Chapter Text
Columbia, Maryland, June 6th, 2001
The hotel room smelled stale. Like alcohol, sweat, and regret… and like the rest of the Gitanes someone (no, he… probably him) had left in the ashtray overnight.
Noel woke with a headache that matched the state of the room, pain pulsing behind his eyes like it had been crouching there, just waiting for him to open them. He rubbed his face, sat up, and blinked against the light bleeding through the curtains.
His knuckles were raw.
He remembered the fight before he remembered the gig. The thick air backstage, the tempers even tighter. The Brotherly Love Tour… the fuck. Three bands, one tour: Oasis, Spacehog, The Black Crowes. On paper, it sounded like legacy. In reality? Long flights, thin patience, and too much history crammed into too many hotel rooms.
And the fact that there was no love lost between Liam and him.
Liam had always been a menace, slightly off his rocker. But this tour? He was losing the plot completely, and the voice was going with it. And Noel? He was losing the last bit of patience he’d been able to muster for his brother.
The night before, Noel had stepped on stage with The Crowes for a raw, snarling version of Oh Well that had left the crowd buzzing. He’d been in good spirits when he returned backstage.
Until Liam had opened his gob. Giving him a hard time about it.
Noel had kind of expected it. Liam had never been good when Noel collaborated with other musicians. He got loud about it. Performative. All swagger and sneer and big opinions, like the volume might drown out the bit underneath he didn’t want anyone to see.
It grated. It used to be something Noel could clock and work around. These days, it just felt like noise.
So Noel hadn’t let Liam get to him. At first. He’d told his brother, slightly dismissively, that he was pissed and should go sleep it off somewhere, not bother him. But Liam hadn’t eased up that day. Had followed him like a dog with a bone… that glint in his eye, the one that meant trouble. Muttering on about how being pissed was the only way to get through playing his „shite music” these days. How everything Noel wrote now didn’t even touch where he’d once been.
Noel didn’t really remember how it escalated after that, only bits and pieces. He remembered Liam implying that Noel intentionally sabotaged Oasis, the paranoid fucker. That he wasn’t really feeling it anymore, only playing about, only in it for the money. Not rock’n’roll anymore, and shite like that.
Noel had snapped then. Something along the lines of: if rock’n’roll meant loudmouthing and dropping shite like Liam did these days, then maybe he wasn’t rock’n’roll… and was glad of it.
It was around that time that Liam launched a bottle.
It had missed Noel’s head by inches, shattered against the wall behind him. And something inside Noel’s head had snapped.
He remembered a shout from one of the techs. Someone moving in… probably one of the backstage security guys. But it had already been too late.
Noel had shoved his brother, hard. And Liam hadn’t hesitated, shoved back. Fists had flown. A blur of noise and movement and years of resentment cracking open in thirty seconds of chaos. Security had rushed in then, dragging them apart. Hands on Noel’s shoulders, his arms, someone yelling his name.
He hadn’t heard them. Not properly. He hadn’t been able to hear anything over the sound of his own pulse crashing in his ears.
He’d twisted out of someone’s grip, eyes fixed on Liam… just in time to see him grab his jacket and walk.
Just walk. Like this was some final act in a play only he had written. No more shouting. No more smashing stuff. No explanation. Just gone.
Noel had stood frozen, blood on his shirt, knuckles throbbing, and all he’d been able to think was: he did it again.
He’d shouted something after him. Something ugly. Added something about him better not coming back or he’d kill him.
Same fucking pattern. Liam exploded, blew it all to bits, then strolled off like a misunderstood genius… while Noel was left to face the managers, the press, the band, the fallout. Left to mop up the blood and the bullshit.
Noel had tasted bile. Anger like a fist in his throat.
It was always the same: Liam lit the fire, and Noel was the one left choking on the smoke.
A voice behind him (maybe Bonehead) had said something like, “Leave it. He’s gone.”
Gone. Of course Liam had gone. And maybe this time, Noel had thought, staring at the exit like it might burn itself into the wall, maybe this time he should stay gone. Because there were only so many times you could rebuild from rubble before you realised: the fucking wrecking ball always came back.
Noel was still groggy, halfway to reaching for the minibar for some sugary treat to take the edge off when someone knocked, sharp and impatient.
He shuffled over to the door of his big-ass suite, barefoot, and opened it to Geoff, the tour manager. Geoff looked like he’d either just woken up himself or been dragged out of bed without warning and thrown straight into a crisis.
„He’s gone,” Geoff said. No hello. Straight to it.
Noel blinked, still trying to get his brain to actually work. „Who’s gone?”
„Liam.”
Noel closed his eyes, then opened them again, like that might change things. „What d’you mean, gone?”
„Didn’t come back to the hotel. He went to management after the show, got his stuff, had someone pull his things from the safe…”
„They just let him walk out?”
„Said something about going to Marseille. Or Spain. Or fuck knows where. Just… left.”
Noel stood there, already swearing. He paced barefoot across the carpet, muttering a mix of venom and disbelief.
„Typical, innit? Kicks off, burns it all down, and I’m the one left scrubbing shit off the walls.”
„He didn’t check out officially. Just disappeared. Girl at the desk said he was… calm.”
„Calm, is he?” Noel spat, bitter. „Always is after he’s wrecked the place. Strolls off like he’s in some arty French film while I’m pickin’ up the fuckin’ pieces.”
They met in the conference room an hour later: the rest of the band, management, a couple of worried label reps who’d flown in and now looked like they regretted it.
No one knew anything useful. No calls. No sightings. No Liam.
They discussed dropping the tour.
Noel leaned back in his chair, arms crossed. „We finish the tour.”
„Six more shows,” Geoff said. „We can cut two…”
„No. We do all six. We’ve played without him before. We’ll do it again.”
A few people looked at him like he’d cracked. A few others nodded. They all knew this had been coming in some form. Liam’s moods were legendary. So were his exits. Noel had done MTV Unplugged as lead singer. He’d taken over vocals whenever Liam left the stage mid-song, kicking the mic stand like it had insulted their mother.
But full arena sets? For more than one show at a time? That was new.
And something about Liam leaving felt different this time. Noel could feel it in the quiet. Not just the usual tantrum. Not the same tired cycle of storming off and sulking. This had weight. Finality.
Still, he refused to flinch. Not in front of them.
„We do the shows,” he said again, firmer. „End of. And after Paris, we take a break. Figure it out.”
No one argued. Not out loud. Bonehead nodded.
The Chief had spoken.
That night, Noel lit a cigarette inside the hotel lobby bar and dared anyone to stop him. What he hated most was how normal it all felt now.
Flight BA212, en route to London
June 12th, 2001. Morning after the last US show
Noel hated flying. Not in a dramatic, white-knuckled, rosary-clutching way. He just hated the constant noise. The forced stillness. The inability to outrun his own thoughts. Thirty thousand feet above the Atlantic, there was nothing but recycled air, a plastic tray of overcooked pasta, and too much fucking thinking.
The cabin was dim. Most of the others were asleep or pretending to be: slouched in their seats, eye masks on, headphones in. Bonehead had commandeered two seats near the back and was snoring like a freight train. Guigsy was flicking through a music magazine. Geoff had passed out with his laptop still open on the tray table. Some kid from the label had a stack of envelopes on his lap, half of them already opened: press clippings, probably.
Noel sat a few rows ahead, window seat, headphones off. He’d tried listening to music, tried a film. Nothing stuck. He just kept drifting back to the same thoughts.
The tour had wrapped with less chaos than expected. Crowds had shown up, belted out the hits, sung Noel’s parts like church hymns. The band had kept their heads down, the crew had run like clockwork. The reviews were kinder than expected… maybe out of pity. Maybe because the car crash never came.
„Gallagher-led grit,” one article had said. „Stripped-back Oasis. Surprisingly focused.”
He’d scoffed at that. It didn’t feel like praise. Our kid would have hated it.
A few tabloids had leaned into the mystery. The Sun ran a piece full of grainy long-lens shots: a bloke with his back to the camera on a beach somewhere. Another walking out of a bar in Naples. One of them in a cowboy hat, which was enough to make Noel snort aloud.
Every caption: Could this be the fallen Gallagher?
But it wasn’t the fakes that got under his skin.
It was the silence.
Of course the press had clocked the irony. One headline in NME had said it outright:
Brotherly Love Tour Ends With One Brother Missing.
Another had been even crueller:
Brotherly Love? Liam Leaves Noel Holding the Bag (Again)
Liam had vanished without a sound. No press stunt. No slurred insults from a Spanish balcony. No bootleg gig with some bloke from Primal Scream. Just gone. Like he’d stepped sideways out of the world.
That was the bit Noel couldn’t shake.
He should’ve done something. Should’ve shouted, should’ve sent a message, stirred the pot… anything. But there was nothing. Nothing since that one call to Noel’s mobile. The one that went to voicemail. The one Noel had deleted, on principle, without listening to it.
He turned to look out the window. England was still hours off. He could just make out the edge of the ocean below, dark and indifferent.
He rubbed at his temples, eyes sore, heart tenser than he liked to admit. The last six shows had been a blur of noise and muscle memory. The band held it together, but they were never really built to run without Liam. It was like driving a Ferrari with one tyre slashed: looked alright from a distance, but you felt every wobble in your teeth.
He’d kept it together. Played the part. Sung the songs.
But the truth was clawing at the edges now: Liam wasn’t sulking this time. He was gone.
And if Noel let himself admit it (really admit it) the bastard part of him missed the chaos. Missed the voice. Missed the fights. Missed the way the room spun slightly differently when Liam walked in.
He didn’t want to say it aloud. Not even to himself. So he didn’t.
He adjusted his seat, closed his eyes, and tried to focus on the gig in Paris in twelve days. Just one more show, then a break. He told himself it was nothing new.
But this time, the quiet didn’t feel temporary.
It felt like the start of something he didn’t know how to finish.