Drown Your Sorrows [Open]
She had waited. Iris said her peace and ordered him to go; no matter how little her heart wanted to send him away, her head said it was for the best. She did not work like that. Her heart did not work like that. Iris was no lovestruck child, fainting at the feet of her paramour whenever he came calling. No, she was a proud and relatively influential goddess who served the King and Queen. And yet Zephyrus thought he could just march back into her life after being gone for an eternity.
No. Absolutely not.
When the door closed and her estranged husband finally gone from view, she screamed. A loud, frustrated and wholly hurt scream that would pit itself into the bones of anyone who heard it. It wasn't her, he said, it was him. Wasn't that just the cliché of the century. Men always tried to blame themselves when the fault was in the other party. It was him, but it was a lack of her being able to hold his interest. Wasn't she beautiful anymore? Was she no longer desirable?
Zephyrus had left her long ago. Mere months ago Helios had refused her.
Ridiculous.
Iris stared at the now closed door and realized that even the idea that she was anything but beautiful to behold was ludicrous. Just for even having the thought, she would prove it to herself. She was going out. Iris was going to go out, she was going to drink and she was going forget that Zephyrus was ever standing in front of her again.
She didn't go to Hera. The Queen had little tolerance for wibbling and sniveling; preferring by far to get even with one's spouse than sitting and letting the eyes leak over it. Or worse, drinking the problem away. And as angry as Iris might have been with Zephyrus, unleashing Hera on him was a fate worse than death and something she wished on no man.
Peitho was also out of the question. Persuasion was a wonderful drinking companion and one that Iris really needed to find time to see again, but as lovely as she was - she too had rather skewed ideas of how to handle this problem. A conclusion that the Rainbow Messenger needed to get laid was a simple one, but something that -no matter how honorable Peitho's intentions were- should be done on her own.
No. Which is what brought her to Vegas. Alone she sat, bar after bar, really starting to doubt her ability to hold anyone's attention anymore. Couples, there were couples everywhere. Wasn't this suppose to be the city of what happens here, stays here? And yet, the only ones who ever paid her more than a second's attention spent the majority of it staring at her breasts. Iris was sad, lonely and it was probably painted across her face like a large blinking sign proclaiming, "I Have Baggage!"
"What are these called again?" She asked the bartender, looking into her now empty shot glass. "I want two more."
He smiled and started setting up her request. "Snake bites. You have to be careful with these, the lime juice cuts the flavor of the whiskey. Yukon Jack will sneak up on you."
"Don't care. What else have I got right now?"
Raising an eyebrow, he withheld the glasses for a second. "You driving anywhere tonight, Ma'am?" He would ask for her keys if she were.
Iris sighed. Ma'am. He called her 'ma'am'. That meant she was old, didn't it? Shaking her head, she handed over the empty glass. She didn't drive. Never needed to and never bothered to learn.