discussions and mildly annoying hauntings

who: dean and thia
where: their house
when: very very early morning before dawn

When Dean hadn't come to bed earlier, Thia hadn't thought anything of it. She figured he was downstairs, maybe talking to Oz, or doing...whatever. So it wasn't cause for concern. She'd tried to lie down for a bit, but she never really slept well without Dean, and definitely not this early. So, she'd tossed and turned for a while, and then given up, getting up again. She'd tried to distract herself by doing some homework--Dean's homework, in reality, but her eyes kept straying towards the clock.

And then eleven came and went. And midnight. And it kept getting later, and later, and she could feel herself getting more and more worried. She didn't want to be that girl--the one who had some invisible clock that her man was meant to just automatically know about, like he was meant to run his life on her schedule. Just usually if he wasn't going to be around he said. Or he'd tell her he was going to be late, or something, and paranoia loomed darkly in the back of her mind. She kept telling herself she was being stupid, that it was probably fine, but still, that didn't help her out as it kept getting later. When it was nearing one, she'd given up working on his homework, because she couldn't concentrate on it. She found herself reading the same sentence over and over, but she wasn't retaining it, so with a sigh, she put it aside, and went to go sit by the window, watching the snow falling. She'd left the lights out, because if the room was lit up and it was night, she was reflected in the glass, and she didn't have any wish to see that. So instead, she just sat there, curled up on his desk chair, right by the window where she could feel the heat from the register rising, as well as the cold from the window.

Dean hadn't lasted long outside - it was too cold for that. He'd just stayed out until he figured he could go back into the house without attracting attention and been grateful when Oz didn't try and come anywhere near him. He hadn't gone upstairs, knowing that Thia would be around, probably in his room since he'd been painting hers all evening. He hadn't wanted to face her right now, not feeling like he did. He'd hoped to stay away until she'd gone to sleep, then he could crawl into bed beside her and hopefully by morning he'd be feeling better about things. Or not - he didn't know, but there was a maybe there and he didn't have a better plan.

And so he'd headed down to the basement and ended up leaning against the cage in the darkness, his head resting on the bars, staring at the wall beyond, waiting for his brain to quieten down some. It hadn't really helped much - being down there had only served to remind him of the vampires, of being locked down here when she died, and that fed back into what Oz had said and the whole thing started again, over and over and yet he never came to any conclusions.

He knew it was late by the time he headed upstairs finally. He hoped she'd be sleeping, and he walked quietly, knowing she wouldn't hear him. He was grateful when he saw the lights were already out in his room and he didn't switch them on as he walked in, already pulling his t-shirt off to get undressed, the plan being the same - to crawl in beside her and hope that miraculously, that made everything okay again.

She felt the air move in the room, and that was what had her looking back. She sat up, relief sweeping through her at first, because he was back, but that was short lived. Mostly because even against the darkness in the room, she could see it. Feel it. That negative energy that surrounded him like a black cloud of doom. Like smoke, licking around him, filling up the space. "God, Dean, what happened?" she whispered, immediately standing up to cross to him. To check him over, touch him, so she could feel if he was hurt anywhere. Had something happened? Had she missed something?

The moment she stood, and he realised she wasn't in bed asleep, Dean almost turned and walked out of the room again. Only then she spoke and it was too late. She'd seen - he hadn't wanted her to see, he hadn't wanted her to know and he stood there, frozen, not knowing what to say. He could hardly tell her it was nothing - she could see that that was a blatant lie. But he didn't want to tell her what was bothering him either, so he was caught, like a deer in the headlights, which was probably very much what he looked like right now.

It was that more than anything that brought her up short. Or, at least, for a moment there. She stopped, about a foot back, just looking at him, light frown on her face. "What's going on?" she asked, taking the last few steps to him, and she reached out to slide her fingertips against the back of his hand, assessing if he had any injuries, which he didn't. But something was most certainly very, very wrong. "Did I--have I missed something?" she asked, wondering if horrible things had happened downstairs and she hadn't heard. Next time, she was going looking for him, even if she did feel like a freak doing it.

Dean shook his head, twisting his hand round to take hers, wanting very much to pull her in and hold her, but he didn't, too miserable and conflicted right now to do even that. He looked up at the ceiling, tilting his head back, then back down at her, hardly seeing her in the darkness. "I spoke to Oz," he said, his voice sounding a little off, though he made an effort to talk loud enough that she would definitely hear him. "About what happened in the orphanage the other day."

Her eyes ticked away for a moment, then back to his. That had to come up sooner or later, it just didn't help the unpleasant, sick twist in her stomach over it at all. And then, on the heels of that, a spike of bright, heart-wrenching panic hit. Fear, because if he was this upset--were they sending her away? Was that what this was about? Did she have to go now, because she was a walking poison bottle? Her grip on his hand got a little tighter, and she tried to find her voice. When she spoke, it didn't come out very steadily. "Do I--Do I have to leave?" she asked. God, not that, please not that, I don't want to leave, things just settled, we can't go through this again, please please please not that.

He pulled her to him then, broken out of that by the tightening around his head, by the panic in her voice. He pulled her to him and wrapped his arms around her, dropping his head so his face was against her hair. "No - fuck no. You're not going anywhere, Thia. Nowhere," he said, strongly.

When he pulled her in she clung to him, arms going around him and she gave herself a second to calm down, hearing that wasn't the case. She squeezed her eyes shut for a long moment, and tried to will herself to be okay. It was easier to do because she could still feel it coming off of him. All that negative energy. He was putting out so much she was drawing by default. "Then what's happening? What's wrong?" she asked, pulling back just enough to look back up at him. "What's going on?" The closet. They should head there. And she started to move in that direction, though kind of refused to actually let him go to do it.

He went with her, taking the first couple of steps in an almost crabbing position since he was still holding her, then letting her go enough for them to actually walk properly until they got in and settled, him pulling her down onto his lap like he normally did. "He - he wants to use you. Use your blood. Said it could be useful," Dean told her, miserably. He still couldn't believe that that was almost the first place Oz had gone to. He'd thought better of him than that, but that had shattered some of his illusions.

She didn't know how to feel about that. Hearing it, it rose up in her a lot of mixed emotions. She didn't want to be a weapon. She didn't want to be something that was only useful to hurt other things, or, she supposed, in this case, kill other things. On the other hand, she had a rational, tactical sort of mind, and couldn't help but see practical applications as well. She was tracing her fingertips on the back of his arm, and didn't say anything for a long, long few minutes. "What did you say?" she asked, voice quiet.

"Not a lot," Dean told her, his voice hardening slightly. As far as he was concerned, there wasn't a whole lot to be said. Especially not when Oz had brought her death into it.

"You don't want to do it." she said, not a question. She still hadn't said what she thought. And it was because she still didn't know. One thing was in her mind though, and that was she didn't feel like even if Oz did want to do something with it, that he'd do anything like force her. The most he'd do is ask, and if she said no, then she said no. Oz wasn't really the type to force anything. "Talk to me. You're...I haven't seen you this upset in a while." She'd seen it before, this wasn't the worst she'd ever seen him, but this was plenty bad. And it didn't seem to be settling at all, it was just so there.

"It's not my decision, Thia," Dean pointed out. "It's not me who has to 'do' anything." Except shoot the bullets that Oz had suggested they cover with Thia's blood. Except take those, knowing they were covered in blood they'd taken from her and push them one by one into that clip. Except pull that trigger knowing that they were using some part of her to specifically kill things. Nothing but play his part in turning her into the one thing he was so afraid that he'd become.

"No, it's not, but you have an opinion. Dean," she said, voice soft. "Please. Talk to me. This is...either more happened, or you're not telling me what's going on here, or this is hitting something really, really hard." she said. She was quiet for a moment, thinking about it. Thinking it over. "Is it...I know we haven't talked about it in a long time, but with you? I know what you were always afraid of." This seemed to go along those same lines, only with her. Even if she'd be a lot more efficient with that than he would have been.

He held her a little tighter as she spoke. "I don't want to do that to you Thia. I don't want that for you. I'll teach you to shoot, Oz is already doing that, we're going to put together the group thing eventually. I just... You want my opinion? That's it. And if that's where Oz' mind goes right away, then fuck him. The lot of them."

"We thought about it." she whispered, thinking back to the orphanage. Then she paused. "....no. Not we. I did." She was quiet, leaning her head back against his collarbone. "I said it. That all it did was leave me as use as a weapon." He'd argued that point. He'd said she was still a person, and that it didn't change things, or dictate what she was. Then they'd gotten into her not healing people anymore because it was too much of a risk now. She still remembered what it had felt like, to give the rat just that tiny little cut, and how it had spasmed and died. What had it taken? Under a minute? Seconds? Something. It had been fast. She took on board that he didn't want it for her, that he didn't want to do that to her, and that meant something to her. Even if she could see the harsh practicality of the uses her blood could have, it meant something that he rejected that.

"And I said then that no it doesn't - it leaves you as a person. You're not just what you can do, Thia. Remember, you keep telling me that and you're right - you're so much more. No matter what, you'll always be so much more. It's not... That's not all there is." He'd thought so then and he still thought so now, but he knew that what he was really pissed about tonight was that Oz had brought it up. Right there and then, that that was where the guy's mind had gone, right away. He could have waited, he could have made the effort to at least pretend that the thought had only occurred to him later. He could have shown some fucking tact, but no - straight in there, today's newest and greatest fucking weapon.

"I know." she said, voice still soft. Her mind was still a huge mess at the moment, but she focused in on him. It was always easy for her to do. "What's got you most upset right now?" she asked. Because he still was. And this was so clearly hitting him incredibly hard. So she wanted him to break it down for her. Work through it, even if it wasn't easy. They always did this. Even if things sucked while they did it, they talked through it. They worked at things, until they got it all worked out. They didn't give it up until then. It was the core of their relationship, it worked for them. And it was going to continue to work.

Dean knew it as well, but that didn't mean he had to like it. Talking things through was sometimes hard - a lot of the time hard. But they did it, because it was easier than the alternative. "He went straight there," Dean told her, after a moment or two. "I told him, and the only things he said before going to dipping bullets in your blood was that we could deal with it. That people have things in their blood all the time and so we could deal with it. And then right to it."

She was quiet for a few moments as she thought about that. She reached up in the dark, and drifted her fingers through his hair, just once, but then she found his cheek. She kissed the other one softly. "He's been through a lot." she said. "All of them have. More than we have. Longer than we have. I'm sure the idea of having something that'd even stop something like...like vampires that fast was a really attractive idea." she said, keeping her voice soft.

"...And one that occurred right away. Right away. Is that where 'being through a lot' takes you?" Is that what was in his future? because he never for a moment thought that his future held rainbows and puppies. God, looking at it, he could already see Thia getting there. And Caleb definitely was already. He didn't want to have to see the world that way. He didn't want that for any of them. But, was that just inevitable? That 'how can I use this' mindset? Would that start to rank above how something was actually affecting the person concerned?

"How did you tell him?" she asked. And it seemed out of place, but it wasn't, in her mind. Dean at the moment was upset because of how fast Oz had gotten to that place. Well, the only ways she could think of involved telling him how fast her blood worked as a killing agent--therefore it wasn't actually that big a leap. "If you told him about the rats, and how they died, and how..." she stopped to search for a word. "Potent," she opted for "it was, then it wasn't that big a stretch to what he said." she said, voice gentle. "Because I don't think you could have told him without getting into the specifics, right?"

Dean swallowed, latching on to that. "No - I told him about the rats," he admitted.

"So, the natural progression of thoughts as presented, because it had to be, was where his head went. I'm not saying it's not an upsetting idea. It is. I...I don't know what to do with it. Not any more than I did when we were in the orphanage. But I don't think Oz is a bad person, because he's a fast, tactical thinker." she said, voice still soft. Gentle. "You know it crossed my mind too." She reached up to draw her fingers through his hair again.

He relaxed a little under her voice and ministrations, though he couldn't help the thought that a natural progression should have been concern for her and how she was taking the news. In his head it should have been, anyhow. That should be the way things worked. "I know it crossed your mind, but..." He broke off, not wanting to finish that thought, but knowing he'd have to fill the gap in with something or she'd just jump on it and make him say it. "But, do you really think it's okay?" he asked her.

"Depends what you mean by 'it'." she said honestly. She rubbed lightly at the back of his neck, knowing how tense he got, so she wanted to ease that if she could. "If you mean having the thought, then yes, I think that it's an inevitable conclusion to draw when we've been in two siege situations in two months. If you're talking about the practical application...I don't know. Part of me thinks that it would save you in everything. And part of me thinks it could be dangerous, just playing with something like that. And part of me thinks that we have to think about it, because we could find ourselves in a situation where that might be it in terms of the best plan, so if we are ever going to get there, I want to think through those angles before we're mid-crisis." she said. "And part of me wants to pretend I never found out, and I'm not really just a replenishing supply of really effective poison."

Dean frowned a little in the mostly darkness as he caught on to one things there. "Save me?" he asked, not understanding what she meant by that. He didn't think it would save him at all, but he didn't say that - he wanted clarification of what she meant by that before he launched in with any opinion there.

She was quiet for a moment, before she spoke. "Dean," she started, tone soft. Her voice was quiet, if steady. "You haven't wanted to go back. You don't want the gun anymore, and I respect that. I think that what you wound up having to do? Cost you too much. And I'm not ever forgetting that." She swallowed, and went on. "I don't want you to have to do it again. Ever. Or even pick it up again. I'm sure if you did it'd still have the connotation, it'd still...I don't want that." But she was also a realist and didn't for a second think that they wouldn't need it. Maybe not soon, but eventually. So, this actually gave them a go-around. "If we still had the others learn to shoot, and they were even slightly adept at it, if they could just hit something...then no one would have to be as good as you. All they'd need to do is land a shot. Which would mean...it'd mean that you wouldn't have to. And you wouldn't have to feel like you were the only one responsible for everyone, and like you had to do everything. And that that was your contribution." she said. She was getting good with the bow and arrows. She could soak the arrowheads and anything she hit could be dead fast, even if she just grazed them. Or, that was her working theory.

"And what? I'm just meant to sit back and let everyone else..." Not for a moment, not with everything, not for a second had Dean even contemplated that. Even knowing that he'd left that gun locked up at the orphanage for a reason, he'd not for a second thought that if there was shit going down he wouldn't be right up there on the front line, where he always was. But wasn't that his issue? Wasn't that the reason why that gun was still locked up - because his first reaction was to reach for it. Because he'd realised that he'd come to rely on it. Because he was terrified of the 'next time' and what that would mean for him. But he was also a realist, and if they needed him, then it didn't matter what the next time cost him, he would be there. he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he wasn't. "I couldn't do that, Thia. I just couldn't."

"And I can't stand back and just watch you throw yourself to the dogs." she said. "Which...right now I think is what you'd be doing. Like I said, I've...I've watched. I've been here, with you, since it happened. And it just cost you. More than I think you ever should have had to give and I'm not happy to watch you give more. Chip away at you. And I don't even know what it would do or mean to you if you had to pick it up again, and so if we can come up with something that means you don't have to then I'd rather do that." She was silent, biting at her lower lip. This was hard. She'd not really wanted to talk about any of this, she wanted to just keep it where it was. She didn't want to push anything, or even seem like she was, and in the end, even if she worried that he'd be unprotected, that he needed it to keep himself safe, there was something else she wasn't willing to give to balance that, and that was him. And as she was talking about it with him now, that much was even more clear to her. End of story. "I don't want to lose you, even if you're still here." she said finally.

"So, what? I lose you instead?" Dean retorted, in much the same way. "Because I worry about what it'd do to you, what it'd end up meaning. How you'd... I know how you see yourself sometimes, Thia. And I won't let you give yourself over to that out of some belief that I'm not strong enough to cope." The moment the words were out of his mouth, he wished he could take them back, because he really didn't think she was going to take that well. It had sounded different in his head, but then it always sounded different in his head - it wasn't until the words were out that he could hear them the way she would do and he stopped, waiting to see what she'd say.

"It's not a matter of being strong enough." She said, very much taken aback by that. She also drew back, almost getting up, but not quite. "It's not about that at all. Because you came through it, Dean. I just know you lost part of yourself in the bargain and I'm still figuring out just how much. I don't know if you have, either. I just saw what happened, and I don't ever want to see it happen again. I never said you weren't strong enough. I don't believe that. It's not about the ability to cope it's about the long run. And what things do to your head. And everyone else's." Because she knew that everyone else, they relied on him. He was good. Damn fucking good and they knew it, so they knew they could trust him. And he could be trusted. But she also remembered coming back when he'd done nothing but hold everyone else up for twenty four fucking hours and no one had done a goddamn thing about that. No one thought that wasn't the way to go. So it wasn't only him. It was what might be expected of him, and her being of the firm opinion that it was too much. But he'd never say it was. He'd just let himself get dragged under. And all because he'd think it was the right thing to do.

"It's going to happen again Thia - we both know it's going to happen again. Sooner or later, it'll happen again, in some form or another and I can't just stand by and... not, y'know? And I can't... I'm not more important than you, Thia." God, how many times had they had this conversation, one way or another? With them both fighting to put the other first? He thunked his head back against the wall, taking a moment before he looked back down at her, shifting her slightly in his lap so he was cradling her more. "We need to just find a way through this. That we're both happy with. Nevermind Oz and... How do you feel about things?" he asked her.

She didn't answer him right away, but didn't fight him shifting her. She'd almost got up, but she didn't, and so...yeah. She did give herself a moment though. They did always have the same conversation. The argument that neither one of them was more important than the other. And it never got anywhere. But, that was different. Him saying that they'd find something they were both happy with? That was a point they hadn't quite hit quite so blatantly. So she was happy to latch onto it, and go with it. "Right now, I feel like yes, we both know it'll happen again, and if we know that you don't want to use the gun again, that we need to think around it. Take it out of the playbook, because it's not going to go there. I think we can, we just have to figure out how to work things. Which is why I'm talking about this in the first place, or one of the reasons. Honestly we need people to be less..." she didn't want to say the word 'useless' but didn't know another one. So she hoped he filled in the blank. "We just need something better for some."

Dean didn't know how to go about making people better than they were. He knew he always expected people to just step up, because that was the right thing to do, but when they didn't, he never pressed them to do more - he simply upped his own game to pick up the slack. That was just his way, and that was what led to some of the situations Thia was so unhappy about. "Where do we start?" he asked her, after a moment or two, sure that she was better at these things than he could ever be.

"We get people learning to shoot. Or something. There's got to be something they can do. Or learn, or be willing to learn." she said. She'd known before that she wanted to have the talk with everyone, she just had been avoiding it because she knew it was going to be a hard one. It really, really was, and well. Yeah. Half the time she didn't even know if it was her place. But right now, she was thinking that it just needed to happen, regardless of the fact that she was nervous about it. "And we start thinking about other things you might be interested in doing or learning, that doesn't involve your gun." she said. "Because I don't see the slightest bit of sense in not even trying to find something else."

"I was planning on putting that off until Caleb had had a chance to talk with Nic," Dean admitted to her. That had been the basis of the idea, originally. To keep Caleb happy, to stop his friend's twitches. It just also happened to mesh well with teaching everyone else to defend themselves. "And I - I've never been good at the other stuff. Oz tried to teach me archery and I nearly took my own foot off. I can't get that whole pull and release thing going right."

"No one said what you looked for had to be offensive." Thia pointed out, tone gentle. "And maybe we can push things up, or maybe they won't even agree, I don't know, but I think we need to talk to them, and start figuring things out." she said. "And I've got us covered in archery, anyways. But I don't think that would make a big difference to you. It's just a different kind of shooting." she added on the end. Because it was. It just was less efficient than his gun.

"Y'd think, wouldn't you," Dean said with a small shrug. "The aiming thing I can do, it's the whole bit before that - I always seem to fumble the arrow. I'm okay with a cross bow, but I think anything more complicated than that..." It just gave him room to think too much. He always did better when he didn't have to actively think about things. You didn't have to think to pull a trigger. "And, I arranged to pick up my first aid courses again next week - hopefully I won't have missed too much. So there'll be that. And, yeah - maybe we can push things up. I - I should talk to Caleb first though. Cos, if they agree to start, then we'll have to. And if he hasn't talked to Nic and we start without them, then - that wouldn't be fair on the guy. And I don't want him to feel like he has to have that conversation before he's ready or anything, and I don't want him to think we're just going ahead without them or anything either," Dean said, clearly worrying more about Caleb at this point than himself.

Thia caught that, and sighed a little. "Dean...Caleb and his stuff with Nic, and everything else...that's really not what we're discussing here." she said. "I don't want to put him in a bad position either, I like him, I want to help him, hell it was my idea with the group thing, but we can't completely edit what we might need to do with our own family to work with his time schedule." she said, trying to keep her voice gentle there, but she really needed Dean not to be deflecting like that. Not right now. "Do your first aid courses. That's a good place to start. And maybe that'll be what's best, and what you can do if there's anything going on again." She drew in a breath, and exhaled, staring into the dark. "I really need to think about things."

"It's not - it might not be what we're talking about, but I don't want to cause new problems either, I just... I dunno." It felt like there'd be issues no matter what he did right now. He fell silent for a moment or two, thinking but coming to no conclusions whatsoever. In the end, he just gave up, focusing instead in on her. "Things?" he asked, lightly - a gentle push to talk, rather than just thinking, or to think aloud at least.

A little frustrated then, Thia didn't say anything right away. She felt a little like she was the only one who was actually being rational and reasonable at the moment. Like Dean wanted to go off and worry about things that in the grand scheme, were really going to fuck things up otherwise, and generally he was a little better at understanding that. Plus, there was all the issues with the gun thing, and she felt like he hadn't so much heard her on that score either. So, she was frustrated. Just not enough to really get into the specifics there, and so she just fell quiet, and tried to think things through. "I need to figure out if I'm going to allow for the use of my blood in emergencies. If I'm going to let everyone know, if I want to leave it up to popular opinion, or what. And if we decide to use it, what's the best way of going about that. And what we do with it once we have it." she said, exhaling. She was tense, and wanted to relax, it was just hard. "It's a lot to think about."

"I think you should leave it up to your opinion - no matter what anyone else said," Dean told her. And he included himself in that - as much as he hated doing so. She'd asked for his opinion and he'd given it, but he wouldn't let himself push her more than that. It wasn't his decision to make - as much as he hated that fact. Though, at the same time, he didn't want to be that guy who tried to tell his girlfriend what she could and couldn't do - he just cared, was all. And, he knew, had a tendency to overreact to things. Right now being case in point, but his head just wouldn't shut up about all sorts of issues that fought against each other and made everything just very very loud - it made it hard to think straight.

She turned her head a little, to look at him in the dark. "I want to know what other people think. I want to know what they see, when they're told about it. They might have other ideas, or other opinions, or...I want to know how they see it." she said. "For all we know, they'd be horrified and completely refuse." she said. Which was possible, really. And on a subject like this? She couldn't even begin to guess. Though she had to admit, Billy's opinion of the adults was most important to her. And he might be the guy who needed it most, outside of dreams. "I'm not making any decisions by myself that impact the lot of us. It'd...it'd be selfish of me."

Dean swallowed and held her a little tighter - not because he thought she needed it, because right now he did. "I didn't say you shouldn't talk to people, Thia. I said the decision should be yours, in the end. Not 'popular opinion', not going with whatever the majority want. You should do what you want to do. What you feel comfortable with. What you can live with and be okay with. You. And it's not selfish of you to do what's best for you, not when it's something like this," he told her, as always unable to really hear himself and take his own advice.

She caught that. She caught it because it was pretty much exactly the same things, just on different ends. Different subjects, different degrees. She leaned in closer to him, and she put her face in close to his neck, just beneath his jaw. She didn't nuzzle so much as just remain there, close, for a few long moments. "That's the kind of advice you need to listen to as well." she told him, voice soft.

Dean closed his eyes and smiled, snorting a slight laugh. "Maybe," he actually agreed, though he wasn't sure that his situation came under the same banner as hers. Maybe one day, if his abilities improved - something he really wasn't working on at all.

She shook her head, keeping in close, so she did nuzzle a little as she did it. "Not maybe. You do. It's good advice." she told him, smiling just a touch herself. "Don't let anyone make decisions for you, for anything. Do what's best for you." Thia took another moment before finishing her thought. "And that includes everything." Like the gun, even if right now, she was definitely of the opinion that he should give it up. Even if he was a fucking action hero with it, in her opinion, he flat out couldn't deal with it. And she didn't want him finding out in the middle of a crisis that pulling the trigger again was too much.

"Is it the kind of advice you could listen to as well?" he asked her, not commenting on her insistence that he should take his own advice. He'd think about it - he'd factor it in. He didn't know what he was going to do, and he had a feeling that he wouldn't know what he was going to do until the shit hit the fan. Until then, they'd have to see. She was much more a planner than he was. He tended to make all these grand plans and then discard them the moment trouble hit for something much more straightforward and effective. And then he dealt with the fallout afterwards.

"I'll make the effort if you will." she said, knowing they were both bad at that. She could deal with this better if they at least said they'd make the effort. Because neither one of them were any good at just saying shit to placate, they liked to stick with what they promised one another. And she could deal well with promising to try. It wasn't promising to do it, but to try? She'd take it.

"I can try," Dean promised. "I just... You - I dunno. I just know that I don't know what's going to be what until I'm there. I mean - it's not like I really plan things. Like..." He paused and moved them, laying her down on her side and curling in behind her, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "If someone had asked me, a few months ago, whether I would have demanded Oz that we go across town into the middle of a vampire attack then I would have laughed at the thought. And it's the same for everything. Things that I've not thought twice about, before they came up, before that actual situation, I didn't think I'd do it."

She still thought that had been an ill advised move on his part, but was still endlessly grateful for it. She knew it had defined a lot of their relationship, just that. The fact that he'd done it at all. So she understood what he meant there. She really did. "I know what you mean." she said. She shifted, getting comfortable, and she reached down with one hand to start tracing lightly up and down the back of his hand up his arm before repeating the process. "I'm never going to forget that, you know." she said, voice soft.

"You might have mentioned that, yeah," Dean said, knowing she was talking about what he'd done, rather than that night in general. "I think, for me, that's part of the problem. When things happen - I stop thinking. And I used to think that that was a good thing. Because I know I usually overthink things, and I kinda... I feel like I get in my own way a lot of the time. But when push comes to shove, it's like all that goes away and I know exactly what I have to do and it's all so simple. Only, looking back, it's not - not really. It's just that I ignore everything that's else and then afterwards you're left to pick up the pieces of me falling apart. So maybe it'd be better if I kept thinking, but I don't know how to stop myself stopping, if that makes sense." He wasn't sure if that made sense at all.

She thought about that, still tracing her fingers back and forth over his skin. She could see what he meant. Like she knew that her role, or part of it, was to make him take those minutes to fall apart for a little while, before things started back up again. It was part of what she did to look out for him because he didn't do it himself. Still though. "Maybe you do the things you do because you have to." she said. "Because that's what you need to do to deal with it at the time. I know...when we're in the middle of everything, I tend to act too. I don't shut down the thinking though, I see angles. I look at a situation, and try to look at it from the higher view, so I can try and see everything. Where it falls, what courses of action need to be taken to get certain results." she paused a moment, tilting her face to the side a little, back over her shoulder though she didn't turn to face him. "And I watch out for you." she said. "Make you stop when we have the time to. Try to make sure you're not taking on too much and the system will all break down." She brushed her thumb back and forth against his wrist. "I think you need me to do that sometimes. When I wasn't there to do that...you didn't. You just kept going."

Dean hugged her to him with a little smile and dropped his head to plant a little kiss on her neck. "I stopped when you got back," he told her, changing speed to remember her getting back - focusing on that, the good, rather than the day before, which was bad. But that didn't last. "Before that... It was easier to keep on going. And I really didn't want to talk to any of them right then... And anyway, that was the reason I was still there - because I could."

She was remembering that shock she'd felt when he'd told her he'd done it because that's what she'd wanted him to. She wondered if that was still the case, or...what. But it was hard to ask, because the concept still scared her. "I know you did. I still think that it was too much. That you doing that the whole time, whether you wanted to talk to anyone or not...I still..." Can't quite forgive them for letting that happen. "Yeah, you stopped when I got back. I wasn't really taking no for an answer."

"No. You weren't," Dean agreed. "You're good at that. Sometimes I think that's why we're here, you know. Because you didn't give up on me. You put up with my shit. And... You're right, you know. I do need you. And I do need you sometimes to just, y'know... I feel - it's like I feel safe with you. Like I can stop in the middle of whatever for a while, because you'll make sure that I don't lose it entirely. That you'll hold me back from that. I couldn't have stopped with you gone. I couldn't have faced that." He hadn't the first time either. The first time he'd freaked so much they'd locked him in a damn cage, only for him to knock himself unconscious trying to escape. And when he'd finally regained consciousness he'd done all he could to get himself the hell out of there and then spent the rest of the day organising logistics for getting her back inside when she returned without her immediately getting pounced on by vampires again.

She smiled just a little. "We're here because I don't give up on you? Could say the same for you." she said. "You putting up with me, too. Couldn't have been easy for you all of the time. Probably still isn't." she said, tone thoughtful. "I think we just support each other. And if one of us is having a melt down, we just...don't have one right then. I take care of you, you take care of me, we work like that. I think it's a good way to do things." She was silent again, just thinking it all over. "I'm glad you feel safe with me." she said. "That you know I'll take care of things. That's how I feel with you. Have done for so long." And he'd never failed her on that.

"I put up with you, do I?" Dean asked, amused by that. "No I don't - I don't put up with you. And as for 'easy'? Hmmm, maybe, maybe not. But - I never wanted to do anything else, so you'll just have to be good with that. You know, the word Caleb uses is 'devoted'," he told her, wondering if he'd mentioned that before.

That actually made her smile in a bright, genuine smile, even if he couldn't see it. "...good word." she said. She could see it. She thought it was very fitting, really. "Observant, isn't he?" she asked rhetorically. "I'd say that's accurate." She laughed a little. "I like that word." she said, thinking she really thought it described them well, and she would have thought that the two of them would have required a whole lot more in the way of vocabulary, but...no, that worked.

Dean could almost hear the smile in her tone - he liked that. "Yeah, I guess he is. He... It was that night - at the other house. He said, watching the two of us. He basically said what you did. That when one of us needed the other, shit just got put aside for that. And then we kinda swapped."

She thought about it, and couldn't see it happening any other way. She guessed, now that it was put like that, that maybe other people wouldn't do it, wouldn't be able to, or just couldn't see past the pain. So, she guessed other people might not be able to do what they had. It had been important, though. she just remembered that it didn't matter. What she was feeling, everything else, it hadn't mattered when he was the one being stitched up. Then, she was remembering how he'd reached up, and took her hearing aids out. He hadn't wanted her to hear him scream. The thought had her hugging him a little tighter, pulling his arm around her more securely. "Seems odd that other people wouldn't do that, but...I suppose other people might not...I just know I couldn't do anything else."

"I know, I don't get it either," Dean said, before a thought occurred to him and he smiled a little, moving his head to by her ear. "See - now you know how it feels," he told her. "That moment when you realise that not everyone in the world does what feels so natural to you. When you realise that something that would to you be unthinkable not to do, wouldn't even occur to some people." Dean had been feeling like that on more and more regular basis lately. He'd almost got used to it now. Most of the time he'd stopped feeling like he'd missed a step when he found something else.

That made her laugh softly. "Yeah, I guess I do." she agreed. "I just...I can't imagine that going any other way. You needed me, and...and I just couldn't not be there, and it wouldn't have occurred that you wouldn't be there for me." Even if the last stitching she'd got done he'd been unconscious for. Not the point. "And yeah, I guess other people in the world would be too wrapped up in their own stuff, but..." She shook her head a little, and squeezed his hand. "Not us." And she sounded like she felt. Like she was grateful for that. Like she appreciated it.

He returned the squeeze. "It always would have been like that you know," he told her. "Even if there wasn't an us." He didn't qualify that it would have been for him, at least. He didn't think he needed to - he was that sure that it would have been for her as well. That certain of the bedrock that was their friendship. Even if things hadn't progressed, they always would have been there for one another.

She smiled at that. There hadn't been a 'them' at the time. Not quite. Even if it had been established that they'd both wanted it, and had even been possibly going to go for that that night. "I know." she said, because she did. She had that faith in the two of them as well, that idea in her mind that no matter what, they would have been there for one another, and they wouldn't ever have abandoned each other like that. Especially not during something like they'd been going through. "We never would have left each other when something like that was going on." Then she paused. "We'd never leave each other in the middle of things unless forced to."

"Forced to? And the other would let them go?" Dean asked, the first thing that came to mind there. He wouldn't let her go - not in a situation like that. That was part of what led them to situations like that. Being there for each other, whatever it took.

She paused for a moment. "I know in most circumstances, we wouldn't do it. Not in a million years, not for anything." she said. "But when we were in England, and I got woken up by the slices on my arm, the shadows...If I'd been the problem, if they were after me, we would have had to have separated, to keep your family safe." she said. They'd hedged around discussing it at the time, but she knew it was a possibility. She'd absolutely hated it, but it would have been necessary. "You would have had to come for me later."

Dean's breath caught slightly at that, and he didn't answer immediately. "I would have come for you," he told her, strongly, needing to say that - needing to make up for the fact that, yes, it was an admission that in that circumstance, he would have let her go.

Waiting for him to answer, she felt like it took far longer than it did. But then he got to it, answered her, spoke. His tone was not what she expected, even if she wouldn't have been able to say what she had expected. Shifting, she slid onto her back, so she could look up at him, even if she couldn't see him well. "I know you would have." she said, reaching up to brush her fingertips over his cheek. "Like I know you wouldn't have wanted to do it in the first place. It just would have needed to be done, that's all." she said, feeling the need to tell him it was okay, even if it hadn't even happened, and it was a pretty specific circumstance. Not one that was likely to pop up again any time soon.

"They haven't come again, have they? Since Billy... I talked to Oz about it earlier. He said that Billy hasn't walked since," Dean told her, trying to keep his tone even, to not betray the pissiness about things that had got Oz' back so firmly up earlier on.

"They haven't. I would have told you." she promised. Or, she would have woke up bleeding, cut to ribbons, one of the two. "And I see. I haven't talked to him about it since we got back, really. But they haven't been back." She didn't even recall dreaming about them period. Not in passing nightmares, or any capacity. So, it was isolated, the incident.

"I know you would have." He was certain she wouldn't have kept something like that from him. He was almost certain she wouldn't have been able to keep something like that from him. Even if she hadn't been hurt by it. "That scared me so much - there... There was nothing I could do." Dean didn't do so well when there was nothing he could do about something.

He sounded so...lost? That's the tone that came through. That helpless little kind of lilt to it. She drifted her fingers up through his hair, then rested her fingertips on the back of his neck, tracing them around softly. "You patched me up." she said. "But...I know what you mean. It happened, and if things had been worse..." You just would have woken up because you felt blood sinking into the mattress. And wasn't that a horrifying thought? She shoved that mental imagery out of her mind right quick.

Dean hugged her to him and then gave up on that and just turned her round to face him properly. "But it wasn't worse," he told her, knowing it was because he wanted to avoid imagining that. Knowing that she would always come back the next day would never be enough for him. "I don't do so well - when there's nothing I can do. Guess that really brings us full circle for me, doesn't it?" Right back to where they'd started - with what he should and shouldn't do. He did better with action, even if he fell to pieces afterwards. "Which just leaves us with you."

She hugged him back, shifting to settle with him comfortably. God, when they'd been gone, she'd missed the closet. They had their best talks in here. It was their safe place, and it was always going to be their safe place. "I know you don't like feeling helpless. You're...you're not one of those people who's any good at standing idly by." she said. He was invested in things. And if it involved anyone he cared about, then that was just how he did it. How he worked things. he couldn't stand aside, and let things fall as they were going to. Which put him at a particularly bad place when there was nothing he could do. Even if it was after the fact. But she remembered how he looked when she walked into the mirror, when they'd been experimenting. "Leaves us with me?" she asked.

"Yeah, " Dean told her, reaching up to cup her chin. "With you. Somehow, we got on to me. My shit. And we were talking about you. About... my conversation with oz about you and everything there. And we got deflected, talking about how I don't deal so well with some things. And we went full circle, talking abut how I maybe should avoid some things I don't deal with, but I deal worse avoiding them so fuck knows what's going to happen. There's no solution there. So... getting back to you."

She smiled faintly. "We always get back around to things." she said. "I still don't know what to do, there. How I feel about things, how it's going to go, how it should go. I can see the practical application, but it's dangerous. I still think it could make people more effective, if they didn't have to learn to be perfect, just efficient enough. But at the same time I don't know how I even feel about it emotionally. I know...I know when I was there, and I saw what happened, and I could feel them die--did I tell you that? That I could feel it when they died? It was just this little surge of death energy. Like a little puff of smoke. But I don't know. I kind of...sorry. It's hard to think about. Rationally I shouldn't connect it to myself and how it reflects on me, but I do anyways. I still feel like it makes me a monster, like just about everything else does. And how with it, it's taking away the one thing that comforted me about being what I am. I mean, I can do other little things, like getting to you when you need me, no matter how far apart we are. But really, what else? I could check on your family to make sure they were sleeping peacefully without having to open the door. That's...not really going to help us out in the long run much. And I need to be able to help. I need to not just be a girl that got taken in, and causes more and more problems."

"You'll never be that, kitten," Dean told her, stroking a thumb over her cheek. "And you don't cause more and more problems. We all have issues. All of us. And..." He broke off as the bathroom light, which had been providing them with limited light in the closet and which was visible through the half-open door, starting flickering on and off in an erratic pattern.

Thia paused too and looked over, frowning. "...you're...not actually doing that, are you." She said, it not really being a question. She hadn't seen the energy streak from him to where the target was, and generally Dean had to be a lot more upset to accidentally do things on accident. So, really, if he'd been going to do that it would have been earlier when he'd first got in. Things had calmed down a lot now, they were in a much better place, but yeah. She waited for it to stop, and it steadied. But just as soon as she was going to blow it off and talk to Dean again, there was more flickering.

"No," Dean told her as he concentrated and switched the light off, plunging them into darkness. "That was me," he told her, just before the light sprang back into life - something he really couldn't do with his abilities. It stayed on constantly for a moment, then dimmed, sprang back to life and finally returned to flickering again - this time adding in the light from the bedroom, which had been off until that moment, but it too started dancing. "Okay, that's just..." Dean pushed back from her, standing and reaching for her hand to pull her to her feet as well, his eyes darting between the two rooms.

Getting up, she looked between both of them, and then reached for the bathroom door, since that had been where it started. She paused. "...want me to employ my ability I just said was useless?" she asked, thinking that it might actually be useful in this case. If anything was in there, it wouldn't see her if she just kinda...ghosted in through the crack or whatever.

Dean didn't let go of her hand at first, then made himself release her. He wasn't allowed to keep her in a glass box, not when it was something she was perfectly capable of doing - and doing a lot more safely and sensibly than he could. "Be careful," he told her, instead.

She waited, not pushing for a moment, before he let her go. Then she looked back at the door, and exhaled, letting her eyes slip shut for a heartbeat or two as she concentrated on dissolving herself down. Fading out was always a little disconcerting, but she was getting used to it. That didn't help her paranoia that she was one day going to screw it up and kill herself, but she wasn't thinking about that at the moment. She was thinking about getting in there and seeing what was there. She got into the bathroom, and 'looked' around, not that she saw anything. She even gave it a few long minutes, or what felt like long minutes, before she re-materialized and opened the door wide. "I don't see anything..." even if the lights were still going nutty.

Dean knew that he could make it stop - before he'd just turned the light off, but he could blow the bulb, or maybe some fuses. That'd make it stop, but it'd do nothing to tell them what was causing this. "Want to check out the rest of the house?" he asked, taking her hand again and nodding towards the door through to his bedroom, suggesting without coming right out and saying it, that he'd be coming with her for that.

"We may as well." she said. "It might just be faulty wiring...though Billy didn't have to rewire anything, did he? Plus he'd do a better job than this..." Reaching out for the door to his room, she opened it slowly, since she could still see the lights flickering, but she didn't immediately see anything in his room either. Just lights that happened to be going a little schizo, and it looked like his computer monitor was as well. "I don't think bad storms turn lights on."

"Sometimes I wonder if - if I got good enough - if I could tell whether something had faulty wiring or something. I'm not sure that I could - I know I can't right now. But one thing I do know is that, no - storms don't turn lights on. And they definitely don't turn computers on - unless you were playing earlier?" he asked, knowing he'd switched it off earlier. He crossed to the lightswitch and tried flipping it up and down, but nothing actually seemed to make any difference.

She shook her head. "No, I wasn't playing earlier. I did some of your homework, but that was all notes and things." she said. She hadn't been on the computer. She tended to avoid that anyhow, even if he'd told her more than once she was welcome to use it. It felt too much like an invasion of privacy to her. She looked back over at him from where she'd been looking at the monitor. "I've seen too many movies." she said, giving him a sheepish sort of look. Her mind had been going all over the place. "I keep thinking about ghost things. But...we'd see a ghost, right? Now we would?"

"Yeah, I think you would - how far do they affect things? I mean - assuming they can and films are right with that," he added, aware that he'd seen too many as well, and still had a tendency to flip back to fiction when he didn't know, despite having a lot of his misconceptions crushed. Of course, he'd also had some of them confirmed, so possibly it was just the luck of the draw. "Could there be one somewhere else in the house? Did the lights go back at the party?" he asked, for once not actually hesitating in bringing that up - it was their only other real experience of ghosts since everything happened, after all.

"Yeah, they were only flickering when the ghosts were nearby." Lullaby answered him, remembering that. "Like the fritzing was following them." She hummed, frowning. "Yeah, I've just seen too many movies. Now I'm thinking about Poltergeist. And White Noise, and Pulse...I don't think any of those had good endings." Not that anything that was meant to be spooky ended well. She started to look under the door to the hall, to see if she could see any more light-spasms, but she couldn't tell. So, she started to walk around the room, looking for a cold spot.

"Do we need to start looking for indian remains and weird cult suicides and stuff, do you think?" Dean asked, trying to make light of it for now. "I mean, I've got that whole history project to do and everything... Two birds with one stone and all." And a gun locked in a cupboard at the orphanage that was making his palms itch right at this very moment. That was bad - they were likely dealing with ghosts. He needed to get perspective. He didn't need to be armed for that.

She looked over and smiled faintly. "Well, we always could, but somehow I don't think we'll find much." she said. "I mean, I'm pretty sure people would have noticed by now if those were the cases. Not that I've seen the news today so I guess there could have been weird mass cult suicides going on. But good thinking, about school projects and such. At least you're thinking about it." she said. Then she went to open up his room door, to peer out into the hallway.

The light in the hallways dimmed as she opened the door, the glow of the bulb diminishing until you could see the filament glowing dimly in the darkness. Dean stepped around her and into the hallway, deciding to head for downstairs, if cautiously. The light remained dim until they reached the top of the stairs, at which point it brightened - and brightened so quickly and so much that the filament cracked broke, plunging the hallway into darkness.

Thia was right there close with him, hand clasped in his. She frowned up at the now dead light, thinking this was always the part in horror movies where the scary apparitions started to show up. All spooky and flickery and for some reason inordinately homicidal. She wasn't so much looking forward to that bit. "That's going to get old really fast." she noted under her breath.

"And yet still no ghosts," Dean said, wondering if they could be wrong in that assumption and it was just faulty wiring. Throughout the entire house. Doing weird things to the lights. He really didn't know enough about electrics to know what was possible - but this didn't seem normal to him. He started them walking slowly downstairs, one step at a time.

"No ghosts. No cold spots, nothing." she agreed, looking around the whole time, but yeah. There was nothing to see but annoying light shows. Her paranoia about things was at once getting worse, and steadily making her feel more and more silly. Like it shouldn't be bothering them so much. But then again, it was the middle of the night, and that was never a good time for things to start going sideways. No matter what it was, it was going to seem scarier. If the lights started to go haywire in the middle of the afternoon, she'd be thinking a lot less about The Ring and that girl who came out of the tv.

"Think we should just give Billy a ring? Or tell Sophie?" Dean suggested, though that latter one he didn't mean terribly seriously. They weren't much geared towards 'tell the adults and let them handle it', all things considered. "Maybe we should ring Billy anyhow though - ghosts or electrics, between the two of them there, they'd know more than we do."

She thought about it, weighing that out. She guessed they could. But it wasn't really how they generally did things. They tended to take care of things themselves. For teenagers, they were pretty damned self sufficient. But in this case, he was right. Billy and Maddie would have a much easier time telling them if they were being ridiculous, or if something strange was up. "You want to?" she asked, since he'd be the one having to do the actual speaking.

Dean considered this. "I'd prefer to make sure we know as much about what we're dealing with first," he told her, after a moment or two. Maybe it was something - maybe it was nothing. He wasn't going to go waking people up in the middle of the night without knowing as much as possible about what was going on.

"Okay, so what do we know?" she asked. "The lights are going weird, we've seen it before when we've seen spirits, and there seems to not actually be any around." she rattled off. She paused then, thinking. "The fuse box is in the basement, right? Could we go reset those, and see if that does anything?" she suggested. It was worth a shot, she thought. Not that she knew how to do that, but she had faith that that was a guy-thing, and therefore Dean would either know, or figure it out fast.

"Right, yeah - in the basement under the stairs," Dean agreed, heading them that way through the weird flickering light show. He didn't know whether it was a guy thing, but knowing there the fuses were kept was definitely a Dean-thing. It was always one of the first things he figured out when he moved to a place - how to fix what he'd inevitably break, quickly and with the minimum of fuss. He'd learned replacing fuses years ago.

She went with him, trying to discern if it was all the lights, or just some, and if it was following them. And really, all she could figure was there wasn't a pattern. it didn't seem to be the entire house, and it seemed to be random. Like she could see down the hall, the den's lights were pretending there was a rave going on in there, but the hall light wasn't doing anything. Neither was the basement light, when they opened up the door. Hrm. Things were easier to figure out if there was a pattern.

They headed down to the basement. or started to, until Dean stopped halfway down the stairs, just as the basement really came into view - and he could see a ghost standing and pushing the door to the cage backwards and forwards. Nothing else, just there, swinging the door over and over again with no apparent purpose in mind.

"Wha--" Thia started to ask him as she bumped into his back, but 'what' became readily apparent when her eyes caught onto the whole door-moving spirits just hanging out there like...well, like she couldn't tell, because they appeared to be very absorbed in their task. She stared for a few long moments, then cleared her throat. "Um, excuse me...sir?" she called. "Can we help you?"

Dean let her take the lead in this - after all, she'd done it before. She'd actually gotten a spirit to move on. This one, however, just seemed to be ignoring her, standing with his back to her and swinging the door backwards and forwards and backwards and forwards, not even acknowledging that someone had spoken. Dean bit back a comment of his own, not wanting to interrupt things.

Frowning, Thia stepped around Dean on the steps, and took a few more of them down. "Hey--sir? Are you lost?" she tried again, though that didn't get her any more attention from the spirit than her first try. Glancing back at Dean, she shrugged, looking at a loss. "Last time I spoke to one, he was just like talking to anyone else." she said. She looked back at the spirit, then to Dean once more. "Should I go try to stop it?" she asked, wondering if stopping the door would interrupt whatever daze it was in.

"I dunno - might just piss him off," Dean considered. Did they really want to get his attention that much knowing that it could be risky. "I didn't realise this house was haunted," he added, as they stepped down onto the basement floor.

"I didn't either." she said. "But...I don't know. Maybe it's still not? I mean...we would have noticed by now, right?" she asked. "But he's here now, and he's not responding, maybe he's...lost or something." she added. "Do ghosts get lost? And it could piss him off, but maybe not, do you think it'd be too much of a chance to take?" She wasn't sure. This was kind of new and weird territory.

"Well, between all of us, we've spent enough time down here that yeah, you'd think we'd notice if there was a resident ghost." he skirted them round the edge of the room until they were parallel with the spirit. "Okay - if... If you go and stop the door, you promise me that if there's anything, then you'll fade out right away and get out of there?" he asked. He didn't particularly like sending her in when they didn't know what they were dealing with, but he told himself that it made more sense that way.

"Cross my heart." she promised, reaching up to make the motion, because she couldn't not do that when she said as much. She was glad that he wasn't insisting he go do it, if they were doing anything, really. Did this mean he trusted her more? Or he was just handing her something that actually did utilize her abilities? She leaned over and kissed his cheek, before she let his hand go so she could walk over there. "Sir?" she tried one more time when she was right up close, but there was still nothing. Then she reached out to stop the cage door swinging, and paid strict attention so she could phase out if he decided to do something.

It wasn't easy to let her go, but he did, watching the situation every step of the way, waiting for some sign of danger to her. He had to keep telling himself that she was better for this, that it made more sense - if anything happened, she could get out of there much quicker and more easily than he could, and he had the tattoo that meant that maybe if he didn't draw attention to himself, he could slip out of there as well, then they could fall back, regroup and come up with another plan. That didn't mean to say that he liked it at all - something being sensible didn't mean that he liked it.

But, watching, there didn't seem to be any effect as she reached for the door. The ghost just carried on, trying to swing it back and forth, only she was holding it still now. Dean frowned, knowing that there was something about this entire thing that wasn't quite right.

Thia frowned when the spirit just kept right on trying. Something in her chest tugged a little bit. "...are you okay?" she asked it, reaching out with her other hand to wave it in front of his face. "Hello? Wake up? You're starting to scare me..." Which could possibly have been a really weird thing to say to a ghost who was probably making the lights in the house go all spooky and was banging cage doors at night. But still. It was weird, and that vacant look in his eyes made her feel off. Off, and sorry for him, since she didn't know what was happening, and it didn't look like he was either. She ticked her gaze back past the spirit to Dean, shaking her head.

Dean swore slightly under his breath and started forward. At least the ghost hadn't gone all scary on them, but this was just weird. He joined Thia, putting his hand on the cage door above hers and pulling, hard. The ghost let go and just stood there for a moment, before turning and heading off over to the other side of the basement, where it started to pour laundry detergent all over the floor. "Okay, so - this is just bizarre," Dean said, watching that.

"It really, really is." she agreed. "I don't like it. I mean, the other spirit, I talked to him just like anyone else. All he was was confused about what the hell happened to him, but this is..." she sighed and leaned back against the bars. "This is weird. And making me feel bad for the ghost. ...it just looks like there's nobody home upstairs, y'know? And now Sophie's going to be all mad because we're out of laundry soap. Guess I'll be mopping--and there goes the fabric softener."

"Right on top of the washing powder," Dean observed as the liquid softener started to make little rivers down the side of the pile of detergent on the floor. "Some of the ghosts at the party ignored us - but it wasn't like this," he added. Then it had just been flat out ignoring everything - not just ignoring them specifically whilst doing other things. This just felt different. "And, anyway - I thought ghosts couldn't do that. Materialise for very long. Wasn't that the whole point with Billy and Maddie? I mean, this guy's been... how long have we been down here now? Five minutes? More - and I dunno, if he's causing the electrics, then he's been down here longer than that."

"That's true." she said, frowning. "But yeah, it's meant to be a limited time. Maybe...I don't know. Hold on." she said, walking over and trying to poke the spirit lightly on the shoulder. Even if she got fabric softener and powdered soap on her feet in the process. At least she'd smell like fresh clothes, or that was the consolation she was giving herself. "Sir, you should stop that now, we'd really appreciate it..."

Dean just became more confused as he watched Thia's finger go through the spirit's shoulder. "Er - that's not meant to happen, right? God - that's what else looked weird, I know there was something. We both saw Maddie manifest, up at the mine - she was solid. Not like this guy." This guy who still looked very much like a ghost, all see through and everything.

Hissing slightly, she shook her hand. "...note to self, touching ghosts equals kinda owie." she said, walking back over, but then she looked down at her feet and sighed, so she pulled up short, so she didn't track things everywhere. "But yeah you're right. She was solid, wasn't she. There-there, and this guy definitely isn't. But he's still moving things around and generally being kinda...weird and annoying." she said. He was throwing drier sheets around now. "Either that or he's got an impassioned hatred for laundry."

"And a fascination for cage doors," Dean agreed, keeping half an eye on their ghostly visitor as he lifted Thia up onto the top of the washing machine. He leant back against it, by her side, so he could watch the spirit properly as he wandered around, pushing the couch that Sophie slept on on full moon nights to the other side of the room. "Or maybe just a really borked sense of feng shui or whatever that is or something," he suggested, crossing his arms across his chest.

Thia settled where Dean had put her, leaning on her hands at her sides, slightly towards Dean. "Something. I mean, he's obviously got a mission, it just almost doesn't look like he knows what it is?" she suggested, not sure if her logic there made sense, but it did in her head. "Like, alright, he's messing stuff up right now. You'd think if he was really into trashing things, he'd be a little more..." she made a vague gesture. "Into it." she said. "But he's not, he's just kinda...lalala guess I'll go knock this thing off the shelf, like ya do."

"Yeah, he's kinda - maybe he's a ghost that smoked too much pot. He'll get the giggles and the munchies next, we just need to wait long enough," Dean suggested, amused by the thought - and rather less scared now, watching the ghost just wander round low-level trashing things. It helped him relax, having been through this and there being no actual sign of danger.

Giggling a little, she knocked her shoulder against his. "I guess. But I'm just going to take your delinquent word for it? Because I'm a sweet little angelic thing that's never done that in my life." she admitted. Which was the truth. She was, in fact, for all intents and purposes, a very good girl. She'd drank occasionally, but only at parties and only like, a max of two girly-beers that tended to hit her hard because she had the tolerance of a concussed hamster. Alcohol kinda went straight to her head. She squinted one eye shut when the ghost went to pull the cushions off of the couch, and he tossed them randomly over his shoulder. One smacked the cage door and shut it again. She just hoped that that didn't make the ghost remember the door, and start clanging it again. Though she guessed it was less destructive.

It did, in fact, do just that as the ghost turned and glided back over to the door, starting back on opening and closing it, in exactly the same position as before, as if nothing had changed. "And here we go again," Dean muttered. "Though - I'll give him this - it's a lot less freaking down here watching him than it was upstairs wondering what was playing with the lights," he added, louder this time so she could hear him.

"Go put a pillow down in the way there so when he tries to shut it, it doesn't clang." Thia instructed. "But yeah, it's far less freaky. I was really waiting for ghosts to show up and start trying to kill us. Which, really, as far as bad things to happen go, is pretty high on the list. I don't even know how we'd start to fight spirits." she admitted. Because the shadows were something else. Incorporeal for the most part, but they still didn't take bullets well. Spirits...well. It went right through. It didn't even mess up their hair.

Dean mock-saluted his girlfriend and grabbed the throw cushion off the floor, slipping it into the gap as the spirit opened the cage door again. As expected, he was completely ignored. "I don't know what we'd do either. The only thing I can think of that would do anything would be something like exorcism and I don't even know where to start with something like that." It had been on the news enough though that it sprang to mind. People talking about whether it was right or not. There'd been a lot of talk about ghosts recently.

She smiled at the mock salute, and crooked her finger at him to beckon him back over. "At ease, soldier. Mission accomplished. Flying colors." she said, reaching out to tug him in by the front of the shirt to give him a kiss. She reached up to cup his face while she did it, fingertips against his skin. Then she sat back again, sighing. "I'm not comfortable with the idea of an exorcism." she admitted. "What's it even do? What if it hurts them? Or...just sends them away someplace awful? Or destroys them?" she asked. "I mean...Mr. Spooky here might not be convenient, but that hardly warrants something that drastic, right?"

"Didn't say I'd want to do it," Dean told her, grabbing a towel from a pile that had, miraculously, escaped the random low level destruction in the basement and starting to clean off her feet. "And yeah, if it's just this then whatever, I think we can live with it. Though disco-lighting guy might just get annoying. I like dark when I sleep, but if the worst comes to the worst, we can probably figure something out there." Like taking the bulbs out of the overhead lights and physically unplugging everything else before he went to sleep.

"I was kind of thinking about like...warding. If he leaves, that is. I'm pretty sure Sophie would have said if there was just random ghost dude hanging out downstairs when she came to do the laundry." she said, holding her feet up for him while he did that. And she took a moment to appreciate the fact that she had such a thoughtful boyfriend. "If he doesn't leave, then I have no idea what would happen. But that might kinda be a non-ouchy way of doing things. It'd just mean he couldn't come in, if I'm remembering wardings correctly." Back when she'd been alive, she'd started learning white magic. Granted, apparently Fades couldn't do anything like that so she'd stopped, but she'd done her homework before then.

"We can look into it. Honestly, looking at this guy, I think calling people can wait until morning," Dean said, casting a glance over his shoulder, then looking back at her. "Maddie'll probably have some suggestions, right?" He hoped so, anyhow. "Or, hey - didn't Billy do some spell to get Maddie here in the first place? So - he must know how to move spirits, right?" he suggested, that thought suddenly occurring to him.

"Yeah, he did. He re-bound her here, but that's cuz she was bound where they were from, before." Thia said, thinking it over as she leaned back on her arms, her attention split between Dean and the spirit...who was perfectly content to just swing that cage door even if it wasn't even making noise anymore. "I think calling people can wait til morning too. Oh!" she said, sitting up straighter. "Do we have a camera? Like a video one? Maybe we can record this, just in case he does go away by morning or something. Get some pictures with your digital camera too." she said. "Then maybe Maddie'll know better what she's dealing with. Billy too, even."

"I don't have a camera - but I think your phone can do that," he told her. Her phone could basically do everything, since he got her the best one he could afford at the time. "Did you want to go get it? And my camera?" Because, no - he wasn't actually intending leaving her down here alone with the ghost, even if it did seem completely harmless.

She wondered if Oz had a camera anywhere, but decided there would be way too much to look through if that were the case. So, her phone could do pretty much anything, he'd made sure of that. She also caught that he wasn't letting her stay down there, and that made her smile too. "If you gimme a piggyback ride to the stairs so I don't get my feet all soapy again after you just got them all clean." she said. She'd warn him to stay back and just let the ghost do his thing but figured that was exactly what Dean was going to do, and he didn't need her to tell him to do it.

Dean raised an eyebrow and looked at her, assessingly. "Is this just because you want a piggyback ride?" he checked, smirking slightly - and also picking her up to sling onto his back even as he finished speaking. It wasn't a hard move from where he'd sat her on the washer, after all.

"Of course not! It's purely practical in nature, because I don't want to go ruining your hard work." she said, clinging to his back and grinning. "It's not at all because it's fun, and you haven't given me one in ages and I have this really perfectly reasonable excuse. Honest!" she told him, tone innocent. "Totally practical. You know me. I'm always practical." she assured him.

Dean looked back over his shoulder. "Not always," he teased, before heading - carefully, since the floor was covered in soap now - over towards the stairs, letting her down only when they got there, depositing her to stand on the top step.

She smiled at him. "Not always?" she asked. Her arms were still hooked around his neck, and she tugged him closer for a kiss before she went to run upstairs. "You'll have to explain that to me when I get back." she told him. "I'll only be a minute." she added, before she took off to go get his camera and her phone. Really with the phone thing she could just send the little video to Billy's phone and he could see it when he got up. It was a good way to go about it.

He watched her go, then turned to sit on the bottom step, watching the ghost, who was still banging the cage door against the cushion. Dean stifled a yawn, knowing he was going to be sleepy for school tomorrow, but there was no helping that. he rested forward, elbows on his knees, his hands lightly clasped together as he waited for her.

She dashed upstairs, where the lights were still flickering all over the place, though again, it seemed to be in random sections of the house. She grabbed her phone, and his camera, then was right back downstairs, sitting on the step directly behind Dean, pulling him back to snuggle him, setting his camera in his hand. She had her phone open and was looking at the ghost from where she'd propped her chin on the back of his shoulder, and she liked it up. "He's just...really obsessing over that door, huh." she said, shaking her head slightly.

"Seems that way, yeah," Dean agreed, leaning back into her a little. "He's just been... stood there. Tell you one thing though - tomorrow I'm going to find some oil and do those hinges, that's for sure," he added, trying to hold back another yawn, lifting his hand to his mouth to cover it once he'd finished speaking.

She smiled, a little, holding up her phone to take a short video of the ghost doing his thing, and then she quickly sent it off to Billy with a note on it. Then she set it on the step beside her and hugged him around the shoulders. "You need to get to bed, sweetie." she told him, lips pressed in mostly against the back of his neck. "I can clean up the mess down here and all." she promised. But he had to get up for school. She didn't, therefore she could be on cleanup duty.

"Nuh uh - I can help you. or you can do it tomorrow. Not gonna leave you down here," Dean said. Not that he particularly wanted to do cleaning things - he didn't, generally, if he could avoid it. But he wasn't going to leave her down here on her own. "I wouldn't sleep anyway, if I did," he pointed out.

She made a little sound, but knew he was right. He'd be worried that the ghost had suddenly taken interest in things outside the exciting world of banging cage doors. "I'll do it tomorrow then. You need rest." she said. She rubbed at his shoulders a little bit, then kissed the back of his neck. "You've had a long night. So, bed for you." she decided firmly. She drifted her fingers through his hair once too. "And if I go with you, you'll be off to dreamland iiiiinnnn...like seven minutes." she said.

"Yeah, s'been a long night," Dean agreed, glad she wasn't putting up a fight on that. It was late, tonight had been stressful, in many ways. It was all hitting, and hitting fast right now and he just wanted to crawl into bed and hope that his alarm didn't go off too early. At any time in the past he would have considered faking an illness, or just plain cutting class to get a lie in, but he'd promised, which meant he'd have to be in school, tired or not.

She stood, grabbing her phone up, and she tugged on his arm. "It has. So, c'mon. Bed. I'll just get up with you and come clean in the morning." she said. She'd feel way too guilty leaving the mess she knew was there for someone else to clean up. So, she couldn't let herself entertain the idea. What she could do was go upstairs with Dean, play with his hair til he dropped off to sleep--which he always did very quickly when she did that--and then when he got up for school she'd get up with him. Simple plans, she was a fan of them.

He let her pull him up - though there wasn't really much pulling to do, since he just stood, but she liked to do it anyway - and glanced once more at the ghost before they headed upstairs, sleep really the only thing on his mind. He'd unplug everything he could, he decided. And if he had to blow the rest to stop the flickering, he would. He could do that - he could make things just stop. Okay, they'd be a bugger to fix again, and he risked a migraine or nosebleed, or something else in the way of a backlash, but if he really had to, he would. Maybe he'd be backlashed with some unconsciousness. No matter what she said, he still counted that as sleeping.

Lullaby led him back upstairs to carry through her devious plans on getting him to sleep as fast as possible. Really, so far as weirdness went, this was more doable. Though, she was thinking she needed to start unscrewing lightbulbs places and getting out candles for when she was busy doing Dean's homework. But she'd do prep work tomorrow. Tonight, there was going to be sleep. Or, the rest of the morning, anyways, it was late. And hopefully the pillow stayed put, just so the clanging didn't start up again, and wake Dean up. She wouldn't hear it but he might, and the boy needed sleep. For once, they were dealing with a crisis that could be put off until tomorrow. All they needed now was for that to become a new trend.