Work Text:
It reminds him a bit of one of those cliché American rom-coms. Y’know— the ones where the mousy girl asks the star jock to junior formal but he turns her down, only for her to come back after the summer with a total makeover, and now she’s suddenly the hottest girl in school and he missed his chance.
Only those films usually have a happy ending, the jock realizing the error of his ways and winning back the girl, the two of them crowned prom king and queen and riding off in a mustang into the sunset, and Clint’s pretty sure that’s not going to happen here. For one, he’s got a beat-up sedan with a baby carrier these days, and for two, he doesn’t think Noel’s gonna come within a hundred feet from him now, let alone follow him off into a sunset. Or overcast midday sky, as it is at the moment.
Clint’s been standing here frozen for near half an hour, shoes glued to the patchy festival grass underfoot, but he still can’t quite match up the memory of Noel— his Noel, the skinny, hard-mouthed roadie with a stick so far up his arse he had perfect posture— with the rock star up on the NME stage now, playing guitar like he was born to it while a crowd of fifteen thousand scream their heads off. Clint can see the parts where the images might align, if he squints, because the boy at its center looks the same, frumpy clothes and furious eyebrows, plush lips pursed in concentration. But this boy’s glowing in the limelight, practically basking in it. A far fucking cry from where he used to lurk in the dark of the wings.
Not that it’s a particularly showy performance, by any means. The five blokes onstage are stiff and unmoving from their marks on the platform; there are no theatrics, none of Tom’s bouncing about, no flashy rainbow stage lights. Even their outfits are colorless, Noel himself in black and khaki like he’s just come from church, and Clint feels like a sore, throbbing thumb in his cherry red shirt.
And yet everyone around him is riveted, Clint included, and they don’t even know the history. Maybe they will, one day, but right now— they just see the glow. What was it the papers said? Meteoric rise. The Noel up there is meteoric.
The opening bars to Supersonic kick up, and the already-rabid crowd erupts, jostling Clint out of his trance. It’s the band’s lead single, that Clint first heard on the radio only a scant two months ago and hasn’t been able to escape since, the way it plays nonstop in every corner shop these days. He couldn’t believe it when Graham had told him who it was. And not just who wrote it, but who was singing.
Tearing his eyes from the guitarist, Clint turns to inspect their frontman. Or front boy, for how young he is— and yet he is just as unrecognizable from the gangly teen Clint knew only as Noel’s shadow a handful of years before. Liam.
The kid is certainly no shadow now, but instead the sun this strange new universe orbits around as he all but snogs the microphone, that nasal voice ringing out over the roar of the crowd wailing the lyrics back at them. Yet Clint can’t pinpoint what exactly makes the kid so arresting. He’s good-looking, sure, but he’s just as stoic as the rest: when he steps back for the guitar bits, he alternates between staring slack-jawed into the audience and staring at his brother, shaking his inaudible star-shaped tambourine almost as an afterthought.
“I need to be myseeeelf,” Liam drawls. “I can’t be no one elllsssee.”
It’s not quite Pulitzer-worthy, the song, its lyrics not far off from the ones Clint had read over Noel’s shoulder on the Inspirals tours, scribbled on scraps of paper in the back of their van, handwriting near illegible from the bumps on the road— but the crowd still knows every word, and Clint’s thrown into that rom-com again. A flashback of the mousy girl pre-butterfly transformation: when Noel had auditioned for the Carpets— a lifetime ago, now— Clint had known he wasn’t the right fit, and he still knows that— but. But what could Noel have become, if the Inspirals had been his cocoon, and not Oasis? Would this be the Inspirals’ raving crowd? Would that be Clint up there with Noel, instead of Liam?
Clint doesn’t know what to name the uncomfortable weight that’s sitting in his chest, reverberating with the bass blaring from the speakers.
He glances back to Noel just in time to watch the guitarist tilt his head back, revealing the long, jagged slope of his throat and the drop of his lower lip as his body cants upwards into his guitar, and Clint’s whisked back yet again to the back of that old van, only this time when it was just the two of them, having snuck away from the night’s nameless crowded club or bar, the windows steaming up around them. There was a time Clint knew the taste of that throat, the pillowy press of that lip, that blissed-out expression so close to his own: it’s the same face Noel would make when Clint finally worked a hand around him, the two of them hurtling towards the edge together. Like this was the greatest feeling in the world, never to be beat, and what was better, Clint was the one to get him there. Clint had ridden the high of that satisfaction for more days than he can count.
You can have it all, but how much do you want it?
Clint wonders who Noel’s asking.
He only makes it through half of their finale— I Am The Walrus, because of course it is— before he finally uproots his trainers and beelines backstage on shaky legs. His artist badge gets him past security no problem, especially as he’ll be back here again in just a few hours, to take the stage himself. And then he’s there in the fleshy, writhing underbelly of festival life, sidestepping tangled wires and waiting instruments and about a million PAs barking into headsets.
Usually Clint loves the chaos of backstage, much like Noel always did as a roadie; he’s always been fascinated by all the bits and bobs that snap into place to make the magic come to life on the other side of the curtain, like playing the man behind Oz. But here Clint feels suddenly like a clumsy, oversized giant, all pointy elbows and sluggish reflexes getting him in everyone’s frowning, grumbling way. He’s mumbled a dozen apologies by the time he finally gets within eyesight of the stage entrance, glimpsing the solitary figures out there from a different angle now as they play their final screeching chords to the adoring masses.
Noel’s the first one off the stage. Clint would almost be impressed with how unaffected he seems, apathetic as he accepts a sweat towel from a PA, if Clint didn’t have the memories of the kid whose heartbeat would near pound out of his chest beneath Clint’s hand at every acid house party. Noel fucking loves music, eats sleeps breathes it, worships it, fucks it, same as Clint. There’s no way his heart isn’t racing just the same now.
He doesn’t notice Clint, though, instead turning the other direction to speak to a waiting brunette woman. Clint doesn’t call out to him, either; rather, he has half a mind to turn tail before Noel can spot him, pretend he was never here at all, put as much distance between himself and this bizarre wrinkle in space-time as he can. He feels sick all of a sudden, his stomach in squeamish knots, hands breaking out in a clammy sweat.
But then right at his brother’s heels comes Liam, who does turn Clint’s way, and Clint’s feet fail him yet again.
Clint’s own memories of Liam’s presence at Inspiral gigs are a little fuzzy. He recalls getting on with the kid relatively well, letting him run simple errands every now and then in exchange for beer and the like, but he leapt between shy and squirrely with the drop of a hat. Clint had just figured he wasn’t much different from any other teenage boy excited to be backstage with a real actual band, though he never strayed far from his brother’s side, no matter how Noel sulked. And so he was always just Noel’s kid brother, a fact emphasized by his being Noel’s golden-hued foil, a few years off from growing into his older brother’s features but still startlingly similar.
No, mostly Clint just remembers Noel complaining about the kid: the spoiled brat who got into all Noel’s records and stole all of Noel’s clothes and stuck his nose in all of Noel’s notebooks. And even then, Noel didn’t really speak of him often. He never spoke of his home life much at all, actually, no matter Clint’s gentle prying. He’d offer details only occasionally, and usually under the influence of very strong drugs, in the quiet stolen moments where it was just Clint and Noel, intertwined and breathing heavy in a heady afterglow, up in Clint’s flat or in that van that knew all their secrets, by the end.
Now, Clint watches as Liam hands off his tambourine to a PA and shoves his sunglasses up into his hair like a crown. He blinks in the new light for a few seconds, before his gaze sharpens and zeroes right in on Clint.
While still fairer than Noel, this close Liam looks remarkably like the elder Gallagher in a way he hadn’t all those years before. They’ve the same brows, same nose, same set of his jaw— he’s even got Noel’s same mouth, which Clint finds distantly fascinating. And the same striking blue eyes, pinning Clint just as Noel’s had.
The kid’s high, obviously, on both adrenaline and drugs, those eyes wide and glassy and bluer than anything, but recognition still sparks like a red-hot flare gun.
Clint doesn’t know what he’s expecting to happen next— a hug, a handshake, a nod— but whatever it is, it’s not the absolute venom that surges up in the kid’s expression.
“Fuck you doing here,” Liam spits with a jut of his chin, lips curled in a snarl, and Clint startles like a ghost that’s just been made solid. Briefly he wonders if Noel ever told Liam what happened between them, but he quickly brushes the idea aside: Noel had always loved his secrets, after all. But still, Clint’s faced down a few overprotective siblings in his time, and this is way too biting for what his memories serve of his and Liam’s friendship.
It takes Clint a couple seconds to answer, his tongue clumsy and thick in his mouth as he grapples for what to say. “Just came to see,” he starts, but he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Came to see Noel? Came to see the show? Came to see if it was real, really, if those two brothers who used to hang around the gas board were really the rumble on the Britpop horizon, poised to take over everything.
“Came to see my foot up your arse, right—” Liam sneers, and moves as if to get in Clint’s face. Clint flinches back on instinct, even though he’s got four inches and forty pounds on the kid, and surely Liam wouldn’t make a scene here, backstage at freaking Glasto, in front of everyone, no matter what the papers say about their unruliness, until—
“Liam.”
The name stops the kid like a hand on the arm. Clint peers past to see Noel a step behind his brother, unmoving and stony as a statue.
His sunglasses are still firmly in place, but he’s undoubtedly staring straight at Clint, even as he addresses Liam, because Clint swears he can feel his gaze burning right through him.
And it’s not the only one: Clint’s well aware they’ve got an audience now. PAs and crew have stopped in their tasks to watch, and everyone’s tense as a strung arrow, waiting to see what’ll happen next. ‘Course they are, it’s the Oasis brothers. He finds he’s barely breathing himself, just as uncertain as all the others.
“Go find Alan,” Noel tells his brother.
“Find Alan fuck,” Liam retorts, still furious. Noel doesn’t move a muscle.
“Liam,” he says again, simple enough, but his tone brokers no argument, and there’s a pause where it looks like the kid really is a second from taking a swing at either Clint or maybe even Noel, before he finally relents with a noise like a growl. Then he’s twisting on his heel and stomping away in that swaggering walk of his, muttering darkly.
There’s no fight to be had, then, and this dissatisfaction seems to break the spell cast on the people around them, especially as the other band members filter backstage, the set officially over. The post-show bustle kicks up again. And then it’s just Clint and Noel.
Up close, it’s even more disorientingly easy for everything to feel oh-so familiar. There’s a slightly-sour tang of deja vu in the air, with them tucked away in the curtains and equipment as they are, the noise of the festival a background buzz. It could be 1989 again, for all Clint knows. They could be at an Inspirals gig, or the darkened back halls of some Manchester club, and Clint almost wishes they were, wishes this wrinkle in the timeline would smooth out and tornado them back to those good old days.
But as Clint studies the boy he used to know in such intimate detail, he instead finds an immovable, emotionless object. There’s still sweat licking at Noel’s temples and sliding down his neck, absorbing into the towel slung there, proving he’s still human, at least somewhat— but otherwise he’s perfectly composed, his expression carefully blank beneath those sunglasses. And maybe this is worse than anything else Clint anticipated finding here. Hatred, he could handle. Joy, he didn’t dare hope for, but would’ve loved. Indifference? Clint doesn’t know what to do up against a wall.
Noel’s waiting for him to speak first, clearly, but Clint’s still at a loss. His mouth is dry as sandpaper. He wishes he could see Noel’s eyes.
When the silence between them finally trips over into awkward, Noel seems to clue in that Clint’s not going to be the one to break it, and if he could see Noel’s eyes, Clint’s certain he’s rolling them. He tries not to flinch again when Noel sighs, the sound uncomfortably similar to a disappointed school marm.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, but even minus the expletives, the question sounds just as cutting as Liam’s did. Clint doesn’t have any right to be surprised, though— after all, he’s the one who ended things between them, isn’t he. The one who— in that perfect quiet of the back of the van, desecrating the little paradise they’d carved— told Noel it wasn’t going to work, that they couldn’t have the future together that Noel had so obviously, painfully hoped for. That Noel had to go home.
The jock, face-to-face with his missed chance, Clint shrugs helplessly. “I heard—” His voice splinters but he’s afraid to swallow, in case he starts choking on his own thready saliva. So he redirects, trying to steer them away from these frightening, unknown waters. “You were great,” he offers instead, and it’s so pathetically overly cheery even to his own ears. “Fantastic, really. That was—” Brilliant. Surprising. Has that always been there?
Yeah, Noel’s silence answers, a statement of fact, and Clint nods like he’d said it out loud.
“Right.” Words abandon him again, and he feels like that funny weight in his chest is capsizing, and he must look as terrified as he feels because Noel just sighs again, and this time it sounds pitying— but at least he finally reaches up and takes off his sunglasses. He rubs at his eyes and squints up at Clint, revealing reddened rims like he hasn’t slept or eaten anything that wasn’t a powder in weeks, as well as that piercing blue stare, exactly the same as all those years before, that searches Clint’s face now for… something.
Abruptly, Clint is terribly, overwhelmingly self-conscious of— of all fucking things— his hair. It’s shorter than Noel’s, now, and far shorter than their matching mops from back in their touring days, and he realizes with a start that he’s just as different as Noel is now from the boy he used to know. Maybe Noel doesn’t recognize him either.
I’m still me, he wants to say, like a plea. It sounds like a lie even to himself. You’re still you, aren’t you?
He has a clear view of Noel’s eyes now, but he still can’t see the answer.
“Clint—”
“I’ve heard your song,” Clint blurts, to stop Noel from saying whatever devastating thing he was likely going to say, but then cringes internally because obviously he’s heard the song, right, heard the songs, plural, if he’s here. “On the radio, I mean. It’s— you’re really good.” You already said that, he chides himself, but he’s babbling now. He sounds like an idiot. No, he sounds like a right fucking cunt, is what he sounds like. “You guys are everywhere, yeah? And Liam! I mean, who knew he could sing, right?”
He glances over Noel’s shoulder then, pretending it’s not just a miserable effort to avoid Noel’s stare as he looks past to see where the other brother has gone to, but surprisingly he doesn’t have to look very far— there’s Liam, right across the way, apparently having circled back after storming off. And he’s glaring at Clint like maybe he could stop Clint’s heart with his mind if he just willed it hard enough.
The kid must know something, then, about Noel and Clint. If Noel didn’t tell him then maybe he figured it out for himself; he had always been watching, Clint supposes, recalling glimpses of those blue eyes in the wings at gigs, or in the rearview mirror of the van, or in the windows whenever Clint would drop Noel off at home, late after a show, or an early morning after. Even now, there he is, just— watching.
It reminds him all too suddenly of all the years Clint kept Noel a secret, and he takes a step back on instinct, because they have to be careful of the crowd that’s still moving around them, don’t they, even if nobody’s really paying any attention anymore. Too many years spent watching his back that Clint’s paranoid even now, when they’re nothing to each other but ex-lovers. Never quite boyfriends, right— Clint had always held that out of reach, no matter how Noel had shown he would’ve liked it, to be called that, had done all he could to try and earn it. But Clint had just strung him along like a dog with a bone, then called it mercy when he’d thrown the bone away entirely and set the dog free on the side of the road.
Christ, no wonder Liam hates him. Clint hates himself, too.
And it’s too late to fix it, too late to rewrite the ending. The credits have rolled, the curtain’s closed, but there’s still a reason he came to see them today, and it’s for that reason that he hears himself asking:
“Are you staying tonight? For our set? The guys would love to see you, and all.”
Noel shrugs, looking bored. “Don’t think we’ll be around.”
Clint’s hands twitch at his sides, but he nods nonetheless, swallowing hard against the humiliation. “Then— can I see you? Before you go?” Later, he means, prays Noel can read in his eyes. At a bar, in a hotel, in the back of a van, even, Noel— “I’d love to— talk, if we can.”
And for a quick, dizzying second, he thinks he sees Noel consider it. His mouth purses slightly the way it used to, and his eyes flick downwards, to Clint’s own lips, and it’s like the nostalgia clouding Clint’s mind drifts across between them to Noel like the smoke of one of the Inspirals’ old fog machines, hazy and sweet.
But then Noel shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, mate.”
“Right, yeah,” Clint nods again, and the fog disperses, leaving behind only a cold damp he can feel all the way down to his bones. “Right.”
“Well,” Noel says, and it’s like a switch flips, and he’s stone again. Eyes shuttering, kicking Clint out once and for all. “Thanks for coming by,” he says, vacantly polite, as if Clint’s just another fan snuck backstage for an autograph. If Noel were any more glib he’d probably say Give my love to your missus and the baby, the way Clint probably deserves, but he doesn’t, maybe out of respect for the years where they were once so, so good together, rather than the way Clint ripped them to shreds.
But Clint still gets the message loud and clear. Maybe in another decade or two they can be friends again, manage a polite conversation, have a chuckle over those good old days— but not now, not yet.
Clint’s never been adept at last words, and Noel’s never bothered with them, so while he’s fumbling for something to say in farewell, Noel simply turns and walks away, and that’s that.
It is, of course, Clint’s cue to leave. His long overdue cue, frankly— and yet he doesn’t move. He can see the PAs and stage crew shooting him curious glances in his periphery, standing as he is in the middle of backstage while everyone’s in a flurry of motion around him, like a rock in a stream as they prepare for the next act to go on, Oasis equipment broken down and moved out in exchange for the next. Embarrassment has him light-headed and nauseous. He feels distinctly like he’s just been thrown from a girl’s house with his dick still out.
Sluggishly, like some Frankenstein monster learning to walk for the first time, Clint begins to retrace his steps through the backstage, or what he thinks are his steps, trying to remember how he got here in his earlier preoccupation. He picks the wrong direction, though, and ends up finding himself further in the depths of backstage, stumbling in a thick swath of curtains that he thinks should be the exit. But when he finally manages to shove through the fabric, he finds himself instead in an abandoned loading dock of sorts, framed on one side by the trees that encircle the Glasto fields, and separated from the rest of the backstage by the curtains behind him and tall, towering stacks of empty equipment trunks.
There's access to the service roads, here, and the artists’ vans are visible a ways away, but otherwise it’s just barren dirt and littered bottles and crushed cigarettes and discarded wires. There’s not a soul in sight, the area not needed again till the festival’s over and it’s time to pack it all up.
Clint lets himself stand there for a moment, just breathing. He’s grateful for the reprieve of fresh air, honestly, and the chance to center his thoughts and lick his wounded pride without being seen.
But the peace doesn’t last very long: he hears footsteps, suddenly, separate from the rest of the backstage traffic and growing louder as they near. Clint hurriedly ducks back into the curtains, hiding himself there on childish instinct, not quite ready to return to the public sphere. But before he can think twice about how ridiculous he’s being, a curtain a few paces away from his hiding spot edges aside, and someone tumbles out into the little hidden alcove.
It’s Liam.
Of all fucking people. But why? Clint can’t think of a single reason for it to be Liam— there’s nothing and no one else back here, after all, and it’s not a cut through to get anywhere beyond the service roads. But there he is, and Clint watches as the kid casts a quick glance around, luckily skipping over Clint’s little nook completely. Maybe he was looking for someplace private to do a line or something, even though Clint doubts he’s ordinarily very subtle about that kind of thing— or, Clint’s mind nervously supplies, maybe he’d seen where Clint had gone, and followed after to try and pick up where their confrontation had left off.
But Liam doesn’t dip back inside when he finds the place empty. Instead, the rest of Liam emerges from the curtains, save for one baggy sweater sleeve with the cuff pulled down over his knuckles extending behind him, and then he’s tugging someone out with him. Clint catches a flash of a black shirt.
Ah. He’s got a bird with him, then. Probably some groupie the kid found waiting at the artists’ exit, or maybe one of the crew, an eager PA who batted her eyes in just the right way. Clint’s fallen for a few of those in his day, he’ll admit. He slips further back into the curtains, safe in the shadows, but to where he still has a clear view of the newcomers through a sliver in the fabric. He doesn’t know why he’s spying, other than he’s curious to see who the kid’s with. Just a look, he tells himself, and then he’ll be on his way.
But who stumbles out behind Liam is not a girl at all. It’s Noel.
Liam’s fist is curled tightly in the hem of Noel’s shirt, bunching up the fabric, and it doesn’t look to be letting go anytime soon. They must be here for a fight, then, Clint thinks, what with Liam having been clearly unhappy when Noel’d dismissed him earlier.
Only the kid’s not scowling now, not spitting vitriol the way he had at Clint, and his other fist isn’t taking a swing at Noel’s head. Instead he’s smiling, as he turns to face his brother fully, and his free hand is inexplicably snaking up Noel’s torso, up his chest, then around to the back of his neck where his fingers slide into the short soft hairs there and guide Noel closer, until their faces are mere inches apart.
Clint’s breath is a rock in his throat. He watches— confused, rapt— as Noel doesn’t shove his brother away.
When Liam speaks, it’s low enough that his voice doesn’t carry far, won’t go overheard by the people in the controlled chaos on the other side of the curtain, but still reaches Clint where he’s suspended only a few paces away.
“You tell him to piss off, then?” Liam murmurs. Me, Clint registers dazedly. He’s talking about me.
“Jealous cunt,” Noel admonishes in answer, nonsensically, but Liam— Liam just presses himself closer, if that’s possible, a smug little flash of teeth glinting as he dips his head to nose around Noel’s jaw. And Noel— Noel tilts his head to give him better access, revealing that long throat Clint once ghosted his own mouth along, the way Liam is now.
“Ain’t nothing to be jealous of though, is there?” Liam breathes into the skin there, and Noel scoffs but it hitches at the end, in response to Liam doing something Clint can’t quite see. It’s not a great angle, and he shifts forward slightly, though not enough to be spotted, as he tries to get a better glimpse at Noel’s face. But the way Liam tightens his fingers in Noel’s hair and deepens the angle leaves Clint with just a part of Noel’s cheek, and Noel’s mouth, those pink lips parted slightly, his tongue darting out to wet them.
“Get fucked,” Noel mutters, only he doesn’t sound annoyed, or angry, but— smitten, Clint recognizes with a jolt. Adoring. Pleased. And Clint only knows that because that voice used to be aimed at him, same as that smile that’s now tugging at Noel’s mouth, which is unmistakably a lover’s smile. But to see it directed elsewhere, to see it aimed at Liam— his brother—
“So? How’d I do, then?”
One of Noel’s hands disappears under Liam’s sweater, and Clint’s stomach swoops. “So fucking good, kid.”
Liam’s eyes are molten as they raise to meet Noel’s. “Yeah?”
“You already know,” is the last thing Noel says, the last thing Clint hears, before their mouths are meeting in the middle and Clint’s ears are roaring with only his pounding heartbeat. The kiss is hard and hungry, and all space between the two vanishes entirely as Noel cants his hips up to Liam’s just as he had to his guitar barely fifteen minutes before, when he and his brother had been playing their song to an oblivious, captivated crowd of thousands, a crowd that didn’t, doesn’t know a goddamn thing. Just like Clint. Clint didn’t know. Or did he—?
Hindsight hits Clint like a truck, or a mustang, or maybe that fucking old Inspirals van— because it is true, that Noel mostly only ever complained about his little brother, in the rare instances he ever deigned to mention him. But how many hushed phone calls had Clint interrupted in hotel rooms while they’d been off on tour, Noel hastily hanging up, red-cheeked and bright-eyed, while Clint would politely pretend not to notice, dismissing it as homesickness? And how many times had Noel spoken of Liam in those same hotel rooms, only later, late in the night, when they were laid together in the mussed sheets, both of them sleepy and sated and high as kites, Clint only half paying attention? But also sometimes earlier, back in Manchester, Noel showing up at Clint’s flat at midnight, storming in and wordlessly yanking Clint after him to the bed, fingers shaking but determined as they fumbled at Clint’s belt, relentless until he had Clint deep inside? And then—
Does me head in, Noel would pant, eyes squeezing shut as Clint rocked into him. Can’t ever fucking breathe.
Back then, Clint didn’t give those moments much thought. They were far and few between, after all, and when they did come he just assumed it was Noel letting out his anger in the only way he could without starting a fight or invoking the wrath of his mam. Like how Clint’s missus took up kickboxing to deal with her shit boss. But now, Christ— how many times?
How long has this been going on?
Fuck, Clint has to leave, before he gets sick all over the curtains and gives himself away. He jerks backwards and stumbles slightly in the pooled fabric by his feet, a stray wire from some equipment snagging his shoe, but he steadies quickly and when he darts an anxious glance back at the— the couple— they’re still too wrapped up in each other to have noticed. Liam’s back at Noel’s throat, a hand working lower between them where Clint doesn’t dare to look, and Noel’s got his eyes closed, mouth still open in a silent groan.
It’s heartbreak and nausea and fear, all crashing over Clint at once like a tidal wave. But then, just as he’s about to pull back the curtain and run, the unthinkable happens.
Liam opens his eyes. And he looks up through his lashes, beneath those heavy brows, a warped fun-house mirror reflection of Noel, directly at Clint.
Only he doesn’t shout, or jump away from Noel, or leap forward and strangle Clint so their little— enormous— incestuous secret dies back here with him in this scraggly little alcove, or any of the other terrible possibilities that flash through Clint’s mind. No, instead he just holds Clint’s gaze as he drags his tongue slowly up the curve of his brother’s neck, and smirks. Taunting.
Clint flees.
This time he somehow makes it through backstage in seconds, blearily following the river rush of people past the instruments and amps and stage dressing, then scrambling down the stage’s steps, until he’s finally tripping back out into the blinding festival daylight. His mind is whirring, barely able to form a coherent thought, but it does manage to occur to him in his frenzy that he had been right, earlier: Liam’s fury hadn’t just been that of a protective brother, but a vengeful new lover. Or maybe not new at all, and it had always been Clint who’d been the interloper, the intruder.
Glasto’s surging on around him as if nothing’s changed, when everything has changed. Clint doesn’t know where to go; he’s expected back at the Inspirals’ caravan eventually, but he doesn’t think he can face his bandmates right now, not like this. And how is he just supposed to play a show tonight, on that very same stage?
That weight in his chest might as well be a boulder now, the way he’s panting hard and heavy around it. There’s a bitter taste at the back of his tongue and his hands are trembling at his sides with shock and adrenaline and fear, and— and something else.
Because— sickeningly— there’s a tiny piece of him that can’t help but be a little jealous. It’s the same piece that had brought him here in the first place, in part to see Noel, but also in part hoping that they wouldn’t be as good as everyone claimed they were, that it was a fluke, that Clint had made the right call all those years ago. That the caterpillar was still just a caterpillar. That fate wasn’t fucking laughing her head off at him.
He feels that same jealousy again, now, but this time it’s not directed at Noel. No, this jealousy is for Liam.
Because Liam was not only center stage up there, in all his haloed glory, having it all because he wanted it all, but he also has Noel. Because Liam— unlike Clint— is unafraid to kiss Noel in plain daylight, is brave enough to take that risk, even if it was just to rub it in Clint’s face. Because Liam knows that in front of fucking thousands of people, he gets to sing his brother’s words, that his brother wrote for him to sing. And as he sings he gets to tell Noel he loves him, and hear in those words and that guitar that he’s loved back, for all the world to listen in.