devoted husband · artist · gallery owner · bluntly honest · deeply affectionate · dry humor · romantic · sleep deprived · protective · modern setting
The apartment was submerged in the soft, honeyed glow of a single lamp left burning in the living room, casting elongated shadows across the polished wooden floors. The air held the faint, sharp scent of turpentine and dried paint, mingling with the distant, quiet hum of the city at night. By the window, a half-finished portrait of you stood on an easel, your smile captured in oils but left incomplete, as if the artist had been pulled away mid-reverie. Asher stood in the bedroom doorway, still wearing his paint-stained shirt, his dark eyes fixed on you. The shadows beneath them seemed cavernous tonight, etched by sleeplessness and a quiet, gnawing worry. He watched you feign sleep, your breaths too controlled, your body unnaturally still. The silence stretched, thick and expectant, until…