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For anyone who believes love tastes like sugar and disaster.
Castiel never thought that he would ask Sam for a favour. Don't get him wrong, Sam is one of his best friends and he likes him, but this feels like a huge favour. He already knows that Sam will agree, but the act of asking him is the whole that's been holding him back for some time.
Dean' birthday is coming up and as a good partner, he wants to give him something that he will like. He wasn't sure what that something might be, but then he realized there are only four things Dean loves more than anything. There's Sam, him, Baby and pie. Considering Dean already has three things out of four, Castiel' mission will be to bake Dean a pie.
And that's where Sam comes to the equation. He needs to get Dean away from the Bunker so he could bake. How Sam will get him away doesn't concern him. Anyhow, it would be only for few hours. He doesn't need much more then that.
That brings him to present as he walks towards Sam, about to ask him. Sam is reading one of the lore books in the library and Dean is nowhere to be seen, which makes it the perfect time to ask.
"Sam, I have a favour to ask."
Sam startles slightly and looks at him. He puts one of his bookmarks in the book and closes it, giving Castiel his full attention.
"Sure, what do you need?"
He looks around, trying to spot Dean, but when the results are negative, he responds.
"I need you to get Dean out of the Bunker for a few hours. I want to bake him a pie, but I don't want him to see it until it's ready."
Sam smiles at him, understanding visible in his expression.
"Sure man. When do you need us to go?"
Tomorrow is Dean' birthday and he would prefer to bake it today, so...
"I would greatly appreciate it, if you would go today."
His eyes get wide and he snickers.
"Yeah, okay. I have a hunt I wanted to go and check out anyways."
Castiel smiles. He might get Sam some unique lore books or something in the future for helping him.
"You got a hunt?"
He turns around when the object of their conversation enters the room. His clothes are covered from oil as he was most likely working in the garage on the cars. Castiel finds him beautiful despite that.
"Yeah, I was just telling Cas that I found a hunt like a hour or two from here. Nothing major, it looks like standard salt and burn."
Castiel shoots Sam a grateful look. He really saved him this time.
Dean comes closer to them and lightly kisses his cheek. Castiel looks at him with eyes full of love and Dean looks at him the same way.
"Give me a few minutes and we can go. It's been a while since we had a good hunt."
Dean squeezes Sam' shoulder and goes to take a shower. Castiel looks at Sam and they nod at each other. The plan is already in motion.
-----
He can do this. He has the recipe in front of him, all the ingredients are in the fridge or on the table and he has the whole Bunker for himself as the brothers already went away. Of course, Dean wasn't very happy that he wasn't going with them, but Castiel told him he will make it up for him later. After that, Dean wasn't complaining as much.
Now, Castiel needs to focus. He doesn't have the full day for it, so he better starts now.
For the pie itself, he will need a pie crust, apples, granulated sugar, brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon and eggs. He already has everything he needs, but...
He looks at the table which is full of various types of apples. He has the Honeycrisp apples, Golden Delicious apples, Pink Lady apples and Granny Smith apples. He doesn't see the difference between them, they all the same to him, but the recipe said to have all of them, so he isn't going to argue.
Then he also has two types of pie crust, the all-butter pie crust and sourdough pie crust. Again, he doesn't know what he needs both, but what the recipe says must be true.
He rolls up his sleeves and starts peeling the apples. The recipe says to peel, cure and then slice the apples. But he has so much of them, it would take him at least an hour to do only apples.
Castiel smirks to himself and lets out a bit of his grace. All the apples start hovering above the table and they glow blue from the influence of his grace. Only a second later, they are all peeled, cored and sliced. He smiles to himself. Half of the job is done.
Now, he needs to go mix the apple slices, granulated sugar, light brown sugar, flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon zest and lemon juice. But he doesn't have a big enough bowl for all those apples. Maybe he can set aside most of them and only work with like a 20% of all the apples? That might work.
Castiel lets the most of the apple slices hover in the air and uses only 20%. He mixes it all together until it's well combined and places it aside. Now he needs to place the oven rack in the center position and preheat the oven to 400°F.
Now that he thinks about it, he should have preheated the oven before he started baking. He hums and spans his fingers. The oven is immediately preheated and Castiel can feel the hot air coming out of it. It's getting pretty warm in there, so he takes of his coat and once again, rolls up the sleeves on his shirt.
To continue, he needs to roll one of the discs into a 12" circle that is ⅛" thick.
"How am I supposed to do that?" he murmurs.
This looks really complicated, but he is nothing if not determined. He is going to make Dean a pie, even if it's the last thing he will ever do.
He tries to roll it for a few minutes, but no matter how much he tries, the crust is still too thick. He sighs. He might need to use his grace one again. His shirt and trousers are covered in flour and he looks really funny like that. Whatever.
The snap echoes in the Bunker and the pie crust flies up and plasters itself to the ceiling. Castiel groans and almost facepalms. He remembered just in time that his hands are covered in flour.
He brings out the second pie crust and tries again. This time, it works and he has the perfect crust. Onward, he needs to spoon the apple pie filling into the crust, discarding any liquid at the bottom of the mixing bowl.
How is he supposed to spoon the filling? Shouldn't he just put the filling in? It looks really confusing. He checks the rest of the recipe and groans. It reads as follows:
'Place the pie dish onto a baking sheet and gently brush the surface of the dough with the egg wash and sprinkle sanding sugar on top. Use a sharp knife to cut vents in the crust.
On a lightly floured surface, roll the second disc of pie dough into a 12" circle that is ⅛" thick. Place the crust over the apple pie filling.
Use a sharp knife to trim the excess dough from around the edge of the pie plate. Use your fingers to pull both the bottom and top pie crust up and slightly away from the edge of the pie dish. Fold the edge under itself and press down to seal the edge in place. Rotate the pie a quarter turn and repeat until edges are neatly tucked in.
In order to protect the edges of the pie from over-browning, use a long strip of aluminum foil (about 38" long) by folding it in half lengthwise and then folding in half again, lengthwise. Wrap it around the edges of the pie plate and over the edges of the crust. This is referred to as a "pie shield".
Bake the pie at 400°F for 25 minutes. Remove the pie shield, lower the oven temperature to 375°F and bake an additional 30-35 minutes.'
He has a long day in front of him.
-----
Just as Castiel is putting the pie in the oven, the Bunker door bursts open, slamming against the wall. It looks like the brothers are back. He smiles when he hears Dean cursing.
"This was a waste of time, Sam! There was not ghost, no nothing and even the food was bad! I think your skills in finding hunts are getting rusty. You should let someone else do the findi...wait, what's that smell?"
Castiel hears him running down the stairs and he looks around himself. He didn't manage to clean everything. He is covered from head to toe in flour, apples and even some egg whites.
"Hey Cas, were you baking some...?"
Dean stops in the doorway to the kitchen and starts laughing when he sees the disaster. Castiel only scowls, waiting for the fit to end. He would have started laughing as well, but he really tried!
"Sorry, Cas," Dean says, wiping away his tears of laughter. "What the hell did you do?"
He sighs.
"I attended to bake a pie, but either the recipe was lieing or I didn't understand it properly. It said to have multiple types of apples and also to wrap the pie in some kind of shield?"
Dean comes close to him, pushing away the apples floating in the air.
"Is that why so many apple slices are flying in the hair?"
Castiel nods.
Dean reaches out to his hair and takes some of the egg whites from it.
"How did you...?"
"You truly don't wanna know how that happened."
Dean smiles at him.
"Now I do want to know. Did you have to fight an egg monster?" Dean says with mischief in his eyes.
Castiel growls and grabs his chin, pulling Dean closer. Dean' eyes cross and Castiel kisses him. Dean hums and after few seconds, they pull away.
Dean has a pleasant expression on his face.
"You taste like pie."
Castiel smirks.
"That was the intention."