Maddox laughed. Now he was the one rolling his eyes. “John, are you kidding me? You’d never be happy if your job was even a smidge easier. You feel like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill? Well, did you ever stop to think of what would happen if you actually got to the top of the hill?”

John opened his mouth, closed it and cocked his head to the side, looking a lot like his brother in that moment. “Good point. I guess if you get to the top of the hill, there’s nowhere else to go.”

“Or you’re like Dad, and you make yourself a new hill.” It may have sounded like a compliment, but Maddox’s face was tight when he said it.

“You’re talking about ambition.”

“You don’t become the DA of Manhattan without it.”

“Yeah, well, apparently you don’t become the mayor of NYC with it.”

The two of them cracked into a grin. It was petty that they both still got so much joy out of their father’s mayoral disappointment. But yeah. As different as their upbringings had been, Upper East Side versus Crown Heights, they were both still New Yorkers to the core and neither of them had believed that their father’s proposed changes to policy would have been good for the city.

Plus, their dad was an ass who pretty much got everything he wanted, and it had felt good to see him lose one.

“So, that’s it? That’s the whole reason for your mood? Work?”

John shrugged and strode over to the small bag of clothes he’d brought to change into after the swim. Standing in Maddox’s living room, he started changing under the towel, thoughtfully looking out at Maddox’s—literal—million-dollar view of the East River, Queens and Brooklyn.

“I always thought it was ironic that the richest people in New York are forced to have the working class in their view at all times,” he said after a minute. “All the money in the world and you still live in New York City, surrounded by all walks of life.”

Maddox grunted. “You’re feeling philosophical today.”

John tugged track pants on and his T-shirt over that. He wore his nice work clothes almost every day of the week, wanting to look respectable and put-together no matter what he was doing. But it gave him a perverse thrill to look shabby and tossed-together whenever he visited Maddox’s penthouse.

“Do you know what negging is?” John asked, sitting down on Maddox’s couch.

Maddox looked slightly surprised, whether it was because John seemed to be extending their hang or at the question itself, John wasn’t sure.