More protein + less calories = muscles?

I am under the impression that gaining muscle also means gaining weight (for a person who starts with a normal weight). And eating less calories means losing weight. I'm curious as to if I can still gain weight if I eat more protein but with a calories deficit?

For starters, complete novices who have never touched a weight before as well as people who are carrying around a lot of extra fat benefit from the ability to gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously. This depends a good bit on genetics too, but in general, simultaneous muscle gain and fat loss (hereafter referred to as recomposition) is next to impossible to achieve outside the realm of novices, overweight individuals and drug users. The reason being, keeping this simplistic, is that muscle building (hypertrophy) is a very intensive process, energetically speaking. Put differently, you need a surplus of calories (more energy in than out) to facilitate recovery and growth of new muscle. While dieting for fat loss, you don’t have adequate calories to maintain your current tissue (hence the loss in weight accompanying a caloric deficit). So adding something as metabolically active as muscle tissue probably isn’t going to happen in the face of an energy deficit. As I’m typing this it seems a bit wordy but suffice it to say, unless you're fat and/or untrained… don’t expect to gain an appreciable amount of muscle while dieting.