Chemical World || Damon Albarn

Chapter 12

How is everyone? Sorry this update is a little later than normal, I've been pretty busy lately.

"Shit, we're not fucking ready for this, are we?"

I rolled my eyes as Liam spoke another phrase of doubt in ourselves. I swear, you'd think he'd never played in front of thousands of screaming fans before like it was nothing. Except he had, and now he was making a big deal of a few hundred people.

I was about to shout at him and tell him to be quiet, but of course, his older brother beat me to it.

"Will you shut the fuck up?!" Noel piped up from where he was sitting on a beat up couch, tuning his guitar. "You're Liam fucking Gallagher and you've sang for so many more people than who's here tonight. So suck it the fuck up!"

I raised my eyebrows and widened my eyes at this response, but I honestly expected no different from Noel, I mean it was pretty much like this everyday.

  Backstage, the place looked like it hadn't been updated since the 70s, the very festive wallpaper starting to peel off and everything. The place practically stunk of weed, since it was all we had been smoking for the past hour and a half, and the it was pretty visible in the air as well.

  There were three couches in the room, and on the first sat Guigs and Tony, on the second me and Noel, and on the third, no one, since Liam was standing up and still pacing the room from his nerves. I tried to concentrate on tuning my guitar just as Noel was and Guigsy was with his bass, but his pacing was starting to annoy the shit out of me.

  Well, that and the anxiety of waiting for that one person to show up. Wondering if he ever would, and if he did, wondering if he would even be seen.

  I looked up from the neck of my guitar and glared daggers into Liam's skull. "Liam, stop fucking pacing around! You've played thousands of shows before you'll be absolutely fine, goddammit."

  The younger brother stopped pacing around to raise his eyebrows at me and take off the round John Lennon glasses he was wearing, placing them on his head.

  "What the hell is wrong with you?" He seemed appalled but I couldn't care less.

  "What's wrong with you?" I threw back at him. "This is the smallest gig we've ever done since Oasis blew up and you; Liam fucking Gallagher, are worried about it? What's up with that?"

  "We haven't practiced playin' live in fucking months, that's what's up with that!" He ran a hand through his hair and put another on his hip, staring down at me at my place on the rugged couch from above.

  "Liam," This time it was Tony that chirped in. "Have you not forgotten that we've been playin' in the recording studio every fucking day for the past couple of weeks?"

  "They're right," Guigsy joined and I motioned my hand over Noel and to the pair, showing that we were right, and of course, Liam was wrong.

  "Whatever," Liam mumbled, accepting his defeat and finally sitting down on the empty couch. I shook my head at this gesture and had finished tuning my guitar, thinking about setting it down to go explore.

  Which is exactly what I did, I set the guitar on the stand I had set up next to me and stood up, walking away but not before I left the room with a million questions.

  "Where are you going?" Of course Liam spoke first, too nosy for his own good. I stopped walking and turned back to look at him.

  "Just to explore," I stated simply.

  "Why?" Noel piped up. "You've played and been in the place thousands of fucking times before, there's nothing new to see."

  He raised an eyebrow but I came up with another bullshit response. "Just the nostalgia," Which was partly true, but I was mainly going to see if I could see Damon.

  "Alright," They still didn't seem convinced.

  "I'll be back before we go on," I insisted. "How much longer?"

  "About fifteen minutes," Tony answered, he was always the one keeping that stuff in order.

  "Then I'll see you guys in ten," I said and opened the door from backstage into a back hallway, closing it behind me.

  Walking through the hallway was easy, nothing was there and as long as you kept your hands out to guide you in the darkness, you could pretty much make your way through to the front stage, which is where I currently stood.

  The curtain was closed of course, and Tony's drum set was to the right of me, having already been set up earlier in the day. A couple amps and microphones stood there too, and I suddenly couldn't wait to play, considering we hadn't toured in a while.

  But something else was on my mind, or really someone else. A part of me had really hoped that Damon showed up to see us play so we could stick it to him, but another part of me hoped that he was here so I could see what he really thought, and talk to him, and be around him.

  And then another part of me hoped he didn't show up at all, so we wouldn't get caught hanging around each other. Whether it was by the press or by the rest of the band, I didn't want to experience either.

  Trying to calm my nerves, I peeked out from behind the black curtain, first scanning the immense amount of people crammed into the club, wondering how The Boardwalk could fit that many people into one small space on the dance floor.

  And then my eyes moved to the bar, where even more people were sitting, sipping on random drinks and talking to one another. But there was one person who wasn't talking to anyone, just sitting there, staring back at me when his eyes met mine.

  Somehow I couldn't believe that I had found the one person I wanted to see the most with all these people around him. But I had found him, and was now smiling at him while he smiled back at me, still amazed that he even showed up at all.

  After a couple seconds I broke back into the real world and pulled my head back behind the curtains, my smile instantly being wiped off by coming eye to eye with someone and being immensely scared.

  "Jesus fucking Christ!" I jumped while Liam's bright blue eyes stared down at me from where I was. "What was that for?"

  "Nothing," He insisted. "I'm just fucking standing here!"

  I took a look around me and found that the rest of the band was in the area with the two of us, running a hand through my hair as Noel handed me my guitar.

  "I thought we said fifteen minutes," I threw the guitar around my body and bit the nail of my thumb, nervous that they had seen me looking at Damon. I mean, obviously not, I was just being paranoid, right?

  "Tony got it wrong," Noel's voice raised as the crowd got louder, knowing that we were coming out any minute now.

  I nodded my head as the curtain began to lift quite dramatically, something I still hadn't gotten used to.

  "You've been acting really fucking weird, E!" Was the last thing Noel shouted to me, using my sort of nickname before we went into the intro of our first song.

  Again, Damon's eyes instantly met mine and I tried not to make it so obviously that I was easily becoming more and more involved with our rival.

A/n: Don't know if I love this or hate it. Thanks for reading. -Liz :)