This is a resubmission of a story originally deemed too "explicit" for you poor, virgin eyed children. Its a story about sex and addiction, so all I could really do is remove some more explicit mentions of fluids and such. If its still too explicit... well, shoot. I don't know what else to remove.
Caleb looked more like a skinhead than a saint. But a saint he was.
He wasn't the kind of saint likely to be found in a church. He wasn't the kind of saint to be found damning all sinners to Hell. He wasn't the kind of saint that you would leave your grown daughter with or sit next to on a bus, but everyone who knew Caleb knew that the man was just short of an angel.
He went to the shady part of town, passing out clean needles to addicts so that they wouldn't share. He took in stray dogs and kids and junkies who needed a warm roof or a hot meal.
That was how he met Ally.
He was passing out hot food on a rainy day by the bridge where the junkies, homeless and crazies stayed during the bad weather. He saw a young woman, a runaway.
He had heard from Carl, a dreadlocked man who collected cans in his shopping cart and had given Caleb an aluminum talisman to ward off aliens, that Ally had a nasty break up with her boyfriend who just happened to be her dealer.
When Caleb offered her a place to stay, he was surprised and a little worried at how quickly she agreed, climbing into his car with minimal hesitation. She didn't know him from Adam. Caleb just felt relief that he was the first to offer to take Ally in rather than one of the other dealers, pimps and perverts who would pounce on the pretty young woman if given the chance.
Ally was safer with Caleb than she was with anyone else in the city. Everyone who was anyone knew that Caleb had guns.
No one really knew who he sold to or bought from, but it was the neighborhood's best known secret that the man had a military grade arsenal tucked away in his modest, working-class home.
The only rule for staying at Caleb's house was that Ally had to stay clean. Caleb wrote his schedule so that he could drop her off and wait for her to finish her NA meetings. He even helped her pick her sponsor and pinned a calendar on the fridge so that Ally could mark off her days sober.
To celebrate her first day sober, Caleb had taken her to a movie. To celebrate her first week sober, Caleb had cooked her dinner. At a month sober, Caleb signed her up for an art class, the only thing Ally had really ever been good at before, during and after the heroin.
Ally was a little overwhelmed by all the support. Caleb gave her everything and asked for nothing in return. At all. When Ally tried to pay him rent from the money she earned at her part time job as a checkout girl, he refused, insisting that she buy art supplies instead.
Ally couldn't be sure, but she knew that Caleb was never hurting for money. She knew he sold guns to mysterious men and a few women who showed up at inconsistent hours. Caleb would always sneak them down to the basement, talking in hushed voices until they were out of her earshot.
Ally knew every drug dealer, pimp and gangster in town so she knew that Caleb wasn't selling to the usual criminal suspects. No one seemed to stay for longer than a night, at most, but they all seemed very familiar and secretive. Sometimes, Caleb would stay up lat and drink with his friends, though the moods varied. Sometimes they would be rambunctious and rowdy, other times quiet and somber.
Ally never asked Caleb who they were, and Caleb never offered more information than their first names. Caleb never offered Ally more information about himself than his first name. Ally figured that the least she could give him was his secret.
Caleb never asked for Ally to do anything. Certainly never anything physical or sexual. Ally probably would have obliged him, she had done more with worse people for less than Caleb was giving her.
And Ally wanted to give him something.
She knew that she was supposed to feel grateful to him. But the emotion was heavy and sticky to her, constantly uncomfortable. No one entered a situation, wanting to be grateful to someone. It was subservient, demeaning. Gratefulness was fine until she was able to pay back the favor, but Caleb's favors were becoming impossible to top. She would forever be one step behind Caleb, constantly owing him her gratitude.
At least when she was a strung out junkie with a dealer boyfriend, she knew the score. She could fuck the guy and get her hit. Everyone was even and no one owed anything.
And, also, Ally wanted to know what Caleb felt like, what he liked between the sheets. She wanted to know if he was always that saintly and giving, or if once he was in the moment, he finally let loose and became human; needing, wanting and ruthlessly taking. Her curiosity mixed with her gratitude was what pulled her towards him in the kitchen after her eighth week sober.
Caleb was washing the dishes while Ally dried them. He was talking about something, Ally would always forget exactly what he was saying, but it didn't matter. He was in a good mood, he was smiling and joking with her. As he handed her a plate, his wrist touched her arm. Caleb ignored the contact and reached for the next dirty dish while Ally stared at the part of her arm that had brushed his, amazed that the sparks she felt weren't shooting off her skin.
Grabbing Caleb by the hips, she turned him so that his back was pinned against the sink. Holding him by the belt loops of his pants, Ally pressed her lips up to his, insistence becoming hunger as Caleb let her push herself against him.
He was reluctant, at first, holding his rubber gloved hands at his sides, mindful to not get Ally wet. But when Ally's tongue began to beg entrance to his mouth, Caleb gave a small moan and accepted her. Ally began to pull at his lips with her own, trying to get him to lose control, trying to push him to be impulsive and greedy like an animal. Trying to prove that he was human, with weaknesses and desires like her.
Caleb pulled the gloves off his hands and placed them politely on her back as he kissed her. Ally tried to intensify the kiss as she pushed her leg between his and slid her crotch up against him, asking him to take her.
Caleb pulled away. Ally was satisfied to see his pupils wide with lust and hear his ragged breath. But he gently pushed her out of arms reach and went back to washing the dishes, his good mood turning into tension and silence.
Ten weeks sober, Ally slipped herself into his room as he slept. Hearing her, he groggily asked her what she was doing awake, if she was ok. Ally didn't say anything, but walked over to his bed, climbing over him, her legs on either side of his hips.
She pushed herself against him, her body finding the most natural rhythm in the world. No high could match the satisfaction she gained from hearing his breath hitch, watching his hands, still not asking anything from her body, as they fisted the sheets, the friction of their still clothed bodies filling both of them with need.
As Ally's hand began to slide into Caleb's boxers, her grabbed her wrist, once again, stopping her.
"Don't Ally," he whispered, "I don't want it… us… to be like this."
He slid her off of him and laid her close to him in his bed. Curling his body up behind her, he drifted back off to sleep.
Ally never again slept in her own bed. Yet every night, when Ally would turn to him, asking him to want her, take her, allow her to give him something in return for his kindness, Caleb would pull away. She could see that he wanted her, feel it pressed against her hip as he held her, his breathing strained as he fought himself for control. She didn't help him on that matter. She would push herself against his hardness, trying with all her might to prove that she wanted him, really wanted him. No longer a whore for a high but a woman wanting to fulfill her relationship to a man.
Caleb was taking a shower when Ally heard the doorbell. As she answered it, she saw a man in his forties. Brooding and serious, he asked in a gruff voice if Caleb was around, as he looked Ally over, clearly unimpressed with what he saw.
Ally nodded and invited him in.
"Where is he?" asked the man, crossing the threshold and looking around the house disinterestedly, as if he had been there a thousand times before.
"Taking a shower." Answered Ally, "He's washing his hair."
That earned her a real, if grudging, smile from the man. Caleb liked to keep his head shaved.
"John" he offered.
"Ally" she replied.
She went into the kitchen, offering him coffee. He followed her in, gladly accepting a black cup.
"How long have you been here?" asked John.
Ally consulted her calendar. Every little red X was another day clean. Every sober minute of her life had Caleb attached to it.
"Eighty seven days." She said.
John glanced at the calendar, then looked at her, knowing what each of those days signified. As he looked at her, Ally felt that he saw every dark thought she had ever had. Every time she blew a guy for a gram, every time she stole money for a hit, she felt like he could see it written across her skin.
"What do you do?" she asked, partly to break his dark, knowing, gaze.
"I hunt." He said.
"What do you hunt?"
"Ghosts, ghouls and all the things that go bump in the night." He said dryly, looking at her as if daring her to laugh at him.
She didn't.
Despite all logic, reason and a lifetime of being told differently, Ally believed that this man killed shadowy things. It explained the darkness that emanated from him, as if he had seen all that was bad in the world and had solemnly swore to die waging a war against it.
"Baby, put some clothes on." Caleb said, jokingly as he entered the kitchen, seeing Ally in her bra and shorts. She was unashamed of her nakedness, but Caleb looked uncomfortable as he glanced between John and Ally. "Poor John here is going to burn his eyes out."
"Handsome man like that," Ally said lightly, "I'm sure it's nothing he hasn't seen before."
But she recognized her cue to leave. She cast a look over her shoulder at John as she left the room. He was still watching her as if he knew every sin she had ever committed, and knew that she would commit a million more.
Ally heard them talking as she stood at the top of the stairs.
"You have to quit fucking strippers, junkies and whores." John's voice said harshly.
"It isn't like that," Caleb said defensively, "She's clean and sober. Eighty seven days."
John gave a disbelieving snort.
"Just lock up your valuables and cash." John said darkly.
He left before Ally knew it, and she was relieved. She didn't like the way he looked at her, the way he talked about her.
At ninety days sober, Caleb got a call in the middle of the night. Ally pretended to be asleep next to him as Caleb whispered into the phone. She heard "hunt," "guns" and "Wendigo," before Caleb slid himself stealthily out of bed, packing a bag.
After fifteen minutes, he got on his knees beside Ally, stroking her hair to wake her up.
"Baby, I have to go for a few days." He said. He didn't offer where. She didn't ask. "Will you be ok?"
He meant would she be able to stay sober. Would she be able to take care of herself. He looked at her with so much faith and trust, it was clear that he thought she could. Ally wasn't so sure.
But she nodded anyways.
"You'll be great, babe." He said, kissing her forehead, casting one last trusting look at her as he left.
At ninety-one days sober, Ally was woken by a pounding on the front door. She didn't bother to put on a bathrobe as she jogged down the stairs, wondering if it was Caleb.
John stood there, clutching his shoulder, looking thoroughly unhappy to see her. Ally stepped back, letting him in.
"Caleb?" he asked roughly.
"I thought he was with you." Ally admitted.
John let out a frustrated groan as he released his shoulder, revealing a large bloodstain pooling from his arm.
Ally looked at it, then back at John who looked at her warily, wondering how she would react. Ally pointed him to the kitchen, then went into the bathroom and pulled out Caleb's unusually extensive medical kit.
She helped John take off his coat, tossing it to the sink. She helped him clean the wound, but he batted her hand away as she tried to help him pull the bullet from the torn flesh. After John struggled to remove the bullet himself for several seconds, Ally jerked the tongs back from his hands and began to deftly pull the metal from his arm.
He continued to watch her, not questioning why she was so good at it. She could sense that he knew she had done this for her ex-boyfriend. After drug deals gone badly or fights over turf, he would come to her. Even high, she was the best medic out of all his girlfriends.
John didn't bother trying to stop her as she started closing the wound with stitches. He nodded approvingly as he inspected her handiwork, the first time he had looked at her with anything besides disgust and suspicion.
Ally led him to the room she had been sleeping in before she had climbed into Caleb's bed.
John grunted in place of a 'thank you,' but Ally was glad to close the door on him and escape downstairs to the kitchen. Seeing his coat, she began to scrub the blood from it, trying to salvage the fabric.
After a few minutes, or possibly hours, she heard his heavy footsteps behind her. Turning to him, she stepped back as she saw the venomous look on his face. He held up a plastic bag and Ally's blood turned cold as she recognized it.
It was three grams of heroin. Her rainy day stash, just in case. Caleb had checked her bags and believed her when she had said that she flushed her drugs, once and for all, the day she moved in. He didn't pat her down.
He should have.
Ally hadn't touched the bag since she moved in, but she would be lying if she said that she had never thought about it. She had hidden it in the dresser of the room Caleb gave to her, the privacy he had trusted her with.
Wordlessly, John flicked the bag onto the counter, not bothering to ask Ally to explain herself. They both knew what the bag meant.
Caleb trusted that she was good. He trusted that she was truthful, and kind and honorable. John saw that she wasn't. John saw all that was dark and greedy and selfish in her. She saw it in him too.
John closed the distance between them.
"I don't like people taking advantage of Caleb. He's a damn good guy. He deserves better than the likes of you," he said, finally voicing the thoughts that he had clearly had since he first saw her.
"I know," said Ally, returning John's venom in full. "I'm just another stripper, junkie or whore to you, aren't I?"
John looked down at her skimpy clothing, then back to the heroin, lying accusingly on the counter. Ally stepped closer to John, though there wasn't much space left.
"But you're dark and twisted and fucked up, just like me." she continued, "Caleb can do better. But I am exactly what you deserve."
John shoved her against the same sink where she had pinned Caleb so many nights ago. His mouth crushing hers in a violent, urgent kiss.
Then, she was asking Caleb to see her as she really was. A woman with flaws and needs and hunger. Caleb had chosen to put her on a pedestal, refusing to see anything but the goodness in her.
But as John trapped her there, she knew that John saw her. Weak. Needy. Human.
John's hands were everywhere, pushing, pinching, claiming her body as his own. Taking what he wanted.
He bit her lip as he pulled away from the kiss.
"On your knees." He demanded in a gravelly voice.
Ally dropped to her knees, still pinned between him and the counter, undoing his pants and pulling the fabric aside.
She had known from the moment that she laid eyes on him that this was how they would end up. She was fucked up. She had always known this and had been begging for Caleb to acknowledge it. But John was no saint either. She might have been on her knees for another man, but he was the one mouth fucking his friend's girlfriend.
John pulled her back up so that she was standing and began to kiss her again, his lips and tongue fighting with hers for dominance. His hand slid into the front of her underwear. He kept it up until she was whimpering, so close to her climax.
He cruelly retracted his hand, pushing her onto her back on the floor, and laying himself over her, being careful to rest his weight on his good arm. He entered her with a strong thrust that pushed her a few inches along the cold linoleum floor.
With his wounded arm, he held her in place while he drove into her. His grunts and gasps matching Ally's.
Ally could see the shame on his face as he coupled with her. It was hot and animal and inevitable. Both of them had seen a reflection of the cruel need in each other.
John let out a low growl as he drew close to his finish and began to pump harder than Ally had ever thought possible. It was almost like abuse, a self flagellation that they were both doling out. Both were consumed with a selfish greed and lust, they fucked each other to fulfill it, ignoring the consequences of their actions.
She rode his thrusts and rolled her eyes to the back of her head as she shuddered fully and loudly beneath him, finding her climax. John finished soon after, throwing his head back and letting out a gravelly yell.
After a few moments, he slid out of her. Standing, he zipped his pants and walked to the door, leaving Ally like a used whore on ground.
He left without saying a word, without looking at her.
Ally pulled her clothes back on and sat silently on the ground as she considered what had just happened. Resolution dawning on her, Ally stood. She ran her hands through her hair and grabbed the heroin from the counter.
As she dumped it down the kitchen sink, watching the white powder dissolve under the water, Ally knew that there would always be the dark, greedy, weak monster in her, pulling her towards heroin, towards men like John.
But there was something else in her that Caleb had seen the entire time. She had never hit rock bottom until this moment, and it wasn't her drugs, but her body that showed her just how far gone she really was.
John's bloody coat was still on the kitchen counter. Ally knew that he would never return to claim it. He would rather freeze to death than lay eyes on Ally again, a living reminder of what he had done.
He had told her that he didn't want her to hurt Caleb, but he went and committed one of the worst crimes against his friend that anyone could commit. Ally dropped the coat in the dumpster, disposing all the evidence of her crime.
When Caleb came home two days later, Ally ran out to the car, throwing herself into his arms and kissing him on the lips.
He smiled at her, but his eyes showed a glimmer of doubt. As he walked into the kitchen, he saw that she had taken down her sober calendar and replaced it with another. Only two days were checked off.
"Did you fall off the wagon?" he asked softly.
Ally's gaze never wavered.
"Yes." She said. "I fucked up, and I relapsed. I threw everything you gave me away, and I'm so sorry Caleb. I know you said you'd never forgive me, but I'm telling you, I've never been more committed than I am right now."
Caleb sighed, rubbing his hand over his smooth head.
"I don't know…" he said warily.
Ally walked towards him, lacing her fingers with his.
"I love you Caleb. I love everything you give me, everything you see in me. " Caleb's eyes dropped to avoid her intense gaze, but she held his head so that he was forced to see her, "Caleb, I need you to see me as I am. I'm weak. I promise to try, everyday, to be stronger, but I mess up. I can promise you right now, though, I will never fuck up like that again. "
Caleb looked between her eyes, then nodded. They started over that day.
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