There were some things Sam just didn't do. Not because he didn't want to, he reminded himself. And not because he couldn't. But because he had just had never had the occasion to try. And by the time a man had lived as long and seen as many things as Sam had, "didn't" had a way of translating into "can't" in his mind. And Sam had never been comfortable with can't.
He could. He could do this.
This was why he found himself alone in the kitchen of their place – theirs, he thought warmly, still loving the way it felt when he turned that word over in his head – leaning back against the open doorway with his hands braced between the small of his back and the beveled frame, eyeing the red-and-white Betty Crocker cookbook on the counter across from him as if he were facing down an unknown adversary.
It was a bit of an unknown. The kitchen was Dean's newfound domain. One of the first things Sam had insisted on for the bunker was a microwave because at least that was familiar. Gas burners were decidedly not. But Dean really wasn't joking when he talked about "nesting." He made actual food. In their actual oven. And it was impressive as hell, so Sam stayed out of his way and let him have it.
It had started as a joke. Things like this, things that escalated between them and ended up becoming bigger deals to Sam than Dean had ever meant, they always started as a joke.
"You know what next week is, right?" Dean said, picking up a section of newspaper over breakfast.
(Eggs, sunny-side up. Two strips of bacon. French toast, cut into triangles, sprinkled – fucking sprinkled – with powdered sugar.)
Sam raised his eyebrows and shook his head.
(Cereal is fine, Dean. I swear, I don't know how you eat like that every day.)
"It's March fourteenth."
"So?"
"You know. Three one four!"
Sam just looked at him.
Dean lowered the paper incredulously. "Three-point-one-four? It's pi, genius! Area of a circle? Geometry? March fourteenth is pi day."
Sam shrugged another wordless "so." Dean set the paper down next to his plate and used his fingers to mime a triangle in the air in front of Sam's face. "P-i-i-i-e!" he exaggerated.
"Right," Sam said, understanding dawning. "Pie day. Gotcha. So, I take it we're getting pie on pie day."
"Nah, Sammy," Dean said, going back to the paper. "We've got a cookbook. I figure you'll just whip one up for me."
Sam laughed. Because it was a joke, they both knew it. The idea of Sam bumbling around in the kitchen was funny.
And then the fact that it was so funny really started to bother him.
It was the idea that Dean might see him as inferior at anything, think him less than capable, look down on him as his little brother. It was what had always made him run harder, shoot straighter, throw farther, hit harder. He had been playing catch-up to Dean's four-year advantage his whole life, and now finally, finally after all they'd been through, having come so far to feel that Dean viewed him as an equal, that Dean felt he was equally worthy of his trust and could be counted on to have his back, to have this one thing thrown back in his face as evidence that Dean would always be somehow more skilled at something…
It shouldn't have mattered so much, but somehow it did. It ate away at him relentlessly until it became more than an offhand crack about Sam in the kitchen.
And now, Sam was going to make a goddamned pie.
The first thing to go wrong was... well, all of it.
And it should have been so straightforward. Sam laid out the cookbook and studied the aged, full-color photos showing step-by-step instructions for bringing all the ingredients together into a neat lump of crumbly-looking pie crust dough, and then he dove straight into the process.
Somewhere in the midst of trying desperately to pry the sticky, unruly result free of the rolling pin, he heard Dean's voice in the doorway of the kitchen.
"Oh my god, STOP."
Dean manhandled the rolling pin away from Sam and held it away from him as if it were a dangerous toy.
"Dean, it's fine! I just need to–" He plunged a hand into the bag of flour and brought out a fist-full of white powder, scattering it haphazardly over the counter which was already well-coated in the stuff.
"Sam!"
"What?"
Dean suppressed a laugh, taking in the scene. His little brother had pulled out virtually every mixing bowl and utensil they owned and covered what seemed to be the entire kitchen in a thick layer of flour. "Apparently you need to stick with what you're good at, Sammy boy, and baking pies ain't it."
Sam heaved an exasperated breath, feeling frustration and internalized anger building to the point that he actually felt the sting of tears building behind his eyes. Furious and humiliated, he slammed the book shut, picked it up and hurled it forcefully against the far wall.
"And what am I good at, then?" he shouted, staring at the book on the floor where it had landed. "Huh? What am I?"
Dean stopped cleaning up, rolling pin in hand, and stared at Sam. "You're kidding, right?"
"No, I'm–" Sam breathed heavily and swiped his forearm over his forehead, a gesture that left a streak of flour on his cheek, and Dean tried hard not to smile at the fact that his little brother was throwing a temper tantrum over a pie recipe-gone-wrong. "I'm not kidding," Sam continued in a miserable voice that took away any temptation Dean had to smile. "You—you always... Look, I'm the one that's always been a step behind, or one shot off the mark, or—I always had someone telling me how I needed to be 'more like Dean.' Y-you don't know what that's like. Things come easily to you. I had to work twice as hard just to... And I know I never... I know I'll never measure up, okay? Not really. I get it. This is just... Look, this is stupid. Just forget it."
Sam turned his back to Dean, and started scooping flour off the counter into his hands.
Dean shook his head, unbelieving. "Hey. Sam, come on. You can't really think any of that crap."
"It's not crap, Dean," he said, not looking up. "It's the truth."
Dean felt a familiar wrenching in his chest. You jumped into Lucifer's cage, Sam, he wanted to say. You saved me, you saved the whole damn world. But he couldn't. It was too big.
"Oh, and which one of us went to Stanford then, I forget?" he said, settling for something he could wrap his head around. "Oh right. Not me."
Sam let out another huff and planted both hands on the counter in front of him, his head hanging between his shoulders. "That's… different than actually being good at something. No actual talent required, just hard work."
"So you'd rather be the high school dropout with a talent for what, exactly? Shooting Dad's beer bottles off a tree stump? Please, enlighten me, Sam. I'd really like to know if that's your idea of good at something."
"Stop calling yourself a dropout."
"Why? It's the truth."
"It's not like you couldn't have finished. We both know why you quit going, and it's not because you're a dropout, Dean, so just stop."
"You stop being ridiculous, then. When are you–"
"It was a test, okay?" Sam blurted out, turning around to face Dean. "A stupid test. I just... I wanted to think that if I could figure this out, this one thing, how to make a goddamned pie, that I could..." He threw up his hands and gestured at the mess in the kitchen as if it explained everything.
Dean looked, not understanding, and then back at Sam. Sam shrugged and shook his head, bringing his long arms in to wrap awkwardly around himself, seemingly conscious of his sticky, pastry-covered hands.
"You could what, Sam?" Dean had to ask. "That you could what?"
"The trials," he muttered.
Dean looked down at the rolling pin in his hands and carefully set it down on the counter next to Sam.
"You're worried about what's next. What's coming down the line." Sam didn't answer but Dean saw the way the muscle on the side of his jaw twitched, which meant Sam was biting the inside of his cheek, and that was a dead giveaway.
"Jesus, Sam. I don't..." He tried to smile, tried to catch his brother's eye to get him to smile, but Sam avoided his gaze. "I don't think there's going to be a bake-off in front of the gates of Hell, but if there is I–" He cut off, seeing that humor wasn't helping. "Hey. Sammy. I get it, really. But part of our deal on you doing this was that you weren't going to be facing any of it alone, and that includes pies."
"Dean. You don't have to-"
"Just, shut up. And go get Betty Crocker off the floor. I'm gonna show you how to make a pie crust that will make you weep."
Sam hesitated, trailing his fingers through a pile of flour on the counter as Dean quickly scraped Sam's ruined crust off the rolling pin. He paused in mid-scrape, looking up at Sam expectantly. "Well? Do it!"
Sam smirked and went to retrieve the cookbook, smoothing the bent pages back into place and straightening the binding.
"I'm sorry about this," he said, still standing over the spot where he'd thrown the book. "It was actually going to be a surprise."
"Trust me, Sammy. No one was more surprised than me to see you messing around in my kitchen."
"It's our kitchen, Dean."
"Oh, so then it's our library, I suppose."
Sam appeared to think about it as he came back over and set the book down between them on the counter, letting a cloud of flour puff out from under its cover. "Your kitchen," he agreed. "What do we do first?"
End