Chapter Text
Noel woke up to the fan above him spluttering out of power. Blackouts had happened a number of times during their stay in the hotel, and every single time without fail it would happen whilst he was sleeping. The stupid fan would start making terrible screechy noises that would wake him up. Noel was absolutely sure that the universe was out to make his entire existence miserable. Although, being miserable was quite enjoyable, proper British behaviour in his opinion.
Finally, he accepted that he wasn’t going to get back to sleep and begrudgingly got up, the world spinning because he’d stood up too fast. A doctor once told him that he had an iron deficiency due to his terrible diet, which was apparently the cause of this ‘spinning’. Still, he couldn’t be bothered to fix it. From his research, he found out ‘fixing it’ meant blood transfusions, a lot of red meat and iron tablets. Seemed like far too much trouble in his opinion.
The hotel room was a little cold despite the whole of England being in the middle of a heatwave, a small chill climbing up his legs from the ugly tiled floor. The fan must’ve been a bit too effective until it lost power. Speaking of, Noel wondered if it was back on. He tiptoed towards the light switch by the entrance, momentarily forgetting that he was the only one in the room—there was no one to wake, even if he stomped his feet as loud as possible. Sharing a room with his brother for so long must’ve cemented the habit in him forever.
Noel aggressively turned the switch on and off about 8 times to no avail. However, dim light was creeping in from underneath the blinds. It must have been early morning then. The alarm clock next to his bed was bloody electric and his watch was god knows where so he couldn’t even check the time.
He opened the blinds and stared out to the city. His room wasn’t too far up but it sure was a nice view with all the dawn colours and glistening car lights.
Such a view should be paired with tea in his opinion.
So, he walked over to the kitchen and filled the kettle up with water before going to turn in on. A small part of him died when the light didn’t turn on when he clicked the on button. The fucking power was gone and he fucking forgot. After a couple seconds of groggy brain computing, he worked out that there were actually other ways to boil water. Underneath the sink there was a rusty old stovetop kettle. However, he was probably going to get meningitis from it or something, so he opted to just go down to the lobby cafe instead.
As he was putting socks on, he started remembering the existence of memories. And then he remembered that last night was fucking weird. His brother had disappeared at around 11pm accompanied by no one and then reappeared at 1am drunk and all panicky. He looked like he’d been punched as well, a bruise forming on his cheek that was flushed red, presumably due to his alcohol intake. Noel was curious but also knew that he’d probably be disappointed by the reality. Liam probably fucked off to a pub with some strangers he just met and then ended up in a bar fight. Although that didn’t really explain why he was freaking out.
Noel managed to get out his room with shorts and a t-shirt on. Even at this early hour, it was already stinking hot, and as much as he loved jackets and jeans, it just wasn’t going to work for him.
Luckily, the hallway towards the lift had a window at the end of it. Otherwise he’d be walking towards where he imagined the lift was with his hands feeling up the wall for support looking like an absolute loser.
Once again, he was caught off guard when he realised that the lift wasn’t going to fucking work. He’d pressed the button and everything, waited there for a good two minutes, kicked it and then realised for about the fourth time that there was no fucking power.
Now he had to go down the fucking stairs.
How miserable.
When he finally got to the lobby, he found a clock. It pointed to 5:30. Fuck, it was far too early for him to be up. It was only about four hours ago when he was dragging his brother up the stairs with Bonehead and now he was back down here with no sleep and no tea until the cafe opens at 6. What an absolute nightmare.
He found a couch close to the front of the lobby the direct sun leaking through the windows. Suddenly he regretted opening his own blinds, once the sun gets in it’ll become a sauna in there.
And then, after about 5 minutes of staring out the window, he felt a tap on his shoulder making him almost jump out his pants.
“Fucking hell.” He muttered out, followed by a relieved sigh when he turned around and saw Bonehead staring at him with the most tired looking face on the planet.
“He’s not there.”
“What?.” Noel was confused.
“Liam, he’s gone.”
“Really? I’m surprised he managed to get out of bed.”
“Yeah.” Bonehead mumbled out in response.
“Huh, he’s probably out getting high or something.”
“I dunno, Noel. You weren’t there last night in his room. He told me that ’they wanna take me to Scotland’ which I just passed off as Liam being Liam but y’know, now that i think about it, he’s kinda been acting weird the whole week. I have a feeling something else is going on.”
“Nah, I’m sure he’s fine. He told me he was just feeling a bit sick, that why he’s being weird.” Noel reassured Bonehead. However, he didn’t believe it. It was true, Liam was being weirder than usual. He had told Noel that he was sick but both of them knew it was a lie. However, Noel didn’t even think for a second that it would be to hide something serious.
…
It was about 9am the following day when they started to get worried. The day before had been Monday so they’d all been doing interviews and meetings and whatnot the whole day. Noel wasn’t surprised that Liam hadn't showed up because interviews and meetings were his worst nightmare. But, he was surprised to find that no one else had even heard an inkling of his whereabouts at all either. The hotel staff hadn’t seen him and he didn’t even come back even to sleep. Usually, Liam would fuck off for hours but he wasn’t about to miss out on a paid-for dinner or bed for nothing. And he was even less likely to miss a free breakfast.
“Should we ask the staff if we can see the cameras?” Bonehead asked Noel whilst they were watching the footy. It was a rerun of the Leeds vs Ipswich from Friday so neither of them were particularly interested.
“Yeah probably.” In truth, it hadn’t even crossed Noel’s mind. Security cameras weren’t very popular in the suburbs of Manchester after all.
They made their way to the front desk and asked the lady, who was surprisingly more than happy to help them out. For some reason Noel thought they’d need some sort of police involvement but apparently not. They started from the night before, watching their earlier selves drag Liam into his room at 1:12 am. Then they sped few about three hours of no movement.
Then it went black.
“Oh, we had a black out yesterday morning, so the cameras cut out. I’ll fast forward to when they turned back on.” The lady informed them.
Noel had a bad feeling that only worsened and twisted tighter in his stomach as they rolled through the five minutes of footage before Bonehead entered the room. No one had come in or out. Liam had left during the blackout. Somehow, Noel didn’t think Liam had gotten out of bed at 4am after being blackout drunk three hours prior, of his own volition whilst the security cameras just 'happened' to be out of commission.
“So what do we do now?” Noel muttered, unable to hide the slight shake in his voice.
“I dunno, I guess go to the police. File a missing persons report? It’s been 24 hours.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
…
Alan McGee sat in his office chair staring down at Thursday’s paper, looking very pleased with himself. The front cover featured both Noel and Bonehead looking all anxious walking to the police station accompanied by the caption:
Where’s the Frontman?
They might sing about chaos and not caring, but yesterday Noel Gallagher and Bonehead of emerging Manchester band, Oasis were looking more like lost children than rockstars. The pair were photographed outside a London police station, supposedly filing a missing persons report for their frontman, Noel’s brother, Liam who had disappeared from the public eye days prior. Guess even rock stars get anxious when the lead singer ghosts them.
Surprisingly, the report was right. They were filing a missing persons report. And although the press wasn’t exactly positive about it, it was still press and that’s all that mattered in Alan’s opinion.