The phone rang twice, plenty long enough for Liam to imagine it going to voicemail. Didn’t matter whether he left a message or not; either way he’d find the number failed to connect the next time he tried. It’d happened before, only he’d promised Mam even more earnestly this time around that he’d save the number only for emergencies.
“Hello,” said Noel, low and gruff.
It was a voice that had every expectation of being disappointed, and Liam wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t. “Hiya, Noel.”
(Vignettes, Nov 22-July 25)
Liam had been sat at the kitchen table looking at the same phone number for twenty minutes. Every so often the phone screen would dim, and he’d tap to brighten it again. Sometimes he’d take a sip of his tea, although it was going cold faster than he was drinking it.
Filthy weather out. Dark like the end of days—or at least the end of this one, though it was only just half three—and absolutely pouring down. Best kind of day for staying in, having a drink, watching something mad on Netflix, having another drink. That was Debbie’s plan once she finished rattling about the kitchen, and his, too. Not a day for excitement or adventures, no. Not a day to expect your life to turn a corner.
Then again, maybe what he hoped would happen next was only possible at the end of days.
The phone rang twice, plenty long enough for Liam to imagine it going to voicemail. Didn’t matter whether he left a message or not; either way he’d find the number failed to connect the next time he tried. It’d happened before, only he’d promised Mam even more earnestly this time around that he’d save the number only for emergencies.
This was an emergency, wasn’t it? Just not his. Mam might even agree.
“Hello,” said Noel, low and gruff.
It was a voice that had every expectation of being disappointed, and Liam wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t. “Hiya, Noel.”
Noel’s sigh was audible over the phone: the quick, sharp inhale and the soft exhale. Instead of hanging up as he’d done the one other time Liam had got this far—years ago, back when Beady Eye was still in business and Liam had been flying high, or high enough anyway, and all he’d really wanted was to hear his brother’s voice—instead of that, Noel said, “I suppose Mam told you the news. You called to gloat, then?”
There’d been some gloating, sure. Noel and the witch were no more? Liam had gloated a whole five minutes, joy growing big and bright like a bubble inside his chest and then popping all at once, because it was a grim, gray day, and now Noel was alone.
“Called to say hello,” Liam said.
“I’m sure,” Noel said. He didn’t end the call, though. He didn’t ask how Liam had got his number yet again. He didn’t say anything at all.
“How’re the kids?”
Noel scoffed. “You haven’t called to ask about my fucking kids.”
“It’s pissing down over here,” Liam said. “Ain’t fit for man nor monkey. It raining where you are?”
“Yes, I am also in London, congratulations on cunningly sleuthing my location,” Noel said.
“Not weather to be alone in, man. You should come over.”
“Just like that,” said Noel mildly, which Liam knew better than to trust. “I’m a free man now, so you figure we might as well pick up right—right where we left off.”
Liam’s pulse picked up, at any rate—not so much at the words themselves as at the funny wobble in Noel’s voice. None of that, now. “Nah, man. Debbie’s here. I reckon she’ll keep the fisticuffs to a minimum.” Noel hadn’t been talking about a fight, but that was easier to think about than the other thing. “Won’t you, love?”
Debbie, who’d spent the last half hour not asking him what he was staring at on his phone and the last two minutes very conspicuously not listening in, looked up from the sink. “What’s that?”
“My brother wants to come over. I told him you’d keep the peace.”
Debbie’s eyebrows rose. “Your brother.”
“Not Paul, the other one. The little one,” Liam added for Noel’s benefit, before he could think better of it. Shit. Very delicate negotiation, this. Every word another step on the high wire, and any moment a stray breeze might send him toppling. “So you’re coming over, right,” he told Noel. “Have a drink with us, yeah? Meet the cats.”
“Meet your cats,” Noel repeated in mild disbelief, but he didn’t say no. For a few moments there they sat, two old geezers on opposite ends of a mobile signal, listening to that weird staticky silence of no one saying anything. At last, Noel broke it. “Another time.”
“Right. Sure.” No more than Liam had expected. That’s what he told himself. “Probably busy with all your—” Liam paused, reaching for something that’d be funny but not ruffle Noel’s feathers, something true but not sharp, something that—well, that likely didn’t exist. “—with your lawyers,” he finished weakly.
“Christ, don’t fucking remind me.”
After another pause—what felt like a long one, waiting for Noel to hang up at any moment—Liam said, “So, you going to tell me about the kids or what? What’s Anais up to these days?”
There was a funny little laugh at the other end of the line, barely more than a breath. A thousand of those laughs, Liam had heard over the years; twenty thousand, maybe. Lots of them he’d felt the heat of, directly on his bare skin. “Who fucking knows,” Noel said. “She’s told me ten times, but I can’t figure it out. Putting your picture on the internet for money, how fucking dodgy is that? I don’t fucking care if you’ve got all your clothes on.”
“Kids these days,” Liam said sagely. He settled back in his chair and sipped on his cold tea, and he let Noel’s voice wash over him like waves on the beach: a sound so ever-present all the years of his life that he couldn’t have imagined missing it until it was gone.
Cold out. Parka weather, not that Liam would admit to there being any other kind. The air nippy on his nose and his lips, pursed around the cigarette. It was warm and cozy back in the house, but the house had windows, and the windows looked out to the road down which any moment Noel might come rolling in his sleek black chauffeured SUV. Liam knew the color from the tabloids. He’d felt like he might do something terrible if he sat looking out those windows for one moment more, so here he was, stood out the back, smoking.
Of course Noel might not come. Might change his mind, turn around, block Liam’s number again. It didn’t seem likely—if Noel wanted to get rid of you, he generally wanted to tell you about it, too—but the possibility was there.
The door creaked open behind Liam, and all his little hairs stood on end. The door shut again. He took another puff, but he was miles beyond any relaxation a little nicotine could give him. Footsteps approached. Liam heard the synthetic swish of a puffer jacket rubbing against its itself.
Noel cleared his throat. “It’s like the Arctic out here.”
“I’ve got more parkas in the house,” Liam said. “If you want to borrow one.”
“I’m all right.”
Liam nodded. Maybe Noel was telling the truth; he’d always been warmer-blooded than Liam.
There was movement at the corner of Liam’s eye. He didn’t look. “You want one?” he asked, gesturing with the cigarette. “I’ve got the pack here somewhere.”
“I quit. Uh, a while back.”
Of course he had. Liam thought maybe he’d even heard about it. Their mam must have told him at some point. Of course Noel’d quit smoking like he’d quit all the other habits he’d decided he didn’t care for anymore. Easy as that. To listen to him, giving up cocaine was a couple of days’ vacation in bed.
He’d never come back to any of that stuff as far Liam knew. Hadn’t spoke to it on the phone here and there, making small talk, sitting through long wordless stretches that might have been awkward or might just have been the sound of two people relearning the sounds of one another’s silence. Hadn’t stopped by for a family visit.
Liam took a deep breath of chill, damp air, and at last he turned to look.
Noel looked old. That was Liam’s first thought, peering around the frames of Noel’s sunglasses. The edges of Noel’s face weren’t so sharp anymore; he had a bit of a jowl where he surely hadn’t thirteen years prior. Liam had seen him in interviews—yeah, fucking have a snigger, wasn’t like he was getting Noel any other way, was he?—but somehow Noel on the TV screen hadn’t looked so tired as the man in front of him. The lines around his mouth hadn’t looked so deep.
Hoarsely—and if Noel said a fucking word about that, Liam would blame the chill—Liam said, “Will you take the shades off?” Not fair that Noel could look Liam straight in the eye, and Liam couldn’t do the same. Not fair that even now Noel was hiding.
Not fair of Liam, maybe, to ask anything more. He’d already got what he wanted most, hadn’t he? Noel in the flesh, and he hadn’t run off yet. “Never mind,” Liam said. “Come on, why’re we freezing our tits off out here? All the booze is in the house.” He bent to stub his cigarette out in the ashtray, and when he turned back, Noel’s face was bare. His sunglasses dangled from his fingers.
His eyes looked the same as they always had: blue and bright, wary, measuring. And how often had they measured Liam and found him wanting? Every fucking day, nearly. Most likely including this one. Noel wasn’t the only one who’d got old, after all.
Only, as he looked, Noel’s eyes got a wet sheen to them. His next breath shook.
Liam moved almost before he thought of it, and he kept moving until his arms were full of Noel. Noel, older and grayer but smelling the same as he ever had, arms as tight around Liam’s waist as they’d ever been. He was there, right there. Liam heard another shaky breath, and his own eyes grew hot. He pulled Noel even closer. “Fuck, Noel,” he said, and if Noel heard the high, squeaky sound of tears in his voice, well, Liam didn’t fucking care.
“I know,” Noel said, holding Liam just as tightly. “I know.”
“Because I’m a professional now, right, I’m trying not to puke the colors of the rainbow all across the carpet of the green room at the fucking Brits, so—”
But Liam forgot what he’d been going to say next, because Noel’d thrown his head back with laughing, his eyes gone squinty. Liam wasn’t sure he could remember how to draw breath anymore. All he could do was look at the new lines in Noel’s face and the shape of his laughing mouth.
Liam would never admit it, but now that he’d got over that first shock, he found age suited Noel. The gray hair and those new, heavier lines in his face gave him a sort of seriousness that Noel in his twenties and thirties could never manage, not for all the scowling in the world. The seriousness made his smiles brighter, too. Every time he directed one Liam’s way, it seemed to light Liam’s whole body up from the inside out. His whole body, every single part.
All those years of grudges and maturing and talking to therapists, and nothing had changed for Liam at all. He might have known.
“I think a professional would have drunk a bit less,” Noel said.
The words shook Liam’s gears loose again. “Nah, man, got to have a little something to grease the wheels, don’t you? So anyway—”
Noel wiped a tear from his eye, still chuckling. It wasn’t even one of Liam’s funnier stories.
“I can’t wait to get out of this fucking country.”
Noel was on his third drink already. Debbie’d taken one long look at him and made herself scarce—a girl’s night with her sister, she said. If such plans had existed before that moment, Liam hadn’t heard of them. Now it was just them two, him and Noel, working through a bottle of Powers. The talking heads blathered on the TV. Rules changes, relegation, blah blah.
Amazing how Noel had barely darkened Liam’s door for years before the split, certainly hadn’t after it, and now at home was the only place Liam saw him. Noel’d made a sour face the one time Liam suggested they try a pub somewhere, and Liam couldn’t even blame him for it. This thing between them was too fragile for public view, like a snowflake that’d melt if you breathed on it. That left Noel legging it out to Highgate, which he grumbled about every single visit.
Today he almost hadn’t, though. You don’t want to see me, Noel’d said over the phone. I don’t fucking want to see me. Christ. I’m going to stay here, and I’m going to drink until I can’t remember my own name, much less— Much less Sara’s, he’d meant. It’d been a miserable day with the lawyers; Liam had managed to glean that much.
You going to get bladdered, Liam had said, you might as well do it here. Promise I’ll hold your hair when you puke.
To Liam’s surprise, Noel had apparently found this a convincing argument, or maybe he’d wanted to be convinced. Fuck knew what went through his head these days; Liam certainly didn’t. He reckoned he didn’t care that much so long as Noel kept coming around.
“I’m going to see all of America,” Noel said now from across the room. Liam had taken one sofa, so Noel’d taken the other. “Every stick and stone of the whole rubbish country, and I’m not going to think about—about any of this.”
Noel’d not said much about the divorce. What Liam knew was limited to muttered asides, despairing or razor-sharp, that he was clearly not meant to comment on or maybe even hear in the first place. Not that he wanted to, really. He’d just as happily not think about Sara MacDonald ever again. “Good riddance to her,” he said now.
Noel’s face twisted up into the sort of scowl that’d have freaked Liam right out a month prior. Still freaked him out a bit now, if he was honest. “You don’t understand anything about it.” The you fucking idiot was implied.
“Suppose not.” Liam sipped at his whisky. Not his preferred method of getting drunk; altogether too efficient. That was Noel’s point, he supposed. He rolled his thoughts around in his head, this way and that. So many questions sat there on the edge of his tongue, always, waiting for any excuse at all to jump off. So many observations he was keeping to himself, piling up in his throat until he might choke on them one of these days.
In a moment of perfect timing, as usual for an animal as effortlessly biblical as she, Sid strolled in. She gave Noel a hard look. Then sat her furry arse down right in the center of the rug to watch him some more, make sure he didn’t get up to any bullshit.
“Which one’s this again?” Noel asked. He gestured towards her with his glass and very nearly spilt some.
“That’s our Sid.”
Noel snorted. “Of course it is.” He leaned down and offered Sid his fingers. “Come on then, you bloodthirsty menace,” he murmured. Sid, being an intelligent creature and far less interested in what anyone said than what they meant, considered this offer with all due seriousness. After a moment, she ventured over with her tail stood straight in the air. She sniffed Noel’s fingers and rubbed her chin against them.
“There we are,” Noel said, just as softly as before. He scratched Sid under her chin. She started her motor going. Noel, who always said cats were dirty, unfriendly, and not worth the effort of keeping them, kept on rubbing Sid at the various spots she shoved against his fingers: top of her head, behind her ear, along her jaw. He talked nonsense to her, harsh words in a voice so sweet no one in their right mind would believe him.
Finally Sid had enough. She wandered away without so much as a goodbye, hopped up onto her carpeted perch, and curled atop it with her eyes slitted open, watching.
Noel rubbed at his face. Before he got the next words out—and Liam could see them taking shape on his lips, I should be going, never mind that he wasn’t nearly as lathered as promised—Liam said, “You got someone you talk to about shit?”
Noel squinted at him. “Like you?” he said, not quite sarcastic, but not far enough from it for comfort.
“No, man. That’s not—no. I mean someone who’s, you know, a professional.”
“Like a hooker,” Noel suggested.
“Like a therapist,” Liam said, nettled into saying it straight. “Or someone like that. Someone to help you get your head on right.”
Noel scoffed. He scoffed again, face turning bitter and sharp. Could cut yourself on that expression; Liam had more than once. “I’m a middle-aged rock star worth fifty million pounds. For now, anyway,” he said under his breath. “It’s a good thing the album’s already finished, because every line I write these days would make a person want to step in front of a train. I think I might hate the love of my life, who most certainly hates me, and meanwhile—” He looked away, and just that guilty shifting gaze told Liam what he’d meant to say next. Not material for the therapist, that. Liam’s heart gave an extra throb. “So what could some idiot with a couch possibly have to say to me?”
“I don’t think they really do couches anymore,” Liam said. “I ain’t seen one, anyway.”
“You,” Noel said, in a tone of voice Liam hadn’t heard direct from the source since 2009. He eyed Liam with dawning, malicious wonder. “You, in therapy. What could you possibly need fucking therapy for? Did you tell them the trauma of being in a world-famous band? The misery of making millions of pounds and pissing them all away?”
“You think I wasn’t a fucking mess after—after you left?”
“Right, of course, the trauma of being in a band with me. Awful, having a brother who made everything happen for you. Made all the decisions, all the connections, wrote all the songs—”
“Yeah, and then you fucking left.” Liam had got to his feet at some point. A mistake, he knew it. A mistake to point in Noel’s face, to have those fingers of scotch, to call Noel that first time, to think—fuck. Liam swallowed hard. “And then Nic left, too—”
“Which had nothing to do with you, obviously—”
“—and I was a fucking mess, which I know you fucking know, because the whole entire fucking world fucking knows—”
“Because you broadcast all your shit to the entire internet—”
“—so yeah,” Liam said. “Yeah, I’ve sat down a time or two with a therapist and talked some of my shit out, and it fucking helped. And now I do fucking meditation sometimes, and I go for my fucking little morning jogs—or I did, before the cunting arthritis bollocksed it all up. It helped, so now I’m trying to help you from being even more of a miserable arse than you already are.”
“Don’t bother,” Noel said. “Dunno why I even came. Should have known better than to come here of all the fucking places, Jesus fucking Christ.” He set his glass on the coffee table and pushed to his feet, shaky: a little farther gone than Liam had realized after all. He shoved right into Liam’s space, toe to toe, eyes alight with icy fury. His whole body was frozen with it, rigid, dangerous like glass under pressure and just about to shatter. Liam could almost see it in Noel’s eyes, the first fatal crack.
Only a few ways this could go, all of them dangerous. A fight or a kiss: which way would things fall this time? Liam’s pulse raced like a fire engine on the way to a blaze. He could already feel the flames. He knew well how Noel’s lips would feel on his, Noel’s fingers pinching into the flesh of his arms, the harsh sound of Noel’s breath between kisses, and he wanted it. He wanted Noel with every fiber in his body.
“Fuck,” Noel said, the sound of him giving in. Liam had heard it dozens of times before. But then Noel did the wrong thing: he took a step back. The rubber band between them, that string that connected them soul to soul in moments like these, pulled sharply, painfully taut. There was nothing else in the world Liam could do but follow him.
Noel put out a hand to stop him, shaking his head. He seemed halfway to saying something, but instead he turned away and stumbled towards the doorway. At the last moment he veered left and came to face to face with Sid in her cat tree. He stood there a moment, breath heaving, his back to Liam. He reached up stroked Sid’s soft, stripy fur. She batted at his hand—playful or furious, difficult to say with her sometimes, but she snagged Noel’s skin with her claw. Noel hissed softly and drew his hand back.
With his back still to Liam, Noel, said, “I told you I shouldn’t come. I’m not fit company right now.”
“You’ll come around again, though,” Liam said. “Next week. Or—” But he couldn’t say aloud what the other option was. Couldn’t risk speaking it into being, as if Noel’d ever needed help fucking off before. Liam should have kept his mouth shut. All this time he’d been telling himself don’t push, don’t push, don’t say any fucking thing Noel doesn’t want to hear.
He could only keep that up so long, though. Maybe it’d always been going to come to this.
Noel looked around. In that moment, Liam could see all fifty-five of Noel’s years in his eyes and maybe a few more besides. Something new and bleak spilled across Noel’s face like ink in water. He backtracked across the carpet and, before Liam could even imagine what he meant to do, Noel took Liam’s face in his hands and pressed their mouths together.
Liam’s heart stopped. That was it, his mortal end, having a heart attack in his own living room while Noel kissed him. Then Noel withdrew, and that really did feel like dying. Liam’s lips tingled and his chest ached. His fingers twitched with the effort of not gripping Noel with all his strength and kissing him back.
“I’m going to go,” Noel said gently, just like Liam had known he would only ten minutes prior. Should have just let him, probably, only Liam wouldn’t have gotten a kiss then.
“Right,” Liam said.
“Right,” Noel said. He went out to the entry, and Liam followed him, unable to do anything else with that rubber band still tugging between them. Noel bent to put on his trainers, then took a moment on his phone, texting his driver. Liam hovered there, twitchy, trying not to stare and then giving up, because who the fuck knew when he’d see Noel again. Noel’d sobered up a bit, he thought, in all the excitement.
“I’ll go wait for him,” Noel said. Liam nodded. Noel gave him another long look, and then he leaned close and kissed Liam again. It was just a peck this time, quick and soft and sweet. “I’ll see you later, all right?”
“Right,” Liam said, like it was the only word he knew. Like he was an idiot, or maybe a parrot. He watched from the door as Noel went out into the night. Even when Noel was out of sight, after the sound of a car on the roadway had come and gone, Liam’s lips still tingled.
The next day: Your cat hates me. Liam looked at the text a long time, let those four short words seep all through him. A few words could say a lot; a singer knew that better than most. Any way he looked at these, they said, I’m a cunt, and, underneath that, I’m still here.
She’s picky she’ll warm up to you give it time, Liam replied.
Noel texted him an eye-rolling emoji.
There was no answering that without spilling all sorts of sentimental shit better kept to himself. Liam closed his texts and opened twitter. If some sentimental shit leaked out there and Noel went looking for it, that was his own fault.
Liam had glanced at photos of Noel’s new studio back when the tabloids had run them. Walking into the place was something else, like walking into a sunset or maybe a fire pit, one burned low at the end of a long night. Oranges and yellows, sunlight from the windows tinted red by the blinds: colors so warm Liam could very nearly feel them on his skin. Knick knacks and oddities scattered all around, fake plants and real ones. A smiley face on the drum kit and another on the wall, and wasn’t that fucking ironic.
It felt like returning someplace Liam had long forgotten. The womb, maybe.
Most of all, Noel was there, wandering around the periphery and moving things an inch this way or that. “I’ve not been here in a bit,” Noel said, when he caught Liam looking.
Liam closed his eyes and breathed in the scents of carpet and air freshener, electrical cords and the coffee Noel’d set going in the control room. Somewhere off to his left, Noel sniffed. Liam knew what that sound meant, but the knowledge couldn’t make its way through his brain; he was too busy with that other question. Why’d this place feel like coming home?
“I didn’t bring you here so you could commune with my fucking studio.”
Liam opened his eyes and found Noel in front of him with his arms crossed, the corners of his mouth turned all the way down. Any other person he gave that look to, stood where Liam was, probably would’ve been about to get sacked. Might’ve got down on their knees, begging him not to. Fucking lot of yes men Noel’d collected over all those years.
Noel sniffed again: a dry, rustling sound, full of judgment, and now Liam remembered where he knew it from. Noel’d used to make that same sound in the very early days just before he went on the radio or backstage before a TV performance. He’d nod very seriously when someone important spoke to him, but otherwise he’d sniff disapproval at everything and everyone, the neck of his guitar clutched in one sweaty hand.
“It’s nice, man,” Liam said.
Noel rolled his eyes. “Don’t do me any fucking favors.”
“Nah, it looks good. Homey and that. Even got Sergeant Pep for company.” Liam nodded towards the cutout.
“Yeah. I reckon I’ll take him on the road with me. For the new album, you know.”
“Mega.”
“Yeah.”
Liam drifted over to an end table covered in oddments. Rocks with eyes, little china mushroom caps on little china stems, two miniature bongo drums. Noel left, making noise about getting the coffee and a warning not to touch anything, which gave Liam the unhelpful urge to stuff the smallest mushroom up his nose. He buried his hands in his pockets.
Noel returned with two mugs. He handed one to Liam, steaming and black as midnight.
“You gonna let me hear the new single?” Liam asked. “Out Friday, isn’t it?”
“You want me to send it you?”
“Don’t be a silly billy. I want to hear it now on your million-quid speakers.”
“They’re not—Christ.” All those little muscles in Noel’s face and arms and shoulders had gone tense again. He ought to have been grateful, because what Liam really wanted was for Noel to huddle on his stool and play the song right there and then, for Liam alone.
“What, you think I won’t like it?”
“Well, you hated the other one, didn’t you?” Noel said.
“The other one,” Liam echoed, baffled. “Easy Now, you mean? I liked that one all right.” Had Noel put out another track out recently? No way Liam could’ve missed that. It’d have been in all the papers. They’d have spoke about it already if he had.
The furrows deepened in Noel’s face. “The one before that. You hated the drum machines, I believe. Pretty Boy?”
“Oh,” Liam said, and then couldn’t find anything else to say. Of course he remembered. He’d heard that one the previous year, the same time as everyone else; he just never expected Noel to be the one bringing it up. Liam had all his conversational topics sorted on a timeline in his head, and he hadn’t thought they were anywhere near far enough along for this one.
Get your head down, pretty boy, sang that past Noel somewhere in the back of Liam’s mind, probably at the vulnerable place where his spine joined his skull. Meanwhile, Present Noel just looked at him, brows raised, waiting for a reply that wasn’t going to come.
Noel sighed very loudly through his nose. “Come on, then.”
So Liam followed Noel into the control room and took a seat on the couch. He sipped at his coffee—full of sugar, just how he wanted it—and waited while Noel tapped at the computer. “Right, then,” Noel said, scowling ferociously. Liam let his eyes fall shut.
First the acoustic guitar with a sweet, sleepy strum. I can lend you a dream, sang Noel from the speakers.
It was beautiful. A heartbreaker through and through from those very first chords, from Noel’s first line, so gentle, like a lullaby or a confession. Liam was back in the nineties, lounging on some backstage couch or in the back of a pub, listening to Noel try out tunes that’d become B-sides. Really, though, Noel was singing just for him. This moment was theirs, never mind whether or not anyone else happened to be listening in. Only this wasn’t Noel of the nineties singing, reedy-voiced, trying so hard to keep anyone from noticing just how hard he was trying. This Noel knew what he was singing. He’d lived it.
An accordion came in, dreamy and slow. Noel came back to ask if love was enough to make it all right, and ask again, and ask again. All that fucking longing, like roots pulled out of the dirt and withering for the lack of it. Like Noel’d peered directly into Liam’s soul and written what he’d found there, the same as he’d always done, all those years ago—or like he’d look into his own, because they were the same, weren’t they? His soul and Liam’s?
I don’t know where I’ve been, Noel sang, and the song ended, long before Liam was ready. Only when he opened his eyes did he realize he was crying. Fuck.
Noel made a funny noise in his throat. Liam looked up before he could think better of it and found Noel looking at him like he’d sprouted wings. Just blank with shock, so overcome he looked a bit stupid with it. Liam would point that out any moment now, as soon as he felt less stupid himself. There was a reason he usually listened to Noel’s new releases alone, no one around to judge. He swallowed hard, wiped at his eye. Sniffled like a kid and wished he’d left well enough alone. No harm in waiting another four days, but he'd had to push, hadn’t he?
“You liked it,” Noel said, sounding suspicious more than anything.
“Noel Gallagher, begging for compliments? Ain’t your ego big enough by now?”
“Liam,” Noel said. Pleaded, almost, but that couldn’t be right.
Liam sniffed again, but Noel still didn’t roll his eyes or ask Liam why he was being a woman, and that made Liam say, “Yeah, man. It’s good. You know it fucking is, don’t pretend you don’t. Like a little sliver of Oasis, almost,” Liam said, and then promptly wished he hadn’t.
Noel didn’t scoff at this, either. He just kept on searching Liam’s face for the clue to some mystery he certainly hadn’t let Liam in on. It chafed, that gaze, but gently, like a kitchen sponge on skin already rubbed raw.
All the longing in that song, and how much of it was for Liam? Not much, probably. Maybe none. Probably none.
“Suppose I’ll be going, then,” Liam said. He took a last sip of coffee and pushed to his feet. “You’ve got that lunch appointment.” Noel had been very clear on that point when he’d finally agreed to show Liam around. They couldn’t stay long; the man had places to be, or said he had, and thank fuck for that. Still, “You gonna send me the rest of the tracks?”
That seemed to break the weird spell Noel'd been under. He heaved a noisy sigh. “Yeah, all right. Don’t put them on Twitter.”
“I’m not going to put them on fucking Twitter. You’ve got no fucking faith.”
Liam gave a last glance into the live room on his way out, and suddenly he realized what it reminded him of, why it felt so long-ago and yet so familiar, guitar stands and fake palm trees and all. Simple, downright obvious now that he’d thought of it: the place felt like Noel.
“You’ve not asked,” Noel said.
Liam fought to the surface of his thoughts. It took him a moment, weighed down with drink as he was. When he finally got his head above water and could get a look at what was right in front of him, he found Noel watching him with that particular dreamy intensity that only came to Noel when he was very, very drunk.
Debbie’d gone to bed ages ago. Probably Noel’d wind up stretched out on the couch again, the very one they were sitting on. It was about time he got his own gaff again, Liam reckoned. Not that Liam minded these visits—the very fucking opposite, in fact—but he thought they happened as often and lasted as long as they did at least partly because Noel’d got sick of living out of a hotel. Of course he was too stubborn to admit that, so every week or two, here he was.
He’d asked a question sometime back. Or not a question, but close enough. Liam considered it a while. Finally, he said, “Asked what?”
“About Oasis,” Noel said.
Liam’s skin prickled all over. Distantly, in the pit of his stomach, he felt a knot of conviction that they were both much too fucking drunk for this. Noel, always with the spectacular timing. “How do you mean?”
“You want a reunion.”
“Well, yeah.” Maybe sobriety wasn’t all that important if they were just stating the fucking obvious.
“That first time you had me over for a drink, I thought—I was certain you’d bring it up by the time I left.”
Liam laughed softly. “That why you scarpered so fast?”
“I didn’t,” Noel said, indignant in that slow, earnest way of the well-lubricated.
Well, maybe he hadn’t. Maybe Liam had just been that sorry to see him go. Not the point, was it? What was the point, Liam wondered. Ah, right. “Of course I want a fucking reunion, mate. I know it. You know it. So not much point talking about it, is there?”
It wasn’t much of a question, so it took Liam a while to realize Noel hadn’t answered. Also, Liam’s eyes had fallen shut. He pulled them open again, half-expecting to see Noel fast asleep there on the far end of the sofa. It wouldn’t be the first time or even the second, and what a wonder that was. Too wonderful, not to mention sentimental, to ever tell anyone about.
But no, Noel’s eyes were open and fixed on Liam, looking remarkably alert all of a sudden. “Tomorrow,” he said, pronouncing each syllable with drunken care. “If you want, we can talk about it.”
They talked about it. Not much, that first time; just enough to establish that it was the first time, one of many to come, maybe. No promises, Noel said. Liam’s heart didn’t listen.
“Bring me an armadillo, will you?”
Noel’s sigh came loud and clear over the phone. It was one of Liam’s favorite varieties, the sigh of I’ve got no earthly idea what you’re talking about but I won’t be caught dead asking.
“They’re in Texas,” Liam added helpfully. “Maybe Missouri.”
“I haven’t got a gig in Missouri,” Noel said, as if that was anywhere in the neighborhood of the point.
Liam wasn’t sure whether Oasis had ever played in Missouri, come to that. He’d liked that one Netflix show, though. Lots of drugs in it. In any case, “What’s the point of you touring if you ain’t going to bring me back something good?”
“I’ll bring myself back, how’s that?”
“I guess that’ll do me,” Liam said, before he could think better of it. One of those silences stretched out over the phone, long and full nearly to bursting. Put a pin to that silence and it might pop, and no telling what would come spilling out. “If you’re offering,” Liam added, softer. That was after he’d thought better of it, so really he had no fucking excuse.
“I’ll see you in August,” Noel said firmly.
“And don’t forget the armadillo.”
“I dunno why I fucking do this. Fucking nightmare. I’m never touring again.”
As an opener to a phone call, it was a bit of a dagger straight to the heart. “The fuck are you talking about?” Liam demanded.
“I can’t get the band sounding right, and this fucking setlist, I’m already tired of it.”
Liam took a deep breath, settling his racing nerves, and snuggled deeper into the sofa. Yesterday he’d chatted to John Squire about that joint album idea, tomorrow he and Debbie were with her sister and the kids all day, but today was his—apparently to talk Noel out of whatever brain twister he’d talked himself into. “Maybe try not organizing ‘em like a bunch of teacups in a china cabinet,” Liam said. “Here’s the Wedgewood on this shelf, over here’s the fucking Dutch set with the little windmills painted on. You’ve got to fucking mix it up, man.”
“I like the songs the way they are,” Noel said, the arse. Hopeless, Liam reflected, with a certain exasperated fondness he’d never, ever admit to. “It’s the Americans, they just fucking sit there the whole set waiting for Don’t Look Back in Anger. Most of ‘em are only there for the other fellas anyway.”
Liam could have told him that. Who’d ever heard of co-headlining anyway? At least don’t share the billing in America with an American band, he’d have said if Noel’d bothered to ask, which of course he very fucking hadn’t. “And how are old Rubbish?” Liam asked.
“They’re all right, actually. Do you remember meeting them? Back in the nineties?”
As if Liam remembered a blessed thing he’d done in the nineties. “Did we?”
“Shirley says we did. Says we were decent to them.” Noel laughed. “Dunno how that happened. We must have been quite drunk.”
“Shirley, eh,” Liam said.
“You wouldn’t like her. Not enough nonsense. She’s funny as fuck, though. Helps make this whole fucking nightmare bearable.”
Liam looked down the length of his leg. Splayed his toes out. He wasn’t really looking at them; he was rolling the conversation back through in his mind, trying to add up the figures and coming up with the wrong sum each time. Bad audiences, all right. Band not quite on task yet, sure, that’d send Noel around the bend a bit. Still not quite nightmare material, though. Not even with Noel’s gift for dramatics.
“Tea’s miserable over there, is it? That’s the fucking nightmare, all right.”
“I don’t drink tea,” Noel said, which was a bald-faced lie and also did not clarify the situation.
The number of things that could ruin Noel’s day was huge and wildly varied. No possible way for Liam to guess. “So what’s the problem, then? You can’t fucking tell me you forgot what America’s like.”
Noel was so quiet that they could’ve lost the connection and it’d have sounded just the same. They hadn’t, though. Liam could feel Noel there on the other end of the line, probably white-knuckling the phone and wondering whether he should drop it in the toilet rather than explain himself.
“Must be because you miss me so much,” Liam mused. “Haven’t seen this beautiful mug in a whole fucking three weeks, that’d put anyone in a depression.”
“You’re a moron,” Noel said, which at least was better than the silence. At last, grudgingly as only he could, he said, “It’s my knee. Banged it up or something, I don’t know. Feels like shit by the end of the set.”
“What’s this?” Liam said, sitting up a little. “Noel Gallagher, admitting to weakness? Like he’s human or summat? Call the fucking tabloids.”
“Christ,” Noel sighed. Suddenly to Liam’s ear he sounded exhausted, like even speaking was almost too much for him. And only three weeks into the tour?
Liam felt a glimmer of sympathy. “It’s called getting old, I reckon. Me, too. Me hips, you know.”
“You mentioned,” Noel said, a bit careful.
“Arthritis, like I’m a fucking granny. Can’t go running anymore. Gigs are a bit of a struggle. Guess I’m getting them replaced with a couple of robot hips before too long.” Not that he’d fully come around to that idea yet, but he supposed he would eventually, with the doctors and Debbie all giving him the evil eye. “Maybe you’ll get a robot knee.”
“It’s not that bad,” Noel said, the liar. “Just ready to be home.”
“I knew you missed me,” Liam said, just to hear the incredulous huff of Noel’s breath over the phone.
Noel disappeared to the loo, surely as posh and sterile as every other part of his hotel suite, and that left just the two of them stood in the living area: Liam and Anais, all grown up now, no longer the little girl of his memories. From the way she was sizing him up, there was zero chance he’d win her over with an ice cream this time around.
Liam gave the place a hard look around. No life in it, because it was a fucking hotel room, no matter how much Noel was spending on it. No color anywhere and shit furniture that’d all come from the same catalog. Like someone had made boredom into a paste and slathered it all over the walls.
Inevitably, Liam came back to Anais. With her crop top and her high-waisted bell-bottom jeans, she could’ve walked straight out of the nineties, which would have been fucking weird under the circumstances except that was how all the youngsters seemed to dress these days. Still a little weird, even so. “Grew up into the spitting image of both your parents,” Liam said. “And prettier than either one. Some kind of magic trick, that is.”
“Thanks,” Anais said. She clearly felt as awkward as he did, her arms crossed over her bare midriff.
He’d seen her instagram now and then, back when she and his boys were talking more. He knew she smiled more than her old man. A regular charmer, this one, at least on social media. She wasn’t smiling now, though; just kept watching him with her brows drawn together, exactly like Noel.
“You take care of your dad?” Liam asked. “Now your step-mam’s out of the picture?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know, protect him and that. Keep him away the computer viruses and the scammers and, you know, arseholes like me.”
She laughed at that, just a glimmer of humor, the light of brighter days glinting in her eyes before she went serious again. “I don’t think there’s anyone else like you.”
“Well, I should fucking hope not.”
She’d already moved on. “Do you have someone that takes care of you?”
“Ah yeah, my missus Debbie. She’s one of a kind. Pulls me out of all sorts of shit. Got her hands full with that, I reckon.”
Anais nodded quite seriously, all business, like this was important intel he was sharing. The furrowed worry didn’t ease. She got a sort of stony, determined look to her—less practiced than Noel’s by far, but not much less fearsome—and said, “You’re not going to hurt him.”
Again, Liam heard. A lot of things he could say to that, but not to Anais. Not to the little girl who’d seen Noel all those fourteen years, felt some echo of whatever it was he’d felt when he’d been far away from Liam.
Liam tipped his head up so he could be sure she was meeting his eye through the sunglasses. As serious as she’d been, he said, “I don’t mean to.”
She nodded again, worried still, and that was suddenly more than Liam could bear. “Come here, then.” He opened his arms, and after a moment’s hesitation, Anais stepped into them. He drew her close. Her hair smelled of something floral. “It’s like I said, you take care of him. You do a fucking good job of it, too.”
Anais shuddered against him. “Not that good,” she said into his shoulder. “The last year or so—it hasn’t been great.”
Liam gave her a last firm squeeze and let her loose. “Worse without you, though. I know it.”
Anais gave him a watery sort of smile. “Thanks.”
“Got to get him out of this place, though.” Liam cast another look around and gave a shudder that was only half for her benefit. “Like a fucking hospital or summat in here. Stay too long, you’re liable to drown yourself in the bathtub just to keep things interesting.”
“I keep telling him!”
“Telling who what?” Noel said, strolling back in. They both turned to him at once, and he took a step back, obviously unsettled by the full force of two Gallagher personalities. He gave them a hard look. “What, have you two been plotting already? I was gone two fucking minutes.”
Backstage, the O2 Forum Kentish Town. John Squire was sat in a corner with his guitar, noodling, as peaceful as in his own living room. Maybe with as many kids as he had about the house, a person learned how to tune out all the bustle, or maybe that was just John. If pushed, Liam would bet on the latter.
Liam on the other hand felt like his skin might split open at any moment. No telling what might spill out if it did: a few gallons of blood or maybe his soul, crackling with the same frantic energy currently buzzing through all his veins. Out in the theater, up in one of those boxes where he imagined no one would spot him, Noel was waiting for the set to start.
Liam's phone chirped. He brought it out, hardly even thinking, and then gave Noel’s name a long, wary look before he tapped to read the text. It said, If you fall off the stage, I’m calling this whole reunion thing off.
Some of Liam’s jumpy nerves sat still at that. Some of the crackling energy settled into its proper tracks, where it could help him. I’m going to be Biblical you fucking nonce, Liam typed. He added some potato emojis for good measure.
“Five minutes,” someone called, and Liam put his phone away.
Outside, it was raining like they might need an ark soon. Buttons was curled up next to Liam on the couch, keeping an eye on the world. Noel was hunched over his phone in one of the overstuffed chairs, tapping away, squinting, tapping some more. On the TV, the talking heads Liam had muted were no doubt still complaining about Man City’s play, trying to make like they were serious analysts and not just fucking jealous. Debbie was about somewhere, doing her Debbie things.
It was peaceful. Comfortable, even, so long as Liam didn’t move and set his new hips twinging. Almost too good to believe.
“You sure about this reunion thing?” Liam asked.
Noel looked up from his phone. Now it was Liam he was squinting at. The man should wear his glasses more often. “By this reunion thing, you mean the tour we’ve been talking about for months, that you’ve been asking for years? That we’re signing the contract on in two days? That reunion?”
“I’m serious, man.”
Noel’s mouth worked. Liam looked away so he didn’t have to see any more shades of Noel’s disbelief, of which Noel’d built up quite the collection over the years. Some Liam enjoyed and actively worked to bring to the surface: delighted, appalled, delighted and appalled. Others he could very well do without.
Noel sighed. He set his phone on the coffee table, crossed his arms, and fixed Liam with that cool gaze that’d sent a lot of lesser mortals fleeing over the years. “Out with it, then. What are you fucking serious about?”
“You sure you want to do it? Things go a little wonky sometimes, the two of us on tour together. We’ve got a good thing here, do you know what I mean?” Liam gestured between them. “Would hate to flush it down the toilet just for, you know, just for a tour.”
“Do you think that’s what we’re doing?” Noel asked. Neutrally, maybe.
“I dunno. I just—if we are, then I’d just as well stay at home.”
“I thought you—you’ve been talking about getting back together for years. You do know that. I’m not sure you’ve said anything else in an interview since 2013. And now you don’t want to?”
“Fuck off, of course I want to. You kidding? Oasis was the best thing we ever did, either of us. Best thing we’ll ever do, I reckon. People’ll love it. Our kids are old enough to appreciate it now. Mam’ll get to see us play together again. And, you know.” Liam shrugged. “I’ll get to sing with you on my left. Best feeling in the world. Of course I fucking want to.”
Noel didn’t scoff, didn’t say any of the obvious things that were already swimming around in Liam’s guts. How it was really too late for these kinds of nerves, how Liam should have brought this up sooner, how Liam was a big fucking sap and look at all the money to be made, did he really want to flush all of that down the toilet?
For a long time Noel didn’t say anything at all. His eyes narrowed, like squinting at Liam might make sense of him, not that it’d ever worked in the previous fifty years as far as Liam was aware. There was no making sense of anyone with your eyes, in Liam’s opinion. You had to do it with your heart, and Noel’s was—well, Liam found it easier to be generous these days when it came to Noel, but it seemed to him that Noel’s heart was still bang out of practice.
At last, Noel said, “You’re saying if it’s a choice between the two, you’d rather I keep coming around to yours for a beer and we not go on tour together. Not have Oasis back.”
“Well—” Liam paused. Gave Noel’s words due consideration. Tried to find a response that sounded a little more rockstar, a little less pathetic. He gave up. “Yeah, man. If it’s between those two, then yeah. Or at least—you know, give it another year or two first. I just got you back, you know.” He mumbled this last bit, half-hoping Noel might not hear.
Noel got that pinched look he did sometimes. It’d taken Liam a long time to realize it wasn’t him that look was directed at. Not anymore, anyway. Mostly. “Well,” Noel said slowly, “That’s why I think it’ll work, this reunion thing. But if you don’t want to, then—then we’ve got to decide now, because it’s about to become a great deal more expensive to change our minds.”
“You’d do that? Just bin the lot?”
“This was your idea,” Noel said, as if he hadn’t spent the last two months pestering Liam with logistical details at all hours that weren’t even either of theirs to pester about. That was Noel all right, rarely happier than when he was sticking his nose into everyone else’s work. “Anyway, I can’t be up there taking center stage. The band’s got to have a proper frontman. And if we’re not both in it—I mean really in it—then what’s the fucking point?”
There was a funny tight spot in Liam’s throat. Made swallowing difficult and talking more so. “Careful, there. You’ll get people starting to doubt that greedy arse reputation of yours.”
Noel’s expression clouded. Again, Liam got the sense that Noel wasn’t really looking at him. “If you don’t want to do it, then just—then just say it.”
“Do you want to do it?” Liam asked, before he could think better of it. “The tour?”
Well, now Noel was definitely looking at him. A hundred percent, absolutely no doubt whatsoever. “What the fuck do you think? That all this time I’ve been just—what, humoring you?”
It sounded stupid, Noel saying it aloud like that. In the cleansing, searing light of that sarcasm, a lot of shadowy worries lurking about in Liam’s lungs and stomach and bones faded away.
Oasis was on every program like it was the nineties again, the presenters talking over dozens of different clips and photos: the new one he and Noel had done together for the announcement and old ones when he was young and pretty; ones from the middle when he was wearing shit he’d claim must have been photoshopped on if anyone asked and ones towards the end when everything was going to hell, including his sideburns. And Noel, of course, so fucking young when they began, now that Liam looked back on it, just a lad, not even out of his twenties and steering a band of other lads to greatness. Noel in those middle years, hair short and furry. Noel these days, face gone creased and weathered. Handsome, Liam thought, not a word anyone would have imagined applying to Noel in the nineties.
Quite the trip down memory lane, it all was. Liam eventually turned off the sound so he could focus on the photographs, try to remember when this one or that one had been shot, what Noel’d said, whether they’d fucked after the pictures had come out. Noel’d usually hated the camera, but sometimes he quite liked the results: the photos of Liam, especially.
Liam had told Noel this, all the best and worst of the photos and what he remembered, and Noel hadn’t answered back a single one of his texts. Not so unusual, that, but it was their day, the announcement of Oasis returning triumphant. There was no fucking way Noel’d somehow lost himself in the studio or got too caught up with one of his mates to remember. His phone was surely blowing up, the same as Liam’s.
You ignoring me, Liam texted. They love us man fucking mad I told you so. Then, fuck you remember when I pierced my ears what schnizzle was I on.
His phone buzzed, but not with yet another text from someone Liam hardly remembered knowing, wanting a promise of tickets. It buzzed with an incoming phone call. The call was from Noel.
Liam hurriedly swiped to answer. “Noel?”
Noel sighed at the other end of the line,. That was all: no reply, no complaint about Liam’s dozens of texts, no demand that Liam quit bothering him. Just a sigh that must have come from the soles of his feet up through his entire body, and then he was silent.
“You saw,” Liam said.
“Yeah,” Noel said.
One word, not much to go on, but after all Liam was psychic, or close enough. Between one moment and the next he understood what the problem was: Noel’d seen all the talking heads, the explosion on social media, the whole country and beyond lighting up with the news of the reunion, and he was shitting himself over it.
“They love us, man,” Liam said.
“It’s a fucking madhouse. It’s Knebworth all over again.”
“You want to call it off?” Liam asked helpfully.
“You fucking knobhead, I don’t want to call it off, not now, are you out of your fucking mind?”
“I suppose it would look a bit villainous,” Liam mused. “Getting everyone’s hopes up like that.”
Noel sighed again. This sigh was more aggrieved and less like he was trying not to be sick. Liam called that progress.
“They love us,” Liam said again. “That’s why it’s all blowing it up like it is. It’s because they want us back.”
“They love what they remember of us, or how we made them feel thirty years ago, or—they love some fucking mirage with our faces on it. Some dream they have that no band on Earth could live up to, and we’re the absolute fucking idiots who’ve got to try.”
“You think I’m not up to it? Is that it? I’m old now, can’t get the crowd going like I used to? Can’t hit them high notes anymore?” They were questions Liam wouldn’t have dared ask a year and a half prior, but he reckoned he knew the answers now.
“We’re old,” Noel said. “It ain’t all fucking about you, is it?”
Let a man play theaters too long, and a stadium would start to give him nerves. Terrible. “Noel,” Liam said patiently. “Listen to me, man, all right? You listening?”
Noel sighed loudly enough that he’d probably done it purposely just to make sure Liam heard. “Yes, I am fucking listening.”
“All right, then, here it is: we’re going to blow their fucking minds.” Liam paused to see if Noel was going to argue some more, air some more impressive-sounding theories that were really just fears, provide a few more irrelevant facts. When he didn’t, Liam went on, “They’ve been missing us all this time, and now we’re coming back. You ain’t played the gigs I have the past few years. Those Definitely Maybe shows, the crowd was fucking buzzing, all these kids our kids’ age jumping up and down and screaming their heads off.
“We’re coming back, and we’re going to be better than ever. Better than how we were in the two thousands, no doubt about that.” Hard to be worse, really. Maybe better not remind Noel of those years. “They’re gonna love us, all right? That’s the truth, I promise.”
Liam waited through the silence that followed. At last, Noel said, “I suppose I’ll have to start working on those guitar solos, then.”
Noel slumped onto the far end of the sofa, and only then did Liam realize how late it’d got.
This sofa was leather and sat shoved up underneath the enormous picture window that looked into the control room. Liam had only ended up there because he’d wanted to watch Noel noodle about on his guitar. Noel was lost to the world at times like those, lost even to Liam, but Liam didn’t mind that like he had in the nineties. Even when Noel was off in his own little daydreams, sat on that stool, he was still nearer than he’d been anytime in the past fifteen years, and Liam could look at him as long as he liked if he was quiet about it.
Maybe sometimes Liam got lost in his own daydreams; otherwise he wouldn’t be so surprised now to see how the light from the studio windows had gone dim.
“All right?” Noel asked from the other end of the sofa.
There’d been a time when Liam would have bristled at the suggestion that he could be anything else. Later, near the end of everything, Noel’d never have even asked such a thing without meaning at least five other, nastier things underneath.
Water under the bridge. So much fucking water, enough for Liam to nearly drown himself in a time or two, haul himself back out (or be hauled, bless Debbie from the crown of her head to the soles of her high-heeled boots), set himself to rights, fall back in again. Hazardous, that, since he never did learn how to swim.
Now here they were, just two brothers sat on a sofa after a long day of planning and noodling, like ordinary brothers might have done. “Yeah,” Liam said, and meant it. He was as right as he’d been in a long fucking time, he reckoned. “You sounded good,” he added. “Earlier. That solo on Live Forever—you’re sounding huge, man. Mega.”
Noel snorted. “Gem could do it better.”
They’d had this argument before, and Liam had learned there was no point arguing it on the merits, even though they were obviously in his favor. The only argument left to him was sentiment. Fortunately he had an infinite store of that stuff. “I like it better when you do it.”
Noel shook his head, like Liam was the world’s biggest idiot. Never could take a fucking compliment, could Noel. “I’m going to fuck it up, you know that. When we get up on that stage, you’re going to wish it was Gem.”
Speaking of the world’s biggest idiot. “I don’t suppose I will.”
Noel snorted, which was as good as admitting that Liam was right and correct, as usual. Rather than even a pretense of argument, Noel concentrated on stretching out his fretting hand, spreading the fingers as far as they would go. Liam saw Noel wince. They couldn’t be having that. The tour hadn’t even started yet. “Give that here,” Liam said.
“What?” Noel said, startled. “What are you on about?”
Liam held his hands out, palms up. “Your hand. Give it here.”
“What for?”
Liam heaved a sigh. Noel always needed a reason for every little thing. “I’ll show you if you give it here.”
Noel gave him a look like he thought Liam might try to stab him next. Or, far worse, like he might do something Noel would like. At last, as if approaching some man-eating animal instead of his brother, Noel shifted cautiously down the couch and offered his hand. Liam took it just as carefully so as not to spook him, turned it palm up, and began massaging the meat of the palm with his thumbs.
Noel winced again. Liam tried the same spot, but more gently. Yeah, Noel was tight there, and no wonder. It was hard work, playing guitar, straining all those same muscles over and over again.
What Liam really wanted was some lotion. He let Noel go and got to his feet. “Don’t you move,” Liam said.
There was lotion in the loo, like he’d thought. Fully kitted out, Noel’s studio was. All the comforts of home, if what you wanted to do at home was make music and drink coffee, which did just about describe Noel.
Noel was squinting at his phone when Liam came back. Liam squirted some lotion into his palm, rubbed until both hands were good and greasy with it, and then held them out. Noel gave them a hard look, like he thought he might refuse this time, but finally he laid his one in Liam’s two again.
The lotion worked wonders. Liam massaged circles in Noel’s palm, then began working along each finger, the joints and the bits in between, coaxing the tight little muscles loose.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Massage therapist,” Liam said. “Get my hands done now and then. They hurt sometimes because of the Hashimoto’s. You know, my thyroid thing.” There’d been a long talk about his thyroid thing before they’d signed the contract. How many shows could Liam’s voice tolerate? How much rest did he need between them? Thank fuck Debbie knew the answers to all those questions, so Liam could be out of the room for most of it. “I do it for myself sometimes, but it’s easier on someone else.”
He kept his attention on what he was doing, so he didn’t have to see whatever face Noel was making. Somehow it was easier to talk about this kind of shit to a few million people on twitter than to Noel. Liam didn’t know if Noel even believed in thyroids. To be fair, Liam wasn’t entirely sure of them himself. Some little walnut-shaped thing in his skull that decided whether he could sing today or make a fist without it hurting? A scam either way, wasn’t it?
If Noel had an opinion on any of that, he kept it to himself. He kept on sitting quietly, and Liam kept on working. Pinch the skin between the thumb and forefinger and hold. Now rotate the wrist: gentle, gentle. Thread his fingers through Noel’s and fold them carefully back. Noel had gone totally slack in his hands, and wasn’t that a nice change. Just letting Liam do what he wanted for once—letting Liam touch him more than a hug now and then or a handclasp to say goodbye.
Maybe Liam drew it out a bit. Maybe he started over from the beginning, just so he didn’t have to let the moment go.
Noel coughed, that kind of low-in-his throat sound that usually meant he was covering for something else. Liam glanced up and was startled by the strange, fixed expression on Noel’s face, wary and tight about the mouth. Liam tried to recall the last few moments, wondering what he’d done to make Noel look at him like that. Then Noel grimaced and shifted just a little bit, hardly even visible to an eye less discerning than Liam’s, but it drew his attention towards downward.
Noel was on his way to a stiffy. The sight of it, the unmistakable bulge in Noel’s jeans, was such a surprise that it flushed all the thoughts right out of Liam’s brain.
Noel coughed again and tried to tug his hand free. Liam didn’t let him. “Liam…”
“I ain’t finished yet,” Liam said. He bowed his head over Noel’s palm, but now all his senses were on alert. He felt the fine tremble in the muscles of Noel’s fingers. He dug his thumbs into Noel’s palm and heard how Noel’s breath stuttered. He certainly felt Noel’s gaze, flighty and uncertain, the same as the little creature running about inside Liam’s chest. And every little sound and shiver and gasp, Liam felt again in his cock.
He was working his way along Noel’s fingers again when Noel said, “You’ve done that bit already.”
Liam looked up, fully prepared to bullshit his way through—or beg, if that’s what it took to keep Noel’s hand in his—but he lost it all when his gaze met Noel’s, wide-open with yearning like he’d almost never let Liam see, that Liam had been certain for so long that he’d never see again. Wild things happened when Noel looked at him like that: first kisses, first shags, miserable breakups and the best fucking makeup sex of Liam’s life.
The moment held, on and on, a point stretched out into a line that might go on forever.
With his other hand, Noel cupped the back of Liam’s neck and drew him in.
It was a fucking awkward kiss, leaning towards each other across too much space. Noel’s breath was shaky and his grip a little too tight, and they couldn’t seem to fit their mouths together right. Liam let go of Noel at last and shifted closer, knocking knees with him and making him hiss at the impact. Liam felt like he couldn’t get enough air; maybe not enough blood to his brain either. Any moment Noel might lose his nerve and pull away. He got hold of Noel’s hip to steady himself and changed his angle a little.
There: this was how a kiss was meant to work. Only then they were really kissing: not that careful press of the lips from months and months ago, but mouths open, tongues sliding past, sharing each others’ breath. Liam could taste an echo of Noel’s coffee from earlier.
He didn’t know what to do next. He wanted everything, was the problem, every inch of Noel inside and out. He wanted to pet the curly hairs on Noel’s chest—surely he still had some, even in old age—and squeeze his soft ticklish sides. He wanted to get his mouth around Noel’s cock, and he wanted to feel it in his arse, the stretch inside and the tremble in Noel’s limbs above him. He wanted to simply lie on top of Noel until he promised to never leave again.
“Liam,” Noel murmured. His hand rested against Liam’s neck. “It’s all right, you don’t have to—Liam.” He pulled back, and Liam caught a glimpse of an unfamiliar, gentle look in his face before it changed to something else. That was about when Liam realized his eyes had gone hot and wet.
“Fuck,” Liam said. “Sorry, I—sorry.” He pushed away from Noel, off the couch, ready to hide away in the loo or some equally girly location. Anywhere at all would do so long as he didn’t have to feel Noel inspecting him while he cried.
Noel caught his wrist. He didn’t look inclined to take the piss, like Liam had half-feared. He looked hardly better off than Liam, in fact; his eyes were wet, too. “Don’t go,” Noel said softly. “Please.”
As if Liam had ever been able to resist a please from Noel. Rare as hen’s teeth, they were, and more precious than the crown jewels. Warily, shakily, Liam sat back down. He wiped at his face. “Sorry,” he said again. “Didn’t mean to ruin the mood. I just fucking—” But he didn’t know how to finish. I just missed you. I never figured out how to stop. I felt like I was missing my skin and my fingers and half my internal organs when you were gone.
Noel hadn’t let go. He brushed his thumb along the inside of Liam’s wrist, back and forth. His face was all pinched and twisted in worry, his eyes full of some feeling Liam didn’t dare try to interpret.
“Didn’t know if we were doing this again.” Liam waggled his other hand between them. “Two and a half years of nothing, just that one—that one time—” If it even counted, Noel kissing him like an apology and then like goodbye.
“Do you want to?” Noel asked.
Liam laughed wetly. “Never fucking had to ask me that before. Of course I do. I want fucking—fucking everything. You know that. Bottomless pit, ain’t that right?” Had Noel said that? Or had that been Liam inside his own head during one of the bad days? The two blurred together sometimes.
“I wasn’t sure. All the shite about you growing up, maturing, I thought…” Noel shrugged.
“That I’d got over you?” Liam laughed again, awed by the sheer idiocy Noel was capable of. “Not possible. If I’m a hundred and two, shitting in an old-man nappy and deaf as a rock, I’ll still want you. Always.” Liam rolled his hand over, palm up, and slipped it into Noel’s. “Just didn’t want to scare you off, you know. And—” Might as well say it all while they were here, making confessions in the blessed, muffled quiet of the studio, a million miles away from anyone. “—and I didn’t know if I could handle it, you telling me no.”
Noel sighed, long and shaky. “Christ,” he said, sharp and heartfelt, the sound of it striking Liam right in the sternum. Could mean one of two things, a word said that way. Liam’s heart was hammering, his adrenaline pumping. Noel’s eyes got that wet look to them again. He tugged on Liam’s hand, drawing him closer, and Liam let him. Even now, with a pretty good idea how this would go, Liam didn’t have it in him to cross that last small distance. He could only sit and wait for it happen, or not. He stared into Noel’s face—a whole kaleidoscope of feelings there, all different hues and colors—and watched as Noel leaned in and kissed him again.
Liam felt easier with the wanting than he had earlier. He could bear to sit there, kissing Noel back, and not worry about what came next. He could let Noel figure out how he wanted their mouths to fit together. Noel’s hands came to rest on either side of Liam’s face, heavy and warm, holding him in place. Nowhere for Liam to go, nothing for him to do but keep on kissing, feeling the soft wash of Noel’s breath on his face, hearing it rush in and out of his lungs.
Eventually it wasn’t enough. That was the trouble, wasn’t it? He could never get enough of Noel, no matter how much he had. His hands went wandering, falling on that soft gut Noel’d been working on the past year or two, drifting past it and down to Noel’s jeans.
Noel was still hard, or maybe hard again. Liam gave him a cautious squeeze, and Noel made an encouraging noise in Liam’s mouth. None of Noel’s old hesitations today, apparently; no coaxing needed. It was the fumbled work of a few moments to get Noel’s belt open, then his jeans. Liam slipped his hand inside Noel’s pants, and there he was, hot and stiff and damp at the tip.
“Liam,” Noel gasped, a shocked, beautiful little sound. Liam gave him another squeeze, skin to bare skin this time. Noel shivered, a whole-body tremor from his cock to his lungs to his fingers, still holding Liam’s face.
The lotion from earlier had mostly soaked into Liam’s skin. Regretfully he pulled away to find some more. Noel watched as Liam felt around for the lotion bottle—aha, there, set on the floor and forgotten. Liam squirted some more in his hand and then gently pulled Noel’s cock free of his jeans. Since Liam had last seen that cock, he’d dreamed of it countless times, sleeping and awake, and now here it was again cradled in his fingers.
He gave Noel an experimental stroke. He was hot in Liam’s hand, and each touch came back to him in Noel’s gasps and shivers. Noel’s face had gone red.
Had they gotten each other off like this before? Sitting quietly, both of them sober? Liam would have said they’d fucked every way there was, or at least every way that didn’t require props, but this felt new.
There was no sound in the studio but the two of them. Liam was wedged against Noel in order to reach, the warmth of Noel’s thigh and hip and side warming him, too. Every time his gaze wandered to Noel’s face, he found Noel looking back. Time was, Noel wouldn’t have let Liam look at him at all when they did this, or he’d have got mean. Now he only watched and gifted Liam with soft sighs of pleasure: Liam’s rewards for touching him just right.
Noel grew tense with the effort of keeping still. His face gradually closed into a squint, his jaw set, his breaths shortening until they were just puffs, and then—
“There you go,” Liam said, and Noel came in white stripes across his hand.
Noel collapsed against the sofa, gasping. His arms had fallen to his sides, and his cock lay pink and lax against his belly. He made a beautiful picture: spent in every way, relaxed and open, not hiding anything at all. Liam thought he could look at Noel like that for a long, long time.
He eyed the spunk on his hand. Another time he’d wait to make sure Noel was watching, get him to make one of those faces—delighted and appalled if Liam played it right. But no one was putting on shows tonight, not even for each other. While Noel was still busy drawing the pieces of himself back together, Liam licked his hand clean. Sixteen years since he’d tasted come, and the taste had not improved with time, but that didn’t fucking matter. The spunk had been Noel’s, and now it was Liam’s.
He found Noel’s gaze on him when he finished: intense, nearly unblinking. He didn’t comment on Liam’s sanitation habits. Instead he tucked himself in—fumbling, fingers still not quite steady—and then he said, “Hand me that lotion.”
Lotion handed over, Liam started to undo the button of his shorts, but Noel’s touch stopped him. Noel shifted closer and gently but firmly moved Liam’s hand aside. “It’s my turn,” Noel said mildly. He slid his hand deliberately over the bulge in Liam’s shorts and squeezed gently.
Arousal flooded through Liam and poured into his gut like a whirlpool. Old age be fucked, because Liam felt thirty seconds from going off, and Noel’d barely touched him yet. His hard-on was all from anticipation and the delirious, wonderful pleasure of bringing Noel off. He squirmed. The corner of Noel’s mouth turned up. Humored? Approving? Liam had no fucking idea. This was the first time he’d had Noel’s attention on him like this in sixteen years. More than, really, for they’d hardly wanted to even look at each other during those last furious encounters.
“Steady on,” Noel said, still mild. He was laughing at Liam, Liam was suddenly quite certain. That would have thrown him into a rage at one time, but it didn’t now. Maybe he was just that desperate. He took a deep breath, then another, all with Noel’s hand resting heavy and promising on his cock.
Noel untucked Liam, efficient and methodical. Concentration made a furrow between his brows. Even his breath sounded focused. He ran his fingers along Liam’s length. Liam squirmed again, caught between arousal and the awkwardness of being looked at so closely, and he heard another soft huff of laughter. Liam’s stomach was tight, his skin tingling, his whole body tense with waiting. Within the studio’s cocoon, everything was quiet and still, as if time itself were suspended.
Liam had promised himself plenty of times over the years that if he ever got Noel in the same room again, he wouldn’t beg. He was Liam Gallagher; he didn’t have to fucking beg. And so he hadn’t. Two full years they’d been dancing since that first phone call, and he’d been so good, he’d been waiting, but he couldn’t wait anymore. “Noel,” he pleaded.
Noel’s gaze came to his face. Liam was shocked to see tears there. Before he could do more than take note of the fact, Noel leaned in and kissed him again. This kiss was messy and wet, open-mouthed, both of them trying a little too hard. His hand started to move on Liam’s cock. That was messy, too, and awkward, Liam rutting into Noel’s grip and trying to keep on kissing him, too.
“Steady,” Noel murmured, as if that’d somehow keep Liam’s breath from stuttering with each downstroke.
Noel remembered how Liam liked it. He was handling Liam’s cock like no years had passed at all. Liam pondered this with wonder for one stroke, two, and then he lost it again. He kissed Noel each time their mouths aligned, and arousal pulled him tighter and tighter, a guitar string on the verge of snapping.
He came with Noel’s tongue in his mouth. He came years and years late and yet much too soon. He came in Noel’s grip and collapsed at last, breathing hard, his fingers digging into Noel’s hip.
They sat there together for a bit, leaning into each other, breath gradually slowing. After a while Noel got to his feet. Before Liam could even be disappointed about that, Noel was coming back, wiping his hand on a tissue. He used the same tissue to wipe at Liam’s shorts. He tucked Liam in, as he’d untucked him before. At last, he slumped down onto the couch again. His knee bumped Liam’s.
Liam’s heart was overflowing. With each heartbeat, it pushed feeling all through his veins to his lungs and his brain and fingertips, and yet his heart was just full as before. No words could do justice what he was feeling, or at least none of his words. Noel’s, maybe, on a good day. All Liam could do was look at Noel’s hand, lying there between them on the sofa leather. It was Noel’s fretting hand. Carefully Liam threaded his fingers through Noel’s. Noel took a deep, audible breath and let it out again.
The last light of evening had faded from the studio windows. All was quiet and still. “I missed you,” Liam said.
Rehearsals, then. Him and Noel and the other five all alone at the front of a stage they’d rented for the purpose, playing to empty seats. The others had all been at it for a week already; the amount of whingeing in Noel’s texts had dropped a good bit as time had gone on. All that was left to add to the mix was Liam.
They started from the top. That was Noel’s way. Go through the whole thing once, find the parts he was unhappy with, do them again and again until no one else was happy with them, either. At least, that’s how Liam recalled it going the last go-round. Not that he was complaining, obviously. He’d known what he was signing up for. Still, he stood there at the mic waiting for the shit to all kick off, and maybe his heart was beating a little faster than its usual; maybe his palms were a little damp.
Noel’s guitar roared to life. That was what it was: alive, something uncoiling right in Liam’s ears, somehow nothing like the chords he’d been listening Noel wear down to nothing for the past year.
No time to be amazed. Everyone else was kicking in, and then it was time for Liam. He came in right on cue like he’d done a few hundred times in his dreams: I don’t feel as if I know you, you take up all my time…
They were good. That was Liam’s first real thought, halfway through the chorus. The band were good, and the arrangements they’d worked out were top. Of course Liam had known, but he hadn’t known, that certainty that came from the bass thudding in his gut and Noel’s solo soaring and wailing in his ear. And he was good. Any little worries that had kept him staring at the ceiling some nights or woken him even earlier than usual—well, those were firmly put to bed by the end of the first song.
Noel knew it, too. Liam caught his eye as they moved into Acquiesce, and he saw that same certainty mirrored back to him. They sounded good. They sounded fantastic.
It went on like that, one song to the next, little surprises in the instrumentation here and there but always the bedrock of him-and-Noel underneath. After a while even that stopped feeling strange or new or surprising: here they were like they were always meant to be. It felt like there was nowhere Liam’s voice couldn’t go while Noel was there on his left, lifting him up with his guitar.
After each song, one after the other, he looked to Noel and saw it again in Noel’s gaze: not just certainty, but something hot and bright, like a torchlight reflecting back and back and back on itself, blinding and like to set the place on fire—or at least set Liam on fire. He wasn’t generally hot for an electric guitar, or else he’d have been run out of the whole rock and roll gig almost before he’d started, but about every thirty seconds Noel’d hit a chord just right and the sound would trace its sizzling musical fingers right down Liam’s spine.
A good thing Liam had worn a parka to rehearsal. He’d only done it to help him get into the mood, but it was long enough to serve other uses, too.
They got through the set somehow. While Christian the keyboardist was still playing the closing strains of Champagne Supernova, Noel was already struggling out from under his guitar and setting it rattling in the stand.
“Right,” he said, stalking towards Liam. “Break, everyone. We’re back in an hour. Richie, you’ll make those changes I told you.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t bother checking to see that Richie the tech agreed. “Liam, you’re with me.” He brushed his hand over the shoulder of Liam’s parka, and it was probably a very near thing that he didn’t simply grab Liam by the scruff of his neck and drag him. As it was, the weight of his grip against Liam’s neck was enough to unsteady him.
They got off the stage somehow, nobody spraining an ankle or breaking his head open. Liam caught one glimpse of Joey, eyes big as hubcaps. Then Noel gave him a squeeze at the join of his neck and his shoulder, and Liam forgot he’d ever known a Mr. Joey Waronker. As soon as the first door closed behind them, Noel was pushing Liam to the wall and pressing their mouths together.
“I can’t fucking believe you,” Noel said in between kisses, and he sounded like maybe he really couldn’t. His hands were already wandering, slipping under Liam’s parka, taking a very naughty survey of Liam’s crotch.
“You, too,” Liam said, gasping. “I fucking told you. That fucking Slide Away solo—”
“Yeah?” Noel asked, like there was any question about it, any in all the fucking world.
“I told you,” Liam repeated. Abruptly he saw Joey’s face again, and he started to laugh. “Fuck, you know they’re probably all wondering if they still have a job.”
“What?” Noel pulled back, baffled. He was sweat-damp from playing the set and maybe from Liam, before on stage and now right in front of him. Maybe Liam still had it, after all: all of it, the whole star package, and not just the publicly presentable bits. “The fuck are you on about?” Noel said.
Liam laughed again. More of a giggle, if he was honest. He grinned at Noel, ducked in for a kiss, inviting Noel to laugh with him. He coaxed him with kisses until Noel huffed a laugh of his own. Then he said, “They think we’re rowing again, and you’re going to set me to rights.” At least it’d guarantee none of them would come looking, which he’d thought had been Noel’s intention.
Noel blinked, letting that sink in. Then he got a smirk, a truly terrible one; Satan himself couldn’t have looked any more smug, nor more dangerous. “Oh, but I am.” He leaned in and said, soft and near enough Liam could feel the heat of his breath, “I’m going to fuck you so deep you’ll be coughing up spunk.”
“Christ,” Liam said blankly. All his blood was in his groin now; none left for his brain. He gripped Noel’s arse and pulled him even nearer. “Better get on with it, then. Time’s wasting.”
The crowd was already roaring loud enough to buzz in Liam’s bones, even from backstage. Debbie hovered nearby, as tightly wound as he’d ever seen her as she watched the final pieces of the huge jigsaw fall into place. Andy and Gem and Bonehead were huddled in a corner, somehow become friends for life in the couple of weeks of rehearsals before Liam had shown up. By bonding over the nightmare of playing with him and Noel all those years, he reckoned.
And there in a separate huddle of security and assistants and Anais was Noel. On a scale of least to most likely to puke sometime in the next ten minutes, Bonehead was comfortably at one end, and Noel was all the way at the other. The next five minutes, maybe. He didn’t look like the chief just then; he looked a bit like Lennon when Nic and Liam had waved him off to his first day of school, a little lost boy halfway to tears. What a strange fucking world. The thought came with a familiar twinge of regret for all those lost years, but today wasn’t the time for that.
Liam cut a glance to Debbie. He’d know just from looking at her when it was time for the walk-on, never mind whatever else was going on, and he had a minute yet.
He crossed that wide open empty space between his little crew and Noel’s and shouldered some big, muscled gentleman in black out of the way. The whole cluster of them eyed him watchfully. Even now, after weeks of good rehearsals, the photoshoot ages ago, Liam making nice on Twitter for over a year, still even Noel’s own crew didn’t quite believe.
Not Liam’s problem; not today. He caught Noel’s eye and nodded away from the whole lot, and with the sheer magnetic force of his personality, he drew Noel just far enough out of the circle for privacy. He leaned in close enough to smell Noel’s aftershave and a whiff of nervous sweat underneath, and softly, for Noel alone, he said, “You go falling off that stage, I’m calling the whole thing off.”
Noel made a choking sort of sound. Could have been a prelude to being sick—better now than later—but the next sound was the familiar, disbelieving huff of him laughing and trying not to.
The piped announcement started. This is not a drill. The crowd roared louder. Might bring the stadium down if Liam and Noel didn’t hurry on out there soon. “Fuck,” Noel said. His eyes had a wet sheen to them. “Suppose we’re doing this, then.”
“About fucking time,” Liam said. “World’s been waiting.” And so have I, he thought. All at once he was awash in all sixteen of those endless, miserable years he’d waited.
Maybe Noel heard that. He got those psychic flashes every now and again, too, much as he always denied it. He looked Liam square in the eye, his whole face still creased in worry and maybe some of that same regret Liam was feeling, and said, “I suppose I have, too.”
What Liam wanted to do was kiss him right there and then, smother Noel with love until he was breathless with it and couldn’t remember how to be nervous anymore. There wasn’t the time for that, though, much less the privacy; Fuckin’ in the Bushes was winding to a close, and Debbie was trying to catch his eye.
Noel saw her, too. “Right, then.”
“Time to go,” Liam agreed.
And they did.