Archive of Our Own

Noel looks up from his guitar, startled by his phone going off. He must have forgotten to put it on silent. He notices the light’s gone down since he came in after lunch, and then he catches the name on the screen, where the phone is face up next to him. The missus. Well—if they ever tie the knot, that is.

He’s talked on the phone with her maybe twice, on business. She was professional enough about it, only he could feel Liam in the room with her while they talked. So maybe he wasn’t very polite, when he told her to make sure to go through his agent in the future.

He looks back down at his guitar. There’s a tune there, a maudlin little thing, hiding from him. He’s busy. She’ll leave a message about whatever it is now, and he’ll send it along to his people. No need to go through all that unpleasantness. He can’t imagine why she thought he’d pick up the—

The phone stops ringing the moment he grabs it. He unlocks it hurriedly, but only has time to pull up his call history before it rings again. He answers and puts the phone to his ear.

He only hears shaky breathing at first. His free hand reaches for something to hold onto but his guitar has slid off his lap and onto the floor.

She still doesn’t speak. Fucking say it, he wants to shout down the line, only the words won’t come out.

“Something’s happened,” she says finally. “Noel, he needs you here.”

Not dead, then. He slumps back on the chair and takes a moment, feeling dizzy.

“What’s he done now?” he asks.

*

Noel knows about the procedure, of course. Everyone does. It’s the exact kind of thing to get tongues wagging, and there’s been a few high-profile cases, a child star who’d just gotten emancipated, some messy celebrity divorce. There were unending debates about it at first, the unknown long-term effects, the potential in trauma recovery or whatever else, and then of course the fucking religious right had to have a word about it, but almost a decade on it’s just a fact of life.

Noel got one of those famous little cards, a few years back—one of his sound engineers who wanted to forget his ex. Please never mention their relationship to him again. A friend of a friend had the memory of her fucking dog removed after she lost it in the divorce. People just do this, now. You can get your breasts done or your eyes fixed or you can walk into a clinic and forget someone forever.

Noel can’t quite fathom it. Let someone open up his head and dig into it, are you mad? He has a few bad memories to his name, sure, maybe more than the average. There were times he was convinced he and Liam would kill each other, one way or another; times he was ready to gnaw his own arm off to escape. But even if someone had brought this to him at their lowest points, he still wouldn’t have gone for it. His memories of Liam are just that: his. It all belongs to Noel, every moment, every blink, every breath. How could he ever allow anyone to cut pieces of himself out? Whatever would walk out of that clinic afterwards wouldn’t be Noel.

That hasn’t stopped him from dangling the threat of it in a couple of interviews, though. He’s made a bit of a game of it over the years—how long before Liam tweets about it if I say this?—how much is Liam going to lose it if I do that?—and he certainly got a bullseye on that one. Liam didn’t even try to pretend he’s not so starved for scraps of Noel he watches everything Noel does: he threw a fit on Twitter before that first interview even finished airing, accusing Noel of just wanting a reaction even as he was unable to stop himself from giving it. He was worked up enough to keep replying to his little army of monkeys for a while. One of them said something mind-numbingly obvious about how Noel couldn’t get rid of Liam without losing his memories of Oasis.

Not just Oasis, Liam wrote back. RKids whole life has revolved around me since he was 5 take me out there’s nothing left

Well. Bit hypocritical of him, wasn’t it? As it turns out.

*

At least the clinic’s in central London, close enough to the studio. If he’d still been touring in the US—It doesn’t matter. The traffic’s not even too bad, though he finishes the trip on foot anyway.

Tick-tock.

All told it’s thirty minutes before he walks in, makes a fuss at the reception desk, and is let through.

“He went under at two in the afternoon,” Debbie says, once they’re put in a gleaming meeting room to wait. “It’s supposed to take a few hours, factoring…” She trails off.

Factoring it takes a bit longer to erase someone you’ve known your whole fucking life than your evil neighbor or the cheating ex you knew two years total.

“By three o’clock they knew something was wrong, and they sent in an extraction team.”

“What does that mean?”

“They have a team of trained—”

“What does it mean, ‘wrong’? What was fucking wrong?”

“The procedure wasn’t progressing normally, and they weren’t able to disengage.” She raises her voice a little when he opens his mouth again. “I don’t know more than that, Noel. The extraction team went under with him—”

“What, like, in his head?”

“Yes.”

“Just fucking—digging around in his head? Doing God knows what?”

“It’s standard procedure,” she says tightly. “Which Liam signed off on in the fucking—” She takes a breath. “In the waiver he had to sign beforehand.”

“And you okayed that?”

“I wasn’t consulted!”

For the first time, she looks a little like Noel feels. He looks away, and gives her a minute to put herself together.

Tick-tock.

“I thought maybe it was your idea,” he says once the minute is up.

“No. Until a few hours ago, I would have thought he’d take the idea quite badly.” He risks a look at her, and she gives him a humorless smile. “He was always so angry when you said you were thinking about having it done yourself. I just don’t understand why he would—He didn’t even mention it to me. It’s just not like him.”

Going off behind his minder’s back to do something stupid sounds just like Liam, actually. The risk of illegitimate children seems unusually low this time, but who fucking knows. Maybe he took the time to chat up one of the nurses beforehand.

“Did something happen between you two?” Debbie asks.

“No.”

“Nothing at all, no matter how small?”

Is anything with Liam ever small, manageable—forgettable?

Tick-tock.

“No.”

He hasn’t even missed Liam’s birthday, yet. Noel was braced for some unpleasantness at the ten-year anniversary, but nothing much happened, and Liam doesn’t usually delay his tantrums by three weeks.

“I can’t make sense of it. He has all these plans to get you back. His master plan. It’s what’s driving him through everything. MTV Unplugged’s airing just next week, and he’s so excited about it. He wouldn’t—Why would he do this?”

“You just don’t know him at all, do you? He’s a fuck-up. That’s what he does. When you need him most—”

“Would you just stop—”

“What the fuck am I even doing here? Why’d you call me?”

“I thought maybe if he heard your voice…”

Noel looks away again. “Pretty fucking stupid of you,” he bites off through gritted teeth. She makes an easier target for his anger at that very failure than the comatose patient who didn’t even twitch, when Noel was taken to see him. Ten years hounding Noel for a word and what did he do when he had it? Fucking nothing. “Want me to try for a true love’s kiss next?”

He bites his tongue, but it’s already too late, of course. He’s never quite kicked the habit of making these little comments. Debbie doesn’t seem to think anything of it, at least. People rarely do.

The door opens, and a couple of suits file in, followed by a woman in a lab coat. Noel folds his hands in his lap and looks at them closely, but they don’t look like anything worse has happened. The woman seems a bit anxious, and trying to hide it. Nothing good either, then.

“I apologize for the wait,” the first suit starts. Tick-tock. His teeth are too shiny. “We wanted to debrief the extraction team first, so we had all the information available.”

“And what information is that?” Debbie asks before Noel can.

“First the good news: Mr Gallagher’s brain activity remains completely within expected—”

“That’s your fucking good news? He’s not brain-dead, let’s throw a party?”

“—and his mindscape presented normally.”

Debbie throws him a warning glance, but Noel clenches his jaw and doesn’t say anything. It’s not going to help any to rant and rave at them. Liam’s been unconscious over five hours already. He resists the urge to check his watch again—it’s already hard not to take it off and smash it to pieces, and he needs to look in control of himself, reasonable, stable. The whole thing is going to be a tough sale as it is. He’s pretty sure the ticking clock sound is just in his head, anyway.

“He’s got a normal mindscape, great.” Whatever the fuck that means. “Wouldn’t have bet any money on that, but what do you know. What’s the hold up, then?”

The suit looks to his right. The woman in the lab coat cringes but speaks up.

“His subconscious didn’t accept the presence of the extraction team, and attacked them.”

“Were they—” Debbie hesitates on the word—“injured?”

“No, they managed to get out at the first signs of violence, to protect Mr. Gallagher as well as themselves. Now we’re flying in a team that specializes in similar cases. As we’ve said, the first twenty-four hours are crucial—”

“How long until they get there?”

“A few hours.”

Tick-tock.

“You’ve said Liam attacked the first team because he didn’t recognize them. Isn’t it likely he’ll also react negatively to this new team?”

They exchange a look. “Yes, but they’ve received specialized training to minimize risk—”

“So there’s a risk.”

“Ms. Gwyther, we’ve tried a chemical treatment without success, and Mr. Gallagher isn’t able to wake up on his own. At this point, there are no other options.”

“Sure there is,” Noel says. Everyone turns to look at him. In control, he reminds himself. Reasonable. Stable. “Send me.”

“Send you?” the woman boggles.

“Noel, he’s attacked the extraction team—”

“Well, of course he did, if they’re sending some wankers in his head. But he knows me.”

“Yes,” the second suit says, in a tone that implies it might be a problem. Noel clenches his fist under the table.

Tick-tock.

“Even if he accepts your presence, you’ve received absolutely no training—”

“Lie down, get pumped full of drugs, wake up in his head, find the cunt. Have I got that right?”

“It’s a bit more complicated than that—and the longer you take to find him, the harder it will be to get both of you out.”

“Well then it’s lucky that other team is already on the way, isn’t it?” He pulls a Sharpie out of his jeans—nothing worse than waiting for a fan to dig around their bag for the pen they swear they’ve got somewhere—and starts writing on the table. “You’ve got quite the high-profile case on your hands here. For rock stars, all publicity is good publicity, but you’re a business asking people to entrust their fragile little minds to you. And I don’t think a lot of people are going to want to do that if you’ve turned the bloke who sang Wonderwall into a vegetable. Now I’m willing to go in there right now and fix your problem for you, and I’m willing to agree that no matter the outcome, the press doesn’t need to get involved and nobody gets sued.” He reads over what he’s written, sounding each word in his head to make sure he hasn’t skipped any: I hereby absolve this company of any responsibility in the fate of my dumbfuck brother and I and waive any right to sue them into the ground now and forever as long as they let me go and get him right the fuck now. He nods to himself, and signs his name with an extra flourish, caps the Sharpie and throws it on the table. “But if you don’t send me in there, I’m going to spend the rest of my life using every means at my considerable disposal to ruin this company and each of your individual lives. So what do you say?”

*

“I think his mind is more likely to accept you if he remembers you,” Dr. Bhat says at the end of her Dream-walking For Mancunian Morons crash-course, “but he might not remember you.”

Tick-tock.

“You said the procedure failed.”

“We originally thought the procedure failed to start at all, but the extraction team reported they didn’t see you anywhere in his mindscape. It’s possible the failure started in our monitoring system, and the erasure worked as planned.”

Noel takes his time signing the last page of the last waiver. “No,” he says once he’s done.

“No? What do you mean, no?”

“I can tell you exactly what happened. He came here high on some perceived slight his little mind cooked up, only he got cold feet at the last minute and couldn’t go through with it.”

She eyes him dubiously, visibly deciding not to argue about it—though she’s pretty quick snatching up the signed waiver. “Do you want to talk to the team? They can tell you what to expect from Liam specifically.”

“I know what to expect.”

All the drugs they’ve done together, all the music they’ve made together—eye to eye, soul to soul, as close as anyone has ever been and then even closer still—Liam’s thoughts in Noel’s mind, Noel’s words in Liam’s mouth. He doesn’t need some cunt to tell him what his brother’s mind is like. He’s been there before. He still knows the way.

Tick-tock.

“Remember,” Dr. Bhat reviews on the way back, “the most important thing is to keep him calm, and remind him gently of where he is and what’s happening. Once he’s fully aware, he should be able to control the dream and wake himself up.”

“Can’t I just give him a pinch?”

“No. Well, maybe. If he doesn’t know where to start—”

“Yeah, yeah. Imagine an alarm clock, picture a door, I heard you.”

The lights in the last white corridor are blinding. He hears the chatter of the little pack of lab coats first and then, finally, the heart monitor, even and strong. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Noel breathes in, out. Ba-dum. They’re not going to stop him now. All he has to do is to take some drugs, and find Liam—and he’s certainly put the hours in, hasn’t he?

A second bed’s been wheeled in, with its accompanying machinery. Debbie hurries over to him, a little more wild-eyed than he last saw her.

“Noel, wait,” she pleads. “This is crazy. We have no real idea what’s happening inside his head, you could make everything worse, or get stuck, too. Liam would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you.”

“Cheer up,” Noel tells her. “If I don’t wake up, chances are he won’t wake up to be mad at you either.”

She doesn’t look particularly reassured, and catches his arm when he tries to move past her.

“Seriously, wait. Take a minute to think. What the fuck do I tell your wife and kids if anything happens?”

“If they know me at all—” Noel starts to say, only of course he’s spent a decade trying not to be known. Will they understand?

Ba-dum.

Well. Ultimately, it’s not his problem, is it? Liam’s his problem, always has been, and always will be. Noel will do what he has to do, and they’ll think what they want to think. 

He shrugs Debbie off. “They’ll know there was nothing you could have done to stop me,” he settles on. He goes to lie down without looking at the bed on his right.

He closes his eyes as they hook him up. Breathes in, out. Listens. Ba-dum.

“Count to ten,” Dr Bhat tells him once everything is ready, so Noel counts the heartbeats.

Ba-dum.

Ba-dum.

Ba-dum.

Ba—

*

It’s Manchester, of course. Burnage, in fact—though not quite the Burnage he knows, parts of it blurry, others that don’t quite make sense. A confectionery shop that closed down decades ago next to an Apple Store that definitely wasn’t there in the nineties. No real people anywhere in sight; only blurry outlines, lines that someone drew and forgot to fill out. One such silhouette, short and stumpy and faceless, is walking something shaped like one of those wiener dogs. The little old lady two houses down had one when they were kids. They walk past Noel without taking any notice of him. Probably for the best, given that extraction team got attacked on sight.

Noel walks home, keeping an eye out for any real-looking people, or any sign of chaos Liam might have left in his wake. The neighborhood seems to settle on a time period as he gets closer: Liam’s early childhood. Soon enough he reaches the house—the first one, the one they lived in with Tommy.

Memory works in such a strange way. Noel didn’t know he remembered that day so clearly until he’s faced with the pitch-perfect picture of it, like stepping into the past: the grey autumn sky; the chipped paint on the gate; the three dead leaves on the ground; the exact angle of the door Liam left open that one afternoon.

“William!” the name bursts out of him, but no one answers.

Noel was only a little later than usual. When he got home, he found the front door open and the house empty. Liam had stayed home with a cold, only he wasn’t there. Tommy was supposed to watch over him while Mam worked, but when had he ever acted like a proper dad? I’ll kill him, Noel thought, perhaps even for the first time, all of ten years old. If Liam’s hurt, I’ll kill him.

Noel takes an unsteady step back, looks left, right, and then goes down the street, picking up speed until he’s just flat out running.

He ran for what felt like a very long time, back then. But then his legs were much smaller, and he had no idea where he was going. The playground wasn’t so far from their house. Only it still feels like it takes forever to get there. To get close enough to hear Noel’s little brother crying his heart out in an empty playground. And then there he is, blond and tiny in the little playhouse, on top of the slide. Little William.

Noel slows down, winded, and tries to catch his breath, to calm himself down. Liam isn’t actually five anymore. This is a dream. And the kid doesn’t look hurt anyway—only he’s not waking up, is he, so who fucking knows?

“Hey,” he calls. “Come on, now, none of that.”

Liam cracks his eyes open, looks at him, and cries even louder.

“Come on, kid, it’s me, yeah? I’m your big brother.”

“You’re not my brother, you’re an old geezer,” Liam argues. At least he had to stop the wailing to say it, the rude little twat.

Noel sits down on the ground at the bottom of the slide, legs feeling like jelly now he’s paying attention, heart still working overtime from the panic he’s had. “Grew up, didn’t I?” He has a burst of inspiration. “I’m from the future, actually.”

Liam hesitates, then slides down to him to peer at his face. Jesus, didn’t Noel say Liam might get snatched off the street by any old pervert? He was right to watch Liam like a hawk when they were out.

“’s it really you?” His little hand comes up to hang onto Noel’s sleeve, the way he used to do when Noel walked him to school. “Noely?”

Noel wipes sweat off his eyes. “Yeah, kid, it’s me.”

Liam suddenly bends his head and bites the side of Noel’s hand, hard.

“Fuck!” He yanks his hand away easily enough—not always a given when Liam’s in a biting mood—and shakes it off. “What’d you go and do that for?”

Liam blinks at him. “Just checking.”

“Checking what, you little cunt?”

Another blink. “Did you come here to find me?”

“Y-Yeah.” His voice breaks on the word. “What are you doing out here?”

“Dunno. I was all alone. You always come home before the little hand of the clock gets all the way down, but it went past and you weren’t there.”

“You’re not supposed to get out of the house alone.” Why am I even saying this? Noel wonders. Even this young, Liam never listened to him. And he’s grown now, practically an old man, even. He can wander around all on his own if he wants. Noel isn’t responsible for him anymore. “You’re supposed to wait for me.”

“But you weren’t there.” Little Liam looks around, as though searching for something. “Where am I then?” He eyes the trees, like his older self might pop out from behind them. It’s so evident to him. If Future Noel traveled back in time, Future Liam must have traveled with him. This Liam had crying fits when Noel came home late; he couldn’t imagine a future where they weren’t together.

“He… He got a little lost, so I’m looking for him. Can you help me find him?”

“Okay.” Little Liam slips his hand into Noel’s, gets up and yanks impatiently until Noel struggles up, too. “Where’d you lose him? Mam says I should stay put if I’m lost, so you know where to find me.”

“Yeah? Why’d you leave the house instead of waiting for me, then?”

He shrugs, head down. “Thought you’d forgotten us.”

Noel rubs over his chest. “I’d never forget you.”

“Liar. You were playing footie with your mates.”

Noel freezes in place. Liam’s hand slips out of his as he keeps walking another few steps. His eyes are cloudy when he looks back at Noel.

This Liam never knew that. Noel lied through his teeth, obviously, when he found Liam here, all those years ago. He only admitted to it years and years down the line, after a few too many pints. Liam took it like a fresh betrayal, of course. Added it to the list of Noel’s offenses he aired out whenever he was angry with Noel. Probably wish you’d never found me, don’t you?

“Liar,” Liam says again. Smoke spills out of his eyes; in seconds it fills Noel’s vision.

“Liam!” he shouts. He reaches in front of him but his fingers only meet air where Liam should have been. “Liam!”

Noel tries to follow him but after a few steps he knocks into something hard—a door, he realizes as he feels the handle. They were nowhere near a door, but that’s dream logic for you. Nothing to do but to open it.

He steps through and finds himself in their house—not that first dreary house but the one after that—the first home they really had. There’s no one downstairs. The magazines Mam keeps in the living room are completely blank, without dates or titles or images. The wallpaper in the hallway hurts Noel’s head when he looks at it too closely.

The door of their bedroom is open, even though it never used to be: even years after they left Tommy, Noel still couldn’t feel at ease with the door open. Even now—But then, he can’t find any sleep with the door closed either. Age, he supposes.

He lingers at the threshold, runs his hand over the wood. There’s a song playing, familiar. How can you say I go about things the wrong way? 

He never goes upstairs, when he visits Mam—certainly never stays the night. It’s been years since he came so close—some uncomfortable family holiday. Liam had gone off sulking into their old room, and someone had to go and get him—the less said about all that, the better.

Would you just fucking go in?

It’s just like it was, of course. The two beds, one in each corner, close enough you could reach out and meet in the middle. Liam’s lying in one of them, eyes on the wall. He hasn’t noticed Noel yet. He looks—painful. The gangliest he’s ever been, certainly. Kept shooting up overnight, it seemed, and eating Mam out of house and home. It hurt to look at him then, or at the few photographs hung up at Mam’s, like his growing pains were contagious. Noel never knew how to talk to him.

He goes to sit on the other bed, but Liam doesn’t even twitch. Maybe Liam can’t see him.

The phone starts to ring. Liam doesn’t seem to hear it either. It rings and rings, louder than it should be all the way downstairs, drowning out the music and growing louder with every ring, until it shakes the walls, shakes Noel’s teeth—and then gives up at last. The answering machine clicks on, and then, of course, it’s Noel’s voice.

“Come on, Liam,” the answering machine says. “Pick it up, I know you’re there.”

“Give it up, mate,” Liam tells it. “I don’t wanna talk to you.”

“Throwing a fucking tantrum like a child,” it goes on. “Real fucking mature. Was I supposed to put you in my suitcase maybe? Tell the ladies at customs not to mind the lad I’m smuggling out of the country, I know he’s got school and no passport but he asked very nicely, you see? You’ve got to get it through your thick skull, I’ve got my own life to live.”

Liam snorts. He was always so sure of himself. You’ll come crawling back, he told Noel before that first tour with the Inspiral Carpets.

The voice goes quiet, entreating. “Will you just pick up that phone and call me a cunt already?” It wants to hear Liam’s voice so badly. A bit pathetic, that. Liam’s probably remembering it wrong.

You’ll come crawling back. You can’t bear it without me.

“Come on. Are you gonna blame me for the rest of your life?”

The plea stretches out, self-conscious, then the clearing tone comes, too loud again.

Liam drapes his arm over his eyes, and doesn’t move for so long Noel can’t take it.

“I’m sorry,” he says, since Liam can’t hear him anyway. He never said it before, not for that. Nothing to be sorry for, was there? Leaving was the right thing to do. It’s always been the right thing to do, any way you look at it. Selfish, or selfless—like one of those paintings that change shape if you look at them different—but always right. It’s only that Noel never manages to stick to it.

He lies down on his side, and looks at his brother. Is that what he did, that angry boy? When he refused to take Noel’s calls, was he really here, lying in Noel’s bed, looking at Noel’s posters, playing Noel’s CDs? Even if it was only once in a while, even if it only lasted a minute or two—did he miss Noel like Noel missed him? Like a limb, like a part of his soul, like a sailor lost at sea longs for his homeland?

Liam lets out a small sigh, and turns on his side, too. Their eyes meet.

Cunt.

Noel isn’t invisible, after all.

“You look proper old,” Liam says finally. “How long’s it take to come home?”

You tell me.

“Won’t be much longer now.”

“Yeah? Only I’m fine on my own, see?” He bites his lip, weighs Noel up. “I got me a band, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” He squirms closer to the edge of the bed. “Will you come and see us?”

“Thought you didn’t need me.”

“I don’t!” Liam erupts, and calms down just as quick. “Could be nice, though, yeah? Got some proper tunes. And if you—if you liked us, then maybe you could join.”

“What do you want me for, if you’ve got songs already?”

“It’s not the same,” Liam protests, rubbing his nose, watching Noel with greedy little eyes. “Wanna have yours.”

Noel scoffs. “You don’t know anything about my songs.”

“Sure I do! Read’em, didn’t I?”

It’s the verb that catches Noel short. Noel’s never given Liam songs to read in his life. Sang them to him, taught them to him, sure. “What do you mean, you read them?” He suddenly catches sight of a little notebook on the night table between their beds, brown leather, looking a little worse for wear. He remembers nicking that one when he was sixteen or seventeen, though he lost it around—the time he left home, sure enough. “You didn’t!”

But of course Liam did. Noel’s songs, Noel’s thoughts, Noel’s soul. Nothing’s ever enough for him. He won’t let Noel keep anything for himself.

“So what if I did?” Liam says, chin pushed up, only the sneer doesn’t fit quite right on his face.

“You’ve got no fucking right—”

“No right?! It’s mine! It’s all for me!” His lower lip wobbles. “What do you care anyway? You wouldn’t have left them behind, if you cared so much.”

All the fight leeches out of Noel. He’s too fucking old for this. “Like fuck it’s for you,” he mutters anyway, ‘cause Liam will take the whole mile and run off with it if you let him have so much as an inch.

“They’re not even that good anyway,” Liam huffs.

Noel throws him an exasperated look. “Why’d you fucking want them, then?”

“‘Cause I’ll make them good. You’re going about it all wrong, nobody wants to hear Morrissey’s moaning, know what I mean?”

“Shut your mouth.”

“Like that one—” He sits up to grab the notebook and flips through it without even looking down. “—about the bird that’s flying away.” He stops on a page like it’s muscle memory and gives it a tap. “You can’t sing it all sad the way you do, you’ve got to sing it loud, so loud the bird hears it and comes back.”

“Yeah?”

Liam turns a little bashful under Noel’s gaze. “Yeah, man. I’ll show you, alright? Just come and hear me sing, and you’ll see.”

It’s a trap, of course. If he had to do it all over again, Noel wouldn’t walk into the Boardwalk at gunpoint; he lost eighteen years of his life there. Maybe the Liam of now—the one who remembers everything and walked into this clinic—maybe that one wouldn’t even want him to.

Still, what’s the harm in indulging him a little, before Noel gets to another memory? It’s been so long since Liam sang for him.

He sits up, mirroring Liam. The tips of their shoes kiss. “You could give it a try now,” Noel says, nodding to the notebook.

“Here?”

“Yeah.”

“But I don’t know how it’s supposed to go.”

“Sure you do. ”

Liam throws him a dubious look, but his eyes are drawn to the blocky letters on the page, as if magnetized. He wants it. Even when he hates Noel, can’t stand the sight of him, won’t talk to him—he still wants Noel’s songs.

His voice comes out too quiet, at first. Hesitant, even though he’s got the rhythm of it like he’s taken it straight from Noel’s head. Maybe Liam’s wrong, and the songs are not for him but of him, and Noel just happened to be there to catch them and put them to paper.

Liam’s found his stride by the end of the first verse. He glances back at Noel as he takes a breath. A shiver runs down Noel’s spine, and he leans in.

The next word’s loud enough to burst Noel’s eardrums, feels like. The window cracks first, and then reality all around them.

*

He hears the noise of the crowd, first. It slams into him, disorienting when he’s heard nothing but Liam’s voice so far. He follows it down a corridor, up a flight of stairs. He steps onto the stage, blinded by the sudden light. He raises a hand to shield his eyes, and catches sight of Liam, sitting at the edge of the stage in that black coat.

The word slips out of him: “No.”

He takes a step back, then another.

Liam starts to turn around, and Noel bolts. He runs out of there like the devil’s after him, and then trips at the top of the stairs and—

*

—falls, and falls. By the time his feet reach solid ground he can’t tell up from down, right from left; he twists around for a few minutes before he realizes he’s trapped halfway into a shirt and manages to get it off. He looks around, panting and disoriented, walls closing in. It’s their room again, fucking hell, will he ever be free from this place—

His hands don’t look right. His bare chest certainly doesn’t look right. That’s the body he was wearing when they moved here, as skinny and pale as he’s ever been, hair grown-out just enough to hide behind. He couldn’t bear for anyone to look at him then, and couldn’t bear to look at himself either. His skin always crawled when—

The one advantage of this claustrophobic room: it takes only a step to be close enough to yank the door open. Liam scrambles backwards on the other side, wide-eyed.

“The fuck?!”

“Were you fucking peeping?” Noel accuses him.

“I wasn’t!” Liam defends himself, badly. “I fucking wasn’t! Nothing to fucking see, is there! Not like you’ve got a bird stashed in here, do you!”

Noel couldn’t bear to be looked at or touched at that age, except when he was angry enough to strangle his brother.

“You little creep!” He throws himself at Liam, trying to get him in a headlock as the lad shouts the house down.

“I’m not, I’m not! It’s all your fault anyway, making such a big deal about it, not letting us see you anymore!”

One of Liam’s pointy elbows gets Noel in the stomach; Noel’s grip slackens enough that Liam makes a run for it.

“What the fuck are you on about!” Noel howls, running after him down the stairs.

“It’s not right, is it,” Liam throws over his shoulder, “to go change in the bathroom like I’m some stranger!” He gets the couch between them, goes right when Noel goes left, left when Noel goes right. “I’m your brother, aren’t I? What have you got to be so shy about?”

“Fuck off!”

“Did it grow up crooked or something?”

Noel climbs over the back of the couch, only he gets his foot caught in between the cushions and falls flat on his face. He swears again and follows Liam’s giggles out of the living room, to the front door Liam left open behind him.

“What the fuck’s wrong with—you,” Noel finishes awkwardly, finding himself alone in the middle of nowhere.

The house is gone when he turns around. Green, as far as the eye can see. A little country road. Some huge tree in the distance. The tree’s kind of familiar, actually. There’s some small shape at the bottom of it.

Sure enough, Liam’s halfway up the tree by the time Noel gets close enough to see. Younger again, maybe six or seven. Tanned and wild-haired, the marks of every summer in Ireland.

“You’re gonna fall and break your neck,” Noel calls up to him. When that doesn’t get a reaction, he adds: “You’re gonna get scared halfway up and beg me to come get you.”

This Liam doesn’t seem surprised to see him, either. No matter what age they are or what Noel looks like, they’ve all accepted him readily enough. Dr Bhat warned him they would find his presence in Liam’s mindscape odd, at least—but then Liam is so obsessed with him: for how often Noel dreams of him, he certainly dreams of Noel twice as much.

Liam sticks his tongue out at him. “Nah, I’m gonna make it all the way to the top this time.”

“What for?”

“Gonna touch the sky.”

“Yeah?” Noel can feel his eyes crinkling. “Think you can reach it from there?”

“I know I can.” He sits down on a gnarly branch and peers down at Noel. “Come up and do it with me, Noely.”

“No can do, kid. I’m on a mission.”

Liam squints at him with unwarranted suspicion. “What mission?”

“I’m looking for you.”

“But I’m here.”

“An older you, like me,” he says, since he’s old again.

“I’m never gonna be that old.”

“Of course you are,” Noel rebukes sharply.

“Well, it’s just me and you here. Might as well come and play with me, yeah?”

Noel looks around, and there’s still nothing. No door he might try. No twat in a parka. He looks back at Liam and tries to see into his twisted little mind.

“Come on,” Liam not-so-much begs as orders. “We can make it if you come with me, I know we can. And then we’ll never have to come down.”

Liam always cried up a storm when it was time to go back to England. He used to hide in cupboards and barns—and trees—and it was Noel’s job to find him, ‘cause Liam always answered when Noel called. He’d try and convince Noel to hide with him, or run away together, live like bandits in the forest. Living in fantasyland, and he never quite grew out of it. It was Noel who had to drag him back to the real world every time, the one where there was food on the table and a roof above their heads and the cost that came with it. And every year, Noel would walk around on the last day of summer and call for Liam with mounting dread, thinking this time for sure Liam would refuse to answer. Surely he’d have learned his lesson and stopped trusting Noel. But Liam always answered.

Liam watches him, waiting—always waiting. The chain around his ankle; the promise of rest at the end of the road. What Noel wouldn't give, to go home.

Noel reaches for the lowest branch. His hand changes in front of his eyes, smaller, smoother, the arm growing shorter.

A little more, he tries to push. Just a little more. Just this once, he wants to lay the burden of those five years down. Just this once, he wants them to look at the world from the same height. But even in a dream, he can’t have it. He’s still five years older as he hoists himself up the first branch; he’s still the older one as he reaches Liam—

Tick-tock.

—and the real world is still waiting outside.

“I need your help,” he says. “Something very bad will happen if I don’t find the real you.”

“I’m the real me!”

“I need you to listen—”

“No!” Liam climbs to his feet on the branch. “You’ve got me, what do you care about him!”

“He’s you, you stupid—”

“He can fuck off!” Liam shouts. “If he’s so good, why isn’t he with you, huh?”

Noel raises his arms, uneasy to see Liam go into a rage so high up. “Will you fucking calm down—”

“Say it, then. How’d you lose him, huh?” His voice turns vicious: “Or maybe he’s not lost, yeah?” Noel freezes. “Maybe he’s just hiding from you, ‘cause he don’t want to see you. ‘Cause he hates you. Like I—”

“You think he hates me?” Noel says. “He’s spent every day of the last ten years begging for me back. I’m the one who doesn’t fucking want to see him.”

Liam throws his head back, gives a great shout. Noel dives for his legs too late; Liam jumps off. For a second, Noel thinks he’s going to see his little brother crash to his death. But of course wings sprout off Liam’s back and carry him away; Noel, who stupidly jumped after him, falls straight to the ground.

*

Falling doesn’t hurt that bad, turns out. Ground’s a bit soft. Kinda uncomfortable, though, like that couch they used to have—Noel opens one eye. The ceiling doesn’t tell him much, but he looks down and, yeah, that’s the lumpy couch, and that’s the living room of their first house. What fucking now, he thinks, exhausted.

Well, Liam can fuck off. It’s always been so easy for him. I don’t need you. Fuck off then, nobody’s asking you to stay. I don’t even like you. I never liked you. And then the next day, next week, all forgotten, like he never said it, like he never meant it. But Noel doesn’t forget. Noel always knows it’s there, held behind Liam’s teeth.

But it’s fine. Noel didn’t come here with any illusion Liam would fall into his arms and swear his everlasting love. He can have his little fucking tantrum, and when he’s good and ready to wake up, he can come find Noel, how about that? Noel’s done running about like a twat. He’s staying on this motherfucking couch, thanks very much.

Of course, that’s when the baby starts crying. And Noel would ignore it just fine, no qualms there, only baby cries have that thing, yeah, evolutionary or whatever, that makes your brain bleed the longer you hear it. Summat like that. His kids all had it, and Liam definitely had it.

He hears an echo of his mother’s voice then, the words impossible to make out, only it smells a bit like Sunday roast now that he thinks about it, and he’s got a feeling he knows what she’s saying.

It’s bullshit, is what it is. There’s no way Liam remembers this. Sure, he’s said he remembers being born and all that, but that’s just his usual nonsense. And he can’t know, ‘cause Noel never told him, never told anyone.

The baby had started crying while Mam was in the kitchen, so she’d called to Noel to go check on him. He approached the crib carefully. He wasn’t tall enough to see over the top of the crib, but he could see the baby through the bars. His red, scrunched little face. He cried so loudly. Noel was sure he’d never been so loud, himself. Tommy wouldn’t have allowed that.

He didn’t really know what he was supposed to do, so he slipped his hand through the bars and brushed against his soft baby cheek, thinking of the way Mam would check if he was warm when he felt unwell. The baby was warm.

Noel touched the baby’s cheek again, pondering how you were supposed to know what was living human warm and what was sick baby warm. The baby opened his eyes and looked at him—and Liam smiled at him, and stopped crying.

And Liam can’t possibly remember that, ‘cause he was a baby.

He hears Mam’s voice again, so he stops hovering at the door of his parents’ bedroom and goes in. And the baby is there, of course, crying in his crib. The tuft of blond hair on the top of his head. A little blue babygrow, ‘cause Mam always liked putting him in blue. It might have been any moment in the first year of Liam’s life.

Noel reaches inside the crib, and tickles Liam’s soft cheek, and Liam opens his eyes and sees him and stops crying.

“It’s alright now,” Noel says clumsily. “You’re alright. I’m here.”

Liam smiles at him, toothless, and Noel has to sit on the floor. He presses his head to the bars of the crib, wishing he could pass through and find Liam on the other side. “Where the fuck are you?” he asks, warbled. “Just tell me where you are. I need—” His voice gets stuck in his throat. “I need to find you.”

But the baby doesn’t answer, so Noel just stays there for a very long time, until he realizes the ground is moving underneath him, and the bars he’s pressed against are the railing of a boat. He’s barely high enough to reach the top of it.

He looks out at the sea. It’s always soothed him. The ferry to Ireland felt cleansing, the darkness left behind, powerless to reach across the water. It’s hard to feel soothed now. How long has he been here, and no closer to Liam than he first began? Dr Bhat wouldn’t give him a time limit, told him time would pass differently here.

Eventually that other team will come in, probably, but Noel kind of thinks no one else will be able to reach Liam if he can’t. So maybe they’ll just stay stuck down here.

He breathes in a lungful of sea air, and when he turns around he sees Liam, very little, sat alone in the middle of the deck. Sulking, Noel can tell just from his hunched-over shoulders and the way he’s sucking his thumb.

There’s no one else there.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, to stay here. Noel’s found himself taking refuge in his memories more and more as time goes by—isn’t it only natural, at this age? Aren’t all your best years past? What do the years hold but a slow decay, feeling forever more distant from your own life, the winters getting colder every year, inspiration getting further and further out of reach? They wouldn’t have to go through that, here. They wouldn’t be alone.

Liam turns his head away when Noel reaches him. It’s funny how much he still looks like that baby, as round and small as he is, with his fat cheeks and big blue eyes. Still Noel’s baby for a little longer.

“What’s this about, then?”

Liam huffs and doesn’t answer.

Toward the front of the ship, Noel can see two indistinct shapes—Mam and Paul, maybe? Paul was sick all the way to Ireland, one year. Mam spent the trip rubbing his back, while Noel was stuck watching Liam. Only they’d argued in the car before the ferry, Liam having broken some toy of his, so Noel refused to sit next to him—so Liam asked to room with Paul that night—so Noel said good riddance—so Liam cried half the night until Paul brought him back to Noel so Liam could get his tears and snot all over Noel’s bed. You could probably trace back their whole life like this, one argument to the next to the next to the next to the next, all the way to now, fifty years later, out cold in a clinic because Liam wanted to forget him.

Liam told him once the only way out of them was feet first—which Sara really didn’t take in the spirit it was intended—but it seems Liam found another one, and took it all on his own.

Well think again, darling.

Noel reaches out and tickles Liam under the chin. Liam lets out a giggle and slaps his hand away. Noel waits half a minute and then pinches Liam’s waist; Liam squawks and throws himself at Noel and bites his shoulder. He’s a vicious little thing: Noel can feel Liam’s teeth even through his thick coat. He ignores it and pets Liam’s hair until Liam calms down and stops biting down, and just worries his teeth over Noel’s shoulder.

“There, there,” Noel says mindlessly, still petting. “I’m not mad at you, yeah? I’m never mad at you.”

Liam bites down again, doubtful, and lets go.

“’m cold,” he mutters into Noel’s neck, so Noel enfolds Liam in his coat and wraps his arms around him. Maybe that’s why Noel had to be born five years earlier: so he could always be big enough to hold Liam.

“Will you rub my back?” Liam asks.

“That’s for when you’re sick.”

“I’m sick,” Liam lies immediately; Noel rubs his back.

They had about the same conversation when Paul brought Liam back to him that night. Maybe that’s where Noel went wrong, by giving Liam anything he wanted if he lied well enough about needing it.

Will you give it a rest, already?

Noel shuts his eyes tight, and gives it a rest.

*

The waves rock them, left then right, left then right—then Noel’s walking, left foot then right foot, left foot then right foot, and his arms are empty, his shoulder cold. Left foot, then right foot. Tick-tock. It’s Manchester again. He passes the Haçienda, and keeps walking. The streets are wet, the sky cloudy. Fall weather, he thinks. October.

He hesitates at the door of the Boardwalk. Only there’s no point, is there? The bed’s already made; the coffin nailed shut.

No need to stay out in the cold just to be stubborn.

He takes a breath, straightens his jacket, goes in. He’s late; Liam’s already on stage. It shouldn’t be such a shock, to see him there, all of nineteen. Noel’s seen that tape he got off Tony McCarroll enough times he should be inured to the sight—has seen Liam on much bigger stages, in much better form. It was plain to see Liam wasn’t sure how to stand and what to do, his nerves painfully obvious: hanging off the mike so he’d have something to do with his hands, refusing to look in Noel’s direction even though he must have clocked Noel the second he came in.

It shouldn’t have been such a shock then, either. It was only Liam. Only Liam’s voice, and Noel knew that voice. He grew up with it, didn’t he? Crying for his milk and calling for Noel and shouting for a pint. It’s hounded Noel every day of his life. It didn’t seem possible, for it to sound new. Yet it had.

Yet it does.

Noel sold his soul away here, for that voice. Signed his name on the dotted line and never read the small script so he could pretend later he didn’t know what it said.

He wanders closer to the stage, and closer, until he’s toeing it, that little half-step that’s no barrier at all, yet impossible to cross. Close enough Liam’s spittle falls on Noel’s face. Liam’s got no choice but to look at him now, and he does, launches into Take Me and looks straight at Noel, sings to him, and for about three minutes fifty Noel doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe, never looks away.

Liam said something to the crowd afterwards, something cocky Noel can’t quite remember, even though he must have heard it a hundred times on that tape, mouths it along with Liam, sometimes. But Liam doesn’t say it this time. His eyes are still on Noel, so bright under the stage lights.

“Can you see it now?” he asks Noel.

Noel reaches a shaking hand to him, yet still can’t cross over to the other side.

“I’m trying,” he says.

The thing nobody tells you about deals with the devil, is that even if one day you escape the devil, even if you run far enough and hide well enough and always turn off the radio when his songs come on—even then you’ll never get your soul back. And you might think eventually you’ll get used to living without a soul, but you won’t. You’ll dream of it every night. You’ll look for it in every mirror. The bleeding will never stop.

So you might as well stay in hell, yeah?

“Please,” Noel tells his soul. “I can’t do it on my own.”

Liam watches him, silent.

“Tell me how to find you,” Noel begs.

“Why?” Liam says finally. “You never listen.”

“I will this time, I swear, so would you just—”

His hand crosses over and almost reaches Liam—only the light cuts out, and Noel’s alone in the dark.

*

The stars come back first, the sky brighter and fuller than Noel’s ever seen it in the city. Ireland again? He can see a lone house in the distance, with a light left on.

It seems more and more familiar the closer he gets, but he’s almost at the door by the time he recognizes it and freezes in place. Not a house—a little cottage.

He does a full turn, but there’s nothing and no one else.

It’s fine, he tells himself. Nothing bad happened here. It’s the one place—Nothing bad happened, so nothing bad can happen now.

The light from the window catches the ruby on his hand as he reaches for the door. His stomach lurches. He can’t go in like this, he’s all wrong, he’ll—

The traces of age fade from his hand before he can bolt, and the only ring left on his hand is the right one. Noel wipes his forehead, then his eyes. Nothing bad can happen.

Inside the cottage, he follows the light to the sitting room. He thinks it’s empty at first, but as he steps further in, he notices the pair of feet sticking out of the couch, too large to be his. He can’t remember Liam having a kip on that couch at night, and certainly not alone. And Liam always woke up before him, but he’d been in bed with Noel every morning, hadn’t he? Unless he—

Liam turns over, waking up, and Noel stops thinking. He watches Liam scrub at his eyes, sleepy—hungover, rather—without a thought in his head. Then Liam catches sight of him through his hair and scowls, and Noel steps back and into a wall.

The door’s gone.

“N-No,” he pleads. Liam scowls harder. “G-Get out. Get the fuck out, I said! You’re not supposed to be here.” He yanks at his hair, tries to use the pain to focus. “I don’t want to see you!”

“Made that plenty clear, haven’t you?”

Noel feels hysteria rising as he slides down to the floor, a proper tantrum like he hasn’t thrown in ten years, bar a few Liam relapses here and there.

“Thought you’d kicked off the panic attacks along with the gak.” Noel doesn’t reply. “Well, breathe a little, mate. You don’t want to pass out, do you?” 

Passing out sounds pretty good to Noel right about now, actually. Liam is so—

“Hey. Look at me.” A kick to his shoe when Noel refuses to look up. Angry now: “Fucking look at me.”

It’s not fair. Noel doesn’t want him. He wants the Liam he had here. He wants the Liam who loved him. It’s been so long since Noel saw him happy, made him happy. Can’t he have this, even for one minute? Must even this memory be tainted by the rot?

“Do you have to take everything from me?” Noel asks his knees. “Even this? Can’t I keep one fucking thing for myself?”

“There we fucking go again! Everything’s always my fault, innit? Always me ruining everything for you! Can’t be because you’re a cunt, no, must be Liam’s fault! Liam’s fault we couldn’t break America, Liam’s fault they didn’t like the new album, Liam’s fault—” you left, he can’t quite say—“and will you fucking look at me!”

Noel braces himself and looks up and a little to the side, the tried and true technique for dealing with Liam when there were no sunnies at hand—or when Liam had ripped them off his face and smashed them. Only it’s not enough, is it? He can still see Liam.

Blurry as he is, he almost looks like the Liam who’s supposed to be here. The hair is right, if you squint. The coat is the same. Only this Liam’s twenty years too old.

“Well?” Noel says.

“Where were you? Are you really such a cunt you can’t make nice with your little brother for one fucking day?”

“Shut up.”

“Nobody said you had to bury the fucking hatchet and bring back Oasis, I just wanted to see you—”

Noel snaps. “Oh, that’s all you wanted, is it? What’s with the get-up, then? Fucking pathetic, you are. What, did you think I’d see you and lose my fucking head again?”

“Fuck off.”

Noel laughs. It’s not even to make Liam angry; he just can’t help it. It’s fucking hilarious that Liam made such a fucking spectacle of himself trying to—what, seduce Noel?

“Do you know what I did instead? I had a fucking dinner party. Invited about ten people. Friends of Sara’s I couldn’t give a fuck about, actually.”

Liam looks livid, about as angry as Noel’s ever seen him sober, and Noel still can’t stop laughing. It’s really so funny. Liam looking like that on the red carpet, and meanwhile Noel was refreshing his Twitter feed in the bathroom, waiting for the first pictures of the premiere. He’d imagined Liam looking beautiful and angry and alone. That would have been horrible enough. He’d even pictured Liam swanning around with his pretty manager girlfriend, giving indifferent answers when asked about Noel’s absence. But then Liam’s always delighted in defying expectations.

At least Noel was in the middle of throwing up when Sara checked on him; he blamed the seafood and was glad for the excuse to be left alone.

“Yeah, I’m pathetic,” Liam sneers down at him, “but what’s that make you? It’s not like you want it any less, yeah? You’re just too scared to go for it if I don’t make the first move. At least I fucking tried. What did you do?”

What did Noel do? Nothing. He sat in that bathroom for the rest of the night, trying to guess when the screening would start, and if Liam would wait until the end or not—or maybe he’d need a little bit of liquid courage, after the first disappointment. There’d be some after-party, but Liam had never liked those. He’d probably ask his driver to drop him off at the nearest pub—or maybe not, if he felt vulnerable—his usual watering hole then, somewhere people knew him—but he had Bonehead with him, unless he ran him off. So maybe not until Bonehead went home. Watching the phone, each minute crawling past. Surely now that old geezer would be leaving. Even if it wasn’t past his bedtime, how long could anyone stand Liam when he was drunk and determined to be a cunt? Surely Liam knew his window of opportunity was closing fast—even if he was too drunk and angry to think, surely he’d have to vent his anger before the end of the night. At some particularly low points, drunken, furious voice-mails were all Noel would hear of Liam’s voice for months—and Noel had never given him half as good an excuse as Liam had now.

3am, 4am, 5am.

Later than Liam’s usual benders these days, but maybe—

The sun rose. The kids got up, and were taken to school. Noel threw his phone down the toilet and went to bed.

“I was never going to show up,” Noel says finally, tired. “Planned the party all proper, the very day they told us the date of the premiere. ‘Cause that was the best I could do short of asking my wife to lock me in a windowless room and throw away the key.”

“What.... What’s that mean?”

“It means you did all that for nothing, you stupid cunt. Taking me down memory lane, like I needed to be reminded.”

Noel lets himself look at his brother, for once. The pictures really didn’t do him justice. He should look ridiculous, in that hair and get-up at his age, but he doesn’t. Noel’s pretty boy, still. Trying to remind Noel of how Noel used to love him, like Noel ever forgot, ever stopped.

“D’you know why I brought you here, back then?” Liam watches him warily. “It was to say goodbye.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Yes, it was.”

“No—”

“I got it off a show. One last hurray before her bloke got married to someone else. Seemed like a good idea. A nice little holiday, one last shag, end it all and then send you off to marry Patsy.”

Liam scoffs. “You think I believe that?”

“It’s the truth.”

“It’s what you told yourself, maybe. One last treat before the dog gets sent off to the farm? As fucking if. You weren’t about to let me go at all. You just wanted to tighten the leash.”

Didn’t I just want to stay tied to you?

“But it don’t matter,” Liam continues. “I don’t care what you thought you were doing, ‘cause it don’t mean anything. We were happy here, know what I mean? We’re fucking happy, when you let us.”

“Look where the fuck we are! It’s not a real place, Liam. It’s… a little holiday from the world, but we can’t live here. ‘Cause it only… it only works as long as we’re alone. It falls apart the minute we open the door again.”

“Then let’s not open it. Let’s stay here, you and me. Don’t need nobody else.”

“That’s a fucking lie.”

“No, it’s not.”

“So you’re fine leaving your bird, then? Your kids? The big O?”

What am I doing? Noel thinks suddenly. Why is he arguing with Liam about this like he wants to be convinced? Letting Liam tell him what he wants to hear again, like he’s always done. They aren’t really in this cottage, and it’s not 2016, or 1996, either. They’re asleep, and if they stay here, they’ll never get out. And fine, maybe a part of Noel’s okay with that. Maybe he even wants it, alright? Wants to be stuck down here, where no matter what they’ll never be able to leave each other again—where there’ll be no point even trying.

Only... It’s never been what Liam wants. It was Noel who wished they could be alone together, forget everyone else, lock all the doors. Liam wanted to love him in the light.

Noel wipes his face, and uses the wall to struggle back up.

“What are you doing?”

The door’s back, at least.

“Noel—it’s fine, I promise, just you and me—don’t go, please—don’t you fucking walk away from me—”

Noel keeps walking.

*

He walks a long time in the dark, so long he thinks he’s gotten lost, or that maybe they’ve gone in and finished the job after all, took all of Liam’s memories away and forgot him down here, and he’ll never get out, and never see Liam again, any version of him—but then he sees some vaguely familiar van, parked in the middle of nowhere in the dark. So there’s probably still time.

A shape moves on top of the van. “Where’ve you been, man?” Liam calls out to him. “The show’s about to start.”

“Keep your knickers on,” Noel tells him, climbing up to join him.

1993, innit? First time they played on the radio—Liam sounded absolutely mega—and then Coyle drove a pack of them out to the country ‘cause there was some big astronomical to-do that night.

They’re alone now, so they lie down on the roof, touching from knee to shoulder, and look up at the sky. There’s the first shooting star, the second, and then it’s a fucking free for all, bursting across the sky faster than the eye can track. They could have made a thousand wishes that night—and who knows, maybe Liam did.

“Fucking biblical,” Liam says, awe in his voice. “Can’t get any clearer sign from the universe than that, yeah? I told you, man, I told you it was meant to be. We’re gonna be the biggest band in the world, I know it. And you and me—”

Noel doesn’t shush him, this time. There’s no one else to hear. And when Liam reaches out to take his hand, he lets him. Lets Liam hold his hand, as fire rains across the sky.

“—it’s meant to be, too. You can feel it, can’t you?”

It did feel biblical. Maybe that was the weed, or how fucking good Liam’s voice had sounded on the radio, but Noel really believed it then. He wants to believe in it again, in something bigger than himself, some cosmic force who thinks Liam and Noel Gallagher are meant to be together, or who doesn’t mind too much if they want to be. He wants to believe in anything that will bring him back to Liam.

“I made a wish, a long time ago,” he tells Liam. He wasn’t brave enough to say it, the first time around. Just told Liam to give his head a wobble and leave off the pot. “‘Cause I didn’t think God was listening. So I wished on falling stars, and on four-leaf clovers, and on birthday candles.”

“What’d you wish for?”

“For something good.” For something just for him that the fear and the blood wouldn’t touch. For a reason to live, maybe. “And then you came.”

“Yeah?” Liam asks, voice incredibly soft.

Noel squeezes his hand. “Yeah.”

Shooting stars continue to fall like raindrops across the sky, until suddenly Noel can hear the pitter-patter. He’s in a hotel room. A suite, really. It’s raining outside. His hand is empty. There’s broken glass on the floor, and plates, too. Meals used to be a bit of a pressure point, ‘cause Noel doesn’t eat when he’s angry, and Liam always pushes when Noel doesn’t eat, and Noel always blows up when Liam pushes. So they’ve probably smashed plates in quite a few countries, all told. Of the thousand arguments they’ve had in a thousand hotel rooms, how’s he supposed to know which one this is?

Only this hotel does look more familiar than most, and more lived-in, too. Liam’s room, probably, ‘cause Noel can only see two of his own guitars.

Their post-divorce pity party, then.

Doesn’t really narrow down on the argument, though. They ate together almost every day while they were staying here. Now when Noel doesn’t feel like eating he just doesn’t come to dinner, but somehow that never occurred to him back then.

Can’t have been that bad if Noel stuck around instead of storming off, unless maybe that time’s Noel did go. It’s not like he’s seen any of them to be able to fucking tell—

He finds Liam in the main bedroom, sat on the floor wedged between the bed and the night table, sucking his thumb. Didn’t leave any room for anyone to sit next to him, which probably would have sent Noel packing back then, if he’d even bothered to come check on Liam, which he probably hadn’t.

Seems he’s spent his whole life dealing with sulking Liams, sometimes—or upsetting him into a sulk, one might argue. Well, he’s seen quite the collection today, and this one can’t possibly be as bad as the one Noel left in the cottage, so he goes in and sits against the bed, laying out his legs in front of him while Liam turns his head to the other side and sucks more loudly on his thumb.

Noel would be happy enough just to look at him, but he’s on the clock so he nudges Liam’s folded legs with his foot, once, twice. Liam spits out his thumb. “Fuck off! Don’t you have an appointment with the estate agent?”

Ah. That argument.

“Come on, lad, it had to happen sometimes. It’s not like we could stay here forever, it’s gonna bleed us dry.”

Only of course it wasn’t about the money; it wasn’t even about what the papers would have to say about it, eventually. It was about the way Liam sucked the air out of every room, the way he stuck to Noel like glue, the way he stopped answering his bird’s calls. The way Noel found himself thinking more and more, Maybe this time—

Well. We all know how that ended.

“Yeah, ‘cause you’re all about the cost-saving, ain’t you? Fucking efficient, that’s what you are. Got the next gaff lined up, the next missus to move into it, too, yeah?” Noel clenches his jaw, but Liam reads the answer off his face. “Think that one’s gonna make you any happier?”

“I don’t see you coming up with any idea.”

“What, think if it hasn’t got twenty-five steps, it’s not worth anything?”

“Let’s hear it, then.”

“What?”

“Your plan.”

Liam squares his shoulder and tips his chin. “Step one: we love each other. There, done.”

Noel sighs, and leans back against the bed. “Not an easy thing, kid.”

“Fuck off,” Liam repeats, warbled now.

“For you,” Noel stresses.

“What kind of bollocks—only done it all my life, me.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not gonna work, you know. We done it your way, the birds and all your fucking mind games with the press and all that, and it didn’t fucking work. So why don’t you try it my way for once?”

Was Nic already pregnant, by then? Noel can’t remember. Makes little difference; Noel never let Liam ask. It’s the little technicality Noel’s always hung on to: Liam never broke any promises to him, ‘cause Noel never let him make any.

And Nic couldn’t make Liam happy either, in the end. Noel hangs onto that, too.

“Alright,” he says.

“What?”

“Let’s try it your way, then. Peace and love and all that.”

“You’re taking the piss.”

“Swear I’m not.”

Liam scurries over to squint at his face. “I don’t believe you.”

“That’s alright, I suppose.” Noel smiles at him, wets his thumb and wipes away a bit of pasta sauce on Liam’s cheek. “How does it go? To have and to hold, from this day forward?”

Liam squirms closer, rests his head on Noel’s shoulder. “You don’t mean it,” he says, tone wheedling, asking to be convinced.

“You’ll just have to see, won’t you?”

Liam’s fingers tighten on the arm of his jacket, pulling him closer, and closer, until Noel falls into and right through him. He finds his footing in another fucking hallway, empty, nothing he recognizes. He only needs to try a few doors to find Liam, all in black, pacing like a lion in his cage. It’s an easy one—reckons half the country’s had wet dreams about his Olympics fit.

Liam’s fiddling with his phone as he walks. He puts it to his ear, walks up and down the room once, twice; throws his phone at the wall. “Cunt!” he shouts.

Noel winces. No need to guess there, either. Well, what had Liam expected, really? Of course Noel wasn’t about to get Oasis back together for the night. He was only halfway through touring his first album, after two years in limbo. He couldn’t hang up his hat and go back to Liam without even seeing it through, how pathetic would that have been?

“It’s my fucking song,” Liam spits. “Where’d you get off, making me ask for permission?”

And yes, alright, he was still a bit sore over Liam not thanking him in his speech at the Brits. Toyed with the idea of forbidding the use of his songs altogether for the performance—if Noel had contributed so little to the band, Liam could use one of his own songs. See if the whole country would sing along with Little James.

He thought it was quite generous of him to give the go-ahead in the end. Not that Liam looks particularly grateful.

“Fucking prick,” he’s complaining to himself. “Not one kind word for your little brother, not one!”

Did they all really leave him alone right before they went on stage? And with his phone, too. Admittedly, Noel’s never had to wrangle Liam in his own absence, but it seems a bit risky. Liam did his best work in a rage, but you couldn’t let him tire himself out before the gig got started—and all this shouting, too, that’s not good for his voice.

Noel considers him a minute, then kicks off his shoes and sits on the couch, lays out his legs. Liam looks over at the noise, and freezes at the sight of the exposed skin.

Noel rubs over his mouth, wondering idly—then he remembers they’re hooked up to all sorts of machines while probably half a dozen people are staring straight at them, so best not.

“What are you doing?”

“Just getting comfortable. Don’t mind me.”

Liam nods absently, but keeps staring at Noel’s feet.

“You’ll smash it,” Noel tells him.

That gets his attention.

“What?”

“You’re gonna be great. The best fucking performance by far, and you didn’t need any of those fucking gimmicks. Did’ya see what they have the Spice Girls doing? Climbing up cabs in those heels?”

“What, like, climbing up on top? In heels? What if one of ‘em slips and breaks a leg?”

“I know!” Noel agrees, gleeful at the thought.

Liam throws him a moody look. “At least they came back together for their country, like.”

“Oh, leave off. Like you give a fuck about queen and country.”

“Maybe I’ve fucking changed.”

Noel holds out a hand and beckons. Liam hesitates, wary, takes a few steps closer, stops, another few steps, stops. Kinda reminds Noel of the dog, after Noel’s accidentally stepped on his paw. Making injured eyes at Noel, but still angling to get his belly rubbed. He lets Noel grab his head, turn it this way and that to take a good look. “Not changed at all,” Noel determines. His voice comes out a bit softer than he intended.

Liam leans into Noel’s hand, looking dazed.

“You’re gonna go out there and smash it, and I’m going to be so proud of you.” Liam’s eyes refocus a little, turn doubtful. “I’m going to be raging mad,” Noel corrects, “which is the same thing. I won’t be able to look away from you at all. And you’ll be thinking of me, won’t you? Singing my song, my words in your mouth. You’ll think of me the whole time.”

“My song,” Liam argues, obstinate to the last, even as he nuzzles Noel’s hand, sniffs his wrist. “Wrote it for me, so it’s mine.”

“But you’ll think of me?”

Liam closes his eyes, gives a little nod.

“Good.” He bites his lip, risks it: “Good boy.”

There’s a feedback sound, and Noel’s vision blurs.

*

He recognizes the studio. Looks up and—sure enough, there Liam is, skulking in the back.

Only one thing to do, really. Noel’s already got the guitar in hand. He knows the song better now, has played it all around the world since. It won’t have the same magic. You can never play the same song twice, really. It’s always different.

Noel didn’t look at him. Closed his eyes, mostly, ‘cause he couldn’t have sung it if he’d thought about anyone hearing it. About him hearing it.

It wasn’t enough, back then. Liam was too angry; Noel too proud. It all fell apart again within months. Maybe if he’d been able to look him in the eye. Maybe if Noel had given him the song to sing. Why is it that Liam can never believe it when Noel’s the one singing the words?

His eyes find Liam as he starts to strum, to sing. Noel was singing to him, then; he sings to him now. He doesn’t have a lyre, to appeal to the god of hell for his lover’s soul. He only has this guitar, and this song, and this promise: I will not rest while love lies dead in the water.

Can you hear it now? Can you hear me?

No one comes in on the piano. There’s no one else here. No one else in the whole wide world. Silent tears drip down Liam’s face, but he doesn’t look away.

Noel can’t sing loud, the way Liam can—but maybe he doesn’t need to, ‘cause the one he sings to is always leaning in close, straining his ears to hear everything, even the things Noel can’t say.

I will not rest while love lies dead in the water.

So don’t walk away, love.

*

Liam’s eyes have turned into Noel’s own, reflected at him in a mirror. He’s in a gleaming, impersonal bathroom. There’s a bitemark on his shoulder, ‘cause no one ever taught that kid any table manners. 

Liam’s lying in the bed on the other side of the door, his back to Noel. He never used to sleep like that, in the before. A fucking leech he was. Always cold, and trying to cuddle up to Noel. He’d sleep with his head on Noel’s shoulder like he thought Noel might leg it in the night. But they married other people, and then again. Noel stopped spending the night, and Liam started sleeping on his side, facing away.

Liam’s hair’s got a fair amount of gray in it. Older, then. Maybe as old as he was the last time, some months ago. Spain, though nothing about the room seems particularly Mediterranean. Those few days in France, then, the year before.

Noel gets dressed in silence. Liam doesn’t stir, even when Noel stubs his elbow reaching for his shoe under the bed. Easier this way, probably. Noel’s been getting further along now he’s stopped fighting with Liam, and this could only end in a fight. Noel will go out of the room and get to the next memory.

He laces his shoes, double knots. Then he undoes them and starts over, ‘cause they felt a little too tight. Yes, better. He puts on his jacket. Gathers Liam’s clothes and folds them, ‘cause it wouldn’t do to leave them on the floor all night. He gets halfway through folding Liam’s socks—Jesus Christ!—and then balls them up and throws them at Liam in a fit of temper.

“You think I can’t tell when you’re faking sleep? I shared a bedroom with you for eighteen years, you daft cunt!”

Liam’s shoulders draw up. “So?” he mutters. “Doesn’t usually bother you.” He sits up, the sheet slipping down to his lap, leaving his chest bare. Noel can feel his eyelid twitch trying not to look down. “What, not satisfied until I cry and beg you not to go? Dream on, mate.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that’d take some guts, wouldn’t it? You can whine in the ear of everyone with a recorder, but you can’t say it to my face?”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Have me crawling on hands and knees, begging to have you back.” Well, when you put it like that. “Make you feel like the big man, yeah? Only maybe I don’t need you as bad as that yet, know what I mean? I’m fine on me own. This solo fucking thing ain’t so bad, really.” Noel scoffs, but Liam goes on determinedly. “Still selling records, selling out stadiums, and without some cunt telling me what to do day in and day out, so I’m sound, yeah. You want me back so bad, you do the begging.”

Noel thinks about leaving and slamming the door. It would feel good in the moment, but he’s pretty sure he’ll just end up going backward again. So: begging. He’s never indulged Liam that much. Lad’s already on a short enough fuse. And his ego doesn’t need the help. But none of this counts, really—it’s only a memory, after all, not something that can be changed, or written over. Liam won’t remember this, ‘cause it never happened.

So. Crawling on hands and knees, he said.

Noel gets on his knees, and then doesn’t know what to do. The shell-shocked look on Liam’s face is certainly helping with the embarrassed heat crawling up his face, but it’s not gonna work miracles: he ain’t about to crawl anywhere. Could stand a little begging, he supposes. “Please,” he says, trying it out.

Liam’s jaw drops. Then he starts nodding furiously. “Yeah, alright.”

Noel eyes the blanket bundled over Liam’s lap. Well, no skin off his nose if all the white coats end up thinking Liam’s some kind of pervert. “Alright what?” he says, a little peeved. He hasn’t even asked for anything yet.

“Anything,” Liam promises, still nodding.

Noel stares at him. Then his knees start to hurt, so he sits back on his arse.

“Help me find you.”

That sobers the lad up quick as anything. Frown on his face: “I’m right here.”

Probably should have stayed on his knees for this part. “Anything, you said. You want to help me, don’t you? I need you. I really need you.”

“You don’t need him. Remember what you said, last time you saw him? Said there was no use talking to him.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes, you did. He’s fucking useless, it’s true.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why? You’ve said it enough times. What do you even want him for? Whatever it is, I’ll do it better. I can be whichever Liam you like best, you know.”

“What are you on about?”

“Which one do you want? The way I was when you wrote Live Forever? You must have liked me then.” His body changes as he speaks. The lines on his face smooth out, his buzzcut grows out. Narrower shoulders. Too thin, from the coke and his last growth spurts.

“Don’t,” Noel says.

“No? Liked me with a bit more meat?” The hair grows out even more, the body builds up, thick arms, soft stomach. The way he looked that summer in America, parading everywhere with those fucking shirts with the arms cut off. “Could throw you around a bit then, you liked that.” Noel doesn’t reply. “No? We can have some fun with it, too.” Noel watches the way his face rearranges into something subtly wrong, Liam but not, and can’t make any sense of it until Liam pushes his chest out. The now waist-length hair covers enough to save what’s left of Noel’s sanity, but only just.

“Jesus Christ!”

“What?” Liam says with a pout. “Didn’t you always want a sister?”

Noel struggles to his feet, hands held out between them.

“Get those off!”

Liam puts his hands over his tits and talks down at them: “He don’t mean it, he’s only a bit shy.”

“I swear to God!” Noel shouts, pushed past endurance.

Liam glowers at him, but settles back into the forty-something Liam. “We can revisit it,” he says. “Any of them, really. You can pick whichever you like best now, and when you get bored of that one, too, we’ll just pick another. Come on, lad, what’s that face for?”

“Where's this coming from? Why would you think…” He swallows the end of the sentence:  that I don’t want you? What, just because Noel said he didn’t, a few times over the years? Like that meant anything? Just because Noel left him, or said Liam bored him, or called him names?

“Called me fat and ugly, didn’t you?”

“Not ugly,” Noel corrects reflexively. He doesn't think so, at least. Had to be somewhat believable, yeah? “And what does it matter? I came here, didn’t I? Wanted you enough then, yeah?” They were both in France for the anniversary, one of these little jokes the universe likes to play on Noel. It’s not really relapsing if it’s on the anniversary of quitting—just celebrating a milestone then, innit?

“Wanted me,” Liam repeats, tone bitter. “Not enough to stay, though. Never enough for that.”

“That’s not fair.” Doesn’t Liam know how hard it is to walk away, every time? How much of himself Noel has to leave behind?

The hardest thing he’s ever had to do, and it never stays done. Every day—every goddamned fucking day he has to choose again and again to stay away, to put the phone down instead of making the call, to put the phone down instead of answering it, and it never gets any easier, but does he get any thanks for it? Any recognition?

What lesson is Liam trying to teach him with all this? That Noel keeps hurting him over and over? He knows it already. Hasn’t he tried to stop? Despite Liam’s constant hounding, despite the wishes of his mam and children and aunts and friends and peers and interviewers and neighbors and fucking fellow commuters and whoever the fuck else gets to have an opinion on Liam and Noel Gallagher, he’s stayed away.

And what fucking for? For Liam to ruin his second marriage? For Liam to put out overproduced drivel half-written by hacks? For Liam to lay down and let some wankers cut out pieces of himself? That’s what Liam is doing with the freedom Noel tried to give him?

Noel looks at him, and tries to see him. About as old as Noel’s ever seen him up close. Unshaven, and angry, and tired in a way that reaches all the way inside. And underneath all that… scared. Scared the way Noel has been trying not to feel since he got the call.

Noel’s known him angry, and heartbroken—made him so, too often to count. He’s used to that. It’s Liam’s fear he really can’t bear, for some reason. Reckons it sends some signal to Noel’s lizard brain, some last vestige of brotherly instinct. Reminds him he’s supposed to take care of his little brother.

“I look for you everywhere,” Noel says, slowly, painfully. “In everything, in everyone. That’s all I do, when I’m away from you. Dream of you and think of you and just—fucking miss you, I suppose. Not… not who you were, or who you could have been or any other shit. Just you. So don’t give me anymore of that bollocks, alright?”

Liam hunches over, tries to hide his face. “He fucked up,” he says, voice small. “He really fucked up.”

“I know. I want him anyway, alright?” Noel takes a breath. “So will you help me fucking find him?”

Liam sniffles. “I’ve told you already.”

“No, you haven’t.”

“Yes, I have! Not my fault you never listen.”

“I think I’d remember if…” Where’d you lose him? “If…” Mam says I should stay put if I’m lost, so you know where to find me. “Are you fucking serious?”

Liam raises a beady eye to him. Noel throws up his hands and goes for the door.

“Go on then,” Liam’s voice follows him, still angry—still scared. “I told you. Where’d you leave me?”

It stays with him, even as Noel pushes the door open and finds himself in yet another long, empty corridor.

Where’d you leave me?

*

It’s stupid, Noel thinks even as he keeps walking down the corridor, his footsteps echoing strangely. It’s not like it was the very last time they saw each other—like they didn’t reconcile and fall out again half a dozen times since. The corridor bends, and starts going up. It wasn’t even their worst fight. It should mean nothing. Why would Liam still be waiting here, after ten years?

And yet here he is, when Noel steps out into the light: sitting at the edge of a stage they never even made it to, waiting, always waiting—for Noel to come home, to play with him, to stop hiding, to stop running, to watch him back, want him back, choose him back.

Has Noel ever been ready for him?

The place looks alright, when it’s not crawling with people. Just like the French, to set a music festival in some castle’s backyard. Liam always had a fondness for the outdoorsy ones. Used to say the music likes it better, closer to nature. But then he liked the football stadiums, too, didn’t he? He’d even liked the half-empty pubs they’d started out in. It never mattered to him how many people were there. Only… Only he doesn’t look so happy on stage, these days. So maybe it does matter to him, who’s there—who isn’t.

Noel’s legs feel made of lead, only getting heavier with each step forward. He has to step around some random fucking beads and guitar debris, of course, even though they didn’t have the fight here and the guitars definitely didn’t get smashed that bad—Noel didn’t have the nerve for it, nor Liam the heart. They both got fixed up, eventually.

The pieces of guitar on the floor are just that, though: pieces. Noel stops before the two broken necks nestled close, the severed strings reaching for each other yet never quite meeting.

Is that what they looked like to Liam then? Beyond repair? Does it still look that way to him?

Noel steps over the mess, and sits carefully at the edge of the stage. Liam doesn’t react, keeps looking out at the grounds. Something ticks in his jaw, as Noel keeps watching him.

It’s been a while, since Noel’s been so close—though of course he’s in Liam’s fucking mind, isn’t he? He’s seen him on TV, obviously—can’t take a step without being assaulted by him really, interviews and concerts and documentaries and music videos and all those fucking tweets, like being haunted. So he’s seen Liam, the best 4K can buy. He’s catalogued the changes in him, in their bouts of not speaking—his hair, the deepening lines around his eyes, the occasional stiffness in his walk. But it’s not the same.

And Noel saw him in the clinic, too. Lying in that bed, hooked up to those machines. But it was hard to look at him then. Even in sleep, Liam’s never so still. He tosses and turns, kicks, curses Man United. Says Noel’s name, sometimes. But he was just lying there, like Noel’s brother was already gone.

“’S that you, then?” Liam asks finally.

“Yeah.” The word comes out choked. Liam knows him. Jesus fucking Christ, Liam still knows him. “Yeah, kid,” Noel tries again. “It’s me.”

Liam gives a tight little nod, but keeps staring straight ahead, like Noel’s not even there.

“Will you fucking look at me?” Noel gives in, helpless, and Liam—his brother, forty-seven and seething mad and so fucking beautiful—turns around.

They look at each other for a long moment. Noel holds on tight to the edge of the stage so he doesn’t do anything stupid. “Do you know me?” he asks, even though he can see in Liam’s eyes that he does. Suppose he just needs to hear it. “Do you really know me?”

“’Course I know you. What kind of fucking question.”

Noel tries not to crumple. “Everything? You’re sure? They didn’t get any of you?”

“Hey, come on. I wasn’t going to let them lay a finger on you, don’t be fucking daft.”

“I couldn’t see me anywhere. Everywhere I looked, everywhere I was supposed to be—and I wasn’t fucking there. I thought I’d come too late.”

“Nah, just—couldn’t leave you laying around where someone might get you, could I?”

Liam squirms a little; Noel stops wiping at his face to narrow his eyes at him. “What did you do?”

Liam pushes his chin up. “Had to eat you, didn’t I?”

“Eat me?!”

“What else was I supposed to do?”

“Eat me?!”

“Couldn’t let them take you away, yeah? So I just… took you into me, I don’t know how. I had to go all over the place, ‘cause there were so many of you, know what I mean? You’d think I would have run out of room at some point, like.” He pats his belly, which certainly doesn’t look filled with a lifetime of Noels. “It’s kinda nice, you know?” His voice turns wistful. “Like I’m pregnant with you.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“What? It’s not so weird, is it? Nobody can get at you like that. You’re just mine.”

Noel’s just not gonna touch any of that, no fucking thanks. Though, actually—

“Hey! When that little cunt bit me—” Liam avoids his eye. “Fuck! It was you?”

“’Course it was me,” Liam says, sullen. “They’re all me. We’re in my fucking head.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve been running around all over, trying to find you—and you were there the whole fucking time?”

“Thought you’d give up. You’re good at that.”

“Yeah? Want to talk about fucking giving up, you cunt?”

Liam flinches. Noel sighs, and reclines on his back. Liam follows suit after a moment, so they just lie side by side, watching the cloudless sky. A thousand unfinished arguments stretch between them.

“It wasn’t what I expected,” Noel says instead of picking up any of them. “The inside of your head.”

“What, not psychedelic enough?”

Noel giggles. “Guess not.” He idly kicks up his feet, still hanging over the stage. “I thought it would be like a movie, you know, everything as it happened, but through your eyes.” It’s a bad habit, telling things to Liam. Hard to break, once he gets started. “I thought I’d finally get to see it. Him, I guess. You know, the bloke you see when you look at me.”

“That shit again. My brother, that’s who I fucking see when I look at you, you cunt.”

“It’s not really, though. ‘Cause I don’t know that guy. Never seen him in the mirror. Never felt like him.”

Noel had this idea in his head, that if he could see it, this idea Liam has of him—if he could just see where he falls short of it… Just so he can get it straight in his head, that he’s not what Liam really wants. Maybe he’d be able to stop trying for good then, if he saw there isn’t any point.

Only that’s not the truth, is it? When it comes down to it, Noel just wishes he could pretend better. He’d study the Noel that only exists in Liam’s head and learn him by heart, disappear into him better than any method actor wanker. If he could be the Noel that Liam sees, he’d never need to be anything else.

“Don’t get it twisted, I’m not your fucking missus,” Liam spits. “Talking like I don’t see you, fucking hell. I see straight through you, man. See all them ugly bits, too. And let me tell you, they’re not where you think they are. But I love them anyway, ‘cause they’re you, and I love you.” He reaches out and grabs Noel’s hand, squeezes. “I fucking love you.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. And the worst fucking part… You make all that fuss about how we’re brothers and all, but it’s got nowt to do with it, ‘cause you don’t really give a fuck about that. You can’t believe I really love you ‘cause… ‘cause you don’t think you deserve to be loved.”

“I don’t think that,” Noel says, feebly.

“You do.”

“Maybe you’re the problem, you ever think about that? Maybe I don’t believe you ‘cause you’re a fucking liar, and you take it back all the time. ‘Cause it’s only you I don’t believe, innit?” He talks over Liam as Liam tries to speak. “I know my wife loves me, I know my children love me, and I love them.”

“Only they don’t know you, yeah? ‘Cause you don’t let them. And you don’t think they’d love you if they really knew you.”

“Fuck off.”

“Go on, say I’m wrong.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Say it and mean it.”

Noel tries to get his hand back, but Liam refuses to let go. He slaps blindly at Liam, and still Liam won’t let go. It bursts out of him: “Well, who fucking would!”

“I do,” Liam says, wrapping around him, pressing his forehead against Noel’s shoulder. Still holding on; always holding on. “I love you.”

“You don’t! Look where we fucking are! You don’t—you can’t, ‘cause if you ever had… you would have stopped by now.”

“Yeah, you were a cunt,” Liam agrees. Noel aims another slap at him, only he hasn’t got much reach with his left hand. “You broke my heart a bunch of times. But look at you now.” Liam puts his right hand over Noel’s chest, pats over his heart. “All mended.”

Noel lets out a sob. He turns onto his side and curls into Liam.

“Why’d you do it?” he asks, clutching Liam close. “How could you do that to me?”

“I didn’t mean to, alright?”

“Didn’t mean to?” Noel gives him a shake. “It’s not like they take walk-ins, you’ve got to go on a fucking wait list to get this thing done! What, did someone have you at gunpoint? Grabbed your dog and said, go on now, or the doggie gets it?”

“What, you’re the only one allowed to have a wobble?”

“Fuck off, this isn’t about me. Why’d you do it?”

Liam noses his way to Noel’s neck, and takes a deep breath. He holds it for a moment, then lets it out again, slowly. “I wasn’t really going to go through with it,” he says then. “I just went and made the appointment ‘cause you changed your number again, and I thought... maybe you’d hear about it, y’know, and maybe it’d give you a kick in the pants or something, know what I mean? You were always threatening to do it to me, but I didn’t think you’d like it as much if the shoe was on the other foot.”

“No,” Noel admits.

“Yeah, I figured. I was gonna cancel it. Wasn’t even supposed to happen today. I just went home for lunch, and I put on your new interview while I was eating. I do that sometimes. Makes me feel like we’re sharing a meal together, yeah?”

“What did I say, then? What did I do that was so f-fucking awful you had to erase every memory of me?”

Liam shrinks on himself, pulls Noel tighter against him. “You wouldn’t say my name,” he says, very quietly. “Even though they kept asking you about me. I can’t even remember the last time I heard you say it.”

It slipped out in a radio interview about six weeks ago. Noel was short-tempered the rest of the day, vaguely queasy. The name always comes out wrong in his mouth, too raw or too soft. Only it’s not the name, is it, ‘cause it happens sometimes no matter what Noel calls him: our kid, my brother, the singer, the tambourine player. It’s just Liam. It’s just what Noel feels when he thinks of him, when he holds the thought of him in his mouth—and everyone is always determined to make him think of Liam: always asking about him, about Oasis, about Noel’s lyrics, Noel’s childhood, Noel’s dreams. Does he have to cut himself open every day and bleed for everyone’s pleasure, where Liam will see it and take satisfaction in it?

“That’s it?” Noel pushes past his constricted throat. “You’ve thrown the worst fucking tantrum of your quite illustrious career, scared everybody to death, only ‘cause I didn’t say your name this one fucking time?”

It’s not like he didn’t think it would hurt Liam; he wanted it to, every time. He wanted Liam to feel small, forgotten—He wanted Liam to feel the way Noel felt a few hours ago, when he learned Liam decided to forget him. How’s that for irony?

“I couldn’t fucking breathe, thinking what if—what if you never say it again? It made me want to die, you know.”

“Don’t say that.”

Liam’s shoulder lifts in a small shrug. “It’s a little like death, this thing, innit? They take out bits of you, and a new person gets born. I thought maybe it wouldn’t be too bad, if it was like that. That guy could start over with my life, and I... I wouldn’t have to miss you anymore. I could just go away. That’s when I got the call. They suddenly had an opening, they offered I could come in right away. Kinda felt like a sign, you know. Like maybe it was what I was supposed to do. But I didn’t think it’d be like this. They told me I’d just go to sleep, and wake up someone new. But I’m here. And I could feel them, trying to take you away from me. I know I should have just let it happen,” Liam says, eyes wet. “You don’t want me anymore. Maybe you’d like him better. He wouldn’t ask so much from you, would he, ‘cause he wouldn’t know what he was missing, that poor bastard. You could just be his brother. What am I even holding on for?”

Noel twists into his arms until he can none-too-gently bump their foreheads together. The most important thing is to keep him calm, Dr Bhat told him before he went under.

“What a fucking load of bollocks,” Noel says. “I didn’t come here to listen to your moaning.”

“Fuck off!” Liam throws back, affronted. “Why the fuck did you come, then? Nobody asked you!”

“Your missus fucking well asked me, didn’t she? In fucking tears she was. I would have thought she’d pop out the champagne and celebrate the holiday, but what do you know.”

“Like she would!” He grinds his head into Noel’s. “Why’d you come! Would you just fucking admit it?”

“I came here ‘cause I need you, you cunt! There. You got me to say it. Are you happy now? Will you stop your little tantrum and wake the fuck up? You were right the whole time, about everything. I’m fucking miserable without you. I hear your voice everywhere. I haven’t slept, I haven’t breathed—I’ve gone nowhere and spoken to no one.”

“You—You’re just saying things to get me to come back.”

“Yeah. Is it working?”

“Fuck you,” Liam swears at him, tears hanging off his eyelashes, pretty as he’s ever been, as he’s always been.

“Yeah, if you wake up. What do you want? You want me to leave Sara? I will. You want Oasis back? I have enough songs for three, maybe four albums, and I’ll write you more, too. Whatever you fucking want. You’ve just got to wake up.”

“So you can leave me again?”

“I won’t.” It was easier to say these things when he didn’t think Liam would remember them. “I said I’d try it your way, didn’t I?”

Noel knew what it meant, when he picked up that phone. He knew there’d be no going back, and he answered anyway. Like he’d been waiting for it for the last ten years, waiting for Liam to need him badly enough that Noel would have an excuse to come running.

He turns his hand in Liam’s, presses into his skin so Liam will feel the claddagh ring that’s been on his finger since the cottage. Liam’s eyes well up.

“You’ve just got to wake up,” Noel repeats softly.

“I don’t know how.”

“Yes, you do. You’ve done it every single day of your life.”

“I’m scared,” Liam finally confesses.

“What about?”

“What if it worked, and I just don’t know it yet? What if you’re gone from me when I wake up?”

Noel’s stomach twists. “No,” he says. “Not ever. I’m in you, the same as you’re in me. I’ve spent so long trying to cut you out of my heart, and I couldn’t do it. You think those white coats can? You’ll know me. You could forget everything else, but you’d still know me. And if you’ve forgotten anything, I’ll fucking remind you.”

“You promise?”

“I swear to God, kid.” The way Liam looks at him makes his heart throb. The way Liam’s always looked at him—when Noel taught him how to shoplift, when Noel wrote him Live Forever, when Noel kissed him first. Like Noel was bigger than life to him.

Noel’s never been worthy of it. He’s tried, sometimes. It always hurt so bad to fall short, to watch worship turn to disappointment on Liam’s face. It was easier to stop trying. But there are worse things. Standing over Liam, lying so still in that hospital bed. He didn’t even twitch, when Noel said his name. When Noel touched his hand. He just wasn’t there. Noel’d rather be raked over coals every day for the rest of his fucking life.

So maybe… Maybe he can try again. Maybe he can keep trying, even if he falls short, even if they hurt each other again.

“It wouldn’t have worked, anyway,” he tells Liam. His voice shakes a little. His face feels too warm. He takes a breath and forges on anyway. “Even if you forgot me… You’d just fall back in love with me anyway, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Liam says, crying outright now. Noel must be really shit at this romance thing. He’ll pretty it up and put it in a song, Liam will like that better.

“C’mon,” he says as he wipes Liam’s tears. “Time to wake up, innit? Morning glory? You’ve just got to open your eyes, and I’ll be… I’ll be in the bed next to you, like old times, yeah?”

Liam nods, but he doesn’t look like he’s listening. “You’ve got to say my name. Even if you leave me again—and you better not fucking leave me again—but even then you have to say my name.”

“Alright.”

Liam looks at him expectantly, rubbing his thumb over the claddagh ring.

“Now?”

Liam nods again.

Noel opens his mouth; closes it.

He must have called Liam’s name walking through their memories—must have said it a hundred million times in his life. It’s only a name. How can saying it feel like cutting himself open? Such a small name: five letters, one breath. How can it carry all of Noel’s heart?

Liam watches him, waiting still.

“Come closer, then.”

Liam squirms closer, and Noel bends his neck to reach his ear.

He takes a breath—

*

He blinks, cotton-eyed. There are people around his bed, talking to him.

He cranes his head to see Liam, lying still—so still—on the other bed.

His voice won’t come out. He wets his lips and manages a feeble whistle, heart in his throat.

Ba-dum.

Ba-dum.

Ba—

“Liam,” he chokes out—begs—orders, and Liam—

Liam opens his eyes.