Where I Am Without You [L.S]

Chapter Twenty Two

"I finally got you to calm down." Louis starts, eyes staring down into his lap. "You told me you'd call me when you woke up again and I was so fuckin' worried about you that I didn't sleep. And you never called again. I know you forgot, that much is clear by how you're reacting now, and I know I have no right to be hurt by that but this mess is all because of my fuck ups and I have never learnt how to deal with that."

"I was trying to finish the album." Harry offers when everything has gone quiet again. "I wrote for a few months then just hit a wall. I was trying to erase every part of what we'd had, I was so angry with you that I tried everything to get you out of my head but then I'd go back to the house at the end of each day, the same house we'd bought together, when we'd had a life together." And Harry sees from the corner of his eye that Louis' hand is shaking where he's holding his tea. "I couldn't deal with it anymore, I arrived back there one night and just couldn't breathe. Walking in the door everyday was torturing myself but I couldn't bare to part with it. It's not even home but it's one of the only things we had that was just ours, and one day you were gone and I couldn't keep that in anymore." The burning in his eyes blinds him for a moment but he won't let himself cry, not at his own story, not until he knows Louis'. The full story this time.

"You know, I wrote 32 songs, scrapped each and every one of them because none of them conveyed anything I actually wanted to say. I knew I had to put down what I'd been through when I let you go. That's why my songs have you woven through them." His heart is aching now at those words, but this is exactly the conversation they need to be having so he shoves the feeling down and shifts slightly on the sofa.

"I lied to you." Louis says, his eyes flickering up to meet Harry's but it only sparks more confusion in him. "And I wasn't strong enough to talk to you about it, instead I got so overwhelmed by the pressure and the bullshit they'd been pushing on us both for years and I just cracked."

"I don't understand."

"I'd been having meetings for months, years, you knew this." And Harry did, he knew all about the meetings Louis had been forced to go to by their previous management and plant new ways to keep the band's image as hetero-normal as possible. Harry had had his 'womanizer' personality shoved down on him. The stunts he'd had to do with numerous woman, the scandals and articles debasing him as a person and painting him as the exact opposite of what he was. He was bisexual, had known that for years now, but he was Harry Styles, and Harry Styles under Syco and Modest! Management could not be that. Louis had been subjected to Eleanor. And whilst Harry had hated the role he'd had to play with all his heart, seeing Louis go through what he'd had to with Eleanor had caused him indescribable amounts of pain.

"It started in early 2015, I went in for another meeting, expecting it too be the usual threats of what they'd put on you if I didn't agree to do whatever but not this time. This time a new person was stood in the room, and she sat down and spent an hour talking with me about you. I was confused, didn't understand what any of it meant as she explained what you were like when you went out with friends, were performing on stage. It made no sense, and then she was there the next time I went back, and the next. It took several of these meetings till I finally got the message she was trying to convey; that you were happy living a life without me in it, that you felt so tied down in our relationship and caught up in pretending for the public eye that you just wanted to be out and free of it all. Not because of me, but just had the chance to be out."

"Louis..." He tries and he cannot believe he can actually speak right now.

"You were in LA when I figured it out, when it dawned on me what this woman was showing to me. And it really got to me. That despite the fact I knew you loved me, that we were so good together it was the strongest reason that they wouldn't let them be you. That I was the factor in the way of letting you be free. I fought it for months, but every time you went out, or we had to sit through another interview as you were asked about your sex life, relationships whatever, I thought about what she'd said. That you wanted a way out. And with the band about to go on a break all I could think about was the fact that I would stop you from being yourself. I knew you wanted to be out and open, you were so proud of who you really were H and I couldn't bare it knowing that I would be what would hold you back. I knew you'd wait, would suppress who you were all for me, and I couldn't cope with that."