"...okay."
He picks at the button. I let him.
Then his hand snakes around the back of my neck and his thumb digs into the long muscle at my shoulder. I close my eyes.
God, that feels good.
I can’t help but keep going.
"And on top of all that I'm checking in on Zero every couple days. Has to be done, Maxie. He does the ugly end of what we do. Atlas points him at things and he handles them, and Atlas tries to keep a leash on him about how and who, but Zero doesn't take a leash. Never has, you know that. So when Atlas runs him hard for a week straight on something rough, somebody has to put eyes on him after, and that somebody is me."
"How is he? I saw him the day before yesterday but he told me he had an assignment that might take him a few days."
"Tired. Mean. Effective. The standard Zero menu when Atlas is using him for the rougher stuff."
His thumb digs deeper. I close my eyes.
"Is he—"
"He's fine, Max. He's not going to do anything stupid. I'd know."
"You'd know?"
"I'd know. He's too proud to make me clean up after him. He'll come up against something he can't bring himself to do, and instead of doing it badly he'll come find me."
"And if he doesn't come find you?"
"Then I find him."
I let my head tip back against the couch. His thumb keeps working at the muscle along my shoulder. My entire body relaxes a bit more.
"Zero, when he goes dark, has a routine. Has had it since he was nineteen. He drinks too much. He uses too much of whatever someone's offering. He finds a stranger to take to bed for a night and is out of their apartment before the coffee's done. That's been his version of decompression for a decade."
"...sounds exhausting."
"It's effective. He's not stupid about it. He doesn't drive when he's like that. He doesn't go anywhere he hasn't been before. He's careful in the ways he's careful and reckless in the ways he's reckless, and he's never given me a reason to come pull him out of anything I couldn't handle in an afternoon."
"...you've had to pull him out of things?"
"I'm the youngest, Maxie. Of course I've had to pull him out of things. It's how the order goes. Atlas does the strategy, Zero does the damage, and I clean up the corners and lie to Dad about the bills." I huff. "Once when he was twenty-two I had to drive to West Virginia at four in the morning because he'd ended up at a card game in a basement and ran his mouth at the wrong guy. I bought him out of it with cash and an apology I did not mean. He bought me breakfast on the way back and we never talked about it again. That's Zero."
"...West Virginia."
"West Virginia."
"At a card game in a basement?"
"Don't ask the rest, baby."
He laughs into my throat. I keep my hand moving slow up and down his back.
"Anyway," I say. "That's the cycle. He works himself dark, he does his version of decompression, he comes back. Nothing I haven't seen ten times."
He's quiet a moment. His hand keeps moving at my neck.
"...you sure he's okay this time?"
I'm quiet a beat too long.
