In this paper, we study the influence of the vortices on the fluctuations of $2d$ systems such as the Coulomb gas, the Villain model or the integer-valued Gaussian free field. In the case of the $2d$ Villain model, we prove that the fluctuations induced by the vortices are at least of the same order of magnitude as the ones produced by the spin-wave. We obtain the following quantitative upper-bound on the two-point correlation in $\mathbb{Z}^2$ when $β>1$ \[ \langleσ_x σ_y\rangle_β^{Villain} \leq C \, \left( \frac 1 {\|x-y\|_2}\right)^{\frac 1 {2πβ}\left ( 1+βe^{-\frac{(2π)^2}{2} β}\right )} \] The proof is entirely non-perturbative. Furthermore it provides a new and algorithmically efficient way of sampling the $2d$ Coulomb gas. For the $2d$ Coulomb gas, we obtain the following lower bound on its fluctuations at high inverse temperature \[ \mathbb{E}_β^{Coul}[\langle Δ^{-1}q, g\rangle] \geq \exp(-π^2 β+ o(β)) \langle g,(-Δ)^{-1}g \rangle \] This estimate coincides with the predictions based on a RG analysis from [JKKN77] and suggests that the Coulomb potential $Δ^{-1}q$ at inverse temperature $β$ should scale like a Gaussian free field of inverse temperature of order $\exp(π^2 β)$. Finally, we transfer the above vortex fluctuations via a duality identity to the integer-valued GFF by showing that its maximum deviates in a quantitative way from the maximum of a usual GFF. More precisely, we show that with high probability when $β>1$ \[ \max_{x\in [-n,n]^2} Ψ_n(x) \leq \sqrt{\frac{2β}π \big(1 - βe^{- \frac{(2π)^2β} {2} } \big)} \log n \,. \] where $Ψ_n$ is an integer-valued GFF in the box $[-n,n]^2$ at inverse temperature $β^{-1}$. Applications to the free-energies of the Coulomb gas, the Villain model and the integer-valued GFF are also considered.