Drowning || niall horan au

twenty two

The camera had been installed for weeks, but the fights always took place in another room. This whole idea started to become a joke to Hannah since she only gained more bruises and blows than she could handle. The only reason it was allowed to be installed was due to the suspicions Bradley had about being robbed. He had taking a liking towards Marisa, a very rare occasion since she was Hannah's friend, but Marisa wasn't about to let that "friendship" go away just yet.

For his sake, the camera was installed so he could see if somebody was breaking into his home. However, it was all for Hannah's sake. Many sleepless nights had passed with him being out drinking or passed out on the other side of the bed. It left her fearing for her life, thinking that maybe he would figure out Marisa's whole purpose of setting the camera up.

He was smart, to an extent. Fights occurred in the other room just so the camera couldn't catch it. Marisa was smarter with the fact that she had access to the camera by connecting it to her computer.

"It would be so much easier to call the police, you know." Marisa told them the day she brought the camera over. She knew Bradley wouldn't have it any other way, so her words were more directed towards Hannah. "This is totally unnecessary."

It was true that Hannah rejected the idea to call the police multiple times. She just couldn't bring herself to it after having a long history with Bradley. It took about a month of convincing before Hannah agreed he should rot in jail, but decided to take the riskier way out.

Hannah had been standing in the kitchen when he arrived back at his flat. The door shut calmly, but even the sound of it made her jump. Over the months, his mood swings became completely unpredictable. His calm state was very likely to be falsely interpreted because ever since she played around with him on a day she thought was good, it ended all of her assumptions. She had to play it by ear.

She was supposed to be cutting a banana into pieces, but the process came to a halt since she heard the door. He didn't take his shoes off by the doormat; his footsteps were louder than normal. Suddenly his figure came into view. Hannah's heartbeat increased due to either being fearful or being in love. To this day, it was still hard to decipher.

The car keys landed on the table noisily. He removed his coat from his body and draped it over the chair, and that's when he and Hannah made eye contact. It was the moment of truth: was it a good day or a bad day? She was frozen on the spot until he looked away from her with a blank expression.

Sometimes neutral days were okay too.

Bradley disappeared into the living room, the television raised to a decent volume. It sounded like some rerun soap opera, but then the channels changed, stopping on a station that played a boxing match. It was settled on that for now, and Hannah felt at ease again and continued to make her smoothie.

Having her boyfriend, who she was not so secretly frightened of, sitting just a room away made her feel without a doubt unsafe, but yet somehow the kitchen gave her some peace. It was the room she was used to the most, cooking meals for when he came home around dinner time. Besides that, she also knew where each dangerous utensil rested. Each knife placement was memorized in case it needed to be used. She felt like she knew his own place better than he did. She seemed to spend more time here than he did, and she didn't even live here.

Her feet padded across the tile to get to the fridge, opening the freezer door to dump ice cubes into a glass. The noise made Bradley lower the volume on the television, Hannah tried to not to make it look like she tensed up.