1

"C'mon, Dean," Sam groaned, sitting next to his brother, trying to prevent him from doing one more of those things he would eventually regret, "You know exactly that Castiel doesn't like it when you hunt."

Not to mention that his brother would surely make it look like Sam had had a paw in this as well. Dean was good at making sure that they were together in everything that was going on, even if his younger brother had done nothing other than trying to reason with him.

"I am a hunter, hunting is what I do!" Dean insisted, "Cas won't change anything about that. Besides, it's not like he'll ever find out."

If his brother, the long-haired pussy, wanted to allow all sorts of pests to walk all over them that was his decision, but Dean would never stand for something like that!

He had been born and raised as a hunter by their father, something his younger brother hadn't taken to quite as well as he had. That he and Sam were bunking with Castiel now didn't change anything about that! Granted, it meant that hunting was more a sport than a necessity, but in this case it was about defending their world!

"Can't you just let it go this once?" Sam gave one of the long-suffering sighs he had brought to perfection while they both had still been kittens. Dean might have been the older one, the one their father have always put in charge and the one who was looking out for Sam, but he wasn't exactly the more reasonable one of them. Not that he'd ever acknowledge that.

"If we start to let this vermin get away with things like that now, they'll overrun us in no time flat!" Dean pointed out heatedly. Castiel having to buy any mouse traps or anything else to keep pests away from the house would let everyone know that Sam and Dean were not defending their territory as they should. Besides, the intruder their entire discussion was about had clearly crossed every line of decency when he had done what he had done!

"Yeah right, it's totally not only about the pie," Sam huffed, perking up his ears in a try to locate Castiel. It would be best for all of them if the blue-eyed man returned to the kitchen to read the newspaper. First of all Dean wouldn't dare to go through with his plan, if Castiel was there to see it and it was a fact that the human hardly ever got enough time to even unfold the paper before the short haired cat took a seat in the middle of it. Dean would be distracted, Sam would have the chance to just nap in peace and quiet and Castiel… Well, the purring of cats had a positive effect on the blood pressure of humans, so he'd get something out of it, as well.

"It's not only about the pie!" Dean replied, scandalized, "It's about the pie and it's a matter of principle!"

After successfully clearing up that misunderstanding, he resumed looking toward the windowsill where a still hot pie fresh from the oven was cooling off a little. There was no chance in hell that Dean would allow that damn pigeon to get to the crumbs before he had a chance to yet again!

"Whatever. I want nothing to do with it," Sam snorted, standing up and shaking his long fur before he walked toward the entrance to the living room. In the end, he only took a few steps before he sat back down, wrapping his bushy tail around his front paws, however. Okay, so maybe he wasn't a completely unwilling partner in crime all the time. Someone had to make sure that Dean didn't get in over his head, after all!

Everyone thought that Gabriel was incredibly slow for a carrier pigeon. In fact, his brothers often taunted him, saying that he was probably delivering the messages on foot, as long as it took him to return from one of the tours assigned to him. Little did they know that Gabriel was actually just incredibly intelligent and maybe just a little lazy… and maybe a bit too much of a sweet tooth. Most of all, he was clever, however.

He had soon realized that delivering his father's messages as quickly as he could – which was much quicker than his brothers, by the way – led to him being the favorite messenger, which in turn meant that he got assigned most of the work.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with hard work, if that was your thing. As a matter of fact, Gabriel had a lot of other responsibilities as well, though. There were dirty cars parked next to the street regularly and the drivers needed someone to drop a hint that they had to be washed ever so often. There also were news to be heard, either from people at the park or from a radio when the windows were open. He also viewed it as his duty to make sure that the golden-brown feathers of his body and the slightly grayish ones of his wings stayed shiny and in a perfect condition, so bathing in the cleanest waters he could find was a part of his daily routine that took up some time, as well. Most of all he had to check to see if the guy in the plain white house with the perfectly symmetrically kept garden had produced baked goods again, however.

Damn, Gabriel wasn't implying that his father wasn't caring for them well enough, but he never gave them crumbs that the pigeon would sell his grandmother for. Okay, so that didn't mean a lot, since Chuck's mother was a pain in the ass and Gabriel might actually sell her for much less than a few crumbs of the best pie of the city. Not that anybody asked him and it was questionable that a pigeon could have sold a human being to another and make the contract legally binding, anyway.

Landing on a branch of the well trimmed bush next to the kitchen window, the pigeon soon realized that there was in fact a pie standing on the windowsill just waiting for him to come and pick up the crumbs that had fallen off the crust.

In Gabriel's opinion a crime was a perfect crime, if nobody noticed that it had been committed in the first place. The victims never learned that they had been victims that way and there was nobody to come after the perpetrator. When it was about stealing food, committing the perfect crime was really important, because people would start to guard their baked goods better otherwise.

Gabriel took another quick look around before he flapped his wings and made his way toward the target. Unfortunately, it had been days since he had last been able to get something sugary and the withdrawal kept him from noticing the slim, reddish-blonde cat pressed against the kitchen floor, getting ready to attack.

Dean had only wanted to give the flying rat enough of a scare so that he'd leave and never come back, but things didn't work out as planned. The moment the cat leapt onto the window sill with all the elegance a feline possessed was also the moment the pigeon turned around and saw him. Gabriel immediately started to flutter in wild panic and hit Dean square in the face with his right wing and prevented the cat from landing just in front of the pigeon as planned and instead sent him crashing into the stupid bird rather ungracefully.

Still on the floor, Sam shook his head and made his way to the countertop to see how bad the situation was. If they were lucky they'd all get away with a bit of a scare and maybe a scratch or two. They really didn't need a dead pigeon around the kitchen. If their human already didn't like any dead mice Dean presented to him as a token of his affection – not that Dean would ever admit that that was exactly what those were – then he'd absolutely hate seeing a bird murdered over pie!

"Son of a bitch!" the short-haired cat exclaimed, pawing at the unmoving bird. That really hadn't gone as planned and Sam, the little bitch, would totally say he'd told him so. He could already see the comment on his brother's tongue!

It wasn't any better that that was the moment Castiel came walking down the stairs. Sure, it kept Sam from actually saying anything, but it meant that the blue-eyed man was only seconds from discovering the dead bird.

"I'll hide the bird, you distract Cas!" Sam decided, quickly taking the pigeon between his jaws and jumping out of the window with it. He wasn't all too jealous, he really wasn't, but it was a fact that Castiel would be busy with petting Dean and caring for him as things were. If Sam had stayed, their human would have been busy searching for the other cat instead. Okay, the long-haired cat could have distracted him for a little while as well, but with Dean staying they had made sure that Castiel would be busy for quite some time.

"Dean, I want to trust you," the blue-eyed man stated in a mildly reprimanding tone, picking the short-haired cat up from the windowsill and taking him away from the pie, "But it seems your good behavior ends when it comes to pie."

Since Sam wasn't around to see it Dean widened his green eyes and gave Castiel a nearly pitiful look, rubbing his head against the side of the human's neck. If there was one thing other than hunting the blonde cat was perfect at it was playing Castiel like a fiddle.

Quite predictably, it only took a few more seconds until the human reached out toward the pie and broke off a piece of the crust to give to the cat. Yes, he was a pushover, especially when it came to Dean, but maybe he could at least teach the animal that there was no use trying to steal something he would get eventually, anyway.

"You have trained me well," Castiel chuckled, handing the blonde cat one more little piece of the pie crust when Dean stretched his neck to lick over his cheek affectionately.

"You got that right, Cas."