chapter one: stranger danger

21.9K 489 665
                                        

STRANGER DANGER

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

STRANGER DANGER

STRANGER DANGER

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

connie's villa

letting it slip to your best friend that you had zero plans the saturday night before the start of your final year? rookie mistake.

not even an hour later, you found yourself perched at a makeshift home bar, clutching a blood orange and cardamom cocktail, in what could only be described as an end-of-summer sweatbox.

the basement sweltered, cloaked in a golden haze that softened flaws into fantasy. it was the kind of lighting that lied, turning exhaustion into allure and sweat into something almost glamorous. the air was thick and dense, a stew of spilt alcohol, budget perfume, and too many bodies packed too close, each exhale contributing to the feverish atmosphere.

from the wall-mounted speakers, a warped r&b remix throbbed like a second pulse, basslines shaking the floor beneath your heels.

around you, lips met in sloppy kisses, hands wandered without a care, and the partygoers moved like one writhing organism, a tide of strangers grinding together in a primal dance.

you didn't hate parties. in fact, you usually enjoyed them. but this? this was something else. a humid, hedonistic purgatory full of half-drunks on the prowl, chasing the next high, the next kiss, the next mistake.

it was, without a doubt, your personal version of hell.

but for sasha braus? this was heaven.

pink dress, pink dress...

you observed the oscillating masses in search of your best friend—a needle in a haystack—and maybe also a way out of your spiralling thoughts.

the only reason you'd even contemplated stepping out of your house tonight was sasha's insistence that it might be a good distraction from the fresh wounds of a recent breakup.

in theory, her suggestion sounded plausible: a night of carefree dancing, harmless flirting and maybe even a handsome stranger to take you home and fuck your brains out. 

IF HAPPY EVER AFTER DID EXIST; levi ackermanWhere stories live. Discover now