced over. His hands were restless on his thighs. The monitor blinked a dull red every few seconds.

“They only let me go as far as the property line,” he said eventually. “Wherever I end up staying, that’s my cage for the next six months.”

“I’ve got a spare room,” I said. “It’s not fancy, but it’s clean. You can take it.”

Calum turned his head and looked at me properly for the first time.

“You serious?”

“Yeah.”

He exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since the station. “I won’t be a problem. I swear.”

“I hope.”

My apartment was on the second floor of a quiet building near the edge of the city. Two bedrooms, open kitchen, a balcony that got decent light in the afternoon. I’d built the cleaning company from nothing over the last three years and the place reflected that — simple, functional, everything in its place.

Calum stood in the middle of the living room with his duffel bag, looking around like he wasn’t sure he was allowed to touch anything.

“Bedroom at the end of the hall is yours,” I said. “Bathroom’s across from it. I keep the place clean, obviously. Help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge.”

He nodded. Still hadn’t put the bag down.

I showed him the room. Queen bed, empty dresser, a window that looked out onto the street. He set the duffel on the floor and sat on the edge of the mattress like he was testing it.

“I need to shower,” he said. “I still smell like that place.”

“Towels are in the hall closet. Take your time.”

While he was in the bathroom I ordered food, too much food, and tried not to think too hard about the fact that I had just invited a man I barely knew anymore to live in my apartment for half a year. A man that’s an ex-con a body that looked like it had been rebuilt for violence. But I always had a crush on Calum…

When Calum came out he was wearing only a pair of old grey sweatpants, towel around his neck, hair still dripping. The difference was even more obvious without the hoodie. His chest was thick and solid, covered in a light dusting of dark hair that ran down his stomach. His arms looked carved. The monitor sat stark against his lower leg.

He caught me looking and gave a tired half-smile.

“Prison diet. Push-ups. Pull-ups. Not much else to do.”

“It shows.”

He dried his hair roughly with the towel and tossed it over the back of a chair. We ate in the living room with the containers open on the coffee table. Calum ate like someone who hadn’t had decent food in a long time, fast, focused, almost aggressive. I watched him more than I watched my own plate.

Afterward he leaned back against the couch and let out a long breath.

“You really live alone?”

“Yeah.”

“No boyfriend?”

I shrugged. “Not right now.”

He nodded slowly, eyes on the blank television screen. The silence stretched. I could feel the weight of everything he wasn’t saying, the year inside, the things he’d seen, the way his hands still hadn’t fully stopped moving.

Around ten I stood up.

“I’m gonna turn in. Extra key’s on the counter. Help yourself if you need anything.”

“I can’t leave, Ash. I need to call the parole agent tomorrow to give your address and they will probably do an inspection. I’m sorry.”

“It’s ok, I don’t have drugs hidden. I’m just a gay guy with a cleaning company.” I said laughing.

Calum looked up at me. For a second something raw flickered across his face — gratitude mixed with something darker and more complicated.

“Ash.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For real. I won’t forget this.”

I nodded and went to my room.

I woke up to screaming.

For a disoriented second I thought it was coming from outside. Then I heard it again — raw, broken, terrified, coming from the spare bedroom.

I was on my feet before I was fully awake. I pushed Calum’s door open without knocking.

He was tangled in the sheets, soaked in sweat, eyes squeezed shut, still trapped in whatever nightmare had him. His fists were clenched in the mattress.

“Calum.” I grabbed his shoulders. “Hey. Wake up. It’s me.”

His eyes flew open. For a moment he looked completely lost, like he didn’t know where he was or who I was. Then recognition hit and his face crumpled. He sat up and pulled me into a hard, desperate hug, face buried against my neck. I felt wetness against my skin. He was shaking.

“I can’t go back,” he rasped. “I can’t fucking go back there. All my family and friends turned their back on me.”

“You’re not going back. You’re here. You’re safe. You’re at my place.”

I stayed like that with him for a long time, one hand on the back of his head, feeling the tremors slowly leave his body. When he finally loosened his grip he didn’t let go completely. 

“Stay five minutes here with me please, that place… that place, Ash. It was pure hell.”

He just pulled me down onto the bed with him and curled around me from behind, one heavy arm locked over my waist, his chest pressed to my back.

We fit together too easily.

I could feel the heat of his body through the thin fabric of my shirt. The solid muscle of his chest and stomach. The way his breathing gradually evened out against the back of my neck. For a few minutes I thought he had fallen asleep again.

Then I felt it.

He was hard. Thick and unmistakable, pressed against the curve of my ass through two layers of fabric. His arm tightened around my waist. His breath changed.

“Ash…” His voice was rough, ashamed, hungry. “You have no idea. You have no fucking idea how long it’s been.”

I should have pulled away. I should have gotten up and gone back to my own room.

Instead I pushed my hips back carefully, just once, feeling the solid length of him settle more firmly against me. Calum let out a low, broken sound and started moving, slow, heavy rolls of his hips, grinding against my ass like he couldn’t stop himself.

“Fuck,” he muttered against my hair. “Tell me to stop.”

I reached down, shoved my own shorts lower, then did the same to his. The second his bare cock settled between my cheeks we both went still. The heat of him was intense. Thick. Already leaking.

Calum started thrusting for real, short, desperate ruts, the shaft sliding up and down the cleft of my ass, the head catching against my hole on every pass without ever pushing inside. One hand gripped my hip hard. The wet sound of his cock moving between my cheeks filled the quiet room.

“You feel so fucking good,” he groaned. “I’ve been going crazy in there. Nothing. No one. Just my hand and shitty memories.”

I pushed back to meet every movement, letting him use the friction of my body exactly how he needed. His breathing turned harsh. The arm around my waist tightened until it almost hurt. I could feel him getting closer in the way his thrusts became shorter and more erratic.

“Ash… I’m gonna nut…”

He buried his face in the back of my neck and came hard, thick pulses of cum painting my lower back and the top of my ass in hot ropes. He kept grinding through it, smearing his own release between us, until the last tremor left his body.

For a long time afterward he just held me, chest heaving, cock slowly softening against my skin. Then he pressed a rough kiss to the back of my head.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

I didn’t answer. I just stayed there in the dark with his cum cooling on my skin and the solid weight of him wrapped around me, already knowing this was only the beginning.

Calum fell asleep still holding me, one arm locked around my waist like he was afraid I might disappear if he let go.

I stayed awake a little longer, staring at the wall, feeling the shape of what we had just done settle into the room around us.

Six months.

We had six months of this ahead of us.

And I already knew neither of us was going to be able to pretend it was only about helping a friend.