"Cas, you can't just spend your whole summer reading. Live a little."
Castiel gave his older brother a withering stare, despite being five years younger than him. "Sure I can."
"No. How do you expect to meet your soulmate if you never do anything? I met Kali at a party. Out. In public. Where the people are."
Castiel rubbed absently at his forearm, where the first words his soulmate would ever say to him were etched. Try and stop me. It's Halloween. It was an odd thing to say, but at least Cas had some sort of time frame of when he would meet his soulmate. "What do you propose I do? I'm not a party person and you know it."
"You can come help me at the shop. Please?"
Castiel sighed, but found himself stocking shelves full of candy the next day nonetheless. His first customer was a tall boy with shaggy brown hair.
"Hey. Do you have any pie here? My brother's a freak."
Cas looked up at the boy. "What does that have to do with pie?"
The boy- giant- laughed. "I mean he's a freak about pie. He can't-"
"Is that a Winchester I hear? If it's Dean, there's no pie. If it's Sam, the pie's next to the window, hidden from your brother's sight."
Cas grinned. His brother clearly knew this boy well. "I'm assuming you're Sam?"
Sam grinned right back. "Yep. I can't tell you how many pies Dean has bought. Gabe can't seem to stop him from only buying one pie, so I try to come before Dean has the chance."
"Thank God it's you Sam. I will not be responsible for that moron overdosing on sugar. By the way, this is Cas, my baby bro. He needed something to do this summer." Gabriel said, slinging an arm around Cas' shoulder. Cas squirmed away.
"Hey Cas. I'm Sam WInchester, and I'm sure you'll be meeting my brother soon. Now, pie, please?"
Dean knew what Sam was up to, and while he appreciated the sentiment, he needed to get his own pie. Sam only ever got one pie. One. Dean needed variety in his life. So instead of getting a quick burger and heading back to work for his lunch break, he went to Gabriel's shop.
Gabriel was behind the counter, a blue eyed boy about Dean's age sitting next to him. Dean barely had time to register him before Gabe said no.
"What? I wasn't doing anything. I'm trying to support local businesses."
"No. You're not allowed to buy pie here anymore, Winchester."
"But you have the best pie!" Dean winked at the other boy, who blushed and turned back to his book.
"Flattery won't work. Get your sorry ass outta here. Stop flirting with my brother. Sam will be hearing about this."
Dean rolled his eyes. "Fine, Mom. One of these days I'm gonna come in when you're not working and I'll buy all the damn pies."
"Okay, Dean-o. I'm putting up security cameras."
Dean humphed as he was shoved outside the shop. He flipped Gabriel off and walked back to his car, thinking about blue eyes and only one flavor of pie.
That was the first time Castiel saw Dean Winchester, but neither of them had said anything to each other. Cas continued seeing Sam every few days, but the elder Winchester never returned.
"Sam, how old are you?" Cas asked one day when Sam was telling him and Gabriel of a bully in his school.
"Uhm, 16. I live with Dean because last year our Dad died in a car accident. Dean could barely get custody of me, but he dropped out of college and started working full time at our friend Bobby's auto shop." Sam sighed. "I wish he would go back to school. He could be so much more than just a mechanic."
"I'm sorry about your parents."
Sam shrugged. "It's alright. My mom died when I was really little, and Dean raised me more than my dad did. I'm kinda glad it's just me and Dean now, because our Dad was always dragging us across the country, and now we get to stay in one place, which is great."
Cas smiled. "That's good. If you've moved around so much, have either of you found your soulmates?"
Sam shook his shaggy head. "Nah. I'll know the second I meet them, though. Look at this."
Sam extended his arm, revealing script that read: Listen moose man, I don't know who died and made you king, but that's my table. Haul ass.
Cas laughed a little. "What do you say to that?"
"I'm gonna say something so polite she's gonna cry. What about you?"
"Try and stop me. It's Halloween. When I was younger, my mom didn't let me out of the house on Halloween because she didn't want me meeting my soulmate too young. Still haven't found them."
"Maybe this year, man. Tell Gabriel I say hey."
"Will do Sam."
Ironically, the very next day, Sam came bounding in with news. "Cas! Cas, it happened! I swear, you're magical or something because I met her. I met my soulmate!"
Cas whipped his head up. "What?"
"Yeah! So I was sitting in the library, minding my own business, when this girl taps me on the shoulder and goes, 'Listen moose man, I don't know who died and made you king, but this is my table. Haul ass.' and I go, like a friggin' child, 'I don't see your name on it,' and she just kinda gasped and started apologizing, like a lot. She had been having a really bad day, and then boom, enter Sam. Her name's Jess, and she's pretty great. I'm so excited."
Cas smiled, and passed the news on to Gabriel later that night, but couldn't explain the sort of emptiness at knowing that Sam had found his happily ever after, but his was still out there.
It was strange, Cas thought, that he knew so much about Dean Winchester without ever having actually met him. He knew about his childhood and his job and his love of pie, yet had never spoken a word to the man. Cas was so caught up in these troubling thoughts that he didn't notice the man himself walk in and start stacking pies in his arms. He looked up just as Dean gently set down six pies on the counter.
Cas frowned. "That seems excessive."
"Try and stop me. It's Halloween." Dean shot back immediately, as if he been preparing defenses for buying six pies. It took a second for the words to register in their brains, but the second they did, Dean sucked in a sharp gasp and Cas shot out of his chair. Dean just gaped at him wordlessly.
"N- no it's not," Cas finally choked out after what felt like hours of staring. "It's August."
"I- um- yeah, I know. Uh- you're Cas, right? Gabe's brother?"
Cas nodded, slowly regaining his senses. "And you're Dean. Sam's brother."
Dean nodded back and ran a hand through his hair, looking at the ground, away from Cas. "I-Jesus Christ I feel like I already know so much about you."
"I was just thinking the same thing." Cas said in a small voice.
"So- uh- do you want to come help me finish these pies?" Dean's hand was still in his hair.
"I, uh," Cas frowned. He hadn't realized he had been smiling like an idiot until he did that. "No. You're not allowed to buy pie here."
Dean looked crestfallen for a moment, and then his smile lit up his face. "Please? I just wanted to annoy Sam. Just two?"
Cas folded his arms. "One."
"Please?" Cas held his stern posture and expression for only a moment.
"Fine. Two. But if Gabriel bans you... "
"I'll come anyway." Dean said as he put most of the pies back.
Two years later, when Cas was done with college and officially moved into the Winchester apartment, Dean woke up to a room decorated in pumpkins and skeletons and witches.
"Happy Halloween, Dean! August is a magical time of year, isn't it?"
Dean rolled over to face his boyfriend, who was up before him, surprisingly, and grinned. "When did you get so sarcastic?"
"Side effect of being around you, Dean."
"Pie for breakfast?" Dean said, his words slightly muffled by the pillow.
"Pie for breakfast." Cas inched closer and kissed him slowly. "Happy anniversary."
"I love you."
"More than pie?"
Dean laughed and threw an arm around Cas' waist, drawing him in closer. "More than pie."