It was a cold November day the first time Castiel came home to find Dean poring over a cookbook, flour smeared on his cheek and a smidge of cake batter at the corner of his mouth. An hour later, Cas pushed a smile on his face as he pretended to enjoy the salty chocolate cupcakes Dean pulled out of the oven.
'Baking is good,' he thought, 'Baking is something to do that's not drinking and watching TV all day.'
Drinking and watching game shows had been Dean's full time occupation after he had gotten laid off, until he had spotted a box outside their door, delivered to them by accident. He was about to send it back, but his curiosity got the better of him and he ripped it open. Inside was a cookbook with shiny pages and an abundance of pink. Dean wavered back and forth between the right thing to do and pride, but he ended up keeping it. He was tired of being useless and watching the light in Cas's eyes die a little more every time he came home to see his husband slumped in his chair, eyes glassy, hand in a firm grip around that day's bottle of whatever.
The next day, Cas woke up shivering and alarmed. Dean always curled up next to him like a cat as they slept, especially after sex, and never got out of bed until midday. Pulling on his robe and stumbling out of bed at 6:30, he felt his stomach tighten in panic until he saw Dean measuring a cup of flour and dumping it in the only large metal bowl they owned. Smiling slightly, he dragged himself back up the stairs to get showered and shaved before work.
As he was pulling his tie up to his neck, Cas smelled the first hints of spices drifting through the house. He slipped into his jacket and walked down the stairs to put on his shoes and coat.
"Hey babe, wanna muffin?" Dean called from the kitchen.
"What kind? And what happened to them?" Cas asked, almost giggling at the man he loved standing there in a stained white shirt and ratty boxers, holding out pieces of a muffin with a ridiculously hopeful look on his face.
"Uh, pumpkin spice, and I forgot about the little things that are supposed to go in the bottom parts."
"We had pumpkin?"
"I hope so. I haven't eaten any of them yet, so you're my test subject."
Cas picked up a piece of orange-ish looking pastry product and put it in his mouth. It was better than the cupcakes yesterday, by a mile.
"Wow, these are really good. Sober cooking suits you."
Dean grinned widely, throwing butterflies into Cas's stomach.
"Not to mention, someone that can bake is pretty sexy," Cas said, winking.
Dean's smile turned lecherous in a second. "Is that so? Well, I'll have to work on my sexy then."
"Hmm, I suppose you're pretty sexy now," Cas said thoughtfully, rubbing his thumb over whatever ingredient had ended up on Dean's bottom lip.
"Care to test that theory?"
Cas leaned in for a kiss and flicked his tongue over Dean's bottom lip. Ah, it was cinnamon.
"I'd love to, but I have to go to work."
Dean whined and pouted. "Accounting is so dumb. Can't you skip for one day?"
Cas's smile froze in place. "I can't, unless you don't like our house anymore and want our credit score to go to shit."
The life in Dean's face drained and he took a step back. "Yeah, okay, get to work."
Cas sighed, "Dean, I didn't-"
"I know. Go to work."
When Cas got home that night, there were three plates of gingersnaps under cling wrap in the kitchen and Dean was asleep on the couch.
As the months progressed and the pages of the cookbook lost some of their shine but none of their pink, Cas noticed a trend forming.
When Dean was happy, he made cake. When he got a job at the garage, he baked a three-tier cake with purple frosting. That night they ate cake until they were stuffed and took the half they hadn't managed to eat to Sam's house and pawned it off on him and Jessica.
When Dean was content, he made muffins. Cas would wake up and find the other side of the bed cold and the smell of blueberries or chocolate chips wafting. He would tramp down the stairs and see Dean humming as he pushed liners into the muffin tin, already wearing his grease-stained t-shirt and jeans.
When Dean was sad or angry, he made cookies. Chocolate chip cookies meant that he'd had a bad day; chocolate crinkles meant he was royally pissed off at someone who wasn't Cas. After they had fights, Dean would bake gingersnaps. If something really bad happened, Dean would bake snickerdoodles, piles upon piles of them.
After Bobby died, Dean took two days off of work and systematically used all of the ingredients in the house to make the cinnamon-sugar cookies. Cas took two plates each to Sam and Mary.
"Is he doing it again?" Sam said softly, accepting the cookies from Cas.
Cas nodded once before turning around and climbing into his car.
Upon arriving home, he found the counters covered in cookies and all of the flour gone. Walking into the living room, he saw the TV tuned to Family Feud and smelled whisky. Cas sighed and began piling the cookies into containers.
Months passed without another snickerdoodle incident, though Dean did make one batch of chocolate chip cookies every day. After seven months, he started making muffins again, and Cas breathed a sigh of relief.
"So, do you want a boy or a girl?" Cas asked, trailing his fingers across Dean's bare chest in a haze of post-coital bliss.
"Hmm, I don't think it matters. They're gonna be kickass anyway, having a mechanic and an accountant for dads," Dean said, wrapping his arms around Cas and turning so they faced each other.
Cas grinned. "That's true. But we have to make up our minds."
"Uh, a girl? I dunno, can we think about this when my brain isn't all sexed up?" Dean asked, wiggling closer so his head was under Cas's chin.
"Want it to get more sexed up?"
Dean's eyebrow twitched. "Hell yeah, just give me fifteen minutes. I'm not as young as I used to be."
Cas pulled away from Dean and bit his lip for a second for going in for a kiss.
Next Week
Cas opened the door and tossed his bag to the side before he froze. The smell that permeated the house was sickeningly familiar. He threw off his coat and ran to the kitchen to find Dean mechanically rolling dough into balls and dipping them in cinnamon-sugar.
Cas pulled Dean's hands out of the bowl. "Dean? What is it? C'mon, please look at me."
Cas's voice broke on the last phrase and it seemed to snap Dean out of his haze. The dead look in his eyes disappeared, replaced by one of pain.
"Dean? Please tell me what's wrong honey, please."
Dean pulled his hands out of Cas's grip and turned away before mumbling something.
"What?"
"We didn't get approved, okay? We didn't get approved by the adoption agency, and now we can't…" Dean's voice trailed off and he breathed deeply through his nose.
Cas froze, the words not quite registering. "We didn't…"
"We didn't get approved. We cannot have a kid because we do not conduct a stable household. It's all in the letter," Dean spat, pointing at the thing on the table accusingly.
Cas picked up the sheet and skimmed it. "Wait, 'The state is willing to overlook homosexuality, but when it is coupled with two parents who need to work to support their child, we must say that it provides an unstable household for a child to live in.' What? Didn't we tell them that you'd work part time or quit altogether?"
Dean laughed harshly. "Yeah, didn't make a difference."
Cas put down the letter and moved to hug Dean. Dean pulled away. "Please don't touch me right now. Just, don't."
Cas swallowed down the lump in his throat and nodded. He grabbed a glass and the bottle of whisky from the cabinet and went to go sit down in front of the TV.
When he woke up the next day, completely hungover, plates and plates of snickerdoodles covered every available surface in the house.
Cas sighed and took another swig from the bottle of whisky.