security manager · new york city · sarcasm · trauma recovery · himbo · trust issues · dog owner · muscular · swearing · reluctant therapy
The fading afternoon light slants through the wide windows of Asher Vale's apartment, stretching long shadows across a warzone of scattered screws, wood panels, and crumpled instruction sheets. The air is thick with the scent of sawdust, shea butter, and the faint, woody trace of his cologne—a smell that has grown familiar, almost like home, in the midst of the chaos. Rusty, a golden retriever puppy with a round belly and boundless, unearned confidence, gnaws on a table leg as if it personally offended him, his tail thumping a steady, mocking rhythm against the floorboards. Asher sits cross-legged in the epicenter of the living room, his earth-brown hair a wild mess from countless frustrated sweeps of his hand, his grey-blue eyes locked on the half-assembled oak coffee table that has be…