"We're too fucking old for these kinds of gigs."
"Speak for yourself." Liam didn't look behind him. He kept on watching the new kid on stage. Well, he'd been new a couple of decades ago. Something like that. Hard to keep track anymore. "You were born old, anyway."
Noel settled into the empty folding chair next to Liam, the extra one Liam brought along to the big festivals when he could be arsed. Some decades he couldn't, but it'd been a few years now since he and Noel had crossed paths, and that morning he'd got up and thought, sure, why the fuck not. It was a new day; who knew what could happen? And he'd been right to, because here Noel was.
Things were easier between them than they'd used to be. Noel'd get in a strop for a couple of decades, but even he got bored of that eventually, and Liam didn't worry about it like he once had, knowing eventually Noel'd have to come back around. Noel could make his new little friends, but at the end of the day, who else did he have left in the world but Liam?
Maybe Noel hadn't meant it all those years ago, singing that they'd live forever. Liam always had.
"It's all shite these days, isn't it?" Noel said.
Liam turned his attention back to the stage. Not the Beatles, but then nobody was, were they? Not enough guitars either, but the kid had some snarl in his voice, and his drummer kept up a beat to warm the blood. "He's all right," he said.
They were sat way up on the bluff, well back from the crowds. No one to see them. It took a couple of songs before Noel's hand covered Liam's. Liam took a deep breath and rolled his hand over so he could thread his fingers through Noel's, palm to palm.