Title: Deserve Some Pie
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters: Castiel, Dean Winchester
Prompt: Written for the "January 31 Day Place Challenge"; Day 2: Kitchen
Word Count: 1,398
Rating: K
Genre: Friendship
Summary: Castiel was human once. He should be able to figure this out. Besides, Dean deserved to have some pie and humans tended to enjoy things that were made by hand.
Author's Notes: This turned out longer than I expected, and I hope I didn't get too technical with the baking instructions.
Disclaimer: I own nothing …

He could do this.

He'd been human, once. He could do this.

How hard could it really be to make a pie from raw ingredients?

The flour had to be sifted. Sifted. When something has been passed through a sieve. Now where was the sieve…? Actually, what exactly did a sieve look like these days…?

He opened his phone and located the dictionary app Claire had downloaded onto his phone the last time he'd seen her. He hadn't saw the necessity of such a thing. He was a centuries old being. He knew every language. Why would he need a dictionary?

But, in the last 2000 years or so contact between angels and humans had been greatly limited. His garrison may have been stationed to watch the earth, but they had been unpermitted to actually interact with it… and Jimmy Novak hadn't known how to cook

He found a silver bowl-shaped object with a small number of holes in it. Was this what sieves looked like these days? He shrugged and held the object over the large pot he was using in lieu of a suitably sized bowl (the likes of which were currently non-existent in the kitchen at present for some reason) and dumped the flour into it, shaking the powder so it sprinkled into the pot.

He may have shaken the sieve a little too vigorously… The flour created a cloud as it was shaken and he was almost completely dusted from his head down to his shoes. Tiny clumps had landed on the counter, floor, and his clothing.

He sighed.

Before continuing, he removed his trench coat. After considering, he also removed his blazer and tie, hanging all three on the back of a chair that sat near the table that the inhabitants of the bunker – "It's not a bunker, Cas. I told you, it's a cave warren. Y'know, a cavarren, if you will." Dean's voice sounded in his head, and he recalled the pleased grin the man had displayed at his clever twisting of the English language. – used when they decided to eat in the kitchen.

He carefully dumped the flour back into the bag to re-measure it. This time he was more careful about shaking the sieve. Once the flour was in the pot he turned back to the recipe he'd written down from the food website.

The instructions stated that the butter was to be "cut" into the flour with a… what was a pastry cutter? He searched the kitchen but found nothing that could fit what he thought was the description of the cutting utensil. Instead, he took a paring knife and, after measuring the right amount of butter by smooshing it into the measuring cup, cut the softened butter with the knife before dumping the resulting squishy cubes into the pot with the flour. He then added the salt and, after deliberating, decided on the mid-point of the range of tablespoons given for the now tepid water. Thought why there was a range and not a specific amount given he didn't know.

He stirred the ingredients together with a wooden spoon so they mixed. It began to resemble dough but the butter was still in clumps so he kept stirring until the dough became too thick for the spoon to adequately useful. He elected to finish mixing the sticky dough with his hands until the butter was fully mixed. It had also lost some of its stickiness and became more solid than mush.

He rolled out the dough, becoming frustrated when it began to crack apart more the thinner it got. He turned the page he was reading to read the apple pie filling recipe he'd written on the back. It had the instructions of what to do with the crust.

First, he preheated the over, as per the instructions, and started on making the filling. In a different pot, he dropped in the butter and set the stove burner on high to melt it. This quickly turned out to be a mistake.

The butter began spitting and bubbling in an alarming fashion. He pulled it off the burner and turned the temperature down. One the rest of the ingredients that were mixed in he put the pot back on the cooler burner and took a more careful approach as he slowly increased the temperature until the mixture began to boil and reduced the temperature, adjusting it to ensure it simmered without spitting at him again.

He pressed the rather dry and tough crust into a pie shaped pan he'd found, hoping that pressing the cracked parts together would hold it, and added the apple pieces before pouring in the hot sugary mixture – he took extra caution to heed the warning to do this slowly. He followed the baking instructions diligently, deciding again on the mid-point of the range of numbers given for the baking time. He still didn't understand why the instructions weren't more precise.

The time was almost up when he realized the scent emanating from the oven was beginning to gain a charred quality to it. He panicked and opened the oven door quickly to look inside… and had to rear back a bit as his face was hit with a large burst of scalding hot air. His lips and nasal passage momentarily felt as though his skin was going to begin peeling before his grace kicked in and the sensation went away. When he looked back into the oven he was dismayed to find the crust of the pie was much darker than he'd intended. He quickly reached in and removed the pie, remembering from his time as a human to use pot holders in order to prevent a need to heal the skin of his hands. He may be able to heal instantly but that didn't mean he had to feel the minor injury in the first place.

He set the slightly over browned thing in the pie plate that barely deserved to be called a pie on the counter and sighed in misery. Maybe there was more to this pie making business than he'd originally thought. He set about cleaning up the mess he'd made of the kitchen in his sad attempt at baking, electing to do it the human way instead of mojoing everything into place. He was about to toss the cooling thing still sitting on the counter in the trash when someone entered the room.

"Hey, is that pie I smell?"

"Oh, Dean," Cas looked up a bit startled. He'd been so focused on the pie in front of him that he'd neglected to notice anyone approaching the kitchen. "Um…"

"Awesome," Dean said as he fished a fork out of a drawer and turned to dig into the freshly baked apple pie. "Where did it come from?"

"I, uh, well I," Cas blushed and looked down. "I thought you deserved some pie."

"You made it?" Dean asked with a surprised but pleased look on his face. "For me?"

"I, yes. I mean, I tried," Cas replied. "Oh, I wouldn't-" Castiel tried to protest as Dean put a bite of the concoction into his mouth.

"Hmm…"

Castiel winced and waited for the verdict of his failed attempt.

"Crust could use some more practice, but the filling is awesome," Dean said as he took another bite.

"You don't have to eat it," Cas stated as he tried reach for the pie.

"Of course I'm going to eat it," Dean scoffed and pulled it closer to himself. "You made it for me."

"Dean, I'm sure it tastes terrible," Cas protested and tried again to reach for the offending pie.

"I don't care, I'm eating it. Go 'way," Dean stated as he wrapped an arm carefully around the still slightly hot pie plate to keep it out of Cas' outstretched hands and forked another bite into his mouth.

Castiel sighed and crossed his arms, glaring at the disaster of a pie.

"You know, it really is pretty good," Dean commented as he continued to eat. Cas scoffed. "No, really. Considering this is your first attempt, you did really good. I mean, yeah, like I said before, the crust could use some practice, but the crust is kinda the hardest part of making a pie."

Cas sighed again. "I you say so, Dean."

Dean grinned. "Don't worry, I'll show you."

Castiel gave a little grin back.

- 30 -

Footnotes:

(1) I used a Homemade Pie Crust recipe from , and "Apple Pie by Grandma Ople" from as a reference when writing this, as well as an article called "10 Secrets For Making Great Pie Crust".
recipe/homemade-pie-crust-13619
/recipe/12682/apple-pie-by-grandma-ople/
blog/cooking-baking-help/2010/november-2010/10-secrets-for-making-great-pie-crust/

(2) Castiel would probably actually know what a sieve looks like, but I liked him being unsure of things, especially modern things, that weren't weapons. He'd been a soldier, after all. And he's technically not wrong. A colander is a type of sieve.

Completed: January 13, 2017