Anchor {h.s}

six

I had often blamed Harry for his abusive drug use, never understanding why he did it or why he never stopped. Plenty of times, he had explained to me the feeling of relief it brought him, the sensation of the weight being lifted off of his shoulder, and yet, I never understood. It seemed to me that he was wasting time and money with this habit and that the bad outweighed the good. It was something I couldn't wrap my head around, until today.

The days were dragging on, I was restless and frustrated and while at first I couldn't figure out what was causing these feelings, now it was clear as day. I missed Harry. It was hard to admit in the beginning because we kept seeing each other every other day, it didn't seem logical to miss him. Then I realized that I missed the sex, or rather the physical closeness. It was like I had lost my access to him and his deepest feelings. Now all I knew was what he wanted me to know.

The worst part was having him so close and not being able to do anything. Strangely, the best part was seeing him being affected too by the 'sex-ban'. I didn't like noticing it and being happy about it, but I was. Every time I would see him again, he would seem a little sadder, like it was taking a toll on him too. It was wrong, but it brought some sort of satisfaction to me. Like he wanted it as much as I did, like he needed it as much as I did.

But at the same time, of course I hated to see him that way. He was my best friend and I was in love with him; I wanted him to be happy. It sucked to think that I was able to do something about it, but couldn't because we had agreed to stop having sex together.

Weirdly, when we were seeing each other, we never really know what to do and the atmosphere was always a little awkward. We were so used to hanging out and having sex that we had forgotten how to be just friends. It was almost as if we were getting to know each other all over again.

As the days went on, I kept telling myself that it couldn't get worst and after a few days, I started to believe it. The urges settled down and I started to get used to the constant thoughts of him. But that was until Friday night.

Just as I thought that things had changed between us, that maybe the old days were behind us, Harry showed up, stoned as always, on my doorstep in the middle of the night. I didn't hear him knocking at my apartment door and only woke up when I heard a knock on my bedroom door. I sat up, sleepy and confused, as the door creaked open.

"Em?" I heard him say. His voice was low and something in his tone shattered a piece of my heart. He sounded sad, broken and lost.

"Harry?" I replied with a sleep-laced voice.

He stepped in carefully while looking at the ground. His hands fumbled with each other, which betrayed how nervous he was. As usual, his hair was damp on his forehead and his breathing raged, but I noticed stains on his shirt that were out of place.

"What happened?" I asked worried. Sleep had completely left my body and I became alert, focusing on the beautiful broken boy that was standing in front of me.

"Can I sleep here tonight?" he whispered.

His voice shook as he talked and I jumped out of bed to reach him. My first reflex was to run to him and hug him as tight as I could, because Harry was here, he had come to me even if our friendship had been rocky in the past few days. At his lowest, he still came to me.

Then I took a hold of his face and caressed his jaw. As my eyes landed on his face, I immediately saw what I wasn't able to with the distance. His lip was bleeding and his shirt was stained with his blood, maybe even the blood of someone else.

"Harry what happened?" I calmly asked, knowing that in the state that he was it was useless to express my anger out loud.

He shook his head and pulled me to him, completely avoiding my question. "I don't want to talk about it."