Dizzy Land

Starbuck threw Dean a look that communicated very well just how worried she was about his brother. Which was to say, not very much, but the giggling was getting to her. Because she was starting too. "He's completely delirious," she said just as Sador approached and fell in step beside her. "Well, now I know the signs of hunger for your family." When she heard another fit of chuckles, she hunched forward in her own peel of laughter.

From:

Starbuck wasn't helping, and neither was the thought of Starbuck not helping. Sam was laughing harder now, one arm crossed over his stomach as he watched her laugh too.

“Hey, it's your dog,” he said between chuckles, wiping at his eyes.

From:

"Nah, I think this is just Sam being weird," Dean said, grinning. "I'm not associating myself with this." Thankfully, they were rapidly approaching the pizza place, so he took a few steps ahead to hold the door open for Starbuck and Sam. "What does your dog eat, anyhow?" he asked Starbuck. "Human food?"

From:

She glanced over at Sam when he made the mention of Sador and laughed again. "Very good, Sam. You're a regular braintrust."

Walking into Redd Rockett's, Starbuck went straight for the kitchen. "Yeah, no dog food around here. I give her meat and vegetables mostly. I figure they're the best things for her."

From:

“Dean just gets grumpy when he’s hungry,” Sam informed Starbuck. “And I’m the smart brother.” He followed her into the restaurant, sniggering, but got sidetracked by the menu on the wall.

“Dude, they’ve got a lot more than pizza here,” he remarked, looking over the impressive list of pastas, salads, and side dishes. “Hey, foccacia!” A sudden thought struck him. “Do any of us actually know how to cook?”

From:

Dean would have smacked Sam over the head for referring to himself as 'the smart brother,' but as he was too far to reach, he simply snorted in disbelief.

"What the hell's foccacia?" Dean asked, reading the menu with a vague feeling of unease. "I was planning on just heating up some pizza, but if you feel like cooking..." He raised an eyebrow at Sam and gestured meaningfully toward the kitchen.

From:

"Oh, he gets grumpy," Starbuck said, raising her eyebrows in understanding and staring pointedly at Dean. "Well, I do too, so he's in good company there. Or maybe not." She didn't even have to laugh out loud at the mention of who the smart brother was. Looked like teasing Dean became a rightful sport with Sam around. But the youngest were always like that, in her experience.

She opened up one of the freezers and started pulling out crusts. "You actually remember how to heat up pizza, Dean?" she joked. "From what I recall of last time you had trouble telling which knobs to turn on the oven. But if you feel like being helpful you can get the sauce out and a spoon or a ladel if you can find one."

From:

"That," Dean said, pointing a finger at her, "is not information that needs to be shared." It wasn't his fault--he didn't exactly have much experience with cooking.

He was starting to prove Sam's point about being grumpy when hungry, though, so he went in search of a spoon without further complaint.

From:

Starbuck shaped her mouth into an 'o' at the scolding as though she were very caught and felt very bad about it. Then she leaned toward Sam and mumbled (so that Dean could hear her perfectly well), "Got a fragile ego, doesn't he? Good thing he's not one of my pilots...." She motioned with her head. "Toppings are over there."

She set the crust out on the counter and went to preheat the oven.

From:

"Focaccia an Italian bread," Sam told his brother. "Like, a flat bread kinda similar to pizza that usually has olive oil and herbs and cheese and sometimes meat or olives baked into it. It's really good."

The fact that he was pretty much just as bad a cook as his brother didn't stop Sam from laughing at Starbuck's comment about the ovens or at Dean's response.

"Very fragile," he told Starbuck in the same not-really-hushed tone, his face overly-serious. "Be careful with him. He might cry."

From:

...There really wasn't any way he was going to get out of this one, was there?

Steadfastly ignoring them, he rummaged around until he found both a (giant) container of pizza sauce and a large spoon, which he carried over to where Sam and Starbuck were standing. "Here you go," he said, setting the sauce down on a counter and handing Sam the spoon. "What now?"

From:

Starbuck had her bottom lip stuck out an ~~sort of~~ apology. Grumpy it was, then. "Well, what do you want on your pizza? That guy John was showing me the ingredients last time I was here, and they pretty much have everything under the sun." Including pineapple, which she didn't get. "Looks like Sam's in charge of the sauce, so... oh, and we need cheese. Where's the cheese?" She glanced around.

From:

“Got it.” Spoon in one hand, Sam opened one of the larger fridges and grabbed a large bag of mozzarella he found inside. Starbuck being in charge of the pizza making was kind of funny, but the weird fit of laughter seemed to have abated, leaving Sam with that breathless feeling you got when you laughed too hard. He hefted it onto the counter.

From:

Dean shrugged at the question of toppings, looking at the assortment and pulling most of them onto the counter. Extra toppings never hurt.

"Do they even have pizza on--uh, where you're from?" he asked Starbuck. He had meant to say 'on your planet,' but maybe that wasn't the best idea. He didn't want Sam to think he'd completely lost his mind, after all.

From:

"Nope," she answered, impressed with how efficiently they took direction. Almost like they were used to it. Like soldiers. "But when I got here I was kind of delirious from running a fifteen hour rotation and getting no sleep in the past couple of days. And I hadn't eaten in gods knows how long, and probably looked like I was ready to deck someone. Because I kind of was. So James brought me pizza at the gates during my little interview, probably to make sure that I didn't fall over."

From:

Just when he thought he’d gotten himself under control, Dean’s mid-sentence switch-up nearly set Sam off again. She must have told him something about herself, where she was from. And he had no idea…

Sam didn’t really trust himself to speak at that moment, so he got busy opening the jar of sauce.

Which took all of about six seconds.

So he just stood there staring into the open jar and holding his breath.

From:

Dean was busy laying out all the toppings he could find (including a few things he wasn't sure were meant for the pizzas, like the giant meatballs he found in a refrigerator), but he soon noticed Sam and gave him a look. Was he missing something again? Sam was... staring at a jar of sauce.

He tapped Sam on the arm, hoping to knock him out of whatever kind of daze he was in, then turned to Starbuck. "Are there any toppings you don't like?" he asked. He'd eat just about anything.

From:

Now that she wasn't quite sure about. "Uh, no fruit," she decided. "If I find anything else I don't like I can just take it off, I guess."

She glanced over at Same, noticing the constant pauses. Maybe he was having a slight nervous breakdown with all of this? She couldn't exactly blame him. She was kind of surprised that no one had yet. "I think after he's done eating you better put him to bed," she told Dean.

From:

Sam poked back at Dean with the spoon when his brother tapped his arm.

“Watch out what you give him license to do,” he told Starbuck with a small grin. “Dean’ll eat just about anything.” His face screwed up a bit at her last comment though.

“He doesn’t need to put me to bed,” he said, eyebrows drawn in. “I’m fine.”

From:

Dean grinned. "Okay, no pineapple, then," he agreed. That was just as well--pineapple on pizza was a little weird.

"You were staring at a jar of sauce for like a minute," Dean said, exaggerating only slightly. "And you still haven't gotten any of the sauce on the pizza." He gestured toward it in a go on, then motion.

From:

Sam gave his brother a petulant look and huffed once, before turning back to the counter and scooping some sauce onto the laid-out crust.

From:

She rolled her eyes a little at Sam's insistance that his brother would eat anything. "Little boy, I was living solid off of rations for nearly two years before I got here. Anything tastes better than that, no matter how weird the combination."

He stifled a laugh at the younger brother's petulance about bedtime and being told what to do. Yeah, very familiar. She fought a twinge of memory at it and picked up a pair of oven mitts from one of the counters. "Thank the gods they don't have that frakking mouse on them," she said, flipping them over in her hands. "Seems like everything else around here does."

From:

Somehow the bit about two years worth of rations hit Sam in a way that the mention of fifteen hour rotations hadn’t and he paused with the spoon in the jar, suddenly reminded of how much Starbuck’s life sucked. A lot more than his and Dean’s, actually.

It was weird, this sudden surge of real, stomach churning sympathy for someone who until today had been only a TV character. It was weird too as he fully realized how much he knew about Starbuck that she would certainly not want him to know; personal things, things about her past, her relationships.

He forced himself to lift the spoon back out of the jar and continue putting sauce carefully on the pizza, gripping the spoon maybe a bit too tightly.

From:

...Speaking of things in the shape of the Mouse, the first thing Dean found when he went in search of plates (since Sam didn't seem like he was in a hurry with the sauce) were plastic, mouse-shaped plates that he quickly tossed aside. Giant plastic cups... Plastic forks... Aha. He finally came across a stack of plates--real plates, and pulled three out.

When Starbuck mentioned gods, he turned to face her. "I meant to ask you--that lady who came when you were sick... Her name's Psyche?" He paused, wondering if there was a polite way of phrasing this, but finally just asked, "Is she one of your gods, or something?" He couldn't figure out why a Greek god would be one of Starbuck's gods, but hey, what the hell--nothing else here made sense.

From: