Figure 8 Ch. 05

Adam wouldn't let the conversation go. His overprotective drive had kicked in; and for once, it didn't make Emma feel special. Instead, she felt like she was suffocating under his consistent questions. One stab after the other, accusing her of secrets that she felt she had righteously hid. It was for their sake, she reasoned. But all the more, she didn't want to see how Adam would react. Losing his respect and trust could be infinitely worse than losing him altogether.

"You used to tell me everything," he said as Emma shied away from his accusatory gaze. "I haven't completely forgotten how to read you. So stop lying, Emma."

The first part of his statement was an exaggeration. They hid a fair amount of stories from each other. Not on purpose, never. It had always been an understandable situational issue. The timing wasn't never right, bringing up the topic only meant killing the mood, and for each other they had always wanted to be happy. So eventually their secrets were outdated facts, irrelevant to how either felt about each other. And if they resurfaced, they were merely jokes.

Emma felt the familiar rope of guilt twist her stomach into knots. She had a feeling that the old rules didn't apply anymore. There were just some things Adam couldn't protect her from. It wasn't like at random college party, or a weekend trip to Montreal where he could scare boys into leaving her alone. It wasn't an issue of reputation or respect either. It was a matter a fact of protecting the image of her that he wanted. The same girl as before. The girl she wanted to be. The less the worlds between Adam and Sylar collided the better.

Emma sighed as she poured hot water into her mug. Tea often calmed her nerves, allowing her to think and process reality.

"It's just a work trip. I promise there's nothing more."

She turned her back to face him. He might be able to guess from her voice that she was lying, but as long as he couldn't read her face, she felt stronger. Adam still read her expertly, even after a year of not seeing her. In her mind, it was just a testament to how little she had changed. She watched the tea bleed, releasing a dark brown hue into her cup, before dipping the bag several times. Emma gently swirled the cup in her hands to avoid using a spoon.

"A work trip with a pervert. How am I - "

Emma whipped around. The hot water scalded her hand, but she barely noticed.

"Don't call him that! I told you, he apologized. He was drunk, it was a mistake... It's over."

"So why can't you tell me where you are staying? At least get the name of your hotel?"

Adam wasn't the type to indulge spontaneous romantic gestures, but she didn't want to risk it. Not when he had repeatedly told her how special she was to him.

The conversation started to weigh heavily on her conscience. They were lying to each other. Already. Or rather she was lying to him, a habit she had never picked up before. Especially when it came to him.

Never in her life did she imagine their relationship having this kind of conflict. In fact, she never believed they would fight at all. She used to be the one who always took the moral high ground. It was how she lived her life.... until now. Adam would leave her, she was sure of that, or convince her to quit. But what then... depend on him for a living? He couldn't pay her financial dues that threatened to drain her life savings dry.

Emma gripped her cup as Adam waited for her to answer. He watched her unwaveringly with the patience of an interrogation officer. It only made her feel worse. He held so much respect for her in that regard, believing that her moral compass was straighter than most. There was even a warped sense of pride in himself. He would never let temporary insanity or desperation cloud his moral standards. He always found a loophole in the unspoken contract, dancing between the line of technically and actuality.

Adam sighed and leaned his long body back against the table. His face had aged strongly in certain areas, permanently leaving lines to predict his face as he smiled and frowned. Did she look the same to him? Ever so plain, ever so boring, the complete opposite of the girls he used to date. Those girls had been the kind boys wanted to climb to the rooftop and shout about. The kind that had other boys slapping his back in congratulations. The kind that had boys picking up their jaw from the floor...

She sipped her tea, trying to figure out the right words to calm his temper.

"You know I signed an NDA. I don't want to get fired."

It surprised her how easily these white lies came. The more she said it, the more she believed it... but if only Adam would too.

He scoffed. "Like I'm going to call the press and expose everything. You know how I feel about cameras, Emma."

She tried to look at him in the eyes, but he challenged her with an intensity that made her cheeks burn.

"I just don't want to get in trouble, you know - be that amateur who screws up."

Emma stared at her tea. She reached up to close a cabinet door. It was barely open and the sound of wood against wood made her jump.

"No, either you don't trust me. Or you're hiding something from me."

"I'm not!" she said a little too desperately. "Why would you think that?"

"I've know you better than anyone, Emma. I can tell when you're lying."

"We haven't seen each other for a year, Adam. I'm not the same, not some open book."

She felt his bitter laugh ring hollow in her ears. Just a while ago, his lips were leaving her breathless and the next he was back to walking the brotherly line of concern. One thing was for certain: Neither of them were prepared to navigate the changed current between them, the one from friendship to romance. She knew they were expecting a paradox of everything and nothing... everything from each other, and yet nothing from their own end.

"All I hear is: You think I can't handle the truth. "

Emma's knuckles turned white as she tried to ignore how the cup had grown hot against her skin. "That's not fair. When I ask you about your year-long disappearance 'band tour,' I don't press for answers. And I don't do that because it's not my business,"

"That's not the same..."

Every time she brought it up, Adam would shake her questions off with the same reply, "That's because I don't remember." He grit his teeth as he turned away. "The concerts are all a blur," he muttered.

"Yeah, funny how that works, right? My work hours are a blur too."

She was done. She felt done.

Feeling the space in the kitchen constrict, she did the next calming thing she could think of and walked out. There was too much familiar and too much new happening at the same time. Adam wanting to drain the truth from her wasn't supposed to be this hard. It was supposed to be easy. He used to be able to guess what she needed just from one look, and then he'd be right there to comfort her.

Adam dropped his head against the wall when he heard the door lock. He just wanted to protect her... but how could he if he didn't even know what to protect her from? His gut instinct told him that she was hiding something. There was always a flash in her eyes before normalcy glazed over.

There were days she would come home from work, flushed and unable to explain what happened. She'd simply grip onto him and whisper how happy she was now that he was here. At first his heart soared, but as it began to occur almost everyday, he knew something was scaring her. But no matter how hard he tried, she wouldn't tell him. She never wanted to talk about work.

So he comforted her, supported her. He was her rock. And then...

Then it stopped. With no tell tale sign as to why, her need for comfort simmered, and the layers of the Emma he once knew fell apart. Underneath it was the independent woman he had known she was capable of being but never truly saw. A woman that excited him with hints of flirtatious kisses and open arms. A woman that frightened him when she smiled because she had grown so much from the naive girl that used to follow him around.

He couldn't shake the feeling that one day Emma would wake up and find him a hindrance. She would see how much better she deserved.

The worst part was that he felt himself stumbling and becoming speechless whenever she questioned him about his past. That year. The year without her. He wished they could both blame amnesia, or that he had a simple answer like "School, you know" as she did, but now that he thought about it, that year was a chaotic mess. He made terrible decisions, gotten caught up in situations he would've never been in if Emma had been there for him.

When she had opened the door, Adam thought there was nothing in the world that could make him happier. The wind left him as he regained his composure. She hadn't changed much, and yet the sight of her warmed his bones, like a welcoming memory revived fresh with the warmest colors. He wanted their relationship to restart from where he had left off, moving forward instead of back. Coming to see her was one of the best decisions he made.

He had always found her attractive, although always more for her mind than her body. The little things she did drew him to her, her supportive and patient nature was like finding home after a long day. And he loved the way she depended on him, that he was the one to teach her how to be brave, the peel back the layers of other people in the world and be less trusting.

Maybe he had done this to her, made her wary of everyone around her. The fact that she now held secrets, secrets he couldn't unlock, made Adam feel like she was balancing his heart on a sharp knife.

With a sigh, he pushed himself off the wall. He'd just have to ask for her forgiveness. He'd tell her that he was sorry. It was presumptuous of him to think that she'd just fall into his arms. After all, she was right. He had been gone for a year, and as long as he couldn't admit to her what had happened over the years, she didn't have to tell him anything. He grinned, remembering the way she moved at night, shy and confused about the feelings her body was developing. The core of her hadn't changed... not by too much.

Adam rattled the door knob and knocked several times. No reply. Not even an acknowledgement telling him to go away.

Damn, she must be angrier than he thought.

Emma never held grudges, at least not for too long. Fuck, he couldn't remember a time she was actually mad at him, even if he done some stupid teenage boy shit. Unable to sit in the house with her silent treatment, he grabbed his hoodie off the couch and the spare keys from the coffee table. Maybe she would be more forgiving if he went missing for a while. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, he reasoned.

...

Emma looked at the door rattling, heard the soft knock before it turned quiet on the other end. She dropped her head in her hands, unable to face the lewd images on her computer or her protective boyfriend on the other side. How did things get so complicated to fast? She knew he thought she was mad at him. She let him think that to avoid the truth of how much she hated herself for lying to him.

But he had always had the advantage of expecting her complete trust. He had... not a right, Emma surmised, just only a reasonable expectation that she could trust him the way she used to. It was just something he always had been privy to only because she allowed it. Adam noticing that she holding back wasn't surprising. Because job in the porn industry aside, she was. She was the same girl that was in love with him.

She wanted to be perfect... she had been the perfect goody-two shoes for so long, and was about to think that it wouldn't pay off. Joining the porn industry was a way of kicking the bucket, but then life had to spin her around and let her get the guy, didn't it? They had each other now. Adam was here, expecting to fulfill his part of the fairytale ending, so why did she have to go screw it by getting such a shitty job?

It's okay, she breathed, waiting for the tea to calm her nerves. Just a hiccup. Just a bump in the road. If they could ride through this, they could get through the rest of their lives without a hitch.

She faced the video feed of Sylar whispering in a woman's ear, only realizing now how stupid it would be to try and get some work done with Adam only a room away. Honesty would kill them even before they had a chance to develop into the fairytale she always dreamed of. What she would give to have been unemployed when Adam came to visit her. Then she wouldn't have met Sylar, he wouldn't have touched her at the club, she wouldn't have to start all these lies to uphold the image Adam had of her. He would never accept that she wasn't the same girl.

Was she still the same girl?

"I want you to want me more than air..."

Her breath hitched as Sylar's voice pounded through her ears. She had unknowingly hit her keyboard, and the audio played, mingling pants from the woman to the passionate words Sylar uttered. Emma was no judge of chemistry, but to her, it sounded like they were performing two different pieces. Everything that came from the woman's lips was driven by scripted lust, but when Sylar spoke, she felt her nerves warm to his voice.

That kiss... it had been chaste and sweet, almost begging for an entrance instead of demanding one like Adam's kisses had. It was the kind of kiss fueled by a need for mutual desire. While Adam's kisses felt like he wanted to swallow her whole, Sylar's approach had been more mesmerizing, like he wanted to savour the taste of her.

It was a different Sylar, a more human one if she had to categorize it. She thought there was only the crazed monster that had approached her on day one. Everything about that Sylar was so wrong. His crass behavior made her want to hide. He was so sure of himself and the effect he was supposed to have on her. In a way, it made her feel ashamed that she didn't respond to him the way every other girl had.

It was Sylar who flinched at the words sexual harassment as if she had dug a nail through his temple. She hadn't really understood what those words meant, and was even satisfied when Adam told her how proud he was that she finally stood her ground. But Sylar's constant brooding made her curious. She asked Greg to hash out the unspoken rules of working in porn. Waving around a harassment lawsuit was one of them, possibly the biggest one, because it would lead to hundreds of other girls to come forth. Once again, she felt small, unprepared for the world she had stepped into.

The moving image of Sylar kissing the woman underneath him haunted her. The script described the scene as passionate, but the look on his face bordered pain. His jaw was set as his lips pressed against the woman's, but his closed eyes told another story. As if two fighting emotions were battling for a place in his mind. It wasn't the same look he had given her.

Oh my god, what was he thinking when he kissed me?

Things were okay now, right? He had apologized. She apologized. The kiss was just a mistake.

Emma smoothed the wrinkles of her shirt, but they refused to fade. Her heart thumped whenever Sylar was near, leaving her at a near breathless state of mind. It wasn't because she found him handsome - he was beyond a doubt one of the most attractive men she had ever seen - it was just the thought of sex was never far whenever Sylar came to her mind. The two came hand in hand.

She felt terrible acknowledging that she objectified him as much as he had to her. Technically she could blame the results of her reaction as simply Pavlovian, nothing to do with the heart or mind, but that still didn't change how he was poisoning her life. She tried her best not to close her eyes, otherwise she would see Sylar's face in the blackness of it all. She would keep her eyes open, making sure it was always Adam in the light.

She had to apologize to Adam.

They would never work out if things were okay with Sylar and broken at home. She sighed and saved her work, knowing she wouldn't be able to focus on it anymore.

Bringing his reluctance into the conversation was not just a stalling tactic. While Emma already had a vague idea of what he did during his year absence, she didn't want to hear how far that rabbit hole went. She didn't expect anything less from the infamous womanizer, Adam Bates, but that didn't mean it wouldn't hurt. Weeks ago, she would've bared through the pain of listening to his stories, one girl after the other, but now that they were together... She was glad that Adam was trying to protect her. He was right, he knew her better than herself.

"Adam?" she called out.

Nothing.

Emma walked out of the room and into the kitchen. The lights were off, not a single shadow cast from the moonlight moved. She looked at the front door and noticed his shoes were gone, as were the spare keys she made for him.

Where did he have to go?

She bit her lip as she dropped herself down on the sofa. Unless he knew the city well, she doubted he would be far, so Emma quickly ran to her room and grabbed a sweater before embracing the night cold in search for the man she wanted to apologize to.

Most of the stores were closed, and of the few delis and convenience stores she passed, only one recognized her description of Adam. Emma frowned as she heard the cashier mention that he had bought a pack of cigarettes and asked about the nearest bar. A warped feeling of comfort and anxiety filled her as she made her way to Tavern Hall.

It was an Irish college bar for students who lived in the area. She knew about it from her aunt's tenants who muttered it in passing, and witnessed plenty of scantily clad girls stumbling in and out. The owners were pure-blooded Irish men, and most of the older men who frequented the place had a slight Irish accent as well, as if they had never left their homeland.

Their light blue eyes always twinkled when she passed by, never afraid to call out to her. In the beginning, Emma would blush at the attention, but she quickly realized that they hollered at anything with two legs and boobs. Sucking in her breath to calm the queasy feeling in her stomach, she walked into the bar, not for a single moment surprised to see a crowd of girls dancing in the middle of the floor and a group of guys watching them.

Her eyes searched for Adam, his tall frame and lithe body which she could recognize anywhere. He wasn't at the bar or sitting at the table, and her breath caught as she imagined him in one of the darker corners with another girl. It wouldn't be the first time if she saw him like that, she thought, but it would be the first in their time together.

She felt a pinching pain in her stomach at the thought of Adam cheating on her. Worst was the thought of it being possibly and most likely. She wanted to have so much faith in him, she did have faith in him. But then there were moments like this, where she felt like she could see a second light beyond the one she was used to, one that explained why they had never been together.

But now they were... They were... and she had that to think of instead of looking back.

As she weaved through the crowds, ignoring the men who tried to get her attention and the towering girls that danced around her, she tried to give Adam the benefit of the doubt. But she couldn't. Adam had never been a one-girl kind of guy, at least for the long term. His relationships had always been short, with him breaking them off because he didn't want to be held down. Part of Emma knew he did it so he could avoid the label of being a cheater.

The Adam she knew would've loved this bar. The girls looked amazing, long hair, slim bodies, each one a replica of the other, each with a look on their face saying that they were ready to have fun. A look that probably was the exact opposite of her own because a Irish man with bright blue eyes swept down and nearly shouted at her, "Having fun, darling?"