The Art of Atheism [Castiel/OFC]
THE ART OF ATHEISM;
Author/Artist: devilsduplicity
Recipient: Pinch-hit for pathsforme
Characters/Pairings: Cas/OFC, Dean, Sam.
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: Fluff, humor, mild language, and a friendly jab at Jehovah's Witnesses.
Notes/Prompt: The prompt was, Castiel falls for a mortal woman. This idea is just begging to be turned into a full-fledged fic, I swear. \o/
Word Count: ~2,500
Summary: Castiel falls for a mortal woman. Problem is, she's an atheist.
Many much moosum thanks for sin_unforgiven who constantly allows me to spam her with snippets, woes, and ideas for basically everything I write. This included. ♥
When people stalk people, other people become paranoid.
It's a Thursday when Castiel falls for a woman.
Irony's just ironic like that.
He's walking out of a diner with the brothers Winchester when he trips on the last step and goes tumbling down.
For angels, falling is actually quite literal.
God's ironic like that.
Sam stumbles into him, but by that time Castiel has already regained his balance so, to Sam, it feels more like running into a brick wall.
Or an angel.
The sentiments are synonymous.
Dean says something like, "Jesus," and Sam does something like whack Dean in the head but Cas isn't paying a lot of attention because his mind has just confirmed the very thing that caused him to lose his balance in the first place.
Castiel is in love.
~*~*~*~
"You don't even know her name," Dean points out, munching on a double cheeseburger back at the hotel room.
Sam is leaning against the wall, staring at Castiel as if he's the most interesting thing in the entire world. The younger Winchester has his Tin Hat of Knowledge resting firmly on his head.
"No," Castiel relents, watching, fascinated, as Dean inhales his food. "But I know her soul."
He'd seen it, bright as day, back at the diner. She had been standing on the other side of the street, hidden amidst a crowd of faces, and yet her presence had been clear and all-encompassing.
"You know my soul," Dean points out, taking a last bite. "Does that mean I need to start wearing a chastity belt around you?"
Castiel doesn't get it.
"No," he answers, tilting his head.
Sam lays his forehead in his palms.
"So," Dean says, jumping up off the edge of the bed and dusting the crumbs off his fingers. "How're you gonna woo her?"
Castiel blinks.
"'Woo' her?"
"Yeah, you know. You can get your nerd on. Follow her around the neighborhood, find out what kind of gum she chews, cut off a lock of her hair."
Somewhere in the room, Sam groans.
Castiel does that thing where he furrows his brow and tells Dean, silently, that he would make more sense were he to speak in Latin.
"I will… tell her that I am an Angel of the Lord. And that her soul connects to mine, and my Father created us to be one."
Dean blinks.
"Cas, remember that thing I told you about lying?"
Castiel nods.
"Well, now's the time to actually do it."
The incline of the angel's head tilts even further.
"But I don't want to be the president."
~*~*~*~
The next day, Castiel becomes a stalker.
He wouldn't call it stalking, of course, but he's the kind of guy who substitutes words like 'fuck' for 'copulation', so it doesn't really matter what he calls it. It's stalking, through and through.
When people stalk people, other people become paranoid.
When angels stalk people, weird shit happens.
Like lights spontaneously combusting, and random drafts of wind opening and shutting doors and turning perfectly neat piles of paper into a confetti parade.
The girl is a blonde, and she has really pretty blue eyes, but Castiel doesn't really notice that part.
He notices the way his grace reaches out for her, the way his ethereal wings stretch and span the length of a room, simply aching to curl around her spirit. It's an urge so natural, it feels vaguely foreign. He simply can't control himself, and thus the source of all the chaos.
He finds her nameplate and digs through the papers on her desk to find her address, then decides to get out of there before he makes her day suck even more.
~*~*~*~
Amelia Jackson -- Amy, to her friends -- usually loves Fridays.
But she'd flipped her boss off behind his back yesterday when he'd called her a fickle office worker, and she figured karma was just rearing its ugly head to make this Friday the worst Friday in the history of all Fridays.
If she thought the word 'Friday' one more time, she swore to God--
Friday.
Amelia Jackson -- Amy, to her friends -- really, really hates her mind.
An hour later, after she cleans up the unexpected parade of flying papers strewn about her room, Amy goes home.
Not realizing that this was just the beginning.
~*~*~*~
"I'm going to go see her this weekend."
Castiel blinks into existence right beside Dean, making the hunter jump.
Dean's still bloody from his last hunt, and he's walking with a limp.
"'Gee,'" Dean says, voice not his own, "'you look pretty bad off, Dean. Can I lend a hand? No, no, it's not a problem. I'm a friggin' Angel of the Lord, after all. I can take out this ghost in the blink of an eye.'"
A ghost flies towards them and Castiel takes it out in the blink of an eye.
Dean stares, and then curses, and then calls out Sam's name because the job's done.
"What'd you say?" Dean asks as all three of them huddle inside the Impala for warmth. It's the middle of December, and the winter so far has been unrelenting.
"I'm going to see her tomorrow," Castiel says again, staring straight ahead.
Sam is leaning against the passenger door, one arm slung across the back of the front seat, and uses that vantage to peer at the angel behind him.
"Do you know what you're gonna tell her?" Sam asks, genuinely curious.
"The truth," Castiel replies.
~*~*~*~
Amy is a nice person. She might not go so far as to call herself a good person, but she's not a jackass, and that's what matters most. She works a steady nine to five at a local newsstand, with no aspirations for journalism, but a healthy grasp of grammatical error, and she visits her mom and dad at least once a week. She doesn't have a kid -- sad day -- but she has had two husbands.
She'd rather take the kid.
Her life isn't exciting, but she doesn't really like to think it's boring, either, so she just settles for mediocre. No grand explosions or high-speed car chases, but she hasn't resigned herself to watching the paint peel just yet.
She's just settling in to read a book, The Art of Atheism, when the doorbell rings.
No one visits her on Saturdays. Saturdays are her "me" time.
Amy does the strategic thing and peers around the curtain and out her window.
There's an awkward looking man standing there in a tan trench coat, and for a moment she has absolutely no idea who he could possibly be when it finally clicks.
A solicitor.
She inches back slowly, as if afraid of detonating The Bomb, then curls back into her comfy armchair and picks her book back up.
A minute passes.
Then two.
Then five.
She glances back up and sees the man staring at her through the window.
Amy isn't the kind of person who flails, but for this she could make an exception.
She does a little number on the chair that includes dropping her book and falling off the edge, then crawls around to the front of her coffee table and stares at the man staring at her.
For another moment, she wonders why in the hell he hadn't left already, and then it clicks inside her mind, again, and she lets out a little groan.
He must've been Jehovah's Witness, dammit. She'd have to up her game.
She doesn't get up off the floor. She continues to crawl around the coffee table until she makes it to the back of her couch, where she then proceeds to huddle on the ground and wait it out.
Five minutes pass, and she glances around.
He's still there.
Seven minutes later, she looks back again.
Still there.
Three after that, she takes another glance and he's gone.
She sighs, relieved, and is about to lift up off the floor when a hand reaches out to help her.
"Hello."
~*~*~*~
Castiel figures he probably shouldn't have invaded her home like that, but he's still somewhat taken aback at the impossible decibel level her scream reaches.
He pulls his hand back slowly, then tilts his head and peers down at her. He can sense the fear rolling off of her, but that is but a single emotion in a slew of feeling. She's scared, yes, but she's also angry, and confused, and irritated.
She scuffles away from him on the floor, then jumps to her feet and dashes behind the chair.
"Jesus," she exclaims, making Castiel twitch.
"I apologize for the intrusion," he begins, and is about to continue when she cuts him off.
"I'm an atheist," she says. "So why don't you just--" she waves towards her door, "scamper off and find someone else to harass, okay?"
Castiel is highly confused.
"But… I'm here to speak with you, Amelia."
The woman looks like she's about to pull out the big guns when she abruptly chokes on air.
"How did you-- How did you know my name?"
"I read it on your nameplate."
"Were you the guy who messed up my office yesterday?"
Amelia apparently has the uncanny ability to put two and two together.
Castiel glances down, his body folding in on itself a tiny bit, and for all the world he looks almost sheepish.
"I apologize for that, as well."
"Why are you here?" Amy finally bites out, shaking off the shock.
"I would like to speak with you--"
"Yeah, yeah, you already said that. But why?"
The room grows silent, as rooms are wont to do.
"Because we are mated."
Lying has never really been Castiel's thing.
~*~*~*~
"You said what?"
Castiel repeated what he'd said.
"Why?"
Castiel cants his head to the side.
"Because I don't want to be the pr--"
"I think," Sam interrupts, clicking away at the ever-informative internet, "what Dean means is, maybe you should've used a little more tact."
Sam puts away his internet for a moment to look at Cas.
"I would never lie to my mate," Castiel informs them somberly, and both Winchesters wince at that term.
"It's called 'dating', Cas," Sam says.
Castiel tries the word out on his tongue.
He doesn't like it nearly as much.
"Then what am I supposed to do?" the angel asks. He isn't used to human customs, so he's open to ideas.
"Flowers," Sam says.
"Chocolates," Dean says at the same time.
Both brothers look at each other, then turn to Cas and repeat in unison, "Flowers and chocolates."
~*~*~*~
Come Monday morning, Amelia walks into work to find her office littered with flowers.
Which is all fine and well, except now her room smells like a funeral parlor, and she can't for the life of her find that article they were supposed to be running on page three.
The chocolates are good, though. She'll be snacking on those for lunch.
Part of her freaks out when a familiar face shows up outside of her door that day.
Another part isn't at all surprised.
"Come in," she says cautiously, then pops a caramel-filled chocolate into her mouth.
The door opens, and an awkward trench-coat wearing man with the most intense blue eyes she's ever seen steps inside. He closes the door behind him, and Amy swallows thickly.
Mostly because of the caramel, but, well, you get the picture.
"What can I do you for?" she asks, pointedly ignoring the fact that he broke into her house over the weekend and professed his status as her 'mate'.
She was being polite out of a fear of enraging the crazy. The moment he stepped out of her office, she was going to call the police.
He moves closer, still standing just in front of the door, then straightens his spine. Amy is taken aback by how intimidating he suddenly looks.
"I wasn't lying," he begins. "The other day when I was at your house… I wasn't lying."
Amy blinks, leans back in her chair, and regards him curiously.
When she doesn't say anything, the man takes another step forward.
"My name is Castiel," he says, his voice firm and unwavering. It sends a chill down Amelia's spine.
"I am an Angel of the Lord."
~*~*~*~
Instead of raving at him violently, like Castiel had expected, the girl merely narrows her eyes.
"I don't believe in angels," she says.
Cas shakes his head.
Neither had Dean.
"We're mated," he replies, trying to reinforce this idea. Already he can see her spirit reacting to the news. It brightens each time he says it.
"I can't be mated to something that doesn't exist."
She's stubborn, but that's far from disheartening.
"I exist," he says, taking another step forward.
Amelia watches him closely, her every breath careful and measured.
"Yes," she finally relents. "You do. But angels don't."
Castiel spreads his invisible wings and flies from one end of the room to the other.
Amy stares at the spot where he had just been for several moments, then glances to her right to peer up at where he was now standing beside her.
She sucks in a breath and is about to let it out in a scream.
Cas wraps his hand around her mouth and brings his finger to his lips.
"Don't. Please."
~*~*~*~
Amelia can't remember the last time she'd gone to church, but she supposed that didn't really matter.
Because it was the first time she'd gone to church with an angel, and the experience was… mind-boggling, to say the least.
She remembered from her early, early years how positively boring the sermons had been. How she'd had to fight to keep awake in the wake of a droning, monotone voice. For some reason, she'd thought going to church with Castiel, as he'd insisted ever since they'd first started dating, would be twenty times worse.
Turns out, it was about a million times better.
Castiel, Angel of the Lord, had a deep fondness for making fun of the preacher. Not that he did it consciously, no, but every time the man spoke of some sort of misgiving, or misquoted, or otherwise botched up the bible, Cas was instantly leaning to his right, brushing shoulders with Amelia to inform her not to listen to a word this heinous man was saying. He would then go on to point out, in outline format, every single lie the man was telling, how wrong his facts were, and his own personal opinions on how to do things better.
Amelia had suggested Cas should become a priest himself. He'd rejected the idea with a smile.
"It's too sacrilegious."
It was from that point on that Amy was adamant every atheist needed their own personal angel.
~*~*~*~
THE END
~*~*~*~
Author/Artist: devilsduplicity
Recipient: Pinch-hit for pathsforme
Characters/Pairings: Cas/OFC, Dean, Sam.
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: Fluff, humor, mild language, and a friendly jab at Jehovah's Witnesses.
Notes/Prompt: The prompt was, Castiel falls for a mortal woman. This idea is just begging to be turned into a full-fledged fic, I swear. \o/
Word Count: ~2,500
Summary: Castiel falls for a mortal woman. Problem is, she's an atheist.
Many much moosum thanks for sin_unforgiven who constantly allows me to spam her with snippets, woes, and ideas for basically everything I write. This included. ♥
When people stalk people, other people become paranoid.
It's a Thursday when Castiel falls for a woman.
Irony's just ironic like that.
He's walking out of a diner with the brothers Winchester when he trips on the last step and goes tumbling down.
For angels, falling is actually quite literal.
God's ironic like that.
Sam stumbles into him, but by that time Castiel has already regained his balance so, to Sam, it feels more like running into a brick wall.
Or an angel.
The sentiments are synonymous.
Dean says something like, "Jesus," and Sam does something like whack Dean in the head but Cas isn't paying a lot of attention because his mind has just confirmed the very thing that caused him to lose his balance in the first place.
Castiel is in love.
~*~*~*~
"You don't even know her name," Dean points out, munching on a double cheeseburger back at the hotel room.
Sam is leaning against the wall, staring at Castiel as if he's the most interesting thing in the entire world. The younger Winchester has his Tin Hat of Knowledge resting firmly on his head.
"No," Castiel relents, watching, fascinated, as Dean inhales his food. "But I know her soul."
He'd seen it, bright as day, back at the diner. She had been standing on the other side of the street, hidden amidst a crowd of faces, and yet her presence had been clear and all-encompassing.
"You know my soul," Dean points out, taking a last bite. "Does that mean I need to start wearing a chastity belt around you?"
Castiel doesn't get it.
"No," he answers, tilting his head.
Sam lays his forehead in his palms.
"So," Dean says, jumping up off the edge of the bed and dusting the crumbs off his fingers. "How're you gonna woo her?"
Castiel blinks.
"'Woo' her?"
"Yeah, you know. You can get your nerd on. Follow her around the neighborhood, find out what kind of gum she chews, cut off a lock of her hair."
Somewhere in the room, Sam groans.
Castiel does that thing where he furrows his brow and tells Dean, silently, that he would make more sense were he to speak in Latin.
"I will… tell her that I am an Angel of the Lord. And that her soul connects to mine, and my Father created us to be one."
Dean blinks.
"Cas, remember that thing I told you about lying?"
Castiel nods.
"Well, now's the time to actually do it."
The incline of the angel's head tilts even further.
"But I don't want to be the president."
~*~*~*~
The next day, Castiel becomes a stalker.
He wouldn't call it stalking, of course, but he's the kind of guy who substitutes words like 'fuck' for 'copulation', so it doesn't really matter what he calls it. It's stalking, through and through.
When people stalk people, other people become paranoid.
When angels stalk people, weird shit happens.
Like lights spontaneously combusting, and random drafts of wind opening and shutting doors and turning perfectly neat piles of paper into a confetti parade.
The girl is a blonde, and she has really pretty blue eyes, but Castiel doesn't really notice that part.
He notices the way his grace reaches out for her, the way his ethereal wings stretch and span the length of a room, simply aching to curl around her spirit. It's an urge so natural, it feels vaguely foreign. He simply can't control himself, and thus the source of all the chaos.
He finds her nameplate and digs through the papers on her desk to find her address, then decides to get out of there before he makes her day suck even more.
~*~*~*~
Amelia Jackson -- Amy, to her friends -- usually loves Fridays.
But she'd flipped her boss off behind his back yesterday when he'd called her a fickle office worker, and she figured karma was just rearing its ugly head to make this Friday the worst Friday in the history of all Fridays.
If she thought the word 'Friday' one more time, she swore to God--
Friday.
Amelia Jackson -- Amy, to her friends -- really, really hates her mind.
An hour later, after she cleans up the unexpected parade of flying papers strewn about her room, Amy goes home.
Not realizing that this was just the beginning.
~*~*~*~
"I'm going to go see her this weekend."
Castiel blinks into existence right beside Dean, making the hunter jump.
Dean's still bloody from his last hunt, and he's walking with a limp.
"'Gee,'" Dean says, voice not his own, "'you look pretty bad off, Dean. Can I lend a hand? No, no, it's not a problem. I'm a friggin' Angel of the Lord, after all. I can take out this ghost in the blink of an eye.'"
A ghost flies towards them and Castiel takes it out in the blink of an eye.
Dean stares, and then curses, and then calls out Sam's name because the job's done.
"What'd you say?" Dean asks as all three of them huddle inside the Impala for warmth. It's the middle of December, and the winter so far has been unrelenting.
"I'm going to see her tomorrow," Castiel says again, staring straight ahead.
Sam is leaning against the passenger door, one arm slung across the back of the front seat, and uses that vantage to peer at the angel behind him.
"Do you know what you're gonna tell her?" Sam asks, genuinely curious.
"The truth," Castiel replies.
~*~*~*~
Amy is a nice person. She might not go so far as to call herself a good person, but she's not a jackass, and that's what matters most. She works a steady nine to five at a local newsstand, with no aspirations for journalism, but a healthy grasp of grammatical error, and she visits her mom and dad at least once a week. She doesn't have a kid -- sad day -- but she has had two husbands.
She'd rather take the kid.
Her life isn't exciting, but she doesn't really like to think it's boring, either, so she just settles for mediocre. No grand explosions or high-speed car chases, but she hasn't resigned herself to watching the paint peel just yet.
She's just settling in to read a book, The Art of Atheism, when the doorbell rings.
No one visits her on Saturdays. Saturdays are her "me" time.
Amy does the strategic thing and peers around the curtain and out her window.
There's an awkward looking man standing there in a tan trench coat, and for a moment she has absolutely no idea who he could possibly be when it finally clicks.
A solicitor.
She inches back slowly, as if afraid of detonating The Bomb, then curls back into her comfy armchair and picks her book back up.
A minute passes.
Then two.
Then five.
She glances back up and sees the man staring at her through the window.
Amy isn't the kind of person who flails, but for this she could make an exception.
She does a little number on the chair that includes dropping her book and falling off the edge, then crawls around to the front of her coffee table and stares at the man staring at her.
For another moment, she wonders why in the hell he hadn't left already, and then it clicks inside her mind, again, and she lets out a little groan.
He must've been Jehovah's Witness, dammit. She'd have to up her game.
She doesn't get up off the floor. She continues to crawl around the coffee table until she makes it to the back of her couch, where she then proceeds to huddle on the ground and wait it out.
Five minutes pass, and she glances around.
He's still there.
Seven minutes later, she looks back again.
Still there.
Three after that, she takes another glance and he's gone.
She sighs, relieved, and is about to lift up off the floor when a hand reaches out to help her.
"Hello."
~*~*~*~
Castiel figures he probably shouldn't have invaded her home like that, but he's still somewhat taken aback at the impossible decibel level her scream reaches.
He pulls his hand back slowly, then tilts his head and peers down at her. He can sense the fear rolling off of her, but that is but a single emotion in a slew of feeling. She's scared, yes, but she's also angry, and confused, and irritated.
She scuffles away from him on the floor, then jumps to her feet and dashes behind the chair.
"Jesus," she exclaims, making Castiel twitch.
"I apologize for the intrusion," he begins, and is about to continue when she cuts him off.
"I'm an atheist," she says. "So why don't you just--" she waves towards her door, "scamper off and find someone else to harass, okay?"
Castiel is highly confused.
"But… I'm here to speak with you, Amelia."
The woman looks like she's about to pull out the big guns when she abruptly chokes on air.
"How did you-- How did you know my name?"
"I read it on your nameplate."
"Were you the guy who messed up my office yesterday?"
Amelia apparently has the uncanny ability to put two and two together.
Castiel glances down, his body folding in on itself a tiny bit, and for all the world he looks almost sheepish.
"I apologize for that, as well."
"Why are you here?" Amy finally bites out, shaking off the shock.
"I would like to speak with you--"
"Yeah, yeah, you already said that. But why?"
The room grows silent, as rooms are wont to do.
"Because we are mated."
Lying has never really been Castiel's thing.
~*~*~*~
"You said what?"
Castiel repeated what he'd said.
"Why?"
Castiel cants his head to the side.
"Because I don't want to be the pr--"
"I think," Sam interrupts, clicking away at the ever-informative internet, "what Dean means is, maybe you should've used a little more tact."
Sam puts away his internet for a moment to look at Cas.
"I would never lie to my mate," Castiel informs them somberly, and both Winchesters wince at that term.
"It's called 'dating', Cas," Sam says.
Castiel tries the word out on his tongue.
He doesn't like it nearly as much.
"Then what am I supposed to do?" the angel asks. He isn't used to human customs, so he's open to ideas.
"Flowers," Sam says.
"Chocolates," Dean says at the same time.
Both brothers look at each other, then turn to Cas and repeat in unison, "Flowers and chocolates."
~*~*~*~
Come Monday morning, Amelia walks into work to find her office littered with flowers.
Which is all fine and well, except now her room smells like a funeral parlor, and she can't for the life of her find that article they were supposed to be running on page three.
The chocolates are good, though. She'll be snacking on those for lunch.
Part of her freaks out when a familiar face shows up outside of her door that day.
Another part isn't at all surprised.
"Come in," she says cautiously, then pops a caramel-filled chocolate into her mouth.
The door opens, and an awkward trench-coat wearing man with the most intense blue eyes she's ever seen steps inside. He closes the door behind him, and Amy swallows thickly.
Mostly because of the caramel, but, well, you get the picture.
"What can I do you for?" she asks, pointedly ignoring the fact that he broke into her house over the weekend and professed his status as her 'mate'.
She was being polite out of a fear of enraging the crazy. The moment he stepped out of her office, she was going to call the police.
He moves closer, still standing just in front of the door, then straightens his spine. Amy is taken aback by how intimidating he suddenly looks.
"I wasn't lying," he begins. "The other day when I was at your house… I wasn't lying."
Amy blinks, leans back in her chair, and regards him curiously.
When she doesn't say anything, the man takes another step forward.
"My name is Castiel," he says, his voice firm and unwavering. It sends a chill down Amelia's spine.
"I am an Angel of the Lord."
~*~*~*~
Instead of raving at him violently, like Castiel had expected, the girl merely narrows her eyes.
"I don't believe in angels," she says.
Cas shakes his head.
Neither had Dean.
"We're mated," he replies, trying to reinforce this idea. Already he can see her spirit reacting to the news. It brightens each time he says it.
"I can't be mated to something that doesn't exist."
She's stubborn, but that's far from disheartening.
"I exist," he says, taking another step forward.
Amelia watches him closely, her every breath careful and measured.
"Yes," she finally relents. "You do. But angels don't."
Castiel spreads his invisible wings and flies from one end of the room to the other.
Amy stares at the spot where he had just been for several moments, then glances to her right to peer up at where he was now standing beside her.
She sucks in a breath and is about to let it out in a scream.
Cas wraps his hand around her mouth and brings his finger to his lips.
"Don't. Please."
~*~*~*~
Amelia can't remember the last time she'd gone to church, but she supposed that didn't really matter.
Because it was the first time she'd gone to church with an angel, and the experience was… mind-boggling, to say the least.
She remembered from her early, early years how positively boring the sermons had been. How she'd had to fight to keep awake in the wake of a droning, monotone voice. For some reason, she'd thought going to church with Castiel, as he'd insisted ever since they'd first started dating, would be twenty times worse.
Turns out, it was about a million times better.
Castiel, Angel of the Lord, had a deep fondness for making fun of the preacher. Not that he did it consciously, no, but every time the man spoke of some sort of misgiving, or misquoted, or otherwise botched up the bible, Cas was instantly leaning to his right, brushing shoulders with Amelia to inform her not to listen to a word this heinous man was saying. He would then go on to point out, in outline format, every single lie the man was telling, how wrong his facts were, and his own personal opinions on how to do things better.
Amelia had suggested Cas should become a priest himself. He'd rejected the idea with a smile.
"It's too sacrilegious."
It was from that point on that Amy was adamant every atheist needed their own personal angel.
~*~*~*~
THE END
~*~*~*~