Private Tales Fresh Prince of Vel Anir

[Lynus Anireth]

Lynus soaked in her words, his hand recoiling as she swatted at it, and he moved away, giving her space.

Her heart? Had his leaving really hurt her so badly? What the fuck had she saw in him that had made her feel anything but frustration?

"You're not a--. You're not that." he insisted. "And I know you have a heart." he added, his voice quieted by shame. He'd seen it in the way she'd smiled at him and he hadn't been able to get it out of his mind ever since.

"I didn't mean to cause trouble." his jaw tightened. The guard had crossed a line, and his control had slipped. "I'm sorry.. I'll.. see that you're compensated." his brow furrowed. As though that would make everything alright..

His gaze fell and he shook his head, his shoulders rising and falling in a huff. "I know I have no right to be here, but I thought.." he frowned at her. "about you.. There hasn't been a moment since I left this place that you haven't been on my mind and I don't know what that means but I just wanted to see you. To talk to you." he shrugged. He didn't talk to many people, he tolerated only one or two, but something about her had soothed something within him and he needed more of it.

"Tell me to leave and I will, if that's what you want.. But I don't think that's what you want." his arms folded.

 

[Isla]

"it is okay. You can say it." Isla fought the urge to mock him while he already looked so defeated. "I am a whore. It is my job."

She stared at him while he spoke, a brow once again raised as he mentioned the man who had been in her bed. A guard? She looked him over. The man hadn't even told her what his occupation was. She hadn't asked. She did not care to ask. Nor did she care to overstep the privacy of her clients again. But...she was curious as to how Lynus and the client knew one another.

Selena. He had crushed something in the blonde when he spat the name at him.

"Have you considered seeing a shrink?" Isla broke her silence once again and patted a spot on the bed beside her, opposite to the side the guard had been on. "Sit and talk if you must." Her voice, an order. "And for what it is worth, I have thought of you as well."

She found it difficult to look up at him in her position, and barely concealed under the silky sheet.

"I had not spoken with anyone so casually since before my father lost his fortune. Perhaps in another life we would have been friends..." She tried to smile at the thought.

Indeed, they may very well have known each other a lifetime ago. As a child, she had attended events thrown by the royal family. Dinners, balls.... She was never in line to be a suitor for one of the princes, but she had played with them. Isla and the princes had been scolded on more than one occasion for teasing one another. Punished for crawling under tables and messing with the adults. Disciplined for pulling each other's hair when they refused to share toys.

"Go on, speak if you must." She waited.

 

[Lynus Anireth]

Lynus looked away from her with a sneer. "You're not a whore for my disposal. All I did was talk to you." Even though all he'd wanted was silence. Now, he couldn't abide it.

He snorted at her quip, his arms folding across his chest as he watched her pat the bed. He stayed where he was, the tension in his body easing slightly as she admitted to thinking of him too. That she had perhaps enjoyed his company as he had hers.

Perhaps in another life we would have been friends...

"And what of this life?.." he asked, his voice softer, as he moved instead to the couch they had both occupied once before. He sat in the same spot, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, his eyes rising to look at her. There was a vulnerability in his gaze that he couldn't hide.

"I don't know what I want to talk about," he admitted, shaking his head. "Perhaps I shouldn't have come. I just missed your company."

The room was silent for a moment, save for the faint sounds of the bustling brothel outside. He ran a hand through his hair, the frustration evident in his posture. "I don't even know why I'm here, Isla. Every day feels like I'm walking through a fog. I thought maybe seeing you would help clear it. But now I just feel... lost."

"I just... I need something real. You felt real to me. I don't know if that makes any sense. But it's the truth." his brow furrowed, a flash of jealousy in his eyes before he drew his gaze to his clasped hands. "Will you wash the smell of him from your skin and sit with me?" he asked quietly.

 

[Isla]

"The life...my life." She watched him as he chose the couch, far from her reach. "Before all of this." Isla rolled over onto her back, her head leaning off the bed where she watched him upside-down. Her golden locks nearly brushed the floor. "You say you thought of me, but surely you have not yet forgotten the pieces of my past. I was not born a whore, you know." Even upside down, there was a little more amusement on her face.

"My father was noble, I suppose. Forgive me, for its been well over a decade since I spent my time enjoying the finer things. Even for a mercenary, and even in your disheveled state, you do seem the type to have also been born into that circle." She eyed him, studying his mannerisms. "Am I correct?"

She flipped back over, a sly smile on her face. "Perhaps you can tell me about that part of you," She suggested, pulling the silky sheet with her as she stood. She wrapped it around her, preserving what little of her modesty she had left. If there was any such thing after what he had seen, walking in.

Will you wash the smell of him from your skin and sit with me?

She froze on her walk to the couch. Shame filled her, but she nodded. "Yes. Of course." She turned, sniffing the air, and walked away from him. Away from the door that led into the brothel's most expensive room and into the door, hidden on the opposite side of the bed. It blended into the wall paper and wooden paneling. A hidden feature if one wished to spend coin on what was behind it- a bathing room.

All Lynus would be able to see from the couch was the sheet, trailing behind her like a wedding dress as she filled the tub with hot water and various herbs that left the whole room smelling of vanilla and lavender. The quiet splashing of her feet as they entered the water was followed by her voice. "What has you feeling so lost?" She called, not entirely keen on sitting in the silence of her own thoughts while she scrubbed at her skin.

 

[Lynus Anireth]

Lynus gave a huff and glanced up at her as she lay there upside down, gossamer hair spilling like sunlight onto the floor. “I haven’t forgotten.” he frowned. "I meant.. can't we be friends in this life?" he winced, realising how childish he sounded.

As she assumed his own upbringing, his gaze narrowed, but he gave her a quiet nod before averting his gaze as she stood, both for her own privacy and so that he didn't have to see the look on her face when he asked her to bathe. He didn't mean to offend her.

He looked up in time to watch her disappear into bathing chambers he had not realised were there. He listened to the sound of her drawing a bath and stepping in. A simple thing, but something about it soothed him. He fidgeted, ignoring the thoughts that crossed his mind, that he might visit with her there, though after barging in to her room already, he realised how terrible an idea that was.

He shook his head at the question she called out. There was so little he could talk to her about, and yet he claimed that was what he had come here for. "It's... complicated," he murmured, evasively and got up, wandering to sit against the wall outside of the bathing room door, so he could better hear her.

"You must think me an idiot.." he laughed under his breath and let his head fall back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. "Many do. It rarely offends me these days."

"I'm sorry I left things that way, before."

 

[Isla]

She was relieved he did not dare to follow her in. Relieved he could not see the look on her face as she contemplated a friendship with him in this lifetime. A life where being associated with her would probably only bring him shame. She could handle it- the stares and whispers, but he didn't exactly strike her as the type who could let words brush past him. If she had been right, if he still had ties to the nobility Isla suspected, than it would certainly tarnish his reputation. It was not ideal to have a whore by his side, nor was it ideal for him to break the nose of every man to comment on it.

He would hear the pouring of water as Isla wrung out a washcloth and set it over her face, scrubbing gently to remove that man's kisses from her skin. She wiped at her arms, torso, and legs while she gave him the freedom to get on with whatever speech he had planned. A speech that never came.

"I do not think you are an idiot." She chimed from beyond the door. He would hear her dunk her head under the water, washing away the scent of the man's sweat and cologne. "A little confused. A little lost. But not an idiot."

She dunked her head again before reemerging. "And I do not blame you for how you left."

Selena. . . The sound of Lynus' hand colliding with the mans' face pulled back the memory of his hands wrapping around her own neck. When she had pushed him. Insisted some things about, whom she now assumed to be- or have been, his wife. The color was leeched from her skin and a horrible, nauseating feeling swept through her. Those words she had chosen to attack him with. . .

She deserved that lingering pain in her neck where his hands had been wrapped around. She deserved the faint bruise that lingered just as the one on her face did.

She was quiet for a long while. Even the gentle swishing of water had frozen to a silence. Then, after far too long, her voice broke.

"Your shirt." An order was given through the brittle voice. Her hand extended past the door. "Give it." Unless you wish to see me nude. She almost added on, but that name once again stopped her. A pang of guilt speared her again. He was not here for that. He was broken. They both were. But Lynus had been the only person that didn't eye her like a wolf after prey and Isla was unsure of how to handle how it had made her feel. She did not know how to handle men in any other way.

"Give it now and get in the bath. You still smell of sewage."