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The reasons that had drawn Isaiah to the bar were, in fact, the very same reasons that had drawn every single one of the dozens of patrons crowding into the hazy, crowded pub space. Unlike the androgynous figure scribbling calculations of calories and equations on a napkin, there was at least one soul there who hadn't even bothered to weigh out his options. Cheap booze, easy women and the promise of swindling a few men out of their hard earned money over a game of pool - those were the things that dreams were made of.

To his credit, he waited patiently for his turn at the bar, leaning on the counter in an empty space as he watched the bartender hop between her patrons in the order of their arrival. It was a skill he always admired about bartenders in busy hotspots, a ritual as old as bars itself and yet, one that took actual talent to master. There was no order to the way people crowded around the bar top, pushing into small spaces and gradually making them bigger by presence alone. Elbows brushed elbows, heads peeked around larger shoulders, like an ever flowing tide of people. Yet, somehow, they made sense of all that chaos and, even more impressively, they tended to remember their most frequent visitors. That was what he liked about this girl, whose name he honestly didn't know, but she likely didn't know his either. All that mattered is that they made eye contact, he waved a hand, and she knew that he wanted another Sam Adams. He might've been third or fiftieth in line, but it would come, soon she'd have a beer in hand for 'that Sam Adams guy'.

Content in the knowledge that he had placed his order and it was on the way, he leaned his side into the bar and took the time to scout the area around him for potential friendly women. His judgment, by now, was beginning to be a little impaired - he'd had more beers than he could count and, honestly, if he hadn't been a regular there was a good chance that the friendly neighborhood bartender might have attempted to cut him off. His eyes caught several others in passing, while flashing charming, if lopsided smiles that promised to blossom into something more as soon as he had another beer in hand. There were the regular bar maids, as he liked to think of them, and then the few fresh faces that dotted the crowd. It was hard to tell, at a glance, which ones would be most susceptible to a drunken pick-up line but even if he struck out once, or twice, there was always someone there willing to warm his bed for the night. Or a few hours, at least.

This pre-game ritual was cut short as a large, sinewy man threw an arm around his shoulders from behind. It was a harmless, playful gesture from a rather intoxicated idiot that elicited a laugh from the dark, burly figure. Unfortunately, two drunks never make for much grace between them, and as Kam turned to greet him he managed to knock a drink out of the hand of his favorite bartender.

"Oh, s**t," he chimed immediately, all too aware of the feeling of glass on elbow. He whipped back just in time to see it spill across the bar top and effectively ruin.. something that a slender little figure was scribbling down. Eliza (he thought that might be her name) was quick with a towel and a sour look, which he countered with that same charming, sloppy smile.

"Just put that one and another on my tab, dollface."

Then his eyes were all for the interesting little woman that stood out not just because she was sitting all alone at the bar. He reached out for the towel the bartender has grudgingly left behind and did his best to wipe up the majority of the Jack and coke now staining the bartop.

"Hey, love, sorry about that." He leaned down to put real effort into the mop up, but also in an attempt just to get close to the stranger. Leave it to Kam to simultaneously spill someone's drink and hit on them in the same breath.

Dark eyes snapped up just in time to catch the wink that accompanied a rather.. interesting confession. Even though the dark creature before him had openly admitted to being not quite what Kam was expecting, he still took the time to drag his eyes slowly over the slender form. It was much easier to trace the line of his figure now that he was on his feet but it didn't really help him distinguish what part of the figure was more man than not. The hand that had paused in his attempt to clean up the mess found motion once more, laying the rag out so it was hanging off the bartender's side.

As she set his beer down, he grabbed it with a nod, then turned back to Isaiah. Despite the fact that he no longer looked like he wanted to get in his pants, neither did he look like he was going to recoil in disgust.

"I suppose you supposed wrong, cause I'm not gonna do either of those things." The broad, dark man seemed amused with himself - so much so that one had to wonder if this was a situation he had played out before. His ease and lack of disgust was probably a dead give away to his flirt-first-ask-questions-later attitude. He leaned his own burly form against the bar and took a long gulp of his beer.

"You're pretty hot, not gunna lie, but I've already got my own set of dangly bits to play with, though, no offense. Just not the way my cookie crumbles." His grin spread into a smirk and he flashed an answering wink at the man that was at least honest enough to tell him before they got into a precariously awkward situation. Kam liked to think he was smart enough to figure it out before hand, but he was also well on his way to intoxicated. He'd woken up next to a lot of women that looked entirely different than he remembered from the night before.

"I'm a pretty damn good wing man, if it's any consolation. The name is Kam." He set his beer down on the bar, wiped the condensation left on his palm on his tattered jeans, and offered said hand in a belated introduction.

One thick, dark brow raised as this companion gave up a name that he was entirely sure was not his own. It amused him enough to bring a smile to his lips, which spread wider the more he thought about the differences between Taylor Swift and this dark, mysterious bar stranger.

"If that's who you want to be, I won't argue with you Ms. Swift. It's a pleasure."

There was a residual chuckling as he pulled himself up easily onto one of the vacant bar stools and settled his heavy wait down with a relieved groan. He was halfway to bringing his beer back up to his lips when his new bar mate asked the one question in the world that Kamboja Vaiphei always faltered over: why not share your story? The hand around his beer glass tightened and stopped midair while his eyes rested on the amber liquid sloshing inside. It wasn't a long pause, but it was noticeable, and he could only attempt to cover it up (and buy himself more time) by downing the rest of the beer in one gluttonous gulp. He set the empty glass back on the bar, waved at Ellie (was that her name?) for another, and turned to settle his dark eyes on Taylor Swift. How much truth was necessary and how much lying could he get away with?

"Well," he began, then cleared his throat, "my parents were killed when I was a kid and I never adjusted well to that. I used my wealthy inheritance to see the world and escape all my problems, like any well adjusted teenager does." Another beer was set down and he reached for it, curling his fingers around the base of the chilled glass and tapping an uneasy beat with the tips. "But then tragedy struck in Destiny City and I returned home, poured tons of money into top-of-the-line super hero equipment, and now I spend every night scouring the streets for evil-doers as a masked vigilante." The story was finished with that same amused smile, if somewhat weaker than it had been before. He leaned closer, for effect, and summoned a gravelly, low voice - his best impression of Batman. "But don't tell anyone, or I'll have to kill you."

If this mysterious, interesting stranger wanted to be Taylor Swift, then Kam could be a convincing Dark Knight. The sad truth was that the story wasn't entirely that far off.

"What about you, Ms Swift? How is your feud with Katy Perry these days?"

A good song pun, let lone two, always went straight to Kam's funny bone. It was likely just the mutual appreciation of his favorite comedic form.

Yet, he listened as respectively to Taylor's song as the gothic man had listened to his own, though his lips quirked into a grin at every cliche mid-twenties, white girl phrase that dropped. The dreadhead himself didn't know much about Taylor Swift - apart from the fact that she had moved to the big city and become a super star - so he couldn't pick out which pieces were all this mysterious bar guest's and which were true to the pop sensation herself.

"Well, they always did say that you go on too many dates and you can't make them stay," he shrugged, drew his beer close to his lips, and added "you should just shake it off" before he took another deep sip. The motion didn't pass as fluidly as he had hoped and he ended up laughing halfway through the gulp, which resulted in a fit of sputtering coughs. The beer dropped sloppily back onto the bar and teetered a moment before settling back on its base while the large man beat a fist into his chest, as if that might clear up the beer that had tried to go down the wrong pipe. By the time that he had gotten himself back under control, he'd regained a bit of his composure and adopted a thoughtful look. Even if Bar-Taylor was making light of the situation, there was some truth to it, and he was too much of a bleeding heart these days to let a man suffer alone.

So he intended to remedy that suffering the same way he remedied his own. One hand slammed down on the bartop, loud enough to cause the bartender to jerk her head in his direction. There was the smallest apologetic smile on his lips, but he'd gotten what he wanted - her attention.

"A round of fireball shots, love!"

His eyes slid to his smaller companion and that apologetic smile slid into a smarmy, daring little smirk.

"You're not allowed to refuse."

A chuckle lingered on Kamboja's lips as the man came alive next to him. Although he liked to come to bars to find something pretty to take home, he wasn't opposed to spending his time with a new drinking buddy. They were few and far between as more and more people decided to grow up and gets jobs and the majority of his interactions of late had been with the underground community busy fighting a war on the streets after dark. Their existence was the same reason he was driven in doors, seeking shelter in numbers and avoiding the only thing that gave his life any meaning. He could drown all of that out with booze, pretty women or good companionship.

Tonight was providing at least two of his requirements.

"Oh, I happen to love cheap dates." He didn't hesitate to salute the darkly clad figure with his own tiny glass, made almost comical in comparison to his hulk of a hand, then knocked it back with a practiced ease. Apart from a small grit of his teeth, he seemed unperturbed by the cinnamon burn at the back of his throat. Years of reckless behavior had numbed him to all manners of abuse, though sometimes he wondered if he should see it as a badge of honor or a sign that he needed help. As long as the world kept spinning the web around him, he wasn't going to question it too deeply.

"Another?" He asked, though his hand was already in the air, two fingers held up for Lisa's attention. His behavior was predictable for any bartender in the area and, though she wasn't rushing to put his request ahead of the dozens of other patrons vying for her attention, the briefest nod of her head came in recognition. Content that she knew what he wanted, he turned back to Taylor Swift and took a long swig of his drink to wash it down.

"I promise to carry you home if you pass out, unless you want to go home with someone else, in which case I promise to make sure they aren't an axe murderer. Deal?" The dark dreadhead might not have been up to bat for Isaiah's team, but he certainly didn't have any qualms about being the sugar daddy tonight.

Thirty-seven minutes.

A thick brow rose as he calculated just how long Taylor Swift claimed it would take him to get smashed. On one hand, he had to admit that it seemed an unlikely brief period of time, but on the other.. well, the kid was pretty small. Years of alcohol abuse and his weight, in general, easily quadrupled that guestimate for Kamboja himself. Without hard liquor, it was usually a challenge for the burly man to get drunk before his system started expelling it all together. It was one challenge he was coming to find irritating, in more ways than one.

The claim also told him that, despite the size and limited intake, Taylor was probably a kindred spirit. People that didn't drink usually didn't know how many drinks it would take to get to the center of the tootsie pop. They normally just aimed high, spiraled too quickly, and burnt out before the night was through - then vowed not to do it again until they'd forgotten the disaster entirely. A repeat customer customer, however, could figure the conversion down to a science. It left him to wonder what demons his new companion was running from.

"Redheads, hm?" Kam stared openly at the girl sitting by her lonesome, remembering a time with another pretty girl that had a wave of pretty curls, dolled up in a pretty little dress. There was a distance to his eyes as memories fluttered by, but the spell broke as the bartender set down another round of shots. "I can see the appeal, I suppose."

He grabbed the napkin Isaiah had scribbled his address on, gave it a brief once over, then tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans. It'd be a lie to say he wasn't impressed with the forethought. Kam would have just given up and dropped the boy on his couch until he was coherent again. Hopefully he retained his own wits enough to remember it was there when the time came. He used a single finger to slide Isaiah's next shot toward him, watching as it stuttered over the tiny nicks and dips of the bar top.

"Oh, the big monster things?" A shrug, careless, as if he didn't actually care about the soul sucking monsters and their rampant destruction of the city every night. "You just gotta punch 'em real hard. One or two clocks to their noggins and they just turn into a big pile of ash. Not unlike vampires." It was a joke made under the assumption that no other warrior in the fight for justice was getting hammered in a bar at night, but anyone that had ever actually witnessed a youma go down would know the truth behind it. It was the one thing he didn't want to talk about at all. He saluted Taylor with his shot instead and downed it again, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth to savor the way the fire lingered.

"Another one bites the dust." It was unclear if he meant monsters or the shot, but it was abundantly clear that he didn't want to linger on the discussion of either. His gaze flickered back up to the redhead instead, reverting the topic back to something he was comfortable with. "What do you think would get her attention? She's playing hard to get, I think, but no girl wears a dress like that if she doesn't want attention."

Kam contented himself with nursing his beer as Taylor played out the story, letting his mind get carried away as he tried to build the girl's lover in his mind. There was an immediate smirk on his lips as his smaller companion decided on a lesbian relationship for the mysterious bar girl, but even his typical male nature didn't stop him from interrupting. There was a definite buzz building and a good story, by a practiced fabricator, was worth listening to.

The way the redhead was sitting, staring at her phone, and ignoring all attempts at advances - well, it couldn't have been so far off the mark.

"If she was truly trying to make her lover jealous, she would be flirting, don't you think? Or at least trying not to look so disinterested in everyone here." He leaned his elbow onto the bar and took a large swig of his beer, letting his gaze flutter away from Taylor and out into the crowd milling about.

"Maybe they're roleplaying. She comes and sits at the bar, acts disinterested, and her lover has to pretend to be a stranger interesting enough to earn her affection for the night." There didn't seem to be anyone else, other than themselves, taking direct notice of the beauty - but that didn't mean, of course, that her lover wasn't there. "Or they're serial killers planning to murder the person she does take home." His eyebrows raised at the suggestion, waggling a little, before he knocked back the last of his beer. He set the empty glass down and slid it carefully to the bartender's edge of the bartop with his fingers, then glanced back down at his new friend.

"Or maybe you've got this all wrong. Maybe she's here to cheat on her girlfriend and she's meeting in a public place, where she doesn't think she'll be noticed." As the bartender set down another beer, Kam's eyes grew distant, watching the enchantress. Although the game was fictional, there was that look to his face that said something about it hit close to home, as if he'd lived out every sad, drab little bar story that could possibly be thought of.

"She is wearing red." He added, diverting his attention away from his own personal ******** class="quote">