Day 39: Intercom, Evening

[damned_intercom]

The Head Doctor seemed a little rushed as he spoke on the intercom, not taking as much pleasure as he usually did in describing the delicious food that would soon be served

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M2

[theroadsofar]

The nosebleed was mostly under control by the time Dean was escorted back to M2. As usual, he was the first one back. Seeing as there was no trash can, he passed off the bloodied tissue to Lurch; might as well, seeing as the orderly was just standing there watching him and he probably should look more busy than that

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Food was not something Angel paid particular attention to, but he was still capable of easily distinguishing one scent from another and he was fairly sure that the faint, fruity sweetness he could catch in the air had nothing to do with the turkey. It might've, had Cordelia done the cooking, but that was one fortunate occurrence avoided while here. Nor could he tell where it was coming from. It just kind of-lightly settled over the room, as if someone had sprayed perfume.

That didn't make sense. His roommate wasn't the type, he was sure of it. Angel was not that hopeless when it came to understanding people.

He frowned, but his attention was distracted from that when he caught sight of the-was that? He was pretty sure that was salt. What? He shot a look at Brian, unable to help his surprise. It wasn't that the line was there that surprised him. Or, yes, because it was there, but it was more that he recognized what this meant about his roommate. Even if the substance was bizarre. Binding powder, he'd used more than once himself, but

[theroadsofar]

Damn. So he had looked down.

"What, that?" Dean asked casually, looking at the salt line as if just seeing it now. He debated telling him the truth, the whole truth, but decided against it. Angel noticing the salt line didn't mean he necessarily knew what he meant. "Just a precaution. Or you could treat it as a personal tick, whatever floats your boat. I'd leave it alone if I were you though."

At least now he knew for sure Angel was no demon, at least, judging by the fact he'd made it over the salt line. Dean went back to his dinner, sniffing a little through his healing nose; seemed to be fine, nothing broken (again), and he definitely felt better than he had this morning, the "fight" with Slappy aside. He didn't know where Angel went during the night-shifts, but so long as he was outta the room for the majority of tonight, then it wasn't his business.

[Sorry it's short, gonna have to jet to get medicine D:]

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Angel cast the line of salt one last glance before sitting down in front of his dinner. Which reminded him that he did need to find something to eat tonight, though half the time, he lost as much blood as he got trying to wrestle down his meal. It defeated the purpose somewhat

[theroadsofar]

Okay, looked like he wasn't dancing around it anymore

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Angel glanced up, a little surprised. He almost never heard of anyone doing this as a generational thing. That tended to be limited to those in the Watcher's Council for...some reason. Angel had never deeply explored their inner workings; he knew Wesley and Giles, of course, but in general he chose not to have any ties with them. They were good people with good intentions, but there was a lot they didn't seem to understand, either. After what'd happened with Faith, especially, he'd stopped trusting them much.

Brian obviously didn't fit the profile, though; Angel didn't even consider the possibility. He was clearly American, for one.

He paused, considering. "I know. Though to be honest, I've never seen salt used in place of a proper binding powder."

But if he thought about it, it wasn't completely irrational. Throwing salt over your shoulder was a common enough superstition, misconception though it was.

It still rang as a bit bizarre.

[theroadsofar]

Dean raised an eyebrow. "You're kidding, right? Salt's a lot easier to come by than trolling around for some ready-made binding powder. It's not exactly like they sell that stuff wholesale."

What kind of hunter was he? Any hunter worth his salt - ha ha, whatever - would just know, he assumed, that salt kept out more than demons and you could pick it up anywhere, any time. And it wasn't like you'd get a lot of weird looks buying it either, so it was inconspicuous to boot. Dean frowned a little at Angel; the fact he knew about binding powder at all screamed "Hunter" of some kind, but how couldn't he have seen salt used? Now, he didn't know how he got into the business. Not everyone was born into it like Sam and him, and it was wasn't out of the question that Chippendale here might've had to self-teach himself about this kinda crap. Maybe he hadn't discovered that yeah, you could use binding powder to juice up a line and throw in stuff like cat's eye shells, but salt was usually good enough to save your ass, especially if you had only a

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Angel's eyebrows furrowed slightly. If Brian hadn't mentioned being raised into this, he wouldn't have found it strange that he didn't know. You did have to dig around to find this type of information. Either you devoted your life to studying all of this or you had a couple of centuries on your hands to read a lot of books and make a lot of contacts. And unless you knew where to look, occult shops with genuine supplies were difficult to locate. A lot of them were made for tourists

[theroadsofar]

"Spirits, for one," Dean said, shooting Angel a look. Hadn't anyone told him anything? Then again, he was right on that count - salt and holy water didn't always work on certain demons, Yellow-Eyes coming to mind that time when he'd been holed up in Dad. Dad had been gone for a year now, but he still felt his absence and it hurt like hell. Some days he didn't know how he got up out of bed, only that he just did and he suspected a majority of the reason was doing it for Sammy. "But you're right about the demons. If they're high-powered enough, then crap like salt and holy water might not work. But better some defense than none, y'know

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Okay, now Angel was...just confused. He was usually confused to some degree or another when talking to people, so that wasn't necessarily new in and of itself, but discussions about vampires and demons and such were often one of the few times he wasn't left feeling vaguely baffled

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Dean snorted. "I wish. Look, man, I don't know what you've been up to before Landels or how much experience you've got, but the second you start trying to make friends with Casper, the more likely it's gonna end bloody. Just gonna tell you right now

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Angel raised an eyebrow. Maybe Brian simply attracted a lot of violent spirits, but just how many were there to attract, anyhow? Psychics could sense the presence of spirits, but otherwise, most of them couldn't be seen or felt.

"Some are, but...they aren't common," he said. "Ghosts in general, I mean. I've run into exactly two violent spirits, and one who's taken up rooming with an associate of mine. Spirits tend to keep to their own plane of existence. It's rare for them to cross over."

Admittedly, he didn't seek them out specifically, but if there was one actively causing trouble somewhere, Cordelia's visions would've likely alerted him to it. Generally, there was simply no need to. He had enough on his hands with the vampires and various demons.

Of course, Brian wasn't exactly wrong to be concerned about ghosts. It was just, wasn't there a lot more he should be worried about instead? If he was focusing all of his attention on what was almost never there...

[theroadsofar]

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