I Hope That You Listen

Imaginary Angels

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Two songs are sung in this chapter, but seven are referenced. I'll credit each of them so that you can look each of them up at your leisure if you so desire. As always, the credits will be in the Author's note at the bottom of the chapter.

Keep the comments and votes coming! I certainly appreciate them!

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Harry's sitting in his hotel suite looking through old pictures on his phone, whiling away the time between now and sound check. He's not angry anymore, he's drained of all his anger from the performance the night before, and has begun to reflect on what he feels.

As he's looking at the pictures, he's focusing more on the ones of him and Louis. Pictures that he couldn't post on Instagram because of both his and Louis' management as well as some of his more problematic fans.

Harry's fans, not necessarily Louis'.

He remembers a time that a poll was run on Twitter asking his own fans what they would do if he were to come out and confirm Larry.

The results were upsetting to say the least.

Harry loved his fans, but to see it in front of his face that a good number of his fans would pretend like they never were his fans just because he loved another man. Some of them didn't have anything against him loving another man, it was Louis they were against. That thought just made him angry.

He was tempted to just come out just to show them he didn't give a fuck.

He didn't though because it wouldn't be just his career that he had the potential to be damaging, but Louis' as well. His management remained the same as what they had in One Direction so it remained as homophobic and controlling as ever in spite of Louis' efforts to gain a little more freedom in his decisions.

For every bit of freedom he gained, it came with a cost.

Harry's management on the other hand, was only keeping an eye on his fanbase and has been trying to clean up his womanizer image, but really hasn't been doing a good job of it.

They weren't as bad as Modest! but they weren't that great either. They won't let him come out due to the extremely negative perception of his "probable" sexuality in his fanbase, but they say nothing about his queercoding. They decided not to set him up with any women, but do nothing about speculation or wild rumor mongering about him hooking up with random women on the street.

He'd even found an article about him hooking up with his sister!

Thinking about all of this and what has been happening recently only brought his thoughts back to the break up. Coincidentally, the pictures he was looking at in his phone were from around that time before Louis asked for a break.

Harry started to feel his eyes burn at the sadness beginning to weigh on his heart.

He closed the photos app and moved to Instagram, just to keep his mind moving. He knew if he dwelt too long on that thought process then he would start crying and be a mess at the show later. His best efforts to heal have only started to come undone, and this only is a further setback.

He knows he's not exactly being fair to the boys and Louis, but he can't help himself. His heart was just beginning to open again and be ready to show the world just what he wanted it to see. His emotion on stage was about to be real again.