Dribbly, Drabbly
Happy birthday to my shiny new friend vikingprincess !! It is still the 25th somewhere in the world! (I am assured of this.)
You asked for either young!John/Castiel, or young!Mary/Castiel, and I had so many ideas where to take the latter it kind of came in fits and starts and bits and pieces and I ended up with a whole beginning scene, and about three(?) drabbly middle pieces. But no cohesion, and no ending. So! I will just post what I have here, and hope you like it. :D (Because I am seemingly incapable of writing short stories, and if I continue with this beginning it may turn into a 5k piece of waffle, and NO ONE WANTS THAT.)
In any case, here is your present! And I have been reliably informed that it is the thought that counts. So shhh.
Title: N/A
Author: I will claim responsibilty. (LIES, ALL LIES IT'S vikingprincess 's FAULT)
Characters/Pairings: young!Mary/Castiel, John-as-Meatsuit
Warnings: comma abuse, unbeta'd, unfinished, wafflecopter, angel!brain
Summary: Eventually he becomes convinced that something is missing, that perhaps he was made imperfectly. Something more is needed, that Castiel will not have this burning inside of him, this ache.
Castiel has watched humans since their Creation; he has loved them as he would any of his Father’s work - homo sapiens mean as much, as little, to him as the endless depths of the oceans; the seamless melding of desert and sky; the birth and death of a sun.
Millennia come, millennia go, and some of his brethren develop unhealthy fascinations with the beings, others a deep-rooted hatred. He has found it easier to admit to no opinion but that of the Word; of course he loves humans more than God - it is what he has been told to do, and who is he to question?
Some are not so smart. Castiel has seen many of his brothers and sisters fall like burning stars in the wake of Adam and Eve. Even Lucifer, the brightest of them all.
Castiel, though. He just watches, and loves with an angel’s endless capacity to do so, as he is bid. As yet though, he is uncomprehending - what is there to rebel or fall for in these primitive, unenlightened souls? These savage, irrepressible beings with whom he will admit to being somewhat intrigued and confused by - drawn in to watch over their mindless fucking, feeding, fleeing, fighting.
How could these creatures be his Father’s favourites? he has often questioned; they may be thought of as his Father's greatest work, but they are also irrevocably flawed, and Castiel finds he will always crave the quiet perfection of nature over their loud, brash existences.
He keeps his thoughts to himself, as much as it is possible to do so, because Castiel - he is a soldier, first and foremost. Loyalty and the potential for unquestioning faith are written into the core of his design, if he chooses to take them up. And he tries.
He tries to trust that the plan is just. To trust in his superiors and believe in his Father, a power to which he has never spoken to, or seen. He tries to tell himself he does not need to understand humans, and that he is not bothered by the idea that he, perhaps, never will, despite his millions of years of surveillance.
Still, three millennia or so is a long time to know, and be given evidence of, nothing; posted away from home and shielding an unknowable race from his own brother.
Eventually he becomes convinced that something is missing, that perhaps he was made imperfectly. Something more is needed, that Castiel will not have this burning inside of him, this ache. This desire for something unnamed.
~~
It is sometime in the twentieth century when he is surprised by a cupid flitting by just under his metaphysical nose. It is obviously on what it’s kind perceive as missions - and Castiel, bored, and floating somewhere on a plane vaguely over the Sierra Nevada, follows closely on it’s heels, curious and without thought as to why he is suddenly stalking such an inferior being.
Castiel has had very little experience with cupids, a personal resolution he had made after his first and last encounter with one, and it’s - enthusiastic - form of greeting. (That accursed Anael, tricking him into helping her with the Mary and Joseph assignment; if it wasn’t for her artifice he could have gone his whole existence without receiving a cupid’s embrace. Oh, how she’d laughed at the look on his face.)
Castiel follows the cupid to a small town in Kansas, populated with humans and their machines, their primitive dwellings, then further down into a sparsely occupied coffee shop on the main street. He sees the creature, naked as the day it had come into the world, flying over the top of a blonde head. A woman, with eyes the colour of sun on a Welsh sea, and a plump, pink mouth that curlicues up in the corners over her coffee mug, where she is cupping it close with both hands.
If Castiel had a stomach in his natural form, the feeling he underwent right then might have been likened to someone king-punching him in it; winding, painful, and shocking. His essence - usually closely contained - floods out from his core to fill the entire room.
It causes the majority of patrons to undergo what is referred to among the angels as ‘overexposure’, though very few in their entire history had ever been weakened or graceless enough to cause such an event. It is, essentially, exposing ill-equipped humans to the unadulterated, unfocused source of angelic power. God’s will.
Maybe five are immediately overcome with the urge to join the nearest congregation and confess their (many, varied) sins - one is already gibbering hers out to her mother over scones with jam and cream. Two more collapse in a dead faint and another is startled into the hallelujah chorus, before a middle-aged gentleman in the centre of the room gets up and announces his lifelong dream to become a priest to his (unimpressed) date, before walking out.
Most importantly, there is this - a man in the corner of the room is having what Castiel knows is his very first prophetic vision, triggered by Castiel’s embarrassing loss of control, and proximity. Realising that if he does not regain command of himself soon an archangel will step in to do it for him, Castiel panics. Yet another mistake, one which causes his essence to be immediately and painfully sucked into the body of the nearest vessel that can hold him, without either of their consent.
He blinks, and opens his eyes on the face that started it all - a face that has gone curiously hard and focused with readiness, studying the room. She turns to Castiel and opens her mouth; but his is already opening against his better judgement.
“You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen,” Castiel says.
The woman blinks, and frowns at him. “John,” she says, "this is not the time," and stands quickly, overturning her chair. “I’ve got to go. See you later, alright?”
She leaves the coffee shop, and Castiel is left to sit there alone, staring down at a plate of untouched bacon and eggs, half a glass of orange juice, and a cupid, who is gesturing urgently for him to follow.
This, he thinks, is why Castiel does not make a habit of following his whims.
Middle-ish Drabble 1:
"Castiel," she says, voice quiet and low. "What are you doing here?"
"I had to see you," he says, and he trembles within the skin he's borrowing at the look in her eyes, flicking over him with that familiar look of censure, of disapproval. Today, though, there is something lurking behind the stillness there, and Castiel holds onto that, and breathes.
quot;What is it?"
This is the hard part.
"I came because I cannot help but to think of you, all the time, it is an affliction! It is unproductive." He takes a step towards her, watches her eyes narrow and her stance widen, readiness in the shape of her limbs and her hands held by her side. He quiets his voice, takes another step. She doesn't back down. "I want to know what is to be done, to rid myself of your face in my mind?"
Her lips quirk. "You - you're here because you've a crush on me?" she says, disbelieving, eyebrows raised high, and Castiel frowns.
"A fitting word," he allows. "I feel remarkably without air in your presence."
She flicks her eyes up and to the side, a laugh tucked into the side of her mouth - Castiel can see it, has spent what feels like three more millennia studying the minutiae that make up her expressions. He knows the curves of her face, the way her nose crinkles when she laughs, the light in her eyes when she'd told him that if she knew this was how angels were watching over her, she would have become an atheist years ago.
He knows her.
"Castiel, you can't just say stuff like that," she says, and he can hear the laughter buried in her voice, despite her tone.
"Why not? It is the truth." And once more he steps closer to her, watching the way the sun strokes along the curls of her hair and the skin of her cheekbones. "Mary," he says softly, experimental.
She goes still, watching him back, and says, "Yes?" Just as quiet.
"Why can't I say such things?"
" I - I love John," she says, unsteadily. Uncertainly. "And you're - well. You're an angel."
"I am sick of just watching," Cas says. He grabs her by the biceps and pulls her to him. "I want to taste your mouth, I want to lay between your thighs as a man does, and kiss the curve of your throat. I want -"
Mary grabs his chin and pulls him down to her, licking over the roof of his mouth, just once, with precision. When she pulls back, leaving him stunned, she says, "What? I thought you wanted -"
He kisses her plump pink mouth and the smoothness of her cheek, hearing her breath whoosh out over the curve of his ear, lifting the short hairs. This, he thinks. This is what he'd been searching for.
Middle-ish Drabble 2:
Castiel has watched humans since they were Created. None of them have ever done to him what Mary does; the soft skin of her inner elbow, the peculiar tilt of her mouth when she smiles down into a cup of chai tea.
It makes him crazy, makes him feel something strange in the pit of his stomach. Castiel can taste the tingling of his grace burning up inside his chest even as his heart thuds at her closeness; feels it filling up and spilling over with something uncontainable, unquantifiable.
She looks at him sideways, with a laugh tucked into the corners of her mouth, and he can't help but lean into her, to feel her breath on his borrowed skin, the swelling of her belly under his palm.
Middle-ish Drabble 3:
"Cas," Mary says, and he jerks; he is still not used to her silent steps, crowding up behind him, the round press of her stomach into the small of his back as unfamiliar as the touch of her hand on his too-vulnerable nape. "What are you doing?"
"Thinking," he says, and allows himself a small smile in her direction, expression almost seeming to soften as he looks down into her wide eyes. "Mary. Why are you here?"
"You still have to ask?" Mary says, her voice low and sweet, meeting him smile for smile. She curls her hand around the curve of his skull and pulls him down to her mouth.