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Chapter Text

January 1992

“That photograph of her, Noel. In the paper. She doesn’t look herself, does she?”

“She’s sound, mam. Just weren’t ready for the camera is all.”

There’s a staticy silence. “Well I can’t help but consider it. She’s not even twenty yet—”

“Yeah,” Noel pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I know.”

“—and suddenly the entire city wants a piece of her. Don’t you think it’s all getting a bit much?”

Actually it ain’t enough, is what Noel wants to respond. It ain’t nearly enough. Oasis were making ripples that dwindled right at the border of Manchester and a hunger for more had bestowed him with an ability to see every mistake his bandmates made, hear every mistake his bandmates made, and scathingly spell out every mistake his bandmates made. As any musician worth their salt would, he’d been wielding this power unapologetically. So far the only wave that’s made is back to Burnage, where Lila looking a bit run-down in the local paper has put mam into a tizzy.

“We got an easy stretch coming up,” he assures. “No real gigs on the horizon.”

“But rehearsals?”

“Fifty-fifty she even shows up to those.”

“I’m aware of our Lila’s vices,” Peggy catches his scoff. “I’m also aware of yours, seeing as I raised the lot of ya. End of the day she’s your wee baby sister. Look out for her, will you now?”

“Right,” he exhales. “Yeah, alright. I will, mam.”

“Good. I know you will, pet. Helps knowing she’s with you and Louise when she isn’t home. Seems good for her. Do they get along fine?”

Noel coughs. “Uh, mam, I think our line’s breaking up.”

“What?”

“I’ll have to call you back.” He bends down towards the phone cradle and crinkles a loose receipt right over the transmitter. “Take care now. Ta-ra.”

“Make sure to—”

The switchhook clicks and Noel tips his head back against the wall. There’s a brief respite where his only concern is what that odd smell wafting about is. Then Louise pokes her head out of the kitchen. 

“Was that Peggy?”

He nods. 

“Well? Did you mention about our squatter?” 

“Weren’t the time, Louise. She’s all worried about Lila’s photo in the paper.”

Louise laughs. “She’s worried, ‘s that right? Last week she were tired. Few days ago she were sick, if me memory’s good. It’ll always be something, won’t it?”

“Well what you expect her to do? Drive down here and pick her up?”

“Seeing as Burnage is only twenty minutes off, Noel,” she finishes the thought with a gesture intended to mean I most certainly fucking do.  

Noel sifts through his rapidly diminishing toolbox of girlfriend placaters. He can’t cook for shite and hadn’t the foresight to pick up butties on the way home. A half-finished Slide Away would certainly fall on unimpressed ears, and as the tune comes to its anthemic close he’s not even certain he’d be able to sell that it’s her he’s singing about. Suppose he could tie her up again the way she likes, but that’s... 

Apology flowers? Maybe some apology flowers.

“I’ll tell her to piss off when she’s back,” he says. “And that’ll be that.”

“Right, and then we’ll all sing Kumbaya and she’ll skip home with a picnic basket.”

“That’s the spirit!” Noel says, completely immune to the derision he had somewhere along their relationship transmitted like herpes. “C’mon, let’s us two eat while we’re alone.”

“Fine. But ‘m not sharing it with her.”

He guides her wearily back into the kitchen. “Don’t have to, Louise.”

“For a scrawny little twit she could put this entire pie away without a second thought. And she would, is the thing! Just to be a fucking…”

“We’ll just have to beat her to it, then.” Noel circles behind her, massaging her shoulders in what he reckons is a clever way to both feign excitement and conceal a cringe that actually makes the muscles in his face cramp up. That’s a fucking sketchy shepherd’s pie, that. Just then Lila strolls through the front door, holding a bag of takeout, and nearly buckles over.

“Smells like sommat’s died in here.”

Louise drops the spatula she’d been set to help herself with. Through the hands on her rigid shoulders, Noel divines her expectation that he step up and be the big bad boyfriend she deserves. One who sets boundaries and tells the truth and doesn’t require a half hour of headspace preparation in order to fulfill her bondage kink. He takes a deep breath. 

“Lila,” he says. “It’s time for you to go back to mam’s. She’s worried about you.”

“Huh?” Lila sounds chipmunky from pinching her nose.

“Yeah. She was in a right state over the phone just now.”

“We can give her a ring, then. Let her know we’re sound. Maybe sing her a little diddy.”

“What Noel means to say,” Louise brushes him off, “is you’ve overstayed your welcome and it’s time to scram.”

“Noel means to say it? Or you do?”

“Us both. We’ve just discussed it.”

In an effort to avoid eye contact Noel glances down at the stovetop. There sits meat and potatoes and veggies all crammed inside their aluminum home. The naughty roommate’s gotta be the lamb mince, Noel figures, which he probably should have binned yesterday. If only there were a way to extract it now, without ruining the entire pie. 

“Right,” Lila says, “so dodgy Delia’s poisoned the nosh, then? Fucking smells like it.”

Apparently it takes blatant name calling to rouse Noel’s good-boyfriend instincts. He looks up sharply. 

“Hang on. You can’t just talk to Louise like that. This is her flat, Lila.”

“Oh, here we bloody go. Her flat, your band, Kwiksave’s toothpaste. I fucking get it, like. Y’know what actually is mine? This Chinese.” She sets the bag on the counter and digs out a pail of noodles. “That I’ve the right to enjoy like any other citizen. And I were even gonna share, before it turned into fucking Wildlife on One around here.”

“Wildlife on One, eh,” Louise repeats. “And who’s the pest, then?” 

“Probably the one with beady little rat eyes.”

“Mm-mm,” Noel forces out. “I sure am hungry.”

Louise pivots to fix two plates of shepherd’s pie and presses one into Noel’s palm like a baton to a runner. Something deep inside of his mammalian brain, refined by centuries of natural selection, sounds urgent alarms to not ingest this meal. Like it ain’t natural or will harm him or whatever the fuck. Thankfully he is very good at ignoring this part of his brain, as it’s also not the biggest fan of his occasional incest forays. Darwin would find him most fascinating. 

“I’ll pay for your bus fare home and give you the rest of the week off from rehearsals,” Noel says as a follow up, once they’re settled at the table and a mouthful of lo mein prevents Lila from refuting. “Them’s the rules, our kid.”

A wordless stand-off commences, soundtracked by the smug clinking of Louise’ utensils. Noel looks right at Lila and arranges his expression into the facial equivalent of a deadbolted door, which only saturates the betrayed flare of whatthefuck spreading across her face like a rash. Arm them with rifles, throw in a few tumbleweeds and it’s the blacklisted, taboo Spaghetti Western that could end Clint Eastwood’s career.

Noel ends it with one last, painstaking display of loyalty to his girlfriend. He visualises Lila’s face on a relatively trustworthy looking carrot cube, spears it, and chews with his front teeth. Across the table she stares at him the way Adam probably did Eve in that one garden where everything went wrong. 

“Fuging wha-effer.”

“Close your bloody mouth,” Louise snaps. “You’re chewing.”

A tennis-ball-lump of noodles shoehorns down Lila’s neck. Noel winces. 

“It’s just like. You can kick us out, right, but that ain’t gonna fix, y’know…” She waves her chopsticks around lazily, “all this.” 

“All what?”  

“Well it ain’t no honeymoon in this flat, is it. Haven’t seen a sock on the doorknob in over a week, d’you know what I mean.”

“A sock on the— right, well maybe that’s ‘cause you treat it as an invite to just waltz right in, don’t you?”

“That were one time, Lou-Lou,” Lila says evenly, “and only because our Noel wanted me to.”

“Did he now!”

“Mhm. He begged me. Cosmically. Was all, ‘make it stop’, like.”

Noel’s rather dubious line in the sand is finally, surely crossed. He swings his elbow up and points at Lila, aiming right where that hammer knocked loose the brain lobe responsible for wigging out whenever one makes a social faux paus, or eats expired lamb mince, or touches their sibling rapturously. 

“No, no. Don’t drag me into that fucking— your cosmic bullshit. That was an invasion of privacy and, and if I’d asked for it, right, I wouldn’t have thrown a book at your bonce, would I’ve.”

“Begged me,” she repeats.

“I didn’t.”

“Did.”

“It’s like she’s schizophrenic,” Louise laughs.

“Lila’s always been fucking tapped.”

“And he’s always been a waffling knob, he has. Just top at hiding it.” Lila’s gaze sears him the same way a blue flame burns the hottest. “So you really want me gone, then? Back to Burnage, by meself, where I can get up to whatever the fuck?”

“Don’t have to be Burnage,” Noel says. “Could sod off to France if you’d prefer.”

“Sure, sure. Hell of a pick that is,” Lila says. “Suppose you’ll meet me there?”

Louise scowls. “The bloody hell is that supposed to mean?”

A memory percolates, warming the space between Noel’s fingers where these words had once been pressed like he were some star to wish upon: Ain’t illegal in France, all this. And Oasis had a gig later that night, and they needed to sound top, and so he’d humoured Lila a bit. I do fancy a croissant, is what he’d said, very dumbly. Then he’d unclasped her bra and planted this information in a dark, cobwebbed corner of his psyche where weeds don’t need sunlight to grow. 

“Means nothing at all,” Lila says. “Unless you like, know. Y’know? Oui oui. Bon-fucking-jour. Euh, ‘ow you say, kwah-sahn.”

“Get out,” Noel says. “Get the fuck out.”

Lila kisses two fingers and extends a Ringo-esque peace sign. Collects her things and knocks over their coat rack in a profoundly un-Ringo-esque manner. It doesn’t occur to Noel until she’s out the door that she doesn’t have money for the bus fare, and doesn’t occur to him that he shouldn’t give a fuck until Louise is gaping like he’s grown a second head.

“Why you even care?! Honestly, Noel. She’ll be fine. She’ll go snog and pickpocket some poor bloke on the street corner.”

Noel flits around for his keys and jacket, unwilling to admit that that’s precisely why he’s about to leg it. “She’s still my fucking sister, Louise.” 

It’s ball-shriveling levels of baltic outside, of course. He spots her just up the block, silhouette illuminated by the streetlights. With adrenaline through the roof he runs like she’s a mirage about to vanish, each inhale like an icicle to the lungs. At this time of night any normal bird would alert right quick to the encroaching thud of sneakers on pavement, but not Lila. Noel gets all the way to cupping her shoulder before she wheels around and shoves him back, hard.

“Y’know I hate you sometimes,” she spits. “I do. I really hate you.”

“You—fuck—Lila—”

Oxygen abandons him. Utterly winded, Noel plants two hands on his knees and bends at the hips. Sounds come out of him that would either alarm a board of pulmonologists or accidentally court some exotic fucking species of bird. Maybe both. A promise burns between him and the blurry pavement below: no more fags, ever.

“Hateyoutoo,” he wheezes. 

“S’like why do I even bother, right. Ain’t worth it. Not when me bruv’s Billy fucking Bullshitter.”

“Take,” Noel extends the quid, head hanging low, “fucking take it.”

“Yeah, alright.” She steps closer, pets up and down his spine like he’s some retching dog. “In and out, bruv. Iiiiin, out. There we are.”

Against all odds, and no thanks to Lila’s caressing, his lungs inflate again. With air and a passionate yearning for nicotine. 

“Christ’s sake,” Noel cracks his back. “Got any fags? Haven’t run like that since primary school.”

From her pocket Lila retrieves a box of Benson and Hedges that Noel could have sworn was last seen on his bedside table. He adds it like an underwhelming chorizo to the charcuterie board of battles he’s decided not to pick tonight. 

“Open your mouth,” she holds one right up to him. “I’ll sort it.”

Proximity to Lila induces all sorts of strange reflexes from Noel, like muscle memory, and so there’s not much he can do when his lips part and eyelids lower. Lila coos, brushes out his windswept fringe and sucks on her lower lip like she always does when she’s upset. Noel watches it roll free from her top teeth, cherry-red and glistening, just as the first headrush hits. He thinks about kissing her.

“Wish you’d come back to Burnage with me,” she says. “Mam’d be chuffed.”

Noel exhales a stream of smoke through the corner of his mouth. “You know I can’t do that.”

“But you want to?”

Loaded question, that—and one he reckons should be asked in disgust rather than longing. Wanting is just so simple for Lila. It’s like she never developed past the grabby-hands stage of toddlerhood where wanting something is visceral and shameless and more important than whether or not the thing should be wanted at all. Noel falls somewhere especially peculiar on this scale, he’s come to learn. Sort of like he’s got one grabby-hand and one scissorhand constantly trying to off each other. He sighs heavily.

“I want a bit of peace and quiet.”

“Get to fuck. You’d be pouring sweat in some packed dingy pub right now if they’d have you. You’re full of shit.”

“Right, alright, I’m full of shit. Tell me who’s the one,” Noel starts, “that accused her big brother of cosmically fucking consenting to voyeurism? Were that—were that me?”

“S’not a fucking accusation.”

“It’s a delusion. A delusion.”

“No it ain’t.”

“Delusion, delusion, delusion.”

“You’re just embarrassed that when I came in and saved the day, right, your fucking prick was soft ‘cause your bird’s got the sex appeal of a tangerine.”

“Whether you like it or not Louise and I are in love, Lila. And you need, you need—” how his fag ended up in Lila’s mouth he hasn’t the slightest clue, but now she’s inhaling til her cheeks hollow just to be a cunt, “you need to let me fucking— try, y’know? I can’t just— we can’t just—”

“I—you—we—you need.” Lila does a limp, half-arsed version of The Robot. “System malfunction.”

“Oh that’s real fucking mature, that.” He swipes the cigarette out of her mouth. “Get lost. Off to mam’s you go.”

“Eh. Burnage-Shmurnage. Reckon I’ll go have a romp. Got lots of options, me.”

“That’s fantastic,” Noel says, stomach lurching. “I’m very happy for you.”

“Yeah, same here. Tickled pink, aren’t we?”

“We certainly are.”

“Then I suppose you’re off to go shag the missus nice and rough.”

He tilts his head and pretends to ponder, blinking until the night sky is stroboscopic.  

“Slow and passionate,” he says. “Since the pest is gone.”

“‘Course, ‘course. Slow and passionate. Your two middle names.”

“Well that’s only if I like you, ain’t it.”

The lamp post flickers when she cages him up against it. This close her eyes are so vivid that an afterimage of blue irises still floats in the darkness, even when Noel looks away. There’s a lyric there, somewhere, that he’ll certainly never write. 

“Y’know I don’t fucking need you, right,” she says, inches from his face. “I don’t need your quid, or your band, or your—your…”

“Go on then,” Noel says. “Out with it.”

“Your todger.”

“Ah.”

“ Ah. Ooh, ah, s’that all you got? I. Don’t. Need. You. But you need us, don’t you, else you’d be back in your gaff right this fucking moment givin’ Lou the Moo your own meat and two veg. Shepherd’s pie round two, innit.”

“You certainly think a lot about me having sex,” he taunts, “don’t you Lila?”

“Sure I do. Yeah, ‘course I do. S’not like you don’t think about me.”

Well. He should’ve known any shame mongering would fall flat. Can’t inspire an emotion Lila’s never felt, can he. 

“About the enormous fucking liability you are, I suppose.”

“Last chance for Burnage,” she sings. “Or Lola’s hitting the streets.”

There are many things Noel should not know about his baby sister, like the colour of her nipples or the heady tang of her slick, but above all else he’s got no business knowing the absurd nickname she bestowed upon her vagina in the midst of a ganja-fueled fuckfest months ago. Too sensitive, too sensitive, she’d giggled when his mouth moved for the nth time between her quivering legs. Lola needs a kip. Stoned and sated, he’d first made the impaired mistake of asking what she was on about, and then he’d laughed so hard a few tears sprung. Since that it’s sort of stuck, as terrible things tend to do.

Noel leans down until their noses brush, whispers softly, “Give mam my regards,” and peels out from the lamppost-Lila sandwich of which he’d been the unenthusiastic filling. 

“When you give Louise an orgasm,” she calls back, and he knows without turning around that she’s making some sort of obscene hand gesture. 

With each step back towards India House, Noel’s cock deflates from an alert half-mast to bored as a brat who just realised da’s switched on The Money Programme instead of Baywatch. That’s alright, that. Not the best look to ostensibly chase his sister down for the bus fare and then return with a lob on anyways. By the time he’s fiddling with his keys it’s like he’s got a bushel of wilted lettuce between the legs; an applause-worthy feat for a perverse deviant.  

“Took you long enough,” Louise says as he kicks the door closed. She’s grinning, which means the powerful sadistic entity pulling the strings in Noel’s life has not yet given her cosmic access to his blood circulation patterns. Won’t be long now, surely. 

“Had to make sure she wouldn’t be back, y’know.”

She hangs his jacket for him. “Why don’t you finish eating, then? You hardly touched your meal.”

“I…” He grabs her elbow and blanks, knowing there’s something he needs to follow through on. “C’mere.”

It’s the right thing to do, innit. Shag his bird. Louise is proper fit, too, is the thing, so it’s not like he doesn’t want it. He leans back against the door and pulls her in and ignores the blue-eyed spectre behind his eyelids. After a while he realises it’s no different than a gig, right. A performance. Noel loves performing. Louise gets him hard, blows him a bit, sprawls out on the dining table and guides him in. Doesn’t matter that she isn’t— she feels good, good, good. She’s Louise and she feels good. 

“Do you need….” Louise reaches down between them and strokes his softening cock. “Alright?”

“Yeah, yeah.” His head drops into the slope between her neck and shoulder. Just a technical difficulty, is all, but now he’s got to do it, doesn’t he. It’s feed the beast or get eaten by it. So he makes a shameful withdrawal from the spank bank, a memory he won’t ever put words to, and lives in it until he’s able to come with a thrust that jerks the table forward with a screech. Louise gasps beneath him, pupils glossy and fuck-blown. 

“Noel,” she says wondrously, blinking up at him.  

Noel leans down and kisses her, again and again and again. 

She’s Louise, he thinks, and he loves her. 

Chapter Text

March 1992

On Tuesday Lila shows up late to rehearsal, exuding a terrifyingly unpredictable energy that stales the air. It’s enough for Guigs and Bonehead to snap out of their banter and eye Noel like he’s got any control over the room’s sudden aura crisis. Fucking as if. If Noel had a presence like Lila, right, his neighbourhood nickname growing up certainly wouldn’t have been ‘Nobody Knows Him Noel’, would it’ve. 

He glares a hole in her head while she ambles in, arms crossed and foot thumping all rabbity like that’ll get her to fess up an explanation. But Lila just shrugs off her cardigan and slinks towards the microphone real careful, like it’s some bloke she’s about to pants, without even looking at him. It’s pretty obvious she’s pissed when she starts gliding her lips back and forth over the windscreen, soft little breaths sounding out tenfold through the speakers. 

“What’s the hold-up, eh?” she asks eventually. “You lot need a signed fucking permission slip or sommat?”

“Right then,” Noel gives up. “Columbia.”

The instruments awaken her prowling nuisance of an alter ego. Not too many lyrics in Columbia, are there, so she’s got lots of time to sidle up beside Guigs and pinch Bonehead’s arse and—and walk right past Noel. Walk right past him like he’s not there at all. Everybody else is at ease then: wahey, Lila’s cheeky and not in the mood to heckle her brother. Unfortunately for Noel it’s like the universe has hand-delivered an omen: sommat’s gonna go real fucking janky today.  

The only thing that keeps him rehearsing at all is that Lila sounds fucking top when she does sing, fingers dancing along the mic stand and tangling in her hair. She’s got this way about her. Gives his songs a sort of sex appeal he never imagines in the demos. Swagger, the papers say, dancing round it a bit. A couple blokes at their last gig kept goading her to flash them. She’d contemplated it, too, until Noel triggered enough feedback to burst every eardrum and testicle in the room. 

Who’s she seducing now? Certainly not him, given that she hasn’t even belched in his direction. He butchers a few chords during Take Me and she just glances back passively. From there his ego shrivels like a raisin and not even some haphazard jabs at Tony’s drumming can plump it back up. Funnily enough he’s fanatsised about this during their worst arguments: Lila as nothing more than a pretty, obedient voice box. What a breeze Oasis would be then. This fantasy failed to account for Noel apparently needing more than just vocals from her.

“Alright?” Lila asks once they finish the setlist, thumb fixed towards the door behind her. Noel blinks. It’s the first thing she’s said to him all day, and it’s a farewell. 

“You in a rush or sommat?” 

She doesn’t look at him. “Did what I needed to, didn’t I.”

“Did what you—right,” he says dumbly. “Yeah. Suppose so.”

“You got any notes then? On me singing?” 

“Um.” Noel hasn’t a single tool in his repertoire for this version of Lila, who he has never met and does not trust. “Not at the moment. Give us time to think.”

“I sounded good?”

“You sounded alright.”

She slings her bag over her shoulder. “We’ll do even better, then. Next time.”

Guigs laughs. “You’re out-Chiefing the Chief, Lillian.”

“I like the new Lila,” Bonehead lobbies. “A true profesh, you are.”

Noel doesn’t. He casts them a glare. “You up for a quick one at the pub, then?”

“Nah. I’ve got plans.”

“With who?”

“Why you fucking care so much?” she suddenly snaps. 

Tony drops his drumsticks. “Sorry.” He bends down to pick them up and bangs his head on the cymbals. “Soz again.”

Noel swivels to berate Tony, even though the noise had snapped him out of a clearly doomed back-and-forth. Like a bat out of hell Lila flees, tossing back a vague promise to see everybody tomorrow. Noel’s left dumbfounded amidst the equipment and his three remaining disciples, who immediately begin to compensate.

“Could be on the rag,” says Guigs. 

Bonehead leans back, “Or up the duff.”

“Leave off,” Noel says warningly. “The fuck makes you say that?”

“Just like, y’know, turning down the pub. S’not like her. You can’t drink if there’s one in the oven, can you.”

“Didn’t seem to stop your mam, did it.”

“Woa-hoh, mate, easy now.”

This successful rehearsal should not end in baseless fetal alcohol accusations. Noel should be chuffed: he’s got the rest of the day off and dinner reservations with Louise later. Instead his head hurts from all the unrealised rows he’d come prepared to have, and his chest feels tight because Lila has never acted that way in her entire life. Not ever. Not even at their worst; she cries to him, or yells at him, or ices him out, but she never placates him. She never hides from him. 

He ends up getting pissed with Guigs at The Crown and Anchor because Tony and Bonehead actually possess the backbones to turn down shite company, and because he promised Guigs he’d cover his first pint. The thing with Guigs is he’s calm, and agreeable, and almost certainly thinks remaining in Noel’s good graces will maximise his chances of getting into Lila’s knickers. 

“She ain’t fucking pregnant,” Noel’s saying now, into his third drink. “I’d know if she was fucking pregnant.”

Guigs shrugs. “She did seem a bit dodgy.”

“Trust—just, just trust me—” his face heats up when he masks derision with a laugh, “Trust me, I would know.”

Guigs gives him a weird look. “Right.”

“I just mean, like,” he backtracks, “Lila can’t hide anything from me. You see that.”

“Reckon you should stop worrying so much, mate. Lila will come around.”

“Hm? Not worried, me. Not at all.”

Doesn’t get much better from there. In fact hours later, Noel stumbles out of the pub with a distinct feeling that Guigs knows everything. No time to worry about that now, as he’s got Louise in his ear at the phone booth, screaming at him for cancelling their plans (“A family emergency, Noel? Really? Does the emergency rhyme with ‘Fila’?”) and a bus back to Burnage to catch. If Guigs doesn’t know everything, he thinks, Louise will probably tell him next time they have a run-in. 

In a welcome change of pace Mam’s absolutely chuffed at his unexpected visit, hungover and all. Paul’s off with some bird and Lila’s apparently been coming back later and later every night, so she’s been spending her evenings bored and alone. Noel chats her ear off and watches telly with her and lets her fret over his eating without any complaints. He tells her she’s the only person in the world who probably likes him right now, and she thinks he’s making a cute joke. 

When the sun starts to set Peggy pecks him on the cheek and turns in, so there’s officially nobody to question Noel when it’s Lila’s room he slips into after washing up. There he stretches out on her bed, arms folded behind his head, and waits with the patient confidence of a lion, or hawk, or some other cool predator. But the sedative cocktail of booze, mam’s cooking and Lila’s scent ends up knocking him out before he can even come up with a proper game plan. 

A creak wakes him at some ungodly hour of the night. In the doorway she’s a shadow haloed by the yellow hallway light, braced against the jamb. Head throbbing, he hikes up on his elbow and mumbles a few sleep-addled strings to beckon her. Her whisper slices right through the tail-end of his dream. 

“The fuck you doing here?”

There’s a rustle of sheets as he hoists his legs over the edge, rubbing his eyes. “Haven’t swung by Burnage in a while, have I.”

“Yeah, well you should swing on back to India House. Fucking jungle monkey.”

Noel’s mouth drops open. “What you saying that for? Lila, turn the light on.”

“No. I want to go to bed.” 

“You want to—alright, then. C’mon.”

“That’s not—you’re not—”

She’s high, he can smell it. And she refuses to turn that light on, so once she closes the door the bedroom is pitch black. A couple thumps sound out as she ambles to the dresser and stumbles into some PJs. She keeps muttering about wanting to go to bed and needing more ganja and how weird her fucking bruv is, with deliberately poor volume control. 

“Oh, I’m the weird one.”

“You are, right, because you’ve no reason to be round here.”

“Do I need one? Fucking grew up here too, didn’t I.”

“Not—no, you didn’t. You didn’t grow up here.”

Noel still can’t really see her. He feels like some sort of insect, sensing her presence only by the sheer heat of it. For a moment he’s nine years old again and roused by the tiny supernova at the foot of his bed who never learned that most tots seek out mam after a nightmare. But even then Noel never had the heart to shoo her; not with her screwed-up face cradled between his palms, wet and pulsing like a heart. Lila’s right. Those memories weren’t made in the council home. 

“Alright. Suppose not,” he says, weathering the same flush of insecurity he’d felt all throughout rehearsal. “Don’t really matter, does it? I can sleep in me own room if you want—”

“It does matter, like. It does. Because none of that,” he hears her make some sweeping arm gestures, “should ever be here. Mm? You follow us, Noel?”

“Not particularly.”

“Mam got us out,” she says. “Out means free, doesn’t it?”

Noel shrugs sleepily, too achy for this. “Free… free as Burnage allows, I reckon.”

“Exactly.” She’s moving again, tugging a shirt on. “Yeah, exactly. S’a fucking bird cage here. Birdage, or sommat, we can go and change the name.”

“You… want to?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. “Yeah, I want to. We could use our Oasis money for it. That’s when you know you’ve made it, right, when you’re minted enough to buy a fucking city.”

“Suppose that’s why you were zoned in at rehearsal,” he says. “Money on the mind.”

“Not money, Noel,” she sounds gloomy again, “s’not about that. It’s the principle, right, the fucking principle of the fucking thing.”

“Of… buying a city?”

“Of Oasis. Of, y’know. Taking something shite and making it good,” she says. “Or better. Or a bit more like it should be. Or less like it were. That’s what we’re about.”

Noel detects her right at the foot of the bed, a frenetic ball of energy, and reaches out to capture her wrist. Against the pad of his thumb her pulse thuds in quick, hot beats. 

“You alright, love?” 

“I…” He hears the snotty slide of nose-wiping. “S’just. Whole day’s been fucking grim, hasn’t it.”

“You sounded top earlier.”

“You said I were just alright.”

“Did I? Suppose that sounds like me.”

“Yeah, you twat. You said you’d think up some notes for us later.”

“Right. Well. I’ve done loads of thinking,” Noel teases, “and I came up empty.”

“Whatever.”

“I mean it. It’s the truth,” he tugs her in an inch. “S’just much easier to say in the dark, innit.”

Her hand is soft and limp in his own. When he rubs his thumb over the knob of her wrist she starts to tremble with the exertion of keeping it all inside. Lila can’t keep anything from her big brother, they both know, but today just might be the first time she’s actually wanted to. It’s certainly the first time Noel’s willingly wanted in on her psyche, anyways. 

“Saw da,” Lila’s voice breaks mid-syllable and then goes squeaky, “at the fucking pub.”

Ah. Noel sighs heavily. “Kid…”

His back hits the comforter. Suddenly he’s amidst a storm of sorts; Lila's branchlike limbs trembling around him, sheets of her tears wetting his neck. But her whimpers are too feeble to sound anything like thunder and it thrusts Noel backwards in time, back to when the fingerprints bruising his skin were half the size and the monsters she cried about were only in her head. The stars on her ceiling glow faintly while she blubbers into the damp, humid pocket of his collarbone everything that happened. 

It went like this: they’d locked eyes across the pub. Tommy closed the gap before she could duck out. He’d asked about Oasis. About mam and Paul. About Noel. That part makes her writhe. She’d told him he could stick his questions up his arse. He’d said what for? There isn't a climax to the tale, not really. Nothing to explain why Lila had afterwards sung her heart out and then locked herself as far away as she’s ever been. Just that she saw him. She saw him and he pretended he hadn’t ruined everything.

For a while Noel lies there beneath the weight of it. The weight of his crying sister, of the memories that flood him, of the anger swelling up. Would’ve gone different if he were there, certainly. Lila wouldn’t have seen him at all. It’s a fucking useless, retroactive promise he murmurs against her skull, as though he can phase a shiny happy superimposition over the memory. Except he doesn’t even sound sure of it, does he, with that fucking stutter. 

“It’s over now, Lila,” he slows his speech down like he’d learned in therapy. “It’s done. You can’t carry it with you.”

“How can you say that? When he— after everything he— to you…”

It’s exhausting when she gets like this, but the instincts still kick in. He rubs her back and lulls her breathing into a slow and rhythmic inverse of his own, until the line where their torsos press together undulates like a wave. Then he scooches them up until both their heads hit the pillow and curls around her like a cavernous wall. Sometimes she just needs to be taken care of, Lila does. Like some high-maintenance flower. Her Majesty , mam used to call her in jest. Her Majesty demands you play catch with her, Noel—Because she doesn’t want me or Paul—She wants you! She asked for you!

It’s a good thing Her Majesty isn’t an actual noblewoman, or else there’d be a battalion ordered to vengefully behead Tommy. And probably Noel himself, at some point. But soon she runs out of curses to cast and wilts into him, exhausted. They lie together in the still, quiet darkness of her bedroom and listen to the world turn outside. They have a cuddle. Noel hardly ever cuddles—a bullet point on Louise’ ever-growing list of contentions—but if he unwraps his arms then Lila’s sure to cry again. Can’t have that.  

At some point he hears mischievous little breaths puff out her nose. Beneath the comforter his chest tickles from the shapes Lila starts drawing on it, squiggles and hearts and letters that spell out love u Noely. Eyes closed, half-asleep, he draws a smiley face with the hand resting just above her arse. She giggles and presses in closer. 

“Give us a kiss,” she whispers, and then her lips cover his, plush and salty. “C’mon.”

A shudder flits down his spine. Without thinking he cradles her jaw and traces his tongue over the tears, slow and gentle, until she moves in and starts to suck on it. He parts his lips and lets her, groaning at his stiffening trouser junction. For a while they snog like that, a bit raunchy, Noel licking up tears wherever he finds them and Lila slotting their mouths together so deep it’s like they’re swallowing each other up. It gets them both moaning like mad and overheating under the covers, under their own skin. Eventually Lila kicks the blankets off and moves her hands below his belly button, scratching playfully at the hair there. Only then do Noel’s eyes snap open. 

“Ay,” he covers her hands with his. “None of that, now. S’alright.”

“What? Please,” she says, tugging on the elastic waistband of his joggers. “Noel, please.”

He just shakes his head and corrals her fingers up behind his neck instead. If the way her nails burrow into his skin is any indication, he’s just done his prick a massive favour. Or that’s what he tells himself, at least, in the disciplined tone of a pet owner, while the red rocket in his pants prepares for launch. And anyways she’s started to cry again, apparently just one blue ball away from unraveling. 

“We could be quick,” she begs, voice wobbly. “Was gonna be good. God, was gonna be so good, Noel, c’mon…”

It really fucking was. “Lila, no.”

“Please.”

“No. That’s enough.”

He can’t. They can’t. Not like this. Not after he’s just been a proper big brother, or as proper as he knows how to be, anyways. He doesn’t have a fucking handbook. 

“You’re an arse,” she sniffs angrily. 

“I can live with that.”

“Oh, can you? Got me all fucking riled up now, mad for it. You get off on that, don’t you?”

“No, no, I don’t. And besides, just what are you getting off on, then? Ten seconds ago you was crying about da.”

“Well it’s like you said, innit. ‘You can’t carry it with you, Lila’,” she mocks his advice in a doltish slur. “So we got over it.”

“I think the only thing you got,” Noel says, “is fucking randy.”

“So what if I did! S’like we… we was having a real moment, there, weren’t we. A moment in time…”

The tenderness in her voice, Noel reckons, really ought to be reserved for genuinely cherished memories and not incestuous heavy petting. But then again that Venn diagram is probably a circle for Lila. 

“A moment in time,” Noel repeats. “Right, sure. We’ve lots of those.”

What Lila will never understand, as somebody with a fixed, persevering selfhood in life’s every circumstance, is that there are two separate hats Noel can’t ever wear at once. A brother, a lover. He has to compartmentalise. And it’d be too fucking sleazy, even for him, to dry Lila’s tears about Tommy and then accept from her the tangled, distant aftershocks of his cruelty. He can’t prove it but he knows deep down, right, that it’s all da’s fault. Da who shattered them over and over, da who created his compartments. Noel thinks about it sometimes, how often and how extremely they had to comfort one another. Physically, emotionally, whatever. It’s no wonder that while they rebuilt, little bits and pieces got mixed up. It’s no wonder they’d welded together somewhere along the line. 

He could tell her these horrible conclusions. She’d try to empathise and end up calling him a tosser. In a way it’s just another thing to protect her from, because if she knew da still haunted him like this then she’d take that ghost on too, carrying it like the second strap of a brick-filled rucksack. So he can just be an arse, tonight. An arse is fine with him. 

Lila ends up getting herself off right next to him. Fair play. It’s the closest Noel comes to earnestly praying in about fifteen years, though, listening to the slick sound of her fingers and those desperate little pants. He swears he can smell her arousal. He could probably concuss somebody with his erection. 

“Thanks for being there, Noely,” she sighs on the comedown, no longer angry or sad or randy. Seems those emotions are all Noel’s to feel now. 

“Don’t mention it, kidda.”

“And who fucking cares what da thinks,” she declares, so sternly that Noel wonders whether or not he’d accidentally voiced a rumination aloud. More likely it’s just another piece of him that she’d picked up over the years, speaking through her. 

“Who cares what da thinks,” he repeats softly. 

“If I want a cuddle with me bruv, well that’s my human fucking right, innit.”

He sighs. “Suppose it is.”

They resume their embrace, snuggling deep under the blankets. It’s nostalgic to hold her in the dark like this, close and protective. Those nightmares she used to have, the ones that sent her weeping into his room, she’d grown out of them eventually. So Noel used to have her watch scary movies with him, mind tingling with a distant, formless optimism that they might come back. He was too young to consider the why of it. Wasn’t like he enjoyed seeing her scared or anything. It was just… her bad dreams were problems already solved just by waking up, so there was no part of it for Noel to fuck up. He just had to hold her and be there until she calmed down. It was his time to be big, his time to be strong, like a warrior. And her time to get away with being the ‘Her Majesty’ mam always teased she was. 

He rests his chin on the crown of her head, breathing her in. Oh, Lila. Not much has changed at all, has it. 

Chapter Text

April 1992 

After a desperate stretch of weeks wherein Noel briefly considers prostituting himself for stage time, he finally books Oasis a gig at North Kent College in Dartford. It’s four hours south and will be their first ever show outside Manchester. First of many! Lila trills at The Boardwalk, after Noel’s bleak lecture that it’s their one and only chance to escape the shithole. Then they all celebrate, ironically, by ditching rehearsal and getting so pissed at the pub that Bonehead spills beer all over her shirt. 

“You fucking prick!” she squawks. “I liked this tee!”

“Used to be the Chief’s, innit,” he ducks away from her limp shoves. “Reckon I should be apologising to him.”  

“Right you are,” Noel cups a hand around his ear and leans across the table. “We’re waiting.”

“Soz, mate. I thought she’d melt.”

“Wanna borrow mine, Lila?” Guigs tugs at his collar to emphasise its disposability. “I’ve got an undershirt beneath it.”

Lila squeezes out her hem with a ponderous sort of frown. It’s an old Beatles tee she’d nicked back when Noel was off roadieing for the Inspirals. By the time he realised where it went she’d long since mutilated it into a girlish little crop top. So now every lad round the table has an eyeful of her flat, beer-shiny stomach when she stands up and announces she’d rather tidy up in the loo. 

“Just bin it, Lila,” Noel says. “Was butchered enough before getting stained.”

Betrayal flashes hot in her eyes. “Says the twat who wouldn’t know fashion if it gave him a prostate exam.”

“Now that’s just— y’know, your favourite shop is me own fucking closet, ta very much.” 

“Ay, that’s just ‘cause we’re skint for the time being and that. Wait until Oasis charts, right, then it’s nowt but fucking Burberry for me. Swear down.”

Hard to stay mad when she’s basically reciting his dream journal. Noel rests his cheek in his palm and pictures his little sister in proper clobber, some stupidly expensive check jacket that finally matches the showboat she sails through life in. Not a bad sight at all. In the daydream she still stole it from his closet, of course, but it’s a walk-in with double doors and a multi-tiered water fountain.  

“Depends what I pay you, doesn’t it,” he smiles serenely. 

“Nah, nah, you keep your royalties, bruv. Got plenty of means to pave me own way.”

Then she strips her wet top off like this were some advert for clearing up psoriasis. Amidst the hoots and hollers Noel blesses the fact she’s actually wearing a bra today. A black one. Ever since she got on birth control she’s been claiming her tits grew a size. Ironically he’s never actually noticed a difference until right this very moment, confronted with the modest but dark shadow of cleavage. That’s a push-up, that. Noel’s is the only jaw that actually stays hinged. 

“Won’t be a tick,” she winks. 

“Fuckin’ hell,” Tony watches her go. “You’ve your work cut out for you, mate.” 

“Says you, you turnip,” Noel snaps. “Worry about your groove.”

Guigs blinks. “S’there something wrong with me shirt?” 

“I owe you a real apology now, Chief,” Bonehead says worriedly. “Just spilled me pint, honest. Didn’t mean to book a peep show.”

“S’not a peep show unless you peep, is it.” Noel cants the base of his bottle towards the godless sky and guzzles lager like a fish. 

“Well that’s only possible when the bird is minging, mate. Lila is— like, y’know, Lila is—”

“She’s fucking fit,” Tony punctuates. 

The only person less equipped than Noel for this conversation is piteous, blushing Guigs, whose sacrificial shirt would be better suited wadded up and placed on his lap until further notice. Been friends since primary school, Guigs and Lila, and Noel knows for a fact they did bits together at some point growing up. Clearly not all the bits, though, considering a flash of collarbone has induced far more fantasy than nostalgia. Probably just dry humping, then. Poor bloke. 

“C’mon, surely you’ve seen a rack before, mate,” Noel tries warily to cajole him. “Surely you’ve seen a bigger rack before.”

Guigs mutters something under his breath and Noel leans in.  

“Sorry?”

“I said it’s more about the shape, innit.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” Noel locates their server and urgently signals for another round. “Right, well. I’ll only say it once, lads: fucking not a single one of you is allowed.”

There’s a dejected chorus of yeah yeah yeah’s that’s almost entirely for show. If Lila actually wanted to shag any of them, right, her bruv’s impromptu verbal ban wouldn’t do nowt. But Tony and Bonehead would gawk at a leggy enough table, and whatever sincerity burns within Guigs will no doubt extinguish once Oasis acquires some proper roadies. And yet, as a fellow victim of Lila’s allure, which not even a marathon of Inspiral tens could eclipse, Noel knows better than to voice this promise aloud.

Eventually she returns with an only partially-damp shirt, two phone numbers scrawled on her arm and a cocktail that Noel watched some beardy chap buy for her. It was agonising, really, all his posturing like some molting peacock trying to mate. Before she turned away he touched her waist and attempted one final banter, which only earned a lip bite and two extra seconds of eye contact. Probably still enough to get him off later, when he inevitably fails to score. 

“Much better,” Lila plops into her chair. “The people in here are proper sound.”

“Right,” Noel says. “Try and scab a drink looking like Bonehead, then. See what happens.”

“‘Scuse me, reckon I could swindle me way into a few—”

“How you suppose I do that?” she says. “Just say you’re fucking jealous and drink on.”

Noel laughs loudly. “Jealous! Of the ice in your drink, maybe.”

“Oh, here we go. The ice in me drink, is that it.”

“Yeah, like. It gets to just,” he wiggles his fingers whimsically, “melt away quietly.”

“How clever. Melt. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, ya melt.”

Noel concludes the exchange with a smug head tilt, as though his likes and dislikes shall remain a profound universal mystery. The conversation moves on but the word sticks to him like a spitball. Jealous. She’s one to fucking talk. Couple weeks ago she caught him flirtatiously cornering Louise in the kitchen and ever since she’s only come round to India House after getting off with some working class cokehead named Cedric, who’s apparently the fucking Oral Oracle of Manchester. It’s a bit maddening actually. Noel hasn’t had her in almost a month. And sure, he might be counting the days, but he’s proper certain she’s counting the seconds. 

It’s an unspoken game they play occasionally. Almost like roleplay. Except where a regular couple’s idea of getting kinky might be to act out some step-sibling fantasy, Noel and Lila embody a strange and non-sexual inverse of it. Tease each other as actual siblings, fuck other people and act like they’re not arsed about it: them’s the rules. Follow them until the charades fall, until the dam breaks. And the dam always breaks. 

By the time the gig rolls around they’re still at it like randy little beavers. All week Lila’s been giving him lip during rehearsals, because once Noel imagined Oasis through non-Mancunian ears suddenly nothing sounded good enough, and nobody besides her were willing to challenge the nit-picking. 

First she fucks off to the campus shop and gets fixated on a bucket hat she can’t afford, even though it’s some cheap Burberry knockoff. Then she has a smoke with the headlining band. Then she shows up late and twitchy to soundcheck, snarling whenever he makes any suggestion whatsoever. It escalates to her throwing a tambourine at him, and the sharp thwack in the temple knocks his next step right into place. Enough is enough. 

“Listen to me. Just ‘cause you're shitting it doesn’t mean you’ve got to act like a knobhead,” he says. He’s dragged her to the handicap bathroom to have it out, of all places. Door locked. Arguably it’s where Lila belongs anyways. 

“I ain’t shitting it! You’re shitting it.”

“I’m not. I’m not.”

“You’re proper shitting it! What you gonna nag about next, yeah?”

“You’re shitting it. You are.”

“The fucking vending machine pop?” She pokes at his chest. “‘Oi, it’s too flat. Too flat, flat, flat like me sister’s voice.’ I threw that tambo because you need a reality check, right. And everybody fucking knows it.”

“Right, alright, I’ll tell you what I need—” Noel stops short and grabs her wrist, hovering it between their noses. Their eyes lock. Some hypothetical beaver loosens a few sticks nonchalantly. 

“Alright. Tell us,” Lila says in a piqued voice.

“I need,” Noel falters a beat, “to put on a good fucking show.”

“Well that won’t happen if you don’t dislodge the old stick, will it.”

He blinks. “Wha— how do you—”

“The one up your arse, like.”

Right, course. For as often as they’re on the same wavelength there’s also very frequently three entire solar systems between them. Noel has half a mind to explain about the beaver and dams thing but he knows they’re at an impasse where any conversation will end the same no matter what. Why fucking bother? Their gig’s in a half hour. 

When they kiss she tastes like orange juice and cigarettes. He chides her because both are bad for vocal chords but his tone is breathy and soft because he doesn’t actually want to argue about it. She says she’s been on an OJ kick for weeks now and he better do more frequent inspections if he’s so arsed about it. At one point she tries to give him a hickey right under his collarbone and it feels so good he nearly lets her. 

“None of that,” he combs her hair back to soften the rejection. “Cheeky little madam.”

Still, it’s proper risk management to turn her round by the hips. He gets a mouthful of hair when she tips her head back on his shoulder, whimpering out devotions of never ending love that sound an awful lot like bullshite coming from the same twat who threw a tambo at him earlier. Between his spluttering and her reaching backwards to grab at his dick it’s a miracle he gets their fasteners undone at all. Noel’s conscience is quick to remind him that definitely nothing about this situation should be considered a miracle. Under any circumstance. Ever. 

“Lemme face you,” Lila says, immobilised by the jeans shucked down mid-thigh. 

“No.”

“C’mon, Noel.”

“Shut up.”

Noel gazes down at the inches between their bodies. All he registers is the sexy contrast of red knickers and pale skin. Mindlessly he presses up against her arse, knocking her just forward enough to brace both forearms against the wall for balance. She grinds back into him, wiggling her hips until his naked erection is nestled snug between her cheeks like a dagger swathed in velvet. At this point his conscience initiates a disappointed shun that Noel will ignore but continue to vaguely register throughout the encounter. 

“Alright. I like that,” he says of her arched spine, gliding a flat hand up between her shoulder blades. “Keep on, then.”

“But I wanna see you,” she whines. “Noel.”

With his free hand he squeezes right where her hips flare the widest. Each breath he draws is thick and heavy, expanding his nostrils like some excited bull that gets all hot and bothered over red flags. Or red frillies. 

“I’m right here,” he says affably, rubbing circles into her skin “Go on, then. Put it where you want it.”

Her cunt’s swallowed up the skimpy crotch fabric. When she reaches back to peel it out his eyes nearly leave their sockets and his cock grows three sizes like some debased grinch. Her hole is taut and a bit twitchy as she adjusts to him, gifting his tip an obscene massage. He knows better than to push right in, since according to her it hurts without a warmup. Lila doesn’t like it when it hurts and a visual of his prick getting swallowed up nice and slow is proper cinema anyways. He exhales, smoothing both hands over her skin until they’re curved over the plump of her arse. 

“Bit tight today,” he spreads her cheeks a bit. “Been a while, eh? What about our Cedric?”

“Don’t let him fuck me,” she moans, pushing backwards to sheath another two inches. “Sort of a div.”

“‘Course he is,” Noel’s toes curl in his trainers. This is exactly what gets him off. “Yeah, nobody’s good enough for Lila, is that it?”

She attempts a dirty look over her shoulder. He laughs, reaches forward and tucks her hair behind her ear so he can enjoy it in all its pinched, bratty glory. 

“D’you give him daggers too? Or are you a good girl for him?”

There’s a contraction around his cock and then Lila whines and starts to touch herself. Her shoulder bows in, moves impatiently up and down while little pants sound out in the echoey bathroom. Desperate, she is. Hasn’t got off proper since their last round. 

“Fuck me. Yeah, you play it nice, don’t you,” Noel breathes out, like he’s discovered something marvelous. “No more of that.”

Now he’s halfway in. He reaches around to run his fingertips over her stomach, the soft little pouch beneath her bellybutton, and eventually beneath the band of her knickers to worsen the mess they’re making. She keeps hers down there as he works, holding his wrist like it’s an iron band. 

“Noel,” her free hand claws against the wall. “C’mon…”

“Yeah? What’s got you stressed, girl?” he teases. 

“Like you don’t already know, Chief.”

“Chief,” he repeats, pulse spiking. “Ah, that bloke. Fuck him.”

Lila grunts in agreement and bottoms him out. They share a gasp, and then a sigh, and then a silence where, unless Lila’s also bargaining with the Devil, their perfect harmony falters. It’s like clockwork at this point: Noel penetrates his sister, Satan telepathises a postcard from the seventh circle of Hell spelling out Can’t wait to see you soon! And perhaps what qualifies him most for such an afterlife is how easy this taunt has become to disregard, what with hot pleasure zinging up and down his legs like Mexican Jumping Beans. She feels fucking amazing. 

“God you feel good,” she echoes, pulling them back into synchrony. Her head is dipped down, blushing skin stretched across the vertebrae at the base of her neck. Noel bends forward to mouth at them while thrusting quick and shallow. To anybody who might walk in he’d probably resemble the world’s scrawniest, palest, yet most sexually dynamic rucksack ever. 

She keeps on begging to turn around and kiss him. Once he finds a suitable finger-cock rhythm, kneading into that one spot on the left she’s mad for, it’s all gibberish anyways. She’s a bit of a screamer, Lila is, but when they’re in public she’s learned to muffle it into her hand. Around his prick he feels what she’s holding back, her cunt clenching hard enough to simulate the almighty vacuum of space for Noel Junior. He makes a humiliating noise against her spine and erupts with what feels like an entire squirty can of release. 

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he says, as his orgasm extends to a length he’d previously only observed in the most contrived of pornos. His hips piston hard and deep. “Oh, baby, oh fuck.”  

“Yeah, yeah. Give it here.” She presses her arse back into him, cunt sealed around his prick. “Give it here Chief. Give it to us.”

He laughs deliriously, eyes screwed shut, inhibited by euphoria. It’s like he’s one tit-grab away from saying ooga booga or sommat, this fucking backslide into the primal Lila’s reduced him to. He’s hard again before the shame confetti can rain, fingers crawling back between her legs. 

“Wait, Noel, wait,” Lila’s saying, underwater. 

“Huh?”

“I said wait.” Everything sharpens when she tugs her jeans back up. “We can’t.”

“We—we just did.”  

“And now we can’t. Got a gig, don’t we?”

There’s a silence he supposes is meant for applauding her devotion to the cause. She always does this, Lila. It’s like once Noel actually matches her desperation she backs off just so she can have a rare and fleeting taste of being the sensible one. The joke is on her then, because he’s so randy he can’t even form a sentence, let alone commend her professionalism. And Hell will freeze over before he begs for it. 

“Right, then. Give us a minute,” he says, dolefully tucking himself back in. “Need to switch gears.”

“Head in the game, bruv,” she pats his crotch in some perverse display of sportsmanship. “Head in the game.”

The gig goes fine. A bit embarrassing they’d been so worked up over it, really. Between the shoddy sound system and college boys ogling Lila like a piece of meat he’s not certain anyone actually registers their tunes, but the scattered headbanging to Columbia is enough to give him some hope that a couple Oasis seeds are now planted far and wide. He’s disassembling the amps when she’s approached just across the stage. 

“You from round here, love?”

“Not really, no. Manchester.”

“A bit out there, then. Not too bad. My mum’s born and raised in Manc.”

“Sound.”

“Sure is.”

“Mm.” Lila clears her throat. “Ain’t you like, sixteen or sommat?”

Noel glances up in time to see the stranger’s shoulders shake with laughter. Some six foot something blond bloke who is—Noel’s not arsed to admit it—significantly better looking than him. Lila’s sat on the stage, leaning back on her palms. 

“Eighteen, actually,” he says. “I’m off to university this autumn.” 

“I’ll tell you what, like. I’m old enough to be your granny.”

“She’s nineteen,” Noel calls over. “Don’t listen to her shit.”

Lila’s glare hits him like a flick on the forehead. 

“Listen up, Noel there’s twenty-five next month. Imagine that. We think he’s got early-onset Alzheimer's."

“Alright, alright. ‘M not trying anything dodgy,” the bloke says, scratching behind his neck. “Name’s Oliver. Just wanted to say, uh, you’ve one of the prettiest voices I ever heard. Honest.”

Noel stops short of saying thank you, I made her. What he can’t stop is the triumphant sensation of his noggin expanding another few inches. It’s not that he takes credit for Lila’s vocals, which he envies on a bad day and gets off to on his worst. It’s just. Well. It’s for him. She sounds pretty for him. 

“I’m alright, me,” Lila says in her first ever display of humility. “Clearly you never heard Kate Bush.”

“Heard plenty. You’re better,” he nods towards Noel. “Don’t you agree?”

They’re both looking at him: Oliver seeking a wingman, Lila seeking something he’s always wrestled with giving. His insides squeeze. Even mam’s most zealous hugs are less smothering than a hopeful looking Lila. As Noel thumbs strategically through possible responses, with special consideration for the toothiness of his next blowjob, a familiar wave of shame washes over him. A normal brother would be proud, right. Would say you bet, Ollie. And maybe a normal sister wouldn’t hinge her entire well being on it. 

“Dunno, mate,” he sighs out, already unhappy with his decision. “Kate Bush is pretty top.”

It doesn’t land like he’d hoped. Oliver doesn’t laugh and Lila mopes into her lap. 

“Yeah. Heard it here first,” she mutters. Then she sits up, dusts off her hands and speeds away without so much as a second look back. So now Noel’s left with tall blond and handsome Oliver, whose eyes are tracking Lila’s arse like there’s a concerned optometrist on standby. 

“Seems you’re a bit of a prick,” he says when she’s out of sight. 

“Being a prick gets us gigs, believe it or not.”

Oliver shrugs. “North Kent College ain’t exactly Knebworth, mate.”

“Right, so one second me sister’s better than Kate Bush and the next we’re some shite band in a shite venue?”

“I never—hang on,” he gapes, “that’s your sister?”

“D’you even think she’s better than Kate Bush? Or s’that like, your line you say to birds? If so that’s pretty oddly specific, I’ll tell you what. Can only really work in like, this exact circumstance.”

“Come to think of it, your eyebrows are sort of the same. Mad. It all makes sense now.”

“I really fucking doubt that mate.”

“So… is she single?”

“She most certainly is not.”

“Ay, ay, no need to get hostile with me. Was just asking. Looked sort of interested when I complimented her, is all.”

Which is the direct result of Noel’s praise-hoarding. At this rate he’d better let a nice job filter through more often, else twats like Oliver will get lucky for the incredibly unimpressive feat of stating what is, to anything with ears, dead fucking obvious. Of course Lila’s voice is beautiful. Of course she’s better than Kate Bush. He shouldn’t need to say it out loud. 

Oliver must misinterpret his contemplation for regret, because he sighs like he’s got just the ditch to bury their hatchet in. 

“Here, alright. Why don't you pass on my number," he hands Noel a scrap of paper, "in case she’s ever up for it.”

“Sure. Your funeral, mate.” He pockets it with a shrug and Oliver buggers off, miming a final salute that’s mostly friendly but also emphasises once more that no really. You must give it to her.

Later on Noel is the last one to board their bus back to Manchester. Lila’s sat all the way in back, knees up, eyes fixed out the window, and his first instinct is to mourn her continuous inability to accept validation from anybody besides him. His second instinct is to collapse down in the seat over and nudge her arm softly. 

“Package delivery. Feel free to bin it.”

“Hm?” she looks over dully, not angry enough to ignore him. “What is it?” 

Noel lets the artifact do the talking. Lila takes it with both hands and looks down with a strange, blooming achiness that he doesn’t know how to translate.  

“You’re kidding,” she says flatly. 

“Since when do I kid?”

The ice breaks. She brightens, donning the bucket hat and looking at him proudly from underneath the beige checkered rim. “Right, check it out. I’ve got fucking Burberry, me.”

“Well—C&A,” Noel says. “But it’s a start, innit.”

“A proper fucking start. How do we look?”

Noel gives her an exaggerated once-over, brows raised and thumbs up. Gives her an exaggerated compliment, too, to dwarf the sincerity. 

“Like the bloody best frontwoman in the business.”

After that she makes Noel try it on, then she makes the rest of the lads try it on, and eventually she skips back to their corner of the bus happy and tired. It’s her new lucky hat, she says. Then she falls asleep on his shoulder and he doesn’t even get to smell her hair, does he, because the girl won’t take it off. Doesn’t get to move at all, really, especially once she starts snoring. Not even when the gum he’d been chewing gets hard and tasteless and jaw-ache-inducing.  

Ah well. Not a problem, that. He’s got the perfect scrap of paper to spit it out in, anyways.