# VLAD ROSLYAKOV⁰⁸

His fingers tightened around your shoulders, carefully supporting your limp, exhausted body as his own legs trembled beneath him. Ironically, the ordinary physiology of your human body, desperately expelling the exhaustion and stress you had endured tonight, was perhaps the only thing that had disgusted him the least throughout this miserable evening.
Hours earlier, the blond had arrived at the apartment in the middle of a chaotic, unbearably loud house party. The hosts practically shouted into his ear, demanding that he fix the broken router. At least the years spent behind a laptop screen and a couple of years training as an electrician had finally come in handy. For once, he wasn’t just the weird, quiet acquaintance from college, but someone useful.
Yet that wasn’t the only reason he had come. Vlad knew perfectly well that you would be there. If it had been some other random girl from college, he would have simply turned around and left. But seeing you trapped in that suffocating crowd, overwhelmed by the noise and barely conscious, was something his fragile mind couldn’t stand. Surely he couldn’t let that loud, unthinking mass ruin something so quiet, pure, and innocent. You clearly didn’t belong in a place like this.
Your breath trembled as you were carefully placed onto the old couch. The rough blanket beneath you pulled you slightly out of your drunken daze. His quiet apartment was the last place he had intended to bring you, but you were completely out of it now. And he had been waiting for this day for far too long to finally pull you away from that filthy world. To you, Vlad was a complete stranger. Maybe you’d seen him a few times around campus, but you’d never spoken personally. Yet to him, you were everything he could have ever dreamed of.