Work Text:
Of all the places Castiel would like to be right now, this lineup isn’t one of them. His favourite coffee shop isn’t that busy, usually, but it’s just after ten and it’s a Monday and apparently there is nothing unique about Castiel’s desire to trick himself into productivity with a bit of caffeine, so the line is several people deep and not moving particularly quickly. Castiel tries not to mind, but he finds himself checking his watch repeatedly. Nobody will notice if he’s a few minutes late getting back, but he will notice. And he’s waited too long to leave without a drink now, so he sighs with resignation and checks his phone to see if he has any emails or text messages or anything at all to distract him. Nothing. He goes to drop the phone back into the pocket of his trench coat and misses entirely, dropping it onto the hard tile floor.
Castiel mutters a curse and goes to reach for it, but the guy behind him in line beats him to it. “Here,” says the stranger, flashing Castiel a cocky grin and handing the phone over. Castiel takes the phone, their fingers touching for only a second before he jerks his hand away, but the stranger doesn’t flinch. There’s a sprinkling of freckles across his cheeks, a little map of constellations hidden there on his skin, and Castiel thinks he is beautiful, but he keeps it to himself.
“Thank you,” he replies. The stranger just grins at him. Castiel finds himself grinning back. The encounter only lasted a moment, but somehow it’s eaten up the time required to move him to the front of the line and he buys his coffee, exits the store, and gets on with his day.
~*~
Three days later, Castiel is sitting at his desk and he’s hungry. It is not normal for him to feel this hungry between meals. He does an excellent job of planning for his caloric needs, pre-cooking meals for all his lunches throughout the week, eating a healthy breakfast every day, and only splurging on something heavy and fattening on rare occasions. He knows his body and what it needs, and it does not usually need anything at all at three in the afternoon. It’s just not him. And what’s weirder still, and Castiel absolutely cannot summon up an explanation for this, is that what he’s craving right now is chocolate.
Castiel eats chocolate, on average, once every three months. Not that he’s done the math or anything, but he’s fairly confident in the estimate. This is altogether too strange. He tries to supress the craving and does a reasonable imitation of a good job, which is to say, he makes it through the work day before caving in and buying a chocolate peanut butter candy bar from the vending machine on the seventh floor before leaving for the day. He eats the entire thing before he even pulls his car out of the parkade downstairs and he tells himself it’s a very odd, but very isolated incident, and vows to think nothing of it.
~*~
A week and a half later, Castiel wakes up Saturday morning with this desire to eat something very specific, and he cannot for the life of him figure out what it is. He’s slow to get out of bed because it is Saturday and he doesn’t have to be awake one minute earlier than he chooses to be, but even though he lazes in bed until the sun is high in the sky, the craving doesn’t subside. What’s annoying is that it also doesn’t become any less nebulous, and so when he finally gets out of bed he finds himself wandering around the kitchen, pulling open cupboards and repeatedly staring into the fridge in hopes that something will jump out at him. Nothing does. Nothing in his house appears satisfying.
Determined, Castiel dresses in loose jeans and a hooded sweatshirt and heads to a diner around the corner, because for some reason he’s sure that looking at a menu will end with him eating the thing his brain is craving but refuses to identify.
He ends up with a plate of pancakes, smothered in syrup, and the whole time he’s eating it he’s trying to remember the last time he even thought about pancakes, let alone ate them.
He can’t remember.
~*~
Castiel pauses with the croissookie still half way between his mouth and the napkin on his desk, and wonders how this became his life.
Twenty minutes ago, he didn’t even know what a croissookie was. He’s still not entirely certain. But he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he had to have one, right now. And he didn’t know where to get one, but there’s google for that, so it didn’t take him long to get his hands on a chocolate coated, sugar laden monstrosity.
He picks up his phone and texts Charlie.
What the fuck is wrong with me. I’m eating a croissookie.
What’s a croissookie? She replies.
I’m still not sure, Castiel tells her, but I’m eating one. Got a craving I couldn’t ignore. How can I crave something I don’t even know about?
Dude, soulmate cravings, Charlie texts back a moment later.
That’s not a real thing.
Is so. When my friend Jody first met her girlfriend Donna, she couldn’t get enough of cookie dough milkshakes, and I’ll give you three guesses what Donna’s favourite dessert is.
That’s a big fun coincidence
You’re a big stupid skeptic
I’m sure there are much more rational explanations for this. Castiel is sure. There’s no way this has anything to do with an old wives tale about craving the foods your soulmate loves. It is, as he informed Charlie, absolutely not a real thing.
This croissookie is damn good though.
~*~
Castiel starts adding ice cream to his regular grocery lists, despite the fact that he never keeps sweets in the house. Once or twice, he goes out for a work dinner and finds himself ordering pie when his colleagues decide they want to stick around for dessert, and he gets some weird looks because Castiel always skips dessert and everyone knows it. But he orders pie, and he relishes it.
There’s this one day where he can’t stop thinking about salted caramel pudding. That’s kinda weird.
Occasionally, he’ll end up craving a double bacon cheeseburger with curly fries, and that seems a little more his speed, if entirely unhealthy, and he’s totally okay with that on occasion, so he’s not even sure it’s along the same lines as the other cravings. But it is definitely an inexplicable and overpowering craving, and he has a pretty damn hard time ignoring it.
But on a Tuesday evening, when he finds himself on the couch in a pair of sweatpants that seem just a little bit more snug than they used to, searching the web for anywhere nearby that makes a Luther Vandross burger, you know, the one with a beef patty and bacon and cheese sandwiched between two glazed donuts, he decides this has to stop. He puts his laptop away, and he makes a goddamned salad, and he vows not to let these cravings rule his life anymore. He doesn’t care where they’re coming from, though he’s damn sure it’s not a soulmate bond like Charlie keeps insisting. He just knows that he’s done obeying them.
He does okay for a while. He craves cherry pie, but instead it makes himself a pork tenderloin with sour cherry demi glace and roasted root vegetables. It is not anywhere near as satisfying as it would be to give in to the craving, but he feels a little bit more in control, and it means there are leftovers for lunch. He craves jelly donuts but instead he makes whole wheat toast for breakfast and lets himself have a little bit of artisan preserves on top. He picked them up at a farmers market a few weeks ago, from this vendor who grows all her own fruit to make the jams and jellies, and sure it’s a bit indulgent but it’s not fried and coated in powdered sugar. He gets low fat frozen yogurt on occasion, and sometimes he even succeeds in forgetting it’s in the freezer. His pants start to fit better again, and the cravings are still there, but he does a whole lot better at not indulging all the time. Once in a while. Sometimes. But not always.
Until the blueberry pie.
Castiel is in the middle of washing dishes, his apartment sparkling clean, and as he’s drying the last plate it strikes him that the perfect end to this day would be a slice of blueberry pie, the kind that stains your mouth purple, with flaky crust and a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting over the top. It makes his mouth water just to think about it.
Which is the strangest thing ever, because Castiel loathes blueberries.
He has never in his entire life enjoyed anything made from or containing blueberries. They’re repulsive. Cannot stand them. Except for right now apparently, when the thought of not eating blueberry pie just seems so totally unfathomable that he’s half way through lacing up his second shoe before he even realizes what he’s doing.
You might not be entirely wrong about the soulmate cravings, he texts Charlie.
I am never entirely wrong about anything, but please, do go on. Castiel can hear the smugness in her text.
Blueberry pie.
Wow. But you hate blueberries.
I know, Castiel replies, searching through his phone for an emoji that conveys the flat stare he wants to give her, but failing. What do I do?
Go get some damn pie, Charlie tells him. The whole point of a bond like this as I understand it, was to make sure our hunter-gatherer ancestors gravitated towards the same hunting grounds so they could end up making biologically advantageous babies. Ideally, you crave pie, and your soulmate craves pie, so you both go get pie and maybe you meet back up.
What do you mean meet back up? We’ve met already?
Well yeah, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Once you meet your soulmate, you start sharing cravings.
This is dumb.
You’re dumb. Go eat pie.
There’s an all-night diner a few blocks from Castiel’s apartment. It is exactly the kind of place you would see in a movie, with neon signs in the window, peeling vinyl seat cushions, Formica table tops, checkerboard floors, and the exact same menu it had 47 years ago when it first opened. These are the places that have the best pie though, so it seems like the right call. Castiel takes a seat at the counter, accepting the waitress’ offer of decaf coffee, but declining the menu.
“Just a slice of blueberry pie please. With ice cream.”
“You got it, darlin,” the waitress says disinterestedly, sauntering off with the coffee pot in hand.
Castiel has no idea what he’s doing. This is going to be so gross. He’s going to hate it. This is a terrible idea. He sips his coffee and thinks about what a bad, bad idea this is, but the craving doesn’t subside at all. If Charlie is right about this, then his soulmate hasn’t had pie yet either.
Eventually, the waitress brings him pie, a thick slice, warm from the oven, with a heaping scoop of vanilla ice cream melting over the top. It smells absolutely amazing, and before he even has a chance to brace himself for the taste of it, he’s stabbing his fork in and shovelling a bite into his mouth.
It’s heavenly. He has no idea how, but it’s amazing. There’s a flake of pastry on his lip, and blueberries in his mouth, and he’s in heaven. It is possible he makes a noise that he does not usually make in public, and at that moment, he realizes he is not alone.
Two seats away at the counter, with his very own slice of blueberry pie, is a man that Castiel can’t put a name to, but definitely recognizes. He’s watching Castiel with a look of mirth on his face, all interest in his pie totally lost. When he realizes he’s been caught, the guy blushes a little, but he doesn’t look away.
“It’s pretty damn good pie,” he says bashfully, and Castiel suddenly knows where he recognizes the guy from. That smile. The freckles. That voice.
It’s a little too good to be true, that Castiel’s sugar craving soulmate might be the gorgeous guy who gave him back his phone that morning, so he dismisses the idea out of hand, but it won’t really let itself be dismissed.
“Yes, it is,” Castiel replies. “Except I hate blueberries.”
The guy looks at him sideways, which Castiel can understand because that doesn’t really make sense. He picks up his pie and his coffee and moves to the seat next to Castiel. “Then why are you eating it?”
“Got a craving,” Castiel says with a shrug, more calm than he feels. He takes another bite of pie, letting the ice cream melt on his tongue, and the guy licks his lips real slow before taking a bite of his own pie.
“For a food you hate.” It’s not even a question. Just a statement. Castiel nods. Here goes nothing.
“Been getting a lot of cravings for weird things lately. Blueberry pie. Salted caramel pudding. I couldn’t focus until I got a croissookie a while ago, and I didn’t even know what a croissookie was!” He takes another bite of pie to keep himself from blurting out anything else damning, but the guy seems to be catching on because his eyes go as wide as the plates their pie is served on.
“I get that,” he says carefully. “I’m a big fan of croissookies. Especially the ones from that place over on 7th street.” Which just so happens to be the exact bakery Castiel ended up getting his croissookie from.
Castiel nods. “My friend says it’s a soulmate thing. I think that’s just an old wives tale. But if there was someone out there I’m supposed to meet who likes blueberry pie this much, well, then hopefully I’ll meet them someday.”
“I’ve heard crazier things. I mean. I don’t know about soulmates or anything, but I had this weird craving for ginger beef last night, and I’m definitely much more of a chicken chow mein kind of guy. Could be a thing.” Castiel feels himself smiling as he thinks of the Chinese takeout in his fridge right now, the ginger beef almost completely devoured because that’s his absolute favourite.
“Castiel,” he says, holding out his hand in greeting.
“Dean,” his companion replies, shaking Castiel’s hand firmly.
Later, when Dean kisses him for the first time, Castiel still tastes blueberries on his lips, and it’s the best thing he’s ever tasted.