So Mal and Adonis used to be friends or at least colleagues, then? Do they recognise their old friend at some point after they become enemies? It sounds like there's an interesting story there!
Nope. They’ve literally hated each other since they first met and still work together. Me saying that they work amazing as a team in previous posts is not past tense.
Adonis thinks Mal lost her job in a mega corporation, which is why they’re okay with her working with them to take down big companies. They are a mercenary team, with her staying as a netrunner the whole time, and thus able to keep herself out of danger. Sort of.
Mal is secretly still working for the same company. It’s literally her job to make sure Adonis never targets the company she works for, so she’s constantly having to work with Adonis and pretend she doesn’t have her original job anymore in order to do this.
These two come from vastly different worlds. Adonis is a nomad, and Mal is a Corpo rat. These two only met because they both are Netrunners and happened to cross paths in cyberspace. It was not a good first meet.
Their shared friend is the reason they became a team in the first place. Mal, Adonis, and two other formed a band and played together for years. At least until Adonis decided that the final music gig would be a distraction so they could bomb a corporation that they have actual beef with. The company Mal works for is not that company (she got lucky there). Mal is also the only reason Adonis managed to have access to any bombs at all.
Fourth band member didn’t make it. Third member, another nomad named Rick who is a friend of Adonis, left the band but occasionally offered help when Mal, Adonis and Jackie (the NPC from the game this story is supposed to be part of) started to work together as mercenaries. Mal never makes a physical appearance to anyone except Jackie. He’s the reason Mal and Adonis became part a band in the first place. He’s been friends with her for a while before meeting Adonis, and he met them during a smuggling job that they were hired to help with.
Still haven’t figured out how I want Adonis and Mal to meet outside of cyberspace.
But, tldr, these two have a long history and a complicated relationship that can be boiled down to “I hate you, you hate me, we have shared friends and goals. Let’s do things we both enjoy that otherwise would only work between friends and lovers, and still hate each other.”
So I repeat: anything kink related between Mal and Adonis is on the same level as hate fucking. Which is okay because I love that kind of stuff and am a sucker for it.