Deep Breath
Romance short. A painter is obsessed with the butcher across the road.
7k, M/M, rated M. A painter is utterly obsessed with the butcher across the road, and the butcher is a little obsessed back.
Lots of mental illness in this one, lots of reference — implicit and explicit — to suicidality, drug use, alcoholism, sexual assault and rape, ableism, consent issues, including past child sexual abuse, all in the context of a victim in recovery whilst also being in active addiction.
Bertie knows a few things about Michael pretty much as soon as he moves in across the way. He’s the sort of man, it becomes clear, to wear his heart on his sleeve, and on his face, and sometimes, stained down his front.
Bertie initially met him in the corner shop — it was only ten in the morning on a Saturday, but Michael had already been drunk. Bertie had been arrested at the sight of him, hadn’t known exactly what to say or what to do, but had felt he should perhaps do something — Michael had been bent to the side with his torso at a sixty degree angle from his waist, a half-drunk bottle of vodka hanging from his right hand’s loose grip, peering at the magazines.
“’Scuse me,” Bertie had said quietly, reaching past him for a copy of the i, and Michael had turned to look at him and his jaw had dropped…
