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“I can't hardly fucking speak,” Liam complains to Alan.
“Then don't.”
The tone in Noel’s voice is enough to send everyone who bothered sticking around for the last half of the day’s recording session packing. It had been a strange couple of hours, no one speaking but for Noel, and only to instruct Liam and Gem to run through the shortest, simplest song the band has ever done over and over again. No explanation for his dissatisfaction, just a steadfast commitment to again, again, again, and a stern look at Liam if he hesitated even a moment. Now he’s in one of those moods where he wants Liam to himself, and it couldn’t be more obvious. It’s the way he walks out of the control booth and straight to Liam without so much as a stray glance at anyone else in the room, not even Alan and Andy sat right on the couch beside him. It’s the way he says those two words with a strangely flirtatious aggression, that manner exclusively reserved for his brother. There’s volumes being communicated that only the two of them are privy to, but on the heels of a recording session strung so high with tension, the room perceives a brewing storm.
“Anyone for a pint then?” Alan offers, plainly eager to leave as soon as possible, looking at Liam in hopes he’ll take the out. Under Noel’s close watch, Liam mouths we'll catch up, and off they all go.
When the studio is empty, Noel leans over Liam, who's just about collapsed on the couch limbs splayed so wide he claims the entire space. But he looks far too exhausted to defend that territory if challenged and seeing his brother so drained gets a smile on Noel’s face for the first time all day.
“I like you like this,” he coos, the aggression softened into something more patronizing now that they’re alone. His fingers are gentle on Liam's jaw as he tilts his head up into a kiss and nibbles on his tired lips.
Liam receives it so eager and gracious Noel almost feels guilty for berating him earlier. They both knew he'd pushed Liam over the line, physically, mentally, all sorts, but the law of the land when they are recording has been firmly if implicitly established: anything goes to get the song perfect. They abide on different principles: Noel because he measures his character by the quality of his work, and Liam because he measures his character by endurance and sacrifice. If he's put everything he's got into it, if he ruins himself for it, gives it everything he possibly can, gives Noel everything he possibly can, he's going to be proud of the result, however it sounds. Not so for Noel, who could watch Liam sing himself unconscious, bleat himself to death, and still consider the session a complete waste if it doesn't come out sounding right. Right being, exactly how it is in his head. Good simply is not good enough.
“You like when I'm hurting or you like when I can’t say nothing?
“The latter. It's you who likes being hurt, innit?”
“Do I?” Liam smirks and tilts his head, lolling it to rest on the back of the couch.
“Last I checked you do.”
Not that there was any need to check. After a certain age, stark differences in both size and aggression established, there was only one reason Noel was ever able to land a hit, that being because Liam wanted him to. Noel knew it, and could’ve assumed it was for the thrill of fighting, or some outgrowth of the psychosis that came over Liam when he was in a true rage, if he hadn’t started asking to be hurt outside the plausible deniability of a fight. Not explicitly at first, not even with provocation, but in every other way. Leaning into Noel’s touch when he brushed a bruise, like a dog being scratched behind the ear, holding Noel’s hand in place don’t stop until he was whimpering and his eyes rolled back in bliss. It only escalated from there. Pinch it, there, harder Noely, please. Bite our neck, below the hair, no one will see. Harder. Feels so nice when you do that with your nails, no harder. Sucking his own blood from Noel’s fingertips until he drooled, and repaid the favor on his knees. Noel hated it, hated drawing his brother’s blood, but loved his soft mouth and gratitude just a bit more.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” Liam teases, making his eyes innocent in a way he can’t do with his voice anymore. In a way that Noel can see right through, but still transports him back to a time he’d rather not go, when Liam sang high and clear and for no one else but him.
“You sound God fucking awful,” Noel remarks, willing himself to stay present. It’s true: the air rakes so harsh against Liam’s vocal cords, it should come out bleeding, and that’s one injury Noel knows he’d never ask for. It brings him a sick sort of satisfaction, even if it's not so pleasant to the ears, to have Liam hurting on his terms. Serves him right, in the grand scheme of things, and makes Noel feel a lot less guilty than making him bleed.
“Yeah that's your fault mate, that's all you, thanks very much.”
“Is it fuck. I reckon it's you smoking a hundred packs a day, staying out all hours getting pissed, and shouting yourself hoarse whenever someone looks at you funny.”
He’s not even angry. He’s the one asking now, and he only realizes it once the dominoes start to fall and his trousers tighten. When he sees the excitement radiating off Liam, his stomach twists. Didn’t they reach the never again point in Barcelona, when he’d given Liam a black eye that had done nothing but left them both gutted and the band nearly destroyed? Love and violence were supposed to be sealed in separate compartments now. Which had sprung a leak?
“I don't—”
“Not to mention, right, not to mention waiting until the last fucking minute to get your lazy arse in the studio, doing who the fuck knows what all month, making me drag you in by the bloody ear only to take an entire fucking day to get one vocal done half decent. And it's the easiest fucking song. It's your fucking song!”
“I ain’t smoking that much now, you know. Be fair.” He tugs the hem of Noel’s jumper and looks up at him to ask for another kiss, eyes too bright and hopeful for the age etched in the lines on his face. It breaks Noel’s heart a bit, but that’s fine, it’s already very, very broken, so broken he hardly feels it. That’s not Liam’s fault, not entirely, but he denies the bid for affection because now he kind of is angry.
“Fair? You better be having a fucking laugh. I’ll tell you what fair is, right—”
“Hey, yeah, just having a laugh, alright?” He tries to demonstrate but the sound comes out like a wheeze and he coughs instead. For a second, he looks like he might cry, but with Liam you can never tell, he has those verge-of-tears features, cries at the drop of a hat, though not necessarily when you’d expect, makes all manner of faces at all manner of times, Noel never fucking knows, and surely that’s not a failing of perceptiveness on his own part, surely he’s not developed some sort of functional blindness over the years from so much time staring at his brothers face searching for things he was too afraid to find.
“Shall we have a listen then?”
“Y'sure you don’t wanna piss off down to the pub?”
“Ah, no. Nine hundred takes, I wanna fucking hear my hard work, man.”
“I heard it.”
“So? Ain’t just your band is it? Half decent? Let’s fucking have a listen.”
In truth, all the takes were more than half decent, and Liam will know as much as soon as hears. In truth, the vocal from the demo was so good they really didn’t need to rerecord it, but when Noel heard it, that sweet melody all cluttered with loops and instruments, he’d gone a bit mad. This song was not for Andy and Gem, and how stupid of Liam to turn it over to them, and how irrationally jealous it made Noel that Liam had sung it for them. He had to make him redo it, so that every part of the song could belong to him, as it should, because who the fuck do they think the songbird is anyway? It’s Liam, that’s who, and they have no fucking clue that it’s what Noel calls him when no one else is around and he’s feeling too fond to stop himself, and yes the songbird knew exactly how to sing it, from Noel’s heart to his then back again, but Noel weren’t there so it doesn’t count, and Liam didn’t question the decision, didn’t mind at all.
He’s going to know they had the take they needed hours ago, that it wasn’t for the sake of perfection or musical greatness that Noel pushed him, and then he might mind. He’ll think it was on a sadistic whim, or something punitive, he’ll think it’s because Noel hates him and likes any excuse to lord power over him, and Noel won’t be able to tell him the truth: it’s just the song, it’s Liam’s song, it’s his song, it’s how much he loves the melody and how he swells with pride and envy when he hears him singing it (and swells and swells and swells). It’s how he’s so pleased with Liam it makes him angry, and so fascinated by that duality, he’s lost track of himself. In fact, it was around the time they could’ve wrapped it up that he’d fallen to full hypnotic obsession. Hardly over three minutes, it’s the shortest song they’ve done, and every take was over too quickly for Noel’s liking. No, no, shite. Again, he’d demanded, a dozen more times that he had any right or reason, because it wasn’t like Liam was going to refuse. It had been Andy that ultimately broke Noel’s trance and ended the session-- so fucking soft about Liam, he is-- and add that to the list of reasons Noel isn’t a fan (The first being, it was Liam who wanted him joining Oasis, and that more than enough to put Noel off him for good).
“Fine. Let me find the best—the only half-decent take. We’ll listen once, I’m a bit fucking sick of it at this point, to tell you the truth.”
“No come on, I sang em all, I wanna hear em all. Good, bad, ugly.” Christ, he thinks Noel’s trying to spare him listening to bad takes. That’s among the many things Noel hates the most, that he’ll never be the person Liam thinks he is, he’ll always be worse, and Liam will never see it and he’ll keep on loving him like he doesn’t deserve.
“Ha. Ain’t that ironic.”
“Ironic? What’s that mean?”
Noel rolls his eyes. He knows.
“You got some nerve bossing me around in my own fucking studio.”
“I’m not bossing, me—” Noel cuts him off with a bolder kiss, grip tight on his jaw this time. Keeps his trembling hand steady, sort of.
“What happened to can’t hardly fucking speak, eh?”
“Just wanna hear my song…”
The fact that he’s not gotten up off the couch to have this argument gives a striking testament to how worn out he is. Noel straddles his lap so he can get closer to his face, braced but unprepared for how the warmth where their bodies meet spreads in him like wildfire and makes his stomach sick with adrenaline. He really does like Liam like this: unthreatening, childlike, and so fucking devoted. His beloved songbird, locked in a cage beneath his weight, where Noel can watch his beating wings up close, where all the songs belong to him.
“Twenty-odd times, in my studio, when I already been holding your hand through it all fucking day. You think I don’t have better shit to do?” And he knows Liam’s thinking it, the way his brow creases in genuine confusion for a moment, but what could be better than this? It passes quickly into sadness, they’ve been up and down that path enough.
“You dick.”
Barely audible, maybe because that’s the best he could do, and it’s so fucking pathetic, Noel can’t stand it. In a flash flood of rage that’s maybe actually fear or guilt, springs coiled with several conflicting urges, he slaps Liam across the face. It’s not very hard, it’s clumsy due to lack of commitment. Before he can register Liam’s shock, the feeling dissipates, gone as quickly as it come. It’s that siren song, driven him mad hasn’t it? And Liam’s looking at him like a kicked dog, too confused by the outburst to retaliate, and Noel should just get up and walk away, but then they wouldn’t be touching anymore and the fire would burn inside him until there was nothing left but ash.
“You think I owe you summat?” Noel growls, and reaches in the sweaty confines of Liam’s kagoul until he finds it: the pack of cigarettes that lives in there, half gone and probably his third of the day. He chucks the box across the studio, white sticks flying out when it hits the PA.
“I think you owe us some fucking smokes, yeah.”
Liam strains to raise his voice, should be out of anger but it’s not. It’s excitement, anticipation, it’s the tiny but impatient push of his hips that gives it away and makes Noel question if that was rage he felt a moment ago, or something to closer to this, something he can only see in his reflection. He rubs a shaking thumb roughly over Liam’s bottom lip.
“Do I? You been forgetting, I own this mouth, yeah? Everything that comes out and everything that goes in. Haven’t been respecting that lately, have ye?”
“You’re a right tyrant, you know that? All I ever done me whole life is respect you.”
As if to prove it, he speaks with Noel’s thumb still on his mouth, lips buzzing gently against it then closing around the tip in an obscene pout. Noel stops himself from digging his nails into the soft flesh and gets off him, storming to the audio booth. Maybe if Liam hears the takes and realizes what Noel did, he’ll lose his temper for real, do something that makes it easier to walk away.
“Pick up your fags. I’ll put the song on.”
It sounds better coming out the speakers than it did in Noel’s headphones, the first take, the last take, and neither of them say a word. For half an hour, Noel paces, focusing on keeping his steps from getting frantic and his eyes from finding Liam’s. He’s going for bored, maybe mildly irritated. The jittery thrill buzzing in his chest like a swarm of flies is not for Liam. It belongs to Noel, and it’s his to hide away just like every other feeling that threatens his self-control. Because he’s been in such good control today, hasn’t he? Shame to ruin that (again, again, and again).
At some point Liam lights a cigarette and Noel must not notice at first, or he does and he forgets to scold him, because the stupid fucking song, and then he notices, and he wants to yell, but he remembers not to, because he knows exactly why Liam’s smoking, because Liam hears it and knows now and there’s nothing Noel can do about it and fuck he wants a cigarette so fucking bad but in his current state he’s one hundred percent sure the nicotine would give him a heart attack and the stupid fucking song would be the last thing he ever heard (can’t have that, even if he’d die happy).
When the room goes silent, it feels like not a minute passed since the tape started and Noel has the immediate urge to play it again. There’s a crackle as Liam takes a long drag prompting Noel to look over at him, successfully baited.
“What do you reckon,” Liam begins, forcing out the words with a thick cloud of smoke, “is worse on a geezer’s throat—one little fag,” he holds it out to indicate, “or one extra take?” He waves the cigarette at Noel, smiling in a way that makes it hard to tell if he’s incensed or amused. “Two extra takes? Seven? How many hours, singing me tits off, singing meself raw, when I could’ve been sat at the pub having a rest, how many packs you reckon that’s worth, eh chief? You tell me, cause I’m too thick to work it out—”
Noel’s head is spinning when he gets into Liam’s lap again and snatches the cigarette out his mouth. He takes a long drag for himself and it’s a nice relief. It’s fine if he dies, anyway. It calms him just enough to not really care about a heart attack.
“I reckon you’re a fucking twat and if you don’t start behaving I’m taking the song off the album.”
“No you ain’t, you’re having it. I can tell. Jealous, yeah? Don’t want your little brother showing you up?”
It’s amazing, truly amazing, how he whips Noel to and fro over the course of a minute, it’s no wonder Noel can’t tell when and why he does or doesn’t want to hurt him.
“You want a real slapping? Cause I’ll give it you, you’re making a right case for it.”
To Noel’s surprise, Liam goes quiet for a moment and gets red around his ears and temples, the spot on his cheek where he was hit earlier glowing fluorescent. He scratches the back of his head looking a bit sheepish.
“Kind of do, yeah.”
He fell right into that, Noel did, but he can’t leave the threat empty. Best not to be caught thinking about it too long, so he smacks Liam twice the same side in quick succession. He raises his arm for a third, that’s not a real fucking slapping is it, but Liam catches his wrist before he can land it.
“Thought you said a real slapping Noely, come on.”
Noel squeezes his eyes shut, like it might make Liam and the studio and the song go away, like he couldn’t go away himself with his own two feet right out the door, any time he wanted.
“Right, I’m not punching you, if that’s what you’re after, pack it in. Christ’s sake, a real slapping—”
“No? Gone soft on us have ya? Missus got your bollocks in a jar already? Ain’t even married to the bitch.”
Fine. He won’t punch him, but he will give him the back of his hand, the hand with rings on, and a great wind up. He gives it once to the side of his face, the larger ring lined up to smash against his heaven-high cheekbone, then once to the opposite side. He pauses to appreciate how incredible his brother looks struck dumb, because it really is a sight to behold: his sharp jaw slack, his eyes round and soft, perfect features undisturbed by tension or attitude. He waits just long enough to see Liam’s guard slip, then gives it hard to his mouth.
“How’s that? Bitch, fucking lunatic.” This is not the way I want to love you.
Liam just looks at him, all bloody-mouthed and newly placid. He wipes some of the blood off with his sleeve, then wraps an arm around Noel’s back and pulls him closer. Noel’s knee splay to either side as he settles deeper into his lap, and there’s his own guard slipping as well. He pretends not to notice Liam’s hips twitching up to greet him welcome to depravity, have you been here before? But he can’t stop his body answering.
“You dig the tune, then?” Liam whispers, his voice disintegrating in real time, to grains of sand that won’t exist when they’ve blown away.
“No.” Noel grits his teeth and finds the sand between them. He lets his head drop to Liam’s shoulder in a sort of resignation. “Fucking love it.” Fucking hate you, though, always forcing me to look at my own reflection like this. Liam beams.
“I’d do a hundred more takes tomorrow if you wanted. Do 'em right now, say the word.”
Like a single word between them would ever be enough.
“You’re a thick bastard, Liam. I’m serious. You’re an idiot.” Because what if he lays himself out like this for someone more dangerous than Noel? And what if Noel’s not there to protect him all exposed? It terrifies Noel just as much as it infuriates him, how profoundly he lacks any sense of self-preservation. How he has to have enough for the both of them, how Liam doesn’t appreciate it one bit--
“But you know I would do, don’t ya?”
He does this thing, something on the inside that Noel can’t see but he sure can feel, where he gets Noel to stare right into his eyes without lifting a finger. Even though he doesn’t want to, even though it hurts, Noel falls into his gaze like it’s a force as inevitable as gravity that pulls him down. It’s thanks to this trick, Noel imagines, that he’s got about a dozen birds up the duff in the past five years. Got a dozen more at his feet, despite the papers running headlines on the daily: this man is a fucking psycho, never been faithful a day in his life, he’ll chew your heart and spit it out and your pain will be broadcast to the world, so you better fucking not.
Never been faithful a day in his life, to anyone save for Noel.
And take it from Noel: it’s an absolute fucking nightmare. It’s kisses that fill your mouth with blood and nicotine, it’s no one else can ever touch you good enough again, it’s the worst in you drawn out over and over, it’s a song in your head for the rest of time, so out of this world that it drives you mad, and nothing else sounds right, and he follows you wherever you go, whether he’s there or not. It’s: you’re a criminal now even though you never meant to be, and if you think turning yourself in will help, don’t bother, because prison is just him. It’s all that and knowing he loves you more than life itself, loves you more than anyone else would dream of, and he makes you love him back so ferociously you forget if there ever was a time you weren’t a monster.
It’s your appetite changed forever, for something only he has, and go ahead try not to eat, ask Noel how well that’s going. If you don’t have him, the hunger will have you, and good luck with that when you have to watch someone else licking up what was made first for you, all your preferences matched just to satisfy some useless fucker who couldn’t begin to deserve it.
Noel wants to deserve it. Not always, but when he feels himself falling down this way, caught in Liam’s baby blue orbit, he wants nothing more than to earn it and deserve it.
“Can I have you, then?”
“Singing?”
“No, Liam, not singing.”
“Course you can, you always can.”
It’s a troubling thing to hear from someone you’ve just hit six times across the face (no matter how much worse he’s done you in the past), or it should be, but Liam has a way of redefining things like Trouble. That must be why his surrender hits Noel so sweetly that his whole body burns like boiled sugar. That must be why he holds Liam’s face like it’s made of glass and kisses up the blood that won’t stop coming.
Fuck it.
“Hang on.”
Noel restarts the tape. Liam smiles so wide at this it opens the split in his lip further, a smile within a smile, until he’s got blood streaming down his chin. Noel should be disgusted, or horrified, but the way Liam basks in exaltation doesn’t allow for it. No one could else could look so exhausted and so alive at once, always this inexplicable light in him that never goes out, that Noel never really notices until he gets like this, so drained it should be gone but there it is shining out his pores. Liam is reason defied, and Noel by reason confined approaches a freedom when they’re together- not by proximity, but when they’re joined in the rarest sense- that is otherwise out of reach. He looks at Noel with awe and gratitude, like it’s some great reward to hear the tape again, to see Noel hear the tape again, to see him openly appreciate his art, like he’s never done before.
Noel silently wills him not to take it for granted, the entire scene precarious as a house of cards in an open field.
Liam finally gets off the couch, and kneels at Noel’s feet. You don’t have to do all that Noel thinks but doesn’t say, because who in their right mind would hesitate at this boy on his knees, the sight. He strokes his hair, sweeps it away from his face and frees the strands that are stuck in half-dried blood. You’re absolutely fucking gorgeous. Liam leans into his palm, to let him know the message is received. He’s still bleeding as he gets Noel out of his trousers, so eager and free. So oblivious to the things that keep saner people grounded and dull as dirt. People, Noel fears, such as himself.
“You’re gonna make it worse.”
“Nah, you are.”
He probably shouldn’t, no matter how much Liam wants it, because he’d have to be a sick fuck to go on unbothered, right? But the proof of that malady is already in Liam’s hands, hard and leaking as it has been for a while now, and Noel’s ambivalence is fast waning.
“Am I?”
He is, and he does, and he feels bad for about two seconds before Liam’s freedom starts to catch, and then he doesn’t look back at all, just looks down and groans at what he sees. The angelic face, bearing all his marks, is almost more arousing than the satin warmth of his mouth. It’s his eyes closed—everyone will wax poetic about his brother’s eyes open, bedroom eyes, doe eyes, blue as and bluer than every blue thing on God’s green earth, but they’re missing the point. Noel likes it best when they’re closed, thick crescents of lash fallen on his cheekbones like feathers from a blackbird. They flutter just like wings when Liam draws a breath through his nose, and again when he relaxes his throat to take Noel’s every inch. Then the wings fold and he peers up at Noel to give permission. So generous, so fucking stupid, gagging for it like he’s still an unsatisfied teenager and not a thirty-year-old rock-and-roll star with any and all avenues for sexual gratification available at his fingertips. Noel turns his own eyes to the ceiling in shame, and with a hand on the back of his brother’s head, lets his hips roll forward.
The sounds Liam makes when Noel fucks into his mouth contrast so starkly with the song playing through the speakers, they form a symphony surreal. It’s hard to believe the filthy wet gargles come from the same throat as such a pure, sweet melody. Harder still to say which drives Noel madder, but he’s on the edge almost instantly.
“Stop, stop.”
Liam looks up and-- fuck, maybe Noel could get poetic about his eyes open when they’re wide like that and his mouth is full—stares at him while he draws slowly down his length, cheeks hollowed just for show, the tart. He leaves Noel’s prick glistening, saliva faintly pink with blood, the same color as the sky at clear dusk and the drool that pours from the corners of Liam's mouth. Not bright red like the mess around his nose and upper lip, not red like the fresh blood spilling from the cut, which Noel clearly did make worse. Liam grins and widens the split.
“Alright?” he asks, absently licking the wound.
“Yeah just, didn’t wanna…” Noel kneels down on the floor with him and reaches to unbuckle his belt. “You know?”
Liam nods and pushes out his hips so Noel can get his trousers down.
“Kiss us first?” Noel could cry.
The best take, the take that should’ve been the last, comes on when Liam’s laying on his back letting Noel ease him open, fingers slicked with an unholy mélange of blood, spit, and precum. Probably sweat in there as well, Liam is hot and damp all over. Noel’s ruched his parka up to find where’s he sweatiest, to breathe him in where he’s not all posh cologne and tobacco and chewing gum, where it smells most like his Liam. Right below his belly button, Noel lets his nose brush against the skin, and when he exhales he feels Liam shudder around his fingers.
It’s unwise, if not downright reckless, to take Liam face to face, the way he does his missus when she wants to call it making love. He’d made that mistake years ago and Liam’s face in rapture had haunted him something fierce, so striking he didn’t even notice his own orgasm when it hit. He couldn’t look him in the eye for weeks after that, couldn’t touch his bird, couldn’t think of anything else when he got himself off, so he’d promised himself he would not indulge again. But Liam’s dying voice is too good an excuse to pass up. What if it goes completely? How will Noel know what he wants, if he’s hurting him, if it’s too much? How will he know how bad Liam wants him, and how good it is, how he makes him come like no one else? Liam gives no protest, hooking an ankle around Noel’s neck to keep him close. Uncanny adoring stare, he sees no risk, just reward.
The risk, Noel finds, is worth it, because Liam’s vocal cords fall apart when he tries to call Noel’s name. Noel only knows for the shape his lips make what the faint rasp is meant to be. So he says it for him, his own name, and it feels so strange it takes him out of his body. Was it someone else? Was it Liam in him like he’s in Liam? No less impossible than anything else the boy does to him.
Liam comes silently, bucking into Noel’s hand, features drawn together by an invisible thread that’s only Noel’s to pull. Noel can read everything he needs to on that face, and he imagines the song on the speakers is coming from his open mouth, a chorus orgasmic. When Noel comes shortly after, he knows exactly where the harmonies will go, they’re humming in his head before he can even catch his breath, composed beyond his will at the height of ecstasy. Once again he forgot to savor his own climax because he was too spellbound by his brother, too wrapped up in his limbs and his song and his lovely blood-stained visage. Too wrapped up, perhaps, in protecting himself from a pleasure he might not recover from.
Again, again, again, he wants to flip Liam like a tape and hear the other side, but he missed his chance. Probably for the best, isn’t it?
Noel hoists himself up and hovers over the wreckage: Liam, intoxicated by his own ruin, is swirling his fingers through the cum on his stomach. A faint smile twitches on and off his lips, flickering with the light in his eyes like a broken radio tuning in and out of reality. Looks peaceful, like he couldn’t want for a single thing more in the world. Noel envies how fluidly he slips between planes, how unattached he is to terra firma. It’s that freedom, the freedom to be lost at will, that Noel can only find halfway to the bottom of a bottle (which is where Liam finds blind psychosis, so maybe call it even, no greener grass, just fallow dirt as far as the eye can see). Wouldn’t it be nice to summon that whenever he liked? Or have it summon him?
He has no idea, really, but on Liam’s face it looks like paradise. He can’t stop himself fingering the welt on Liam’s cheek where his ring had struck—a soft breath caress that still makes Liam wince. Noel winces back.
“Lighten up, Noely, look like you’re at a funeral or summat.”
“Yeah well, you look half dead so that’ll be why, won’t it?” And twice as beautiful as anything ever lived but never mind that.
“I don’t.”
“You sound it, right on death’s doorstep with that croak, ain’t ya?”
Liam sits up, and grimaces as a fresh wave of crimson pours out his nose.
“Shit, sorry.”
“It hurt?”
“No, nah, not at all. Just a bit gross, innit?” He almost looks a tad embarrassed when he goes to wipe himself off with his already bloodied sleeve, and only manages to spread the mess around. It startles Noel. When he did fall to earth, all human like this? He tries not to make a face. He doesn’t find it gross so much as heart-rending, and disconcertingly erotic—not the blood, but the helpless look of him trying to clean it. Reminds him of-- Noel forces back memories from childhood that have no business surfacing in such a context.
“Yeah, hang on. Stay there.”
Noel shuts himself in the washroom and startles at his own reflection. The full-length mirror reveals he’s every bit as disheveled as his brother, bloodied in all the same places, just not so bruised, like he’s won the fight for once. He washes his hands slow and methodical, checks his watch, splashes water on his face, checks his watch, is it fucking broken? When did the others leave? Why does time get so funny when it’s him and Liam alone? He needs a drink. He needs several drinks, and all of Liam’s cigarettes, but he needs a shower first and foremost. The cubicle is right there, pristine white towels hung on the wall waiting to be stained. It wouldn’t really be fair, would it? He thinks of Liam, bloody, half dressed, on the floor of the studio like a fallen angel. Shot down from heaven by Noel himself. At once he feels both miles away, and so close it suffocates, reality caving from with-in and with-out.
He weighs his options (or does he just lament them?) and checks his watch again. Again, again, again, measures his pulse against the ticking hand. Who does he want to be? It’s a fork in the road and he's stalling, because what’s he’s looking for is a knife, something to end himself and avoid the burden of decision altogether. He doesn’t need a tablet but he wants one, or six, or maybe the bottle. He doesn’t have a single option that wouldn’t be improved by a good dose of sedation.
The dread swells as he slinks out of the washroom, that premature regret that always comes when he’s overwhelmed by the urge to care for his little brother. He stops before Liam’s in view, closes his eyes and takes a breath that seems not to reach his lungs. His heart is racing and he distantly registers that irony that maybe he does need to take a tablet.
“I’m going to have a shower,” he announces to Liam, who just as instructed, is sprawled on the floor where Noel left him. Thirty seconds ago, fifteen minutes ago, ten years ago, hard to say.
“Alright. You need help or summat? What you looking at me like that for?”
“You’re having one too.” Noel throws a towel at him as if that explains everything.
“Yeah. Got loads of towels in me room though.”
“No, no, you’re not going bleeding all over the whole compound, reckon I’ll get framed for you murder in a few years time.”
“I will, if I want to.”
“You don’t want to, do ya? And I don’t want you going off on your own like… like that.”
“Ah, why not? I can take care of meself.”
“Too sad, too messy, maybe you’ll die, don’t want the premiums going up.” He ticks the reasons off on his fingers with mild exasperation let me love you like I fucking want to for once and with one digit left, adds “and I said so.” He jerks his head toward the hallway. “Come on, don’t make me drag ya.”
“In your fucking dreams, mate,” Liam rasps, standing up to follow.
In his nightmares, if anything.
In a dream, he wouldn’t have hit him, not for no good reason, he wouldn’t shout at him, and he wouldn’t fuck him either. He’d look after him proper, no need for dragging threats.
It’s in a dream, then, where Noel leads him to the shower and washes the blood out of his hair, and Liam loves it, drops the weight of his head into Noel’s hands and begs for kisses with his eyes closed. Noel gives and takes and they taste of the blood still dripping out Liam’s nose and the shampoo run down his face. Noel licks the rivulets of pink foam from his jaw until he gets enough to swallow, to drink and savor.
It’s in a dream where Noel brushes his lips over the welt on Liam’s cheek and asks him if it hurts. Its nothing. I love you. It’s a big ugly bruise with a raised center in the shape of Noel’s ring and it has no business being on his face but… it’s nothing. His smile is pure and serene. Everything else is nothing when Noel is touching him. I love you. It doesn’t matter what he’s done, it only matters that he’s here, now, and to Liam that means everything.
It’s a love that Noel could never deserve, so in a dream he does his best to earn it, he acts like it means something to him, Liam’s trust and adoration, he doesn’t take it for granted, he is careful not to break such precious, fragile things.
In a dream, Noel says I love you back, and kisses the perimeter of the bruise. He cleans his brother’s body like a ritual, thorough and reverent. He’s gentle between his legs, soaps him one end to the other, and pays careful attention to the spot where he left his mess. Nothing would be more offensive, after all, than leaving Liam to clean that up by himself. Noel should know, he’s done it dozens of times, just never when he were in such a ruined state. But in dreams he always cleans him, and never ruins him, always stays and holds him and never runs from the afterglow, never makes him sleep alone, never gets dressed while he’s still catching his breath, never leaves him before he’s ready. Never leaves him at all.
And even in dreams, it's never enough for either of them.
In reality, he’s frozen in the hallway, shaking so bad he can’t take a step in any direction. Even though he can’t see Liam, he can feel him. He knows he’s still there, obedient and waiting, and the knowing nearly moves him to tears. He wants to kiss him more than anything, one more time, then never, ever again, he swears, he promises, does God fucking hear that? But it’s not God stopping him, it’s his own cowardice. It's his fear of being loved the way that Liam loves, a love he's not sure he can return.
It’s a love that Noel could never deserve, so in reality he runs away from it. Again, again, and again. Completely misses the point that Liam is going to keep giving it to him, whether he deserves it or not, whether he’s there or not, and rejecting it doesn’t give him anything back, it just offends the offering. In reality, his heart is over crowded and it’s more than he can handle, so he slips out the back in silent shame and leaves Liam to clean himself. All the towels in the studio washroom stay white as snow.