Chapter 6 #2
"Which leaves him with one place to put it, baby. All his negative energy and angst and fury. And that place is the bond between you and him."
He stares at me. His mouth has gone soft and open.
"He wouldn't hurt me—"
"He wouldn't mean to. Zero would not raise a hand against you in his right mind for any reason in this world. I'd stake my life on that, and I would also stake yours, which I know is a lot to ask, but I'd stake yours too. That's not what I'm worried about."
"Then what?"
"He'll come to your room one of these nights with the wrong thing in him and he'll fuck you the way he used to fuck strangers.
Not to hurt you. To not feel something for an hour.
And he'll wake up at four in the morning with you against his chest and he'll realize what he just did and he'll—" I stop.
Start again. "He'll break, Maxie. Not you.
Him. And I don't know what's on the other side of that for him. Or for you, watching it happen."
The library has gone very quiet.
His hand at the back of my neck has started moving again, slow, almost without him knowing he's doing it. He's processing.
"...does he know you're worried about that?"
"No. But if I sense it happening and he comes to your door one night with something behind his eyes I can't reach—I'll be at your door first. Every time."
Max swallows. His hand tightens at my nape. I can tell my words have scared him.
"Don't carry this around, baby. I have it. I have him. I have you. That's the order. That's always the order."
"You don't sound okay, Bane."
"I'm just tired, Maxie."
His hand keeps working slow at the back of my neck. He kisses my jaw, light. He doesn't say anything for a while.
When he speaks again it's small and almost lost against my throat.
"If he comes to my door, I don't have to turn him away."
"...Maxie."
"I'm not going to turn him away, Bane. He's mine. Whatever he's carrying, that's mine too. If you're worried, then come too. Come with him. Be in the room. But don't ask me to send him away when he needs something."
I close my eyes.
I'd been running the same loop for two weeks. Zero coming to Max's door alone. Me getting there too late. Or worse—me getting there in time and having to put my hand on my brother's chest and physically turn him around in a hallway, in front of Max, and watching what that did to all three of us.
Max just took that version off the table. Come with him. Be in the room. Somehow he just brought me even more peace than his presence already did.
I don't know what to do with that other than press my forehead against the side of his head and breathe him in.
"Okay, Max."
"Okay."
"You'd really let him in when he’s like that?"
“I think I’ve already seen the worst version of him. I've already met that Zero. He didn't break me then, even though I think he wanted to. He's not going to break me now."
I pull him tighter against my side.
"You're a better person than I know how to be," I murmur. Into his hair.
"I am not."
"Yeah, baby. You are."
His hand keeps working the back of my neck. I can feel the day coming off me in pieces. Hawkins. Atlas. The trucks. The file on the coffee table. The nine names I'd just been making myself read for the third week in a row before he walked in.
I know I'm unloading on him.
I know I am, and I should care more than I do.
He has his own week. He has classes starting back up in three weeks.
Hell, we both do. He has whatever he came up here carrying that he hasn't said and isn't going to say tonight.
He didn't come up to the library to listen to me catalog warehouse drama and Zero's bruises.
But he's here. His hand is warm at my nape. His weight is light against my side. The bond is going steady and full under my ribs. And I cannot, for the life of me, stop talking. He makes me calm in a way nothing else does, and the calm wants out as words, and he is letting it.
"Sorry," I murmur. Eventually.
"For what."
"Talking your ear off."
His hand tightens at the back of my neck. He turns his face up and kisses the underside of my jaw, soft.
"Don't be."
"Maxie—"
"I like it when you talk to me about your day, Bane. I like knowing what you do. I like knowing who Hawkins is.”
Max smirks and his eyelashes bat like he knows exactly what he’s doing. But he doesn’t. He’s just this fucking cute.
“Keep talking," he whispers.
I let my head fall back against his hand. Close my eyes again.
He keeps kneading.
After a while his thumb stops. He kisses the underside of my jaw, slow, and lets his cheek rest against mine.
He's quiet. Then, into my shoulder: "Wren made cookies on Wednesday. From scratch. She had me on FaceTime through the whole thing because she said she'd never made them and was sure they'd explode."
I breathe out a small chuckle. "Did they explode?"
"They burned a little around the edges. She said it added character. I tried them the other day when I went over there. They were good."
I press my mouth to the top of his head. Just rest there. "I'm glad you two have gotten close."
"Me too. She's actually the funniest person I've ever met. I don't know how she's funny. I don't know how a person comes out of that with a sense of humor intact."
"Some of us do, baby. Some of us don't. She did."
"Mm."
"You did too."
He goes very still against my chest. I feel him decide not to argue with me about that one. Fair. Some compliments you swallow.
"By the way." Casually. I say it nto his hair. "Her rent's good for the next two years. Just so you know."
He pulls back to look at me.
"Bane."
"What?"
"Two years?"
"Mm."
"You paid two years of rent up front?"
"In her name. With a letter from the building manager. So she knows it's hers, not mine. She can take a job, leave a job, change her mind, do whatever she wants. The rent isn't the lever."
He stares at me. His mouth has gone a little open. "You just—did that. Without telling anyone."
“I just told you.”
He doesn't answer. He puts his face back into my collarbone and his hand finds the front of my shirt and fists in it, and I feel him breathing against my throat for a long moment.
"Thank you," he says. Muffled. "For all of it. For her."
"Don't thank me for being a person, Max."
"I'll thank you for whatever I want to thank you for, you stubborn ass."
I grin.
He's quiet a long beat. His fist stays curled in my shirt. I can feel the shift in him before he says anything—the small heaviness, the thing that has been sitting on him.
"I think about the others," he says. Eventually. Very quiet. “The ones we left.”
I close my eyes. "I know."
"All the time, Bane. Every time Wren texts me a picture of her apartment, every time she sends me a stupid meme, every time she tells me she got a tip at the coffee shop—there's this thing in my stomach.
Like a knot. I keep thinking how arbitrary it was.
That it was us who got out. Why us, why not them. "
"Maxie."
"I don't know how you don't think about it."
"I think about it."
"...you do?"
"Yes, Max. Trust me, I do."
He pulls back again. Slower this time. Looks at me properly. His eyes are very wide and very dark. He must have read between the lies. He’s too observant for me to keep anything in secret.
"...you're going to get them out?"
"Yeah, baby."
"All of them?"
"Every one of them, I hope. It's going to take me a minute. The local PD is bought, so I can't send anyone in without burning my guy and bringing too much heat back on us. I'm building it slow. But yes. All of them."
He shakes his head, the edges of his lips tipping up slightly. "You're not afraid of anything."
"That's not true, baby."
"It's true from where I'm sitting. You went into that facility for me.
You're going back in for them. You paid for an apartment so a stranger we were locked next to has somewhere to call home.
You—you just do the hard thing. You don't hesitate.
You don't second-guess. You don't even think it's brave, you just think it's the next thing that needs doing. "
"Maxie—"
"I would never have done any of that. Not for anyone. Not even for myself, I don’t think. I'd have spent the rest of my life telling myself it was too dangerous and going to bed on time."
"That's not—"
"It is. I'm telling you it is. I look at you and I—" He stops. His thumb is still at my cheekbone. He has gotten quieter. "I'm envious. Is what it is. I'm envious of how you exist."
I can't speak for a second.
The fire pops in the hearth.
He is in my lap, more or less, half-curled against me, his hand at my face, his eyes on mine, and he has just laid out a version of me I don't entirely recognize and called it brave.
I have never thought of myself as brave. I have thought of myself as the youngest brother who got handed a list and is working through it. I have thought of myself as the one who was worse before any of this, who has a long way to go to be worth what he just said about me.
But he meant it.
He’s sitting in my lap, looking directly at me, and still saying I’m brave.
I bring my hand up to cover his where it rests on my cheek. Hold it there.
"You exist plenty brave on your own, baby."
"Bane—"
"I mean it."
"You don't have to say it back—"
"I'm not saying it back. I'm telling you what's true."
His eyes shine. His mouth opens to argue and then doesn't.
I look at him.
The house has gone fully quiet—just the occasional foundation settle and the whirr of the A/C. The fire pops in the hearth. He is so warm under my arm. So light against my side.
I'm, I notice, so fucking happy.
Not the way I'm happy when something works in a deal. Not the way I'm happy when I've outmaneuvered someone who deserved it. Not even the way I've been happy the past two months as a man with a bonded omega in his house and his life.
This is something else.
I look at him.