Post Midnight Pie

by mandrake-o

While Sam sleeps, Dean bakes a pie. Castiel helps.

Post-Midnight Pie

Author's Note: Originally posted on my LiveJournal (I'm mandraco, over there). I don't think anyone is going to have as much fun reading this as I did writing it.

x X X x

It's long past midnight and Dean is still awake. Be it the lingering pain from his dislocated shoulder or Sam's snoring, Dean just can't get comfortable. Usually when Dean feels like this he'll wake up his brother because misery loves company. But Sam got the brunt of the poltergeist's rage and the bulk of their good painkillers so even if Dean wanted to wake him, his brother's going to be out for at least the next couple of hours. Dean can't help the frustrated groan that escapes him.

Dean flicks on the TV and ends up looking at an infomercial for a set of baking dishes. By now he usually would have clicked through to the menu for the pay-per-view porn, but the overly cheerful woman is pulling the most perfect pie out of the oven that Dean's ever seen. For an irrational second, Dean has the urge to place an order for those baking dishes. He even finds himself dialing the number before he catches himself. He doesn't want or need dishes. He wants pie. Hot, steaming apple pie. Cherry or peach if he can't find apple. But pie and only pie will do.

Dean leaves a note for Sam ("Gone PIE-ing") even though he's pretty sure he'll be back before Sam crawls from his drug-induced slumber. He's outside and next to the Impala before he remembers that he's in the sort of town that doesn't have a twenty-four hour pharmacy. The only thing open is a grocery store, and the lone dude who was probably the owner had already given him and Sam the stink-eye once tonight when they complained about his lack of anything stronger than aspirin. Sam thought he was going to call the cops on them for being junkies.

Dean likes to think he's the sort of guy who could get through any kind of pain with nothing more than gritted teeth and a snarky one-liner, and yeah, he's been to Hell, so he actually knows that he can better than most people. On the other hand, he's been to Hell so he knows that even though he can, he doesn't friggin' want to. Sure Mr Army Reserve over there thinks he can handle it, but he's never had all the skin flayed from his body. He can take his condescension and shove it.

Cranky store-owner or not, Dean is on a mission for pie. Dean doesn't need to fire up his baby, since the supermarket is only across the road from the motel. Mr Army Reserve is surprised when the bell rings as he enters the store. The man warningly taps the sign that says the premises are being monitored by video surveillance, but Dean's willing to bet that they're merely decoys. He guesses that shows in his demeanour because next the man's fingers dance over the sticker that proudly lists the owner as a member of the NRA. Dean fights the urge to adjust the weapon tucked into the waistband of his pants and just nods politely at Mr Army Reserve.

Dean walks right in and doesn't stop until he's standing in front of the shelves of baked goods. A quick once over reveals doughnuts, cupcakes and other snack cakes, loaves of banana bread, and muffins. A second, longer look doesn't reveal anything else. Dean pushes aside a few of the plastic containers, hoping to see pie behind them. There is not a single pastry on any of the shelves. There is nothing remotely resembling pie anywhere.

Okay, thinks Dean. The pie must just be in a separate section. An entire section devoted to pie and pie-related snacks. He's not going to ask Mr Army Reserve for help, so he takes a step to his right and surveys the next section. Fruit and vegetables. Then frozen and refrigerated food. No pie. Then canned food. (He examines those a little more carefully in case someone's invented pie in a can.) Shelves upon shelves of chips. Baking supplies. Stationery. Personal hygiene products. That single shelf of pain relievers and cold and flu medicine. Cleaning supplies. Even friggin' gardening supplies, and there is no pie anywhere.

Dean's starting to feel a little stressed and panicked. He needs pie. Pie is the only thing that is going to guarantee that he gets some sleep tonight. Dean shivers. Is there a ghost in this shop? He looks at Mr Army Reserve. He bets the man is a demon. It explains everything. His attitude to painkillers, and his attitude to pie. But Dean hasn't completely lost his mind, just yet. Maybe the guy's just hiding the pie behind the counter for special customers. It probably goes quickly and he needs to keep an eye on it. Maybe the local teens have been caught trying to steal it. It's the sort of thing Dean would have done when he was a kid, if the shop owner was anything like Mr Army Reserve.

Dean stalks over to Mr Army Reserve and his hands are conspicuously empty, clenching like they'd like to grab Mr Army Reserve's lapels. "Where's the pie?" he demands.

"Pie?" asks Mr Army Reserve, his hand slowly reaching under the counter.

Dean figures the man's going for his gun and that just makes him mad. He's screwing with Dean. He knows it. "You know what a pie is, man. Buttery, pastry crust. Warm fruit filling. Delicious, delicious goodness all in one neat package."

"All out," says Mr Army Reserve. Grudgingly, he adds, "New stock comes in at seven in the morning."

"Seven?" Dean can't wait until seven o'clock. The sun will be up by then. It'll be too late. He'll have missed an entire night's sleep. Dean stands in a stupor, trying to figure out where he's going to go from here.

"You can't stand there all night," says Mr Army Reserve. "Buy something or get out before I call the cops."

Dean walks stiffly from the store. No pie. Completely on auto-pilot, Dean's feet walk him back to the motel. He's in the front seat of the Impala with his keys in the ignition before he comes back to himself. Dean sighs. Pie or not, he can't just abandon his brother here. It's just going to have to be another sleepless night to add to Dean's long list of them.

x x x

Dean sits on his bed and fires up Sam's laptop. He has some vague idea that maybe there's some sort of pie delivery service in the next town over. At this point, he'll pay everything in his wallet and max out all his fraudulent credit cards if someone will deliver him a pie in the next hour. He wonders why McDonald's doesn't deliver and worries he's reached a new low.

Dean calls a couple of restaurants and while they don't outright laughed at him, they don't seem to believe how much cash he's willing to offer for a delivery outside of their area. Then an advertisement alongside the menu of one of the restaurants catches his attention: Mama Mary's Best Apple Pie Recipe. It feels like a sign. Dean clicks the link and as the page loads on the motel's dodgy wireless connection, his eyes slide to the kitchenette and Dean can see an oven. While Dean expects working kettles and toasters, maybe a microwave, an actual oven in a motel room is a rare occurrence. That's definitely a sign.

Dean has never made a pie before in his life. He remembers trying once as a kid and being disappointed in the result as well as in Sam's reaction to tasting it. Usually Sam making that particular face is cause for amusement, but not when he's reacting to something Dean put a lot of time and effort into baking. It put Dean off baking for the rest of his life. Right up until now. Because now, Dean really wants some pie. And Sam is asleep. He doesn't ever have to know. And now, Dean is an adult. He's sure he's now much better at following instructions and that's all you need to be able to do to cook. Dean's got this in the bag just as soon as he... pays Mr Army Reserve a third visit tonight.

Dean copies down the ingredients from the recipe. As dweebish as it is to go in with a shopping list, Dean's not going to make a mistake and have to visit Mr Army Reserve a fourth time. He's pretty sure even if he buys something the guy's going to call the cops and Dean really doesn't need that kind of scrutiny at this time of night. A part of him absently wonders how often prison inmates are treated to a dessert of pie. Probably not often, so that's off the table.

Dean fishes his note from the trash and puts it back near Sam's phone. Then he walks across the road to confront Mr Army Reserve again.

"What the fuck do you want this time?" asks Mr Army Reserve. He actually brings the shotgun up this time. Dean hopes it's loaded with rock salt. Somehow that doesn't seem likely. "It's not seven AM, yet."

"Relax, man," says Dean, holding up his list. "I've got a list."

Mr Army Reserves looks at him like he's crazy, and okay, maybe it's a little over the edge of sanity to be baking a pie in the wee hours of the morning, but frankly, that's a normal kind of crazy. Not Dean's kind, so he'll take it. Dean snags a basket and continues through the aisles. It sucks that he has to buy an entire bag of flour when he only wants two cups. It sucks that he has to buy a whole carton of eggs when he only wants one. And then there's the sugar and spices. At least he needs the whole stick of butter.

Dean spends a long time going through the apples in the little bin. The recipe specifies Granny Smiths, but Dean is pretty sure that he can do any apple substitution. But it also says six large ones and these are all medium sized. He finds the six biggest ones, then decides that he likes pie filling, so actually, he wouldn't mind another one. He'll just do the math to get the proportions right. Dean can do that.

After getting everything on his list, Dean decides to grab a pint of vanilla ice cream, too. Mr Army Reserve rings everything up one-handed. The other rests on his weapon. "Is your boyfriend pregnant?" he asks.

"My brother," says Dean. "Is asleep." And now Mr Army Reserve knows for sure that Dean is the crazy one. He should have let Sammy take the hit to his honour. He isn't here, after all. He hasn't gotten to know Mr Army Reserve the way Dean has.

"Are you making some kind of hash pie?" Mr Army Reserve asks once he's done scanning and bagging.

Dean ignores him and checks his total on the register's display before handing over a twenty dollar bill. When he looks up from his wallet, he realises that for the first time tonight someone else is coming into the store. The bell rings and a woman walks in. She has the self-confident strut and attire of a street-walker and her eyes skim straight over Dean, locking onto Mr Army Reserve. Dean's not used to being passed over for men like Mr Army Reserve, but he figures that's probably a blessing at this moment.

Dean grabs his bags and leaves, but not before he hears the hooker call Mr Army Reserve 'daddy' and sees them start to suck face. Well, that explains why Mr Army Reserve bothers to keep his shop open at this time.

x x x

When Dean gets back with his ingredients, he's careful to be as quiet as possible. It's one thing for Sam to wake up while Dean's trying to order a pie delivery from a restaurant. It's another for Sam to find him actually making the pie. Dean's really kind of hoping Sam never has to find out that this happened. He doesn't want Sam to call him Martha Stewart (although she is kind of hot for her age, is an excellent cook and businesswoman, and spent some time in prison, so is an overall badass like Dean), or worse, assume that he's allowed to eat half the pie. This is Dean's pie and he's going to eat all of it all by himself.

Dean boots up Sam's laptop again and sets it on the kitchen table where he can see the recipe while he bakes. In the olden days, he might have worked by candlelight. Tonight he's working in the glow of a laptop screen. He puts the ice cream into the freezer, washes his hands, looks over to make sure Sam's still asleep, then centres himself. The first thing the recipe says to do is to make the dough for the pastry. This is where Dean realises that although he has all the ingredients for a pie, he doesn't have all the equipment. He thinks back to the infomercial about the baking dishes and the free set of measuring cups they were going to throw in. Equipment or not, Dean isn't going to give up now. He's invested.

Dean opens all the cupboards and pulls out every single mug and glass, setting them next to each other before deciding which one comes closest to a cup. It's a glass tumbler. Dean puts away the rest. The cupboard falls shut with a bang and Dean tenses for a second. Sam breaks out a thundering snore, so Dean figures he's still safe on that count.

Dean measures out two cups of flour, then uses a butter knife to cut the butter into it. It's time to get his hands dirty, and Dean smirks, forgetting for a moment that he's in this for the pie, not the joy of cooking. The dough comes together nicely, then Dean sticks it into the fridge to cool. Time to peel the apples.

Dean hasn't peeled an apple since Sam got onto solid foods. He figures it's like riding a bike. It turns out it's best not done with a butter knife and those are the only knives the motel provides. But knives, Dean has. He just has to figure out which one has been covered with blood or monster goo the least. Then he washes it. Then sticks it into the burner to disinfect it. Then he decides it's good. Peeling the apples is tedious, but it's fairly quiet, except when he accidentally cuts himself and drops an apple. Plus he can keep one eye on Sam, just to make sure. Chopping the apples is a little louder than peeling them, but Sam doesn't stir. Dean uses the smallest spoons to measure the spices in the bowl of apple pieces, and that's the filling done.

Dean goes through the cupboards again, looking for a bowl that he can use in place of a pie plate. None of them are exactly right of course, but Dean settles on one as close to the measurements in the recipe as possible. Thankfully, the bottom is handily marked "Oven Safe". After that he needs a rolling pin. There isn't one, so Dean uses the tallest and straightest glass he can find. It's not on MacGyver's level, but Dean feels pretty proud of his ingenuity. Dean gets the larger portion of pastry out of the fridge and sets it on a floured chopping board.

It's a lot harder to roll dough into a circle than Dean had anticipated. The edges tear, his pastry develops a hole and he has to start again. It's murder on his shoulder and Dean bites back a cry of pain. Dean loses it. He curses everyone and everything he's ever met, all under his breath in a long uninterrupted stream. His arm almost stops hurting.

"Hello Dean," says Castiel, appearing right next to Dean.

Dean's eyes widen and he recoils. "You freaked the fuck out of me."

Castiel tilts his head, apparently confused about how one can freak fuck out of another. "I heard your distress. Do you require assistance?"

Next time, thinks Dean, don't curse the angel. He might consider it a prayer. "Keep your voice down. I don't want to wake Sam."

Castiel nods, then walks over to Sam and touches him on the forehead. Sam's still out, but his snoring stops. Dean grins. "I'm baking a pie," he says.

"I did not think the pastry required holes."

Dean frowns. "It's harder than it looks," he says.

Castiel just stares at the dough.

Dean wonders if he really has gone round the bend when he says, "Why don't you do it? My shoulder's kind of sore."

The look on Castiel's face is almost one of concern. "What do I do?"

Dean gets up and lets Castiel take his place at the table. "You use this-" Dean pushes the glass into Castiel's hands. "To roll the dough into a circle a quarter inch thick."

Castiel looks at the dough, and at the glass, as though calculating intently. For a moment, Dean doesn't think Cas is going to do anything at all. Then Castiel gathers the dough into what appears to be a perfect sphere. Dean wonders if he should have told the angel to wash his hands, but it's too late now and what sort of germs can an angel carry, anyway? Actually, Dean doesn't want to know and hopes they all cook out because nothing is stopping him from eating this pie. Meanwhile, Castiel turns the perfect sphere into a perfect circle, and Dean doesn't have a ruler, but he's sure it's exactly a quarter of an inch thick.

"Dude," says Dean. He's not sure whether he's jealous that Cas succeeded where he'd failed, or just relieved that his pie wasn't going to have holes in it. He settles on thankful and decides that Cas has earned himself a slice of the finished pie.

"What next?" asks Castiel.

Dean tells Cas to do the same thing to the other piece of pastry for the lid of the pie. Dean takes the finished dough circle and puts it into the bowl. Then he adds the filling. It's at this point that he realises he's forgotten to preheat the oven. He double-checks the temperature, and turns it on. At least it's working.

Castiel finishes rolling out the pie lid, and they settle it over the filling together. The pie looks pretty perfect. Dean starts to cut steam holes into the dough, then figures since it'll take a few more minutes for the oven to heat up he can try a more elaborate design. He draws a devil's trap into the pastry. His pie is now protected from demons. Dean's pretty sure all pies should be protected in the same way. He thinks about adding that to the comments page on the recipe he's using.

The oven light blinks off and Dean takes that to mean that the oven is preheated. Castiel opens the door for him and Dean gently slides his pie in. Now all they have to do is wait. Dean has never been good with waiting.

Dean works at trying to erase all evidence that he's been baking from the room. He washes and dries everything he borrowed from the kitchen. He puts his knife back in the weapons duffel. All the while, Castiel watches him.

"Do you require further assistance?" asks Castiel, looking to leave.

"Stay," says Dean. "Don't you want to taste the fruits of your labour?"

"I do not require sustenance," says Castiel predictably.

"Screw sustenance," says Dean. "You're going to eat some pie and you're going to like it."

Castiel doesn't say anything. They sit together on the end of Dean's bed and flick through the channels while the pie bakes.

And then Dean smells smoke.

Dean races over to the oven door and opens it. The filling has bubbled out through the devil's trap and sugar syrup has pooled on the bottom of the oven and started to burn. The rest of the pastry and pie look unharmed. Dean shuts the oven door.

"Where's the smoke detector?" Dean asks, not actually expecting a response. He scans the ceiling and locates it, pushing a chair underneath it and pulling out the batteries before it can start squealing. He hopes the motel doesn't have a sprinkler system. Dean glances at Sam, but he's still sleeping peacefully. Cas, too, is still sitting where Dean left him.

Dean looks back at his pie again and realises that not only has he forgotten to set a timer, he has no idea how long it's been since he put the pie into the oven. It's clearly not done yet, so Dean gives it his best guess and adds fifteen minutes to the oven timer.

There's nothing good on TV, so Dean settles on some random cop procedural and makes another effort to explain humanity to Cas. The oven timer goes off. Dean uses his flannel shirt's tails as makeshift oven mitts, and sets the pie on the counter. It looks absolutely perfect, if a little bowl-shaped. The crust is golden and it smells amazing. Dean grabs plates and forks, and cuts into it with a butter knife. Dean can't wait to taste it, and burns his tongue on the first bite before he even cuts Cas a slice. When his sense of taste comes back to him, Dean realises that the pie could do with more cooking. The pastry is still a little underdone and the apples are still a little al dente.

The shit-eating grin slides off his face and Dean pushes the rest of his slice back into the pie bowl. He doesn't wait for the oven to pre-heat this time, just pushes the pie back in and turns the oven on. "It needs another minute," he tells Castiel.

This time Dean sits in front of the oven, peering in through the door at the pie. He's determined to sit here until it's on the cusp of burning. Then he'll be sure it's done. But watching a pie bake is like watching a pot of water you want to boil. Before long Dean's mind is wandering. He's not sure what he's thinking about, but the next thing he knows he's looking into the oven and the edges of the crust of his pie are now burnt.

Dean turns off the oven and feels a tiny bit heartbroken as he pulls the pie out again. He puts his partially eaten slice back on his plate, and cuts a neater one for Castiel. He goes to the fridge and puts a generous scoop of ice cream onto each plate. He hands Castiel's plate to the angel and they sit at the table together.

Castiel waits for Dean to take a bite before he precisely cuts into his slice of pie. Dean chews on his bite, letting the flavours roll around in his mouth. It's not bad, actually. Aside from the burnt pieces, it's actually pretty damn good. It's got just the right amount of spice and the pieces of crust that aren't black are perfectly crunchy, flaky and buttery. It practically melts in his mouth. Hell, it doesn't even need the ice cream. Dean quickly polishes off his first slice and cuts another, much larger one.

"It's good, huh?" says Dean to Cas around a mouthful.

Castiel seems to have refrained from forming an opinion until now. He looks at the pie thoughtfully. "It's sweet," he says.

Dean just laughs and continues to eat his pie.

x x x

It's dawn when Dean eats the last of the crumbs from the pie bowl. Dean's not sure he managed to get Cas to loosen up a bit, but he seems pretty content sitting right there and his plate is completely crumb free. Dean's belly is full and what he really wants to do right now is crawl into bed. He's pretty sure that he'll be able to fall asleep this time.

But sunlight's streaming in through the motel room's thin curtains, so of course Sam chooses that moment to wake up. Although there's no pie left, it's still pretty obvious that he's been up to something. But exactly what will remain a mystery to Sam. The smoky smell is all but gone from the room and if Sam brings it up, Dean's going to pretend it was there when they got here. Their motel rooms always smell of something.

"What's that?" Sam asks, looking at Dean and Castiel sitting at the table. "Did you grab breakfast?"

The thought of what exactly he'd been doing all night cracks Dean up. He just laughs. He's probably delirious and in a food coma; it's the most hilarious thing Dean's ever heard. And Sam is never going to know. Dean ignores his brother and just crawls into his bed with a grin on his face. He's going to have to do this again some time. After all, he's still got all the ingredients stuffed into his duffel, and he thinks he might have saved that number from the infomercial.

x X X x

A/N: So... that was longer than expected.