once & done: destiel one shots

Salt

Summary: Cas accidentally uses salt instead of sugar for the pie he makes, but Dean pretends it's delicious for Cas' sake.

+

The pie looked perfect: golden-brown flaky crust, hand-crimped edges. The top of the pie even had cut-outs in the shape of maple leaves, which Cas had etched with a toothpick to create the veins. The filling peeked out leaf-shaped windows, and Dean got a whiff of ground cloves. It smelled like childhood, like his mom's kitchen, and stirred something in him: Cas just spent the last two hours cutting apples into precise slices, measuring sugar and spices like this was a ritual instead of a recipe, and he did it for Dean. Just for Dean.

He would have been fine with the store-bought variety with a limp crust, or one of those frozen ones—they bake up okay—but Cas said no. He would make one from scratch. He wouldn't even accept the refrigerated piecrust, insisted on making that too, and shooed Dean out of the kitchen. 

The top of the crust was glossy because Cas brushed it with an egg wash, beautiful like something out of a magazine.

"I'm gonna start calling you Martha," Dean teased as Cas took down two plates and scrounged through the drawers for a pie server.

"My name is Castiel," Cas corrected him with a smirk.

"Baker of the Lord," Dean added, pulling out a chair at the table.

Cas sliced into the pie. The first piece fell apart—"It always does that," Dean assured him—but Cas took that one anyway, and cut Dean a second slice, which he presented with a fork positioned artfully beside it. He set the plate on the table in front of him.

"You're something else, man," Dean said with a grin, shaking his head. He picked up the fork and cut off a generous bite while Cas watched, slid it into his mouth, and nearly gagged.

It was about the saltiest thing Dean had ever tasted, like water from the Dead Sea, which he knew for a fact because of that unfortunate time he sipped from the wrong flask. He wanted to spit it out, but he couldn't, not with Cas looking at him like that, his eyes huge and earnest, his expression so adoring that Dean forced his eyes wide to keep them from watering, and swallowed through a smile.

"Is it good?" Cas asked. 

When Dean croaked, "Never had anything like it," Cas's answering smile was resplendent. He curved a hand around Dean's cheek and leaned down to kiss him, and it was worth eating a mouthful of salt for that kiss, for the look on Cas's face that Dean had put there.

He let Cas kiss him for a while, step between his knees and hold Dean's face. He laid the fork down and rested his hands on Cas's hips, brushed both thumbs against his skin. But when Cas licked into his mouth, he made a funny noise and stepped back, smacking his lips together, touching his fingers to them. He looked at Dean and then at the pie, then the kitchen counter behind him.

"I confused the salt and sugar," he muttered.

"Yup," Dean said sheepishly.

"You lied," Cas accused, looking back at him. 

"No," Dean corrected. "I said I never had pie like that before," but Cas deflated. He sat in the chair next to Dean and folded his hands on the table, frowning.

Dean scooted his chair closer and put a hand on Cas's knee.

"No one's baked me a pie like that since my mom," he said, but it was enough for Cas to meet his eyes.

"I want to make you happy," Cas murmured, which Dean decided meant I love you.

"It's a damn good looking pie," he said in response, which was his way of saying I love you too.