Chapter Text
The weird thing about the end of a relationship was all the little things that suddenly just came to an end. Things like Sunday brunch and dinner dates at restaurants that Dean would have never stepped foot in before. The best things to end were the arguments when Lisa would get mad every single week about Dean’s standing bar night with Sam. Or how often Lisa had expected Dean to get her flowers. In some ways, it was strange to re-calibrate to having free time again, but in the best way.
Dean found himself at The Roadhouse on a Wednesday night — something that would have never occurred while he was dating Lisa. Wednesday was not his and Sam’s usual night, but his brother met him there anyway.
“How are you holding up?” Sam asked after they were already a few beers in.
“What do you mean?”
“The break up, dude,” Sam said. “It’s been what? Two weeks?”
The thing that really cemented for him that he’d done the right thing breaking up with Lisa was that he didn’t even miss her. Dean had expected to, but the loss of the relationship didn’t really hurt. It was nothing like his last serious relationship with Cassie and maybe that was why Sam was so concerned. Cassie had broken him. It had been a long time after Cassie before Dean felt like he could do more than a one night stand. It was why Lisa had felt different, Dean had wanted more from her and yet somehow things just hadn’t worked. If he really had to think about it, he couldn’t even say that he missed the sex and considering how bendy Lisa was, that was saying something.
“I’m alright, Sammy,” Dean said. “I don’t think I actually let myself get attached, if I’m honest.”
Sam nodded.
“But, I do miss one thing,” Dean said. He took a gulp of his beer.
Sam made a face. “Ew, Dean!”
“What? No….I mean, she did yoga. But, no, I miss the pie.”
“Lisa baked?” Sam asked, his eyebrow raised.
Dean couldn’t help but laugh. “No. Definitely not. But she had this neighbor. I never met them, but every Friday they brought Lisa some sort of baked good. Sam, it was the best pie that I have ever tasted. Better than mom’s even. And now, no more pie.”
“Wow,” Sam said.
The crust had been flaky and sweet. The apples had had a crunch to them and there had been so much care put to the spices and the flavor. Dean had never believed in a higher power and yet eating that pie had felt like a religious experience.
A month after the break up, Dean ran into Lisa. He really should have known better than to stop at the cafe near the yoga studio, but Dean had been desperate for caffeine and it was a better option than Starbucks. While he was there, he couldn’t help but notice the pies on display and so he indulged in a slice of cherry pie. It left Dean on his own at a round table waiting for the coffee to kick in and savoring his pie. It wasn’t an amazing pie, but it was still pie. He was so single-focused on the pie that he almost didn’t see her at first, but then he looked up and spotted her.
She wore yoga leggings and a sports bra. Her hair was tied back into a neat ponytail and she was laughing with a gaggle of her yoga friends. Dean had met a few of them and he wasn’t ever going to be able to tell them apart.
As she turned to get into the line, her eyes swept right over Dean and then came back to him. Dean lifted his hand in an awkward wave. He didn’t expect Lisa to do more than similarly acknowledge him, but instead she headed his way.
“Dean,” she said.
“Hi,” Dean said back. “How, um, how have you been?”
Lisa actually smiled at him. “I’m alright. We had fun there for a while. And I just wanted to say, no hard feelings.”
“Good. Yeah. Uh, you too.”
Lisa pointed at the last few bites of Dean’s pie. “My neighbor came by last night and left me a loaf of banana bread. I had to bring it into yoga class because you weren’t around to eat it all.”
Dean chuckled. “Your neighbor should open up their own bakery. I would be their number one customer.”
“I don’t doubt that,” Lisa said.
“And, uh, you know, since no hard feelings and all, if your neighbor bakes a pie any time soon I am definitely available to take it off your hands. If that isn’t, you know, weird.”
Lisa actually threw her head back and laughed. “Do you want my neighbor’s number? Get you right to the source?”
He should have felt weird about it, especially because in the entire time that Dean had dated Lisa, he’d never actually seen Lisa’s neighbor. He’d always pictured the neighbor as a nice older woman who lived alone and didn’t have anyone to share her baking with.
“Look, Cas is a sweetheart and it won’t be weird or anything.”
Maybe, it would be less weird than using Lisa as some sort of go between. No matter how amicable their break up had been, Dean figured they probably shouldn’t see much of each other.
“Alright, then,” Dean said.
Lisa nodded. She grabbed her phone out and a moment later Dean had a text with Cas’ phone number.
It was almost a month later when Dean saw Lisa again. This time, it was because she was having car trouble and didn’t know where else to go but to the only mechanic that Lisa knew: Dean.
Dean co-owned Singer Auto. It had once belonged to his uncle, Bobby Singer. Bobby wasn’t even really his uncle by blood, but he’d been a family friend for so long that everyone considered Bobby family. When Bobby decided to retire a few years earlier, he’d offered Dean the shop. It was Dean that insisted on buying it from him. Bobby had eventually been worn down to selling half the business to Dean.
Dean ran the day to day, but Bobby stopped in every once in a while — when he got bored mostly — and did a bit here and there. Business was going well.
Lisa’s car had been in good shape when Dean was dating her, but when she called him up, it was because her car wasn’t starting. Dean talked her through tightening up the battery terminals but the car still didn’t start.
“You might need a new battery,” Dean said.
Before Dean could offer to head to her place to jump the battery and get the car over to the shop, Lisa told her her neighbor had just come out and offered to do it.
“And I’ll just drive it straight over to you.”
Lisa arrived not long after and with her came a tupperware container of chocolate chip cookies.
“From my neighbor,” Lisa said. “I asked and Cas said you never called.”
It wasn’t that Dean had forgotten as much as that he’d felt awkward calling someone he didn’t really know just to ask them if he could buy some pie from them. He was sort of rethinking Cas being an older grandma type, though, what with the whole giving Lisa’s car a jump thing. Maybe Cas was younger than Dean expected, or a woman that knew how to bake and their way around a car.
“Call Cas, Dean,” Lisa said. “It would be rude not to. Cas is expecting a call.”
Replacing her battery didn’t take long and Lisa reminded him to call her neighbor again before she left. The taste of Cas’ cookies after they were all gone later that day made him decide that he would call Lisa’s neighbor.
He sent a text instead of calling. He did it early, right between breakfast and leaving for work. A kind of rip the band-aid off type of thing.
Hi. This is Dean.
And then because that felt like not enough at all. He sent a second:
Lisa gave me your number because of how much I gush about your pie.
Hope this isn’t weird.
And when that didn’t seem like enough either.
Feel free to ignore me if this is too strange to you, but I am very willing to pay you to bake me a pie.
He read them all over a couple of times before sending one last text.
Thank you. And promise, I’m just very enthusiastic about pie.
After that, he just dropped his phone on the couch next to him and groaned. He wanted to take back all the texts. Lisa’s neighbor was going to think he was crazy.
By the time Dean set off to work, he had no response which was probably for the better.
Work was busy that day. It was a constant. They had a bunch of appointments lined up. Some easy jobs like doing an oil change, but others were more complicated — the type of thing that would take days to finish. Then, there were the people that just stopped by on the chance that Dean or one of his mechanics were free. So, Dean didn’t get to glance at his phone once the whole morning. And because Sam showed up during his lunch, he didn’t look at it then either.
It wasn’t until he got home, after a long shower to get rid of all the grime and the smell of motor oil that clung to him, that Dean even glanced at his phone.
Hello, Dean .
Lisa mentioned I might get a call from you. Your texts were a humorous way to start my morning. It is not weird to be complimented on something I love to do. Baking is a passion of mine. I would love to bake you a pie. Lisa mentioned my apple double crust was your favorite.
Payment is not necessary. Friday is the earliest I will have time, if that works for you. I’ll have it ready for you to pick up by six.
-Cas
Cas sounded formal. It was hard to infer age or gender, but Dean supposed none of that mattered when it came to it, not when this Cas person could bake a pie that was rivaled by no other.
I would feel weird not paying you for all that hard work. Friday is great. Thanks again.
Dean was going to make sure he gave Cas something for the pie. The whole thing already felt a little strange, but for Dean it would feel even stranger to take the pie for free.
When he and Sam met up that night, Dean didn’t bring up the whole weirdness with Lisa’s neighbor, but when Sam asked if Dean wanted to do something on Friday night he turned him down.
“What, you have a date or something?” Sam asked.
Dean denied it, but his brother didn’t seem to actually believe him.
On Friday, it was Cas that texted Dean first, with an address to the house on the right of Lisa’s, as well as confirmation for pick up any time after six. Dean read the text over his lunch and he texted an affirmative before he got back to work.
The shop closed at five. Dean went home and got showered and cleaned up. And because it felt like he’d come off as too eager to show up at six on the dot, he busied himself cleaning his kitchen and getting his laundry sorted so he could put it in the wash later. After that, he went through the pile of mail that he hadn’t looked at all week. It was almost seven when he texted Cas to let him know he was on his way.
Cas’ house looked almost identical to Lisa’s and all the other houses on that street. A neat lawn in the front, a Victorian style with a large porch, a detached garage in front of which sat an electric blue Jeep. Not the type of car that should have belonged to the middle aged woman that Dean had been expecting. He parked his car on the street, feeling just a little strange that he wasn’t pulling into Lisa’s driveway. A glance over there told Dean that Lisa wasn’t home.
As he walked up, the first thing that Dean noticed was that Cas’ mailbox was shaped like a bee. It was really well made and adorable to boot.
He gave the doorbell a ring and didn’t wait long for someone to come to the door. As the door pulled open, Dean was startled by a car screeching by. He turned away, looking out as a Honda Civic narrowly missed Dean’s Impala as it drove off. For a moment, Dean had almost stopped breathing.
“I don’t know how that kid managed to get his license,” a voice from behind him said. A deep, masculine voice.
Dean turned, slowly. Cas had stepped out and Dean’s breath caught.
Cas was a man that stood almost at Dean’s height. His dark hair was tousled, his eyes were the bluest eyes that Dean had ever seen, and over a lean and muscular frame, he wore an apron that in cursive letters said “ Save The Bees” .
“Hello, Dean,” Cas said and his chapped lips broke into a smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes. “I’m actually a little behind, so your pie just made it into the oven. But, come on in.”
“Uh,” Dean couldn’t find words. How had Lisa not told him that her neighbor was a guy. A very attractive guy.