New story: Good Eats, Dean/Cas, PG-13
Look, Ma, Casfest story is done!
Title: Good Eats
Author/Artist: eretria
Recipient: x_shadowwings_x
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Cas
Rating: PG-13
Size: ~ 6700
Warnings/Spoilers: none, really. Set post S5, with the general assumption that Sam's back. May not be suitable for vegetarians. No ducks were harmed in the production of this story!
Notes/Prompt: Written for Castielfest for the prompt "Cas tries to learn to be more human, taking cooking lessons among other things. He cooks for Dean and Dean is more than a little surprised and grateful for Cas' gesture. " It's not ... quite a 100 % fill. However, there is a lot of cooking and quite a few shenanigans. I don't like the word crack, so I'll go with humour. Also, I blame Alton Brown. Completely. Most heartfelt gratitude goes to auburnnothenna and murron for beta-reading and tireless hand-holding as well as gabby_silang and kuwdora for helpful chats.
Summary: "Cas," Sam said in his reasonable voice. "You've never cooked before. Why not start with something simple like … scrambled eggs?"
"I was stationed on earth for two thousand years, Sam." Cas crossed his arms in front of his chest and threw Sam a look that should have skinned Dean's brother alive. "Cooking is not, as you're so fond of saying, rocket science." -- In which Cas zaps a lot and gets ambitious, Dean is covered in feathers, a tie is ruined, a kitchen is wrecked and Good Eats are created against all odds.
Put all the above together and you have seriously ...
Good Eats
The afternoon sun was bright and warm, pleasant maybe for the last time before summer came to pelt them all with sweltering heat. Dean stretched his back. He'd been leaning over the engine of the old Ford truck, exchanging the spark plugs when suddenly, a gust of wind rustled the tarp on a nearby car and Cas appeared. He'd been all interested in their plans for the weekend this morning when he arrived. Dean hadn't really thought that Cas would stick around after Bobby and Dean had left him with Sam in the library.
Cas bent toward where Bobby's legs were the only evidence of his presence. "Bobby." Cas voice was urgent, serious. Then again, when wasn't it?
"What? We're busy." Bobby's reply was muffled by the metal bulk of the truck he was stuck underneath, pulling the transmission.
"There is no pasta machine in your kitchen."
Dean cracked his head against the hood as he whipped his head up and toward Cas. The sudden burst of pain was enough to make him forget the question that had just been on the tip of his tongue.
Something rattled underneath the truck. It was followed by silence. A long silence. Then Bobby pushed out from underneath the truck, squinting against the sunlight.
"Dean," Bobby said, his voice carefully neutral. "Did he just say what I think he said?"
Dean nodded, mute. He still rubbed his head, busy with the lump that was no doubt forming there.
"Just checking. I thought maybe something had fallen on my head and pushed me into the Twilight Zone."
Bobby rose with a groan, wiped his hands on an already greasy cloth. "What brings you to that brilliant deduction, Sherlock?"
"I can't make pasta without a pasta machine," Cas stated in a tone that clearly added, moron, to the end of the sentence.
Dean finally shook himself from the stupor he had fallen into when Cas had asked his first question. "Why would you want to make pasta? Did you meet Fanny Farmer in heaven and spend too much time with her?"
"Heaven was nothing like that."
"So, what, they kicked you out because you annoyed them?"
"I believe I was considered … uncomfortable to be around."
"You?" Dean open his eyes wide in mock-shock. "No!"
"Dean."
"So… pasta? What the hell, Cas?"
"The educational program said it was best."
"Educational program?"
"On your television."
"You watched TV?"
"You do it all the time, don't you?"
"Yes, but…" Porn! Dean thought. Dr. Sexy, MD! Not educational programs.
"Sam said it was the best way to keep me out of trouble."
"Sam?" Dean had known it hadn't been the best idea to make Sam entertain Cas while Bobby and he finished fixing the truck.
"He said he wanted to avoid me stumbling over porn, so he programmed the TV."
"To cooking shows?" Dean was going to kill his brother. In new and creative ways.
"It was that or Nickelodeon." Cas gave a visible shudder. "I think out of the two, I prefer the Food Network. Their shows are educational. I already had the chance to prepare a few things."
Bobby was already on the way to the house before Dean had even started yelling at Sam.
***
"Castiel! " Bobby's outraged shout should have been enough to shake the house. Dean was only a few steps behind him and couldn't yet see what had caused it. He only knew that Bobby didn't yell a lot to begin with - not in that tone, anyway. It made Dean's stomach do an unpleasant flip-flop. He found out why when he rounded the corner, just as Bobby was asking, in a tight voice: "Why is there a dead duck on my kitchen table?"
***
Dean dragged Sam away from his computer and into the kitchen. At least Sam had the good grace to look sheepish when they confronted him with his crime. Yes, Sam admitted, running a hand through his hair, he'd been tired of Cas' questions. Yes, he'd wanted some peace and quiet. "Dude, give me a break. I didn't mean to turn him into Julia Child, I just wanted a break. Have you been around him lately?"
Dean bit back on the "road to hell is paved" comment.
Sam's admission didn't do anything to change Cas' determination, though. Of course not. Damn brick-headed angel.
"You're bored." Bobby stated, finally, in a masterful rundown of the obvious.
Cas nodded. "Yes."
"And you want to start cooking of all things?"
"It seems as good a pastime as any, and actually useful. You all need to eat, don't you?" Cas looked expectantly from Bobby to Sam to Dean.
Dean's stomach grumbled hungrily and Dean nodded before he could stop himself. Cas seemed pleased in a way that made Dean suddenly very apprehensive. There still was a way out of this, right? "Well, couldn't you just… I don't know, mojo something here?"
"That would defeat the purpose of conquering my boredom, wouldn't it?"
Well, really, no, it… yeah. It would. "Good point."
"So, have you ever cooked anything before, Cas?" Sam asked carefully.
"No."
A pregnant pause followed. Sam shifted uncomfortably and finally birthed a few words. "And you think it's a good idea to start with a home-made pasta in duck sauce - using a whole duck - why?"
"It's called pasta con l'anatra. And you forgot the antipasti and the tiramisu," Cas corrected, then gave a bad imitation of a shrug. "Because it's a challenge."
"Cas," Sam said in his reasonable voice. "You've never cooked before. Why not start with something simple like … scrambled eggs?"
"I was stationed on earth for two thousand years, Sam." Cas crossed his arms in front of his chest and threw Sam a look that should have skinned Dean's brother alive. "Cooking is not, as you're so fond of saying, rocket science."
Sam had the good grace to blush.
Bobby, on the other hand, raised both hands before retreating and grabbing his car keys.
"Where're you going?" Dean asked.
"I ain't gonna be a guinea pig. He raised you from hell, not me. Show some gratitude, Dean," he said and slapped Dean's back hard enough to make Dean cough. "I'm getting a pizza."
"Gratitude is an excellent idea, Dean," Sam piped up, patting Dean's shoulder as well. "I'm going with Bobby. Have fun, you two!"
They were out and gone before Dean could formulate a plan to inflict bodily harm on both of them at the same time.
Surprise over the sudden exit was obvious in the tilt of Cas' head. He shrugged when the door slammed. "We will have leftovers. I hear they are a good thing to have around."
Dean crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Hold your horses, Michael Landon. If you don’t promise pie, I'm outta here."
"Pie is not a dinner food."
"I don't care. Promise."
"Very well."
"Promise!"
"Dean, I'm an angel. You can take my word for it."
Dean snorted. "Yeah, because I have such a good track record with you guys."
Dean didn't know how Cas managed, but his face actually fell without him even moving many facial muscles. "Did I ever actively lie to you?"
Dean needed a strategy. Anything to take the puppy dog look away. "So there will be pie?"
"Yes, Dean. There will be pie."
"All right, then. But remember that that's the only reason I'm staying." Well, that and the fact that Dean had actually missed Cas' grumpy ass. Not that he was thinking about Cas' ass. Because he wasn't. He never saw it underneath the damn trenchcoat, anyway.
Cas turned toward the dead bird on the kitchen table. "You will pluck the duck while I assemble the pasta dough, Dean," Cas said, shaking Dean from his contemplation with orders so matter-of-fact that they didn't leave room for discussion.
Dean looked at Cas and blinked. Once. Twice. "There's a pun in there, somewhere," he muttered, looked at the duck on the table and fought the urge to dissolve into hysterical laughter. "You couldn't have gone to the supermarket?"
"The woman I learned this recipe from used fresh duck. When it comes to poultry, freshness matters."
"Naturally." The Twilight Zone theory became more and more plausible by the minute. What the hell?! "Remind me again why I shouldn't call the Angelic Loonie Bin right now?"
Cas turned around from where he was clearing a space on the counter. Gave Dean a level, gaze, that - son of a bitch - looked actually hurt this time. "Dean."
Bastard knew exactly how to get Dean. Welcome to Guilt Trips, Inc., take a seat, pluck a duck! With just one word, damn it. "Right. Right."
Cas raised an eyebrow.
Looked like there was no use fighting the inevitable. "You better clean it, is all I'm saying!"
***
Dean was already sitting in a pile of feathers when suddenly, Cas muttered something unintelligible, then disappeared in front of his eyes.
Dean barely had the time to get an outraged, "Hey! " out before Cas reappeared.
The gust of wind accompanying Cas' reappearance disturbed the pile of feathers, sending them flying all around Dean and the kitchen.
"Cas! " Dean thundered.
"There were no Kalamata olives in this kitchen. No Colosssoles either." Something Dean couldn't see through the storm of feathers was dropped onto the counter with a hollow plonk. "No zucchini," Cas continued. "No eggplant. No bell peppers."
"This isn't your average Italian Mama's kitchen, genius, of course that stuff isn't around. Have you heard about shopping before cooking?"
"Shopping?" Cas' tone was uncomprehending.
An unpleasant suspicion began to creep up in Dean. "Cas, where are you getting this stuff, anyway?"
"Torazza," Cas answered.
"Which is?"
Cas shrugged. "A village."
It was like pulling teeth. "A village where?"
"Italy," Cas stated.
"You're stealing veggies and ducks from some poor little farmer lady in Italy?"
"One duck," Cas corrected. "And I told her she would be rewarded for her generosity in heaven."
"You're lying?" Dean was almost as impressed as he was horrified.
"I am not," Cas said, sudden steel in his voice. "I will make sure of it. After all, her ancestor was the one who familiarised me with the recipe for the pasta sauce 500 years ago. I will make sure they are reunited in heaven. They will have much to talk about. Both are excellent cooks."
Five hundred years. Dean decided that it might be a good idea to back-pedal a bit. "And the other stuff?"
"What other-" Cas began. He looked around, his forehead creasing. Then he pointed his index finger at Dean. "You're right. I forgot the piping bag."
He was gone in a whoosh. The last feather settled gently on the ground.
"Cas, don't you dare reappear inside this kitche-" Another whoosh, a gust of wind. Dean's world was white again. "Castiel, I swear to God, I will-"
"Do not use the Lord's name in vain, Dean," Cas admonished gently. He stepped closer, picked something off Dean's eyebrow, smoothed the hair back into place where a feather had disturbed it. "These belong on the bird, not on you."
"Pluck you." Dean contemplated throwing the half-plucked duck at Cas. "Just … Get cookin'," he squeezed out between clenched teeth. He took a breath, then bellowed, "And don't zap again until I'm done! "
***
The phone rang. Dean looked at the caller ID. Sam. Of course.
"What?" Dean answered irritably.
"Just checking in on you," Sam said, not a small amount of mirth in his voice, "you know, making sure everything's all right and my big brother is well fed."
Dean looked at the feathers surrounding him. "Bitch," he answered and hung up.
***
Of course, Cas didn't listen. He had enough sense to take off the trenchcoat, though.
After finishing the pasta dough - which included a lot of not-quite swearing, grunting and the complete ruin of Cas' suit jacket and pants with flour, as well as a slightly panicked, "This recipe called for 6 cups of flour, not 10!" - he disappeared and reappeared several times until Bobby's kitchen looked like something taken straight from a restaurant supply store. With a dusting of feathers and flour on every surface. A pasta machine, a stand mixer, several cookie sheets, an espresso machine, and various other appliances appeared in Bobby kitchen one by one, zap by zap. After the third, Dean gave up on trying to remove feathers from his hair.
"Don't even think about making me clean this mess," Dean said when he finally put the now quite naked duck on the kitchen counter. He had the urge to give it a sweater. It looked like it had goose bumps. Hunh. Goose bumps. So that's where that came from. "It's all your fault, anyway."
Cas gave him an indulgent look, snapped his fingers and the feathers were gone. Dean glowered, revised the 'throttling an angel is a bad idea' theory. "You couldn't have done that with the duck?"
"No."
"No?" Dean's hands twitched. Cas' neck looked more throttle-able by the second. Especially with the white flour marks along the side where Cas had rubbed his neck.
"No," Cas reaffirmed. "Now give me the measuring cups. I have to start on the ladyfingers."
The needle on Dean's internal record player scratched across the vinyl. Loudly. "The what?" He had a bad flash from some really tasteless horror movies.
"Ladyfingers," Cas repeated. He seemed to notice Dean's horrified stare and added: "A cookie, Dean."
"Oh. Right," Dean said, having a hard time hiding his relief. "Why don't you just buy them?"
Cas sighed. "I thought we had covered this?" The tone clearly implied insults to Dean's ancestors.
Which, hey. Hey! "Not sufficiently."
Cas' gaze turned speculative. "I could smite towns if you prefer. I'm a little rusty and Washington, DC looks like it could go with-"
Dean crossed his arms over his chest. "Very funny."
"Actually," Cas gave him a once-over and picked another feather from Dean's hair. "It is."
"Why a cooking show of all things?"
"Would you really have wanted me to go with the Teletubbies? Or Casa Erotica?"
"Hey, you said Sam had programmed the TV not to show you porn!"
"Dean." The "moron" tone was back again. "I'm an angel. That doesn't mean I'm technologically inept."
Dean narrowed his eyes at Cas. "What else have you been hiding from us, buddy?"
A dangerous twinkle lit Cas' eyes. Cas' tongue darted out to wet his lower lip in a way he'd never done before but which looked damn familiar, followed by a smirk. "Do you really want to know?"
Oh, shit. Dean remembered some of the decidedly non-angel-safe porn he had hidden in a hollowed out copy of Kafka's "The Castle" and realised that this conversation needed to go somewhere else quick. "Measuring cups!" he said brightly and presented them to Cas so quick he almost smacked Cas' hands with them.
"Very good," Cas said, apparently successfully distracted from the earlier topic. "Now, if you could chop up some carrots and onions-"
"I'm not your kitchen-servant!" Dean protested.
"I could call your brother and tell him about the duck-plucking?"
"You son of a-"
"I had no mother, Dean." Cas gave him a sunny smile. "Let's get started."
***
When the phone rang this time, it was Bobby's caller ID. Of course. Playing dirty.
"So," Bobby started.
"Don't," Dean warned.
A burst of static, a female voice shouting, "Singer, party of two!"
"We're about to have really good pizza." Dean heard Bobby grin. "How's that duck coming along?"
"Dean, the onions!" Cas called and snapped - snapped! - his fingers in Dean's direction.
"I see," Bobby said slowly. The grin vanished from his voice and was replaced by menace. "Don't mess up my kitchen!"
Dean looked at the already present wreckage around him - mountains of dirty dishes, flour everywhere, broken china on the floor where Cas had dropped a plate, spots of oil on Bobby's calendar over the stove, and, God, the stove itself was a complete mess that would likely never get clean again - and fought a gulp.
"Oh, gotta hang up, menu's here. The menu I'll choose from before I wait for someone to slave in the kitchen for me."
"I hate you," Dean said and took a deep, desperate swig from the wine bottle in front of him. Damn. He was going to need a lot more before the night was over.
***
In hindsight, the carrot chopping wasn't so bad. Nothing like chopping the onions. There just was no way to manly chop onions and not have your eyes watering like a weeping sissy.
But if Dean had thought that everything about this came easy to Cas, he'd been wrong.
The difference between the old, outdated electric burner dinosaur of a stove Bobby used and the wood-fired one Mama Italia must have used five hundred years ago soon became very clear when Cas burnt the first few batches of onions. The sharp smell of it hung in the kitchen along with an ominous blue-ish cloud. The mountain of dirty dishes in the sink just grew and grew. Cas flitted back and forth, getting new appliances (and new onions) each time something was ruined. He appeared to have miscalculated the difference between TV and reality and damn if that didn't make Dean just a little - scratch that, a lot - gleeful. Despite the fact that he had to start chopping onions again and again.
Good thing the onions were in a big casserole now along with bacon - Dean could get behind that part of the recipe easily enough -, the duck, an obscene amount of herbs, red wine and, if Dean had seen correctly, some kind of tomato goo. He had to admit it was starting to smell good. Not that he planned to admit it to anyone else.
In the meantime the ladyfingers also weren't quite as cooperative as Cas had thought. The construction of the batter seemed simple enough, especially with the sparkling new Kitchen Aid mixer that now adorned Bobby's kitchen (they'd get so much shit for that, Dean could already hear Bobby cursing up a storm). The gentle folding movements - "folding, Dean, not stirring, it'll destroy all the bubbles in the dough, and you want the bubbles!" - were hypnotising, Cas' slim hands were careful yet efficient, just like they had been handling knives and guns before. No, the interesting part came with the piping bag. Or rather, with using it.
Cas - still clad in his now severely flour-smudged suit - was leaning over the counter, squeezing the first string of batter from the bag, then suddenly he stopped, huffing. He pushed back the jacket sleeve, bowed over the counter again, squeezed - and honest-to-God growled.
Much more of the batter was coming out from the back of the bag rather than the piped front. Cas jacket-sleeve kept slipping into the sticky batter. When he'd tried pulling it back this time, his other hand had ended up smeared with batter, too, making it impossible to pull up the sleeve again.
Dean cocked his hip against the counter, dipped his finger into the batter at the back of Cas' hand and licked the finger clean with a smirk. "Need some help?" he asked around his index finger. Damn, that was good batter.
Cas stared at Dean's now clean finger a bit longer than strictly necessary, then shook his head minutely as though waking from a particularly insistent daydream. "Yes."
Which was how they ended up much closer than they were before, with Dean holding back Cas' jacket sleeve and Cas piping long, wide strips of dough on the cookie sheets. It gave Dean time to notice just how warm Cas was and exactly how bony his wrists were. Cas was also biting his lower lip in concentration. White teeth against chapped, yet soft-looking lips. The sight sent an unexpected jolt through Dean and he realised he was staring.
"Done!" Cas finally exclaimed and Dean stepped back, releasing a breath he was well aware he'd been holding.
He cleared his throat. "Okay, genius, next thing on the list? Lose that jacket." Cas began to shrug out of the suit jacket but Dean stopped him with a hand to his wrist. "Clean your fingers first."
Cas rolled his eyes, dropped the piping bag in the sink, contemplated his hands for a short moment. He looked at Dean, then at Dean's hands, gave a vague hint of a shrug and began licking his fingers clean, one after the other.
Dean swallowed. Hard.
***
It didn't really get any easier on Dean's pride when Cas asked him to hold the stretched out pasta sheets. Nor would it get any easier to explain to Bobby why there were spaghetti hanging from every surface of his kitchen to dry.
For now, he had to deal with Cas insulting his ancestry again as Dean ripped the pasta sheet for the third time by pulling too hard.
After the fifth ruined sheet, Cas pushed Dean none too gently on the kitchen chair and handed him a knife and a zucchini. "I think you'll do less damage here."
Dean stuck out his tongue and reached for the wine bottle.
***
"Bacon!" Sam's said with a blissed-out voice on his next call. "Nice, crispy bacon, just the way you like it."
Dean gnashed his teeth and hung up to Sam's laughter.
***
"Hand me the slotted spoon, Dean," Cas demanded over his shoulder from where he was bent over a hissing and spitting cast iron pan. Something started to smell burnt.
Dean looked around, confused, and grabbed the first thing that looked vaguely right. "Here."
Cas reached out without looking, then gave an audible sigh. "No, the slotted spoon."
"How the hell would I know what a slotted spoon is?"
Cas rolled his eyes and disappeared. The stuff in the pan - whatever the hell it was - sizzled. So did Dean's nerves. He was going to, really, he was going to kick Cas' a-
"This," Cas said, reappearing in a gust of wind that had a forgotten feather flying all over the place and Dean groaning in horror, "is a slotted spoon." Cas held the item up like a school teacher.
Dean pulled a face. "It has holes, not slots, Cas."
Cas stared at the spoon for a moment. "You're right. This language doesn't make any sense." He picked up the feather from where it had landed on a stack of sliced eggplant. "You should learn Enochian."
"I'll put it on the to-do list right after Mandarin." Dean rolled his eyes.
Apparently, Cas must have picked up on some of the finer points of sarcasm, because Dean could have sworn that Cas flipped him the bird.
Or maybe that was just Cas jumping away from the frying pan as the hot oil spit in his direction when he placed the fresh eggplant into it. He looked almost as though he bit back a litany of curses.
Dean didn't even try to fight the grin. "What's up, Cas? Big Bad Angel not splatter protected? You're not telling me this hurts, are you?"
"I've had knives in my chest and not felt pain," Cas pointed out. "This is nothing. It merely …"
"Merely what?"
Cas sighed. "Ruins the tie."
Dean dropped his gaze and saw the spats of oil that riddled Cas' dress shirt and tie. Laughter bubbled up before he could stop it. "Life's a bitch," he said, slapping Cas' shoulder, "what can you say?"
***
The next thing Dean received was a picture message.
Despite better knowledge, he opened the message and found the picture of a half-eaten pizza and a dementedly grinning Bobby. "Wish you were here," the caption said.
Dean took another large swig from the bottle and resisted the urge to throw his phone out the window.
***
It had to end badly . Of course it did. Depending on one's definition of badly, of course.
Pasta done and drying, antipasti platter assembled (and looking awesome, even though Dean had never been a fancy schmancy antipasti eater), water coming to a boil, duck smelling too frigging damn good for words; all good. Cas was busy mixing mascarpone and sugar in that monster of a machine he'd zapped into the kitchen. Specks of cream cheese were flying in all directions when he set the speed too high. Dean watched one particularly large glob fly toward the top of the dusty grey shutters on Bobby's kitchen window and idly wondered if the next generation would still find it.
Cas fiddled with the settings, wiped some cream cheese off his chin and grumbled. Amused, Dean reached for the bottle of brandy Cas had placed on the table and took an absentminded swig. This was going from annoying to amusing fast. All he needed was more booze. He wondered for a moment if he should tell Cas about the new spots on his tie but decided against it.
He was so immersed in his appraisal of all the tiny flecks of cream cheese riddling Cas' tie and clinging to the side of his eyebrow - idly wondering if he should wipe it away, since Cas didn't seem to notice - that he didn't even hear the first time Cas called his name. Dean tried hard not to choke on his own spit when Cas suddenly appeared directly in front of him, a spoon held out. "Try."
Dean hesitated, staring at the spoon with the cream cheese on it, then at Cas, then back at the spoon. He hadn't had that much to drink, had he? "You're kidding, right?" He was in this for the pie, not for actually eating any of this stuff Cas made.
"I'm asking you to try a dessert filling, not sacrifice your firstborn." Cas waved the spoon at him, clearly unwilling to let it go. "I need an opinion."
"Fine. Fine." There were worse things, after all. He was just going to ignore the weirdly thick tension in the room. Elephant. What elephant?
He reached for the spoon Cas was holding, licked it clean with a swift motion. Sweet. Not bad. But the cream had a weird aftertaste. It took Dean a moment to identify what it was. He tapped the spoon against his palm. "Damn."
"What? Too sweet?"
"It's not that." Dean held the spoon up between them. "Bobby uses actual silverware - real silver, it's the paranoid hunter part of him - and it always leaves a weird aftertaste. Try eating a lime pie from silver forks." He shuddered at the memory.
"He doesn't have anything but silverware?"
Dean shook his head. "Nope. As I said, paranoid."
Cas looked at the bowl, then at the spoon. Gave another approximation of a shrug and dipped his finger in the cream without hesitation. He held out his cream-smeared index-finger to Dean. "It shouldn't have an aftertaste this way."
Dean waited for Sam to come jumping out from behind the kitchen door, yelling: "Gotcha!" Only … it didn't happen. Cas still stood there, expectant, holding his index finger out to Dean. With that glare that wouldn't accept no for an answer.
Dean closed his eyes and gave a silent groan. Someone up there was having a laugh. A gigantic, body-shaking one. Dean hoped that someone was falling off their damn cloud from it.
"Why don't you try it yourself?"
Cas' mouth turned down a fraction. "I can't."
"What do you mean, you can't? You cook all this stuff and you're telling me you can't try it?"
"I can't taste it, Dean."
Oh. Dean stopped in his tracks. Breathed in an out. Once. Twice. Then, "What?" He shook his head. "You had a great time with the burgers when Famine was around."
Cas turned vaguely green but held Dean's gaze. "It wasn't the angel in me that was tasting the burgers."
It took Dean a while to read between the lines. Oh. Oh. "So now that you're all fully angeled up, they scrapped your taste-buds?"
"It's not required for an angel."
"Dude," Dean huffed. He tried to imagine a world without taste and shuddered. "That sucks."
"Will you tell me if it tastes all right now?" Cas asked, raising his finger again.
"If you tell Sam about this…" he gave Cas a glare and left the sentence unfinished. Then he bent forward and closed his lips around Cas index finger.
Cas inhaled sharply.
Damn, that was good stuff. Not pie, but still good. A burst of cream and sweetness and salt. Salt that came from Cas' skin, and boy, was Dean ever not thinking about that. Dean dragged his tongue quickly around the fingertip to get the last bit of cream off, then straightened his back. "Good stuff."
Cas just stared for a long few seconds, eyes slightly dilated, chest rising and falling more quickly than before. Like he was pondering a complicated puzzle. "I'm glad you approve," he finally said. His voice wasn't as stable as it had been before.
***
The taste-testing requests came more frequent after that incident. After a while, Cas refused to let Dean hold the spoon. Insisted on freaking spoon-feeding him. He mentioned something about less spillage that way that sounded vaguely - insultingly - logical in a totally illogical way. Since Dean had finished the rest of the bottle of heavy red wine Cas had used on the duck - about half of it, in fact - as well as a couple good swigs of brandy he may have been a little on the loose and willing-to-indulge-the-weird-angel side. Or just too wobbly to hold a spoon without spilling.
Cas' suit jacket was gone by now, too, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up. A fine dusting of flour tinted the fine hair on his lower arms a faint grey, making Dean wonder if angels aged along with worrying about how long it would be until the first grey would start showing in his own hair.
"Tell me if the pasta is al dente to your liking," Cas startled him from his thoughts and Dean stared at a long noodle dangling in front of his face.
"Al dente?"
"It means-"
"I know what that means, Cas. It's just," he grinned. "You sound like a TV cook."
"How would you know?"
Dean snatched the pasta from Cas' hand and stuffed it in his mouth. Oh, he wasn't going to answer that. Not over his dead body would Cas find out-
"Dean?"
"Give it another half minute," Dean mumbled around the pasta.
"Dean, please answer the question."
"No."
"Dean."
"No. Watch out for your pasta."
The look Cas threw him made it clear that the conversation wasn't over. Well, it was for Dean. He wouldn't ever admit out loud that-
"You watch cooking show reruns when you can't sleep?"
Son of a- "Stop reading my mind!"
Cas looked smug while Dean was blushing to the roots of his hair. Not blushing. Flushing with anger. Yes. Not blushing.
"There is no shame in wat-"
Dean raised his hand and glared at Cas. "We will not talk about this again. Ever."
"Very well. I think the pasta is done, anyway."
"Does that mean we can finally eat?" Dean groused. "I'm starving while watching the food, here, and-"
Dean's phone chirped. He whipped it out, skimming over the text message that said, "We're going for pie next."
After he had fought the initial urge to explode in a giant ball of wrath, Dean texted back, "I'll kill you. Slowly."
Then he turned to Cas. "Dude, where's the pie? I still haven't seen you make any pie. You remember your promise? You remember the pie?"
Cas gave a small smile. "Don't worry."
"I worry! We have prepared every other damn thing on your list, yet no pie. Where's the pie?"
"Patience."
"I don't have patience. I want pie!"
"Dean, do I need to tell your brother about the cooking-"
"I'll kill you if you try."
Cas - son of a bitch - actually smirked. "I would like to see you try."
Dean reached for a kitchen knife, found it miraculously gone, grabbed a wooden spoon instead, wielding it like a weapon. "Don't tempt me."
"I am shaking with fear," Cas said, not even trying to contain the laughter in his voice. "Please set the table." He turned toward the pot with the pasta in it, reached into it with his bare hands and pulled out some of the pasta. "I need plates."
Dean gulped and let the spoon sink. "Show-off," he said weakly.
***
Dean actually forgot about the pie after the duck sauce. Plain old forgot about it because while he'd had doubts before, this had to be the best fucking thing he had ever eaten, and that included his mother's sandwiches, Bobby's meatloaf, and his favourite burgers.
Cas had removed most of the fat that had come from the duck and had shredded the meat to return it to the sauce. Dean couldn't pick out any of the spices and herbs Cas had used, but it felt like the perfect combination, with the duck meat juicy and tender and the tomato flavour just bursting on his tongue. The whole thing was smooth, too.
He was glad Bobby didn't have any table-linens, though, because he doubted that even with the powers of heaven at Cas' disposal, any of the sauce spots ever would have come out again. It felt more rustic and comfortable this way, anyway, with the casserole on the wooden table and nothing but a bottle of wine and a glass to distract from the sauce. The bottle Cas had had to zap out to get because Dean had - much to Cas' annoyance - consumed the first one before Cas could use it to finish the sauce. Dean hadn't been sorry in the least.
He dug in with such a healthy appetite that, had Sam and Bobby been there, they'd have had to fight him for their share. "Man," he mumbled between bites, licking the corner of his mouth to clean up some sauce that was stuck there, "they don't know what they're missing."
Cas watched him eat with the satisfaction of a job well done surrounding him. "More?"
"Does the wild bear shit in the woods?"
Cas blinked at him. "I don't know how that is relevant to cooking."
Dean grinned. Licked at the corner of his mouth again. "Never mind," he said. "Yes, more."
He dug in with a healthy appetite, got a little frustrated when the pasta kept slipping off his fork and made a mess when guiding the fork to his mouth. This was exactly why spaghetti or any kind of long noodle was no date food. Not that he ever went on nice dates to nice restaurants that served nice food.
It took him a while to realise that Cas was watching him more intently than before. He tried to ignore it for several long seconds, then finally blurted out: "Okay, what? Do I have something in my face?"
"Yes." Without further ado, Cas reached up and across the table.
Dean twitched back, holding his hand up. "What are you-"
Cas stopped his hand in mid-reach, twitched his eyebrow. "You have something in your face. Hold still."
Like a fool, Dean did, because damn it if he hadn't known this was coming eventually. Cas set his fingertips against Dean's cheekbone and swiped his thumb along the corner of Dean's lower lip. Hot and cold at the same time, Cas' hand still smelled of vanilla cream and cookies. Cas frowned, inched closer. The sauce apparently was very difficult to remove, because suddenly, all of Cas' intense focus was on Dean's mouth. Dean fought the urge to lick his lips as Cas ran his thumb along the underside of Dean's lower lip, not quite touching his mouth.
"You made a mess," Cas stated, his voice low and unsteady as he held his hand between them, showing Dean the red sauce clinging to his thumb.
"I generally do," Dean answered and because he was buzzed and the food was good and Cas looked so weirdly uncertain… he grabbed Cas' wrist and led Cas' hand back to his face. Dean inched forward slightly, closed his lips over Cas' sauce-smeared thumb, and circled his tongue around it.
He made the mistake of looking up while cleaning the final taste of duck sauce off Cas' thumb, and… fuck. He'd thought he was messing with Cas, and Cas was messing with him, but what he saw was far from what he had expected. Cas looked hungry. The heated stare and the slightly opened lips and the look of repressed need would have made stronger men than Dean crumble. He licked at Cas' thumb again and felt Cas' fingertips press harder against his cheekbone, sparking little pinpricks of pain. Dean's jeans grew uncomfortably tight.
Eventually, when it became too much, Dean pulled away, swallowing convulsively as Cas' gaze flickered between Dean's mouth and his own wet thumb.
Some really idiotic part of Dean's mind went back to the speck of cream cheese still clinging to Cas' eyebrow and he reached up without thinking, rested his fingertips against Cas' face and wiped the spot away with his thumb. Cas' eyes never left him. Not when Dean pulled back. Not when he licked his thumb clean, tasting sweetness and something that had to be Cas.
Cas' adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed, hard. He uttered a rough, "Thank you."
Dean swallowed again, felt the flush creeping all along his face to his scalp and over his ears. A distraction seemed necessary, desperately necessary. Something, anything, it didn't matter what. "Now, what about that fancy-schmancy tiramisu of yours, Cas?"
Cas visibly pulled himself together. "It has to sit in the fridge for another eight hours before it has developed its full flavour."
"Eight hours?" Dean echoed, pushing back from the table and the thick tension making room for dismay. "You made me try it and watch you assemble it and now you tell me I have to wait eight hours to eat it? Does that mean we have no dessert?"
"Yes, Dean. Cooking needs patience."
"Well, fuck patience. I'm an instant gratification kind of guy!"
"I hadn't noticed," Cas said, and that undertone was decidedly not a coy one.
Dean's heartbeat skipped a beat, he fought a new flush creeping up his neck. "Hey!"
"Dean," Cas said in that damn indulgent tone of his. "I did promise, remember. I … took the liberty of preparing something."
Cas stood up, walked to the fridge … and pulled out something covered. Something that was …
"Pie!"
"As I said. I never lie to you."
"I could kiss you." It was out before he could stop himself. Brain. Mouth. Filter. The pie had obviously fried said filter.
Cas raised his eyebrows. "Your obsession with food is very peculiar."
"Not food, Cas, pie!"
"In that case, maybe I should have served the pie earlier."
Dean watched a small smile turn up Cas' lips. A decidedly sneaky smile.
"You son of a-"
"As I said, Dean, I had no mother," Cas stated.
"Just," Dean huffed and grabbed Cas' tie, "just shut up. You harp-plucker." He pulled on Cas to him and slanted his lips over Cas', tasted the smile and decided that, yes. This was worth making the pie wait.
Not for too long, though. In a marvellous display of foresight, Dean reached for his phone, texted a short, "Kitchen exploded, sauce everywhere, everything burnt, toxic, give us time to clean." And turned the phone off.
After that, with Cas' lips against his throat and his own under Cas' shirt, with heat and skin and a bedroom conveniently close by, he didn't think much at all anymore.
***
When they stumbled out of the bedroom the next morning, they found a note in Bobby's hasty scribble on the hallway floor, stating in bullet points,
Dean decided that Sam's addition to the list warranted an un-manly squeak as well as a panicked run to the kitchen. If Cas laughed at him, Dean ignored it.
Finis
Title: Good Eats
Author/Artist: eretria
Recipient: x_shadowwings_x
Characters/Pairings: Dean/Cas
Rating: PG-13
Size: ~ 6700
Warnings/Spoilers: none, really. Set post S5, with the general assumption that Sam's back. May not be suitable for vegetarians. No ducks were harmed in the production of this story!
Notes/Prompt: Written for Castielfest for the prompt "Cas tries to learn to be more human, taking cooking lessons among other things. He cooks for Dean and Dean is more than a little surprised and grateful for Cas' gesture. " It's not ... quite a 100 % fill. However, there is a lot of cooking and quite a few shenanigans. I don't like the word crack, so I'll go with humour. Also, I blame Alton Brown. Completely. Most heartfelt gratitude goes to auburnnothenna and murron for beta-reading and tireless hand-holding as well as gabby_silang and kuwdora for helpful chats.
Summary: "Cas," Sam said in his reasonable voice. "You've never cooked before. Why not start with something simple like … scrambled eggs?"
"I was stationed on earth for two thousand years, Sam." Cas crossed his arms in front of his chest and threw Sam a look that should have skinned Dean's brother alive. "Cooking is not, as you're so fond of saying, rocket science." -- In which Cas zaps a lot and gets ambitious, Dean is covered in feathers, a tie is ruined, a kitchen is wrecked and Good Eats are created against all odds.
Put all the above together and you have seriously ...
Good Eats
The afternoon sun was bright and warm, pleasant maybe for the last time before summer came to pelt them all with sweltering heat. Dean stretched his back. He'd been leaning over the engine of the old Ford truck, exchanging the spark plugs when suddenly, a gust of wind rustled the tarp on a nearby car and Cas appeared. He'd been all interested in their plans for the weekend this morning when he arrived. Dean hadn't really thought that Cas would stick around after Bobby and Dean had left him with Sam in the library.
Cas bent toward where Bobby's legs were the only evidence of his presence. "Bobby." Cas voice was urgent, serious. Then again, when wasn't it?
"What? We're busy." Bobby's reply was muffled by the metal bulk of the truck he was stuck underneath, pulling the transmission.
"There is no pasta machine in your kitchen."
Dean cracked his head against the hood as he whipped his head up and toward Cas. The sudden burst of pain was enough to make him forget the question that had just been on the tip of his tongue.
Something rattled underneath the truck. It was followed by silence. A long silence. Then Bobby pushed out from underneath the truck, squinting against the sunlight.
"Dean," Bobby said, his voice carefully neutral. "Did he just say what I think he said?"
Dean nodded, mute. He still rubbed his head, busy with the lump that was no doubt forming there.
"Just checking. I thought maybe something had fallen on my head and pushed me into the Twilight Zone."
Bobby rose with a groan, wiped his hands on an already greasy cloth. "What brings you to that brilliant deduction, Sherlock?"
"I can't make pasta without a pasta machine," Cas stated in a tone that clearly added, moron, to the end of the sentence.
Dean finally shook himself from the stupor he had fallen into when Cas had asked his first question. "Why would you want to make pasta? Did you meet Fanny Farmer in heaven and spend too much time with her?"
"Heaven was nothing like that."
"So, what, they kicked you out because you annoyed them?"
"I believe I was considered … uncomfortable to be around."
"You?" Dean open his eyes wide in mock-shock. "No!"
"Dean."
"So… pasta? What the hell, Cas?"
"The educational program said it was best."
"Educational program?"
"On your television."
"You watched TV?"
"You do it all the time, don't you?"
"Yes, but…" Porn! Dean thought. Dr. Sexy, MD! Not educational programs.
"Sam said it was the best way to keep me out of trouble."
"Sam?" Dean had known it hadn't been the best idea to make Sam entertain Cas while Bobby and he finished fixing the truck.
"He said he wanted to avoid me stumbling over porn, so he programmed the TV."
"To cooking shows?" Dean was going to kill his brother. In new and creative ways.
"It was that or Nickelodeon." Cas gave a visible shudder. "I think out of the two, I prefer the Food Network. Their shows are educational. I already had the chance to prepare a few things."
Bobby was already on the way to the house before Dean had even started yelling at Sam.
***
"Castiel! " Bobby's outraged shout should have been enough to shake the house. Dean was only a few steps behind him and couldn't yet see what had caused it. He only knew that Bobby didn't yell a lot to begin with - not in that tone, anyway. It made Dean's stomach do an unpleasant flip-flop. He found out why when he rounded the corner, just as Bobby was asking, in a tight voice: "Why is there a dead duck on my kitchen table?"
***
Dean dragged Sam away from his computer and into the kitchen. At least Sam had the good grace to look sheepish when they confronted him with his crime. Yes, Sam admitted, running a hand through his hair, he'd been tired of Cas' questions. Yes, he'd wanted some peace and quiet. "Dude, give me a break. I didn't mean to turn him into Julia Child, I just wanted a break. Have you been around him lately?"
Dean bit back on the "road to hell is paved" comment.
Sam's admission didn't do anything to change Cas' determination, though. Of course not. Damn brick-headed angel.
"You're bored." Bobby stated, finally, in a masterful rundown of the obvious.
Cas nodded. "Yes."
"And you want to start cooking of all things?"
"It seems as good a pastime as any, and actually useful. You all need to eat, don't you?" Cas looked expectantly from Bobby to Sam to Dean.
Dean's stomach grumbled hungrily and Dean nodded before he could stop himself. Cas seemed pleased in a way that made Dean suddenly very apprehensive. There still was a way out of this, right? "Well, couldn't you just… I don't know, mojo something here?"
"That would defeat the purpose of conquering my boredom, wouldn't it?"
Well, really, no, it… yeah. It would. "Good point."
"So, have you ever cooked anything before, Cas?" Sam asked carefully.
"No."
A pregnant pause followed. Sam shifted uncomfortably and finally birthed a few words. "And you think it's a good idea to start with a home-made pasta in duck sauce - using a whole duck - why?"
"It's called pasta con l'anatra. And you forgot the antipasti and the tiramisu," Cas corrected, then gave a bad imitation of a shrug. "Because it's a challenge."
"Cas," Sam said in his reasonable voice. "You've never cooked before. Why not start with something simple like … scrambled eggs?"
"I was stationed on earth for two thousand years, Sam." Cas crossed his arms in front of his chest and threw Sam a look that should have skinned Dean's brother alive. "Cooking is not, as you're so fond of saying, rocket science."
Sam had the good grace to blush.
Bobby, on the other hand, raised both hands before retreating and grabbing his car keys.
"Where're you going?" Dean asked.
"I ain't gonna be a guinea pig. He raised you from hell, not me. Show some gratitude, Dean," he said and slapped Dean's back hard enough to make Dean cough. "I'm getting a pizza."
"Gratitude is an excellent idea, Dean," Sam piped up, patting Dean's shoulder as well. "I'm going with Bobby. Have fun, you two!"
They were out and gone before Dean could formulate a plan to inflict bodily harm on both of them at the same time.
Surprise over the sudden exit was obvious in the tilt of Cas' head. He shrugged when the door slammed. "We will have leftovers. I hear they are a good thing to have around."
Dean crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Hold your horses, Michael Landon. If you don’t promise pie, I'm outta here."
"Pie is not a dinner food."
"I don't care. Promise."
"Very well."
"Promise!"
"Dean, I'm an angel. You can take my word for it."
Dean snorted. "Yeah, because I have such a good track record with you guys."
Dean didn't know how Cas managed, but his face actually fell without him even moving many facial muscles. "Did I ever actively lie to you?"
Dean needed a strategy. Anything to take the puppy dog look away. "So there will be pie?"
"Yes, Dean. There will be pie."
"All right, then. But remember that that's the only reason I'm staying." Well, that and the fact that Dean had actually missed Cas' grumpy ass. Not that he was thinking about Cas' ass. Because he wasn't. He never saw it underneath the damn trenchcoat, anyway.
Cas turned toward the dead bird on the kitchen table. "You will pluck the duck while I assemble the pasta dough, Dean," Cas said, shaking Dean from his contemplation with orders so matter-of-fact that they didn't leave room for discussion.
Dean looked at Cas and blinked. Once. Twice. "There's a pun in there, somewhere," he muttered, looked at the duck on the table and fought the urge to dissolve into hysterical laughter. "You couldn't have gone to the supermarket?"
"The woman I learned this recipe from used fresh duck. When it comes to poultry, freshness matters."
"Naturally." The Twilight Zone theory became more and more plausible by the minute. What the hell?! "Remind me again why I shouldn't call the Angelic Loonie Bin right now?"
Cas turned around from where he was clearing a space on the counter. Gave Dean a level, gaze, that - son of a bitch - looked actually hurt this time. "Dean."
Bastard knew exactly how to get Dean. Welcome to Guilt Trips, Inc., take a seat, pluck a duck! With just one word, damn it. "Right. Right."
Cas raised an eyebrow.
Looked like there was no use fighting the inevitable. "You better clean it, is all I'm saying!"
***
Dean was already sitting in a pile of feathers when suddenly, Cas muttered something unintelligible, then disappeared in front of his eyes.
Dean barely had the time to get an outraged, "Hey! " out before Cas reappeared.
The gust of wind accompanying Cas' reappearance disturbed the pile of feathers, sending them flying all around Dean and the kitchen.
"Cas! " Dean thundered.
"There were no Kalamata olives in this kitchen. No Colosssoles either." Something Dean couldn't see through the storm of feathers was dropped onto the counter with a hollow plonk. "No zucchini," Cas continued. "No eggplant. No bell peppers."
"This isn't your average Italian Mama's kitchen, genius, of course that stuff isn't around. Have you heard about shopping before cooking?"
"Shopping?" Cas' tone was uncomprehending.
An unpleasant suspicion began to creep up in Dean. "Cas, where are you getting this stuff, anyway?"
"Torazza," Cas answered.
"Which is?"
Cas shrugged. "A village."
It was like pulling teeth. "A village where?"
"Italy," Cas stated.
"You're stealing veggies and ducks from some poor little farmer lady in Italy?"
"One duck," Cas corrected. "And I told her she would be rewarded for her generosity in heaven."
"You're lying?" Dean was almost as impressed as he was horrified.
"I am not," Cas said, sudden steel in his voice. "I will make sure of it. After all, her ancestor was the one who familiarised me with the recipe for the pasta sauce 500 years ago. I will make sure they are reunited in heaven. They will have much to talk about. Both are excellent cooks."
Five hundred years. Dean decided that it might be a good idea to back-pedal a bit. "And the other stuff?"
"What other-" Cas began. He looked around, his forehead creasing. Then he pointed his index finger at Dean. "You're right. I forgot the piping bag."
He was gone in a whoosh. The last feather settled gently on the ground.
"Cas, don't you dare reappear inside this kitche-" Another whoosh, a gust of wind. Dean's world was white again. "Castiel, I swear to God, I will-"
"Do not use the Lord's name in vain, Dean," Cas admonished gently. He stepped closer, picked something off Dean's eyebrow, smoothed the hair back into place where a feather had disturbed it. "These belong on the bird, not on you."
"Pluck you." Dean contemplated throwing the half-plucked duck at Cas. "Just … Get cookin'," he squeezed out between clenched teeth. He took a breath, then bellowed, "And don't zap again until I'm done! "
***
The phone rang. Dean looked at the caller ID. Sam. Of course.
"What?" Dean answered irritably.
"Just checking in on you," Sam said, not a small amount of mirth in his voice, "you know, making sure everything's all right and my big brother is well fed."
Dean looked at the feathers surrounding him. "Bitch," he answered and hung up.
***
Of course, Cas didn't listen. He had enough sense to take off the trenchcoat, though.
After finishing the pasta dough - which included a lot of not-quite swearing, grunting and the complete ruin of Cas' suit jacket and pants with flour, as well as a slightly panicked, "This recipe called for 6 cups of flour, not 10!" - he disappeared and reappeared several times until Bobby's kitchen looked like something taken straight from a restaurant supply store. With a dusting of feathers and flour on every surface. A pasta machine, a stand mixer, several cookie sheets, an espresso machine, and various other appliances appeared in Bobby kitchen one by one, zap by zap. After the third, Dean gave up on trying to remove feathers from his hair.
"Don't even think about making me clean this mess," Dean said when he finally put the now quite naked duck on the kitchen counter. He had the urge to give it a sweater. It looked like it had goose bumps. Hunh. Goose bumps. So that's where that came from. "It's all your fault, anyway."
Cas gave him an indulgent look, snapped his fingers and the feathers were gone. Dean glowered, revised the 'throttling an angel is a bad idea' theory. "You couldn't have done that with the duck?"
"No."
"No?" Dean's hands twitched. Cas' neck looked more throttle-able by the second. Especially with the white flour marks along the side where Cas had rubbed his neck.
"No," Cas reaffirmed. "Now give me the measuring cups. I have to start on the ladyfingers."
The needle on Dean's internal record player scratched across the vinyl. Loudly. "The what?" He had a bad flash from some really tasteless horror movies.
"Ladyfingers," Cas repeated. He seemed to notice Dean's horrified stare and added: "A cookie, Dean."
"Oh. Right," Dean said, having a hard time hiding his relief. "Why don't you just buy them?"
Cas sighed. "I thought we had covered this?" The tone clearly implied insults to Dean's ancestors.
Which, hey. Hey! "Not sufficiently."
Cas' gaze turned speculative. "I could smite towns if you prefer. I'm a little rusty and Washington, DC looks like it could go with-"
Dean crossed his arms over his chest. "Very funny."
"Actually," Cas gave him a once-over and picked another feather from Dean's hair. "It is."
"Why a cooking show of all things?"
"Would you really have wanted me to go with the Teletubbies? Or Casa Erotica?"
"Hey, you said Sam had programmed the TV not to show you porn!"
"Dean." The "moron" tone was back again. "I'm an angel. That doesn't mean I'm technologically inept."
Dean narrowed his eyes at Cas. "What else have you been hiding from us, buddy?"
A dangerous twinkle lit Cas' eyes. Cas' tongue darted out to wet his lower lip in a way he'd never done before but which looked damn familiar, followed by a smirk. "Do you really want to know?"
Oh, shit. Dean remembered some of the decidedly non-angel-safe porn he had hidden in a hollowed out copy of Kafka's "The Castle" and realised that this conversation needed to go somewhere else quick. "Measuring cups!" he said brightly and presented them to Cas so quick he almost smacked Cas' hands with them.
"Very good," Cas said, apparently successfully distracted from the earlier topic. "Now, if you could chop up some carrots and onions-"
"I'm not your kitchen-servant!" Dean protested.
"I could call your brother and tell him about the duck-plucking?"
"You son of a-"
"I had no mother, Dean." Cas gave him a sunny smile. "Let's get started."
***
When the phone rang this time, it was Bobby's caller ID. Of course. Playing dirty.
"So," Bobby started.
"Don't," Dean warned.
A burst of static, a female voice shouting, "Singer, party of two!"
"We're about to have really good pizza." Dean heard Bobby grin. "How's that duck coming along?"
"Dean, the onions!" Cas called and snapped - snapped! - his fingers in Dean's direction.
"I see," Bobby said slowly. The grin vanished from his voice and was replaced by menace. "Don't mess up my kitchen!"
Dean looked at the already present wreckage around him - mountains of dirty dishes, flour everywhere, broken china on the floor where Cas had dropped a plate, spots of oil on Bobby's calendar over the stove, and, God, the stove itself was a complete mess that would likely never get clean again - and fought a gulp.
"Oh, gotta hang up, menu's here. The menu I'll choose from before I wait for someone to slave in the kitchen for me."
"I hate you," Dean said and took a deep, desperate swig from the wine bottle in front of him. Damn. He was going to need a lot more before the night was over.
***
In hindsight, the carrot chopping wasn't so bad. Nothing like chopping the onions. There just was no way to manly chop onions and not have your eyes watering like a weeping sissy.
But if Dean had thought that everything about this came easy to Cas, he'd been wrong.
The difference between the old, outdated electric burner dinosaur of a stove Bobby used and the wood-fired one Mama Italia must have used five hundred years ago soon became very clear when Cas burnt the first few batches of onions. The sharp smell of it hung in the kitchen along with an ominous blue-ish cloud. The mountain of dirty dishes in the sink just grew and grew. Cas flitted back and forth, getting new appliances (and new onions) each time something was ruined. He appeared to have miscalculated the difference between TV and reality and damn if that didn't make Dean just a little - scratch that, a lot - gleeful. Despite the fact that he had to start chopping onions again and again.
Good thing the onions were in a big casserole now along with bacon - Dean could get behind that part of the recipe easily enough -, the duck, an obscene amount of herbs, red wine and, if Dean had seen correctly, some kind of tomato goo. He had to admit it was starting to smell good. Not that he planned to admit it to anyone else.
In the meantime the ladyfingers also weren't quite as cooperative as Cas had thought. The construction of the batter seemed simple enough, especially with the sparkling new Kitchen Aid mixer that now adorned Bobby's kitchen (they'd get so much shit for that, Dean could already hear Bobby cursing up a storm). The gentle folding movements - "folding, Dean, not stirring, it'll destroy all the bubbles in the dough, and you want the bubbles!" - were hypnotising, Cas' slim hands were careful yet efficient, just like they had been handling knives and guns before. No, the interesting part came with the piping bag. Or rather, with using it.
Cas - still clad in his now severely flour-smudged suit - was leaning over the counter, squeezing the first string of batter from the bag, then suddenly he stopped, huffing. He pushed back the jacket sleeve, bowed over the counter again, squeezed - and honest-to-God growled.
Much more of the batter was coming out from the back of the bag rather than the piped front. Cas jacket-sleeve kept slipping into the sticky batter. When he'd tried pulling it back this time, his other hand had ended up smeared with batter, too, making it impossible to pull up the sleeve again.
Dean cocked his hip against the counter, dipped his finger into the batter at the back of Cas' hand and licked the finger clean with a smirk. "Need some help?" he asked around his index finger. Damn, that was good batter.
Cas stared at Dean's now clean finger a bit longer than strictly necessary, then shook his head minutely as though waking from a particularly insistent daydream. "Yes."
Which was how they ended up much closer than they were before, with Dean holding back Cas' jacket sleeve and Cas piping long, wide strips of dough on the cookie sheets. It gave Dean time to notice just how warm Cas was and exactly how bony his wrists were. Cas was also biting his lower lip in concentration. White teeth against chapped, yet soft-looking lips. The sight sent an unexpected jolt through Dean and he realised he was staring.
"Done!" Cas finally exclaimed and Dean stepped back, releasing a breath he was well aware he'd been holding.
He cleared his throat. "Okay, genius, next thing on the list? Lose that jacket." Cas began to shrug out of the suit jacket but Dean stopped him with a hand to his wrist. "Clean your fingers first."
Cas rolled his eyes, dropped the piping bag in the sink, contemplated his hands for a short moment. He looked at Dean, then at Dean's hands, gave a vague hint of a shrug and began licking his fingers clean, one after the other.
Dean swallowed. Hard.
***
It didn't really get any easier on Dean's pride when Cas asked him to hold the stretched out pasta sheets. Nor would it get any easier to explain to Bobby why there were spaghetti hanging from every surface of his kitchen to dry.
For now, he had to deal with Cas insulting his ancestry again as Dean ripped the pasta sheet for the third time by pulling too hard.
After the fifth ruined sheet, Cas pushed Dean none too gently on the kitchen chair and handed him a knife and a zucchini. "I think you'll do less damage here."
Dean stuck out his tongue and reached for the wine bottle.
***
"Bacon!" Sam's said with a blissed-out voice on his next call. "Nice, crispy bacon, just the way you like it."
Dean gnashed his teeth and hung up to Sam's laughter.
***
"Hand me the slotted spoon, Dean," Cas demanded over his shoulder from where he was bent over a hissing and spitting cast iron pan. Something started to smell burnt.
Dean looked around, confused, and grabbed the first thing that looked vaguely right. "Here."
Cas reached out without looking, then gave an audible sigh. "No, the slotted spoon."
"How the hell would I know what a slotted spoon is?"
Cas rolled his eyes and disappeared. The stuff in the pan - whatever the hell it was - sizzled. So did Dean's nerves. He was going to, really, he was going to kick Cas' a-
"This," Cas said, reappearing in a gust of wind that had a forgotten feather flying all over the place and Dean groaning in horror, "is a slotted spoon." Cas held the item up like a school teacher.
Dean pulled a face. "It has holes, not slots, Cas."
Cas stared at the spoon for a moment. "You're right. This language doesn't make any sense." He picked up the feather from where it had landed on a stack of sliced eggplant. "You should learn Enochian."
"I'll put it on the to-do list right after Mandarin." Dean rolled his eyes.
Apparently, Cas must have picked up on some of the finer points of sarcasm, because Dean could have sworn that Cas flipped him the bird.
Or maybe that was just Cas jumping away from the frying pan as the hot oil spit in his direction when he placed the fresh eggplant into it. He looked almost as though he bit back a litany of curses.
Dean didn't even try to fight the grin. "What's up, Cas? Big Bad Angel not splatter protected? You're not telling me this hurts, are you?"
"I've had knives in my chest and not felt pain," Cas pointed out. "This is nothing. It merely …"
"Merely what?"
Cas sighed. "Ruins the tie."
Dean dropped his gaze and saw the spats of oil that riddled Cas' dress shirt and tie. Laughter bubbled up before he could stop it. "Life's a bitch," he said, slapping Cas' shoulder, "what can you say?"
***
The next thing Dean received was a picture message.
Despite better knowledge, he opened the message and found the picture of a half-eaten pizza and a dementedly grinning Bobby. "Wish you were here," the caption said.
Dean took another large swig from the bottle and resisted the urge to throw his phone out the window.
***
It had to end badly . Of course it did. Depending on one's definition of badly, of course.
Pasta done and drying, antipasti platter assembled (and looking awesome, even though Dean had never been a fancy schmancy antipasti eater), water coming to a boil, duck smelling too frigging damn good for words; all good. Cas was busy mixing mascarpone and sugar in that monster of a machine he'd zapped into the kitchen. Specks of cream cheese were flying in all directions when he set the speed too high. Dean watched one particularly large glob fly toward the top of the dusty grey shutters on Bobby's kitchen window and idly wondered if the next generation would still find it.
Cas fiddled with the settings, wiped some cream cheese off his chin and grumbled. Amused, Dean reached for the bottle of brandy Cas had placed on the table and took an absentminded swig. This was going from annoying to amusing fast. All he needed was more booze. He wondered for a moment if he should tell Cas about the new spots on his tie but decided against it.
He was so immersed in his appraisal of all the tiny flecks of cream cheese riddling Cas' tie and clinging to the side of his eyebrow - idly wondering if he should wipe it away, since Cas didn't seem to notice - that he didn't even hear the first time Cas called his name. Dean tried hard not to choke on his own spit when Cas suddenly appeared directly in front of him, a spoon held out. "Try."
Dean hesitated, staring at the spoon with the cream cheese on it, then at Cas, then back at the spoon. He hadn't had that much to drink, had he? "You're kidding, right?" He was in this for the pie, not for actually eating any of this stuff Cas made.
"I'm asking you to try a dessert filling, not sacrifice your firstborn." Cas waved the spoon at him, clearly unwilling to let it go. "I need an opinion."
"Fine. Fine." There were worse things, after all. He was just going to ignore the weirdly thick tension in the room. Elephant. What elephant?
He reached for the spoon Cas was holding, licked it clean with a swift motion. Sweet. Not bad. But the cream had a weird aftertaste. It took Dean a moment to identify what it was. He tapped the spoon against his palm. "Damn."
"What? Too sweet?"
"It's not that." Dean held the spoon up between them. "Bobby uses actual silverware - real silver, it's the paranoid hunter part of him - and it always leaves a weird aftertaste. Try eating a lime pie from silver forks." He shuddered at the memory.
"He doesn't have anything but silverware?"
Dean shook his head. "Nope. As I said, paranoid."
Cas looked at the bowl, then at the spoon. Gave another approximation of a shrug and dipped his finger in the cream without hesitation. He held out his cream-smeared index-finger to Dean. "It shouldn't have an aftertaste this way."
Dean waited for Sam to come jumping out from behind the kitchen door, yelling: "Gotcha!" Only … it didn't happen. Cas still stood there, expectant, holding his index finger out to Dean. With that glare that wouldn't accept no for an answer.
Dean closed his eyes and gave a silent groan. Someone up there was having a laugh. A gigantic, body-shaking one. Dean hoped that someone was falling off their damn cloud from it.
"Why don't you try it yourself?"
Cas' mouth turned down a fraction. "I can't."
"What do you mean, you can't? You cook all this stuff and you're telling me you can't try it?"
"I can't taste it, Dean."
Oh. Dean stopped in his tracks. Breathed in an out. Once. Twice. Then, "What?" He shook his head. "You had a great time with the burgers when Famine was around."
Cas turned vaguely green but held Dean's gaze. "It wasn't the angel in me that was tasting the burgers."
It took Dean a while to read between the lines. Oh. Oh. "So now that you're all fully angeled up, they scrapped your taste-buds?"
"It's not required for an angel."
"Dude," Dean huffed. He tried to imagine a world without taste and shuddered. "That sucks."
"Will you tell me if it tastes all right now?" Cas asked, raising his finger again.
"If you tell Sam about this…" he gave Cas a glare and left the sentence unfinished. Then he bent forward and closed his lips around Cas index finger.
Cas inhaled sharply.
Damn, that was good stuff. Not pie, but still good. A burst of cream and sweetness and salt. Salt that came from Cas' skin, and boy, was Dean ever not thinking about that. Dean dragged his tongue quickly around the fingertip to get the last bit of cream off, then straightened his back. "Good stuff."
Cas just stared for a long few seconds, eyes slightly dilated, chest rising and falling more quickly than before. Like he was pondering a complicated puzzle. "I'm glad you approve," he finally said. His voice wasn't as stable as it had been before.
***
The taste-testing requests came more frequent after that incident. After a while, Cas refused to let Dean hold the spoon. Insisted on freaking spoon-feeding him. He mentioned something about less spillage that way that sounded vaguely - insultingly - logical in a totally illogical way. Since Dean had finished the rest of the bottle of heavy red wine Cas had used on the duck - about half of it, in fact - as well as a couple good swigs of brandy he may have been a little on the loose and willing-to-indulge-the-weird-angel side. Or just too wobbly to hold a spoon without spilling.
Cas' suit jacket was gone by now, too, and his shirt sleeves were rolled up. A fine dusting of flour tinted the fine hair on his lower arms a faint grey, making Dean wonder if angels aged along with worrying about how long it would be until the first grey would start showing in his own hair.
"Tell me if the pasta is al dente to your liking," Cas startled him from his thoughts and Dean stared at a long noodle dangling in front of his face.
"Al dente?"
"It means-"
"I know what that means, Cas. It's just," he grinned. "You sound like a TV cook."
"How would you know?"
Dean snatched the pasta from Cas' hand and stuffed it in his mouth. Oh, he wasn't going to answer that. Not over his dead body would Cas find out-
"Dean?"
"Give it another half minute," Dean mumbled around the pasta.
"Dean, please answer the question."
"No."
"Dean."
"No. Watch out for your pasta."
The look Cas threw him made it clear that the conversation wasn't over. Well, it was for Dean. He wouldn't ever admit out loud that-
"You watch cooking show reruns when you can't sleep?"
Son of a- "Stop reading my mind!"
Cas looked smug while Dean was blushing to the roots of his hair. Not blushing. Flushing with anger. Yes. Not blushing.
"There is no shame in wat-"
Dean raised his hand and glared at Cas. "We will not talk about this again. Ever."
"Very well. I think the pasta is done, anyway."
"Does that mean we can finally eat?" Dean groused. "I'm starving while watching the food, here, and-"
Dean's phone chirped. He whipped it out, skimming over the text message that said, "We're going for pie next."
After he had fought the initial urge to explode in a giant ball of wrath, Dean texted back, "I'll kill you. Slowly."
Then he turned to Cas. "Dude, where's the pie? I still haven't seen you make any pie. You remember your promise? You remember the pie?"
Cas gave a small smile. "Don't worry."
"I worry! We have prepared every other damn thing on your list, yet no pie. Where's the pie?"
"Patience."
"I don't have patience. I want pie!"
"Dean, do I need to tell your brother about the cooking-"
"I'll kill you if you try."
Cas - son of a bitch - actually smirked. "I would like to see you try."
Dean reached for a kitchen knife, found it miraculously gone, grabbed a wooden spoon instead, wielding it like a weapon. "Don't tempt me."
"I am shaking with fear," Cas said, not even trying to contain the laughter in his voice. "Please set the table." He turned toward the pot with the pasta in it, reached into it with his bare hands and pulled out some of the pasta. "I need plates."
Dean gulped and let the spoon sink. "Show-off," he said weakly.
***
Dean actually forgot about the pie after the duck sauce. Plain old forgot about it because while he'd had doubts before, this had to be the best fucking thing he had ever eaten, and that included his mother's sandwiches, Bobby's meatloaf, and his favourite burgers.
Cas had removed most of the fat that had come from the duck and had shredded the meat to return it to the sauce. Dean couldn't pick out any of the spices and herbs Cas had used, but it felt like the perfect combination, with the duck meat juicy and tender and the tomato flavour just bursting on his tongue. The whole thing was smooth, too.
He was glad Bobby didn't have any table-linens, though, because he doubted that even with the powers of heaven at Cas' disposal, any of the sauce spots ever would have come out again. It felt more rustic and comfortable this way, anyway, with the casserole on the wooden table and nothing but a bottle of wine and a glass to distract from the sauce. The bottle Cas had had to zap out to get because Dean had - much to Cas' annoyance - consumed the first one before Cas could use it to finish the sauce. Dean hadn't been sorry in the least.
He dug in with such a healthy appetite that, had Sam and Bobby been there, they'd have had to fight him for their share. "Man," he mumbled between bites, licking the corner of his mouth to clean up some sauce that was stuck there, "they don't know what they're missing."
Cas watched him eat with the satisfaction of a job well done surrounding him. "More?"
"Does the wild bear shit in the woods?"
Cas blinked at him. "I don't know how that is relevant to cooking."
Dean grinned. Licked at the corner of his mouth again. "Never mind," he said. "Yes, more."
He dug in with a healthy appetite, got a little frustrated when the pasta kept slipping off his fork and made a mess when guiding the fork to his mouth. This was exactly why spaghetti or any kind of long noodle was no date food. Not that he ever went on nice dates to nice restaurants that served nice food.
It took him a while to realise that Cas was watching him more intently than before. He tried to ignore it for several long seconds, then finally blurted out: "Okay, what? Do I have something in my face?"
"Yes." Without further ado, Cas reached up and across the table.
Dean twitched back, holding his hand up. "What are you-"
Cas stopped his hand in mid-reach, twitched his eyebrow. "You have something in your face. Hold still."
Like a fool, Dean did, because damn it if he hadn't known this was coming eventually. Cas set his fingertips against Dean's cheekbone and swiped his thumb along the corner of Dean's lower lip. Hot and cold at the same time, Cas' hand still smelled of vanilla cream and cookies. Cas frowned, inched closer. The sauce apparently was very difficult to remove, because suddenly, all of Cas' intense focus was on Dean's mouth. Dean fought the urge to lick his lips as Cas ran his thumb along the underside of Dean's lower lip, not quite touching his mouth.
"You made a mess," Cas stated, his voice low and unsteady as he held his hand between them, showing Dean the red sauce clinging to his thumb.
"I generally do," Dean answered and because he was buzzed and the food was good and Cas looked so weirdly uncertain… he grabbed Cas' wrist and led Cas' hand back to his face. Dean inched forward slightly, closed his lips over Cas' sauce-smeared thumb, and circled his tongue around it.
He made the mistake of looking up while cleaning the final taste of duck sauce off Cas' thumb, and… fuck. He'd thought he was messing with Cas, and Cas was messing with him, but what he saw was far from what he had expected. Cas looked hungry. The heated stare and the slightly opened lips and the look of repressed need would have made stronger men than Dean crumble. He licked at Cas' thumb again and felt Cas' fingertips press harder against his cheekbone, sparking little pinpricks of pain. Dean's jeans grew uncomfortably tight.
Eventually, when it became too much, Dean pulled away, swallowing convulsively as Cas' gaze flickered between Dean's mouth and his own wet thumb.
Some really idiotic part of Dean's mind went back to the speck of cream cheese still clinging to Cas' eyebrow and he reached up without thinking, rested his fingertips against Cas' face and wiped the spot away with his thumb. Cas' eyes never left him. Not when Dean pulled back. Not when he licked his thumb clean, tasting sweetness and something that had to be Cas.
Cas' adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed, hard. He uttered a rough, "Thank you."
Dean swallowed again, felt the flush creeping all along his face to his scalp and over his ears. A distraction seemed necessary, desperately necessary. Something, anything, it didn't matter what. "Now, what about that fancy-schmancy tiramisu of yours, Cas?"
Cas visibly pulled himself together. "It has to sit in the fridge for another eight hours before it has developed its full flavour."
"Eight hours?" Dean echoed, pushing back from the table and the thick tension making room for dismay. "You made me try it and watch you assemble it and now you tell me I have to wait eight hours to eat it? Does that mean we have no dessert?"
"Yes, Dean. Cooking needs patience."
"Well, fuck patience. I'm an instant gratification kind of guy!"
"I hadn't noticed," Cas said, and that undertone was decidedly not a coy one.
Dean's heartbeat skipped a beat, he fought a new flush creeping up his neck. "Hey!"
"Dean," Cas said in that damn indulgent tone of his. "I did promise, remember. I … took the liberty of preparing something."
Cas stood up, walked to the fridge … and pulled out something covered. Something that was …
"Pie!"
"As I said. I never lie to you."
"I could kiss you." It was out before he could stop himself. Brain. Mouth. Filter. The pie had obviously fried said filter.
Cas raised his eyebrows. "Your obsession with food is very peculiar."
"Not food, Cas, pie!"
"In that case, maybe I should have served the pie earlier."
Dean watched a small smile turn up Cas' lips. A decidedly sneaky smile.
"You son of a-"
"As I said, Dean, I had no mother," Cas stated.
"Just," Dean huffed and grabbed Cas' tie, "just shut up. You harp-plucker." He pulled on Cas to him and slanted his lips over Cas', tasted the smile and decided that, yes. This was worth making the pie wait.
Not for too long, though. In a marvellous display of foresight, Dean reached for his phone, texted a short, "Kitchen exploded, sauce everywhere, everything burnt, toxic, give us time to clean." And turned the phone off.
After that, with Cas' lips against his throat and his own under Cas' shirt, with heat and skin and a bedroom conveniently close by, he didn't think much at all anymore.
***
When they stumbled out of the bedroom the next morning, they found a note in Bobby's hasty scribble on the hallway floor, stating in bullet points,
Dean decided that Sam's addition to the list warranted an un-manly squeak as well as a panicked run to the kitchen. If Cas laughed at him, Dean ignored it.
Finis