Memories in Your Lungs Like Air

It was footie that broke the standoff, in the end. Probably there was something poetic about that. Noel could put it in a song. He wasn’t presently inclined to, though, because a second ago he’d turned the corner at Estádio do Dragão, and there was Liam.

“Are you following me?” Noel demanded, incredulous. As soon as he said it he knew it was a stupid question; even Liam could have found Noel a good few years before now if he’d put his mind to it.

Liam hunched into one of those parka coats he never seemed to go without anymore. “Just here to support the team, right?”

“You going to call me a potato now?” Noel asked. “Or is that just for the internet?”

Above Liam’s mask, the skin around his eyes crinkled with good humor, like Noel’d made a great joke and Liam was proud of him for it. “You want me to?”

“I’m all right, thanks.”

Liam nodded, his gaze bright and sharp, ageless, though it looked out of a face that seemed—older. Tired. Well, weren’t they all. They were mortal, after all—he and Liam were, at least, even if Oasis itself did live forever. “Well,” Noel said. He didn’t know how to exit this gracefully; awkwardly would have to do.

“I’m doing well for meself,” Liam said, as though Noel had asked. “My records are doing all right. I’ve been writing some songs, too, you know. Playing some gigs—or I was, before this cunting virus. I’m doing good, man.” The words tumbling out didn’t sound like the childish boasts from Liam’s twitter. They sounded like a reassurance: Don’t worry about me.

Noel’d been subjected to news about Liam’s sales figures now and again. He was not fucking worried. “Good for you,” Noel said, not meaning a word of it. “Right, bye then.” And he strode away before Liam could say another word. He almost expected to hear Liam calling, even running to catch up, but he didn’t.

That should have been it. Noel had every reason to think that would be it. He stopped thinking of it at all for a while, too busy watching the slow, soul-grinding process of City losing one goal to none. He’d gotten texts before the match, scolding him for the interview he’d done. Jinxed it, mate! By the time Chelsea rushed the pitch to celebrate, he felt as if he had.

It was time to get drunk. He’d had a few beers during the match, but now he was going to find some friends, complain about the officiating (fucking dire), and drink himself blind. That was all Noel was thinking of when he went looking for the gents’. He passed by the one with a crowd mobbing the door and went on to the next one down the way—the one with a big yellow cone sitting in front and a sign hanging on the door whose meaning he couldn’t possibly have guessed, if anyone called him on it. Not him; he didn’t speak a word of Portuguese. He glanced along the corridor, just in case, and then he slipped his mask off and ducked inside.

Sense memory hit him like a kick to the chest. Suddenly, violently he was shoved up against the door of some anonymous hotel room, Liam kissing him as if he might eat him alive. He could feel Liam’s fingers wrapped around his wrists, painfully tight, while the humid tang of Liam’s heat rose up all around them, so thick Noel could taste it.

Noel coughed, and he was back in the restroom. He coughed again, trying to clear that bizarre shock of memory out of his system. Where the fuck had that come from? After a moment he realized where. There he was, stood in the stadium’s reasonably clean-looking loo, and he could still smell that wet, sweet-sour odor.

Surely not. Surely it wasn’t…

He should have walked right out again. The stadium had plenty more loos. Whatever was happening in this one was not by any definition his problem, but the familiar scent (not familiar, it couldn’t be) clung to the inside of his nose and sank down into his lungs, and he didn’t have it in him to walk away.

“Hello?” he called.

“Oh, fuck me,” said a voice Noel would’ve have known anywhere, no matter how time and tobacco smoke weathered it. “Are you fucking serious?”

“I’m not the one holed up in the gents’ smelling of—of—”

The door swung open, and on the other side of it was Liam: unmasked now, weathered like his voice, bristly with two weeks’ stubble and well on his way to a beard. He was also deeply flushed with the first stages of heat. “I wasn’t talking to you,” he said.

“Who were you talking to, then?” Noel asked. He peered into the stall, but there’d certainly been no one in it but Liam.

“God,” Liam said.

They looked at each other, Liam with a bucket hat jammed on his head and sweating in his parka coat, Noel feeling a little steamy himself. He’d imagined a lot of reunions—a lot of attempted reunions, at least, with Liam making an idiot of himself at a concert or an industry event or in fucking Waitrose. Noel’d even imagined Liam skipping a few pills on purpose and turning up smelling exactly as he was at that moment, demanding Noel’s attention.

Stumbling across Liam in a restroom, scowling at Noel like he was personally responsible for all past and current misery, had not been part of that picture. “You’ve got a ride out of here,” Noel said, hoping it was true. “You don’t need a phone call or—or anything.”

“Yeah,” Liam said. “Somehow I’ve gotten along the past decade without you holding me hand.”

Noel flushed with that old familiar anger. “And yet here you are.”

Liam grumbled something to himself.

“What?”

“I said fuck off,” Liam said. He shifted forward, his whole body swinging with that promise of easy violence that’d gotten him into so many brawls over the years. “You got what you wanted, right? Here I am, arse out like I’m a fucking teenager again, making a mess of meself. You win, Mr. High Flying Bird, so just—just fuck off and leave me be.”

Ten seconds ago, Noel’d had every intention of doing exactly that. Now he folded his arms and said, “Or what? You’ll smash another guitar?”

Liam’s eyes widened in outrage: a familiar, comfortable return to form. “You bashed mine in, too, you fucking scally. Why the fuck didn’t you ever tell that part of the story, hmm? Or the time you took the clobber I gave you—nice shit, brand new shit, not even in stores yet—and donated it to a fucking charity shop? Or—”

“Oh, shut it. Nobody fucking cares.”

“You care,” Liam said, nonsensically. “What the fuck else did you follow me in here for?”

“I just wanted to take a fucking piss! You think I’d have come in if I’d known you were here?”

“Oh,” Liam said. With that single word he deflated all at once, all his bluster leaving him like a leaky balloon. Without it, he just looked tired and maybe a little hung over. He turned abruptly towards the sink. “Go on, then.”

Noel stared at Liam’s back and his bowed shoulders. Liam was stood at an angle, so Noel could see the water running over his hands, and of course that brought to mind the video someone had insisted on showing Noel over a year earlier: Liam, half-drunk, washing his hands at his kitchen sink while sing-songing a miserable bastardized version of Champagne Supernova, except it’d been ‘Soapernova’ instead. He’d looked just as scruffy then.

Noel’d kept the sound off when he’d rewatched the video later, on his own.

“What?” Liam said. He met Noel’s eyes in the mirror. “Thought you came here to piss.”

“Right,” Noel said, and fled to the urinal. He could have just left—there were plenty of other loos—but that felt like running away, and fuck him if he’d give Liam the last word.

But once he wasn’t looking at Liam anymore or listening to the utter bollocks pouring forth from his mouth, that left Noel smelling him. Christ, the odor had thickened just in the time since he’d walked in. Liam’s heats had always come on quick, but usually not that quick. Noel’s cock was already responding; it took a little effort to piss.

When he’d finished, Liam was still stood by the sink, eyeing Noel warily and for once in his life not running his mouth.

There was Noel’s chance. He’d done his business; it was time to leave before he soaked any more of Liam’s scent into his clothes or his lungs. He’d go find those friends and drink away the memory of the whole miserable day, as planned. He’d consider telling his mam later that he’d seen Liam, and then he’d think better of it and not say a word of the whole incident. He’d go back to never speaking to Liam ever again.

Instead of doing any of that, he said, “What happened to taking your fucking pills?”

Liam’s head came up, eyes firey. “Well, I don’t fucking need them, do I? I’m fucking forty-eight years old, what the fuck do I need fucking heat suppressants for?”

Noel folded his arms. “I can think of a thing or two.”

“I ain’t had a heat in three fucking years! I’ve fucking over it, man. I’m old now. I don’t—I don’t fucking get them anymore.” Liam sighed heavily. “Except around you, apparently.”

“Are you serious? You’re not serious.”

Liam shrugged.

“I did not trigger your heat by standing five feet away from you for two fucking minutes.”

“All right, then, you didn’t.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Noel said. He definitely should have left. A hell of a story it’d make. You’ll never believe who I found sweating through his heat in the loo of the Porto stadium. But he didn’t; he was rooted to the spot. He’d never thought to smell Liam like this again. Every breath he took seemed to draw Liam deeper into his lungs, his blood, his gut. Never mind Noel’s cock; his very skin seemed to buzz with awareness of just how close Liam was—and how far.

His feet weren’t fixed quite so firmly to the ground as he’d thought. They couldn’t take him away from Liam, but they could take him nearer. Before Noel really noticed what was happening, he was stood right in front of Liam, easily within reach.

Liam hadn’t moved an inch. He’d only watched with a sharp, wary gaze as Noel approached. Sweat glistened on his brow. He was breathing harshly and too fast; whatever his getaway plans had been, he’d surely pushed them too late for comfort. The needy funk of his arousal seeped from every pore, thick enough Noel could just about have drunk it out of the air.

“You’re a massive cunt,” Liam said, breathless.

“I know,” Noel said. “You said so on Twitter.”

“I fucking hate you.” He was closer now; the words were warm against Noel’s face.

“Likewise, I assure you.”

“Right,” Liam said, and then didn’t seem to know how to continue. He gazed down at Noel from those two extra inches he was always crowing about, his pupils huge, his mouth twisted with some emotion far too complex for Noel to read just then.

The first time they’d ever fucked, Liam had smelled just like this. The last time, too, and basically all the times in between, because it wasn’t wrong if your brother was in heat, was it? Noel could have been breathing memories into his lungs instead of air.

“Fucking hell,” Noel breathed. Then he gripped Liam’s neck, damp with sweat, and brought their mouths together.

Liam tasted the same. Twelve years since Noel had last willingly laid eyes on him, much less touched him, and yet Liam still tasted of beer and need. He still shuddered against Noel, his hands skimming over Noel’s back and shoulders like he didn’t know where to put them.

With a groan, Liam pulled away, very much unlike twelve years ago. “We’re in a fucking public loo,” he gasped.

Noel blinked at him. It took longer than it should for the words to sink in, and then understanding flooded through him like a chill. “Fuck,” he said, glancing behind them. That Closed sign hadn’t been enough to keep him or Liam out, and it almost certainly wouldn’t keep out every single other knobhead in the stadium. Possibilities flashed through his mind: find somewhere else, go somewhere else, bring Liam, leave him behind.

There’d be no leaving Liam behind. It’d have taken force or threats to his life to drag Noel away.

Liam would obviously be no help. He only stood there, sucking in huge gulping breaths and waiting for Noel to solve the problem like he always fucking had. Noel looked wildly around and settled at last on the space-age-looking garbage bin—shiny, like stainless steel, but hopefully not too heavy. “Eyar, give us a hand,” he said.

Liam tried, but he fumbled his grip and nearly rolled the bin onto Noel’s foot. “Fucking idiot,” Noel muttered.

“Sorry,” Liam mumbled.

That got Noel’s attention. Liam really didn’t look good. “Are you all right?” Leave it to Liam to have some kind of actual heat-related emergency, no euphemisms required.

“Yeah,” Liam said, utterly without conviction. “It just—it hits me hard nowadays. Just fuck me if you’re going to fuck me, yeah?”

“I was,” Noel said, mostly to himself. He rolled the bin the last couple of inches, so it was up against the door. Then he reached for Liam, cupping his jaw. “Come on,” he said, and he leaned up and kissed Liam again. Liam breathed again Noel’s mouth in shaky little gasps. Now he didn’t seem to have any trouble figuring out what to do with his hands; he gripped Noel’s arse and pulled him in until their hips were flush. Noel shifted, pressing his hard-on against Liam’s thigh.

“Do it if you’re going to do it,” Liam said.

“How d’ya want it?”

“Anything, man.” Liam sounded like he meant it. “Fucking anything.”

Noel undid his own belt buckle and then reached for Liam’s. Liam pulled just far enough back to let him. It was difficult, getting Liam’s unclasped; distantly Noel noticed that he wasn’t in much better shape than Liam anymore. Together they got Liam’s shorts unzipped and pooled at his ankles. Underneath he was as bare as the day he was born.

The sour stink of heat filled Noel’s nose. He reached around Liam and slid his fingers between Liam’s cheeks. He found him already slippery with slick. Christ, he’d probably soaked a wet spot through his shorts. Arse out, indeed. There was a good chance it’d been why he was hiding in a closed loo in the first place.

“Fucking get on with it,” Liam growled.

Noel had sworn some years back—2002, maybe—that he was never again fucking Liam through a heat anywhere but a bed. Not wedged into a bunk on the bus while everyone else was conspiciously elsewhere, not in some office in the bowels of the arena they’d just played. And yet here he was. He rejected the countertop (too low) and the floor (absolutely not). In the end there was only one option.

He took Liam by the hips, backed him up to the wall, and turned him around to face it. Noel swept his hands down Liam’s thighs—meatier than Noel remembered—and then took his own cock in hand, fully stiff just from the smell of Liam and the taste his mouth. He ached for Liam, and for the first time in twelve years, here Liam was.

For just a moment—barely a breath—Noel paused to savor that ache and the promise of fulfillment to follow.

“Noel,” Liam said.

Noel pinched Liam’s side: Shut it. Then he pressed the head of his dick to Liam’s hole. Liam moaned, shameless or just desperate. The sound burrowed deep in Noel’s gut, urging him on. He braced himself, feet grounded against the tile and hand to the wall, and he pushed into Liam.

“Fuck,” Liam groaned, a high-pitched sound that broke in the middle.

Liam felt so good around Noel. Dimly Noel was aware that he’d fucked other people in heat, but just then he couldn’t really believe it. It had never been this good except with Liam. No arse had ever taken his cock so sweetly, had gripped it so tightly, had been so needy and willing and ready as Liam’s.

“Fucking amazing,” Noel said, hardly knowing that he did.

“Noel,” Liam said. “Fuck, Noel.”

“You’re all right.” Noel stroked Liam’s arm. Only then did it occur to him that Liam was still dressed from the waist up. He was still wearing that ridiculous bucket hat, for God’s sake. Christ, Noel had him pressed up against a wall in a fucking public loo.

But all those concerns fell away when Liam shoved his arse back against Noel. “You just enjoying the fucking view back there?”

Noel didn’t bother with words. He drew back, groaning at the delicious hot drag of Liam around his dick, and then he thrust in again. Liam bellowed—in pleasure or fury or pain, it was all the same to Noel by then. His future had narrowed to a single point. He had one job to do, and by God he’d do it.

It was hard work, fucking against a wall. It was a young man’s game, but Noel played it anyway, thrusting into Liam, drawing back, pushing in again. Liam was swearing to himself almost continuously, pausing only to yell wordlessly with each thrust. Had he always been so fucking loud?

Memory intruded into Noel’s mind long enough to confirm that yes, yes he had.

The friction of Liam around him built into a new, more urgent heat all the way down into his balls. “Liam,” Noel warned.

“Just fucking do it.”

Noel rutted into Liam once more, twice, and then his orgasm burst through him. In the wake of those first waves of pleasure, his knot began to swell. In ten seconds it was all over, and Noel was lodged in Liam as surely as a fist in a jar. He sagged against him, legs shaking with effort and release both.

Liam was still moving erratically, thrusting into his hand. After a few moments, he grunted and went still.

Here was another reason not to go fucking people against walls: because there was no good position to wait out the aftermath. Especially not, to repeat, in a public loo. Liam sank slowly to his knees, dragging Noel down with him. Noel ended up straddling Liam’s calves and half-draped along his back. Liam crossed his arms against the wall and pillowed his head against them.

Gradually Noel’s racing pulse slowed. The tile floor grew harder and colder underneath his knees, and his thoughts began to clear.

The door banged against the rubbish bin loud enough to nearly stop Noel’s heart, which didn’t seem to start again until he craned his neck and saw that their makeshift barrier appeared to be holding firm. “It’s fucking closed!” he yelled.

The door bumped against the bin a couple more times, and then whoever it was must have wandered off, because all was quiet again.

“Fucking Christ,” Liam muttered.

Noel squeezed Liam’s shoulder protectively, feeling absurdly tender. It obviously didn’t mean anything. It was just instinct, that was all. It was like he and Liam became different people when Liam was in heat: people who could be easy with each other. Reality and Liam’s winning personality would reassert themselves soon enough. No need to hurry it along.

“I thought maybe I’d run into you today,” Liam said. His voice was soft and a little bit muffled against his forearms.

“Yeah?” Noel said, bracing himself for the aforesaid winning personality.

“I hoped so,” Liam said, even softer. Before Noel could figure out how to respond to that—to decide if he was recovered enough yet, callous enough, to pretend he hadn’t heard—Liam went on, “I didn’t expect any of this, though.”

“I’d fucking murder you if you had. If you’d planned it—”

“Nah. I was just about to take me emergency blocker when you showed up.”

“Your emergency blocker,” Noel repeated. Little flames of outrage flickered along the edges of his serenity. “You had a—and you—”

“You know I fucking hate them things. Make me feel like shit for days. Last longer than a heat does, especially now. I was just—I was working up to it, do you know what I mean?”

Liam had always hated them. It’d gone some way to explaining why he was in heat so fucking often in the early Oasis years—at least, it explained it to people other than Noel, who knew better. Liam just liked getting Noel’s hands on him.

So that was why Liam had been holed up in the gents’. Nothing to do with Noel, or even with a wardrobe failure. Liam hadn’t needed him even a little bit.

As if reading his mind, Liam said, “Like it better this way.”

Noel snorted. “Of course you do.”

Liam shifted awkwardly and reached for Noel’s hand, still resting on Liam’s arm. He gave Noel’s fingers a squeeze. Thank God Noel couldn’t see his face, his steady, blue-eyed gaze. A person could fall right into it if they looked too long. Instead he had only to feel the slow expansion and deflation of Liam’s breath against Noel’s chest.

Liam’s heat had broken, Noel realized. It’d used to take a lot longer than a single fuck, but Liam’s sweet, irresistible musk was already turning unmistakably sour.

With it, Noel’s hazy peace slowly leaked away, drop by drop. His knees were a sight older than the last time he’d been stupid enough to knot Liam in a loo, and they’d started to twinge. The air was uncomfortably cool against his bare arse. He must reek of Liam now; he’d have to go back to the hotel for a shower and a full change of clothes before he even started his night of misery drinking for the match that he could now barely remember.

He’d go out with his friends and pretend he’d never been here. He’d never been balls-deep in his brother, again. He’d never seen him at all; never felt the slow rhythm of Liam’s breath. And if that thought gave him a twinge, well, that was just a few leftover hormones working their way out of his system. They’d be gone soon enough.

At last his knot was small enough that he could slip free of Liam. Noel shoved himself to his feet, a little shaky still, and tucked himself back in. Liam shifted around, tugging his shorts up as he went, and then sat against the wall and looked silently up at Noel. His bucket hat had fallen off.

Noel’d been there too long, breathing Liam in, remembering. It came to him, sharp and sudden, that if he didn’t escape in a hurry he’d do something he’d regret even more than the fucking.

“Was that worth a phone number, then?” Liam asked.

“What?”

“Your number,” Liam said witheringly. “People use ‘em to text other people. Even call ‘em, sometimes.”

“Now hang on a minute.”

Liam stood, looming in front of Noel. “Too good to pick up the phone and send a fucking text. Not too good for a shag, though, innit?”

“Liam—” Noel began, without the first idea how he meant to continue.

“Right,” Liam said, rich with judgment he had no fucking right to. “Same old Noel.” He turned to the sinks and went to work rinsing his hands. For a strange, disorienting moment, it was as though time had folded; as though Liam had just walked out of the stall in the corner, and the sex hadn’t happened at all.

“If you got me up the duff,” Liam said, “I’ll just tell you through the fucking lawyers.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Noel said. He’d never even thought of a condom. All those years of fucking Liam through his heats, and Noel hadn’t ever forgotten. Not once.

Liam met his eyes in the mirror, and his gaze softened. “Nah, mate. I’m too old for it. You got nowt to worry about.” He ducked his head, hiding his face from Noel. “Probably won’t even have another heat. Suppose this was the last hurrah. The last time for us, eh? Fuck.”

When he looked up again, there were tears in his eyes.

Noel wanted to go to him. That was just leftover instinct, age-old, with no respect for feuds or one party being an absolute fucking arse, but still: Noel wanted to touch him. He wanted to pull Liam into his arms, press kisses to his jaw until those tears melted away. He took an aborted step.

Liam’s face twisted into a scowl. “Never mind that. You can fuck off now.”

“Liam—”

“I don’t need you, Noel.” Liam turned to face him, still shaking the water from his hands. “I been all right without you. Well, no, sometimes I was a fucking mess, but that was me own shit. You left, and I got on without you, and I never fucking asked you to come in here and—and—I never asked you, all right? So just fuck off.”

“Fine,” Noel said.

But he didn’t. He just stood there, held in Liam’s gaze. Liam’s eyes were still shiny-wet. Were it anyone else in the world, Noel would think the tears were a show, a performance for Noel’s benefit, but Liam felt every fucking thing through and through. He couldn’t have faked a tear if his life depended on it. No matter how much Liam had changed—thicker body, maybe marginally thicker skin—Noel knew in this he’d always be the same.

Without letting himself think about it, Noel dug his phone out of his pocket and typed in the passcode. “What’s your number?” he said.

Liam looked at him for a long, silent moment, and Noel wondered if he’d refuse to give it to him, turnabout being fair play or some shite.

After another moment, Liam gave him the digits. Noel dutifully put them in. He could have stopped then, said I’ll be in touch or Just in case. But in a day full of incredibly stupid fucking decisions, starting with that interview about the match and continuing up to the very present moment, Noel made one more. Into the empty box he typed, Me, and he sent the text. A moment later the chirp of a phone came from somewhere on Liam’s person.

Liam didn’t say a word, didn’t pull out his phone to check. He just looked at Noel.

“Right,” Noel said.

He turned away. He wrestled the bin away from the door and walked out it into the sunny afternoon. A geezer passing by wrinkled his nose, and Noel remembered that shower he desperately needed. He gave the loo door one last glance, and then he turned firmly towards the exit.

Noel expected a half-dozen texts before he reached his hotel room in Porto and at least fifty by the time he set foot in England. He expected Liam to start crowing about a reunion again on twitter, or—equally likely—to slag him off worse than ever. He wouldn’t even have put it past Liam to tweet about the heat shagging, though vaguely enough to be deniable.

(Or he’d just say it right out. In 1995 he’d told all of Earls Court that he and Noel’d had sex, and even the tabloids had barely commented.)

None of those things happened. Anais didn’t ask any awkward questions about shite she’d seen on Liam’s twitter. Eventually Noel’s curiosity got the better of him and he looked himself, but the only mention he found was Liam blaming City’s loss on the interview Noel had given, the same as a few thousand other Twitter knobheads. And he didn’t text Noel even once.

Maybe Noel’d typed the number in wrong after all. It was just as well, he told himself. That was relief he was feeling. Some catastrophically ill-advised heat sex, his body flooded hormones and memory, and he’d escaped without so much as a scratch to either reputation or peace of mind.

(Except for the dreams. One encounter and all those years he’d spent forgetting Liam’s body, the smell of him and the heat of his skin, were wiped away. Noel fell asleep already dreaming of him; he woke in the mornings with the sense-memory of Liam still lingering in his lungs and gut and cock.

Some mornings he woke with a tight, aching feeling in his chest. Our last hurrah, he heard, over and over again.)

On a day when Sara and the boys were gone from the house, the song Noel was trying to write kept going wrong, and every few moments he seemed to catch a whiff of someone who certainly wasn’t there, who wouldn’t have smelled like that even if he were there. Every time he caught another phantom whiff, he felt the heave of Liam’s breath against his chest. He saw Liam’s shock all over again when he’d first caught sight of Noel there in Porto; he felt the full force of Liam’s attention as he hadn’t in twelve fucking years.

At last Noel put the guitar aside and got out his phone. He looked up Liam Gallagher concert 2021. None of the results were from that year—the cunting virus, after all—so he clicked on a link at random. It was just audio; not what he wanted.

He tried again, this time choosing a video with a still that looked familiar. Right, it was from that gig Liam had done on a boat. Try as he might, Noel couldn’t escape news of Liam’s really big gigs. This video was only a short clip, an advert. Liam wore a fuzzy hat and sunglasses—never mind the thing had been filmed at night—and a parka that was for once weather-appropriate. The lyrics he sang weren’t familiar.

He sounded good. Far better than he had in 09, certainly. He looked fantastic, but that was just editing, Noel told himself. Liam’s voice was likewise courtesy of some well-paid sound editors. Noel knew the tricks. He watched the clip three more times, watching for them. Every time, Liam swaggered up to the mic as no one else in Britain ever had, omega or not, and Noel forgot everything else.

He looked up the song Liam kept singing in the clip. That turned into listening to the whole album, then the previous one, then the album for the acoustic concert Liam had done with MTV only twenty-three years after he’d swerved the first one and left Noel holding the mic. Pre-heat, Noel’s lily-white arse. Post-drugs was more like it.

The gig had Oasis songs in it, of course. How many years had it been since Noel’d last heard Liam sing Champagne Supernova?

It wasn’t the same; no amount of editing could lift Liam’s voice to those high notes anymore. That was why Noel’s throat ached as he listened: in sympathy. No other reason.

Noel got himself together eventually. He took the Youtube app off his phone, just temporarily while he finished recovering from the insanity that Liam always spread like a plague. The dreams started to fade. Two weeks after the match, Noel was halfway to forgetting the whole incident had ever happened—or telling himself he was, anyway.

Naturally, Liam fucked that all up. Noel checked his phone one Saturday and found a text notification from hours earlier, a single word: You.

Noel blinked at it for several moments, mystified and half-awake. Was it spam? Some deranged fan who’d got hold of his number? Only when he unlocked the phone and saw the rest of the conversation—such as it was—did he recognize the number as Liam’s. He put the phone aside in disgust.

He spent the whole morning ignoring the text the way he’d ignore a toothache: entirely un-fucking-successfully. He worked up a sweat in his gym, he showered, he had something to eat. He took the train into London and looked at shoes he didn’t need, just as he’d already planned. All through it, that single word glowed bright in his mind like a particularly sticky after-image.

At last, unwillingly, he brought his phone out and texted, Suppose you’re spending the day tweeting your toenail clippings.

The reply came almost instantly. Yeah got nothing else in my life im very boring watching football later. Then, you eating tofu you numpty.

Liam was a fucking imbecile. Forty-eight years Noel had known him, if he included the decade-plus of not speaking, and Liam had been an idiot for all of them. It wasn’t a new thought, and yet Noel was suddenly furious. Tofu.

He texted Matt Morgan. What’s Liam’s new address? Matt would have endless questions later, but for now all Noel got was a long string of question marks and the information he’d asked for. God knew how Matt always knew how to find this shit, but he did. Noel opened an app and called for a cab.

He had plenty of time for regrets in the half-hour it took to arrive at Liam’s grand new house in Highgate. It looked fucking old, like it’d feature in some historical movie, heavily framed in wood with windows each split up into dozens of tiny glass panes. Noel considered the possibility that Matt was having one over on him, but nonetheless he tried the gate—not even locked, nothing to keep out any passing celebrity seeker—and marched up to the front door. There, heart pounding, it occurred to him at last what an incredibly stupid idea this was. It was right up there with anything Liam had ever come up with.

Before he could decide to march away again and pretend it had never happened, the door swung open.

It was Liam, of course. He stared at Noel, for once at a loss for words. However stupid an idea this had been, at least Noel got the satisfaction of Liam looking utterly gobsmacked. Soft and unsure, Liam said, “Noel?”

“You were expecting John Lennon?”

“What you doing here?”

What an excellent question. Noel opened his mouth to say something caustic and ended up with, “Believe me, I’ve got no fucking idea.”

Liam didn’t jump on that like he could have. He only kept staring like he hadn’t seen Noel in years, like that brief encounter two weeks prior had just been some fever dream Noel’d had all on his own. He looked good, Noel thought. He wore just a t-shirt and cargo shorts rather than the omnipresent parka, so the general shape of his body was more apparent than at any point in Porto, even when Noel had been fucking him. His hair was sticking up in odd places, left to dry after a shower.

At last, Liam said, “You want to come in?”

And Noel, for lack of better ideas, said, “Yeah, all right.”

The house looked old-fashioned on the inside, too. They passed a huge stone fireplace on the way to, Noel discovered, the kitchen, which was spacious and bright, all painted white and fitted with chrome. “You want a drink or a cuppa?” Liam asked. “I’ve got a good lager or this weird poncy flavored beer. Debbie’s friend wanted me to try it. Tastes like arse. Should just throw it out.”

“Tea’s fine,” Noel said. He was taking no chances on drinking in Liam’s house.

Liam nodded and got out two mugs. “I’m not pregnant,” he said, out of nowhere. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”

“Oh. Good.” Noel hadn’t let himself consider that possibility. In fact, he realized with some alarm that he’d simply believed Liam before when he’d said it wasn’t possible. Christ. Had he really forgotten what Liam was like? He’d just believed him? That must have been the pheromones at work.

“Yeah,” Liam said. “Went to the doctor just in case, do you know what I mean? Just wanted to be sure. He did the tests, said I wasn’t. What a right cock-up that’d have been. Right?” Liam glanced at Noel. There was something aching in it: a kind of plea. Looking to Noel for assurance, like he’d never lost the habit in all those years.

“Yes,” Noel said firmly. “Yes, that would have been an absolute fucking disaster for everyone involved.”

“Yeah,” Liam said, turning away again. “Well, no point worrying about that anymore. Doc said probably that was the last heat, like I thought. Imagine that, eh?” Liam took a big gusty breath. “No more emergency blockers or fucking emergency shagging. None of that. No you or—or Bonehead.”

It took Noel a few moments to follow that last bit. Yes, he supposed if Liam still refused to manage his suppressants properly, Bonehead was as good an alternative as anyone. After the break up, Noel’d wondered once or twice what Liam had done the first time he’d gone hot without Noel there to save his arse, literally and figuratively. Now Noel had his answer.

Liam glanced back, looking for a reaction.

“Well,” Noel said. “Good for you.”

“Yeah.”

Liam didn’t say any more after that, just kept throwing Noel little glances, as if checking that he was still there. If they were other people, probably some small talk would have been called for, but Noel hated that shite at the best of times. Anyway, he had an idea Liam would only slag him off if he tried.

There was no fucking reason for Noel to be sat in Liam’s kitchen, waiting for a cuppa. Why had he even come?

Ah, right. “Tofu,” Noel said.

This time when Liam looked his way, there was a twinkle in his eye.

Noel told himself he hated that twinkle. Smug fucking bastard. “Do you know what’s in tofu?” he asked.

There was a pause. Warily, Liam said, “It’s beans, ain’t it?”

“Soy beans,” Noel agreed. Sara liked chunks of it in her curry occasionally, not that Noel’d ever tell Liam that. “And have you ever had it?”

“Like fuck.”

“Me neither.”

Liam snorted. There was another pause, perhaps while Liam waited for Noel to follow this up with something funnier, more cutting, but Noel didn’t have a fucking thing. Finally, Liam asked, “That’s what you come over for? Because of my text?” Liam asked this dubiously, as well he might. Fuck.

“What, you thought it was just to look at your ugly face?”

As if Liam could ever really be ugly. He was a bit jowly now, and he had wrinkles clustered at the corners of his eyes, but those eyes were just as bright as ever, as blue as a cloudless sky. He’d grown his hair out; Noel couldn’t tell if he just hadn’t bothered to ever get a trim, or if it was meant to look like that, all ragged and uneven. It was impossible to say with Liam. Somehow it still suited him.

“You love my face,” Liam was saying. It was as though no years had passed at all, as though they still talked shite to each other all their time—to each other’s faces, not through the press or the internet. “What was it you called me? ‘Stunningly beautiful’?”

Probably Noel had done. Who fucking knew. Even after he’d kicked the cocaine habit, his memory never quite held onto things like some people’s seemed to. “It’s your ego that’s stunning,” he said. “And supposing I did say that, it would have been a fucking long time ago. You’re a bit longer in the tooth now, wouldn’t you say?”

“Didn’t stop you the other week,” Liam said. To Noel’s surprise, a flush spread along the back of Liam’s neck. Abruptly he turned to face Noel with a wild look in his eye. “Look, Noel, what the fuck are you here for? I already—I already said I’m not pregnant, so you don’t have to worry about that, and we both know it’s not about fucking tofu. Why are you chatting me up in my fucking kitchen? What do you want?”

Noel hadn’t even gotten to look at him when they’d shagged. All those years of keeping his distance, all his resolve had been lost with his first breath of Liam, and then Noel’d hardly even gotten to touch him. What a fucking waste.

“Was it really your last heat?” Noel asked.

Liam shrugged. “Probably. No guarantees, the doctor said, but I shouldn’t have even had that one, so.”

For twenty-six years Noel’d been giving into the temptation of Liam, and now at last that temptation was moved entirely beyond his reach. Noel was safe. He should have been relieved, overjoyed. Instead he felt a chilling ache in his chest like the one that came at the very end of a heat, when the hormonal tide had gone out and left only exhaustion and wreckage behind it.

“Anyway, not like you care, right?” Liam said. “You missed plenty of ‘em before and didn’t—and you didn’t even notice.”

“Liam,” Noel said.

Liam nodded, as if hearing something Noel hadn’t said. “I told you I done all right, but you done fine without me, too. Got that solo career you always wanted. Got the crowds all to yourself. You can talk any bollocks you want to that band of yours, and not a soul’ll argue with you. Your music’s a bit shite, but I guess you like it that way these days. You got your missus and your kids. You’ve got everything you want in the whole fucking world, haven’t you?”

Liam leaned back against the countertop, his hands curling over the edge of it. He wasn’t crying, like Noel had sometimes imagined over the years, nor yelling, which Noel had considered a lot more likely. He only stood there quietly, watching Noel and waiting for him to agree.

As if Noel’d ever give him the satisfaction.

Noel pushed to his feet. He walked right up to Liam, close enough he could hear Liam’s quiet breath and see each individual eyelash. “You’ve got it all figured out, have you?”

Liam leaned back to look down his nose at Noel. His eyes had gone dark and watchful. When Noel breathed in, he smelled only Liam’s aftershave. No liquid heat poured down into Noel’s lungs; no strange, new flush rose on his skin. Moving closer, he closed his palm over Liam’s hip, solid and warm. Noel did what felt natural, easy: he cupped Liam’s jaw, freshly shaven and baby-smooth, and he pressed his lips to Liam’s.

For a moment they both stood utterly still. Then, to Noel’s shock, Liam shifted away—still within reach, but too far for kissing. “What’s this, then?” Liam said.

“What the fuck do you think it is?” Noel asked. Now he was flushed, but with humiliation.

“You can’t—you can’t just kick me into another heat, you know. It’s too soon, even if I still could.”

“Who said anything about another heat?”

“What, like we’re gonna fuck without one? Right.” Liam huffed softly, without humor.

It wouldn’t be the first time. Granted, Noel didn’t remember those few other times very well. He’d been off his head for most of them. It turned out that given enough cocaine and booze, Noel’s decisions looked pretty much like the ones he made when Liam was in heat.

But Noel was entirely sober, stood there in Liam’s kitchen. Liam leaned against the counter top, still not even angry: his little brother who’d had the fucking nerve to get old while Noel wasn’t looking, who sometime in the intervening years had apparently given up expecting things of Noel.

“You want to see the house?” Liam said. “I’ll give you a tour.”

“No, I don’t fucking want to see the house,” Noel said, but Liam was already nearly out of the kitchen. He glanced back, waiting for Noel to catch up.

The house was all right for the sort of thing it was, which was to say not Noel’s sort of thing. Too old and heavy-feeling, with the wooden beams exposed above his head. The garden, though—he could admit Liam had done well there.

“Beautiful, innit?” Liam said, eyes shining. “Got my teepee there, and the landscapers keep up all the flowers and shit. I like coming out to just sit, you know, with a beer and that. We got us a nice grill we bring out sometimes. I banged it together.”

“You did,” Noel said, as a matter of form. “And it works?”

“Well enough,” Liam said, unperturbed. He looked happy, even. “You want to see the teepee?”

“No,” Noel said, but he followed Liam across the lawn anyway. Liam pulled away the flap and ducked inside, and Noel went in after him. A light flickered on above their heads. The teepee was tall enough to stand in, barely. There was a ring of cushions on the ground for sitting.

“Come out here to think sometimes. Away from everything, you know.”

“I can hear the neighbors from here,” Noel pointed out. Their voices were too far away to really make out the words, but plenty close enough to break any illusion of an island getaway or whatever Liam had in mind. Farther still, he heard the sound of a car out on the road.

“You got no fucking romance in you,” Liam said. “No imagination.”

“I reckon you’ve got enough for the both of us.”

Finally that unnatural calm broke, and Liam’s scowl came out. “Yeah,” Liam said. “Should have known you wouldn’t rate a teepee. Not cool enough for you, innit? Dunno why I brought you out here. Come on.” He turned to go.

Noel caught his arm. “Liam.”

Liam glared at him from under furrowed brow. Noel’s blood was rushing in that old familiar way, and irritation prickled his skin. Next he’d say something cutting, Liam would puff up like a maligned parakeet, and it’d all go to hell the same way it always fucking had. Predictable, that’s what they were. Inevitable. Utterly hopeless.

“Fuck it,” Liam said. He pulled Noel in and kissed him.

It wasn’t like in the stadium loo. It wasn’t like those dozens of other times when Liam had been in heat or they’d both been high out of their minds. Noel was fully aware of every trivial detail, every passing thought: how Liam’s bottom lip was a little rough, likely from being chewed on; how deliberately he gripped Noel’s shoulder and hip, pulling them flush together.

He’d got good at kissing at some point, or else he’d always been good at it when he was sober and between heats, and Noel’d just never known. Noel reckoned the former, though. He pressed a little closer. Liam stilled, as if he’d expected Noel to just stand there and take whatever Liam felt like giving him. Not fucking likely.

Noel pulled away. “Haven’t you got a bedroom somewhere in that pile of yours? I ain’t doing this on the fucking ground, I’ll tell you that.”

Liam looked at him, stock-still, and didn’t answer. The silence stretched out, and Noel grew impatient. “Well?” he said.

“Yeah, all right,” Liam said. He hesitated for a moment longer, just staring at Noel like he was surprised to see him even though Liam was the one who’d dragged him out there in the first place. Then he shook his head and pushed out of the teepee into the sun.

Inside the house, Liam glanced back every few steps to see if Noel was still following.

He oughtn’t have been. He ought to have passed right through the house and out the front door. He ought never have set foot inside the place. He oughtn’t to have shagged his brother through a heat that first time years and years ago or any of the times since, but ought had gotten lost somewhere in the midst of earning his second million, and Noel’d never got it back.

Inside the bedroom door, Liam pulled him in and kissed him again, but still tentative, not entirely sure of himself. His hand found its way to Noel’s arse and gave it a squeeze. He’d always been fascinated by Noel’s arse, never mind that Noel barely had one.

At least, he’d been fascinated when he wasn’t in heat. Just another thing that was different.

“Come on, get this off,” Noel said, reaching for Liam’s t-shirt.

Liam shied away a full two steps out of reach, glaring like Noel’d just tried to fucking assault him.

“You’re not wearing that to bed,” Noel said, suddenly convinced that was exactly what Liam meant to do. “I’m not shagging you like that, like—like we’re still in that fucking shithole of a loo.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Liam said hoarsely.

“What, shagging?”

“We never did before.”

Noel’d meant to do this all along, he realized. The intent had hidden deep under his skin, lying flush with his bones where he couldn’t catch sight of it and change his mind. He hadn’t thought of it at all, only let it carry him to Liam, and so he’d never once considered that Liam might say no. “Well, not if you’re going to fucking psychoanalyze it, we’re not. You gonna lie me down on a couch, tell me what my dreams mean? Ask if my mam loved me?”

“She’s my mam, too,” Liam said, as if that was the important point.

Maybe it was the point, after all. Or maybe those years had just been too long. Liam was wary and nervy, so different from how Noel remembered him. “Fucking hell,” Noel breathed. “I’m a fucking idiot, clearly. I’ll just see myself out.” He turned to leave, humiliation burning up his spine. He really, really shouldn’t have come.

Before he reached the door, Liam caught his arm. Unwillingly, Noel looked back to see Liam still staring at him like he was completely mental. “You’re here,” Liam said.

“Oh, that’s what this is. I should have known. You’re off your head,” Noel said scathingly, though even as he said it he didn’t quite believe it.

“I didn’t take anything,” Liam said. He came round to stand in Noel’s path. He rubbed down Noel’s arms and up again, just touching, his hands coming finally to rest heavily against Noel’s neck. “Feels like I must have done, though. You, here in my house? Wanting—even when—”

His eyes had gone shiny, and Noel felt the gears of a very old, rusty instinct begin to turn. “None of that,” he said. He took Liam by the hips and pulled him in close: the echo of what he’d done dozens of times and yet entirely new. He leaned up and kissed Liam again, and Liam kissed back, a triumph Noel hadn’t dreamed he’d have to earn. After a moment, Noel pulled away and said, “Now, do you want to?”

After a moment Liam nodded. Not quite the enthusiasm Noel’d gotten back in that miserable loo, but he could work with it. “You gonna show me to this bed of yours?” he asked.

“It’s mega,” Liam said. He took Noel by the hand—like Noel might still have disappeared if Liam didn’t keep a hold on him—and tugged him over to the massive king bed that took up a good portion the room. Before Noel had time to realize what was happening, Liam flopped dramatically backwards onto it, landing with arms outspread and his feet hanging off the end. He grinned up at Noel: See? See how mega it is?

“You’re a nutter,” Noel said

Liam only grinned wider. He swiped his arms up and down along the bedspread, like he was making a snow angel. He was ridiculous. He was completely off his fucking nut, and Noel had missed him so badly that it hurt to look at him, like Noel’s heart had gone to sleep some years back and was just now waking up, all pins and needles.

None of that, now.

Noel kicked off his shoes and crawled onto the bed. He knelt at Liam’s side. Liam looked up at him, gaze soft and a little awed like he’d gotten sometimes an eon ago, when Noel writing songs at all was still a novelty and he’d just played Liam a new one. “Come here,” Liam said. He tugged at Noel’s sleeve, and Noel did as he wanted, lying down next to him on the bedspread. Liam rolled over to look Noel searchingly in the eye. He palmed Noel’s pec, squeezing gently until he located Noel’s nipple under his shirt. He thumbed over it, still watching Noel’s face. The flush Noel felt at that touch was all his own. No chemical enhancements at all, natural or artificial.

It was very still. Outside there were dogs, cars, people yelling across lawns and fences, but the walls of Liam’s house were thick, and there were no sounds inside except the ones he and Liam made themselves: their quiet breathing, the creak of the bed frame as Liam shifted forward those last few inches and put his mouth on Noel’s.

His first kisses were brief, careful. They were quick forays into unknown territory followed by hasty retreats: entirely unsatisfying. Noel caught the back of Liam’s neck. When he moved in to kiss Liam at last, it was long and slow and thorough. The kiss was a wet one by the time Noel finished, mouth to open mouth, and it left Noel gasping for breath. He slid his hand under the hem of Liam’s shirt, pressing his palm to the skin.

Liam went still, but he didn’t launch himself off the bed. Didn’t try to move at all.

Noel stroked along Liam’s side. He wanted to touch him all over, grind his growing hard-on against Liam’s hip, take him, but this was a beginning. He ought to have remembered the sweet warmth of Liam’s skin—he’d touched him in the nude plenty of times—but those memories were all red-hued, vaguely frightening in their intensity and best not looked at too closely.

“Ain’t the same, is it?” Liam said, reading Noel’s mind in that same uncanny way he had in the Oasis days.

“No, it isn’t.” Noel tugged at the hem of Liam’s shirt.

Liam caught his hand. “I don’t look the same, you know.”

“That’s right, I do see some gray,” Noel said, peering at Liam’s temple. “Gone a bit long between dye jobs, have you?”

“You’re all gray,” Liam said, outraged. “A fucking snowy owl, you are.”

“Yeah,” Noel said. He found himself grinning. He was about to make another one of those really bad decisions, the kind that only came over him every decade or so, and he wasn’t even worried. “That’s right. I’m your elder, you’d best mind me.”

“Will I, fuck,” Liam said, but this time when Noel began to slide his shirt up his side, Liam let him. He sat up and lifted his arms to help Noel get it off, and then the undershirt, too. Now he was down to skin and looking none too happy about it, but not trying to leave, either.

He’d got thicker, like Noel’d seen in the pap photos. He’d been fretting about getting a belly for twenty years, and now he’d got one, a hairy gut that pushed out a bit over the waistband of his shorts. It heaved very gently in time with his breath. Noel’s slagged him off for getting fat, but now, up close, he couldn’t remember what he’d been on about. This was still just Liam. Just his brother. Noel scraped his fingernails lightly through the fuzzy mat of hair on Liam’s chest. Before Liam could react, Noel reached out and tweaked a nipple.

“Piss off!” Liam exclaimed, batting at Noel’s hand. “Anyway, it’s your turn now.”

“What?”

Liam rolled his eyes and reached for Noel’s button-down. Noel shoved him off—he’d learned the hard way never to entrust a shirt he liked to Liam—and undid the buttons himself. As he did, he felt a shiver of—anticipation? Alarm? Liam wasn’t the only one who’d changed in the last decade. Then Noel’d changed again as the pandemic dragged on and on. He took a little longer with that last button than he needed, bracing himself.

“What you fucking waiting for? Everyone knows about your six pack.”

“Hardly,” Noel said. He’d been trimmer a couple of years ago, but even then he hadn’t liked hard work enough to try for much muscle definition. No one but Sara and the kids ever saw him without a shirt anyway. Except here was Liam, eyebrows high with impatience, and Noel would have liked something better to show off than a bit of a beer belly acquired during a miserable year and a half indoors.

Stalling could only get him so far. Unwillingly he unfastened that last button and threw his shirt aside. Then Liam was sweeping his undershirt up his sides, like Noel’d kept him waiting too long and he wasn’t going to wait one more moment. There went the undershirt, and here Noel was, a bit soft in the middle and a bit wizened and not, it had to be said, possessed of a body anyone would pick out from a crowd as one to get their hands on.

Liam hardly seemed to notice any of that. He reached for Noel immediately, drawing him in. He palmed Noel’s pec and pressed in for a kiss, wet and urgent. Before Noel could do much more than open his mouth to him, Liam was straddling him and framing Noel’s face in his hands. He kissed him again. There was something desperate about Liam’s moves, uncoordinated, almost like—but no, he wasn’t in heat. Noel would’ve smelled it on him. “Liam—”

“Twelve fucking years,” Liam said. The next moment he pushed Noel firmly down onto the bed. Liam had never spent much time on top, and for a moment Noel felt a shiver of uncertainty. All Liam did was stare at him, though, like he was memorizing him.

“Well?” Noel said, unsettled. “You want a photograph? I’ll even sign—fuck.”

Liam was nuzzling at Noel’s neck. Noel would have said he wasn’t particularly sensitive there, but Liam wasn’t kissing or even sucking at the skin, just brushing his lips across it. It tickled. “This what you wanted, right?” Liam murmured. His breath was warm. “What you came here for?”

Not specifically, and yet somehow Noel’s skin was tingling wherever Liam put his mouth. Noel arched against him, and there, that was good, that pressure of Liam’s thigh on his cock. Liam hummed against him. He inched down Noel’s body. He pressed a kiss to the hollow of Noel’s throat, and that felt good, too. “Liam,” Noel tried again.

Liam nipped at Noel’s pec hard enough to make him yelp. “Fucking years I’ve waited. You can wait five fucking minutes.”

Noel had waited every one of those years, too, though he hadn’t realized it. Hadn’t let himself even consider the possibility that there was anything to wait for. “Last week,” he protested.

“Nah,” Liam said, an unanswerable rebuttal. He shifted a little further down and went sniffing around Noel’s chest like he was a big ugly cat. He licked across Noel’s nipple, and Noel groaned, because he was that fucking turned on—and from nothing more than being lain on and nosed at and licked. He tangled his hand in Liam’s hair, meaning to urge him on—to what, Noel couldn’t have said—but he got distracted by the marvel of touching Liam’s hair. Of course it was well-conditioned, not as soft as it’d been once because of the gray strands mixed in, but it smelled nice and fell easily through his fingers, and it was Liam’s.

Liam was on the move again. He gently nibbled a path between Noel’s pecs, towards his navel. When he reached Noel’s waist he didn’t even pause, just sat up and unfastened Noel’s belt, then the button of his jeans. He began working Noel’s jeans down his hips. Noel helped him, lifting his arse off the bed, but he found he’d gone tense, and his breathing had shallowed, thinking of Liam looking at him. As if Liam could fucking talk. As if Liam hadn’t put on a stone or two since Noel’d seen him last. As if—

“So you’re human after all,” Liam murmured. He looked down at Noel without any mockery Noel could see, only a weird, gentle fondness that made Noel’s skin prickle. He thumbed across Noel’s hip bone, and then he shimmied down and pressed his face into Noel’s soft gut.

“Liam,” Noel said—not to get his attention, not to get him to start doing something or stop doing it. He didn’t know why he said it, except that Liam was there, and he hadn’t been in so fucking long.

Liam shifted, snuffling loudly against Noel’s skin. He tugged down the band of Noel’s briefs. Noel felt a pinch, then another one. Liam was working his way across Noel’s stomach with his teeth. “What the fuck are you doing?” Noel asked. The question got a little breathless at the end. Fuck, he was hard. His cock was straining in his pants, and Liam had angled himself so Noel couldn’t even grind against him. “Will you—will you just fucking—”

Liam bit him harder, properly sinking his teeth in.

“Fuck!” Noel yelled. He shoved up on his elbows so that he could see the reddening mark of Liam’s teeth. “What the fuck was that for?”

“So you remember me,” Liam said. “Can’t have you forgetting this time.”

Noel’d never come close to forgetting Liam in twelve years of trying.

Liam was already moving on. He inched back on elbows and knees until he was staring at the arc of Noel’s cock in his pants. After a moment’s deliberation, he drew the briefs down, baring Noel to the air.

Noel hadn’t really planned how this would play out. For that he’d have to have admitted that he meant it to happen at all. His dreams of the last few weeks had mostly been unformed, made up of impressions: of Liam’s mouth beautifully swollen from kissing, of the glorious drag of his arse around Noel. Noel’d never imagined the wet heat of Liam’s mouth so close to his cock, and the sight made him nearly dizzy.

He swallowed. “Liam.”

Liam’s gaze flitted to him. His mouth stretched in a dangerous, Cheshire-cat grin. “Say please.”

“Fuck, Liam. Please.”

Liam stared. He clearly hadn’t expected Noel to give in so fast. He got over his surprise quickly, though, and turned his attention to Noel’s cock. He moved in like a snake, one those cobras from India, winding closer in like he was sneaking up on Noel. But once he was just inches away, he froze, mesmerized, like he’d become the prey.

“Fucking get on with it,” Noel said.

Liam threw him a glance. He shifted a little closer and brushed his cheek against the head of Noel’s cock. The touch was barely anything, not nearly what Noel wanted. It left a wet streak across Liam’s skin. Liam considered Noel’s cock, his eyes crossing a little, and then he opened his mouth and carefully sucked the head in.

Liam’s mouth was incredible. Perfect. Noel was quite sure it was the best thing he’d ever felt in his life. He collapsed against the bed, gripping the bedclothes in an effort not to come on the spot. “Liam.”

Liam’s hum vibrated deliciously around Noel’s cock. He tongued over the head, across Noel’s slit, and Noel practically levitated off the bed, entirely unable to keep from thrusting into Liam’s mouth. Liam pulled off, coughing.

“Sorry,” Noel said. “Sorry.”

He expected Liam to get right back to it, but he only gave Noel’s cock a long, pensive look.

“Well?” Noel said. He meant it as a demand; it sounded more like a plea. Christ, he was close.

Liam lifted his eyes to Noel’s. “You could fuck me if you wanted.”

Noel blinked at him. Liam’s mouth was close enough to Noel’s cock that Noel could feel his breath, and for a few lust-addled moments, all Noel could think of was why didn’t Liam keep going.

Finally the words arranged themselves into something he understood. He gripped the bedspread more tightly. “Do—do you want me to?”

“That ain’t the same, either,” Liam said, which was not an answer. He dropped his gaze to stare moodily at Noel’s knee. “I always wanted to try it, do you know what I mean? When I wasn’t in heat, just once, so I could remember it properly.” His hand had been resting on Noel’s bare thigh; now his grip tightened until the pressure almost hurt. “You always said there was—there was no fucking point, was there? I didn’t fucking need it. And you didn’t want it, I guess.”

Noel remembered that, barely. They’d fucked around outside of heat less as the years had gone on, especially after Noel’d given up coke. Once Liam had got serious with Nicole, even the heat sex happened less. She was better at getting Liam to take his pills than Patsy’d ever been—or Noel either, possibly because, if he was honest, he’d never tried that hard.

But even when they’d both got high as fuck and touched each other as brothers weren’t meant to—not even when one of them was in heat, not really, not outside soaps and porn—even then, Noel had kept them from ever crossing that last line.

He’d been too long answering. Liam was already turning back to Noel’s cock, no doubt intending to suck the last of Noel’s sanity out of it along with his come. For a moment Noel was certain he would let him; surely no one on Earth or in heaven could fault him if he did.

“I wanted it,” Noel said hoarsely. Liam’s head shot up, his gaze fixing on Noel like it was some kind of death ray. “You—you fucking idiot. Of course I did. I always fucking wanted it.”

Liam stared at him from under his heavy eyebrows and his ragged, untrimmed hair. For once his expression was utterly unreadable. The silence stretched out, thick and syrupy, and then Liam did absolutely the worst thing he could have done: he pushed up off the bed, far away from Noel and Noel’s flushed, aching cock. He stood there in the middle of the floor with a visible bulge in his shorts, and he said, “You’re a fucking cunt.”

He stared a moment longer. Then he stomped across the room to the master bath and slammed the door shut behind him.

“Fucking Christ,” Noel breathed. For a moment, shock overrode all else. He sat up and stared at the door like it was a mirage that Liam might walk through or at least open again. After several minutes had passed and no such thing had occurred, anger started to leak back into Noel. He looked down at his cock, now softened somewhat. He’d been so fucking close. He’d been riding a high like he hadn’t felt in twenty years, and he knew in his bones the orgasm Liam had been about to pull out of him would have been fucking incredible.

It wouldn’t take much to get him up again. He considered it a moment, even got an experimental grip on himself, and then gave up the whole idea. What was the point? Liam had fucking ruined it.

Noel should leave, he supposed. Let Liam throw himself a tantrum in the loo. Noel’d been well shut of him for twelve years; might as well make it thirteen.

The thought felt like Noel was wrenching his own shoulder out of socket, or maybe something even more vital than his shoulder. All his finely-honed self-preservation instincts told him to leave, but he knew in his gut that if he did, he really never would come back again. That fucking terrified him.

He took a few careful breaths. He was not going to have a panic attack in Liam’s house. He could get a drink of water, he thought. Maybe Liam would have come out by the time he got back. Noel was halfway down the hall, naked as a newborn and still half-hard, before he thought about what would happen if Debbie the missus walked into her kitchen and found him that way. Would she be coming home anytime soon? He’d never even thought to ask.

He took a turn into a guest bath instead. He took a cup from the stack by the sink and drank his fill, and then he returned to the bedroom. The bathroom door was still closed.

Noel walked up to it. “Liam, you fucking coming out anytime soon?”

“Piss off,” came the reply, loud and sharp.

Noel tried the door knob. It wasn’t locked. Quietly he twisted it and pulled the door open. Liam was sat on the closed toilet lid: a thick-set, graying, middle-aged man with his face in his hands. As Noel watched, Liam’s shoulders shook. Noel was struck with that same wrenching feeling as before. This time it clearly came from somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. He didn’t know what to do.

He always knew what to do, and whenever he spied a situation on the horizon where he might not, he made fucking sure it never arrived. Now his brother was hiding in a bathroom, crying into his hands, and all Noel could do was stare at him.

All at once Liam’s head came up. His face twisted in anger. “I told you to fucking piss off! Get the fuck out!”

“No,” Noel said.

For a moment he thought Liam was going to jump up and run him out, and if he did, then Noel was going to fucking let him. He’d let Liam run him all the way out of the fucking house—ideally with a detour to grab his clobber—and he’d never darken the door again.

Liam stayed where he was. “Don’t fucking look at me,” he said.

“Fine,” Noel said. He didn’t want to anyway. He’d been immune, once, to the childish tears that welled up in those enormous blue eyes, but he’d lost the knack. Deliberately he walked in and leaned his bare arse against the countertop a little ways down from Liam, so he could look at the opposite wall.

Liam’s breath hitched, and the walls echoed it back. Nice acoustics. Noel wondered if Liam ever brought a guitar in just to fuck around with.

The bathroom was cold, especially given Noel had no clothes on. Goosebumps rose on his arms. Every time Liam made another miserable sniffing sound, Noel wished a little more that he’d had the good sense to stay out in the bedroom. He tried to think of the new song he was working on, but somehow he couldn’t keep hold of the lyrics he’d written.

Into that echoing silence, Liam said, “I suppose that’s it for you today, then. Getting old is fucking shite, innit?”

“What?”

Liam nodded towards Noel’s flaccid cock. “Not getting it up twice are you? And you already—you already had it off without me.” His jaw was set, and Noel knew with utter certainty that Liam was trying not to tear up again.

“I didn’t,” Noel said.

Unwillingly, Liam looked up at Noel. He clearly didn’t believe him.

“I didn’t,” Noel repeated. Don’t get any ideas, he wanted to say. I didn’t mean anything by it. But Liam’s red-rimmed eyes had grown wide, and Noel kept his protests to himself. “Fine,” he said, “don’t believe me.”

Liam eyed him warily and expressed no opinion either way. After a moment he turned away again. Quietly, almost to himself, he said, “I fucking knew it.”

Noel let that bait lie. He let it lie some more. Finally, inevitably, he took it. “Knew what?”

“That you—that you—fucking Christ, Noel. All those years, and we could’ve…”

“We couldn’t,” Noel said gently.

“We could if you weren’t such a fucking prick, if you didn’t have to make everything so fucking hard all the fucking time—if—” Liam took a sobbing breath. “What are you doing here, Noel? What do you fucking want?”

I thought I made it quite fucking clear what I wanted, Noel thought, but the words didn’t come. He thought of other replies, all with the same bite, the same old familiar anger that Liam effortlessly drew out of him. He held them all in. Awkwardly, feeling a right idiot, he shifted over and squeezed Liam’s bare shoulder.

It was a mistake. As long as there was space between them, he could still remember the ways Liam infuriated him, all the reasons he’d stayed away so long. Now he felt the hitch of Liam’s breath under his hand, and it hurt. Each pained sound twinged in Noel’s chest. There was no heat scent in the air at all, and yet he still felt so full of Liam’s grief that he was choking on it.

“I just missed you,” Noel said, hoarse. “Can’t—can’t I do that? Miss my brother?”

Liam lifted his watery gaze to Noel. “You never did before.”

“I did,” Noel said. He felt as though he’d dragged the words out of himself by force. His throat was tight, and he was gripping Liam so tightly it probably hurt. “I did.”

Liam searched Noel’s face for God knew what. Sincerity? Noel’d always been shit at that, outside of a song. An expression more neutral than hostile, that was the best he could offer. If the outcome of all this depended on the look of Noel’s face, they were fucked.

When Liam had been looking at him a long time and not turned away yet, not given up, Noel swallowed and said, “Will you come back to bed?”

After a long, aching moment, Liam nodded. He pushed to his feet and reached for toilet paper to blow his nose on. Christ, he’d only gotten louder and more obnoxious at that since Noel’d last heard him do it. He dabbed the paper at his eyes, too, and then he threw it away and nodded Noel towards the door.

Noel sat on the bed. There was no hope of returning to where they’d been before, Liam full of mischief and Noel nearly mad with arousal. Noel took a breath, grieving that lost orgasm, and then he let it go. “Come here,” he said. Liam sat on the edge of the bed, quite near, and Noel cupped his jaw and kissed him.

Liam’s breath shuddered. It wasn’t quite a sob.

Noel carefully mouthed at Liam, coaxing Liam’s lips open. Something had shifted between them in the bathroom. What Noel wanted most wasn’t to get off—although he still had ambitions in that area—but to prod Liam into enjoying himself again. Noel’d braced himself for all sorts of unpleasantness when he’d come here, but what he absolutely couldn’t fucking handle was Liam hiding himself away, crying. It went against all the laws of the universe.

Surely Liam hadn’t changed that much, had he? Surely.

Noel took his time. This wasn’t how they’d ever kissed, too driven by hormones or drugs or just Noel’s fear of what he might discover if he slowed down long enough to really take in who he was kissing.

He fucking well knew now, yet here he was. He stroked Liam’s shoulder and down his arm, mindless, just touching him and trying to say I’m here.

Liam’s shuddering eased. His hands began to wander over Noel in return, brushing down his sides, over his hips, along his thighs. His fingers lingered there on the inside of Noel’s thigh, flexing, relaxing, never quite touching Noel’s cock. It was maddening to have him so close and yet so far from where Noel wanted him. Just the tantalizing idea of direct contact brought arousal thrumming through Noel.

Liam pulled away to catch his breath—breathless from pleasure this time, not from crying. The contrast was sharp, like a pain under Noel’s ribs. Rather than think on it anymore, he chased Liam’s mouth and caught it again. He gently squeezed Liam’s side, grounding Liam or maybe himself, he didn’t know which. There was more to Liam there than there’d once been, and again Noel realized in wonder that wasn’t a bad change nor a good change. It was different, that was all.

He sat back and looked at Liam, taking in the ragged haircut, the sloping shoulders, the curly hairs on Liam’s chest that’d gone mostly gray and white. “Funny how these have gone gray, and the ones on your head haven’t,” Noel said.

Liam gave Noel a toothy grin with a spark of his old humor. “That’s ‘cause I’m magic.”

“Magic,” Noel repeated drily. Liam’s grin broadened a fraction, and the clenched worry in Noel’s chest relaxed a little. He tugged Liam back for another kiss, and he slid his other hand inside Liam’s thigh. He found Liam not entirely unaffected, and that was good, that eased Noel’s worry a little more. Liam’s breath hitched as Noel brushed his fingers lightly over that tell-tale bulge. When Noel did it again just to be an arse, Liam gasped against him, open-mouthed.

“Noel,” Liam moaned. He rolled his hips, bumping his cock against Noel’s fingers. At last Noel took pity and gripped Liam through his shorts. Liam gasped again. Noel massaged him through the cloth, savoring the stiffening proof of Liam’s interest.

That last barrier between them was suddenly too much. He slid his fingers inside Liam’s waistband and said, “Can’t you get these off?”

“Yeah, all right. All right.” Liam fumbled for his belt buckle, and Noel tried to help. Mostly he got in the way. Their fingers kept bumping against one another, tangling together. It reminded him of the old days when they’d both been high on Liam’s heat, both aching and desperate. There’d been times Noel had wanted to rip the belt right off of Liam and had maybe even tried.

The unyielding permanence of Liam’s belt buckle had been the worst thing in the world, then. Noel’d known if he could just solve that one problem, all would be right. Just get it open, get Liam’s jeans off. He’d crawl inside Liam’s scent, push into his body, make him thoroughly and utterly Noel’s, and as long as they were joined, no worry or sorrow could ever touch them.

“Noel?” Liam was saying.

Noel’s eyes were damp, he found, and Liam’s were wide with concern: not that baby-faced Liam of his memories, but this one, weathered and graying, whom Noel didn’t know. “It’s fine,” Noel said. He blinked the moisture away. “Come on, get on with it.”

Liam finally got the fucking belt buckle open and stood up to take it all off. Noel watched, transfixed, as Liam shoved his boxers down. There was his cock, which of course Noel had seen plenty of times before, in bed and out of it. It was plumped somewhat, not erect yet but on the way. It looked the same as it always had, Noel supposed, not that he remembered it particularly well. When Liam’d been in in heat they’d both had other priorities, and when he hadn’t, well, Noel remembered those times even less.

“Come here,” he said. He beckoned Liam closer, until he was standing between Noel’s knees. Noel closed his fingers around Liam’s cock. The foreskin had begun to draw back, revealing the tender, sensitive head. He traced along a vein with his thumb, making Liam shiver.

Liam didn’t say a word. The only sound was the hitch of his breath as Noel brushed his fingers along the shaft, exploring, taking in the fragile softness of the skin. The flushed color deepened as Noel continued, drawing more blood from Liam’s heart into his cock—into Noel’s hand.

The moment felt suspended, weightless, endless. Noel couldn’t have said how long he sat there examining all the details of Liam’s cock, feeling Liam’s minute shivers and shudders. Without any warning, Noel found that he’d seen enough. With a steadying hand on Liam’s hip, he bent until he was close enough to smell Liam: not the drenching, all-encompassing odor of heat, but an ordinary musky smell of a man a few hours out of the shower. He cupped Liam’s cock with his other hand, measuring the heft of it in his palm. Distantly he was aware that Liam had gone utterly still.

Liam’s cock was inches from Noel’s face. Noel crossed that final gap, mouth open, and licked cautiously across the head. Liam took a noisy breath, but still he didn’t move at all. Noel closed his lips around the tip. He sucked Liam slowly in.

“Fuck,” Liam breathed. He closed his hand around the side of Noel’s head and tangled his fingers in Noel’s hair, steadying himself. “Fuck, Noel.”

Noel’d sucked a cock now and then over the years. He’d even sucked Liam off a couple of times in those frantic, coked-up days—or maybe he’d only imagined it, when he was far enough off his head to allow himself such fantasies. None of those dim half-memories prepared him for the living reality of Liam in his mouth, blood-hot and twitching, undeniably present. There were no illusions left, Noel thought, when you had your brother’s cock in your mouth.

He licked an awkward circuit around the head, and Liam’s grip tightened in his hair. He began cursing, low and muttered, and he didn’t stop, a filthy litany of Noel and Christ and fuck. Noel sucked a little, massaged the shaft a little. His attention narrowed to the flavor beading on his tongue and the pricks of pain along his scalp, the heat of Liam’s cock and the shudder of his thighs.

After a while a new sensation intruded, an ache in Noel’s back and neck from bending over that way. He pulled off and sat up, rolling his neck and working some of the tension out of his jaw. Liam stared down at him, breath heaving. His fingers were still wrapped up in Noel’s hair. “You want to finish now?” Noel asked. “Or wait until I fuck you?”

Liam sucked in a breath. “Now. Fuck, Noel, please just—just—”

“All right,” Noel said. He stroked along Liam’s hip. “All right.”

He bent again. This time as he approached, Liam smelled of arousal: a bit sharp and a bit like dirty socks. Somehow it smelled as good as his heat scent ever had. Noel breathed him in and rubbed his palm against his own cock, shivering at the little frissons of pleasure.

“Noel,” Liam said, insistent. He thrust his cock into Noel’s face. It bumped against his lips. Noel took another deep breath of Liam, gripped himself, and took Liam into his mouth.

Liam was hotter than when Noel’d begun, and bigger, and stiffer. He filled Noel’s whole mouth, and he was wet at the tip. Noel gave himself a last squeeze and then regretfully let go; otherwise he thought he might go off before ever getting his cock into Liam. Instead he focused on touching Liam as he sucked. He brushed his fingers inside Liam’s thighs. He cupped Liam’s balls, and the hairs tickled his palm.

Liam was making little gasping noises, and his thighs were trembling. He was so close. Noel teased his fingers along Liam’s shaft, coaxing, inviting.

“Fuck,” Liam breathed.

Come flooded Noel’s mouth in hot, bitter pulses. Noel swallowed, then swallowed again. When Liam’s cock had gone lax, Noel sucked at it a little longer while Liam shuddered against him. He tongued Liam clean, and finally he straightened up. His back ached, but he didn’t fucking care, because he had a bright, clear memory of Liam’s taste on his tongue, and he was going to make very fucking sure he never lost it.

Liam slumped next to him in the bed. “Shit, Noel,” he said. “You fucking—you—”

“Now do you believe me?” Noel asked. Once the words were out, he wondered what he meant by them. Believe what? It felt like the right question, though, the one above all others that he needed an answer to.

Liam turned to look at him, his gaze open and full of wonder. Christ, how’d he gotten along without Noel all these years, looking at people like that? He leaned over and pressed a kiss to Noel’s cheekbone. Soft and warm against Noel’s skin, he said, “Yeah, I missed you, too, you fucker.”

Of course he had. It’d been very fucking obvious, between the tweets and the one music video and the endless interviews and all the fucking songs. There was no reason for the words to steal Noel’s breath and leave him gasping for air like an unlucky fish.

Noel pushed shakily to his feet. “Don’t go wandering off,” he said.

He walked to the bathroom, his cock bobbing all the way. He drank tap water from his cupped hand, trying to wash the aftertaste of come out of his mouth. He still felt unsteady, and he told himself it was because he’d just sucked Liam off while entirely sober, as much in his right mind as he ever had any chance of being and without any excuse at all.

When he came back out, Liam was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling with his hands folded over his belly. His gaze rolled over to Noel and followed him as he came and sat on the bed. Noel tucked one foot under himself and twisted around so he could look at Liam properly: his brother, grown old and fat and gray.

He gripped Liam’s thigh, just above the knee. Liam twitched and then lay still. People’d always been surprised by his capacity for stillness. They’d tended to blame it on drugs when he sat and watched the sound checks, unmoving except for his gaze—although even that rarely shifted, and no guesses who it’d usually been fixed on. The drugs hadn’t been the reason, though. That stillness had always been just another part of Liam.

Not, it must be said, a part of Liam Noel’d often encountered in bed. He didn’t know quite what to do with it.

“So, do you—is that still what you want?” Noel asked. Somehow it was difficult to say the next words, as though Noel’d regressed forty years, an awkward teenager barely rid of his virginity. “You want me to fuck you?”

For a moment Liam didn’t answer, and Noel wondered if, after all this, Liam would say no. That’d be all right, Noel thought. They’d gone all their lives without that particular thing, and they could go on living without it, even though Noel already knew he’d regret it.

“Yeah,” Liam said finally. “That’s what I want.”

“All right,” Noel said, but he didn’t move. Neither did Liam, who suddenly seemed very far away, there on the bed, those few inches between them a near-impassible distance. That’s how it felt: like Noel’d set himself to scale a mountain.

Liam huffed softly and sat up. He stroked Noel’s back, eyeing him with a hint of humor. “Not got nerves now, have you? Ain’t like you never done it before.”

“No, I fucking haven’t got nerves.”

“Well, part of you hasn’t, anyway.” Liam flicked Noel’s hard-on with his finger, and Noel flinched. “Shh,” Liam said. “You’re all right.” This seemed to be addressed to Noel’s cock rather than to Noel. He took Noel loosely in his grip, and Noel shivered at the touch, which was too light to be useful yet too much to ignore. Before he could complain, Liam brushed his fingers gently along the shaft. Noel made an embarrassing little moan.

He caught Liam’s hand. “It won’t—like you said, it won’t be the same.”

“No shit,” Liam said. “That’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it?”

Was it? Noel’d lost the point quite a ways back. Maybe he’d lost it when he first walked up to Liam’s door.

Liam sighed. “You don’t fucking have to. It’s not—I’ll just, I can bring you off like this, you know. Or I can, like before—get you laid out on the bed for me, so I can do what I fucking want with you, yeah? Or anything. It don’t matter, mate.”

“I told you,” Noel said, tightening his grip on Liam’s wrist, “I haven’t got fucking nerves.”

Liam lifted his chin. “Yeah? Prove it.”

Noel did the obvious thing to stop Liam mouthing off. This felt like the old days: kissing him in anger, shutting him up. Straddling him and pushing him down onto the mattress. Liam went readily like he always had, like he’d only ever been waiting for Noel to make him. His blue-eyed gaze blazed hot, still goading Noel on. His hands skimmed down Noel’s back and settled on his arse. “Come on, then,” he said.

Noel bent close and kissed Liam again, hard and bruising. Liam’s fingers dug into his arse. He moaned into Noel’s mouth, and the sound of it burned through Noel and burrowed in his gut. Need, that was what had been missing from Liam’s polite offer to do something else. It was all a load of bollocks if they didn’t need it.

And Christ, Noel did. What anxious, confused arousal remained after all the talking was hammering in him now, getting louder all the time.

“Fuck, Noel,” Liam said, when Noel broke away. Liam’s eyes were dark, and not with drugs. “What you stopping for? Come on.”

It took Noel a moment to remember why he had. “You need—you need stuff, right? Lube. Or—or do you—?” Some didn’t, he knew. Some slicked their own way even outside of heat. He didn’t think Liam could have hidden that back in the day—or would have even tried to—but Noel was in unknown territory now.

Liam heaved an impatient sigh and settled back against the pillow. “Yeah. In the table, there.”

Noel climbed off him and went exploring in the drawer of the bedside table. He came up with a likely-looking tube. Liam had opened his legs and bent his knees, and now he propped his head up on his elbow and watched Noel unscrew the cap. When it was off, Liam held his hand out. “Give it here, I’ll do it.”

For a moment Noel considered the prospect of watching Liam do this for himself. Noel knew just the expression he’d have, that look of intense concentration Liam reserved for fucking around on the guitar or, well, fucking. A hell of a sight it’d be.

And a missed chance, one Noel might never have again. Instead of handing over the lube, Noel squeezed some out into his hand. “Just tell me how you like it, yeah?”

After a moment’s hesitation, Liam nodded. He pulled a knee back towards his face, baring his arse. He watched warily as Noel sat below him, where Noel had a good clear view and an easy reach. There it was: the pink, dark pucker of Liam’s hole.

Noel’d been telling the truth. He had always wanted this. He’d lost so many memories of the Oasis years to cocaine, booze, and denial, and yet he could still remember how he’d fantasized about Liam’s arse. He stroked the inside of Liam’s thigh, and all his wistful, shamed daydreams came flooding back: not of heat sex, like what an ordinary young man imagined with his hand on his cock, but of shagging outside that desperate haze, when they could take their time.

All those years, we could’ve…

Noel pushed the thought aside. They were here now, weren’t they? They were doing it now. With his thumb, still dry, Noel traced around Liam’s rim. Liam twitched. “Noel,” he began.

“Shhh,” Noel said. Miraculously, Liam quieted.

At least Noel had a far better idea of what to do now than he would’ve in his twenties. He still had lube warming and waiting in his palm, but with the other hand he thumbed around Liam’s puckered hole, then back. He massaged a little deeper into the flesh, then stroked directly across the rim. He let Liam’s twitches and grunts guide him. He knew he was getting it right when Liam reached between his legs and took his lax cock in his hand. The sight sent a little zing of arousal through Noel, too.

Breathlessly, Liam said, “Just—just stick it in, why don’t you.”

“Now who doesn’t have any romance?” Noel said. He smeared lube over a finger and circled Liam’s hole one more time, leaving a shiny trail. Slowly he pushed inside. Liam clenched around him, and then took a breath and slowly, deliberately relaxed.

“Good?” Noel asked. Liam nodded. Noel pulled the finger out, smeared more lube on it, pushed it in again. He stroked a circuit inside, smoothing lube around, enjoying the silky heat of Liam’s arse and the way he was trying and failing not to squirm.

“You were going to tell me how you liked it,” Noel said.

Liam took a sharp breath. Again that hesitation, like he was considering not answering. Then, “I like—I like a couple of fingers.”

Dutifully Noel wet two fingers liberally with lube and pushed them into Liam. Again he felt Liam deliberately relaxing around him. He felt another pleasurable little wave of arousal, imagining that grip around his cock.

“Now,” Liam said, “if you sort of curl ‘em up towards—fuck.”

Noel’d found his prostate, then. He did it again, stretching his fingers as far into Liam as he could and then stroking up, back towards himself. He was rewarded with another low curse. Slowly, deliberately he repeated the motion, retreating every so often for more lube. Occasionally Liam would suggest an adjustment, each time with a little more confidence. When Noel judged him slick enough, he quit bothering with lube and began to pick up the pace, stroking Liam inside as he asked, watching him blush deeper and deeper.

He was gorgeous. Liam had always done everything with his whole body, and that included getting fingered, it seemed. He’d given up any pretense of holding himself together. His face was twisted up in pleasure, his mouth gapped open, a red flush spread all the way down his chest. Heavier, graying, it didn’t fucking matter: he made a beautiful picture, one Noel in his twenties wouldn’t have even known to wish for.

At last Noel hit something just right, because Liam arched off the bed. “Fuck,” he breathed, collapsing back onto the mattress. He still had his hand on his cock, which was stiffening up pretty nicely, Noel thought.

“I thought you couldn’t get it up twice anymore,” Noel said.

Liam blinked at him and then looked down towards his hand. Cautiously he gave himself a squeeze. “Not usually,” he muttered.

I guess you did miss me, Noel almost said, but it seemed too sharp, a scalpel instead of a butter knife. He didn’t want Liam clamming up on him again, pulling back in on himself; the thought of it made his throat ache. Instead he leaned over and kissed Liam’s knee. “You ready for me now?”

Liam nodded shakily. Noel pulled his fingers out and wiped them off on a tissue from the bedside table.

“You gonna knot me?” Liam asked.

Noel paused mid-wipe. “That was the idea.”

“I can’t, lying like this,” Liam said. His mouth twisted unhappily. “Me hips—I’ve got arthritis. I can’t handle it.”

“All right,” Noel said slowly. “Then what?”

Liam had plenty of alternative suggestions, it turned out. He avoided Noel’s eyes as he listed them off, and he flushed a darker, less happy red. Noel didn’t know why this of all things embarrassed Liam so much. He stroked the inside of Liam’s thigh. When Liam finished, Noel said again, “All right.”

“All right?” Liam repeated. An ugly surliness had crept into his tone. “All right? I’m glad you—you fucking think so.”

Noel felt very old. It was as though no time had passed at all between them, and yet as though Noel’d aged a hundred years. He gripped Liam’s leg a little tighter. “Liam,” he said firmly.

“What?” Liam demanded.

Noel came around to sit where he could look Liam square in the eye, lying there on the pillow and scowling fiercely. Noel realized in a strange moment of clarity that Liam wasn’t angry. He wasn’t suddenly spoiling for a fight, taken with the urge to smash everything like he so often had over the years. He was just afraid.

“Liam,” Noel said softly. He brushed Liam’s ragged hair back from his brow. Liam stared up at him, wary and unhappy. Noel bent and kissed Liam on the mouth. Liam sucked in a shuddering breath, very nearly a sob. He cupped Noel’s jaw and kissed back, wet and a little desperate.

Noel’s back had had quite enough of bending over for one day. He straightened up, and Liam’s eyes followed him. His eyelashes were damp.

“I don’t care how we do it,” Noel said. “Just—just tell me how you want it. Yeah?”

Liam lay quietly, perhaps running back through that list of options. At last he nodded to himself. “Yeah, okay. Like this, I guess.” He rolled over onto his side, baring his back and arse to Noel.

All right, then. Noel took a condom from the same drawer where he’d gotten the lube, tore the packaging, and rolled the condom onto himself. Then he lay down behind Liam. He shifted in close until he was snug at Liam’s back. He rolled his hips, wedging his cock between Liam’s cheeks. The direct contact was a shock after waiting so long. He’d been simmering with want for what felt like a decade. He gasped against the back of Liam’s neck.

Liam laughed softly. “You ain’t even in yet,” he said, good humor apparently restored.

“Piss off,” Noel said. He gripped Liam’s arm for leverage and rolled his hips again. He shuddered at how good Liam felt against his cock. Noel had a little ground to make up, and this would get him there in no time.

When he was fully stiff and gasping every breath, he said, “Move your leg, yeah? Like that.” He guided Liam’s leg forward, giving Noel better access to his arse. He could hardly believe it was finally time. It’d taken them so fucking long to get there—decades, if a person wanted to look at it that way. He took himself in hand and awkwardly shifted that last miniscule distance, until his cock head was pressed to Liam’s hole.

Without fanfare, he pressed in.

Liam inhaled noisily. “All right?” Noel said.

“Yeah, fuck. Don’t just—don’t fucking just lie there.”

Noel pushed farther in. Liam was hot around him and deliciously tight, and he grunted as Noel bottomed out. “Good?” Noel asked.

“Yeah.” Liam took a couple of huge, slow breaths. “Come on, then.”

Noel hadn’t shagged like this since Sara’d been pregnant with Sonny. It took him a couple of tries to remember how to get leverage. He gripped Liam’s hip, leaned backwards until he’d almost pulled out, then shoved in again and nearly whited out at how good it felt. Liam gasped explosively. “Christ, Noel.”

“Yeah,” Noel said. Wasn’t he meant to be some kind of wordsmith? God knew he didn’t have any words now. He stroked Liam’s side, feeling the expansion of Liam’s ribcage as he breathed. He mashed his face into the back of Liam’s neck and breathed in the odors of skin and designer shampoo.

“Noel.”

“You wanted to fucking remember what it’s like, didn’t you? Well, this is it.” Noel wanted it, yeah, obviously. He felt as though he’d been aroused for hours, and he’d fucking earned what was going to happen next. If ever in his life he deserved to come his brains out, it was now, and yet still it wasn’t like when Liam was in heat. Even now, balls-deep, Noel could choose.

He kissed Liam on the back of the neck. Liam reached up and gripped Noel’s hand, lying on his hip. “Go on, then,” Liam said.

Noel took a deep breath, and he got on with it. He fucked Liam slowly at first, making sure he didn’t go off too soon, savoring the sounds Liam made. Gradually he worked up some speed. His attention narrowed to the place where they connected, to body heat and glorious friction, and to Liam’s fingers clutching his.

He’d spent all his stamina almost before they’d started. All at once he felt his arousal outpacing him. “Liam,” he gasped. He thrust once more, twice, and then he came, a searing, white-hot bolt of pleasure. In its wake came smaller waves of pleasure and the aching, pleasant tightness of his knot blooming. He collapsed onto the mattress, or maybe he melted into it, it was hard to say.

Liam jerked rhythmically against him, and after a few dazed moments, Noel realized what he must be doing. He shoved unsteadily up onto his elbow and reached over Liam’s side. He closed his hand over Liam’s, curled around Liam’s cock. “Let me,” Noel said.

Liam let go. He was well stiff, nearly finished already. Noel got a good grip on him. It occurred to him Liam really couldn’t escape now, try as he might: not with Noel holding his cock and knotting his arse. There was something good in that, a simple pleasure Noel was too blissed out to examine. He could only dwell in it as he went to work finishing Liam off.

Afterward, with Liam’s come wet on his fingers, Noel relaxed back down on the bed. He was exhausted. He was more tired than he could remember being in years—or more than he’d been willing to notice in all those years, maybe. That was another thought too complex to really grasp. Instead he wiped his fingers on Liam’s hip.

This prompted mild grumbling. Liam shifted against his chest and then took hold of his hand again. Sounding more than half-asleep, Liam said, “It’s like the first time.”

“What?”

Liam made a sound that definitely wasn’t words. He squeezed Noel’s fingers and said, “When we shagged the first time. My pills weren’t working or summat, and you dragged me back to that hotel room. You knotted me proper and held me like this after.”

“How the fuck do you remember things like that?” Noel said wonderingly. “You were off your head as much as I was. You fucking dreamed it.”

“Nah,” Liam said. He was mostly asleep, now. “I remember the important shit.”

Noel scoffed, but it was clearly lost on Liam. Noel pressed a little closer and draped his arm over Liam’s side, and he gently stroked Liam’s belly until sleep took him, too.

Noel drifted awake slowly. He was still spooned up against Liam, but his knot had deflated. Noel lay there a bit, soothed by the sound of Liam’s breath. He felt utterly relaxed, as though all his problems had been fucked away. It was an illusion he was willing to live in a little while longer. When Liam made a snuffling, waking sound, though, Noel pulled out. He sat up, peeled the condom off, and tied it off. Then he spent a few moments contemplating whether he was really willing to get up and look for a bin.

Before he could decide, Liam reached up and took hold of his arm. Startled, Noel looked down into Liam’s clear blue eyes. Noel wondered what he should say. There was no script for what to do when you’d fucked your brother for the first time in twelve years, or maybe ever in your lives, depending on how one counted.

“I knew you did,” Liam said. “You said you didn’t—you wouldn’t ever—like that. You wouldn’t want it like this, but I knew—I fucking knew you were lying.” He grabbed Noel by the shoulder and dragged him down onto the bed, pulling him in so they barely avoided smashing their noses together. “So many fucking years, Noel.”

“I know,” Noel said.

“Christ.” Liam pressed in and kissed him, messy and sloppy.

Noel was entirely, utterly shagged out. He was quite sure he wouldn’t be able to muster even a drop of arousal for hours, and still he caught some of Liam’s desperation, like a shared fever. He pulled him even closer, and he kissed Liam like he might never again.

They were both gasping for air when they broke apart. Noel rolled over onto his back to try and catch his breath—easier to do when he couldn’t see Liam’s gaze boring into him. He could still feel it, though. Might as well not have bothered.

“What happens now?” Liam asked. “We doing this again, then? Or was just this for old time’s sake?”

“Fucking weird if it was, wouldn’t it, seeing as we never did it before.” Now that it was over, a part of Noel still couldn’t quite believe he really had. He’d built that wall with his own hands, brick by brick (of cocaine, possibly), and now he’d torn it down, and the view on the other side was exactly the same. It was still just Liam.

Liam didn’t acknowledge Noel’s shit attempt at diversion. He just kept on staring, boring holes into Noel. Noel gave in to the inevitable. “Do you want to do it again?”

“Of course I do. What’d you think? Could do this forever. Always did want to.”

Noel sighed. “You mean Oasis.”

“Same thing, innit? Wasn’t a band without you anymore. You and Oasis—same thing. Always loved being in a band with me brother.”

“Except for when you hated it. We hated each other at the end, Liam. Or did you forget that, too?”

“Do you still hate me,” Liam said. There was no upturn at the end, like he hadn’t quite the courage to make it a question in spite of all they’d been through today. When Noel rolled his head over to look, Liam shied away from Noel’s gaze. There was no doubt in Noel’s mind that Liam cared very, very much what the answer was.

Noel had it all in his hand. He could see it: this unlikely, fragile truce, Liam’s even more fragile hope. Noel could roll it up in his fingers and crush it, and he’d never be bothered with Liam again. Liam would clam up on Twitter or he’d say something bad enough to get himself banned. Noel had looked into that a little, and it seemed it did happen, very occasionally. Noel’d veto any Liam-related questions before they happened. He could be free, or as close as anyone could come in this life to being free of another person.

The idea of it made him ill. He swallowed down a wave of nausea. When it’d passed, he said, “Not—not all the time. But you know, if you didn’t want me to hate you, you’ve been giving a fucking good impression otherwise.”

As quietly as Noel had ever heard him say anything, Liam said, “Well, I hated you too, sometimes.”

It wasn’t anything Noel didn’t know, hadn’t sometimes deliberately encouraged. How much easier for them to just hate each other, he’d always thought. None of those other complications, only pure, uncomplicated hatred. He’d probably been right about it being easier, but that hardly mattered, because simplicity was utterly beyond the two of them. Noel was as sure of that as he’d ever been in his life as he lay there in Liam’s bed, a bit itchy with dried sweat.

That last thing, at least, was a simple problem with a simple solution. “I’m filthy,” he told Liam. “I’m using your shower.”

He saw the moment Liam decided to let him go without a fight. “Don’t use that shit in the gold bottle. Debbie’ll have a conniption.”

“Fine.”

The shower was comfortably modern, like the kitchen. The shower shelves were loaded with all manner of shit, of which probably seventy-five percent was Liam’s. Noel duly avoided the gold bottle—not without taking a sniff, obviously—and got himself clean.

He’d washed the smell of Liam off him any number of times over the years. Sometimes he’d told himself it was permanent; this time he didn’t bother. Fuck if he knew what it was instead, though, and Liam would want to know. Noel knew very fucking well they’d have that conversation again, and again, and—

He took a deep breath and stepped into the spray to rinse off.

Liam was gone when he came out. Noel went on a scavenger hunt for his clothes and put them on. He could hardly believe he’d pulled them out of his closet just that morning. That seemed weeks ago, not hours.

He found Liam in the kitchen, making tea. “Never did get you that cuppa,” Liam said.

Noel could leave. He’d gotten everything he’d come for, hadn’t he? Even though at first he hadn’t realized what that was. He gave it approximately half a second’s thought, and then he pulled out a chair. At the counter, Liam’s shoulders relaxed.

Maybe Noel’d come for this, too.

Liam started humming something. Noel couldn’t catch enough of it to identify the tune. Maybe he wouldn’t have anyway; maybe it was something new. Liam wrote songs too, after all. Noel had listened to a bunch of them in the past few weeks, back when he was busy pretending that he meant to never see Liam again.

Liam brought him the cup of tea. He sat across from Noel with his own mug. Inevitably, as Noel’d known he would, Liam said, “So was that it, then?”

Noel sighed. “Liam—”

“Was this the plan all along, absolutely blow my fucking mind and then scarper, never to be seen again outside the fucking Sun?”

“If that was the plan, would I still be fucking sat here in your kitchen?”

Liam gave him a long look. Then he reached across the table and poked Noel in the arm. “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you are, ain’t you.”

Noel rolled his eyes and refrained from rubbing at his arm. “Look, I can’t—I can’t fucking promise anything, all right? I don’t know.”

Liam blew on his tea, took a sip, and set the mug down. “Do you want to, though?”

Against his better judgment, Noel said, “Do I want to what?”

Liam shrugged. “See each other again. For a shag, or a beer, or—or anything.”

“I just said—”

“I’m not asking for a promise. I’m asking, do you want to.”

Noel scoffed. That alone had usually been enough to push Liam off track; with luck, he’d have been throwing fruit or dishware within sixty seconds. But this Liam wasn’t the one Noel knew, because though his mouth twisted a bit, he kept on staring at Noel just the same, implacable.

Noel wasn’t the same, either. He wasn’t even the same person who’d walked out his own front door that morning. That fellow’d been a lot more fucking certain of the world and his place in it, and Noel already missed him.

But not as much as he’d missed Liam. He took a deep breath. “Yeah,” he said.

Liam nodded down at his tea mug. “That’ll do me, then, I reckon.”

“That?” Noel said, disbelieving. “That’s it. That’s all you wanted to hear.”

“Well,” Liam said, “I never heard it before, did I?” Before Noel could find an answer to that, Liam stretched across the table and softly kissed him. When he pulled back, he peered at Noel from under his hair with a sweet, shy smile that took Noel back thirty years. The first time he’d told Liam he’d sung well, he’d seen a flash of a smile just like that, before Liam had hidden it away so he could pretend to look cool.

Noel’d never imagined he’d ever see it again. He couldn’t look away from Liam, couldn’t move at all, not even to say something sarcastic that’d puncture the awful swell of feeling in his chest. Maybe Liam knew, as he so often knew things he had no fucking right to, because he reached across the table and gently squeezed Noel’s fingers. Without ever quite meaning to, Noel squeezed back.

On the table, Liam’s phone buzzed. “That’s the takeaway,” he said. He slipped his hand free of Noel’s and got to his feet. “Don’t worry, I ordered you some. Got you tofu.”

“You fucking did not,” Noel said.

Liam threw a grin over his shoulder that said differently. He disappeared around the corner.

Noel yelled after him, “I ain’t fucking eating that. Fuck you, I’m eating yours.”

And for the first time in twelve years, Noel heard Liam’s delighted cackle as it echoed down the hall.