Drowning || niall horan au

twelve

Not that he had gotten the chance to talk to her, but from the times he’d seen her at a distance, he knew she was crying for help. Her body language was weak, sometimes walking hunchbacked as Bradley guided her into his apartment. He had seen this several times when he and a couple of friends were kicked out of the flat just minutes before. The other guys would usually saunter off to their cars and head to someone else’s, but Corey always ended up staying the extra minute, taking in his sister’s presence.

From the start, Corey never liked the two of them together. Bradley had been a friend of his ever since he started rebelling at the age of fourteen. He had no filter, no apologies for the vulgar ways he talked about Hannah. And the more he saw Hannah around the house as she got older, the worse he became. At any time Corey would remind him that was his sister he was talking about and how she was off-limits, but it would only backfire with any threat Bradley could think of. He always got what he wanted. He went out of his way to go to a party she was at that one night, bragging about it to his friends the next day. The relationship began at a rapid pace. Bradley claimed he was so good to her, so Corey shouldn’t have any worries, but that statement only lasted for five months. That’s when Hannah started to crumble, fake smiles plastered across her face.

She had never noticed her brother, although he bet she was looking around for him every time she saw one of Bradley’s friends. Corey knew how livid she had to be with him about abandoning their family and leaving her to fend for herself with her destructive boyfriend. By this point in their lives, Hannah was seventeen and Corey was nineteen, Corey wasn’t sure if he was ready to get his life back together. He had dug himself a deep hole that he didn’t know if he was prepared enough to climb out of yet. But as the months dragged on with the news of the condition his sister was in, he was ready to be a changed man.

“I want you to break up with my sister.” He announced in Bradley’s flat when it was just the two of them.

Bradley looked up from the table, the dollar unrolling once it was released from his hand. His eyes were blinking slowly as he tried to best to stay awake and focused. He used a finger to plug one of his nostrils and took a deep breath through the open one. Then, he shook his head in laughter.

“Since when did you start ordering my around?”

Bradley had always been the ringleader, the intimidator of all of Corey’s friends. It was easy to back down like a coward because it was easy for Bradley to pull a knife on him. Something inside him snapped, and Corey almost didn’t care if he didn’t make it out alive. He was sick of seeing Hannah from far away, miserable and in danger. All he cared about was getting her out of this situation that he felt guilty for bringing her into in the first place.

“I think I have a right.”

“I stay out of your relationships, so you need to stay the fuck out of mine.”

“Hannah is my sister. What part of that do you not understand?”

Bradley stood from the couch, taking his drink with him. He took a large sip before speaking.

“The only thing I understand is that you abandoned them, your mother, your sister, each and every one of them without turning back. For all she knows, you simply don’t care about her. You’re never coming back. I’m the one man she is able to look up to in her life after all the others failed her.” He took a couple steps closer to Corey, putting his fists on both arms of the chair he was sitting in. The stench off the drugs and alcohol were present as the friends were only inches apart. “And I would like to keep it that way.”

The first attempt was an utter fail, especially the next few that followed after that. All he did was talk it out and stopped before things got physical. Things went back to normal. Bradley was back to abusing his best friend’s sister, and Corey could do nothing but stay out of the way.