1.
When Noel took out his key card, he found Liam still behind him. The gig had left him looking nearly blank with exhaustion—the natural state of a pregnant person, Noel was learning—but not so far gone he’d confuse Noel’s door with his own. “What?” Noel asked.
Before Noel’s eyes, Liam’s weariness melted gradually, almost imperceptibly to something else: a lift at the corner of his mouth, a new sparkle in his eye, an infuriating hint of knowing that Noel’s body never failed to respond to.
The rest of the band and crew had all disappeared into their own rooms. Tomorrow Oasis would climb on the train to another crowd roaring to hear Wonderwall and Live Forever, all on the strategy of getting in as many gigs as humanly possible before Liam got too pregnant to travel, but tonight there was no one watching to see what room Liam might end up in.
“Come on, then,” Noel said, stepping aside. Liam’s grin lit up his whole face.
If anyone noticed the next morning, Noel’d say Liam had felt especially pregnant and in need of brotherly support. He pulled Liam in for a kiss and reflected it might even be true.
2.
“Noel.”
From somewhere beyond the dreamless abyss, someone was saying his name.
A hand shook Noel roughly. “Noel,” said that familiar voice, impossible to forget.
“What?” Noel demanded, dragged to consciousness. Another city; another show. They were in a bed with stiff hotel sheets and pillows that were too fat to sleep on. He and Liam had stumbled in with the idea of shagging, but Liam had already passed out on top of the covers before Noel had so much as touched him.
Noel had stood there for a while, looking at Liam’s long lashes fanned out on his cheeks and at his hand resting against his round belly with his fingers splayed across it. Noel’d found he didn’t have the heart to wake him and insist he sleep in his own fucking room.
He was getting soft, Noel was.
He squinted at the digital clock, its numerals glowing sharply out of the black. Fucking five-thirty in the morning. “What is it?” Noel repeated. With a sudden shock of alarm, he said, “Is something wrong? Are you—?”
“I’m fine,” Liam said. “Here, give us your hand.” He took Noel by the wrist and dragged his hand nearer to himself, until Noel’s palm was flat against Liam’s belly. Still dazed with sleep, Noel spread his fingers across Liam’s skin.
Something odd happened under Noel’s palm. It was a strange sort of bumping sensation. “What the fuck?” Noel said, and then he understood.
“Can you feel it?” Liam asked.
“Yeah.” Liam had been feeling the baby moving about for two weeks, and he’d demanded everyone on the tour touch his stomach to see if they could feel it, too. As far as Noel knew, no one had until now. “Fucking weird,” Noel said.
“Weirder for me,” Liam said. Noel couldn’t argue with that.
It still seemed impossible that Noel’s kid brother could get pregnant, have a baby, be a father. Leave it to Liam to get up the duff in a toilet stall at a club by some geezer he’d never even known the name of. The thought didn’t sting quite as much as it once had. Whose bed was Liam in more often than not these days? Not that cunt’s.
“I’m gonna love this kid so much, Noel.” Liam’s fingers bumped up against Noel’s, there in the dark under the covers. “I’m gonna love the fucking shit out of it.”
“Yeah,” Noel said.
He fell asleep to that gentle tapping against his palm.
3.
The bed shifted, then shifted again. A light switched on. “Fuck,” Noel said, squeezing his eyes shut against the brightness. With a groan, Liam pushed off from the bed and stumped towards the toilet, and after a moment Noel heard the sound of pissing.
Why do we even fucking pay for a bed you ain’t going to sleep in? Noel had asked weeks ago, after Liam had somehow ended up in his room yet again. Liam had shrugged and said he didn’t know. Now they shared a room, still for ‘brotherly support,’ of course. There were two beds, but Liam nearly always slept in Noel’s anyway.
Not for sex, mind; not anymore. Just sleeping. A month ago Liam had started getting squirrely about sex, and so far he’d refused to explain why. Discomfort, Noel supposed.
The toilet flushed. Noel opened his eyes just enough to watch Liam stagger back towards the bed in his boxer shorts and oversized t-shirt. He was getting proper huge now. Noel wondered how much bigger he could possibly get with more than two months still to go. He looked a sight on the stage, belting out Noel’s lyrics with his hands behind his back and his belly sticking out in front of him, round and unmistakable. The magazines said he was breaking some barrier or other, a man giving rock and roll shows while he was pregnant.
I just want to have a kid and fucking sing, Liam had told a journo. Don’t see what’s so fucking great about it. He’d refused interview requests after that.
“Fuck,” Liam said now. He sat heavily on the edge of the bed, and there his progress stopped. “Fuck,” he said again, more softly.
Still a little groggy, Noel asked, “The kid wake you up?”
“Yeah. Seems like I sleep or he does. Can’t ever have both at the same time, and he’s got sharp fucking little heels. And me back hurts.” This last was said with a sidelong, hopeful-looking glance.
Noel considered his chances of getting back to sleep while Liam was still uncomfortable. He didn’t like them much. With a sigh, he struggled upright and crawled over to sit behind Liam. He put his hands on Liam’s lower back and dug his thumbs in.
“Aw, fuck,” Liam groaned.
He was fucking tight there, his muscles all knotted up with the effort of carrying that belly round. It was mind-boggling, honestly, what a person went through to have a baby. Noel couldn’t imagine choosing to do it.
“Yeah, there,” Liam said. Then, “Ow, fuck, that tickles.”
Noel brushed his fingers lightly along Liam’s sides and enjoyed the way Liam squirmed. Then he returned to the knots. He was no masseuse, but he’d gotten some experience with back rubs in the past few weeks—or experience giving back rubs to Liam, at least. With his luck, what worked on Liam would be the exact opposite of what anyone else would want whose back Noel might ever have occasion to rub.
Still, Noel didn’t mind, really, because it was the only way Liam would let Noel touch him anymore. The noises he made during a back rub were almost like sex noises.
Very like sex noises, in fact; even more so tonight than usual. Experimentally Noel dug a little deeper into the muscle, and Liam groaned again.
“Are you fucking getting off on this?” Noel demanded.
“No,” Liam said, sullen and entirely unconvincing. Noel slipped his hand below Liam’s belly, aiming for his cock, but Liam caught him by the wrist. “I don’t want it,” Liam said.
“Really? Because it sounds like you do.” Noel stretched his fingers out. They brushed over a suspicious bulge in Liam’s boxers. “Feels like it, too.”
Liam stayed quiet. Noel tried to get his hand free and do a fuller exploration of Liam’s hard-on, but Liam’s grip on his wrist tightened. “You’ll laugh,” Liam said.
“At what?” Noel shuffled around to sit at Liam’s side so he could look at him properly. “What am I laughing at?”
Liam wouldn’t meet his gaze. He had that stubborn set to his mouth that said it was hopeless, he wouldn’t be moved, but Noel’d had a month of that mulish silence, and he wasn’t having it anymore. He waited, letting the silence stretch out, until finally Liam broke. “I look weird, is all,” he said.
Noel took this in. “Pregnant, you mean.” It explained why Liam slept in a t-shirt now, he supposed.
“I’m all swollen up. I’ve got a funny dark line down my stomach and little silvery marks on the sides, and my bellybutton’s gone poking out. I’ve got fucking tits now. There’s nothing—nothing sexy about me anymore, all right? So quit fucking asking me.”
Noel should have known. Liam was a vain fuck; of course he didn’t want to be looked at like this.
But Noel wanted to look at him. He hadn’t realized until that very moment how much he wanted see all those changes the baby was making to Liam, all the places he looked different. Noel couldn’t move his hand without wrestling it out of Liam’s grip, so instead he leaned over and caught Liam’s mouth in a kiss.
Liam ducked away. “Noel, come on.”
“You come on,” Noel said. “You can’t tell me you don’t want to get off. You’re probably still randy with all the hormones and shite. You must be gagging for it.”
Liam’s mouth twisted. He didn’t disagree, which was as good as admitting it.
Noel leaned in again. This time he pressed a kiss to Liam’s jaw. Liam didn’t immediately pull away, so Noel stayed right where he was, kissing Liam where he was sandpapery with half a day’s stubble. After a few moments of that, he opened his mouth and scraped his teeth lightly along the skin. Liam shuddered with a satisfying, full-body shiver.
Noel moved back to Liam’s mouth. After the briefest of pauses, Liam began to respond. Noel cupped the back of Liam’s head with his free hand, running his fingers through the shaggy hair. His heart thudded in his throat. He felt pretty desperate even without any special hormones to egg him on. Christ, it’d been a month since he’d so much as kissed Liam. A girl here and there on the road wasn’t any kind of substitute.
Noel moaned into Liam’s mouth. Liam clutched at Noel’s shoulder and kissed back just as hungrily, just as desperately.
Liam pulled away again, this time to change position, twisting around with a foot underneath him and the other hanging over the edge of the bed. He faced Noel at last. His hair was all mussed with sleep, and his t-shirt, which had no doubt fit him fine a few weeks ago, was now beginning to stretch around his belly.
Noel reached out and pressed his hand flat to that round, heavy curve. He thumbed over Liam’s bellybutton, which poked out just as he’d said and cast a stark little shadow across his stomach, thrown by the bedside lamp. Liam’s breath hitched, and Noel felt it through his hand. “Let me see,” Noel said.
Liam shook his head.
Fine. Noel slid his hand down below the swollen moon of Liam’s belly to the bulge of his cock in his boxers. He wasn’t fully stiff yet, but he was interested. Noel gave him a squeeze, enjoying the weight in his hand and the sharp inhale of Liam’s breath.
“Noel,” Liam said, a whining little plea.
“What, you want me to do something with this?” Noel gave Liam another squeeze. “Bring you off just like this, or maybe with my mouth, eh? When’s the last time you blew your load in someone’s gob?” Noel knew very well when it’d been, because it’d been Noel’s mouth Liam had come in. Liam hadn’t shagged anyone else since the pregnancy had first started to show.
Ironic, that. Liam pregnant with some other cunt’s baby was more Noel’s than he’d ever been.
Noel adjusted his grip on Liam’s cock, giving him a twist through the cotton.
“Fuck,” Liam breathed.
“You want it, don’t you?”
“You know I do, you fucking arsewipe.”
With his free hand, Noel curled his fingers under the hem of Liam’s t-shirt. “All right, then.”
“Noel,” Liam said, a long drawn-out whine. “You’ll fucking laugh.”
“I won’t,” Noel said. He even meant it, probably. “I just want to see you.”
“Why?” Liam asked, full of mistrust.
“Because—” Noel paused. Because I do. Because you’re my brother. Because you’ve got this whole weird fucking thing happening to you without me, and I want to see what it is.
“It doesn’t matter why,” Noel said. “But I ain’t touching you unless I can look at you.” He let go of Liam’s t-shirt and his cock and sat back on his hands, waiting to see what Liam would do. Seeing Liam waver, Noel repeated, “I won’t laugh.”
“I’ll fucking kick your head in if you do,” Liam said. “And—and I can’t, like this. It hurts, sitting like this too long.”
That meant Noel had won. He waited while Liam moved up the bed, where he could sit with his back to the headboard, his legs sprawled wide. When Liam looked settled, Noel wedged in beside him close enough to hear his breath. Liam watched Noel suspiciously out of the corner of his eye. Before Liam had time to change his mind, Noel slipped his hand under Liam’s shirt and pressed his hand flat against the side of Liam’s stomach.
Liam squirmed. “Your hand’s fucking cold.”
“Mm.” And Liam’s skin was beautifully warm. Noel brushed over it with his thumb, teasing, and Liam squirmed again, but Noel wouldn’t be hurried. He’d barely touched Liam in a month, and a month ago Liam had been much smaller: already obviously pregnant, but not massive like he was now. There’d been less of him to touch. He slipped his other hand in as well, and he swept carefully over Liam, mapping the surface of him. He felt a couple of those little bumps from within.
A baby. Fucking absurd.
Liam was much less enthralled and starting to look impatient.
“Come on, then,” Noel said. He lifted Liam’s shirt over his belly and up his chest. Liam obligingly raised his arms, and Noel pulled the shirt all the way off and tossed it in a corner. Then he turned to take in the view.
“Fuck me, you’re huge,” he said.
“Fuck off!” Liam said, outraged. “You said—”
“I’m not laughing,” Noel said. He didn’t feel the slightest urge to. “All right?”
Liam still scowled, but he didn’t say any more.
Liam’s general shape had been quite visible through the clothes, but looking at him now, bare-skinned, it was as if Liam had grown into an entirely new creature since Noel had last gotten him naked. Noel rubbed along the curve of Liam’s belly. There was the dark line Liam had spoke of, running vertically straight through his bellybutton. Noel traced along it with his finger.
“The doctor says it’s normal,” Liam said. “It’s supposed to go away after.”
Noel could only shake his head. He stroked across Liam’s bellybutton, and it tickled against his palm. That was how crowded it was inside Liam: no room even for that little bit of flesh anymore. Christ. No wonder he had to piss all the fucking time. Probably couldn’t hold more than teaspoon of piss in him at once.
Noel’s gaze wandered farther up. Liam’s pecs were a bit bigger now, softer-looking. He did have tits, right enough, though he’d still have been pretty flat-chested for a girl. Noel wanted to cup them in his hands. The areoles had got bigger, too, and darker around the nipples.
“I told you,” Liam said.
“Told me what?” Noel said absently.
“That I looked weird. That you wouldn’t want to fuck me anymore.”
Noel looked up sharply. He took in Liam’s deflated, unhappy expression. Liam seemed to be trying to hunch into his shoulders, as though there were any possible way for him to hide. “Well, you’re wrong, as usual,” Noel said.
Liam stared out from under his eyebrows in sullen disbelief. There was no point arguing with that look, so Noel ignored it entirely. He leaned up and caught Liam’s mouth in a kiss. For a moment Liam was stiff, and then he relaxed into a sigh and kissed Noel back. Noel stroked along Liam’s side. Fuck, he’d missed this. Liam threaded his fingers through Noel’s hair and pulled him a little closer, and Noel thought Liam must have missed it, too.
Noel worked his hand inside Liam’s boxers. Liam shifted a little and opened his legs wider, which didn’t really compensate for the belly Noel had to angle around, but it helped a little. Finally he got his hand on Liam’s cock. He’d gone soft with all the talking, and Noel went to work plumping him up again. Liam moaned into Noel’s mouth and thrust raggedly into his grip. Noel had missed that about him, too: how easy he was. If anything, Liam had got even more sensitive since the last time they’d shagged. His groans were starting to get to Noel. They wormed hot and delicious in his gut.
The awkward angle got to him first, though. He pulled back and looked into Liam’s eyes, huge and blue and a little dazed.
“Well?” Noel said.
A disbelieving smile began around Liam’s eyes. “Yeah?”
“Idiot,” Noel said. “You’re—you’re fucking amazing.”
“Fuck off,” Liam said, flushing with pleasure. “Now you’re just talking shite.”
Liam still loved a compliment, it seemed; that hadn’t changed at all. Give him one nice word and he’d turn insufferable, strutting around and starting shit.
Except there wasn’t anyone to start shit with now, in this timeless hour, in a sterile hotel room whose walls sucked up all sound and didn’t give any back. There were no echoes here. Whatever Noel said next, there’d be no one to hear but Liam, and God knew he’d be dead to the world again before long. Truth be told, he didn’t have quite the same capacity for causing trouble anymore anyway. He couldn’t move fast enough for it.
“It’s mental,” Noel said. “What you’re doing. It’s fucking weird. You’re just sitting around, eating bon bons and getting fat—”
“Fuck you, dickhead.”
“—and at the end of it you’re gonna have a kid.”
Noel stroked Liam’s stomach. A kid of his own. Liam, a father at the ripe age of twenty-two and half that in maturity. The mind boggled. And yet Noel could imagine it, because he’d watched all the beers Liam didn’t drink, the drugs he didn’t take. He’d seen the little vitamin pills Liam snuck instead when he thought no one was watching. Liam knew he was meant to sleep on his side—he knew which side—and he mostly did it.
He’d made himself into a home for a little future person he’d never even met. He was indeed swollen up, with tits and the weird dark line and the lot of it. It was all so fucking bizarre that Noel wanted to go hide in the bathroom and have a wank in peace, away from Liam’s frank gaze that always seemed to see exactly the bit of himself Noel most wanted to hide.
“Fucking hell, Liam,” Noel said.
Liam looked at him very seriously. For a moment it was quiet, only the sound of Liam’s breath and the thud of Noel’s own pulse. Softly, Liam said, “What if he was yours?”
“What?”
Liam dipped his chin, gesturing to his stomach, and Noel’s chest lurched with old misery. Never mind there were a dozen very good reasons he could never father a child on Liam. Noel hadn’t so much gotten over the bitter disappointment of Liam’s kid’s parentage as he had simply put it away in a cabinet, never to be looked at.
And now here was Liam, wanting to drag it out again and look at it. “Piss off,” Noel said. The sudden fury shook him; it held him so tight he could barely breathe. “You—you fucking arse.”
Liam caught Noel’s hand before he could pull it away. “No, that’s not—what I mean is, what would you say? If he were yours. Just for tonight, like. Just—if he was.”
Realization slowly dawned. “Mine,” Noel echoed.
Liam relaxed his hold on Noel and settled back against the headboard. His gaze was far too old, too knowing, for someone who’d fretted five minutes ago about being attractive enough to fuck.
His heart beating in his throat, Noel pressed his other hand flat against Liam, so that he was holding Liam’s belly—Liam’s baby—between his hands. What if that were Noel’s baby resting there under his palms, tiny and squashed and ugly?
Noel’s breath shook. “Fuck, Liam.”
“Gonna have your genes,” Liam said.
“He’ll be a good-looking fucker, like you,” Noel said. He was trying to find his way off this island of emotion Liam had suddenly marooned him on, but he didn’t know how. He spread his fingers wide across Liam’s warm skin. “You’re saying I did this?”
“Yeah,” Liam said, sounding much more sure of himself than Noel. “Fucking got me up the duff, you did. This is all your fault.”
The words went through Noel like lightning. “These, too?” Noel said. He reached up and cupped Liam’s swollen breast in his hand.
Liam’s breath hitched. “Yeah.”
Noel leaned over and did what, in his heart of hearts, he’d been wanting to do for the past half hour: he bent and put his mouth on Liam’s nipple.
Liam drew a sharp breath. He held very still. “I don’t—there isn’t any milk.”
“Yet,” Noel mumbled. He’d overheard Liam on the phone with their mam. Between Liam’s half of the conversation and his deep red flush, Noel’d gotten an idea of Liam’s prospects in the lactation department. Noel sucked gently, just to see. Nothing happened, so Noel licked a circuit all the way around the nipple, drawing some of the tissue erect. He palmed Liam’s other breast. “I did this,” he said.
“Yeah,” Liam said. “And you fucking ruined all my t-shirts.”
Noel laughed. He’d said he wouldn’t, but it burst out of him nonetheless. He sat back and grinned at Liam. Something bright sparked behind his breastbone, where the misery had been. “I think you did that on your own. Get clobber that fits, you idiot.”
“That pregnancy stuff’s all shit,” Liam said.
That was an old refrain, and Noel currently had no fucking patience for it. He shifted on the bed, bent low, and pressed a kiss to Liam’s stomach.
“Noel,” Liam gasped.
“Gorgeous,” Noel said. He wasn’t talking about the future kid anymore. “Huge and swollen and—and beautiful.”
Liam made a choked, gurgling sound. Noel looked up into Liam’s shocked gaze.
“Beautiful,” Noel repeated. He kissed Liam’s skin again, then again. He framed Liam’s belly in his hands and kissed a trail from Liam’s side all the way up to the rounded peak, where Liam first began to swell out from below his ribs. Noel kept on going, mouthing a line up between Liam’s soft new tits. He arrived at Liam’s collarbone and felt as if he could not go one inch farther. He could only rest there, breathing on Liam, feeling Liam’s own breath blowing gently through his hair.
As Noel shifted against Liam’s hip, he realized he was achingly hard. He didn’t know when that had happened.
“Mine,” Noel said fiercely, and that wasn’t about the baby, either. He opened his mouth and closed his teeth around Liam’s collarbone.
“Fuck!” Liam jerked in Noel’s arms.
Noel had already let go. He took Liam’s head in his hands and kissed his jaw. “Mine,” Noel said, softer this time, just a murmur. The word seemed to pulse in his blood and burn through his lips. He thought surely he must have branded it into Liam’s skin.
“Yeah, fuck. Just us, right? Just us and the little one.” Liam reached up and gripped Noel’s hand, where he was still holding Liam’s face.
Noel squeezed back. His nerves buzzed like he’d touched a live wire. He leaned up that extra inch to kiss Liam again, open-mouthed. He took all of Liam he could. He ground his cock against Liam’s thigh and groaned at how good it felt. Much more of it and he was going to come in his pants, and he wouldn’t even mind.
“Get it out,” Liam said, fumbling with waistband of those same underpants. “Come on, show me.”
Noel sat back. He shoved the waistband down and pulled his cock out over the top. He felt he’d regressed ten years, like he was seventeen again, and just touching himself in front of another person was almost more than he could handle without going off. He massaged himself gently, squeezing his eyes shut at the pleasure of it and the sheer effort of holding himself together.
When he thought he had some measure of control again, he opened his eyes and found Liam staring back, looking almost as shellshocked as Noel felt. He was reaching around his stomach to grip himself through his boxers.
“None of that,” Noel said. He let go of his cock and reached for Liam’s boxers. “Come on, we’re getting you out of these.” He had a glimmer of an idea. It felt like a really amazing one.
It took a bit of maneuvering, but eventually Liam’s boxers were tossed aside. He fondled his bare cock as it bobbed against the underside of his belly. It was a fucking sight, one Noel’d never known he’d been missing until now. He covered Liam’s hand with his and gave him a squeeze, and Liam sucked in a sharp breath.
“I’m doing it,” Noel said. He brushed Liam’s hand aside. “I’m gonna to make you come a fucking gusher all over yourself.”
“Yeah, okay,” Liam said breathlessly.
Liam was always sensitive anywhere Noel touched him. So fucking eager in bed, if not anywhere else where Noel might have wanted him to be. Noel sometimes wondered if that was what the appeal: that in this one place, Liam would do exactly what Noel wanted him to, would react exactly the way Noel wanted. (Except, memorably, the various occasions when he hadn’t.)
But no, that was bollocks. The appeal was Liam himself, sitting there bare and twitchy as he tried to hold still, awkwardly thrusting into Noel’s grip when he couldn’t. His face had gone as red as his cock. He had one hand clenched in the sheets and the other resting against his stomach, as if he’d forgotten in the past few months that were was anywhere else to put it.
He was gorgeous. He was Noel’s brother, the most beautiful man on the planet—stretch marks and all—and very nearly on the brink.
There. “Fuck,” Liam gasped. He jerked in Noel’s hand. He came in white gouts of spunk, painting the underside of his belly and flecking across Noel’s hand. “Fuck,” Liam repeated faintly, collapsing back against the headboard. He gasped for air.
He wasn’t so out of it that he didn’t notice Noel lifting his hand to his mouth. Liam watched, utterly transfixed, as Noel licked Liam’s come off his knuckles. He kept on watching while Noel settled back on his heels and finally got his hand on his own cock again. He’d flagged a little, but all he had to do was look at Liam’s great huge belly and his soft, puffy tits, at his hand still resting over the baby: Noel’s baby, for at least another two minutes. Noel was nearly light-headed with arousal just from looking.
Noel’d teased them both long enough. He stroked himself with purpose. He laid his free hand flat against Liam’s stomach and felt Liam’s shallow breath under his palm.
He didn’t need much more: a few more strokes, the delicious tension building his balls and deep in his gut, and then Noel leaned forward and came in an arc across Liam’s belly.
Noel sat back, breath heaving, and admired his handiwork. Liam was doing the same, staring down in fascination at the stripes of jizz on his skin. After a moment’s breather, Noel reached out and swiped through the jizz with his fingers, smearing it around. Liam’s sparse dark hairs stuck up through it here and there. Noel’d only half caught his breath, yet he still felt a flicker of arousal, looking at that white mess on Liam’s stomach. It might have been the hottest fucking thing Noel’d ever seen in his life.
Liam reached down to his own come, which had begun to dry. He wiped some from his skin and then, with intense concentration, he brought it up to mix with Noel’s, like the spunk was paint and Liam’s belly was the palette. When he’d made quite a filthy mess of it, he settled back with a satisfied air. “There. Now the baby’s got both of us.”
“You absolute nutter,” Noel said. He was torn between laughter and would-be arousal and something else altogether, a kind of electric shock so sharp he couldn’t tell whether it was pleasure or pain. He braced his clean hand against the headboard and leaned in, until he was inches from Liam’s face. “You’re fucking mine, you got that straight?”
“Yeah,” Liam said. He nodded shakily. “Yeah. Noel—”
Noel swallowed the rest of Liam’s words with a kiss. Liam leaned up to meet him, kissing back as hungrily as if he meant to go another round.
Maybe Liam could, having all those magical pregnancy hormones, but Noel couldn’t. After a bit he broke away. Rather than sort out anything he was feeling, he said, “Better get that cleaned up before it dries.”
“Yeah,” Liam said. He looked at Noel expectantly.
Noel snorted. He reached for a tissue and managed to wipe off most of the mess, with the help of some spit. The rest could wait for a shower, he judged. Liam watched with half-lidded eyes as Noel tossed the tissue towards the bin. Noel asked, “Can you sleep now?”
Liam nodded. He looked halfway there already. Awkwardly he shifted on the bed so he could lie down on his side—sans t-shirt and boxers, Noel noticed. Just Liam himself, bare and pregnant. Weird and beautiful and Noel’s.
Noel shut the light off and pulled the covers up over them both. Almost before Noel had gotten comfortable again, he heard Liam’s breath deepen into sleep. Sleep pulled at Noel, too, inviting him under, but he held onto consciousness just a little longer. He listened to his brother breathe.