Most were able to come to a less than savory place like this, indulge themselves with a few strong drinks, and find that ever-sweet release from their life and whatever meagertroubles they would be working to weather through. It aggravated the dark hunter to no end, though some might foolishly dare to try and tell him that it was not so much that it aggravated him as it was that he envied them. Saying such a thing was likely to earn more than a dangerous look from the man who despised being told what he was or what he was actually feeling. Even if it was true, he would still stubbornly refuse that he was at all capable of looking upon those lightweights far from used to the sinful - if not almost lethal - amounts of alcohol Lazarus consumed on a nearly daily basis. Fuck, he couldn't even remember the last time he was able to lose himself in only three or four drinks. All he knew was that it has been far too long since the liquor has been able to provide for him the temporary reprieve from his own - and mostly - misery which could very easily be considered self-inflicted to a large degree. It wasn't as though there was someone holding a gun to the man's head, telling him to hate the world or else his life would come to an end. No, that would be much too simple of an excuse. There wasn't a single damn soul out there that he could pin thr blame to, no one whom he could point out and say that it was because of them that he was the ill-tempered and cold being that he was. The way his father had been so hard on him, the relationship he never should have been in to begin with, the murder of his parents... they all did in fact play a part in who the hunter was now. There was no denying that, and yet still he could hardly place the blame on any one or all of them. He couldn't remember a time in his life where he'd been genuinely happy... Perhaps as a toddler, when the world was so incredibly simple. All he had to worry about back then was learning the alphabet, how to read and write. Simple shit. Naptime, lunchtime, everything was a routine back then. His father changed all that though when he'd become old enough to start realizing that the man had already decided what the future would look like for Lazarus.

Gods knew he would do very nearly anything and everything to have things be simple. He would even go as far as to say that there were moments where he would almost fantasize about how his life could have been had things been entirely different, despite being entirely and completely aware that what he wanted and what he could have could not be any more different than they were. There was nothing he could have done about his youth, when his father hadn't really regarded him much until the boy with messy caramel-colored hair so painfully unaware of the years to come had reached the age when he was able to understand things beyond simple words and simple tasks like dressing himself, brushing his teeth, or how to tie his shoelaces. It was like some sort of switch had been flipped around the time he'd turned five, maybe six. Tal had expected so much from the boy fated to grow into the loathsome man he was. Nothing he ever did was good enough for the man young Lazarus would have gone to the ends of the earth to please just once. Like most sons, he would have eagerly done something that might make his father look upon him with that proud expression. That moment never came for Lazarus, no matter how hard he tried. He was meant to take over the family council one day, and it was this high expectation his father held of him that he could never seem to reach. Just when the boy thought he was so close, it would be yanked away and that bar set even higher despite Lazarus never having reached it before. Failure. That was all he'd ever known in his childhood, disappointment and icy frustration the only things that Tal ever seemed to look on his only son with. Eventually, Lazarus learned how to stop caring about what the man thought of him or the poor choices he was prone to making. All those times he'd been sent to the principal's office for getting into fights for petty reasons, all those nights he would stalk the streets of his hometown and see what trouble he could get into, they only made things harder for the young man. However, he had reached a point where he didn't give a shit what his father thought. As far as Lazarus was concerned, he would never be the son Tal wanted, and that was that. Even when Lazarus had gone through those family traditions and managed to kill the alpha of a pack that had grown too large and was beginning to cause trouble the night he had gone on his first hunt with the rest of the council. One might think that his father would have been proud, maybe eased up on the young hunter.

That didn't happen, though. Instead, Tal expected more, pushed Lazarus even harder in those sparring sessions and teachings to the point where the divide which had existed between father and son only grew deeper and wider until it rivaled all the oceans of the world. So, he started drinking and partying. That was back when life finally held some sort of trivial pleasure for him. That was back when the whiskey had been his closest companion, when he could drink enough to forget everything and wake up in a woman's bed and slip plot before he was missed. He and Donovan would go where the alcohol was flowing and people threw away their inhibitions, and the dark hunter had managed to find some shallow and blatantly artificial contentment. Then, he found Isabelle and, unknowingly, a whole new level of misery. It never really should have gone further than that one night when they'd been drinking and ended up sharing a bed, but it did. He couldn't quite remember how it was they even agreed to take on those titles of boyfriend and girlfriend, but they had. He quickly came to see more clearly in himself the possessiveness and fury which had once only shown as a fierce protectiveness of his little sister. He'd beaten the shit out of several assholes who thought they could touch her or look at the raven-haired woman with mocha skin and devil-red lips. At first, so blinded by the ecstasy he felt every time they slept together and thinking that he might have actually found someone he cared about aside from Ellie, the hunter had thought that those fights had been to keep what he'd claimed as his. But, when he caught the bitch flirting with another guy, that was when he realized she'd never been his to begin with. He'd been an idiot, fooled by her beauty and devilish charms. There were no words to describe the pure rage the man had felt in that moment, and when he'd knocked the bastard out right in front of her and got into a yelling match with the woman he thought he had feelings for... well, it had been the definition of a messy breakup and the very last time he ever allowed for a woman to hold such any sort of power over him.

Until Vhal. The most infuriating thing about the white-haired witch was the fact that he hadn't even wanted a single fucking thing to do with her from the very first words she said to him."What are you looking at?"... That's all it had taken for him to know in that very moment that he would hate her. That encounter had been like fire, and his own rebuttal to her piss-poor attitude the gasoline thrown carelessly onto those flames. He still adorned the scar on his sternum from the third degree burn she'd left him that night in the burlesque after effectively putting the man on his back when she'd knocked his legs out from under him like the cheap shot he hadn't been anticipating. The punch to his face hadn't fazed him, but the hunter hadn't expected for her to be a dirty fighter. Not that it had really been dirty, but try telling the man that and see what happens. To make matters even better, she'd showed up at his townhouse the next morning, Ellie having run into the witch that afternoon only to invite her over for dinner. As if he wasn't miserable enough, it was like life had snickered at the man and decided to integrate Vhal into his life despite his best efforts to kick her out of it. The whole thing was like a smack in the face. His life wasn't already shitty enough with his past apparently, so fate had been so compelled to push Lazarus even further. Now, here he was, trying to drink her off his mind and knowing it wouldn't work. How he'd gone from hating her with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns only to end up finding himself far too close to her residence than he cared to admit to, he didn't have the faintest idea, but it was fucking frustrating. So, when he orders that drink and downs most of it the second the glass hits his coaster, the hunter doesn't even stop to think why the smooth burn wasn't as strong as he was used to. He was almost content to just assume it was the damn side effect that came with those brilliant blue eyes that tried to wriggle to the forethought of his mind. Why wouldn't they be the reason he couldn't quite taste the whiskey? They were the whole reason he was here tonight in this worn bar not even sure how much money he would waste until he was satisfied, should he be so lucky as to feel the familiar haze of intoxication sinking into his mind and dulling everything until he could have some fragile semblance of hollow satisfaction.

Unexpectedly, accented tenor tones pull the hunter from those miserable memories that battle for the attention he was fiercely determined not to give them. Dark forest green eyes slide over to the man beside him, making a better observation of the leather jacket he adorns. And yet, those unusual eyes... the way blue was laced with silver... Warlock. All the teachings forced into the man by his long-dead father make it easy for Lazarus to now realize the air about the guy suggesting he try something else wasn't exactly human. However, he hardly cares about this observation almost second nature to him him, instead downing the last of whatever it was the bartender had given him and waves her back down before she hardly has a moment to get very far."I'll have what he has. Also double.", he orders then, dark forest eyes narrowed for a moment as she turns to get his drink, hardly taking long to fill that glass and serve it to the dark hunter."How hard is it to get a decent drink? For fuck sake", he growls lowly as the woman walks away, the closest thing to a sort of thanks to the man sitting beside him. Lazarus had never been the best at socializing, the skill seeming practically useless to him when all he really ever used to exercise was how to say the right things in order to land himself a one-night stand. Now that he essentially had no desires at all to try and steal the sheets of another woman, having tried once or twice since his first night with Vhal that never should have happened, only to find that for some absolutely absurd reason, it only made him want her more. He knew he shouldn't have stayed at her place that night after running into her alleged master. God, how he wanted to break every bone in that damn vampire and set the pieces on fire for putting him in that situation. In reality, he could have walked away, left the witch to deal with the bastard on her own... but did he? No. Wait, why was he thinking about her again?! When the women on the other side of the bar manage to have Lazarus glancing over with their girlish giggles and soft whispers, he makes no effort to hide the roll of his eyes before looking back to the bottles on those shelves behind the counter."Women", he says disdainfully, refusing to glance back over to the flirtatious creatures looking for gods knew what. Whether it was a one-night stand or them so stupidly thinking a bar like this would have some sort of hidden diamond in the rough, he didn't want any part of it.