Noel was sat at the back of some club. It wasn’t much of one, but it had booze, and in a corner there was a screen showing football—not the real kind, because fucking America didn’t have footie, but the kind with helmets and far too much standing about, which Liam was currently pointing out at high volume. Oasis didn’t have a show until the next night, which meant tonight was looking to be a late one, and Noel gave it even odds the yelling on Liam’s part would escalate to punching someone up. Noel couldn’t even be fucked worrying about it; they could throw Liam out of this pathetic drinking hole, but they couldn’t throw him out of Detroit, at least not without a lot more provocation than even Liam would probably offer at short notice.
Anyway, Noel had a couple of pints in him and another on the table, and he didn’t care overmuch what Liam got up to. The Chicago show the night before had been good, a good atmosphere, a good crowd that’d sung “Live Forever” and “Supersonic” back at Liam. They’d heard them before, those words Noel had written, on the radio or on a record; probably even listened to them on purpose. Noel couldn’t find it in him to be surprised. He didn’t have to hope Oasis were going to be big. He knew.
Suddenly, into this contented glow shoved Liam. He flopped down into the booth, sloshing half a pint down Noel’s shirt in the process. “For Christ’s sake, Liam.”
“Got lonely,” Liam said. His pupils were dark, riding a fresh high; he was flushed, obviously overheated, the collar of his shirt sticking to his skin. He ought to take his coat off, vain prick. He ought to go back to the hotel, take a shower, wash the sweat off him until he looked decent, as if Liam ever—
“Christ,” Noel repeated weakly. Liam shifted a little closer, his knee pressed to Noel’s thigh as that thick, unmistakable scent of heat rose up all around him. “The fuck you doing out like this? You’re fucking—you’re gagging for it.”
“Yeah,” Liam agreed, breathless, more a sigh than a word. He was staring Noel in the eye, mouth fallen open like he’d forgotten to shut it—or like he was some kind of fish, sucking everything through it, maybe including the air direct from Noel’s lungs. That must have been why Noel couldn’t catch his breath.
“Fuck off,” Noel said, and pushed Liam out of the booth.
Liam sprawled on his arse on the greasy-looking floor, shocked out of his daze. “You fuck off!”
Noel took a long swallow of lager to get the taste of Liam out of his throat and looked around the place for Bonehead, Guigsy, anyone. People were starting to look, and normally Noel couldn’t give a shit about that, but he didn’t want them looking at his brother. Not now.
“Come on,” Noel said. He slid out of the booth and took Liam by the arm, tugging him sharply up. Liam’s eyes flashed, fully angry, and that was good, that was better than any of the alternatives. “We’re going to the hotel.”
Liam came along meekly enough, and that itself would have made Noel uneasy if he weren’t already on the edge of panic—irrational, but that’s what heat did, wasn’t it? Made you irrational. Made you do things you wouldn’t choose to do, think things you wouldn’t—
Noel took a sharp breath and pushed Liam out the door.
It was cold outside, too near freezing for Noel’s comfort, even in his jacket. The chill barely seemed to touch Liam or his high, red flush. He stuffed his hands into his coat pockets and stared off into the distance, but he kept peeking at Noel from the corner of his eye. By the time Noel had hailed a cab, Liam had his shoulder pressed to Noel’s and was starting to lean.
It was worse in the cab, of course. Liam’s scent filled the whole interior in no time; the cheap dampener swinging from the car’s rearview mirror barely made a dent. It was a good job the driver made no sign of recognizing either of them, seeing as Liam kept trying to crawl into Noel’s lap. “Noel,” Liam whined, when Noel pushed him away yet again.
“At the hotel,” Noel said, as if he were promising something. That’d bite him later, probably. He was sweating as badly as Liam, steaming in his leather jacket as the essence of Liam filled his nose and his lungs and—yeah, and his cock. He was human, wasn’t he? It was bad enough even before Liam pressed his face to Noel’s neck and refused to be budged, his hair tickling Noel’s ear. His fingers slid up Noel’s thigh, and Noel caught his hand before it got too far, but then he was holding it, and there didn’t seem anything to do but keep holding it.
“It’s too fucking hot,” Liam said.
“Yeah, I know, kid.” Noel squeezed the back of Liam’s neck.
They made it up to the right floor somehow, Liam leaving an unmistakable trail of fuck me fuck me fuck me in his wake. It ought to have been funny, Noel thought distantly. Liam forgot his pills again, now he wants it up the arse from fucking anyone, even his brother, ain’t that a laugh?
“Where’s your key?” Noel asked, when they got to Liam and Guigsy’s door at last.
“My what?” Liam peered at him with huge, blown pupils that might well have had nothing to do with white lines at all. Liam got it after a moment and began patting ineffectually at his pockets; no surprise he came up with nothing but half a packet of cigarettes.
“For fuck’s sake,” Noel said, and steered Liam down the hall to his own room. That’d be better anyway, since Noel didn’t share. There’d be no chance of Guigsy walking in on—well, whatever Liam was going to be doing with himself next. Noel wasn’t thinking about that. He got Liam in the door and shut it behind them, and that was his last mistake, the nail in the proverbial coffin, the final straw, because he’d hardly turned around before Liam had shoved him against the door and put his wet, sloppy mouth on Noel’s.
A memory: Noel, nineteen years old, comes home covered in sheetrock dust to find his mum barring the door. “You’d best find someplace else to be the next few days. Our Liam, he’s come down hot.”
It takes Noel a few bewildered seconds to understand what she’s getting at. Another few to believe it: Liam, an O? It’s only ever been women going into heat in the Gallagher family, or the Sweeney family either. But then the certainty of it settles into Noel’s gut, far surer than anything Peggy Gallagher could say, because look at how Liam always wants every eye on him, starving for attention, demanding it like his birthright. Of course Liam’s an O; it feels like Noel’s always known.
In the end, as with most things Liam, this is an inconvenience. “Can I have my guitar, then?” Noel asks.
Liam tasted of stale breath and beer. He was like a furnace, pressed up against Noel from knee to collarbone; he was stiff against Noel’s thigh. He tugged at Noel’s t-shirt, yanking it from his jeans. “Liam,” Noel said, or tried to, around the obstacle of Liam’s tongue.
Liam withdrew to shove his face against Noel’s neck. “I don’t want one of them emergency blockers. I fucking hate them. You can take care of me.”
Noel didn’t get to play stupid, not while Liam was trying to hump his thigh. He shoved Liam far enough away to get another look at him, as if that was going to make any fucking difference at all. “Thought you didn’t want anyone fucking you. It’s gay, right?” That was obviously nonsense—omegas weren’t men, properly speaking, so how could fucking men make them gay?—but Liam felt differently, and he tended to back up the feeling with his fists.
Now Liam rolled his eyes hugely, like the swing of planets in orbit. “Not if it’s you. You’re me brother.”
There was logic there, impossible to refute. Or maybe it was the delicious fog of heat clouding Noel’s brain, or the fact that they’d rocked Chicago to its foundation the night before, or that Noel didn’t give a flying fuck about any of that, because he’d always been going to say yes. “You going to get on the bed or what?”
He’d watched Liam strip a hundred times: when they shared a room, backstage, the time after a gig Liam drunkenly pissed himself and decided to shed his trousers on the spot. Noel’d seen that pale chest, those long, weedy limbs, and they’d meant nothing to him except maybe an appreciation for all he himself wasn’t, a keen-edged jealousy—or maybe something else, because he felt it still, watching Liam artlessly free himself from his pants. He wanted to sink his teeth into Liam’s skinny arse.
Liam turned, and now Noel could see his cock, flushed and bobbing gently. Liam clutched it and gave it a squeeze. “Stop that,” Noel said, stepping up and batting Liam’s hand away. He didn’t know why he did it. Now he was inside the cloud of Liam’s scent, and he felt as if he were breathing underwater. He leaned in, nosed at Liam’s neck. He licked across the sweaty skin and let the flavor of it sit on his tongue.
“Twat,” Liam gasped. He gripped Noel through his jeans. “Fuck me, you dickhead.”
Noel grabbed the back of Liam’s neck and yanked him down to kiss him again, and the thing of it was, Liam let him. Liam just stood there, aching and overheated, letting Noel kiss his filthy, beautiful mouth. Not for a lark, not a tease in front of a camera. Noel gripped Liam’s jaw and took every kiss he’d ever imagined Liam giving the girls that always hung around him. But none of those girls were any good to Liam now—well, not unless he lured an A in somehow, but Noel promptly rid himself of that thought. None of the girls were here now, and Noel was.
Liam pressed even closer to Noel, close enough that Noel felt his flinch. Liam mumbled something into Noel’s mouth. “Button,” he repeated, when Noel withdrew a few inches. Liam’s fingers fumbled at the front of Noel’s shirt. “You gonna fuck me with your shirt on,” Liam breathed. “And your jeans.”
“Needy,” Noel taunted. Then, “I could.” Before Noel could decide whether that made sense, Liam gave up on the buttons and just ripped Noel’s shirt open. “Fuckhead,” Noel said, startled out of his fog. “Do you know what that cost?”
Liam was busily attacking Noel’s belt, with less success. Noel pushed his hands away and fumbled it loose, none too steady himself. It was better than coke, this. All those intriguing whiffs he’d ever caught of Liam just before a heat, all the stale funk after—they were candle flames next to the blazing need Liam was now sweating out of every pore.
Noel got loose at last and stepped out of his jeans. Liam was already tugging Noel’s pants down, cradling his cock. That first touch of skin on skin was like a bolt of lightning. “Fuck me,” Liam said again, less a demand than a plea.
For a split second Noel wondered just what Liam would be willing to do to persuade him. Then Noel inhaled, the smell of Liam burning through him like a fresh hit, and he knew he’d never last long enough to find out. “On the bed,” he said, ragged, and this time Liam went. He flopped onto it and leaned back on his hands, hard-on still waving like a banner in the breeze.
His eyes had gone glassy again, the pupils huge. His skinny chest lifted and fell too fast. “Noel,” he whined, when Noel took too long looking. There was the barest trace of uncertainty in his eyes, as if he didn’t have Noel hooked through like some unlucky fish.
“Shh,” Noel said. He crawled onto the bed until he was leaning over Liam, and he caught Liam’s mouth again. Noel knew a moment’s doubt: was kissing really necessary during heat? Did he need to do quite this much of it? Liam seemed to suffer no such qualms; he squirmed underneath Noel, eagerly kissing back.
It wasn’t enough anymore. “Turn over,” Noel said.
Liam did that eagerly, too. Had Liam ever been this pliable in his entire life? Noel settled on top of him and pressed a kiss to the back of his neck, damp with sweat. Then he added teeth, because it felt right. Liam yelped, but it didn’t sound like a protest. He was shifting against the bed—rubbing off on it, on Noel’s sheets. Noel bit down harder. “I’m getting you off,” he growled, and Liam stilled.
Noel remembered a condom with moments to spare. He froze, the tip of his cock pressed between Liam’s thighs, and there was a dangerous moment of indecision before he dragged himself off the bed and went hunting in his luggage. “The fuck are you doing?” Liam demanded, shoving up on his elbows and looking outraged.
Success. Noel ripped the foil open and nearly took his thumb nail off in the process. “Can’t be knocking you up, can I?” He felt a distant, icy shiver of fear at the thought. He rolled the rubber onto himself and climbed back up onto the bed. “Up,” he said, patting Liam’s thigh. “On your knees.”
Liam did, grumbling something Noel ignored; he’d had a lifetime’s practice in ignoring Liam until he got so loud it was impossible. He thumbed across Liam’s hole, slick and fragrant and hot and hungry, and then he lined himself up and pushed home, and every nerve in his body fired at once.
When he came back to himself a moment later, Liam was braced on his forearms and shoving back against Noel. “I need it,” Liam said.
“All right, all right.” Noel gripped Liam’s hips, drew back and thrust again, and whatever Liam was saying collapsed into a moan. It was loud, impossible to mistake. It hummed in Noel’s belly. He’d been on edge since his first whiff of Liam less than an hour ago; now it took only a few more thrusts until his knot began to swell.
Liam was cursing to himself, a near-continuous litany, and he was moving with a rhythm that Noel eventually recognized. He reached around Liam and batted his hand away—again—and then, finally, he got his hand on his brother’s cock, hot and stiff and so sweet in his hand.
“Noel.”
“Shh.” Liam was already right on the edge. Noel kissed the meat of Liam’s shoulder and teased his grip up and down Liam’s shaft, lightly, until Liam growled in inarticulate frustration and closed his hand over Noel’s. That final squeeze was all it took. Liam spurted hot over Noel’s hand and shuddered around his knot, and Noel whited out.
Noel lost some time after that. When he came to, he was on his side, snug against Liam’s back and still knotted securely in him. Noel slung an arm over Liam’s waist and found his belly still tacky with come.
The thought occurred to Noel hazily, distantly, without any weight to it: he’d never shagged a man before. Or an O, either, but Liam would insist that counted, and Noel was willing to concede it to him, just the once. Noel’d never shagged a person with a cock before, was the point.
(He’d never shagged Liam before, but that was not the point.)
In the all-seeing glare of the overhead light—Noel hadn’t thought to turn it off once they got in the door, and now it was much too late—and between the strands of hair plastered to the back of Liam’s neck, Noel could see the harsh red outline of his own teeth. He hadn’t realized he’d bitten Liam that hard. He wanted to press kisses to the spot now, as if he could soothe the sting away. He wanted to bite him again.
Liam sucked in a sharp breath, clearly coming to, and Noel braced himself for—yelling? Liam trying to pull off from Noel’s knot, which they’d both sorely regret? But after a moment, Liam relaxed again, settling against Noel’s chest. He was comfortable where he was, and that warmed Noel somewhere down deep in his gut. “You all right?” Noel asked, as if he were in the habit of asking after Liam’s wellbeing, as if Liam didn’t tell everyone in earshot when he wasn’t perfectly contented.
Sluggishly, Liam said, “I like this better than the blockers.”
Noel laughed against Liam’s spine. “Yeah, I bet you do.”
“Should’ve done this years ago.”
It took a while for this to filter through, and a while after that for Noel to grind out the implications of it. Still, a question eventually formed; it grew insistent. “You’ve not done it with anyone else? Not ever?”
“I’m not a fucking fruit.” This was not accompanied by Liam’s usual outrage at the slightest perceived suggestion of same. He didn’t even twitch. Despite the delicious chemicals flooding Noel’s system, he thought clearly: My brother is a fucking idiot. In that moment, the thought was a fond one.
Hard on the heels of that realization came the next, which was that no one had done this except Noel. No one had ever had Liam like this, lodged in him, soothing that sharp, hungry need for him. No one had heard that particular note of blissed-out satisfaction in Liam’s voice. A feeling burst through Noel that he couldn’t identify at all; he could only let it burn through him and wash out all the way to his feet and his hands. When it was past, Noel shifted ever so slightly, just enough to feel the ecstatic pressure of Liam around his knot, and then he pressed a little closer against Liam’s back. Already they were sweat-slick in all the places they touched, and Liam grunted in complaint, but Noel only kissed the back of his neck, where the teeth marks were. “Go to sleep. You’ll want it again in a bit.”
Liam wouldn’t know that, maybe. Liam had never had a heat with another person before. The embers of that knowledge glowed bright in Noel’s chest, banked and waiting.
A memory: Liam’s missed a pill and decided he wants to go out anyway, smelling like an invitation, and now some bloke’s tried to cop a feel. Liam’s spitting mad, shoulders thrown back, fists at the ready; he’s already popped the guy in the jaw. “Don’t fucking touch me, queer,” Liam spits.
“Queer,” the fellow repeats, turning purple.
“Piss off,” Noel says. He has to look up to meet the bloke’s eye, but he doesn’t fucking care. Idiot or not, no one’s touching Liam that Liam doesn’t want touching him. “You get the fuck away from me brother.”
“Brother,” the fellow says. His lip’s split, and now it splits wider as he grins, showing bloody teeth. “It’s like that, is it? Couple of fucking perverts.” He’s backing away, still with that ugly glint in it his eye. “Take your bitch brother home and fuck some manners into him, then.”
“Pillock,” Liam calls after him, still looking half a step from murder. “Queer tried to fucking feel me up,” he mutters.
He never says anything about the bloke thinking they were shagging, so Noel never does, either.
Sometime later, Liam shoved Noel awake from a hazy, pleasant dream. Oasis had been playing a huge crowd, and their mum had been on stage with, for some reason, a harmonica. Noel blinked up at Liam, still flushed, his hair hanging stringy and damp in his eyes. “Come on,” Liam said, sounding a little frantic.
His need was thick in the air, cloying, desperate, and Noel found himself already mostly hard. “Shove over,” he said. Obediently Liam stretched out on his back, eyes fixed on Noel’s every move. Noel drew one of Liam’s knees up and felt around Liam’s hole, sopping with slick. Fresh, dizzying waves of scent wafted up. “Stay here,” Noel said, suddenly breathless, and went for a condom.
Noel didn’t know just why he wanted to look at Liam this time, only that he did. He held Liam’s gaze as he slid into him. And then Noel was caught in the slippery, warm grip of Liam’s heat, and there was nothing to do but fuck him until Noel’s knot bloomed, tying them together more surely in that moment than even blood ever had.
Liam watched him through it all, blue eyes blazing. He hardly blinked.
Noel lost count. They were long past the point of pleasure, when fucking was a kind of compulsion, a thread of need that pulled as sharply at Noel as it did Liam. Noel ached with exhaustion. He wondered hazily if omega heats were always like this, or if it was because Liam had never had a proper one before. Christ. Twenty-two years old and never had a real heat, no wonder the kid was such a fucking disaster.
At last, after Noel had given up hoping for it, Liam finally squirmed away. “Get off me,” he rasped. “I’m fucking knackered.”
The rasp was something Noel should have worried about. Instead, he rolled off Liam, closed his eyes against the glare of the overhead light, and went to sleep.
Noel woke to Liam sat up in bed, staring at him with an expression Noel couldn’t read. That was always a dangerous sign. “About time,” Liam said.
Noel took a cautious sniff and was punched in the nose by that noxious post-heat funk, except no woman Noel had taken through a heat had ever smelled this bad. “Christ, you reek.” Liam immediately puffed up, ready for a fight, and Noel hastily added, “How d’you feel?” He didn’t want to start something with Liam today. He wasn’t going to think about why.
Liam paused mid-bristle. His mouth twisted, and he shifted restlessly on the bed, clearly checking out all his internals. Finally, chin tucked to his chest and gaze fixed on the sheets, where Noel couldn’t catch it, he said, “All right. Sore.”
He was sore. All he’d done was lie there. Noel had muscles aching in places he didn’t even know could ache.
They ached because Noel’d fucked his brother. A lot. Better not to think about it.
Noel regarded his crusty sheets and decided they were hopeless. What time was it? Not so late they had to worry about the gig, at least. Late enough that he felt as though he hadn’t eaten in a year, although that could’ve been due to all the—
Not thinking about it.
Liam was staring at Noel with that same unreadable expression Noel’d woken up to. It wasn’t like Liam to sit so still; it was unsettling. It would’ve been unsettling in any circumstances. Noel abruptly got to his feet. “Next time just take your fucking pill.”
“I did!” Liam’s voice was still a bit strained, but he’d sung through worse. He’d be fine. “I took it, you can ask Bonehead, he was there.” Then he hunched into himself, the picture of guilt. “I think it was that meth, fucking me up. From LA? Been feeling weird.”
As if Noel could forget that nightmare of a gig he’d tried to quit the band over, even if today the memory of it felt years old, practically ancient. “Right, so no more meth.” That was probably a lost cause, too. Get Liam to take things he ought to take, keep him from taking things he shouldn’t—Noel wouldn’t put money on either.
This time, though, Liam nodded, subdued. It was uncanny. Noel would never have guessed Liam had it in him to look so small. “Right,” Noel said. “I’m manky as hell, so I’m going and getting myself cleaned off. You should probably piss off before someone comes knocking for me.” And Noel stalked off to the shower, source of scalding hot water and blissful solitude.
Solitude seemed a bit of a mistake, once Noel had it. Too much space for thoughts he didn’t want, flashes of memory too vivid to fully shut out. The grunt Liam made when he was breached and the sharper one when he came. The taste of his skin.
The shower door slid open with a rattle so loud and unexpected that Noel slammed his elbow against the tile wall. “Fucking hell!” he said. The next moment, Liam pushed in next to him and slid the door shut again. “This is not a fucking two-person shower.”
“Didn’t think you’d want me wandering around the hotel smelling like you.”
That—was a fair point. “Then wait five fucking minutes and I’ll be out, you dickhead.”
“It’s you that’s got me smelling like this,” Liam said, as if that were some kind of rebuttal. He reached past Noel and retreated with the tiny bottle of hotel shampoo—if retreat meant he was a full six inches away, where Noel felt his presence more keenly than any time when they’d been actively fucking, because then Noel’d been high on heat and now he was well and truly caught in the clammy grip of the comedown. He felt as though someone had taken a wire brush to his every last nerve, and now Liam was stood on all of them.
“You want me to do yours?” Liam asked, gesturing towards Noel’s hair. “Easy enough, cause you’re so short.”
“No, I don’t want you to do mine. I want you to get out of the fucking shower and let me get your scent off me in fucking peace, you giant fucking twat. And you kissed me first,” Noel added.
“So what if I did?” Liam lifted his chin, shoulders going back, ready for a fight. Noel itched to give it to him. That uneasy buzz under his skin—that was him wanting to punch Liam, obviously. It’d put one or both of them in hospital, considering the size of the shower stall. Noel’d knock Liam’s head against the tiles, that’d be good, that’d shut him up—
Kissing shut him up too, it seemed.
Liam melted against Noel, all the fight gone out of him in an instant. He moaned hungrily into Noel’s mouth, which was surely an act; surely he didn’t still want it after all those feverish hours. Noel cupped the back of Liam’s neck and again remembered the teeth marks. Suddenly it was intolerable that they should be hidden under Liam’s hair, where no one could see. Noel could do better than that.
Sometime later, Noel banged his sore elbow against the wall again and came abruptly back to himself. He stumbled backwards into the spray. When he’d wiped the water out of his eyes, he found Liam lounging opposite, gaze hooded and looking supremely pleased with himself. And there was Noel’s handiwork on Liam’s stubbly jaw: a bruise already darkening and impossible to miss.
Liam had always been beautiful. Somehow, the bruise improved him. Just looking at it settled all the parts of Noel that’d been on edge.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” Liam said, peeling away from the wall and out of the shower.
“Christ,” Noel said blankly. Liam had left the door open, of course; Noel pulled it shut again. He got at last to the business of soaping himself down very thoroughly, carefully working around all the places chafed raw. He squirted shampoo into his hair. Then he gave up and emptied the whole miniature bottle.
Absently he flipped through memories of Liam’s ragged gasps hours ago, of his fingers in Noel’s hair moments ago. He wasn’t meant to fuck his brother. He turned that thought over in his mind, then over again, but he couldn’t seem to get a grip on it. Who wouldn’t want to fuck Liam? And whose fucking business was it anyway? It was no one’s, Noel concluded.
When he finally got out of the shower, he discovered that Liam had not only left the room to wander around the hotel smelling like Noel, but he’d taken the last of Noel’s towels. “That little fucker,” Noel said, but he couldn’t even work up much outrage over it. He had bigger concerns: a room service breakfast—mid-afternoon lunch?—and a fresh snort, and at some point soon there was a soundcheck Oasis were supposed to be on hand for. They were going to take America by storm; Noel could feel it. And they deserved to, because they were the best band in the world.
A memory, recent: Liam drifts by on stage, eyes burning with what looks like heat, except Noel watched him wash his suppressant down with lager just a few hours ago. Liam favors the whole crowd with that smolder, those faces all but lost to the darkness beyond the stage lights, and then he smirks at Noel: Look at them, looking at me. Are you looking?
Noel is very much fucking looking.
Satisfied, Liam stalks away again. He presses his upper lip to the microphone like the beginning of a kiss.
[end]