Simple Pleasures ~ Chapter 9

** Trigger warning, car crash stuff **

Dean learned three things about Missouri Moseley on her cloudy, cold, Wednesday afternoon funeral. Firstly, she never had any children, nor did her siblings. Second, she despised her father in spite of him being a civil rights leader. And lastly, she left Dean her personal cookbook, the one she always batted Sam and Dean away from with a spatula covered with bits of frying okra whenever they tried to sneak a peak at its pages for their mother's culinary queries.

He wasn't expecting to be asked for pallbearer service, but he answered the request by shouldering one corner of her pinewood casket and walking out the doors of that small, Methodist church towards the frigid graveyard. She would be buried in the same cheap wood as his mother.

Why do the best people always wind up with the worst funerals? Something quiet inside him asked.

Neither one of them, Missouri or his mom, should have had to die, by cancer or diabetes or whatever. At least… not like this. They deserved a freaking pillar of marble and a parade for the secrets they held, for the love they dished out sweetly and tough, and for the backbone they gave him.

Eyes on the Prize blared behind him in the church as Dean lowered Ms. Moseley's coffin into her plot. Eyes on the prize? What fucking prize was there in all this?

A heavy hand landed on Dean's shoulder. He whirled to find Bobby starting himself. "Hell, it's only me, kid."

Dean nodded once before turning back to watch a flow of dirt put Missouri six feet under. After a few minutes Dean stepped backwards into the crowd, ignoring the preacher's words to whisper at Bobby, "This is weird man, watching her go down twice."

Bobby sighed to say the world was weird.

The service ended with dust to dust. Bobby and Dean stepped a few paces away from the fresh grave where Missouri's sisters were crying. "How ya holdin' up?" Bobby asked.

"Fine," Dean lied. "Fine, man. Just… went through all this once, y'know?"

"Yeah, guess so," Bobby said. The old man stuffed his hands into his jacket and hissed at the cold, shooting a stream of steam into the wind. Puffy snowbirds pecked around their ankles, searching for seed among the brittle prairie grass.

"That coffee place, the obolus," Bobby started, but he stopped. A few moments later Dean glanced at the old man, who was squinting at Ms. Moseley's sisters. Finally he shrugged and said, "There was a death there about six months ago. This kid, Jamal Henry, was missing from a track meet in Athens, Georgia; he showed up on the building's roof with not an organ in him. Boy was just skin and bones. Police named the case cold the day before the new tenants opened."

"What?... Wait, are you sayin' Cas picked up some teenager a thousands miles away and killed him in the—"

"Whoa, hold your horses boy, I ain't saying anything like that," Bobby said. "But… hell, Dean, if what you've been seeing's all true and if I haven't gone down the mother of all rabbit holes then I gotta say that somethin' bad's going on there. It's got one hell of an arrangement with people dyin', plus wacko weird stuff in general."

"We don't know who did it," a sharp voice said from behind them. Bobby and Dean spun around to see the young Vietnamese man Dean saw riding with Ms. Moseley standing before them, wearing a black suit too big for his shoulders.

"Jesus Mary Jo- - would it kill you things to warn a guy before you, you, pop out of hoodoo dimension?" Dean growled.

The young man watched them both for a moment before saying. "I just walked up to you..."

"Balls," Bobby wheezed. "Who the hell are you?"

"I'm Kevin Tra-… I'm Kevin," he said. "I'm the psychopomp assigned to Missouri Moseley."

"Yeah you little prick, I saw you that night, now what the hell are you doing here?"

Kevin glanced at them both again. "Part of my job is making sure nothing takes the body of the deceased until it's been properly laid to rest… but that murder you were talking about, we don't know who did it. That's part of the reason why we're here – our boss is trying to uncover the murderer."

"Your boss?" Dean asked.

"Charon," Bobby said. Dean blinked. "…What, you saying you haven't even Google-searched things since you got caught up in all this mess? That's Greek mythology 101, boy, come on!"

"I'm sorry, I've been a little busy picking guts off the road and welding cracked axles!"

"You had a whole weekend off, Dean, you could have-"

"Actually he was busy then, too," Kevin said. "From what I've heard he had date with a unicorn."

The two men stared at Kevin with wildly different confused faces. Kevin shrugged meekly and said, "That's how Meg described it, anyway…"

"I… whatever the hell that means," Bobby sighed. "Why'd y'all set up a whole fake café just to figure out why some poor kid got turned into a piñata?"

Kevin blinked, smiled, then frowned and shook his head in a shiver. "Well, uh, for one the shop's not a front, it's part of something else, and secondly… I don't think I can tell you anything else."

"You don't think you can?" Dean asked.

Kevin sighed. "Look, I'm still kind of new to all this, okay? My tongue pulls back whenever I'm about to say something I'm 'not supposed to say', and if I go on and try to say it I start bleeding all over the place."

Just like Castiel. Dean frowned. "…So…how'd you become a psychopomp."

Kevin opened his mouth and made a gagging sound. He pressed his lips together, eventually saying, "It's something that happens when you're between death and life. You… ggghuetth okay… that's all I can say then."

"Were you, uh… were you an 'intern' before it happened?" Dean asked amidst Bobby's curious frown.

Kevin again opened his mouth, but this time he didn't close it because of a gag. "I know what you're really asking," he said. "No, he's not slotted to be ghede."

Dean backed and twisted his head in confusion.

"Ghede, psychopomp, angel, guiding spirit—"

"Got it," Dean replied. As his next question spelled itself out in his head Dean's phone started vibrating in his pocket. He groaned and opened it. "Whaddya want?"

"Heeey, Dean, buddy, it's Zachariah from AAA—"

"Aw fuck," Dean said. "Just tell me where I gotta go you white collared creep."

"Always so quick to anger, Mr. Wincehster? It's really not—"

"Oh, guess what, I don't fucking care what you have to say unless it's an address!"

Zachariah started blathering about some woman that sideswiped and flipped, but Kevin tapped Dean's shoulder. The young man was holding open a beat up flip-phone which held a text message: MASSACHUSSETTS ST. AND E. 23RD ST.

No mystery how this tow trip was going to end. Dean tossed the keys to his baby over to Bobby, who exchanged them for the keys to Levi, then pushed his phone into his pocket, Zachariah still gabbing away, and started up the hill towards the church parking lot.

"Hey, can you give me a lift? My bike's almost out of gas." Kevin called after him.

"And be there when you punch someone's lights out? I don't think so," Dean shot back. Eyes on the Prize was still playing. He decided the song sucked balls. In the bad way.

Two and a half days passed, featuring oily rags and a few people who weren't going to pay for a "robbery's" worth of auto-repairs. Dean finished pulling one of those people's cars into the Yard Saturday night, basking in the driver's haughty embarrassment. He dropped off both before jumping in the Impala and heading back to the Locust street shop. He watched the clock on his dash, barely putting his foot on the gas pedal.

Eleven twenty-five. He pulled off Massachusetts to get to New Hampshire.

Eleven twenty eight. Still on New Hampshire. Oh no, what would happen if he weren't back at the shop by closing? The shop that he made sure to power down and lock before picking up that pink-polo wearing prick?

Eleven thirty. Well gosh darn, his shift was over and he just so happened to be in front of this Café. That had a dead kid on the roof six months ago. Right. Dean's memory, man… such a fucking downer.

A cup of dragon pearl tea Thursday night gave Castiel the duty of figuring out what to do during tonight's "hang out". Dean sucked at the air, preparing for a night of hunting an infestation of flying rattle-snakes, or just chilling, both things outside his concept of reality. He stepped inside the front room, quiet and dark save a string of small lanterns hanging against the back wall, until a bang echoed out from the storage room, followed by a scream and the shriek of a fire alarm.

"Cas?" Dean yelled as he ran for the counter, jumped over, through the doorway to the back room and then into the kitchen, where smoke rolled out along the ceiling. He found Charlie standing on stool in the middle of the room, waving a cookie sheet at the fire alarm, while Castiel threw open a window and chucked out a smoldering cannon ball.

"Hi Dean!" Charlie yelled between her fanning. "You mother-fucking piece of plastic I will feed you to the digital undead if you don't shut up!"

The fire alarm stopped.

Charlie smiled. "Violence is always the answer."

After a moment to swallow his lungs, Dean found himself giving Charlie his get the fuck out glare. This wasn't a date, not officially, so perhaps Cas didn't understand that this was supposed to be a one-on-one kinda thing, but still. "What'd I walk in on?... Wait, is that… are y'all baking?"

"More like perfecting the method of making charcoal," Charlie replied. Castiel shut the window and closed the oven door. He looked at Dean with eyes worn of patience, flour slashed across his face.

"I believe this oven is the work of the devil," Castiel grumbled.

"Or heaven," Charlie said, turning to him. "It has two settings: Sodom and Gomorrah."

"So…your plan for tonight was… baking?" Dean asked, still glowering.

Charlie glanced between the two men, still standing on the stool. "I'm missing something."

"No, nothing…," Castiel replied. "I was hoping that… well…Dean might arrive here after we had yielded something aside from a burned carcass of gluten and sliced apples."

Dean glanced at the contents lining the cramped kitchen's counter. Apples, eggs, flour, butter, sugar, a hand-full of spices, and several badly burned pie tins. Charlie's computer was open, bearing a recipe for apple pie. That Cas was trying to cook for him.

Dean almost d'awwed. Almost. His mouth made moved to position but his voice was still pissed and not cooperating.

"Hold on," Charlie said. She pointed at Cas. "You wanted me to help you make pie, and you," she pointed to Dean. A smile rose to her face. "Was this a second date?"

"It's not a date!" Dean said.

"Why're you all defensive, I was there when you asked him out last wee-"

"This is a 'hang-out'," Castiel offered. "Not a date."

"Oh," Charlie said. She made fists and bounced them against her hips and looked down at her shoes. "Whoa… how do tall people stand being this far away from the ground?"

"On our feet," Dean said, offering her a hand getting down.

"Very funny."

"Yes I am," Dean said.

Charlie kicked his hand and climbed down herself. Once on the ground she said, "So… should I… go?"

Dean opened his mouth to say yes but he heard Cas's voice say, "No, that won't be necessary. We still need your computer to figure out how to properly make this recipe."

Dean glared over his shoulder at Castiel, who shrugged and admitted, "We do."

"Be back in a minute," Dean sighed, walking out of the kitchen. He poked his head into the Impala's back seat and pulled out Ms. Moseley's thick, red cookbook, turning and walking back to the Café. He opened the door with his left hand, the book in his right, the same that held Missouri's hand a week ago… walking this same path. Dean slowed as that song started ringing in his ears. At the counter divider he looked into the darkened storage room at the locked cellar doors, glimmering in the cracks of light sliding through the bottom of the kitchen door. He switched the book in his hands, jumped over the counter, and swept into the kitchen.

Charlie was bent over her computer as Castiel whispered something to her, scrubbing at one of the massacred pie tins. He turned to Dean, then to the book. Dean held it up and, with a slightly forced smile, declared, "I've got the friggin' baking bible."

"Ooh, sweet!" Charlie yelled, running over and grabbing for it. Dean held it above his head, prompting her to glare at him and reach behind her for the stool.

"That won't help you reach it," Dean said.

"Who said I'm trying to reach it?" she asked. "Violence is always the answer."

"Try backing that up with-hey!" Dean yelled as Castiel walked back to the kitchen counter, carrying the book in his hands. He opened it and flipped through a few pages with a gentle grin before his face turned dark. His head jerked up to look at Dean, then down at the book. He took a large breath and said, "I believe this will be a good source to cook from."

Charlie stared at the boys for a moment before saying, "Well come on, bitches, we can't smite another pie with heavenly glory by standing around gazing deeply into each other's eyes."

Dean chomped his lips together for a moment, watching Castiel and Charlie start assembling ingredients for their baking endeavor. The book kind of meant that Charlie and her computer didn't have to be there… wasn't that obvious? His arms crossed over his chest, then his hands fell onto his hips, but he slowly scooted closer to the book, wondering what secrets Missouri had withheld from him and his brother.

He felt the weight of that manila letter in his hands again, just thinking about Sam, the piece of mail that sealed his—

No, not tonight, Dean's thoughts hissed. He didn't want to get caught in remembering things all the time. What was he doing now? Right, being pissed. At what? The Charlie thing. Right.

Cas was interpreting Ms. Moseley's scrawling cursive script as Charlie stepped over to her computer and turned on music. She was cute, he had to admit. Wait, she's lesbian. Can't touch. Damn.

"No day passes that something doesn't gnaw on you," Castiel whispered, keeping his gaze on the cookbook. "What's troubling you?"

"…Your psychic shrink thing is really hard to get used to, you know that?"

"We've known each other for only a few weeks," Castiel replied, this time glancing at Dean. "I believe getting used to someone takes longer than that."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Fine, yeah, I'm peeved, like that's new."

"…about the book?" Castiel asked. For a moment Dean's eyes glanced between Charlie's hips as she bent over the computer and then at Castiel's as he bent over the book and his hips popped back and brain holy shit FOCUS.

"Nah, just… nah. So what's it say in there about pie?"

After a dubious look Castiel said, "It seems to be saying the same thing as our internet recipe, just in greater detail. For example, the butter must be finger-pressed into the flour after being chilled to near freezing, and ice water must be used when making the pastry. The… author recommends making it in two periods so as to let the butter and water already mixed in to chill and rest before adding the rest… Hm… she also recommends a pinch of ground cardamom and allspice into the flour itself."

"Duuude, you gotta be kiddin' me!" Dean said, jumping over and looking over Cas's shoulder at the recipe. "That was her thing all this time!?"

"I'm not sure what you mean by thing," Cas said, pointing to a line of scribble. "But see here? It says to use those spices as they disperse easy, preserve well when mixed with cold water and sugar, and are relatively resistant to charring."

"…All I see is chicken scratch."

"Tilt your head to the right and you can make out cardamom," Castiel said. They studied the page, whispering the words beneath their breath, tilting their heads in union upon the word cardamom. "And there, she… I believe that is a mathematical equation for the right temperature to bake with. This woman was fastidious."

"Damn, no wonder her cooking was freakin' perfect," Dean muttered.

"What are you guys looking at?" Charlie asked, poking her head around Castiel's. Dean was tempted to give her his glare again, but let it go, instead saying:

"I got no idea but it tastes good."

Charlie peered closer at the page until her eyes popped wide. "Whoa… whoever wrote this went all out. That's a variation of the general convection-diffusion equation… they did something weird with the gradient though, see? It's related to the diffusibility as well as R, and there's a new variable over there that I… why are you two staring at me?"

"Geek," Dean cracked a smile.

"Zip it, horde guy," she quipped.

"Hey, I'm not horde!"

"If you took quests from them then technically you have an associational relation with—"

"That's bull-shit, I was just taking the quests I that were cool and—"

"Dean, Charlie, focus, please!" Castiel shouted. "We have more pressing matters at hand than establishing identity categorization from a video game! We have to bake a pie!"

It was quiet for a moment before Dean muttered, "We don't have to-"

"I wantto bake a pie!" Castiel said, throwing a scalding look at Dean.

Dean backed away slightly. "…Okay…"

Castiel didn't turn his face away from him, still hitting him with all the fire Dean had ever felt from another man's stare. Part of it was angry of course, but something else in it seemed desperate. "Charlie," Castiel said. "Please translate the temperature equation."

Castiel took over the rest of the crust making process, leaving Charlie and Dean to slice up the last of the apples in a large bag marked 'Mercury's – Delivered So Fast So Your Groceries Will Last!'

"Okay," Charlie said, wiping her hands on a towel as Dean carried a bowl of spiced apples over to the waiting pie tin. "Fifth time's the charm, right?"

Castiel said nothing, instead scooping the apple mix out of Dean's arms and into the tin with a rubber spatula. Dean and Charlie looked at each other worriedly as Castiel wove a lattice on top of the pie using his prepared dough, muttering to himself, Highway to Hell roaring out of Charlie's computer. He carefully brushed on the egg wash and a final spread of sugar and cinnamon on top.

"And this time," Castiel hissed, shoving the pie into the precisely heated oven. "You will cook properly."

He turned on the backlight of the oven, set the timer for fifteen minutes, and sat down in front of the oven door, staring intently at the pie illuminated within.

"Cas," Charlie said. "The second pie shot out of the oven like a canon. I don't think sitting so close is a good idea…"

"No, this will work fine," Castiel said with a hint of airy craze. "It can't catch fire or bloat up or blacken or explode or melt if I watch it and pull it out. Hand me the oven mitt please."

Dean passed it over as Charlie started picking up dirty prep materials. "I'm just saying I'm pretty sure that's going to blow up in your face. Literally. We've made these things just like that other recipe said repeatedly and it just, you know, won't work with pyro oven."

"It will work this time," Castiel replied. "We simply missed some important details in the previous recipe or weren't paying proper attention."

Charlie rolled her eyes as she turned on the faucet, grabbing a half used bottle of liquid soap and shooting down at the soiled kitchenware. "If it doesn't work this time, can we just order pizza?"

"It will work," Castiel said.

"And if it doesn't?" She repeated.

Castiel continued to stare at the pie, but after a few moments he took a loud breath and said, "Alright, we can order pizza if it doesn't work."

"So, uh…," Dean said, clapping his hands together. "What can I do. Just kinda standin' over here…"

"Think your horde hands won't be too sullied if you were to wash dishes?" Charlie replied.

"For the last time I'm not horde!" Dean said, taking off his jacket and throwing it on the stool. "I'm a free agent. I do the jobs I gotta to get what I want! S'that sound like horde to you?"

"…No, that'd be too practical for horde," Charlie admitted. Dean grabbed a sponge from the sink while slightly glaring at her, and started scrubbing.

"What's your thing against the horde anyway?" Dean asked. "It's just a game."

"Yeah, but… I told you last week," she replied, slightly quieter. "They're like the bible-thumping horde… the game's got that binary power system, right? The one that's like 'oh look, you're on the Good side, you get this pretty armor,' and 'oh, you're on the Evil side, you get the armor that makes you look like a skank.' I hate it, the whole 'you gotta act exactly how the Good people want you to otherwise you're Evil.' It all sucks, but if I gotta fight in the binary I'm gonna fight the ass-holes who decided it should be a thing in the first place. Plus I can look sexy instead of looking like a weaponized nun."

"I get that," Dean said. "But what's the point of the game if you don't want any of the rewards either side's paying out? Why be the butt-boy to either one?"

"Entertainment," Castiel said. The other two looked over to him, though Dean noticed that Castiel's eyes had to look up to his, not over. As if he had been staring at something in Dean's vicinity and then looked up to his face. The only other thing in the vicinity was Dean's butt. Aaaand Dean turned on his "I am sexy" smirk.

"The point of the game is entertainment." Castiel said with some extra color to his cheeks. "And not all people who have faith in the Holy Bible believe its accurate expression is violence unto others."

"… I didn't mean you, Cas," Charlie said, but Castiel's glance was already back at the pie. She sighed and whispered, "I hate it when he gets like this…"

"The point aint just entertainment," Dean said before dipping down to Charlie's level to ask, "Hate it when he gets like what?"

She glanced around Dean to see if Cas was paying attention, which he wasn't. She pressed her lips together and said, while keeping her voice below the volume of the music her computer provided, "I mean… I don't… well, I don't know Cas really really well, you know, only for a few months, but there are these times that he gets fixated on one tiny little thing and then kaboom that's his whole life. Like when I first told him about my issues with Christianity, what with the whole 'you're a lesbian, therefore must die or at least loose all your family!'… with that he just wouldn't let the matter drop - - hey, whoa, your face Winchester, chill. It's not like he was yelling at me or anything, he just… he became determined to apologize to me on the part of the Mormons and all the Christians. It didn't matter that I told him it wasn't his thing to apologize for, he just kept getting more worked up about it till he was about to cry and finally told him I accepted the apology."

"So you lied to get him to shut up?" Dean asked.

Charlie almost spoke, but she changed it to a quick smile and said, "Actually… I don't know. I mean, I didn't want him to just shut up, and I'm still pissed at bible thumpers, but… I forgave him for his tiny little part in all that, y'know? I didn't want him to keep feeling bad, so maybe I did forgive… am I sharing too much?"

Dean stared into the invisible distance a moment before shrugging.

"Okay," Charlie muttered. "So yeah, that's what this is. I don't know why, but this afternoon he just grabbed me and said I need to make pie in his scary voice and then I came in here and… I guess that five page paper on Ruby's just gonna have to screw itself in the face."

"Ruby?"

"Yeah… the language." She said.

Dean blinked, sexy grin long gone.

"It's a programming language," Charlie said. "It's a lot of fun once you learn how to use it, but man is it a bitch when you don't respect—"

"No, NO!" Castiel yelled. The dishwashing duo looked over, Castiel grabbing at the oven door handle right as the pie exploded in a fiery splat. The oven door burst open and smacked Cas in the face, throwing him back on the floor as black smoke and embers rolled out of the oven. It took a moment for Dean to realize that one of the charred, flaming strips of the pie's lattice was stuck to Castiel's face.

"Jesus!" Dean yelled while hurdling at the flaming piece of crust and knocking if off Castiel's face as he writhed on the floor. "Hold still, lemme look at it… whoa…"

There was a strip of red, burned and peeling skin across Castiel's face, but as Dean crouched there he could see healthy skin pulling up over the burn. In just a few moments there was no burn at all. "The hell…"

"Human with benefits," Castiel said quietly. "We need to put out the fire."

Dean jumped over to the offending strip of pastry and stomped it into ashy bits, turning back to watch Castiel get up as Charlie used the faucet sprayer to douse the flames that were once an apple pie. She got out of the way as Cas grabbed the smoldering mass they had spent an hour preparing , threw open the kitchen window, and tossed out the damned lump. There was a clang reminiscent to that of a dumpster.

This place… this place… Dean shook his head as he grabbed wet paper towels to grab chunks of the pie bomb to toss the mess out. Just when he thought there might be some kind of normalcy here the café did something else weird, like making a human somehow freaking immortal or whatever or, hell, maybe flipping gravity when he wasn't paying attention.

Dean immediately imagined himself falling onto his head and had to grab onto the nearby wall to keep from feeling sick.

"And more fire and brimstone," Charlie sighed, tossing her sponge into the soapy water, which sprayed suds over her and the sink. "You okay Cas? Dodge more shrapnel with your ninja skills?"

"…Do we have any more apples?"

"Cas, no. No more pie," Charlie begged. "You promised pizza, and it's like… yeah, it's past midnight. Want food. Please. I need noms to sacrifice at the altar of the college paper writing gods."

Castiel was back at the refrigerator, digging around. "Can you make a pie out of cantaloupe and a half-bag of blueber-"

"Cas, c'mon man," Dean said. "You told her you'd get pizza if things went south, they did, so yeah. C'mon."

Castiel's shoulders sank deep and head fell, still one step into the refrigerator. He stepped out but his head still hung. After a few moments he nodded and pulled off an advert and coupon from one of the pizza joints on Massachusetts and handed it to Charlie. "The phone's over in the corner."

"Finally," Charlie said, grabbing the advert and coupon and striding over to the phone. Dean watched her go, then looked back to Cas… still sullen.

"You alive in there?"

"Yes," Castiel replied.

"Sure don't look it."

"I'm disappointed, Dean."

"I wouldn't be too disappointed if I could take a flaming biscuit to face and walk away lookin' fine."

"…it wasn't a biscuit."

"Close enough," Dean said. "Look, it sucks that we don't get pie, but it's not like it's the end of the world or something."

"Of course not," Castiel shot back. His gaze lifted to Dean's for a moment turning down again, followed by a sigh. "You're always in pain when you come in, and I contribute to it. I wanted…,"

"…This is about what Ms. Moseley told you before, eh… yeah, that," Dean said.

"Yes…," Castiel said. "You don't deserve to be in pain all the time."

"Yeah, well, those are the rules of the game, right? We both know this all sucks, s'all fucked up…," Dean replied, sucking in a hiss of breath at the end.

"Yes, but that doesn't mean we should be allowed our simple pleasures."

"That book made it pretty clear pie aint simple."

"…You know what I mean," Castiel said.

Charlie put the wall-phone down to her chest. "Hey bitches, you realize I'm, like, five feet away from you? Zepplin isn't covering your whispers – oh, yes, one large with peperoni, peppers, onions, and extra cheese… yup, the Obolus Café… thanks so much!

"Okay, look," She said, hanging up the phone. "First… well, I don't know what biscuits has to do with anything, I was punching in the pizza dude's number, sorry I can't preach on that. Second, Cas, the system was rigged against you. No matter how many times we try to cook with that oven it always nukes out. I mean, it sucks that we don't get pie – which apparently is a thing for you Dean, which, gotta be honest, totally adorbs – but… it's not for lack of trying. The system's not perfect and fucks us over. So fuck the system and eat all the pizza instead."

"What happened to fighting the system from within the system, little miss Devil's Dispatch?" Dean said.

"Really dude? How're you gonna fight a heating appliance that weighs, like, a ton and is connected to gas lines? All that other stuff is part of the system… whoa I sound like a crazy communist hippie person in one of my sociology classes, but it's still true. I am fighting the crappy system from within it cause that's all I got. I can use the phone lines to order greasy, nommy pizza. If you don't want the blazed pie or the pizza, then hey you can go hungry."

"This conversation has quickly turned very philosophical," Castiel muttered.

"It's called meta," Dean said, but his phone began buzzing. He clenched his jaw and reached inside his pocket, pulled out his phone and checked the number. Maybe it wasn't AAA… nope, it was AAA. "Fuck…," He sighed. He opened it up and raised the phone to his ear. "Lemme guess."

"Deeeaan! How ya doing buddy? I got—"

"Are you fucking deaf? Business. Not buddies. Now drop the shit and tell me where I'm going."

Charlie raised an eyebrow, but Dean ignored her, grabbing a paper towel and a pen to write down the location of the wreck. He didn't recognize the location. After hanging up he borrowed Charlie's computer and, stealing the neighbor's wifi, pinned the location. "Where the hell is that?"

"What is it?" Charlie asked.

"Triple-A shit, it's a contract thing," Dean said. "There's been a wreck at 170th and Kestrel, but I got no idea… holy fuck… fuck no, he's screwing with me," Dean said, smashing redial on his phone. After a few rings he yelled, "Zachariah what the hell is this, this place's practically at the Nebraska border!"

"Yeah…," Zachariah replied, sounding as if he failed to see an issue.

"The hell! Send someone else!"

"There isn't anyone else, Mr. Winchester," he said, making Dean grit his teeth. "Our man in Hiawatha lapsed on his deal a year back, so—"

"St. Joseph's right there, man, tell them to—"

"St. Joseph, Missouri, Mr. Winchester. Our policies do not allow us to call in someone from another state—"

"Since when was that a thing!?"

"That is the regulation of our company as of a court ruling on—"

"Atchison, Topeka, hell Kansas City, how is it possible that I'm the only one that-!"

"Mr. Winchester, need I remind you that refusing to fulfill your end of your contract with us incurs a fine and legal reproachment of—"

"FINE, I'M GOING!" Dean yelled, poking his phone to hang up in fury. He missed the phone in the Locust shop; poking a plastic box wasn't the same as slamming something down with a clang.

After a few moments he turned around, finding Charlie clearly worried and… shit, Cas looked resigned.

"Save me a piece of pizza, got it?" Dean said, walking over to the stool and grabbing his jacket. As he slid it on Charlie asked, "What's going on?"

"Someone went stupid tonight and got into a car crash up near fucking Hiawatha, and cuz I got this leash around my neck…," He seethed for a moment before pointing at Charlie. "Don't let him," he pointed at Cas. "Try to make another pie. Or from beating himself up. Think you can do that?"

Charlie nodded. Castiel lowered his shoulders and let his head drift slightly to the side and lightly lift an eyebrow. "I don't need looking after."

"Yeah, well… Maybe someone should do it anyway." Dean said. "God knows he ain't doin' it… for anyone."

He didn't want to explain that, Dean just wanted this shit to be done with. He slammed himself into the Impala and rushed to the Levi. At the yard he cursed and spat and kicked the gravel, unable to name his fury. His sentences kept coming back to the point, the point, what was the point? He got in the Levi, angry at his mother's funeral, at Ms. Moseley's, the futility, the impermanence, the suffering that kept coming back again and again. It didn't stop there; tonight things were getting better with Cas. Philosophical and third wheely, but better, until this damn contracted, pencil pushing prat interrupted the whole thing.

It was going to take him hours to get up to Hiawatha, clean up the mess, talk with EMTs and police when they got there, and tow everything back. He told Charlie and Cas to save him a piece of pizza, but he wouldn't be there to get it. Quick math told Dean that he'd be opening up the Locust shop by the time he was done with all this.

What was the point? Of all of this?

Ten miles out from the wreck Dean was passed by gang of bikers. Four miles out he saw them coming back on the other side of the road, and he realized who the bikers were. He pushed Levi as hard as he could to get to the wreck faster, but then he saw it. Flames towering into the sky, a burst as the remnants of an SUV exploded. He slowly pulled up to the crossing of 170th and Kestral, also a railroad crossing. There was a whole string of cars piled up, crashed into each other. Some of the bodies were still in the cars, dead and draped over the steering wheels, but others were closer to the fire with bodies on top of them. It looked like they had been trying to carry people who were caught in the fire out when something, smoke inhalation, shrapnel, who knows…

Dean stepped out of the Leviathon. They were kids. One of the cars had window paint scribbled on the side, saying "KC or Bust!" The license plates were Idaho. Bits of blue and white marching band gear fluttered in the air, tumbled across the road, caught fire and flew up into the sky.

What if he hadn't fought with Zachariah? What if he hadn't blown up at the Yard?

"God you bastard," Dean said. "You horde bastard."

1. Grad school. Paper writing season. PANIC
(AKA – In the next three weeks I have… about 50 pages of academic writing to complete, which will then be followed by another 30. Believe me, I'm trying to get these chapters out as fast as I can, but there really are days where I can't touch it lest I fall behind. I repeat, things will REALLY ease up after Nov. 18)

2. This chapter… would not… fucking… end…

(AKA – I kept wanting it to go in one direction and it kept telling me no, no, no you stupid writer, you're going the wrong way. Eventually I listened to it.)

3. I'm sorry I keep causing pain in this story! It gets better, I swear! Seriously! Sexeh times are on the horizon! Addendum: GOOD sexeh times are on the horizon!