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Dean gave up on trying to sleep when the digital clock on the nightstand displayed the first minutes of three in the morning. Castiel’s arm was a warm, heavy weight on Dean’s waist, his husband’s breath puffing softly against the back of his neck. He’d fallen asleep a few minutes after they’d laid down for the night, which was easily five hours ago. Dean had been left to stew in his own thoughts since then.
He laid in bed for about thirty seconds before the ants under his skin finally won over. Dean picked up Castiel’s arm, kissed his hand, and draped it back over his body. Once Castiel had been moved out of the way, Dean quietly got up and slid out of bed. He tucked the covers in around his husband, then padded through the dark room to the door.
Dean hadn’t quite gotten a feel for the new house yet. He managed to stub his toe on the corner of the staircase as he went down. He had to breathe through the pain to keep from shouting curses, then pray that the creaking of the house as he went through it wouldn’t wake his sleeping husband. Castiel didn’t deserve to have his sleep interrupted just because Dean’s mind was fucked up.
Dean made it to the kitchen before he even realized where he was going. He turned on the light.
When Jack had become God, he’d wiped Dean’s criminal record free, as well as any memories the authorities might have had of him. Dean had been free to house-hunt with Castiel as much as he’d wanted, and after a couple months of searching in the Sioux Falls area, they’d found one that fit the bill. One of the main attractions had been the kitchen. Dean stared into it now, brain half-functioning, buried in doubts.
They had no cookbooks. Dean walked over to the laptop Sam had lent them until they could buy a real one and opened it, pulling up a new tab over all the others about insurance and renting homes. In the search bar, he typed: sugar cookie recipe.
Over a million results came up in less than a second. Dean quirked a mirthless smile at the speed at which the technology had performed, clicking on one recipe at random. It had been reviewed five hundred and seventeen times, and it had 4.9 stars. Dean didn’t really care what middle-aged women on Pinterest thought of how the cookies tasted and how easy they were to make. He just wanted something to do, something to pour the bubbling anxiety under his skin into. He pulled up the recipe, sent away the fourteen ads that tried to attack him on sight, and walked mechanically over to the pantry.
The ingredients for the recipe were all there. Flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baking soda, vanilla extract. Dean looked up a frosting recipe, just because. Three hundred reviews, 4.5 stars. Milk, powdered sugar, vanilla extract, salt. Fucking perfect.
The kitchen island was clear of anything, just a sparkling slab of dark granite. The kitchen hadn’t been used yet. They’d eaten takeout on the unpacked living room floor seven hours ago, lightly arguing about which boxes went where.
Dean got to work, trying to be as quiet as possible. He had a feeling it would all be for nothing in the end, but he still tried to muffle the sounds of the metal bowls clinking and the crappy old hand mixer being set up. It was pretty amazing that they had some of this equipment at all, since most of the stuff they ate was made up of diner food and takeout.
Dean couldn’t help but wonder if he’d have time to fix that. Would he be able to buy kitchen supplies? Would he have reason to? There was no space for kitchen supplies on the road. The boxes he and Castiel had argued about the night before were mostly weapons and supplies taken from the Bunker, anyway. Baby could only hold so many things. As much as he loved her, Dean had to admit that Baby wasn’t capable of carrying even the basics needed to live in a house. And yet, she’d been home for Dean’s entire life.
He wondered if this handsome, modern, slightly expensive house would ever become home. In his heart, he hoped so. In his experience, he had a bad feeling it wouldn’t.
Maybe if he used the kitchen, this place would feel a little more permanent. After all, food that was set aside for later was meant to be eaten later, right? And later meant staying in one place. Later meant a small amount of permanence, no matter how brief.
Dean would give a lot of things to feel safe. He would do a lot of things to understand the definition of home. Baking cookies?
Easy.
Vanilla extract, eggs, butter, sugar. Dean winced at the initial noise the hand mixer made, but after a few minutes of it whirring away at the eggs in the bowl, he figured he was safe from waking his husband up. Into the bowl the wet ingredients went. Dean mixed them for as long as his baker’s intuition directed, then slowly began to add in the dry, powdery ingredients. The hand mixer started getting choppy as the last cups of flour made it into the bowl, but Dean forced the little machine into the mixture as best he could and combined it until it was ready.
The oven beeped behind him. He’d started it when he’d brought out the ingredients. Dean glanced at it absentmindedly, then left his bowl of dough and headed into the dark house to search for something that could be used as a tray.
Much of Dean’s childhood had been built on learning lessons and training with his father. One of the parts of training he hadn’t minded had been counting and loading ammunition. There was something therapeutic about putting down a fully loaded magazine, of knowing that there was an equal amount of bullets in each one and that they all added to some sort of round number that looked really nice when scrawled into the little pad of paper Dad kept just for the occasion.
One of the items Dean knew made everything helpful was an ammo tray. Ironically, it had started out as a baking pan. The interior had been wrecked by dropped bullets and the scuffed edges of empty magazines over the years, but when Dean scrubbed it with some soap and laid a couple extra layers of parchment paper down, he was pleased to say he had a pretty damn fine pan. He loaded it with cookie dough balls and shoved it into the oven.
The smell of cooking food was just as therapeutic as loading magazines. It was kind of funny how differently those two actions turned out. Dean started on the frosting while the cookies baked, still moving like a robot.
Castiel came downstairs as he was measuring powdered sugar into a bowl. Dean’s angel looked beautiful standing in the doorway of the kitchen, quiet and handsome and wise. He was wearing boxers and one of Dean’s AC/DC shirts, one with a hole in the armpit and an oil stain on the hem that had never really washed out. He looked gorgeous.
Castiel said nothing as he came into the kitchen. He squinted a little at the light, but he merely came up and wrapped his arms around Dean from behind, pressing a gentle kiss to the back of his neck. In an inhuman, gravel-deep rumble, Castiel asked, “Nightmares?”
Dean shook his head at that, focusing on measuring in the last cup of powdered sugar. “Couldn’t sleep.” His own voice was rough and croaky from disuse. He didn’t bother to clear it.
Castiel hummed, nuzzling gently into the skin of Dean’s neck. He stayed there for as long as Dean did, then released him when Dean needed to lean to the side to grab the milk. Dean felt the absence of his husband’s warmth keenly, but he felt better when Castiel moved into his field of view. He stepped up to the sink and began to do the dishes, because he was perfect like that.
Dean finished the frosting and set it aside just as the timer for the oven beeped. Dean checked on the cookies, decided they needed a little longer to bake, and shut the door again. He set the timer for five minutes.
While he waited, Dean grabbed a dish towel and began to dry the dishes Castiel put up in the dish drainer. They worked in comfortable, easy silence, just like they always had. It was like before a hunt, when Dean cleaned the guns and Castiel packed them away to be used later on. This was better, though. This was safer. Softer. Happier. More like home.
Dean and Castiel finished the dishes seconds before the timer went off. Dean checked, left the cookies in for thirty more seconds, then took them out and set them on the stovetop. Castiel watched him quietly, a damp spot spread across the front of his shirt where he’d brushed up against the wet counter while doing the dishes. When Dean had finished setting the cookies out to cool, he turned to face his husband.
“You bought all this stuff earlier, didn’t you?”
Castiel glanced down and to the right, a telltale sign that he was about to lie. “I went with Sam to buy the essentials,” he said. “Sam... told me that these ingredients were essentials.”
“Sure,” Dean snorted. “You’re not seriously playing the Unassuming Angel Card again, right? You’ve been on Earth long enough to know that sugar and vanilla extract don’t exactly count as the ‘essentials,’ Cas.”
Castiel huffed, caught. “It counts if it is being utilized for your wellbeing,” he said, as if that made any sense and cleared everything right up. “If fulfilling your need to create sustenance for your loved ones soothes your anxiety about settling in a new location, I would gladly provide the necessary resources for the creation of said foodstuffs.”
Dean glared at the floor, nudging at the corner of the little rug beside the sink with his toe. “I don’t have anxiety,” he grumbled.
Castiel came forward and wrapped his arms around Dean, finally drawing him in against his chest. Dean allowed his head to be tucked underneath Castiel’s chin only because it gave him a good vantage point to view the cookies. That was the only reason. “Of course, Dean,” Castiel said, one of his hands coming up to cup the back of Dean’s head in that way the angel pretended he didn’t know Dean liked. “Whatever you say.”
Dean snorted, nudging the bridge of his nose up against the column of Castiel’s throat. The feeling of his angel’s arms around him soothed the last of the tension from his muscles, leaving his body weak and his eyes aching with tiredness. “Okay.”
“Would you like to frost these cookies in the morning?” Castiel asked into his hair.
Dean closed his eyes, pressing his face up against Castiel’s throat. He gave a tiny nod. “’M tired now,” Dean managed.
“Time for you to rest, then,” Castiel said. When he spoke, his throat vibrated pleasantly against the bridge of Dean’s nose. Dean hummed at the sensation, burying his face deeper into the warmth that was the crook of his husband’s neck. Castiel chuckled at the motion. “Come on, love. Let’s put these away.”
He released Dean so they could work in tandem to put the just-cooled cookies away. Dean tiredly set the baking tray in the sink, silently deciding he’d clean it tomorrow. Castiel helped him put all the baking supplies away, working quickly and efficiently at Dean’s side. By the time the kitchen was clean and the cookies and frosting had been put away, it was nearing five in the morning. The birds were chirping outside, the sky just beginning to lighten.
Castiel leaned over to press a kiss to Dean’s temple. “Let’s go to bed, love.”
Dean didn’t protest. He grabbed his angel’s hand and quietly followed as he was led out of the kitchen and up the stairs. The sheets of their bed felt cool and strange against his skin when he slid underneath them, but they warmed soon. Castiel’s body heat helped. Dean could tell his husband was tired too, since he wrapped around Dean like a grumbly octopus the second he got the chance. Castiel pressed a sleepy kiss to Dean’s forehead, settled in, and almost immediately fell asleep.
This time, Dean easily joined him. Tomorrow, he’d take the cookies out, frost them, eat a couple, then pack them away. The cookies would stay in the corner of their pantry until Castiel eventually gave into his sugar cravings and ate all of them in one sitting. The duration of their stay wasn’t what mattered, though. It was that they were there at all. A plastic container of cookies could serve as a metaphor for a lot of things. For later. For next time.
For home.