Who: Adam Malloy, Billie Pappas, & OPEN to innocent bystanders (feel free to have any characters who might be present drop by in the comments to witness this glorious display) What: No-Shave November is over; Adam loses the beard. Where: The Agency’s front lobby When: Monday, November 30; afternoon Warnings: Mild violence, language
If you asked Adam, he couldn’t say that he was happy, but that didn’t mean much. Adam hadn’t been happy for years, it wasn’t something that having a job, friends, and a girlfriend was going to be able to actually fix. What he could say was that some parts of his life made him pretty happy, which was more than he’d had. Drinks with Connor and Colin. Testing out whatever Q was working on in R&D. Dropping in on security to tease Colby. Ganging up with Quinn to give Connor shit about not touching anything in X-Factor Investigations’ office. Finally cracking something on a case, and the sense of victory when all of it came together and they could solve someone’s problem. He’d added, grudgingly at first but later nothing but glad, mastering using Ric’s powers in a new way and feeling the earth embrace him like the mother he remembered from before his sister disappeared. Before he’d recovered from the cure and heard Ric’s voice in his head again, everything had seemed like unrelenting bleakness, so much of it that he couldn’t even be sad or upset anymore, just tired. Now, there were bright spots, ones that he could remember when everything started looking dim again. Sure, maybe his girlfriend wasn’t one of those, and maybe he knew for a fact that he didn’t love her, maybe didn’t even like her all of the time, but that didn’t mean anything. Not everyone could be a bright spot in his life, and Billie was usually more like a thunderstorm, anyway.
She was going to be even more of one than usual in a few more minutes, too. It wasn’t like she and Adam had any plans that night, but Adam had figured out that Billie expected him to be at her beck and call any time she wanted him, whether he was at work at the Agency, at X-Factor, out with the guys, or (most rarely) completely free. It had been easier to just go along with it, at first, and after that, Adam hadn’t really known how to break that habit… not that he’d let her get away with dragging him away from work when he was actually doing something important. Sure, she was pretty. She was a model. That didn’t mean that he was going to follow her around like a puppy and do tricks for her attention. Adam had other things going on in his life, and those other things were a lot more important than walking her dog or getting her a latte. Maybe that made it seem like he wasn’t really that into her, but…. yeah, actually, he had nothing. He already knew Billie wasn’t the great love of his life, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t enjoy having her there for the moment. Sometimes. When she wasn’t trying to be a controlling bitch.
It was tempting to sneak out of the Agency without alerting her, or even just walk out the front door and hope that she would be too busy to call him over, but Adam manned up and approached the desk. “Hey, babe, I’ve got some stuff to do with the guys tonight. Work stuff.” Some of it was work stuff. Most of it was supposed to be drinking and bullshitting about work. That meant it still counted as work stuff, though, right? As far as Billie needed to know, anyway. “I might just crash on Connor’s couch, if it runs too late.” So there’d be no meeting up with her later and having to explain the beer on his breath. Yeah, Adam knew this made him a shitty boyfriend. There were days when he couldn’t stop thinking about how shitty a boyfriend he was being to her, and hating himself for it. This was not one of those days.
Billie was having a shitty day. Not that that was surprising. Ever since she’d been outed as a reincarnate and unable to model or act, she’d been forced to work at the agency as the receptionist, and it was just so below her. She was a god, dammit, the god of the skies. There was supposed to be a level of respect that went along with that. But apparently there wasn’t, and she didn’t know how it was Minnie’s fault, but she was blaming her. It was always easiest to blame her sisters.
That day was particularly annoying. People kept calling with increasing rudeness, to the point that she’d just had to smite some stupid fucker who’d had the audacity to call her a bitch. He’d yelped over the phone and then the line had gone dead, so she wasn’t sure if he was alive or not, but she didn’t particularly care either. Maybe from then on he’d treat the people he spoke to on the phone with more dignity than that. Stupid prat.
When Adam approached her desk, she eyed him suspiciously. Billie wasn’t particularly smitten with Adam; he’d made a great assistant to begin with and he was hot enough to be an okay fuck buddy, but she’d never been much of the love type, and Zeus didn’t help. Hell, most of the Greek problems were because Zeus had put his dick in something and started a war. Lately, however, Adam was getting a little too cocky for his own good, and it was clear that this was going to be one of those days.
She smiled sweetly at him and turned the page in her magazine. With a sigh, she leaned forward. “No.” It was a simple answer. He wasn’t going with the guys, because Billie hated the guys. And just for emphasis she shrugged. “I don’t like them, so you shouldn’t hang out with them. So. No.”
Of course. Of course she was going to be a bitch about it. Adam gritted his teeth, counted to ten inside his head, and told her, calmly as he could, “I know you don’t get along with them, but they were my friends before you were my girlfriend, and I’m not going to just stop hanging out with them because you say so.” It wasn’t going to do any more good than it had the first hundred times he’d said it to her, but it was better than what he really wanted to say about it.
He thought that she didn’t like him any more than he liked her, most of the time. She just wanted a slave that she could have sex with when she felt like it… and when Adam didn’t find some excuse to duck it, which was doing more and more lately. Sometimes, he wondered why she hadn’t just broken up with him already. It would have been easier on everybody, and there had to be plenty of guys that she could hook up with who’d be happy to deal with her evil dog, her unnecessarily complicated coffee, and her mounds of dry cleaning, just so he could show up with her on his arm. That had been what it was about for Adam, at first. Maybe not so much her, as a girlfriend in general, but there had to be guys out there who would be happy to deal with her horrible personality for the possibility of dating a former model.
“Look, we can do whatever you want tomorrow night.” Adam winced while he was offering it. He couldn’t help it. Telling Billie he’d do whatever she wanted never turned out well, and he was setting himself up for something horrible that he couldn’t even argue about. If it would get her off his balls about his night out with the guys, though, he’d make that sacrifice. “But I’m not just hanging out with them.” He was definitely just hanging out with them. “I’m going to be working. It isn’t like I’m going to be going out and having fun without you.” Except that… he was. He didn’t know if a god could read minds, but he was pretty sure that even if she could, she didn’t bother with him, or she’d probably have struck him down with lightning a million times in the past eight months that they’d been dating.
Billie was usually scariest when she was eerily calm in the face of something that people knew should piss her off. Normally she flew off the handle, especially at Adam when he wanted to go off and do something she didn’t approve of. Which was mainly everything that he didn’t get permission for first. Some people called it controlling, she just looked at it as her being entitled. What was the point of being a god if you weren’t able to be worshipped?
She quietly closed her magazine and tucked it out of sight. It was a preparation for battle, a very clear one when she shot a death glare at somebody who approached the counter to ask for assistance around Adam. The guy, and IT guy who kept having trouble punching in, slunk back with fearful eyes before actually turning and running. At least somebody had the decency to respect her enough to fear her. She cleared her throat and leaned forward on the desk, arms folded on top of each other delicately as she smiled tensely at him again.
“I’m not sure you heard me correctly sweetheart,” She spoke through gritted teeth, her voice dangerously low. “I don’t care about tomorrow. We’re talking about tonight. And those friends of yours who hate me and fill your head with bullshit. So no.” Billie took a deep breath. Overhead, clouds were gathering outside, and a low rumble of thunder left a few people confused by the weather report.
“YOU’RE NOT FUCKING GOING.” The last sentence was shouted in a shrill voice and emphasized with a stomp of her foot. The idle chatter in the lobby immediately hushed into stunned silence, with all eyes on them. But that was how she liked it. A scene, with witnesses, because it made Adam uncomfortable and usually got her her way.
Adam knew he was in trouble when Billie put away the magazine. If all she did was snap at him while still doing… whatever it was she did while she was at the desk, most of which probably wasn’t actually real work but who was going to question her… he was going to get out of it without much of a problem. Sometimes, though, sometimes Billie really got it in her head that she was going to get her way, and that was when the magazine, or whatever else she was looking at, went down. He watched it go, mentally cursing, and squared his shoulders.
The clatter of someone turning tail and running at the sight of her glare made him tense them a little more, but this was it. He was committed to this, right now, and he wasn’t going to let Billie get away with telling him that he couldn’t go out with his friends. He was a grown man, and sure, she was a god, but she couldn’t keep telling him what to do. He couldn’t keep letting her tell him what to do, right? He had to let her know she couldn’t get away with it, and then maybe she would back off.
Probably not. But he wasn’t going to go the rest of however long they dated just letting her get away with telling him he couldn’t see whoever he wanted to see. He’d been hiding his friendships with women for the entire eight months, going roundabout ways to make sure that she didn’t realize that he ever hung out with Quinn or Colby. This couldn’t keep going.
There was the rumble of thunder, right on cue as she stomped her foot and yelled, throwing the rest of the lobby into silence before whispers broke out, everybody looking at the drama going on between the receptionist and the guy from R&D. Sure, Adam was uncomfortable, but he swallowed, tilted his head up, and told her, “I understood you just fine, sweetheart, but I am going, no matter what you say.” Oh shit, he was going to get struck by lightning, this was a really, really shitty idea.
“Excuse me?” Billie looked taken back by his refusal to acquiesce to her demands, even after her dramatic display and the storm she was creating outside. People didn’t usually tell her no, and when they did she tended to strike them down as punishment. The only ones who got away with telling her no without being harmed were other gods--like her sisters--and that was just because they were freaking gods so the lightning wouldn’t bother them. If she could hurt her sisters with lightning, she would have expended all energy just to do it. Alas, it wasn’t an option. But Adam? Adam was mortal. He should have been frightened by her power display. But he wasn’t. And that was more frustrating than the fact that he wanted to hang out with friends.
“I can’t believe you just said that to me!” She shrieked, stepping out from behind her counter to walk up to him a huff. He was much taller than her, but that had never intimidated Billie. Not much did. It wasn’t like there were Titans running around for people to use against her. And sure, demigods could probably figure out a way to get one up on her, but she wasn’t particularly worried. Which was why she had no qualms against jabbing her finger into his chest as she gave him an icy glare.
“How DARE you!” She continued, another clap of thunder, and lightning flashed across the sky. If this kept going, the sky would open to dump torrential rains on the poor people walking around outside. “I can’t believe you’re being such a horrible boyfriend. You’d rather me sit at home all alone and bored while you go running around with the worst freaking people in the entire world. Doesn’t it bother you what they think of me?!”
Billie huffed again, before jabbing another finger roughly into his chest. “Boyfriends are supposed to freaking care, you insufferable jackass!”
For a second, it almost worked. Yeah, Adam was a horrible boyfriend, he was being a horrible boyfriend. It would have been easy to beat himself up over it, much easier than handling Billie poking him in the chest and yelling into his face, and having everyone see what a horrible boyfriend he was being. He could tell people were staring. Someone who’d somehow managed to miss the entire saga of Adam and Billie was getting filled in on it in whispers behind Adam’s back, a little gleefully. For the informant’s sake, Adam really hoped that Billie didn’t overhear it. They weren’t exactly being flattering about their description of either of them, and while Adam could take it, he knew Billie didn’t like it.
A few months ago, it would have worked, not because Adam was intimidated, but because it was just easier to let her have her way and he didn’t have the energy to fight about it. Didn’t care enough to, if he wasn’t going to be able to get away with it easily. Now, though, Adam was just done with this bullshit. “No. It really, truly doesn’t bother me what they think of you. They’re my friends, why the hell does it matter?” It wasn’t like they had to like Billie to get along with Adam. Sure, Connor could be an ass, and Colin was kind of a catty bastard sometimes, but they were good guys. Unlike Billie, who was… was…
“Maybe if you weren’t such a complete bitch all the time, everyone wouldn’t hate you.” Yeah, everyone. Adam was pretty sure that if he could only hang out with people who didn’t hate Billie, his options would be limited to… yeah, just Billie. Even her sisters didn’t like her. “Maybe you’ve somehow managed to miss this because your head’s so far up your own ass, but nobody likes you. So, yeah, I’m going to hang out with people who don’t like you, because if I had to spend all of my time with just you I would blow my own brains out.”
Why wasn’t someone stopping him? Did they like watching him commit verbal suicide?
Billie overheard it. Of course she overheard it. When she was heated like this, she was often hyperaware of everything around them, including the spectators to the sport that was their relationship tussles. Her eyes snapped over to the gossiping pair, electricity crackling from the corners dangerously. Another crack of thunder overhead, and the lights briefly flickered. The mouthy pair fell silent; being caught up on the gossip wasn’t worth getting electrocuted over.
“Excuse me?” Billie sounded scandalized. Of course nobody liked her. People weren’t supposed to like her. She was a deity. She was supposed to be worshipped, envied, and feared. She and Zeus didn’t work with ‘like.’ Like got you shit. So far in her life she’d gotten exactly what she wanted, so why would she change? So that mortal people like Adam or Joe Big Mouth wouldn’t feel uncomfortable? Please. She was above that. She was above him.
“Ha. Like that would be much of a loss,” Billie snorted and rolled her eyes. Did he think he was going to upset her with that statement? At least if he was dead she’d get sympathy over her dead boyfriend instead of the aggravation of a boyfriend who didn’t listen. Billie pursed her lips together as she noticed Connor Bone returning to the room with a bowl of popcorn out of the corner of her eyes. What an insufferable jerk of a man. He’d been a thorn in her side since the beginning. “Could you be more dramatic? Gods. It isn’t like I’m asking you to kill your friends. You don’t even defend me to them. You’re pretty much worthless to me.”
“I did defend you, Billie.” At the beginning, at least, he had. Adam had been so caught up in the fact that he had a girlfriend, that he had some sign that his life was starting to turn around, that he’d defended all the shitty things that Billie did, when his friends mentioned them. After a while, though, all the shitty things started piling up until he couldn’t even do that anymore. There were no excuses for Billie. “I ran out of things to say that weren’t ‘sorry my girlfriend is a piece of shit’ a long time ago.”
There wasn’t much deeper Adam could dig himself on this one, no matter what he said, so he figured… fuck it. “You have absolutely no redeeming qualities. You’re mean, you’re selfish, you treat me like your fucking slave instead of your boyfriend. I hate your dog, it’s stupid that all of your clothes are dry clean only, and… and I spit in your coffee every time.”
Okay, it wasn’t every time, but it was at least once a week. More often, lately. It wasn’t like she’d been able to tell the difference. If she had, she would have complained about it. She complained about everything else that was less than perfect.
Billie didn’t know how to act at first. Every instinct in her brain was telling her to smite him for being so blatantly blasphemous to her. Spitting in a god’s drink?! Did he have a death wish?! He must. That was the only explanation for why he was being such an asshole with no qualms about his actions. It would be so easy to bring in some lightning and strike him dead right then. She highly doubted her boss would appreciate it, though, and while she could easily avoid jail by going to Olympus, it wasn’t nearly as fun as being on Earth. Which meant some discretion.
Assault, though. Assault she could live with. The problem was figuring out what part of him she wanted to attack first, because she wanted to rip him apart in that moment. An intern made the mistake of walking past her with a styrofoam coffee cup in his hand, so in her angry indecision she reached over and slapped the cup out of his hand so that coffee went all over him. The intern yelped and looked like a wounded puppy before scrambling off.
And in that moment she was done. Billie rushed forward and slammed her foot right into Adam’s crotch, her face screwed up in malice. She hoped that he felt all of that fucking pain. He needed to be put in his place; how dare he. She almost wanted to do it again, despite the fact that once was usually more than enough, but she stopped herself. People were watching. She had to at least give him the chance to rebut so that people wouldn’t just be overly sympathetic to the giant man baby.
“Do you want to repeat anything you just said to me?”
Adam doubled over, hands going to cover himself way too late to actually do any good. Shit, that hurt. His eyes watered, and he struggled to breathe past waves of nausea. If he’d been anywhere other than the middle of the Agency lobby, he’d probably have curled up on the floor to wait it out… because it didn’t just stop after the initial pain, it lingered, throbbing pain in his balls radiating up into his stomach. Since he was in the middle of the Agency lobby, and his horrible bitch of a girlfriend wouldn’t have hesitated when it came to kicking him when he was down, he just braced his elbows on his thighs, hands hovering over but not quite clutching his crotch, because he couldn’t even stand the thought of anything else touching him there, right then. He heard her question, but all he could manage to do, at first, was whimper.
Then, when the pain faded enough for him to draw a full breath again, he kept his head ducked and choked out, “You look like a hag without your makeup on.” It wasn’t true, but if she was going for low blows, so was he. The only thing that really mattered to Billie was her vanity, after all.
As far as low blows went, though, Adam knew he’d gotten lucky that she’d used her foot instead of a bolt of lightning. Maybe he should have stopped while he was ahead, but part of him didn’t want to let her win again, like she won every time. He was so sick and tired of Billie getting her way, or punishing him when she didn’t get it. He was sick of Billie walking all over him and then trying to make him feel like shit for wanting something for himself. That was over, he wasn’t playing that game anymore.
Billie was done. She was so, so done that it was amazing that everybody in the lobby was still alive. For a second she contemplated whether it was really that great of a loss if everybody in that lobby died. At least she would have gotten revenge on the giant prick hunched over in front of her. Clearly that hit wasn’t enough, or else he was just a giant fucking masochist, because he was still running his mouth about her.
“Take. That. Back!” She hissed, stomping the same foot she’d used to deliver the last round of pain. She wasn’t ugly without make-up, okay, she was fucking gorgeous and she knew it. She worked hard for that shit, she got paid for that shit, so how dare he even insinuate that she was less than perfect. Sure, her personality was flawed by societal standards, and she could even admit that she was a bitch, but ugly? UGLY?
Billie let out an angry shriek like a dying whale. Outside, lightning struck a street lamp, causing it to explode in a shower of sparks. People screamed. She didn’t give a shit, because the one screaming wasn’t the one she wanted to scream. Adam, though still in pain, was still being a gigantic asshole despite the fact that she’d probably just decreased his chances of ever getting anyone pregnant ever.
“Yeah? You’re a pathetic, worthless stain of a man who’s constantly whining about everything in your stupid life. God. Grow some balls.”
Since Billie had just tried to destroy his, Adam kind of wished he could just go ahead and grow some new ones to replace them with, ones that wouldn’t be bruised. They were delicate, he wasn’t one of those guys that was into that weird torture stuff, and he was going to hold a grudge against this one for as long as he damn well wanted because no matter how long she lived, Billie was never going to know how much something like this hurt.
Adam ignored the parts of what she said that actually cut, a little, because fuck her, she didn’t even know him well enough to know those kinds of things about him. He’d never talked to her about being depressed, about feelings at all. That wasn’t what the two of them did. No, their relationship was all about Billie and what she could get out of him. What she thought of as ‘whining’ was Adam wanting to spend time with his friends, do shit on his own, which was just fucked up. He didn’t have anything to feel bad about himself for.
“I have them.” Had. He’d had them, before Billie kicked them. “They just crawl up inside my body to get away from you every time you open your mouth. Or your legs.” Shit, shit, he was going too far, but there wasn’t any stopping now. He pushed himself upright, gestured at his crotch. “At least this means I have an excuse not to fuck you when you decide you want it. It’s not like it’s any good, anyway. Here’s a hint, maybe do more than lay there and expect me to do all the work. Maybe then I’d actually enjoy it enough to put up with the rest of you.”
At that point, Billie actually laughed. In Adam’s attempt to insult her, he had no idea he’d just handed her an atom bomb to drop right in his lap to obliterate what was left of his balls. He wanted to talk about their sex life? Oooooh she would talk about their sex life. He was going to regret ever saying anything negative about her when she was done with him. Nobody mortal ever dared to cross her, and she was going to show Adam exactly why that was.
“Oh, sweetie,” She spoke with a cool voice, low and even and terrifying. A few of the people closest to them took a few steps back, expecting fall out from Adam’s statements to hit them as collateral damage as it had done the poor intern with his coffee. Billie smiled sarcastically and stepped closer to Adam, ominously close, before crouching down so that they could be face to face. She wanted him to see her eyes as she spoke what she had to say, loudly and with enough conviction that the rest of the crowd could hear it.
“It’s funny that you think that this whole thing is proving anything. Everybody knows that you’re gay. So maybe the sex was bad because I’m not man enough for you to enjoy it. Must be the tits.” Billie scoffed, and somewhere in the crowd she heard somebody say ‘oh shit’ in hushed tones. “You can whine and act like the victim all you want, but we all know you used me as much as I used you. I’ve worked Hollywood long enough to know when I’m a beard. The only reason I let it happen was because I got shit out of it. So boohoo for you.”
It was like the world dropped out from under Adam, and if she hadn’t already kicked him in the balls, he’d have thought she’d just done it again. He’d worked so hard to convince everyone that he wasn’t gay, he’d dated her, and… and he wasn’t. He wasn’t gay, he liked women, women were fine. Everyone had shut up about him being gay while he’d been dating Billie, all they’d wanted to talk about was how he and Billie were fighting, and their rocky relationship, instead. Adam had been okay with them talking about that. It was nice for them to be talking about that, for a chance, instead of speculating about him, and all because he had Ric in his head, like he couldn’t have different preferences than his reincarnate.
For once, Rictor kept quiet about it, just stayed a low buzz at the back of Adam’s head. Now, now that she’d said it, everybody would be talking about that again, how he was gay, how he was in the closet. Everything that he’d built up by dating her, she could destroy it, just like that. He almost apologized, sucked up, did whatever it would take for her to take that back.
He didn’t, though, just stared at her, face pale, eyes wide, then pulled himself together. So what. So what if they said things about him. So what if they believed whatever they wanted to believe, because the truth was… “Not finding you attractive doesn’t make me gay, it makes me sane. And, ha, what tits?” Okay, so Billie wasn’t an A-cup or anything, but they weren’t huge. That hadn’t been a problem for him, he wasn’t a boobs guy, but he was pretty sure that was supposed to be a sensitive subject, for women. She’d hit him where it hurt, he needed to find a better way to hit back instead of just taking it. For once.
“Maybe not,” Billie shrugged at Adam. She wasn’t phased by the tits comment. She knew he was grasping at straws in an attempt to get back at her for the gay comment, but she had never been worried about her looks. Make-up didn’t create her body; she had enough self-esteem to know that she had a rockin’ body that had never had trouble getting boys. In fact, she hadn’t had trouble even after she started dating Adam. Not that he knew that, or noticed. She was pretty sure he wasn’t all that observant of her.
“You know, complaining that I have no tits isn’t helping your whole cause to pretend to be straight,” Billie held her hand out to study her nails. She had a hook now, and she was sticking to it. She may have treated him as a slave, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know Adam well enough to be able to tell when something really, truly bothered him. And the possibility that people would think he was gay? She knew that that was bothering him and he was trying to save face. Especially since he wasn’t doing a really great job at it.
“Besides, I’m not basing it on your attraction to me. I’m basing it on the fact that you were checking out the same guys I was checking out while we were dating. Which, by the way, remember Jake? Yeah, totally did him because unlike you, he’s into girls.”
“...Thor guy?” That was the only Jake that Adam could think of, off the top of his head. The guy he'd had a conversation about dicks with on the boards, his name had been Jake. “Bullshit, you didn't sleep with Thor guy, you were a complete bitch about the both being gods of thunder thing to him, he wouldn't have touched you.” If there was another Jake that they'd met, Adam hadn’t noticed him enough to remember his name. Not that it meant there hadn’t been. He’d met a lot of people with Billie that he didn’t remember.
Oh. Shit. “And I wasn't checking him out, I was just talking to him, like a normal person.” Not like you could check someone out on the boards. Not like Adam would have checked him out if he could have, because Adam was straight, no matter what Billie or anyone else wanted to shove in his face. He hadn’t been checking him out, and fuck you Ric, he hadn’t been flirting. He'd just been joking with the guy.
The fact that it took him two other reactions before he realized exactly what it was that Billie was really telling him definitely meant that he wasn’t very observant, when it came to his girlfriend. “...wait. You cheated on me?” It wasn’t actually that much of a surprise, and when he thought about it, all the signs had been there. It had just been such a relief when she left him alone that he'd never questioned it. “What the fuck, Billie!”
Billie immediately looked insulted, even going so far as to pretend to gag at the insinuation that she’d meant that Jake. “As if I’d ever touch him,” her nose wrinkled in disgust, mouth twitching at the mere thought. That asshole who thought he could be the god of skies? She was the god of the sky. No. If there was one thing she and Zeus liked better than sex was power, and she didn’t share. Never. Still, after a moment she looked triumphant. So he had been thinking about a Jake, and he’d just admitted it out loud in front of everybody. Adam was practically doing her work for her.
“No. I’m talking about tall dark and handsome from the Starbucks maybe...three months ago? You were staring at his ass while he was staring at mine. It only seemed fair that I got something out of it.” Billie shrugged. She didn’t have any remorse for what she’d done. After all, Adam should have known what he was getting into in the first place. There wasn’t a Greek myth around that didn’t involve Zeus and infidelity. Hell, half the time Hera was reigning down punishments for that very reason. So if Adam thought that he could let his eyes wander but didn’t expect her to? Well. Fuck him. Sort’ve. Fuck the other guy, really.
“Wow. Took you long enough to put that all together. Jeeze, your priorities are a little messed up, don’t you think? More worried about the guy you flirted with than the fact that your girlfriend slept with somebody else. Yeah. That totally screams straight.”
“Obviously I wasn’t checking him out, if I don’t even remember his name!” Adam thought he remembered the guy, vaguely, but he hadn’t really looked at his name tag. Anyway, ass or no ass, tall dark and handsome wasn’t really Adam’s type, Adam liked guys that were…
Shit.
Fuck.
Okay. He hadn’t said anything out loud, that was… he was fine. He couldn’t have looked any more like a deer in the headlights than he had from the second she’d called him gay, so his expression couldn’t have given him away, or anything. If he played the rest of this cool, changed the subject, maybe he could still… save this. Somehow.
He was really, really glad that Jake—Thor Jake—was never going to find out about this. The guy probably didn’t even remember that Adam existed, Adam remembering that one conversation would just be him making himself look like a massive creep. Shit, why was he thinking about this, he had more important things going on, like dealing with his girlfriend trying to out him in front of the entire Agency.
“You know what? No. I don’t give a fuck that you slept with somebody else. I don’t care what you do! The only reason I haven’t dumped your ass is that you’re a psycho bitch who might actually kill me if I did, so I was waiting until you got bored enough of whatever game you’re playing with me to do it yourself.” Please, like Billie actually cared about him, and whether he’d been invested in their sad excuse for a relationship. Obviously, she hadn’t been, either. “So Jake from Starbucks can deal with your shit, now, because I’m done.” Fuck. Fuck, had he just broken up with her? He’d… just broken up with her.
He needed to get the fuck out before she got over what he’d said enough to actually strike him with lightning. Turning on his heel, Adam started stalking (okay, more like limping, that nut shot still hurt) away, hoping that his complete panic wasn’t showing on his face.
Billie had so many things in her head to come back at with him for most of what he’d said. Most of them reiterated everything she’d been saying about him being gay. How she was so going to make sure that the other Jake, the one that he was doing a horrible job covering up his lust over, knew that Adam had a hard-on for him the second she got a chance (if, of course, she could force herself to talk to him seeing as she was repulsed by another god of thunder). How she wasn’t surprised he didn’t give a fuck about her sleeping with somebody else because it meant he didn’t have to (again, hello, gay).
Instead, for a brief, glorious second, Billie Pappas was speechless. She wasn’t used to being dumped. Normally she was doing the dumping when she was bored, or when she’d only taken the guy to prove to her sister that he was a horrible cheater who she shouldn’t date. Never once, in the history of dating, had Billie been dumped. She didn’t exactly go for guys full of depth who needed more than the occasional fuck and arm candy, so that helped, but this was definitely a new experience for her.
One she absolutely didn’t enjoy. The crowd had grown silent, and Adam had turned around and started to walk away from her like she didn’t get a say in any of this. Varying shades of emotion crashed across Billie’s face in a matter of seconds until it settled on anger. Hot, blinding anger. She let out an inhuman screech that echoed in the lobby and caused a couple of people to flee. With a shaky breath, Billie ran forward to tackle Adam, jumping onto his back like some sort of deranged, rabid monkey--and since he was so solid, she merely ended up on his back, with her hands tearing at his hair.
“YOU. SON. OF. A. BITCH!”
Adam almost didn’t hear her coming after him past the roaring in his ears. He’d just broken up with the Greek god of the sky. He’d just basically committed suicide. She’d… she’d called him gay in front of everyone, and he hadn’t had a good enough comeback to that, to any of her ‘proof’ that he was actually gay, and he knew it. Adam had screwed up, so much, and he could feel everyone staring at him even though his eyes were on the floor. They all knew, now. What they knew, what they thought they knew, he didn’t know, but all these people who didn’t even know him thought that they knew something about him, and… he couldn’t even argue.
The key word there was ‘almost’, though. He almost didn’t hear her, and when he did she was too close to do more than brace for it before she jumped at him, clinging to his back. Had she thought she could knock him down? Maybe, but god or no god, Adam was still bigger than her, and it wasn’t like he’d stopped working out since he’d joined R&D. He could have carried her through the entire Agency easily, if he’d wanted to. The grip she had on his hair, though, that was more of a problem. It hurt, and he winced, hands going up to press hers more closely against his skull, trying to weaken her grip by giving her less room to work.
Maybe Billie had forgotten that Adam was a trained military vet, and maybe she’d forgotten that his reincarnate had been trained by someone a lot harsher than that, back in his X-Force days. Maybe she just hadn’t listened when he told her about it. That seemed a lot more likely, actually. Since when had Billie ever listened to anything that anybody had to say when it wasn’t about her? Either way, it took more of a coordinated, planned attack than that to be able to take Adam down. The pressure on her hands turned onto a grip on her wrists, and Adam stopped dead and leaned forward, letting the momentum from her attempted tackle keep carrying her forward. He flipped her over his head, letting go of her wrists so that there was nothing to stop her drop to the floor short.
She hit with a thump, sprawled on her back. It probably hurt. Adam looked down at her, looked her in the eye, and smirked. “Did you miss it? I dumped you.”
...yeah, it was time to get out. This time, he made sure to walk a little faster, hoping that the time it took her to get up off the floor was long enough for him to get out of lightning range.