“you have strong feelings about my physical appearance?” zeus’ eyebrows shot up, his expression somewhere between surprised and impressed. soter was clearly in love with him. he couldn’t understand how soter was so blind to his obvious infatuation, except that soter was usually blind to things close to his heart, like the treachery of that redheaded bitch. there was equal surprise at soter’s refusal of the beer, but the expression faded just as quickly as it came, warded off with a shrug and another sip from zeus’ own glass bottle. “fair enough. just drink your water, old man. or are you so old you’ve forgotten how to avoid them?” a less experienced agent may not have been able to keep the concern off their face, but zeus’ expression remained imperceptible as he watched soter’s every frustrated, twitchy movement. what the hell happened? “it isn’t creepy. don’t let little girls with daddy issues and daddy kinks turn it into something creepy. it’s supposed to be humorous,” he scoffed, as though he wasn’t very okay with girls with daddy issues and daddy kinks referring to him as such. “and anyway, if i promise not to gloat, will you at least tell me what happened?” but as the story continued—or began, really, following that lovely preface, it really took every fiber of zeus’ being not to gloat. he knew it. he fucking knew it. speak (or think, apparently) of the devil and she will appear and oh, god, zeus knew it. of course, every drop of smugness quickly transmogrified into a fury that, only a few weeks ago, zeus had not felt in a very, very long time, yet between this and the bombing of their appalachian headquarters, it had become all too familiar, almost a comfort. but it was quickly branching off from acceptable protective best friend fury, wanting to stomp on the heart of any bitch who dared stomp on his friend’s, and into a vicious, viscous violence, a need for vengeance twisting in his gut the likes of which zeus could only attribute to the raw bloodlust of hades. he registered, distantly, that that was probably something he should be concerned about, but that minuscule subconscious of a conscience stood no match against the louder voices in his head that told him to rip mavis limb from limb, atom from atom—that heartbreaking, traitorous cunt. “‘some man’?” zeus repeated—spat, really. “one of her fellow fucking terrorists, i’m sure. god, don’t be jealous, are you fucking kidding me? kill that bitch. we should have killed her before. you should have killed her right then. it would have been so fucking poetic—bang, bang, my baby shot me down, bang, bang. because that’s what those ICHOR bitches do, soter. they toy with your fucking feelings. they make a sport of it. i mean, for fuck’s sake, hyperion is their leader, and we all learned how she played atlas.” he shook his head and took another swig of beer—a long one, buying time to collect himself. “i can’t believe she’s here. she had better pray to whatever cavernous asshole of hell she crawled out of that i don’t catch her out and about.”