Whatever Chains (Sequel to Where Your Heart is - A Harry Styles fanfiction)

Part two: The bubbles rise while my heart sinks.

December, 2015.

"I can walk on my own, you know?" I complain as Niall practically manhandles me through the door and into my room.

With a movement that is a quick as it is awkward, I push myself out of his reach and I start making my way towards the bed. But as soon as I take the second step my feet get tangled with something that should not be there in the first place, and I fall straight to the floor.

"I'm sure you can, Harold." He chuckles condescendingly whilst rushing to help me back up, dragging and then dropping me on the bed like the dead weight I currently am. "You good?"

I growl in response which could be taken both as a yes and a no. And since I don't really know the answer to his question I don't add anything else.

I lie there still and in silence closing my eyes only to open them up again when my head starts spinning seconds later.

Why do I keep doing this when I know it just doesn't work? When did I become the person who drowns his sorrows in booze? Scratch that, when did I become the person who tries to drown his sorrows in booze?

It doesn't drown them. It muffles them, at best. And they are still there in the morning, as loud and wrenching as ever, mocking me and my desperate ways.

Each morning after a bender I wake up and I curse at the decisions that I've made the night before. Whether it is a girl sleeping next to me, or a headline waiting to hit the tabloids, it is always the same cringe worthy routine.

Drink. Make poor decisions. Regret said decisions. Vow not to do it again. Repeat.

At least tonight, with the help of a very vigilant Niall, I managed to break the vicious cycle and get home with nothing and no one to regret by the time the cold light of morning inevitably breaks.

And that would be a great thing if it weren't for the fact that everything I'm always so eager to chase away whenever I do these things slips right back way ahead of schedule.

Is her face what pops into my head first. And how I love, and hate, and miss that face. Those blue, haunting eyes, floating behind my closed eyelids and staring right through me.

Her lips. Ever curled up into that weak, trembling smile she wore the last time I ever saw her as she would say to me "I'll see you soon" which meaning I later came to understand.

Her cheeks slightly splattered with tiny orange freckles that would spread all the way to her nose. They were flustered, I recall.

"Fuck..." I grunt, driving my hands to cover my face as if her image would disappear by that action. It doesn't. "This is just useless."

"What?"

I guess I had totally forgotten he was still here, and his voice startles my hands away and my eyes open. He is just walking around my room, looking at the mess with his face scrunched in a grimace of disgust.

"This?" He says, picking up a piece of underwear that, for obvious reasons, does not belong in my personal collection. "I'd say it is."

I can tell there is not a single trace of reprimand in his tone, which strangely makes me feel a little disappointed. Because if there was, I would be able to pick up a fight about him being a judgmental prick and I would get distracted long enough to shove the memory of her right to the back of my head once again.

"Why can't I just get her out of my head? It is a bloody torture."

I slowly lift myself up from the bed using my suddenly tired arms to slide upwards into a sitting position. Somehow, with my back and head resting on the headboard, I start to feel a little bit better and my head seems to slip out of the alcohol haze I'm in.