it's a bad idea, right?

There's always this deep cutting need to deprecate a given situation - to flippantly spit out an oh, nice, score at the idea that this guy doesn't want to harm him. But also, what if that's a lie? Like how they play music for livestock before they turn them into food.

Do they do that? He feels like they do that. Ren's mind suddenly tries to save itself from anxiety by prying through the backlog of about four million reels and shorts and tiktok posts he's scrolled through in the last few weeks for the memory of livestock trivia but that's useless and also stupid.

Walls and shit. Winter nodded, looking around and seeing no sign of art directly around them, which was disappointing. "Will you show me your art?" He asked, and then glanced over at the man on the ground. His smile grew and he shook his head, almost finding it funny, though it probably wasn't. "No! He is asleep. Drunk. His friends are on their way out, they will find him and bring him home. He will wake up hungover, but he was going to wake up like that even if he had not met me," he reassured them, looking at Ren again.

The nudge pulled him out of his own head and Flynn cleared his throat. "I don't think friends... do that with one another." Not that Flynn would particularly know all that well. He was new to the whole "friendship" thing. "Or maybe they do and I just haven't experienced it." He shrugged his shoulders, trying to play it off and not show just how flustered the conversation was making him.

The butterflies died and instead, his stomach twisted. "Has that happened before?" Flynn's voice was lower and more firm as he leaned in towards Winter. "Someone taking advantage of you?" His eyes then left the other's to flicker around at the crowd. He was searching for inappropriate behaviors. People who seemed to push their luck or their own power over the performers there. Was someone there, tonight, who had harmed Winter in the past?

Even though Flynn had full control over his magic, he could feel it pressing against his skin -- the air tightening around him.

"I do that with my friends, sometimes." He didn't want to explain much more than that, but if he were to get into details then he'd tell Flynn how much better the sex was when both parties cared about each other. And Winter cared very deeply for his friends, the few that he had now especially. "When we both want to."

The last thing he'd meant to do was upset Flynn further by discussing things that had happened to him in the past, working as a scantily clad dancer. Winter reached over and placed a cold hand on Flynn's arm, smiling reassuringly. "Yes, but you do not have to worry about me. Anyone that hurts me here gets hurt, too," he didn't want to say more, but when he turned his head, one of his fangs was just visible in his smile.

His gaze moved back to Flynn after a moment, and he smiled again. "No, it's okay! I want to show you. I watched them with my grandmother last. She liked watching them. It would be a nice way to remember her, too," he explained.

The dangers were forgotten as he answered her question, and though she wanted to step closer, she wouldn't allow herself to, because then she might move straight past the vampire and sink her teeth into the other's sloppy seconds.

"How do you know when to stop, so that you don't kill them?" She had tried once before, but she couldn't get it right. She had gotten the timing all wrong, or perhaps she had gotten it right but then didn't want to stop. She didn't remember much of her first feeding; it was all a blood-fuelled haze.

He glanced again at his prey, and then back to Thao, smiling. "Have you ever taken time with your meal?" He asked. He meant it genuinely, not at all condescending, because he remembered the early days for himself as well. It wasn't like his first kill had been slow and comfortable. He'd been messy, too fast, too eager. Sometimes he still felt that way. "When you start drinking the blood, you become attached to the pulse. You can feel it. The blood flows to the steady beat of the heart, like a drum." Winter closed his eyes, as if imagining it now.

"It is strong, at first, usually. But it gets slower and weaker. I can usually feel that they are going to go unconscious before they do. Sometimes I can stop there, let them walk away, but usually I let them sleep. And then you stop, and they won't be dead." He explained, opening his eyes again. "Are you hungry?"

He lifted the glass to his lips and took a long swig. He needed more, if he was going to keep embarrassing himself in front of one of the only friends he even had. "Winter can be nice and Ice can't?" Flynn asked. "And I could argue that you are all three, regardless of the name you choose for the day or night." Ice. Winter. It didn't really matter. Flynn saw him as the same.

Winter shrugged. "Ice can't be too nice, or people take advantage here. Most people keep their hands to themselves, but if they think you're going to keep quiet about it then there's no guarantee. I might be nice, but I don't think most people are," he explained, looking at the bar for a second or two. It wasn't something he liked to dwell on, his early days dancing here. All the people who worked there were awesome and supportive and helpful, so he'd been taken care of, but he'd had a few scares with handsy clientele.

Before he could force himself to smile again, Flynn asked about the dance videos, and Winter felt his stomach flip. He made eye contact with the other again, forced the smile, and nodded. "Yes, maybe. I have not watched them in a long, long time." It was one of the few things he'd ended up going back home for eventually.

The redhead hanging off her arm had spent the last twenty minutes talking about a missing friend. Frankie found pretending to care to be exhausting and annoying. She was approximately two seconds away from compelling the woman to shut up when the redhead suddenly froze in shock and horror. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open to let out a scream loud enough to make Frankie physically flinch. "Mon amour, why are you yelling?"

Then the scent of fresh blood hit her. Her eyes found the mouth of the alley, where a body was slumped by the wall. The weak but steady heartbeat still rattling around inside the human's chest. Nope, not dead. A good thing, no? The redhead tore away from her, dropping to her knees beside the unconscious body, slapping at their cheek and begging them to wake up, wake up, wake up.

Frankie rolled her eyes so hard they nearly left orbit.

There he was, the culprit, having the audcaity to ask if there was a problem, acting as if he didn't just ruin her night. She stared at him, before stepping forward and planting the heel of a very expensive stiletto directly onto his foot. "You know what? Yeah, there is a problem, babe, she's not supposed to scream bloody murder until after I get her home." Frankie gestured vaguely toward the hysterical redhead sobbing into her friend. "You've made my date cry. Do you know how hard it is getting her from crying over a corpse to taking her clothes off?" Another stomp. The one time she left her house in decades, and this was what happened? Had Corpse Bride finally found a witch to curse her?

"You owe me a hot date."

When her eyes met his, he did everything he could to maintain the eye contact, ducking his head to be at her level and raising his eyebrows to show concern for her. "He is okay, just sleeping. He had a lot to drink," Winter was speaking gently to her, his sympathetic smile meeting his eyes as he stared at the woman. And it was easy to believe, the man still breathing as he sat there, unconscious. Winter had made sure not to leave a mess, the only sign of anything else wrong the puncture wounds near his collar bone, but that was already covered again by his jacket. Throughout his life, Winter had always had a way of calming the nerves of others. He was soft and kind and people tended to receive his warmth with ease. Since death, he'd just gotten better at it. Sure, there was something to be said about the supernatural power of it all, but it was still something he was proud of himself for. Convincing others to do his bidding was harder, and a skill he didn't practice often. But helping others to calm down and see a bad situation for something less dire? That he could do.

"I will make sure he gets home safely, I promise you," he added, his smile growing only slightly as he tilted his chin in her direction. "You should have a nice night, like you were having. There's no reason to dwell on your friend," He shook his head and waited until she seemed to be following along with him. Then he stood, holding out his hand to help the woman up, and turned to look at Frankie over his shoulder. "Just a hiccup in your night, is all," he said, shrugging.

That obvious problem, plus the fact that the young vampire was practically salivating, honed in on the pinprick marks in the human's neck still leaking blood. She couldn't drink from him, not when she didn't know how much the vampire in front of her had taken, and not when she was still so new to feeding from humans directly.

"You... You do that often? And you leave them alive?"

He nodded, suddenly looking cheerful again. "I usually leave them alive, yes! I do not like killing. Unless they are bad to me," Winter explained, looking over his shoulder at his unconscious prey. "He was not bad to me."

"Ice." Flynn tilted his head to the side as his eyes finally flickered to meet his friend's again. "Are they not the same person?" A pause. "What's the difference between the two?" He was curious, now, wondering which side of Winter was the true one. The real one. Did he know this person, that he'd called friend, at all? Or was "Winter" just a facade he put on?

Flynn knew what that was like.

"Is there anywhere I could witness that type of dancing?" He asked. "The story telling one. I think... I think I'd like that one more than..." His attention shifted towards the other dancers. "Not that this is bad. It's not. You weren't." He stated, quickly. "This kind of dancing just isn't always... to my taste."

It took a moment's thought for Winter to really grasp the question and how he wanted to answer it. He didn't think it was as simple as Winter vs. Ice and who was the real him. "They are the same person, but different. Winter is me, how I want the world to see me and think of me. Ice is also how I want to be seen, but different. Ice is-" he trailed off, frowning, not sure what word he was looking for. "Desirable. Confident. What a place like this needs, so I can be successful," Winter explained, smiling again. "Winter can just be nice."

It was a simplistic way of putting it, but Winter figured it was a start.

"Oh, I wish I did more of that type of dancing, but I do not do it often anymore. Sometimes in my own home! Or when I am alone. I save some of my old videos, too!"

Ren nods, shaking. When the other question comes through, he tries to find the words rattling around in a panicked mind. "Uh... s'a rebreather. Like, for the spray paint." His thumb points at the backpack slung over his shoulder.

"Uh... you're not gonna like, hurt me, are you?"

Frowning, he looks at the rebreather again, and then at Ren's face, his brows furrowing together as if he needs a moment to think about that. For the spray paint. "How do you mean?" He asks finally, cocking his head to the side curiously. "You are an artist?"

Winter looks surprised by Ren's question, eyebrows rising and eyes widening, lips parting slightly to immediately answer negatively until he realizes he's supposed to be scary and intimidating right now. "No, I don't plan on harming you," he said after a moment's thought, fighting the urge to smile. "Where were you using your spray paints?"

He wanders just out of the gathered crowd of smokers, and finds a quieter spot to stand, with his plastic cup of water, and a dark camel coat he can't fumble the buttons up on. So he's given up on that.

The writer wonders if one of the folk just up ahead of him might mind helping him with the buttons in a bit, maybe they'll laugh about it and call him silly or drunk. Maybe he's both. Maybe it's time to go home, and not go back to the super nice, very well-dressed, sparkling green-eyed pilates instructor waiting at the bar, with Tomás' number in his phone. Feels kinda like he's chasing things he's missed out on, lately. (Compensating for heartbreak, also) But before Tomás can even amble up and talk about buttons on a jacket to more strangers, they're getting intimate and he's quick to red flag himself outta the private moment. He thinks he's done pretty good over the months to not get bothered by the reminder of an ex that got bored of him, and pushed him out and never came back.

But that used to be them, fumbling in the alley.

His ex never dropped him to the ground, though.

Are they okay? Priestley misunderstands the question fired off at him, and thinks it's a statement. Fog-brained, and sobering by the second.

Quickly, Tomás' feet kick through the snow, coat whipping in the wind as he jogs up the alley to check on the pair. "Hey! Is, uh, you guys okay?" He's tapping his pockets for his phone in case they need medical. Sudden, fleeting moment of concern. Oh fuck. He didn't leave it at the bar, did he? No. Maybe it's in his jeans. He'll find it in a second. Dropping to his knees down on the snow, the wet soaks through denim, and he's nudging the slumped figure. Be awake, be awake. Please. "Hey, you uh good — can you hear me?" Whilst he reaches for the neck, to brazenly check for a pulse, there's a wound beneath his fingers. No. He's imagining that. Was. He knows there was. There's a smidge of red on the inside of a collar; it doesn't match the non-existent, Tomas' imaginary —

All the neurons in his brain fire at once. He's been this guy.

Head snaps back up to the stranger, "You're a... nightchild. Oh boy, you can't —" a beat, to shake his head as he's relieved to hear the thrum of a pulse, "Not cool! I mean, awesome." Sort of. He wishes he got a photo — "But, you, this. You were gonna leave? Mierda." Shaking his head, both relieved and exasperated. He'd had Priestley panicked for a second, and just as confused about the circumstances of the whole thing. But the sleeper's breathing. Thank fuck.

What's he gonna write about this?

"A...nightchild?" Winter smiled as he repeated the word, reaching out a hand for Tomas to take, wordlessly offering to help him up. "You don't need to worry, he'll be fine. His friends are going to come look for him in ten minutes. He will sleep this off," he reassured the other, laughing and taking a step back, looking down at the body one last time and shrugging. He didn't feel bad, didn't feel ashamed, but he did recognize that it wasn't good to have been spotted by anyone.

He took a moment to gather himself, and then he looked into the other's eyes, raising a brow. "You could keep this quiet, too, you know," he suggested, smiling again.

She watches the feed with an amused smile.

"Me? Have a problem?" She shakes her head with a faux pout, "Just wondering if we could have some fun together." Oksana tilts away from Winter, and looks to the human slumped down in the alley - bundled and where someone could see them. A caring vampire - that's sweet.

Her smile widens as she straightens up. "I think I've seen you around." Perhaps at her escapades to the Cabaret, trying to keep an eye on Vanessa. "Still hungry? I'm feeling a little peckish."

These days, he cared about things like that.

"You might have! I dance at the Satin Cabaret, and you look familiar too," he said, nodding. He licked the last drops of blood from his lips and smiled again. "I'm always a little hungry, honestly," Winter said cheerfully.

"Problem?" the vampire is asking. Brow up. A shade of confidence in his tone. The warlock does not answer. Her coat is drawn all the way to her chin so that she looks like the stalk of a streetlamp, gravity shifting like a well around her, eyes fixed on the slouched figure he has left at the brick. She does not sow a single fuck for the vampire; she seethes, instead, for all that blood about to go to waste. She moves then - striding past the offender, hopping some alleyway debris, and kneeling at the side of wastefully arranged human. Two fingers slip up along the cooling jaw - the easy, practiced touch of a warlock who has spent her whole life siphoning life-and-death, life-and-death, life-and-death through the long quiet tunnels of her veins.

"He left a great deal of you," she informs the body, conversationally. What a waste. What a fucking waste. "I think it is important, in moments like this, that we are honest about who finishes what."

She lays her palm flat against the human's sternum, and pulls. A small contemptuous sneer touches the corner of her mouth as she pulls, and pulls, and pulls at the magic. There must have been an ancestor of hers once - one who probably still sits nestled somewhere in her bones - who pulled just like this at a loom: patient, steady, gathering the long bright thread of something that did not, strictly, belong to her, and making something new of it because she could.

As she takes the blood for herself, the magic for herself, Cait wonders if the vampire knows yet that she has just finished his dinner. That is what is happening here. He left it on the plate; she has eaten it for him; and now they are both standing in this alley, one of them simply surviving and the other measurably more powerful for it.

"I've seen rats with better economy," Caitlin finally, condescendingly, speaks. "I do not, as a rule, think highly of rats, and the comparison is frankly, unkind to the rats - who at least finish what they start."

Her sneer gains the smallest gleam of tooth behind it. And why not? She is a warlock, with fresh blood at her fingertips. Whatever he says next, she would like him to say it under the load-bearing understanding that he is, presently, the second most efficient predator in this conversation, and the gap is not what one would call close.

He watched her move to the human, and while he couldn't really see what she was doing, he almost felt it. In the tension he wanted to bite, the air all around them thick with it. She wasn't going to leave the human alive, like he had.

When she turned to him, scolding him, he did smile. It was a slower, drunken smile. Not that he felt drunk, necessarily, though he did enjoy the little bit of a head buzz. "I was full," he said simply, shrugging a shoulder. The response was a tease, not true, but he didn't care to hear what she had to say. Whoever this was, she took herself very seriously, and he wasn't in the mood to entertain that tonight.

What the hell had he just seen? The question of it races around in his head. His heart thuds in his chest though, when he realizes the shape in the alley's coming towards him. Blink. Blink hard. That'll make it not happen.

Nope.

Ren winces as they guy rounds the corner - what's meant to be a night-time excursion to try and grab some photo-stock for a side-project has turned into him becoming witness to an assault or something. He feels both stupid and afraid when the guy turns directly towards him though, and it's everything he can do not to yelp through his rebreather.

"Uh... Nope...?"

His hands shoot up in defense, palms forward. "No problem. Just us chickens, haha."

So he leans in a little closer, forcing Ren to meet his eyes. And he smiles, though the smile isn't his typical friendly thing, it's colder. A little more sinister.

"You are not to tell anyone about what you just saw," he said slowly, his words clear and concise. He hadn't used his compulsion with many people, but this seemed as good a time as any to practice. Winter didn't need anyone coming after him for this.

As he opened his mouth to say more, he stopped, hesitating for the second time that night. "What is that?" He asks, gesturing towards the rebreather.

"You do look good. The clothes... I mean, the clothes aren't want gives you the talent you have. Obviously. You could be wearing anything up on that stage and look--" Flynn pressed his lips together for a moment. "Attractive." Flynn's cheeks warmed at the admission and he turned his face away from his friend in an effort to hide it.

"It has green tea in the name but there's no green tea in it?" That caused Flynn to smirk and shake his head. "Make that make sense, Winter." Even though it was something small, Flynn could feel himself relaxing ever so slightly. "No, no. I came here to see you at work, working. Just because I'm not used to this... atmosphere doesn't mean I want to leave."

Winter merely shrugged, still smiling at Flynn. "I do not know where it came from, I just know that it's good!" He argued, shaking his head. "And here, I am Ice, not Winter. It is good to keep the two people separate, I think." It kept him safe from any creeps...or kept the creeps safe from him, maybe. Should anyone stupidly choose to follow him after work, he was likely to be able to protect himself very well.

"I just wanted you to see me dance, and you have now! Though, I am a much better dancer than this, too. It is not always so sexy, sometimes it tells a story. That is hard to do here," he explained, laughing.

"It's... something." The club, he meant. Not exactly his cup of tea but Flynn didn't need to say that, outright. He was sure Winter understood that without him voicing it. "You-- ah..." Flynn cleared his throat, his eyes sweeping extremely quickly over Winter's clothes and then he offered him a tight smile. "It fits you well, yes." Because what else was Flynn supposed to say? Hot felt... rude to him. Winter was attractive but that didn't mean that he had to say that, either. They were just friends.

Did friends tell each other they were hot?

"A green tea cocktail?" Flynn asked. "Is there actually green tea in it or does it just look like tea?" He'd had green tea many times -- even preferred it over coffee some days. But mixing it with alcohol had never crossed his mind. "Hopefully it doesn't ruin regular green tea for me."

He also was feeling guilty for making his friend come to the club at all, if it was something that would make Flynn feel discomfort like this.

Trying to decide what to do next, if he should get Flynn out of there or if he should try and make the other more comfortable somehow, Winter hesitated at the bar for a moment before responding. "Oh, um, no, I don't think it's actually got any green tea in it. Or maybe it can? But I don't think most bars make it that way. It's good, though! And it sort of tastes like a fruity green tea," he explained.

Then he turned fully to face the other, looking concerned. "Do you want to leave? We can go, if you want. I'll just say I need to leave early tonight, I don't ever do that so I don't think it will be a problem."

Some of the Satin Cabaret crowd hang around after hours. One of the first groups of people Birdie'd actually come to trust after her bout with inhumanity (it had been, after all, the Dancers of the club who had helped them get the drop on Skinner), she felt, especially now, that it was her duty to treat them.

Winter Yi is one of those dancers; a member of the Cabaret she's had fleetingly little time to speak with. So tonight, as she forwards round after round to the clientele - some of whom are unassuming humans, others of whom are witches, or wolves, or vampires - it's Winter Yi she finds herself pulling up to the bar.

"Sorry about that asshole earlier," she says. The offending loudmouth asshole had been yoinked from the space and thrown out into the snow before he could get handsy - a generous fate, really. "Nobody ought to be acting like that in here."

So it took a lot to rattle Winter, now. But there had been one guy tonight who had said a few too many things that made Winter blush, and not in a fun way. It had been quiet, at first, but when he'd seen the vampire reacting it had gotten worse. At a certain point, Winter knew when the man reached out a hand to him he was likely to rip the entire limb off with his teeth. And the man was definitely building to that.

It was probably better that Birdie got rid of him, though. Ripping the limb off would be a whole mess, and Winter didn't want to have to clean any of that up. And he liked dancing here, he wasn't sure if that was a fireable offense, but it definitely seemed like it could be.

As Birdie approached, Winter was counting their tips, but they stopped to smile at the other. "It's fine, really. It could have been worse," he said, though if he were to be honest with the other, he was still a little shaken. But he was only very rarely honest with anyone about things like that. "Thank you for getting him out of here. I wasn't going to be polite for much longer."

His stomach dipped as he watched the other walk towards him, eyes shifting away from his friend as to not look at him in a disrespectful way. Then, Winter's arms were around him and Flynn didn't even respond back with a hug. He just sat there, unsure of what to do.

Still smiling, more than anything happy that his friend had wanted to come and see him, he took Flynn by the hand and led him to the bar. The lights were a bit dimmer over here, less people paid attention to him. And Winter doubted anyone cared if he took a little time to chat up a patron at the bar.

"So, what do you think?" He asked, spreading his arms to show off the club, and then taking a step back and doing a spin. "I look hot, right?" He added, laughing. When the bartender approached, he stepped back up to the bar, ready to order. "Can we get a green tea cocktail?" He asked, and the bartender nodded before going to fix it up. Winter looked at Flynn and shrugged, "Those used to be my favorite, you'll have to tell me what you think!"