#gratuitous pie

"Well, is he going to be back soon?" Sam asked.

The exasperation in Sam's voice was clear, but Dean kept his eyes fixed on the steadily shrinking yellow circle on top of the pie. "Doubt it."

"Dammit, Dean!" Sam was definitely frustrated now. "What did he say?"

Dean's shoulders were tight with tension as he carefully dropped the last dollop of meringue on top of the pie and gently smoothed it down. "He said there wasn't anything left to say." He clenched his spoon hard to keep it from shaking and inspected the entire edge to make sure the meringue had been sealed against the baked crust.

"It's like pulling teeth," Sam muttered. "What did he say before that?"

He sounded tired. Dean felt a smaller pang of guilt about Sam plop neatly on top of the giant hill of guilt about Cas that was hollowing out the pit of his stomach. "Hang on," Dean sighed. He used the back of the spoon to lift the meringue in little peaks across the surface of the pie before setting the spoon back in the empty meringue bowl. He slid the pie in the oven and set the timer for five minutes.

Dean grabbed the saucepan from the stove with the cooling remains of the lemon filling and handed it to Sam as a peace offering. "He said the plan in Hell went wrong," Dean admitted, not daring to look at his brother. "He said I didn't trust him anymore. That I didn't listen to him. That I blamed him for Mom's death." Each confession felt like it was scraping him raw on the inside. Like he was bleeding internally, but no one could tell.

Sam sent the pan down on the counter with a controlled click. "And what did you say?" His voice was artificially even.

"I--" Dean couldn't get the words out. Couldn't admit to Sam the accusations and blame that he had thrown. His fingers curled tightly around the edge of the counter on either side of him. "I--"

"You agreed." Dean knew his brother loved him. Even so, there were a few instances where he had figured it to be more of a theoretical fraternal obligation than a choice made out of familial affection. Parts of the first Apocalypse sprang to mind, as did the Trials, everything with Gadreel, and, oh yes, the entire Mark of Cain fiasco. Even so, that one sentence out of Sam's mouth shot this moment straight into the top three.

Dean couldn't stand one more moment of his brother's disgust. "Of course I did!" Dean shouted, his knuckles white where they gripped the counter behind him. "What else was I supposed to say?" He looked at Sam for the first time since his brother had walked in the room.

Sam's face was lined with grief and exhaustion and pale with anger. "What else-- Anything else, Dean! Anything! Anything but sending Cas away, again."

"I didn't send him," Dean argued, ignoring with long practice the memory of Cas's face falling as Dean had told him to leave six years earlier. "He left."

"You didn't give him much reason to stay, though, did you?" Sam snapped.

"He killed Mom!" Dean shouted. "And Rowena--"

"No!" Sam yelled. "No, he didn't! Dean. Jack killed Mom. I--" Sam faltered. "I killed Rowena. Cas had nothing to do with it!"

"It was his fault," Dean argued. "If he hadn't killed--"

"And what was he reason for that? I'm sure he had one."

"He said--" Dean hesitated and some of the anger bled out of him. "He said something about Belphagor eating all the souls of Hell and taking over."

The silence after his pronouncement was broken by the sustained beep of the over timer.

Sam's face was incredulous. Dean looked away quickly and busied himself with pulling the pie out of the oven. The meringue was beautifully browned after its brief sojourn in the oven and Dean set it on a cooling rack next to the apple, pecan, and pumpkin pies he had already finished.

The oven timer beeped again and Dean shut it off and set the potholders back down on the counter. The room fell silent again.

"Belphagor wanted to take over Hell by eating all the souls there," Sam repeated slowly from behind him. "And you didn't think that was a good enough reason for Cas to reevaluate the plan?"

"The plan was fine," Dean said impatiently, fidgeting with a loose thread on the end of a potholder. "We would have figured it out. We have before. It was fine, but then it went wrong, and it was his fault--"

"Things always go wrong, Dean," Sam protested.

"But why is it always him?" Dean asked quietly. He was almost pleading with Sam. Pleading with Sam to answer the question that Cas had refused to.

"You're such a child," Sam said coldly. Dean spun around to face his brother, a protest on his lips, but before he could speak, Sam continued. "Four years ago you were supposed to kill me. That was the plan. But then you killed Death with his own scythe instead."

"I wasn't about to--" Dean argued, but Sam cut him off.

"You never let me die, Dean, even when I begged you to let me go. You let Gadreel in me. You sold your soul to bring me back. But I--" Sam took a breath. "I said yes to Lucifer. I killed Lilith, even with you and Cas both begging me not to. I trusted Ruby over my family." The accusations lay in the still air between them, a decade of grievances aired.

"Sometimes things go wrong," Sam continued evenly. "Things usually go wrong; it's kind of our family motto by this point. And sometimes that's Cas's fault. But, Dean, sometimes it's your fault, and sometimes it's my fault. It just...happens."

"I did that for you," Dean said hollowly. "All of that, I did it for you."

"Yeah, well, you went too far, Dean. And we've already yelled enough about that, I think," Sam said in the delicate way that meant he was still upset but not about to pick a fight over it.

"Yeah," Dean laughed humorlessly.

"Anyway," Sam said, and it sounded like he was determined not to get off track. "Sometimes things go off the rails, and we can get mad about it, but that doesn't make it the sort of mistake that we cut people off over. Especially not this one. Even if we did lose Rowena." He swallowed. "It wasn't Cas's fault."

"He wasn't supposed to leave," Dean said helplessly.

"What?"

"He...he said...years ago, during the Mark stuff," Dean looked down at his hands for a moment. "He said that everyone would be dead, except him, and he would still be there." Dean grabbed the counter behind him again, hands braced by his hips. "He said he'd always come when I call, Sam." Dean's voice broke in the middle of the sentence. His fingers clutched at the counter and he kept his eyes fixed on the worn linoleum under Sam's feet.

"Well..." Sam shifted on his feet. Dean's grip on the counter tightened until he knew his fingers were white, and he tried to keep his breathing under control. "Have you tried calling him?"

Dean let out a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. "No. I can't, I--" His fingers ached against the edge of the stainless steel counter.

"Why can't you?" Sam asked cautiously. "I mean, I'm not sure if he's still tuned into angel radio, but I'm pretty sure he's still got his cell on him."

"He might not be," Dean said, focusing on Sam. "That's one of the things he said. That he's losing power again." Dean flexed his fingers. "I didn't listen," he added quietly.

"It's not the first time he's fallen, though," Sam pointed out. "It's not like it's new."

Dean stifled another twinge of guilt at the six-year-old memory of a freshly-fallen Cas turning up at the bunker and expecting the welcome he should have been given.

"I mean," Sam continued. "He's been falling on-and-off really since we met him."

"Yeah." Dean thought nostalgically about the unearthly Castiel who had blown the doors off a barn in Illinois and made the air around him crackle with ozone. "He was really worried about it the first time. He got shored up though. He figured it was--oh." Dean's fingers went slack in realization and he was wide-eyed when he turned back to Sam.

"What?" Sam asked.

"Chuck. Cas always thought it was God who had powered him back up after you jumped into the Cage. And now with Chuck on the outs..."

"You think that's why Cas's losing power again," Sam finished.

Dean nodded grimly. "It makes sense."

"If he's falling again, falling for good, we should be there," Sam said firmly. "Not because he needs us," he added quickly, "but because his family should be there for him anyway."

Dean nodded. "Yeah. But," he hesitated, his fingers curling loosely over the counter again. "I can't call him, Sam," he admitted quietly.

"Why not?" Sam asked, frustration seeping through. "Just call him and tell him you're sorry. That it wasn't his fault and there's always a place for him here."

Dean opened his mouth, but I'm dead to you echoed too loudly in his head for him to speak. "I just...what I said, Sam...I can't--"

Sam sighed loudly. "Okay," he said. "Do you want to make up with Cas? Make things right with him?"

"Yes," Dean said immediately. Then he thought about the anger and sadness in Cas's eyes before he left. He thought about the months when he thought Cas was dead after the leviathan. He thought about the months Cas was trapped in Purgatory. He thought about the long years in front of him if Cas never came home. "Yes," he repeated. "I do."

"Good," Sam said firmly. "That's good, because if you didn't, I was going to have to kick your ass. Now, I know you and Cas used to talk a lot and I was only there for some of it. So I know there's some really sentimental stuff you guys were throwing around."

Dean looked up sharply at Sam, but his younger brother wasn't sneering, just teasing with a knowing look on his face. Dean swallowed.

"I'm sure 'more profound bond' was the least of your endearments." Sam didn't really have to look so smug about the whole thing, but Dean could hardly say he was wrong.

"Yeah," Dean agreed hoarsely.

I was getting too close to the humans in my charge - you

, floated across his mind, accompanied by such lines as

I gave everything for you.

The sort of lines Dean ruminated on when he couldn't sleep and the night seemed too cold and too dark to be borne alone.

I'm hunted, I rebelled, and I did all of it for you

. Affection and love lurking in every phrase, warming Dean from the inside.

I prayed to you, every night. I always come when you call. I'd rather have you, cursed or not.

We're family. We need you. ...I need you.

You ask what about all of this is real. We are.

Dean realized Sam was watching him with a knowing look. "What?" he said instinctively, fighting the heat flooding his face.

"Nothing," Sam said, though his innocent act was ruined by his cat-that-ate-the-canary routine. "Alright, so what you're going to do is call Cas and convince him to meet you somewhere. Neutral ground." Sam's grin was growing, which made Dean automatically wary of whatever plan he was concocting. "You're going to apologize for everything you said. And then you're going to turn up with all those lines and memories and tell Cas truthfully how they made you feel."

Dean swallowed around the dry lump in his throat. His fingers tightened around the counter edge. It...wasn't a terrible plan. It was just terrifying. It was just everything he'd been avoiding for the last decade.

"You can have a boombox with you if it makes you feel better," Sam told him with fake solemnity.

"Huh?" Dean managed, attempting to carry on the basics of human conversation while most of him was trying to figure out how many ways he could say I love you to Cas without having to actually...say it.

"This is your big romantic gesture, Dean," Sam told him gently. "Like a John Hughes movie. And don't say you don't like chick flicks, because both of us know that's not true."

Dean just nodded. Big romantic gesture. Right. Maybe he could just...say it. Love you, Cas seemed too casual for the way this felt, but I've fallen in love with you, Castiel was waaay too far in the other direction. Maybe just I'm in love with you, Cas. Simple, hard to misunderstand. Right.

Dean nodded again and pried his hands off the counter. "Right," he echoed aloud. He rubbed his palms and glanced absently around the kitchen.

"Those will need to be refrigerated once they're cool," he said, gesturing toward the cooling racks of pies. "And you can do the dishes, Sammy."

Dean flexed his fingers and took a breath. "Right," he whispered again before stepping away from the counter.

"And where are you going?" Sam asked. Dean suspected he meant to sound put out about the dishes, but it was impossible not to hear the delight in his brother's voice.

"To get a boombox," Dean called over his shoulder as he leapt the two steps at the kitchen's entrance.