“Noel?”
Noel looked up from his guitar and out over his garden, there in back of his brand-new London house. The garden wasn’t much to look at, just a fence and some weeds, but the steps were all right for sitting on with a guitar on his knee. He blinked into the afternoon sun, which had moved without him noticing. He could’ve sworn he’d heard Liam’s voice.
“Noel?” said the disembodied voice from beyond Noel’s garden fence. The gate rattled against the latch. “You’re there, I know you are. Let me in, dickhead.”
It’d be funny not to, except there was only one reason for Liam to come around to Noel’s in the middle of the bloody day. Noel made the same calculation every time Liam knocked on his door, and he came to the same decision now that he’d somehow made all those other times. He went to the gate and let Liam in.
Liam sidled in and stood by while Noel closed the latch. “I was writing a song,” Noel said.
“You’re always writing a song,” Liam said, as he’d said plenty of times before.
“Yeah, and where do you think that nice clobber you’re wearing comes from?” Noel asked, as he’d said plenty of times before. It was habit, comfortable, a conversational groove worn into the space between them. Sometimes Liam would want to hear the song, and then he’d make inane suggestions like starting the chorus of Wonderwall with “baby” instead of “maybe.”
But sooner or later, Noel would go into the house, and Liam would follow. There’d be a dreaminess to it, like it wasn’t really happening; like they were walking through water up the steps, one after the other. Inside, Noel would lay his guitar aside and push Liam up against a wall, and maybe there’d be kissing first and then a detour to find a horizontal surface, or maybe they’d do it against that very same wall. Noel’d get his hand inside Liam’s jeans or his mouth on Liam’s cock, and it’d be perfect: too good to even be real. A dream.
Only this time, once they were inside, Liam caught his arm. “Noel,” he said again, with a funny sound to his voice.
Noel turned and really looked at Liam for the first time. He took him in, shaggy haircut and athletic jacket and trainers, all as expected except that maybe his fists were jammed a little more firmly into the jacket pockets than usual. He looked at Liam’s full mouth that was Noel’s to kiss. He looked into Liam’s clear blue eyes.
Noel didn’t recognize what he saw there. He didn’t like that. “What?” he said.
“I went to the doctor, like you said.”
Something in Noel went cold. Liam had collapsed backstage at their last gig. Their first stadium show, and Noel had had to sing the last of it all on his own while the crowd rippled in discontent. Liam had insisted he was fine after, and Noel’d been sure it was a bad batch of ganja or some shit, but he’d told Liam to go get checked out anyway, if only because it was so clear Liam didn’t want to. Let that teach him to smoke bad weed.
But now Liam was stood here in front of him with round eyes and furrowed brow, and Noel felt a chill. “Yeah? What, did they tell you to lay off the drugs?” But it was more than that, because Noel had placed that look in Liam’s eyes now, one he’d hardly ever seen, all their growing up years. Liam was afraid.
Liam worked his mouth, and Noel wanted to grab him by the shoulders and make him spit it out, whatever it was.
Finally, Liam did. “I’m pregnant.”
“You fucking ain’t,” Noel said blankly. His racing thoughts had ground to a halt. “It runs in families, that, and it don’t run in ours. And anyway,” he pressed on, “you and me ain’t even—oh.”
Liam met Noel’s eye and lifted his chin, unrepentant.
“You done it with someone else,” Noel said slowly. “You’re always going on about how it’s gay—” Which was bollocks, because Noel liked taking it up the arse just fine, and it hadn’t diminished his interest in a quality pair of tits. “—and now you done it with—with who, anyway?”
Liam shrugged. “Just some bloke. I dunno. At a club a few weeks ago, in America.”
“Christ,” Noel said. “And you just—not even a condom?"
Liam winced.
“You’re off your fucking rocker. What if you’d got AIDS?” The thought pierced like an ice shard. “Have you got AIDS? Liam,” Noel said harshly, when Liam failed to answer.
“They haven’t got the test back yet,” Liam said.
“Fucking hell,” Noel breathed.
“Probably not, right? It was just the once.”
“You fucking moron,” Noel said. He scrubbed at his face. That wasn’t enough, so he turned to look around his kitchen, where a late afternoon sun still glowed through the window. There were dishes piled in his sink, because the housekeeper wouldn’t come until tomorrow, but it was still better than looking at Liam.
Except if he wasn’t looking at Liam, he was thinking about him: letting some jowly fucker with meaty hands press him against a wall, putting it in him without even—
Or maybe it’d been some girly bloke with eyeliner who listened to old disco tunes and called Liam babe, like Americans did, who took him back to his flat and laid Liam out on his sheets the way Liam had never let Noel do—
“Noel?” Liam said, the real Liam, standing just there behind him in his own kitchen.
Unwillingly, Noel turned to look at him. Liam’s eyes were huge and blue and scared. “What?” Noel said. The word felt scraped out of his throat.
“I don’t know what to do,” Liam said. He sounded so young, suddenly: twelve instead of twenty-two, a scrappy kid who took on guys half again his size and even got the best of them sometimes, but who still, very occasionally, looked to his big brother for help.
Fucking hell. “What do you mean, what to do? They told you how, didn’t they? How to—to deal with it?”
“Yeah. I have to make an appointment.”
“Well, there you go,” Noel said.
“But,” Liam said, and stopped.
Noel looked at Liam’s fingers, resting in the general vicinity of where Noel supposed a baby would be. “You’re not thinking about having it,” Noel said, gripped with absolute certainty that it was exactly what Liam was thinking. “You, having a kid.”
A flush of humiliation rose high on Liam’s cheeks.
“You haven’t even got a place of your own. You’ve got as much coke and lager going into your system as food. You gonna go on tour in a couple of months, knocked up? Let everyone see what you let that cunt do to you?” Noel heard all the words as if someone else were saying them—as if this were still that dream he’d envisioned, now gone sour.
“Right,” Liam said. He looked at the floor instead of Noel. “Yeah.”
“You make the fucking call,” Noel said, ignoring Liam’s palpable disappointment. He wasn’t a kid anymore, and this wasn’t Noel refusing to lend him a pair of shoes he liked. “And fucking wear a fucking condom next time, you idiot. Or—or make the other fella wear one.” Because apparently taking it up the arse was something Liam did now. Just not with Noel.
“Yeah,” Liam said again.
“Now fuck off. I’m working. We’re recording in a week, in case you forgot.” Noel picked up the guitar he’d set by the door and took it to the living room. Eyes on the frets, he said, “You can let yourself out.”
He felt Liam watching him from the doorway, on the verge of saying something. For a miracle, he never did. Eventually Noel heard footsteps taking him away, and then Noel’s front door opened and shut again.
Noel strummed a sour, off-key chord. “Fuck,” he said. Liam shone so bright he lit up the whole stage and then stomped off mid-set because he didn’t like his voice. His bare skin was hot as a furnace under Noel’s hands, his eyes diamond-blue, and then he went off and he—
“Fuck this shite,” Noel said, and put the guitar aside. It was close enough to evening to go find a party, maybe a girl, definitely a way of getting drunk enough that he couldn’t think of Liam anymore even if he wanted to.
In fact, Noel had no time to think about Liam for the next few days. He had far too much else to be thinking about: sacking McCarroll at last, announcing Alan White to replace him, watching “Some Might Say” jump right up to number one, playing Top of the Pops twice in two weeks. He saw Liam there of course, but Liam seemed no more inclined to speak to him than he to Liam, so they got on all right. It was suspiciously peaceful, even, which probably explained Bonehead casting a puzzled glance between the two of them now and again.
Noel did pull Liam aside backstage, the second time around. “You done it, then?” he asked.
Liam shrugged.
“Liam.”
“I’m doing it, fuck off. Next week. Tuesday. And I ain’t got it.”
Noel blinked at him, scraping his brain for what Liam might mean. He’d taken a breath of nice fresh snow a little while before, and it was hard work seeing through a storm.
Liam scowled and dropped his voice low. “You know. The other thing. I haven’t got it.”
Somehow this made the connection Noel had been missing. HIV. Liam was clean. “Fuck,” Noel said, relieved of a worry he’d mostly managed to forget, with a lot of trying. The relief felt like nausea. “You fucking idiot.” He ground his knuckles against Liam’s chest, and Liam winced.
McGee turned up at his elbow then, and that was the end of that.
Noel kept on not thinking about Liam— not about the taste of his skin nor the way his cock curved in Noel’s hand. Not that scared look in his eyes when he’d asked Noel for help nor the droop to his shoulders when Noel gave it. Noel definitely didn’t think about Liam going in to see a doctor and having a procedure done that Noel had never imagined either of them needing.
It was said one man in ten could carry a child, but how many of those ten ever gave nature the chance? By the odds, it should have been Noel paying those doctors to do whatever mysterious, painful things were involved in getting an abortion, except Noel’d always given barebacking the same wary respect he did heroin: things to be fucked with only if you didn’t care that much about living.
He didn’t ring Liam up on Tuesday night and ask if it went all right. He got close a couple of times, but he always thought better of it before he started dialing. Or before he finished dialing, anyway.
And then it was time to record the new album. The band all met up at the bus chartered to take them up to the studio in Wales, and Noel ended up towards the front with Owen. Owen wanted to hear the new song, so Noel played the bits he had. Then he explained how he thought there ought to be trumpets in the back of it, a big swinging horn section, and Owen nearly fell off his seat laughing. In his defense, he’d taken a snort of the white stuff before they left, the same as Noel had. “I ought to sack you for that,” Noel told him, which made Owen laugh harder.
Finally, Noel let himself look round for Liam. He found him towards the back, his seat reclined and his eyes closed. A hell of a busy night he’d had, then. It’d have to be, to knock Liam off kilter—unless there was a different reason he wasn’t feeling well. Maybe there were after-effects. Noel didn’t know anything about that.
If there were, Liam deserved them for fucking some stranger bare, for letting an idiot American named Larry or Ron or Wyatt put it in him—for letting the bloke touch him at all, putting his hands all over Liam, leaving bruises with his fingers or sucking them into Liam’s skin as if any cunt named Larry had any right—
“You all right, mate?”
It was Owen, eyeing Noel dubiously. Noel swallowed, fighting the sick feeling in his stomach. “Of course I am,” he said. “Something wrong with your eyes?”
Owen snorted and turned away, and that left Noel alone again, in peace. He gave one more glance backward. Liam’s eyes were still closed.
The first few days recording were brilliant. Noel spent the first afternoon examining the equipment and asking questions, trying out the various pianos, singing into mics and then playing back the results. “Like you’re fucking twelve, mate, on Christmas morning,” Bonehead said, laughing at him, but Noel was too giddy to care.
There were sandwiches and crisps when he got hungry and sheep to go watch when he needed somewhere to think or compose his songs. There was a village pub a mile away for when he needed to stop thinking.
But there was also Liam, who hadn’t recovered yet. He wasn’t loud enough nor obnoxious enough to be Noel’s brother. He didn’t come begging Noel for coke. He kept falling asleep on sofas. Sometimes he went to bed before midnight like an old granny, and when Noel told him so, he shrugged and said, “You’re the fucking granny,” a comeback so weak Noel couldn’t even credit him with the attempt. Then he went off to bed anyway.
Noel’d looked after the kid his whole life, willingly or not, even if it was a rough sort of looking-after, built on the basic assumption that Liam would come crying anytime the least little thing occurred contrary to his preferences. Usually Noel didn’t need to go checking on him; if anything was amiss, he’d know. He wasn’t in the habit of saying, “So, you all right, then?” He’d never even felt the impulse before, but now, watching Liam drift around the studio like a shadow of himself—well, Noel worried.
He wondered if he’d done right, sending Liam off to get an abortion without even checking on who the doctor was or whether he was any good at his business. Doctors were supposed to be, weren’t they? But now Noel felt like he had a ghost for a brother, and he didn’t know what to do with him.
Liam didn’t seem to have any trouble staying awake to sing, at least. On the fifth day they recorded Champagne Supernova, and it gave Noel shivers how Liam sounded on that big chorus: like a bell ringing, clear and beautiful and fucking unstoppable. “That’s fucking all right, that is,” Noel told Liam, and Liam lit up, eyes shining for a good thirty seconds before he remembered he was too cool to look that happy. Then he went back to the mic for another take, a bit of new swagger in his step, and Noel could have sworn he sounded even better.
There was nothing like it on Earth, Liam singing his heart out to Noel’s songs. It was like Noel himself was the song, and Liam was singing him. Watching him, Noel was reminded how long it’d been since they’d fucked. He felt the lack like a weird kind of hunger. He wanted to get Liam away to one of the forgotten corners of the farm, touch him everywhere, reclaim every square inch of him until the images of that arsehole in America were washed clean away.
Everyone was in a good mood that night. The band and the techs crowded into the room off the kitchen with the telly and all the sofas. Guigsy had his ganja and Bonehead had a bottle of wine. There was a football match on. No one cared about either team except Mike Rowe, which meant everyone else sided with the other team as a matter of course and heckled him mercilessly about it.
Riding a wave of goodwill, Noel offered coke to whoever wanted it. Owen took him up on it.
“Liam?” Noel asked. He shook the white baggie.
Liam barely glanced away from the screen. “Nah, mate. Saving me voice.”
Noel scoffed. Since when did Liam give a shit about that? Not on tour, even when they’d begged him. Noel couldn’t argue with results, though—he’d heard them in the studio. He shrugged and cut a line for himself.
That might have been it. Who knew how much longer Noel might have stayed in the dark, missing the obvious and worrying about his brother like a fucking idiot, except that fifteen minutes later the new guy, Whitey, asked Liam if he wanted a beer.
“Nah,” Liam said. Then, bizarrely, he cut a guilty glance over at Noel.
There’d never been a time in Noel’s life when that look had meant anything but trouble. It took him a good thirty seconds or so to work out exactly what the trouble was this time, and another few seconds to believe it. Surely—but then—and what about—no, surely not.
Except Noel knew in his gut it was true. “You kept it,” he said.
Nobody heard him, too raucous with booze and good cheer. Noel pushed to his feet. He jabbed his finger towards Liam, and said, “You fucking kept it.”
Liam wasn’t meeting his eyes, but he heard him, all right. Distantly Noel was aware of some of the other guys turning his way, but all he could see was his brother. Like he was looking down a telescope, all his attention narrowed to the outline of Liam sitting on that sofa, floppy-haired and hunched and guilty as hell and pregnant.
“You can’t have a baby, Liam,” Noel said.
Liam tipped his chin up, defiant. “I fucking can.”
“No, you can’t.” Noel advanced on him. Fury coiled inside him like a spring.
“Yes I can!” Liam said, shoving to his feet.
“You don’t know shit about babies! I don’t even know shit about them, and I still fucking know more than you, because at least I had your nappies to change.”
“You never did,” Liam scoffed.
That was more or less true and entirely beside the point. “You haven’t got any place to keep it,” Noel said. “You’re still living at Mam’s! And need I remind you, we are going on fucking tour. I’m not having you up there singing my songs, looking like some fat slut who’s too stupid to even put on a fucking condom.”
“Well, it wasn’t my cock that needed one, was it?” Liam said.
“I’m not having it,” Noel said. “I forbid it.”
“You can’t forbid it. You’re my brother, not—not my dad. It ain’t any of your fucking business, is it?”
“This band is my business.” Noel was close enough to feel Liam’s hot breath in his face. He shoved at Liam’s shoulder.
He expected resistance, but instead Liam stumbled backwards. “Don’t,” Liam mumbled, crossing his arms over himself. “You’ll hurt it.”
Noel stared at him, this alien being that had replaced his brother—who was also basically an alien, granted. But he’d never backed away from a brawl in his life, and now here he was, looking at Noel across the strange, vast distance he’d put between them.
For a few shocked moments, Noel wanted to cross that distance and strangle him. Then the wave of fury passed through him, and he could say, “You fucking get rid of it, Liam, or you’re out of the band.”
Liam straightened up, fear forgotten. “Who’s gonna sing, then? You?” He seemed delighted by this prospect, hugely entertained. “You’re fucking terrified of them crowds.”
Noel changed tack. “What the fuck kind of parent do you think you’ll be, Liam?”
Liam’s smile dropped away. There it was—that worry Noel had seen in his eyes weeks ago when he’d first turned up in Noel’s garden with the news.
“You’re an idiot who lives on coke and booze. You never even had a dad worth knowing. How are you going be one yourself? You’ll just ruin the kid, the same as—as he did.”
“I fucking won’t!” Liam said, but he was upset, his fists balling up. Any moment now, furious tears would start spilling over.
“You will. It’ll be even a bigger disaster than you. Is that what you want?”
“Fuck off.” Liam shoved at Noel, a single hard push.
Noel slipped. He flailed backwards, landing awkwardly against the sofa. His head hit the back of it. “Fuck.” He rubbed at his skull and glared up at Liam. “You’re not keeping that kid. I’m not having it.”
Liam looked down at him. He seemed unfamiliar, suddenly. Older, like he’d gained a year or five when Noel wasn’t looking. Liam splayed his hand carefully over his stomach and said, “You’re right. I am. And there’s not a fucking thing you can do about it.”
And then he left. He stepped carefully over Noel’s one leg, gave the other a vicious little kick, and walked out of the room.
Noel sat up. He rolled his shoulders, which felt funny from falling against the sofa that way, and rubbed the place on his ankle where Liam had kicked it. The football match was still on, the announcers chatting quietly in the background, but no one was watching it. It was only then Noel realized that everyone else had already fled the scene.
Fair enough, he thought. He certainly had no interest in hanging about a moment longer.
He went to his room and packed his bag. Fuck them all: the band and the crew and this fucking countryside full of sheep and most especially fuck Liam.
Yeah. Fuck Liam most of all. Noel gripped the strap of his carry-all so tight it pinched his fingers.
Noel got a phone call from his mam, his third day back in London.
“Noel,” Peggy said. There was a lot in that single word. Reproof, weariness. Relief, which Noel recognized from years and years of it: relief that Noel was on the scene now. Whatever Liam had gotten up to, Noel could fix it. “Has your brother told you he’s expecting?”
Noel curled his lip at the phone. Expecting, like there was something to be completed, even looked forward to. “He told me he was pregnant.”
If she heard the implied correction, she ignored it. “He’s so young.”
“That’s what I said.”
“He won’t tell me who the fellow is.”
“I doubt he knows.”
“Noel,” Peggy said.
Noel heaved a sigh. “Well, what do you want me to do, Mam? He says he won’t get an abortion. I ain’t picking him up and carrying him there, am I?”
Peggy was quiet for a bit, then. Her church upbringing wouldn’t be getting on well with the notion of Liam ending the pregnancy. Yet another excellent reason for Noel to never darken those doors again.
At last, Peggy said, “That’s my grandchild he’s having. My very first. Will you try to see he takes care of himself?”
Noel scoffed. “There’s a thing that’s easier said than done.”
“But you’ll try, won’t you, when you’re on the road and that?”
And Noel knew there was nothing for it, no possible protest he could make, certainly no help in pointing out that he’d left the band. She wouldn’t believe any of it. “Yeah, all right. I’ll try.”
After that, it took one more week for McGee and the machinery of the music business to drag Noel back to Wales. Noel told him he wasn’t having it, he was done this time, Oasis was over. McGee nodded through it all and then asked to hear the new song again, the one Noel’d written half of while sitting on the stone wall at Rockfield. “It’s good, innit,” McGee said, when Noel had finished. “I’d like to hear that one on a record.”
“A bit shite, really,” Noel said, because what else was he going to say? But he played it again after McGee had gone, and fuck it all, it was good, and Noel did want to put it on a record.
Noel hired his own ride to the studio separate from the crew. He had money now, enough to put off wading into that chaos for another couple of hours. But those hours flew by too fast, and then they were pulling up to Rockfield, surrounded by sheep pastures. Noel felt a little sick. Probably it was the ride up—all those turns through the hills.
He’d beaten the crew there, at least. He had time to unload his things from the car in peace and lug them all back to the places he’d taken them from: his guitars to the studio, his clothes to the room he reclaimed as his. He was making himself a sandwich in the kitchen when he heard the bus roll in.
Predictably, it was Liam who found him first. As far as Liam was concerned, toting gear was for other people. He strolled through the kitchen door and stopped short when he saw Noel.
They hadn’t spoken since the last fight. Noel had let someone else call Liam and talk him into coming back to finish the recording. Somehow Noel had imagined Liam getting a belly on him in those few weeks apart, but of course that was nonsense. Liam looked just the same. A bit pale, maybe, and warier than usual. Ironic; maybe if he’d had a bit more of that caution in America, then—
Whatever. Noel put the last touch on the sandwich and headed for the door.
Liam caught his arm.
“Fuck off,” Noel said, jerking free. “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“Noel—”
Noel half-expected Liam to chase after him, but he didn’t, though Noel could feel Liam’s eyes burning holes in him, all the way down the hall.
Everyone was a bit more subdued this time around, at least for a while. Bonehead still drank himself into a stupor, but more quietly. Guigs had never made much noise in the first place. Alan White was still figuring out where he fit in, god help him. Liam still wasn’t drinking at all, which had to be the weirdest thing about all this, and when he and some of the others made their way to the village for a night’s entertainment at the pub, they never seemed to last long. Or so it seemed to Noel, who holed up at the studio on those nights, sometimes with Owen or Coylely for company, often not.
“It’s Liam,” Bonehead said with a shrug, one night when Noel expressed surprise at seeing him again so soon. “He’s sat there pining for a pint with them huge, sad eyes. Puts me right off my drink.”
Noel very much doubted that, given how Bonehead was swaying. “Doesn’t he have even one?”
Bonehead shook his head with drunken earnestness. “He’s gonna be a good da, he says. You shouldn’t give him such a hard time.”
Noel curled his lip. “You don’t know anything about it,” he said. He left while Bonehead was still puzzling out a response.
It was true enough that Oasis wasn’t living up to their rock and roll reputation. Noel should have been happy about it. Liam sounded spectacular in the studio. The album was coming together in record time; they were laying down vocals and instruments and giving them to Owen to do his magic on at the rate of one a day. A man couldn’t ask for more.
He and Liam didn’t speak. Liam tried now and then, but he went away after Noel ignored him long enough—a strange occurrence in itself. Noel stayed at the soundboard while Liam recorded and had other people pass along notes if Liam needed them.
One night Liam disappeared to his room just after supper, mumbling about a headache. Usually that was the last anyone would have seen of him these days, because apparently being pregnant took all the stamina out of a guy. However, once Bonehead and some of the others had gone off to the village and Noel had the living room to himself, he heard a sound and turned to see Liam stood there in the doorway—the same one he’d walked out of three weeks before.
Were they in for another row? Probably, Noel supposed, though he wasn’t sure he had the appetite just then. He could barely remember that searing fury he’d felt before. He’d thought about the whole situation, thought about it some more, and then some more after that until he felt like he had an ice cube in the pit of his stomach, chilling him from the inside out. The last thing he wanted was to think about it even more or, God forbid, talk about it. He turned back to the football match and waited for Liam to go away.
Naturally, Liam ventured further into the room instead. “I figured it out, you know. You’re jealous.”
Noel scoffed. “What the fuck would I have to be jealous about?”
“It’s because I shagged that geezer,” Liam said.
“If I cared about who you let into your bed, I’d get old pretty fucking fast.”
Liam flushed a deep red, but somehow he stuck to his point. “Tell me you don’t want me shagging other geezers anymore, and I won’t.”
“A bit late for that, isn’t it?” Noel looked pointedly at Liam’s stomach, and like some kind of fucking cliché, Liam carefully splayed his hand over it. The sight made Noel want to throw up. He said, “You’re telling me this like you think it matters, and it doesn’t. I don’t give a fuck who you shag. Not my business, is it? Like you said, I’m only your brother.”
“Noel,” Liam said, a whining little plea. Noel never hated his name as much as when Liam said it like that. (There were other times Liam said it that Noel didn’t mind at all, times like—
Never mind that.)
“Why do you have to be such a cunt about it?” Liam asked. “It’s gonna be your niece or nephew, you know.”
Noel shrugged deeper into the sofa and turned his gaze back to the TV screen. “You do what you want with whoever the fuck you want. It’s got nowt to do with me.”
“Fucking cunt,” Liam muttered at last, and he went away again. Then Noel could breathe a little easier, though it felt like the cold spot in his stomach had only got colder.
They wrapped up the album and went back to London. That was a relief. No more looking at Liam and thinking of things Noel didn’t want to think of. No more avoiding Liam’s gaze or his fingers pinching Noel in the ribs as he went past. No visits from him, knocking at Noel’s garden gate.
McGee was enthusiastic over the tracks to the point of euphoria. It was a bit much even for Noel, if he was being honest.
“By the way, about your brother,” McGee said.
“It’s not my problem,” Noel said, before McGee could go any farther. “You guys work it all out, whether he can tour or—or whatever. You take it up with him. I’m not his fucking handler.”
“Right,” McGee said slowly, and changed the subject.
Fortunately, Oasis kept rolling on whether Noel was speaking to Liam or not. They’d show up to the same photo shoot, and if Liam kept trying to catch Noel’s eye, well, Noel could just ignore that.
(Once, when Liam wasn’t looking, Noel did try to see if he’d got bigger. If he had, not even the sharpest eye could have told as long as Liam was swathed in that parka.)
They played the Bath Pavilion that night. Liam watched the sound check like he always did—or he watched Noel, rather, gaze hooded and fixed on Noel like he’d never look anywhere else again. It was unnerving. Noel would manage to get lost in the music for a song at a time, and then he’d look up to see Liam staring and he’d miss another chord.
The show went all right, at least. They were a little rusty after the two months’ hiatus, but it could have been worse. Liam didn’t even try to feel Noel up like he did sometimes. At the end of it, Noel came off the stage thinking maybe it’d work out all right, performing together and not talking.
Then Liam caught him outside the green room, his fingers wrapped around Noel’s arm just like it was months ago, like they still touched each other all the time.
Noel twisted free of Liam’s grip, face hot, furious. “Lay a hand on me again and I’ll punch your face in,” Noel spat. Liam flinched, and that gave Noel just enough time to make his escape.
He decided it was past time to get very, very drunk.
Oasis spent the next month at festivals. Liam took to bringing his latest ultrasound pictures around to show everyone, pointing out which ghostly blob was, allegedly, which part of the baby. All the rest of the crew made noises like they were impressed.
He tried to show Noel once, when he got tired of Noel never coming to look. Liam thrust the picture in Noel’s face and said, “Look, I’m going to be a dad.”
Noel looked at the thing before he could help himself. It was a relief, somehow, that there wasn’t much to see. Just black blobs and white blobs. “It doesn’t look like anything,” Noel said.
Liam snatched the image away, scowling. “Fucking knobhead.” He looked at the picture and then at Noel, back and forth, and Noel thought for a moment they were about to have themselves a real row. Eventually, though, Liam shook his head and strolled away to accost someone else with the proof of his disastrous sexual activity.
“He’s a good lad, you know,” Bonehead said to Noel.
Noel’s throat was tight. “Got you fooled then, hasn’t he?”
Liam was proving at least some of Noel’s predictions wrong, though. He still wasn’t drinking or snorting or smoking. (Much. Not more than tobacco, anyway, and not as often as he had been.) It really left a person wondering what it was he did all day—not that Noel gave it much thought.
Sometimes he didn’t need to, though, because Liam would turn up on their charter bus with headphones, and someone would say, “What are you listening to now?”
Liam would reply with the title of some album or other that Noel’d never heard of. Nor had the man at the record store, the one time when Noel asked him later. It wasn’t until Whitey asked Liam what the thing was about that Noel realized it was a book Liam was listening to, not music.
“What are you listening to books for?” Noel asked, before he could help himself.
Liam looked up, startled. He hunched a little deeper into himself. “It makes me sick now, riding on the bus and that, trying to watch the TV. You wouldn’t believe what they put in books, though.” His eyes lit up, ready to tell Noel all about it. “It’s some fucking mad shit.”
“Right,” Noel said, and slipped his own headphones on before Liam could say another word.
After a month’s break, mostly parties and only a very little bit of work—interviews, a day shooting a video, another day taking photos for the album cover—they were off to Japan.
The last time they’d been in Japan, Noel had sucked Liam off for the first time. It’d been brilliant, Liam staring down with his huge blue eyes full of drugs and disbelief, his cock hot in Noel’s mouth. Afterwards, half-asleep, Liam had said, “You’re the best. You’re better at it than anyone.”
“Fucking right,” Noel had said.
But Noel could find his own entertainment. There was no rubber band between him and Liam, stretching ever thinner. He didn’t fucking miss Liam, and even if he’d been of a mind to, neither the schedule nor Liam himself ever gave Noel the opportunity. He was always there off to Noel’s right, belting into the microphone. Never mind that those few feet between them felt like miles.
Anyway, seven gigs in nine brutal, punishing days kept Noel too busy to spend much time thinking. That must have been the reason why, when he asked at the hotel desk in Tokyo where he could find the rest of his party, he followed the woman’s directions without question, even though they took him down a hall he hadn’t seen before. He came to the end and looked through a huge glass window next to a door.
It was a pool. There were people splashing about in it, but it took a moment for Noel to realize one of them was Liam.
Surely not. But Noel peered closer, and sure enough, there was his brother paddling awkwardly down the length of the pool. Liam didn’t even know how to swim, any more than Noel did—except he knew now, it seemed, at least well enough to stay afloat. He was in a t-shirt, which made Noel wonder if he’d wandered by and gotten pushed in, or if he’d jumped. But no, there was a pile of the hotel’s towels piled near the steps into the pool, and now Liam was walking up those steps and taking one of the towels. He’d planned this, him and—Whitey, Noel saw. It was Whitey who was still floating in the water. He called something to Liam, and Liam yelled back, laughing.
Then Liam turned, and suddenly Noel couldn’t breathe.
Liam was pregnant. Obviously Noel had known, he had been very fucking aware of it for what felt like a short but miserable eternity, but his bitterest imaginings hadn’t prepared him for the sight of Liam in profile with his belly swelling gently outward. It was still small enough to hide under the shapeless clothes Liam liked to wear, but just then, his wet t-shirt and shorts clinging to his skin, there was nothing left to the imagination.
Liam looked up and saw Noel. He froze. Noel couldn’t move, either; hadn’t been able to since the moment Liam began to turn. They stood there staring at each other like a pair of idiots. Then Alan headed towards the steps, and that was enough to break the spell. Liam hurriedly wrapped up in his towel, hiding himself away again. Before he could look up again, Noel fled.
Their first night in Osaka, in the middle of Roll With It, a young man climbed up on stage and went straight for Liam. One moment Noel was a couple of beats from coming in on vocals, and the next there was a man on stage, black-eyed in a white shirt darkening at the pits. What bizarre fucking details Noel noticed in that surreal, timeless moment.
Liam was peering out into the crowd, singing his lungs out. He didn’t even see the guy until he was right on him, arm raised high. The thought came to Noel like a bell ringing right through him: He’s got a fucking knife.
Liam threw his arms up. The guy collided with him, and maybe Liam could have withstood it if he hadn’t tripped over a cable. He fell back on his arse with the guy on top of him.
It all happened in two seconds. By the time Noel had come unfrozen and started disentangling himself from his guitar, security was already swarming the stage. Bellowing, Liam brought his knee up between the guy’s legs. Two of the security staff grabbed the attacker’s arms and hauled him off of Liam.
Free from his guitar strap at last, Noel stalked over, nerves singing and heart beating furiously. Liam was struggling upright. Noel looked for blood, but Liam just looked shaken. Noel didn’t see any knife lying around, either. He’d imagined it. That should have made him feel better.
One of the security men took Liam by the elbow. “We’re getting you out of here,” Noel heard.
They hustled Noel and the rest of the band off soon after. “The set,” Noel protested, automatically.
A woman he vaguely recognized as being attached to the venue shook her head. That was likely just as well, as Noel seemed to have lost control of his legs; he walked where he was led and sat where he was told, all without planning to. “Liam,” he said.
“The medical staff are with him,” a man said.
“He’s pregnant,” Noel told him. “Do they know that?”
The man took this in. “We’ll tell them.” Then he left, presumably to do just that.
They all went back to the hotel. Some of the band and crew elected to go out and try to improve the night with sake. Noel only shook his head when they asked him along. “I’ve got to call our Mam,” he said, and everyone nodded.
He didn’t, though; better to wait until he knew the full extent of the news. He told the woman at the front desk to send any band members or crew she saw to the hotel bar. Whitey waited there with him. He wasn’t bad for a poncey southerner. Steady, but still capable of a laugh, unlike Guigs, for example, or fucking McCarroll if it came to that.
Eventually Noel’s patience was rewarded, because it was Liam himself who stalked in looking none the worse for wear with a bodyguard at his elbow. “Oh, it’s just you,” he said when he got close enough, peering through his shades. It was the middle of the bloody night, and Liam was still in shades.
Now that it came to it, Noel wasn’t sure what he’d meant to say. He’d only wanted to look at Liam, really, to know he was all in one piece. But he was, it seemed. “You’re all right? You and, uh.” Noel cleared his throat. “And the baby?”
“What the fuck do you care?” Liam asked, scowling.
“Well, I don’t, then,” Noel said, hunching over his drink. “Just worried about what I was going to tell Mam, but I don’t have to now. You can call her yourself, before she sees it on the fucking telly.”
“Right,” Liam said. He looked between Noel and Whitey, and then he shrugged and walked out again.
Everything must have been fine, Noel thought. He looked fine.
Still, when Owen and Coylely wandered through and asked if Noel wanted to get something to eat with them, he found himself heading upstairs instead. He stood at his own door for a stupidly long time, and then he walked a little further on and knocked on Liam’s instead.
No one answered. Maybe Liam was asleep. He’d been jetlagged to fuck their whole week in Japan, though, sleeping until mid-afternoon without even drinking the night before, so maybe he wasn’t. “Liam!” Noel called, knocking harder. “Fucking open up.”
Faintly, through the heavy door, he heard, “Piss off.”
“I’ll go down to the desk and make them give me a key, see if I don’t.”
There was no answer. Noel was on the verge of doing just that when the door slid open. And there, see, Liam hadn’t been asleep at all. He was still fully dressed in one of those shirts that hid everything, and—
And his eyes were red at the rims, his lashes damp and clumped together. In a thick, congested voice, he asked, “What do you want?”
Noel stared at him. Liam scowled back. At last, Noel asked uncertainly, “Do you need a doctor?” He’d have thought surely they’d have made sure Liam was all right before letting him loose, but Liam was a medical mystery these days. Who knew how all those strange internal processes worked?
“No,” Liam said. He wiped angrily at his wet face. “If that’s all you wanted, then you can fuck off now.”
Noel didn’t know what he wanted, but he knew he wasn’t going to find it out there in the hall. He shouldered past Liam into the room. Liam let him. The room looked exactly like Noel’s except for the shit strewn everywhere. Or at least, he thought, strewn more thoroughly.
Also unlike Noel’s room these past months, it had Liam in it. He let the door fall shut and sat heavily on the edge of the bed. All the fight seemed to have gone out of him, and without it he looked shockingly young. Noel thought of Peggy’s instructions months ago: Look out for your brother. But Liam had looked after himself far better than Noel had expected, and in that one moment on the stage when he couldn’t, Noel hadn’t been any help at all.
“You’re all right, then,” Noel said awkwardly.
Liam looked down at his hands and nodded. “Freaked me out a bit, is all.”
Noel wasn’t the kind of brother used to giving comfort. He was more apt to feed Liam his dick than ask him how he felt. Usually they got on just fine that way—more or less—but just then, looking at Liam’s bowed, shaggy head, Noel felt himself profoundly lacking.
He sat down next to Liam, close enough to touch but far enough that it was easy not to. “The fuck’s wrong, then?”
“I was just thinking, like—what if it’d gone wrong? What if something happened?” Liam’s hand closed convulsively over his stomach, once again hidden away under his shirt. “Maybe next time it will.”
“There won’t be a next time,” Noel said firmly. “I talked to the team. We’re getting double security tomorrow night.”
“Right,” Liam said. He looked tired, more worn down than one weird crying jag could account for. Softly, like he half-hoped Noel wouldn’t hear him, he said, “But what if it does? Or—or something else? What if I’m gonna be a shit dad?”
Noel stared at him. There was a set to Liam’s mouth like he was trying not to cry again, and Noel was at an utter loss. “Well,” he tried, “you’re not going to beat the kid, right?”
“No!” Liam said, outraged.
“See, you’re already doing better than our dad.”
“But we still had Mam. This kid ain’t got anyone but me, and I’m not clever, Noel. I don’t know how things work, do you know what I mean?” Liam gestured vaguely. “How will I know what to do? What if I fuck it all up?” He screwed up his face as if to prevent further tears, but it mostly just made him look even more miserably unhappy. “Maybe you were right. Maybe I shouldn’t have it.”
Noel dimly recalled saying exactly that and meaning every word. Now he was halfway to winning that argument of months ago, but it didn’t feel like winning. “The kid’ll have Mam, too, though. Are you shitting me? She’s over the moon, getting a grandkid. She loves it already. And you’ll love it, right. That goes a long way, love does.
“And—and it’ll have me, too.”
“It will?” Liam said doubtfully.
“Well, it’s my niece or nephew,” Noel said, with a heartiness that sounded utterly false, even to himself.
“But you hate it,” Liam said. His hand closed protectively over himself once more.
“I don’t—I don’t hate it, Liam.” Noel turned abruptly away, so he was looking at the little table across the room. A year ago, it’d have been littered with little plastic baggies, dusted inside with white crystalline crumbs. Now it was just piled with socks, for some reason.
“You do,” Liam said. “You wanted me to get rid of it.”
I still do. That icy chill in the pit of Noel’s stomach concurred. Somehow Noel couldn’t say it, not while Liam was watching him with those red-rimmed eyes.
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” Noel said. Liam scoffed, and Noel fought the urge to get up and walk right out of the room. “Anyway, I didn’t think you’d take it seriously like you have. I thought you’d be back on the sauce in a week or two, or you’d get bored, or whatever. You’ve done all right.” That sounded even more awkward than the heartiness.
Liam must have agreed. He was eyeing Noel warily, like Noel might take it back at any moment.
“Right,” Noel said. He was past ready to leave. Liam was fine. Everything was fine.
Liam reached out and caught Noel’s wrist in a loose grip, his fingers brushing Noel’s skin. Not holding him there, not really; not pulling him toward Liam nor shoving him away. Just touching him.
Liam didn’t say anything more. He didn’t move.
An ache built in Noel’s throat. It kept on building, until: “You don’t even like men.” The words burst out of him, entirely unbidden. “I wanted to—but you kept saying no, and then you went and done it with—with some idiot in a club.”
He couldn’t look Liam in the eye. He wanted to stalk out of the room and slam the door behind him, except that’d mean pulling out of Liam’s grip, and that seemed impossible. That icy chill crept over him further and further until he was frozen stiff. He could barely breathe.
“That’s why I done it,” Liam said at last. “It was because you kept asking.”
“What?”
“I didn’t want you putting your cock up me arse if I wasn’t going to like it. So when that geezer was feeling me up, I thought I’d find out, do you know what I mean?”
“What?” Noel said again, staring at Liam. In that moment, he was too mystified to feel—well, any of the other things he’d been feeling for the past three months.
Liam grimaced. “I guess it was a bit of a shit plan, but I was fucking high, mate. I just—I just wanted to know.”
“And did you?” Noel asked. He wasn’t sure he wanted the answer, but it’d have taken a gag to keep him from asking. “Did you like it?”
“Nah,” Liam said sadly. “I didn’t like the way he smelled.”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t like it. And he was too heavy or something. I don’t like being with, you know, people bigger than me.”
Noel stared. He stared some more, until Liam flushed and turned away, finally freeing Noel’s hand. “I wasn’t going to tell you,” Liam said. “Or—or maybe I was, but not all of it. I thought, like, maybe you’d get angry, and you’d tell me you didn’t want me shagging other guys anymore.” Softly, he said, “I didn’t think you’d hate me.”
Noel wanted to say something sharp, something that’d hurt Liam and not him, but what came out of his mouth was, “You kept it. You got knocked up by some American, and you fucking kept it, and now you’re having his kid.”
“It’s not his kid,” Liam said hotly.
Noel felt a wild, impossible flash of hope. “Whose is it, then?”
“It’s mine,” Liam said.
Noel rolled his eyes, feeling like an idiot. “Right. Sure.”
Digging his fingers into Noel’s arm, Liam said, “No, you fucking listen. What’s that geezer got to do with it? I don’t hardly remember what he looked like, even. He’s not gonna ever hold the kid or see it or—or anything. It’s gonna be my kid, and I’m gonna look after it, right? Change its nappies and sing to it and that. It’s my kid. I’m the one who’s gonna be a dad. Not him.”
Liam spoke with that intensity that strangers tended to confuse with anger, but Noel knew better. It was just Liam fighting to make the world understand what he was already certain of. Abruptly he let go of Noel. Absently Noel rubbed at his sore arm and tried to play the words back in his head, but even with all Liam’s conviction behind them, they were slippery things, hard to hold onto.
He felt Liam’s steady gaze on him. Quietly Liam said, “You wanted it to be yours.”
“What? Don’t be an idiot.”
Liam said nothing.
“It couldn’t be mine,” Noel said. He knew that better than he knew anything else about this whole fucked-up business. He couldn’t keep from knowing it. “It’d come out with its ears where its feet should be or some shite. It’d be—no. It couldn’t ever have been.”
“All right,” Liam said, with far more patience than anyone would credit him, “but you wanted it to be.”
Noel looked away. He couldn’t bear to look at Liam anymore. He was chilled and exhausted and unpleasantly sober, the buzz long gone from those drinks earlier. To his horror, he realized his eyes were wet.
“Noel.”
“Fuck off.”
Liam shifted closer. Noel resolutely refused to look, but then Liam was touching his face, guiding it towards him, until there was no place for Noel to look except into Liam’s blue eyes, the exact same shade as his own. Liam tipped Noel’s chin up and closed the distance.
For a few moments, all Noel could do was let Liam kiss him. He couldn’t quite believe they were here. It’d been so fucking long. Liam pressed in, kissing Noel gently, carefully, until Noel opened and let him in. It was very nearly the first time he’d ever kissed him that Liam didn’t taste of booze.
There was something wrong about this—or more wrong, anyway. Kissing your brother in the heat of moment, at the height of whatever chemical high you were enjoying, that was one thing. Kissing him for comfort, just because you’d missed kissing him, that was the really unnatural thing, wasn’t it?
“Fuck this,” Noel said. “Come on, up on the bed.”
Liam went readily, stretching out on his back. He watched Noel crawl up beside him like Noel might scarper off at any moment—like Liam, too, couldn’t quite believe they were here.
Noel straddled Liam’s hips and bent to kiss him again. Liam’s breath was hot against his mouth and heavier than Noel was expecting. Noel reached between Liam’s legs and found him already half-hard. Liam gasped at his touch.
“What, already?” Noel said, sitting up.
Liam grimaced. “That’s how it is lately. I always—I always fucking want it, but I ain’t shagged anyone since—you know.” He brushed his hands over his stomach, visibly rounded under the drape of his shirt. “Since I started getting bigger. Didn’t want anyone looking at me.”
Noel saw the fork in the path. He could let that queasy anger overtake him again, remembering how they’d got here—how Liam had got here, pregnant by a man who’d had something from him he’d never given to Noel. They could carry on as they had for the past three months—or worse, maybe. After all this, it felt like it’d be worse.
Liam watched him like he knew what was going through Noel’s head. Deliberately, Noel brushed his fingers against Liam’s. “What about me?” Noel said. “You gonna let me look at you?”
For a moment, the answer seemed uncertain. Then Liam bit his lip and reached for his jeans. Noel crawled off and helped him wriggle out of them. There was Liam’s cock, flushed and stiffening, but that wasn’t what Noel wanted. Not yet.
They unbuttoned Liam’s shirt together. Once it was open, that left Liam’s undershirt, but it couldn’t disguise what had been happening to him in those months Noel had stayed away. Noel splayed his hand over the swell. Liam went so still he might not even have been breathing. “Yours,” Noel said.
“Yeah.” Liam’s tone left no room for argument.
All right, Noel thought. All right.
He slid his hand past it, down. He took Liam’s cock loosely in his hand.
“Fuck,” Liam said. He was staring wildly at Noel. Noel hadn’t even done anything interesting yet. He should have laughed at Liam for it, except Noel felt that same wild desperation, and he didn't even have pregnancy hormones for an excuse. He thumbed over the head, enjoying the way Liam shivered, but that wasn’t enough for either of them, Noel reckoned. He bent down on the bed, opened wide, and closed his lips around Liam’s cock.
Liam wasn’t going to last long. A month or more without any relief, keyed up like he was? It was no wonder. Noel tongued at Liam’s slit and along his foreskin, teasing, and sucked on him in short bursts that were just another kind of tease. Liam shifted on the bed. When Noel glanced over, he found Liam shoved up on his elbows, staring, eyes near-crazed with arousal.
Not with drugs, because he didn’t put those in his system these days. There’d been plenty of drugs involved the first time Noel had done it—also in Japan, now that he thought of it. But no, this time it was all Noel’s doing, that look in Liam’s eyes. It burned right into Noel. He felt himself flush hot, cheeks and inside his armpits and all the way down his chest. He turned his attention back to Liam’s cock, and he set about finishing the job.
Noel pulled off at the end and worked Liam that last little bit, until Liam bucked up into Noel’s grip and came in a high, white arc. Some of it landed on his belly, bared now with all his moving around, and some on his undershirt. Liam grumbled about that, eventually pulling himself sluggishly upright so he could take it off and toss it to the floor. Then he prodded Noel out of his clothes and put his hand on Noel’s cock.
Liam had been shy about this, once. He’d loved kissing Noel, loved Noel’s hands on him, but when it came to reciprocating, Liam had been skittish. That first time, he’d eyed Noel cock like he really thought it might bite him. Now he gripped it carefully and grinned at Noel’s indrawn breath, clearly pleased with himself. There was something else in Liam’s eyes, too, something far too fond and sincere for Noel to look at straight on.
He didn’t have to, though. He only had to let Liam work him up to that cliff’s edge of pleasure and tip him over. When even the aftershocks had faded away, Noel reached for a tissue and swiped it at them both until they were sort of clean. He’d want a shower later, but just then, all he wanted in the world was to lie there next to Liam.
He surfaced from a doze a little while later and realized he was cold. He pulled the covers up over them, which was enough to bring Liam awake. He rolled over onto his back. After a few moments, he took Noel’s hand between his and tugged it until it lay flat on his belly.
“You’re getting bigger,” Noel said.
“Yeah,” Liam said with evident satisfaction.
“The press are going to murder you, you know.” Noel brushed his thumb across the fine trail of hairs that led down Liam’s stomach, towards his cock. “It’s good you can still hide it under them clothes for a while.”
Liam scoffed. “I don’t fucking care about the press.” Of course he didn’t; he wasn’t ever the one who had to talk to them.
They fell quiet again. It felt unimaginably late. Noel wasn’t sure any time was passing at all; he thought maybe he and Liam were caught in a timeless moment that would stretch out forever.
Into that silence, in response to nothing whatsoever, Liam said, “Nephew.”
“What?” Noel said.
Liam took a sharp breath. He squeezed Noel’s hand, still lying on his belly. “It’s gonna be a boy. Gonna be your nephew.”
Noel shoved up on his elbow. “You’re shitting me,” he said, shocked. He couldn’t have said why he was shocked. Obviously it was going to be one of the two. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, the doctor saw his little prick, last time I went.”
Noel splayed his fingers wider over Liam’s warm skin and tried to imagine a little boy with the Gallagher eyebrows and Liam’s nose and—well, Noel wasn’t going to think about what features the other parent might have contributed. He thought about blue eyes instead, the same as Liam’s. The same as his own.
“Hang on,” he said suddenly. “I thought you didn’t know yet. Last week—you told Bonehead you didn’t know.” That’d been on the flight to Japan. Surely Liam hadn’t had time to find out since then.
“I didn’t say that,” Liam said, very shifty. “You’re hearing things, mate.”
“I’m fucking not,” Noel said, bewildered. He couldn’t imagine why Liam would lie about this.
Liam stared at the ceiling, jaw set. Noel wanted to press him, but he knew better. He stayed quiet and waited as Liam visibly grew more and more uncomfortable.
At last Liam heaved a sigh. Mouth twisting unhappily, he said, “I found out a few weeks ago. I didn’t want to tell anyone until—until I told you.”
“Liam,” Noel said helplessly. Liam started to roll away, onto his side, but Noel caught his shoulder and brought him back. Liam looked fiercely up at him, tense, braced for a fight. Noel had never wanted to make Liam look at him like that.
No, that wasn’t true. For months he’d wanted exactly that. He’d wanted Liam to feel as miserable and hollowed out as he did.
Noel leaned over and pressed his mouth to Liam’s. He threaded his fingers through Liam’s hair, tugged him closer, and kissed him as tenderly as he knew how. I’m sorry, he thought, kissing the corner of Liam’s mouth. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
Eventually the angle began to make his neck ache, and he pulled back. Liam’s eyes followed him, watchful but not so wary any longer. “Listen,” Noel began, and stopped. Liam’s gaze sharpened. Awkwardly, feeling ridiculous, Noel said, “I don’t want you shagging any other men, all right?”
It took a moment for the words to take effect. Gradually, Liam’s whole face brightened into that grin he rarely let anyone see. “Yeah?”
“Fuck off,” Noel said reflexively. “Don’t say a fucking word.”
“What about—”
“I don’t care about the women. Just—no more men. Except me.”
“All right,” Liam said, not bothering with even a token protest. He lay back, grinning at the ceiling like a lunatic. Like a fellow lunatic, Noel kept looking at him. He couldn’t seem to help it.
The late hour started to drag at him, the same as it was clearly dragging at Liam. They’d both had a fucking long day. Slowly Liam’s eyelids fell shut, and his mouth went slack. He was still holding onto Noel’s hand. Noel thought about pulling his fingers free, maybe heading back to his own room down the hall, but in the end he didn’t. He just shifted a little closer to Liam and closed his eyes.
When Noel slipped out late the next morning, Liam was still dead asleep. He wandered down to the lobby a couple of hours later, just in time to go for food with Noel and the rest of the band. At the restaurant, he slumped down next to Noel as a matter of course, and Noel leveled a stare at the others at the table until they each wisely chose not to say anything about it.
It was a return to old times, except that Liam only drank tea, and every so often the fabric of his jumper would fall just right so that Noel could see the curve of his stomach.
Noel kept waiting for that sick, awful feeling to return. Every time the memory of it threatened, Liam would casually knock his knee against Noel’s or dig his elbow into Noel’s side. At last Noel gave up thinking about it. They were all right, he told himself. They were all right.
“You’re going to be okay tonight?” someone asked Liam backstage.
Liam glanced at Noel and shrugged. “A fucking rock and roll star, ain’t I?”
And he was. He was fucking brilliant there under the stage lights. His voice blasting through the monitors gave Noel the kind of chills he’d felt that first show at the Boardwalk—the very first time he’d heard Liam sing.
Liam finished the bridge of Wonderwall—not out yet even as a single, and yet half this Japanese crowd seemed to know it anyway—and then, right on cue, he sang, “Baby, you’re gonna be the one that saves me…”
Noel looked up in disbelief, sure he’d misheard. But no, there Liam was, utterly unselfconscious, palming his belly as he belted out the wrong lyric. It was hard to say if anyone in the audience had caught on yet, but surely they would soon. You fucking idiot, Noel thought. He wanted to be furious, but somehow he couldn’t. He could only watch in wonder as Liam kept on singing his heart out, impossible to look away from and as bright as the sun.