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

Part Thirty-Nine: Listen to my heart, can you hear it sing?

"I gave up ballet, you know?"

Her naked body is tangled with mine, and her breathing is still ragged. We haven't said a single word since we got up to my room, and even though I haven't been precisely counting them, the fact that the party has officially died downstairs lets me know it was a few hours ago.

I look down at her and she's not looking at me. Instead, she is utterly focused on tracing the outlines of the butterfly on my stomach with her fingers. And for a few moments I think that, either I heard her wrong, or she thinks that she didn't say those words out loud.

"What do you mean? Why? What happened?" I ask, suddenly worried, and she tilts her head up to meet my eyes. "Did you get hurt again?"

She smiles at me crookedly, shaking her head and then putting a soft kiss on my collarbone.

"No. But a year is like a decade in ballet." She says with a half smile I could spend my life trying to kiss it into a full one. "And I just couldn't keep up."

"Are you okay?" I ask, and it sounds more like I'm telling her that she will be. "I must have been a hard decision to make."

She sighs and nods her head, snuggling closer to me and reaching up to kiss me. I kiss her back, and I find myself trying to swallow down the knot that just took shape in my throat thinking that I couldn't be by her side when she had to make that choice.

"I've made harder ones, and quite badly." She laughs, hiding her face on the crook of my neck. "But I know this one is the right one. I'm still dancing, though. And that's what really matters."

We talk about her for a while; she tells me, with surprisingly funny details, about the torture those ballet classes were for her, and how out of place she felt.

She tells me about her new classes and how, once the sadness of giving up her first love and dream subsided, and the pressure became significantly lower, she started to remember how much fun and liberating dancing actually is.

All I have to do is look into her eyes and, although there's still a trace of melancholy that I'm sure will never be erased from them, I believe her when she says she's accepted it. I believe her when she she says she's even happy.

"What about you?" She suddenly changes the subject, sliding her arm across my waist, under the sheets. "I gather your album is ready to see the light. How you feel about it?"

I take in a deep breath, brushing my hair away in a gesture that apparently will never go away, no matter how long it's been since the length of it was actually a nuisance.

"I feel good, actually." I respond, feeling a bit coy all of a sudden, so I decide to focus my attention on the Pink Floyd poster poorly taped to the door. "It's really... honest, I guess. Maybe a little bit too much, if I think about it. It wasn't exactly comfortable having my mum listening to it, that's for sure."

I chuckle at the thought, knowing that most of the euphemisms I used in the lyrics would probably fly over her head, but when I look at Lea again, her face is serious and almost blank.

"I suppose it's a good thing no one really knew who I was, then." She says, trying and failing to sound chill about it. "They'd be asking for my head otherwise."

I look at her and chew my bottom lip, considering whether or not I should say the next words.

"Do you want to listen to it?" I ask her, and my heart begins to pick up the pace.