77th_emo_earl | [For the Winchester Brothers] Not Doing a Lunatic Dance Yet...

"Family business." Dean smiles, a bit tight, but Titus would probably have to know him better than he does to notice it very easily. The elder Winchester has been false-facing 90% of the time for years, and he does so now as he begins to walk - first stiffly, and then more smoothly as his muscles loosen back up - towards the door. "C'mon, he's probably in our room, or the library. We'll see what we can do once we're all in the same room."

Dean will take Titus straight up to the room he shares with his brother, and only because he has someone with him does the hunter bother to knock on the door a splitsecond before he opens it.

"Sam? You home?" It's not his joking voice, not the high-pitched yoo hoo! tone he would've used just to rankle Sam a bit. Instead, there's a little bit of an edge to his speech that will probably advertise that he thinks he's hot on the trail of something important to anyone who knows him as well as Sam does.

Sam is indeed in the room, though he was about to go for a run (okay, try to, he's still...pretty torn up) to try to digest some of his own ramblings - fruitless, as usual, even after the 'gods' hint he got from Shadow that was probably no more than a guess. He hears the edge, though, and has snapped around and is alert and at the door a moment later.

"Yeah, right here. Find something?"

Listening, definitely listening. Because after that...whatever the hell it was...the wolves, everything, Sam could use something like a lead.

It's likely Sam's height that startles Titus a bit: Sam easily overtops even the tall and beanpole-like Mister Flay, and so he quails back from the door a bit, hiding behind Dean, but looking up at Sam curiously.

"I hope we did not interrupt anything," he says, trying to maintain some vague semblance of politeness.

Okay, lead or not, that shit needs addressed. Dean is drawn up short when he sees Sam's running gear about to be put to use, features clouding for just a moment.

"Dude, are you stupid?" No, wait, not the time for a fight; and besides, if Dean can distract Sam with talking to Titus, the nimwit can't go A.) Aggravating his injuries by taking a page from Dean's book of physical therapy and B.) right back where the problem started to begin with and C.) Giving Dean another heart attack or three. The hunter flaps a hand, forcibly taking that baby step back from Asshole Mode to Professional Mode again, hoping Sam will let him dismiss it; they can discuss why Sam's running shoes are in the toilet later, after Dean has had a chance to try to flush them.

"Never mind. This is... huh." Dean glances over his shoulder to motion Titus in and doesn't see him at first, not until he twists to look and finds the smaller man... could that be considered cowering? Dean steps to the side and raises both eyebrows at him. "I actually didn't get your name, but c'mon in. This is my brother Sam, and I'm Dean, and I think we can all help each other. Pop a squat on the bed there, if you want - or there's a chair there."

Titus has probably never seen a cheap but comfortable modern American hotel room with two queen-sized beds; he can get an eyeful now, though.

"...no?" Is Sam's response, mostly because yeah, Dean, like you can go talking. :| And, well, isn't. Sort of. Also because it was the only answer he thought of right off the bat.

And meta!Sam is hiding his running shoes thank you, there are not many possessions here and he'd like to keep those. Meanwhile, though, Sam lets it slide with one okay, what was that look, like a clueless idiot, and steps back. "Nah, you're fine," he says to Titus. Sam goes back - gingerly, okay - and sits back down on the bed, giving Dean a curious expression out of the corner of his eye.

"Okay, so. What's this about?"

"I am Titus Groan, formerly of Gormenghast," Titus replies. "I was attacked by some unseen demon which tried to force my hand into harming myself, and your...companion tells me that the two of you know how to shield a man against more attacks such as this?"

Dean wasn't the one out running, alone, when the wolves attacked him, thank you very much, Sam; and he will defend his decision to go in looking for Sam to his dying breath, which both of them should be well aware of by this point.

He might be the one wandering all over the mansion with a torn up thigh, though. Maybe. Moving on - look, a demon!

Dean meets Sam's curious glance with raised eyebrows, they might even be described as part and parcel to a gloating expression if Dean weren't so lethally focused on this newest development. It's that side, the hunter side, that studies Titus for a moment before swapping to settle on his brother as Dean finds a seat for himself on his own bed.

"I found the kid here in the kitchen, trying to buzz himself awake on tea and nerves. Which, I might add -" Dean points a stern finger at Titus in passing, tagging a lighter tone in like the old hand he is at using humor to deflect serious situations. "- is going to keep you up all night pissing like a racehorse but not much else."

Back to Sam.

"Told me he was writing a letter to a friend of his that ain't in this world anymore - you've heard about people disappearing, right? Back to their own worlds, supposedly? Yeah, like that. - and hears this voice claiming it did it. Then the hand thing." Dean mimes stabbing his own hand with an invisible instrument in the opposite for Sam's benefit, since he's glossing. He punctuates it by twitching both eyebrows slightly higher, apparently concluding his argument that this is their kind of thing, and then smiling broadly, reassuringly, back at Titus.

Hush, says Sam. Still alive, isn't he? ...perhaps that's not the best argument to use. MOVING ON TO DEMONS.

Sam puts his elbows on his knees, carefully, after waving a hand at Dean in an 'okay, okay, so you win' sort of gestures. "Yeah, that'd be the kind of thing we could help with," he says, after listening to the description with a raised eyebrow. "Though - are we taking that claim at face value?" That to Dean, before to Titus, "Did anything else happen during this whole thing? Lights, smells, noises...anything might be important."

Already starting ticking on this. Yep.

"I neither saw nor smelled nothing beyond the usual sights and scents of my chamber," Titus replies. "You do not think that I am going mad, do you?" he asks, worried. He knows his father had gone mad and thought himself an owl before he vanished, and he wonders if it is at all possible that he could have fallen victim to the same illness. "You do not think that I could be so aggrieved at the loss of my friend that I might have lost some grip on my wits?"

"Well. It's possible," replies Dean, reasonably, though he doesn't sound convinced. His lips purse, tilting his head thoughtfully as he considers Titus, then glances over at Sam.

"Dunno. This whole place is whacked out. Couldn't hurt, though - usually hurts more when we don't assume the worst." Dean shrugs, returning his attention to Titus.

"No offense, 'cause I might be the crazy one, but you don't seem torn up enough about the whole thing to fall off the gourd. Okay, writing letters to people who ain't here? Little weird, but I'd expect more clothes-rending an' hair-ripping if you were all that bad off." He tilts his head the other way, tries to sound less brisk. "It's possible this ain't what we're used to dealing with, but you ain't crazy just because you're thinking someone talked to you and then moved your hand. We've seen it before. It happens, sometimes."

"True," Sam allows, chewing on the inside of his lip. "Huh. So probably not your classic demon, right?" He says to Dean, before looking back at Titus. "Personally? No, I don't think you're insane. Can you think of anything else about what happened, though? Maybe-" He glances over at Dean, not quite nervously. "Maybe tell me what happened, from the beginning. Just so I can hear it from the horse's mouth."

Not that he doesn't think you're good at this or something! No! Not going that direction!

(He may be a little obscurely paranoid in the Dean direction at the moment.)

"It is not an easy tale to tell: I was in my room, putting pen to paper in order to write a letter of farewell to my friend Ahiru, a girl who had been almost as a younger sister to me. Master de Bergerac had recommended that I write it in order to ease my spirits," Titus relates.

"I had paused, wondering how this could have happened, how she could have vanished, and I tried to take comfort in the thought that perhaps she had merely found her way home to her own world. But then a voice spoke out of the darkness of the room, an unpleasant voice, which claimed that it had taken her. I challenged the voice, telling it to unhand her. It mocked me and I gave it an angry retort: instead it laughed at me, and that is when my hand moved as if pulled by invisible strings which another controlled. My hand opened a drawer of the desk and drew out a paper knife, which it started to stab toward my free hand. But somehow, by an act of the will, I forced my hand to obey me and I dropped the paper knife.

"After that, I could not bear to be solitary any longer, nor could I bear to sleep in case I should dream something horrible, and so I descended to the kitchen where your companion discovered me."

Dean shrugs at Sam the first time - it's been a while since they've dealt with "classic" demons, so he wouldn't be at all surprised, and he doesn't seem to be now. He, too, looks back at Titus - when Sam casts another, weirder glance at him, he's met with a raised eyebrow from Dean, but it's pure and simple puzzlement. It's a weird vibe he's picking up from his brother, not from Titus, and his eyes switch back to the other man to give him his attention but, uncharacteristically, the elder hunter doesn't add anything.

He's glad of the extra details, too, and when Titus finishes up, Dean not only corrects casually - "Brother." - because if that doesn't get out there, people tend to think the wrong things; but he also cocks his head slightly to one side and seeks clarification. "The voice came from somewhere in the room? Like, you heard someone speaking to you?" Beat. "Not inside your head?"

He'd glanced doubtfully to Sam at an act of will - there were only two people Dean had ever met that had been able to overpower being possessed by a demon by sheer act of will, and it had taken far more incentive than stabbing themselves in the hand with a letter opener to do it.

Sam nods minutely at that glance, in silent agreement that he has his own doubts about possession, between the description and Titus' ability to break free of it at all. His ears have also perked up at the same detail Dean noticed.

(In his own head, Sam is just observing that he is no longer assuming that 'de Bergerac' is the historical one, and that this is probably a bad sign.)

Titus shakes his head. "Nay, the voice came from without, as if some invisible man had crept into the room and had started to mock my grief," he replies.

He looks from one to the other, concerned, even worried, hoping that this makes sense to the both of them and that he isn't confusing them, or weakening his case for his sanity.

"Huh." Dean sits back a bit from his reflexive lean to brace his elbows on his knees where he's sitting on the edge of his bed, features thoughtful. He doesn't look in the least confused, at least not with the basic premise of Titus's tale. He looks like he's flipping through a mental rolodex of possibilities - which is exactly what he's doing.

"And you're sure you didn't smell anything? Nothing like rotten eggs, or... like... you know how everything smells after a bad storm? Nothing like that, not even a little? Take a second and think about it." He glances at Sam, giving the slightest shrug; he doesn't know.

Definitely chewing on his lip now, and Sam makes a brief move as if to get up and pace, but it's quickly aborted with a slight wince. Not the time for pacing, perhaps. He doesn't want Dean to get worried about anything, not if he wants to make a campaign for getting out of the house at all in the near future.

Sam watches Titus with one eye, and mouths at Dean, Some kind of spirit manifestation? Vague, but it could be somewhere to start. Maybe.

He pauses, thinking for a long moment, then shakes his head, lifting his hands in a small shrug. "Nay, I smelled nothing out of the ordinary, nothing except the damp of that night, since it was a rather close and muggy one."

Dean doesn't look at Sam, not directly, but he both nods and gives the signature worth a shot shrug. More obviously, he nods to Titus and mentally ticks off the box beside the next question on his Find Out What This Is list.

"How long you been in that room?" If he hasn't been there long it might be a thing with the room; if he's been there quite some time, that's not as likely.

Sam, meanwhile, goes for both a notebook and a book, flips the book open and starts writing fast in the notebook, though one eye is still on both Titus and Dean, clearly listening to the answer to this question.

"I have been dwelling in that room since this autumn past: I had been dwelling in a dim room on the north side, but a kind girl helped me to move to my present lodgings because my room at the time lacked fresh air, which had made me ill," he replies. "I have been there perhaps some eight or nine months and I have never noticed anything strange there until this night."

Dean glances over at what Sam is doing, but doesn't interrupt Titus. Instead, on the end of the kid's answer, Dean tags a clear aside to his brother - "Anniversary?" - before returning full attention to Titus.

"Was there anything in the room when you moved in? That you kept, I mean? Or did you bring it all with you?"

Sam jots that down, and asks, "By the way - where is this, in the house? What floor, what wing..." Because whatever it is, they're going to need to go look at it. And adds, to Dean, "What kind of a night was it, that..."

So many questions, but Titus is only too willing to answer them if it helps him to find a cure for this situation. "There was a chair, a desk, a bed and a wardrobe in the room when I arrived. When I was well enough to remove my things from my old room, I brought in the same clothes that I had had in my old room.

"My current room is on the third floor, in the southern wing, and the window faces due south: it is quite well-lit in the daytime and at night as well, if there is a full moon."

Dean, perfectly capable of carrying on two conversations at once as long as one of them is with Sam, flicks one glance to his brother - "Dunno." - then smoothly transitions back to Titus.

"Mind if we take a look? We might see something you didn't notice at the time. What with the aborted stabbing and all."

Sam jots something down. "I'll find out," he says, and then sets the notebook aside. "Might be important, who knows." He examines Titus, and after a nod to agree with Dean's suggestion, asks, "Just to be clear - nothing like this has happened to you before?"

"Nay, I do not mind in the least: the more pairs of eyes to examine this, the better," he says, stepping aside and lifting the latch on the door. "But, no, this has not happened to me before: there were no demons nor spirits nor gods nor angels in Gormenghast, and so I have had no experience with anything of this nature."

Dean lets Sam take point on the questioning for now, focusing instead on carefully levering himself back to his feet. He never stops smirking, but it's a more laborious task recently than it has been most of his life, and he only tunes back into the conversation once he's ready to start walking forward.

"Lead the way, kiddo." Dean prompts, reaching to take over holding the door open so the trio can pass into the hallway.

He was mostly making sure you weren't mental, Titus. Or that something followed you here, that is true. On the other hand...for the moment, he'll put the notebook down and stand up himself. "I think that's it, without seeing the room itself. We should...do that."

Another one of those slightly odd glances at Dean.

"Very well, if you gentlemen will follow me," he say, stepping through the door and beckoning them to follow him. He'll lead the way down the hallway and around a corner, then down another hallway, leading to his room. He'll open the door and step aside to let them enter first.

The room within is comfortable, but not lavish, and a bit untidy in a lived-in way. A few clothes hap-hazardly draped over a chest and a pair of riding boots dumped over under the bed. There are a few books scattered on the desk, as well as an ink-splattered sheet of paper. A quill pen is lying on the floor where he dropped it, and the chair is tipped over.

Dean flips a hand idly at Sam's glance, and tails the two of them down the hall. When he slips past Titus and into the room, the change is immediate, and most akin to some kind of hound searching a field for a scent trail; if he had mobile ears they'd be perked up and focused forward, his eyes bright and intent, and he is actually sniffing the air - though subtly. He moves forward and mentally separates the room into a grid, and begins poking around opposite Sam.

Since the typists already know what actually happened, it's safe to say there's nothing to find; no sulfur in the air, no marks on the walls or floor, no hexbags hidden behind a book or under the bed. Dean does his best to turn the room upside down, though, putting things back where he finds them for the most part unless or until Titus protests. Dean has never been the one with finesse.

If Titus doesn't stop him, though, he'll end up standing next to the discarded quill, wishing he could crouch down to examine it, and looking for the knife that had been mentioned before.

Sam follows Dean into the room and does his own poking around, wondering if he should be able to - he doesn't know, sense something or something. For the moment, though, relying on his eyes, and catching nothing out of the ordinary. Eventually, he straightens and follows Dean's eyes to the quill.

"Where's the knife you were talking about?" he asks, voicing that particular thought. "The one that tried to stab you?"

Erasing previous candidates in his mind and trying to sort through potential new ones, but of course it could be something entirely new they've never seen before, that's always a possibility.

He looks down beside the desk. "It has fallen down behind the far side of the desk. It is here on the floor," he says, pointing to the knife, as it lies on the carpet beside the desk.

Dean raises both eyebrows and bends to look where Titus is pointing; his eyebrows frown a bit, then, and he sighs softly. Crap. Instead of being able to just crouch down and go at it, Dean lowers himself stiffly to one knee and shakes the sleeve of his henley down over his hand so he can reach to pick up the knife without touching it to his skin. He just stays where he is on the floor while holding it so both he and Sam can look at it, turning it to try and figure out what kind of metal it is, if there's anything unusual about it, before his eyes trail back to bounce between the floor where it ended up and the desk it came off of.

[For the Winchester Brothers] Not Doing a Lunatic Dance Yet...

Sounds good to me!

Word up!

Re: Word up!

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