a/n: A review! Follows! Thank you! I appreciate them. It's always nice to be received into a new fandom.

Chapter 2: The Taste of Honey

I miss that feeling of feeling.
-The Avett Brothers, "Tin Man"

It wasn't that he had assumed the task he'd set himself would be simple. His experiences with Dean and Sam had taught him that interactions with humans were never simple. They rarely did as you expected and even more rarely did as you would have them do. They were contrary and stubborn and infuriating. Their limited view of the universe left them with minds so small but egos so big…well. It was impossible to put into words, really.

All of this he knew—or thought he knew—from his time on Earth. What he hadn't known was that all the time in the world with the Winchesters could never have prepared him for…her. She was a completely different sort of creature. It had only been one day, but already any of the frustration he'd previously felt toward a human was a paltry and pitiful thing compared to what he felt now.

She was impossible.

First, she wouldn't tell him her name. He knew her name, of course. He knew everything about her. He knew where she was going. Where she came from. He knew about the brother who fixed cars. He knew what had her looking over her shoulder like a startled doe every time they stopped for more than a few minutes. He knew the exact moment she had stepped off the path she'd been on and down a darker, more twisted one. And he knew why she'd done it.

None of that was the point. It's true he wasn't very good with people, but he'd finally figured out that they didn't like it when an angel dumped all their deepest, darkest secrets into their laps. That was the lesson he'd taken away from the brothel—once Dean had stopped laughing long enough to explain it to him. He wanted to help this woman, and the method he'd taken with the prostitute (Dean had told him he couldn't call them fallen women) that night wasn't going to work here. It certainly hadn't worked there.

Her music perplexed him. The words came fast, the metaphors like tiny bullets that whizzed past his head and left him dizzy. She laughed at his confusion and changed it to something he preferred, the old masters like Mozart or Bach. That soothed him, but it perplexed him further. She'd told him the driver picked the music—he'd understood that much—and she wouldn't let him drive. So why…?

She pretended not to notice when he didn't eat. When the biting cold didn't affect him. She altered her speech patterns to exclude references and metaphors that she knew would confuse him. She'd caught him talking to their hotel's cat this morning and had barely raised a brow.

Infuriating. Infuriating because she wasn't supposed to adapt to him. He was adapting to her, at least as well as he could. He was an angel attempting to pass as human, and it was rough going, especially after all he'd been through recently. She was taking all of his strangeness as though it were a matter of course, and nothing seemed to daunt her.

She wouldn't tell him her name. She had yet to ask him his. She refused to react to his otherness. Maybe he was on a fool's mission. Maybe there was nothing left of the woman he'd come to save.

He frowned and stared out the window. Handel's Water Music filled the small car and drowned out the road noise. The sky above them was darkening. Snow soon, he thought. Very soon.

If there was nothing left, why was she running?

He turned to look at her. There was a crease of concentration between her dark eyes. A stray shaft of sun fell across her face and highlighted the smattering of freckles over her nose. Flashed copper from her brows. Her hair was brown, but it was a lie, and her coppery brows were a giveaway she'd apparently forgotten. A chink in the armor of her disguise.

She pulled a pair of sunglasses from the center console and slid them on. Her eyes disappeared behind tinted glass and he sat back in his seat, disappointed. A moment later he leaned forward again to get another look at the sky. It definitely looked like snow. That sunbeam was the last they'd see in a while.

After hours of quiet, he was acting strange again. Stranger than usual, and that was saying something. She watched from the corner of her eye as he swiveled around in his seat. Peered out the windshield down the road. Craned his neck around to look behind them.

"Are you trying to practice car yoga, or is something wrong?"

He looked startled, like he'd forgotten she was there. "Ah. It's the weather," he said. "It's changing."

She leaned forward to gaze up at the lowering sky. "I don't know much about it, but kinda looks like snow to me. Snow in November." She shuddered. "I guess these were a bit premature." She pulled the sunglasses off and stowed them away.

It said something, some part of her noted, that she wasn't a bit surprised by his human barometer act. One day on the road and she was already taking his idiosyncrasies in stride. Well, witness a man actually attempt to carry on a conversation with a feral cat, and…

She let the thought trail away. It didn't matter. They weren't going to be together long enough for any of this to matter. He was a strange guy, and that was fine. She kind of liked his strangeness. It was an innocent strangeness, not a dark and twisted weirdness like she had started to become accustomed to in LA. She didn't want to think about LA. Wasn't she driving as far east as fast as she could so that she wouldn't have to think about LA? She glanced over her shoulder to set eyes on her bag. Still there. Still safe.

"We should stop," he said.

"Stop? What are you talking about? We're making good time."

He pointed toward a sign. "It says there's an overlook."

"An overlook of what? There's nothing but cows here."

"Something, apparently, or there wouldn't be an overlook. We can see the snow."

"There isn't any snow," she said, struggling to keep her voice even.

"There will be."

"You seriously want to stop at a cow overlook?"

"I like cows. They're serene."

"I…" She laughed a little. "I guess I can't argue with that. Cow overlook it is."

Gravel crunched beneath the tires as she turned in, but from the parking lot scrubby trees obscured any sort of view. "We'll have to get out," he said.

"To see the cows."

"Yes," he said. "To see the cows."

"Right. Wait here while I get my coat."

He got out of the car and stood next to it while she added layers. A coat. Hat. Scarf. Gloves. She was from the South, and she hated this cold. One of the few things about LA that had suited her was the climate. At the last minute he remembered the coat Dean had insisted he buy. The cold didn't bother him, but he had to act like he at least noticed it.

They started up a path that turned surprisingly steep as they walked it, and just as she started to get winded (he didn't really notice things like steep paths, either) the trees cleared and the view swept out before them in a startling vista.

"Oh," she said in a little rush of air. "That's not cows."

He smiled, but she was too absorbed in the spectacle to notice. "Look," he said, pointing over her shoulder. "It's starting." The clouds moved closer, and as they did they brought a dancing veil of snow.

She laughed, a delighted, unfettered sound of pure joy and raised her hands toward it. "Ohh," she said again. Far to the west the sun broke free, and a thin snake of a river was turned to molten silver by its rays.

"Did you know this was here?" she said in a soft voice.

"I had an idea."

She turned toward him. Her smile was like a beacon, brighter than that far away sun. She watched the way the snowflakes danced in his dark blue eyes. Melted in his sooty hair. "Oh, damn," she said because she knew what was going to happen next and part of her regretted it and part of her didn't. Not even one tiny bit.

His face changed. He leaned closer. Their lips touched and he knew he'd made a terrible mistake. Not because he didn't enjoy it. He enjoyed it very much. It was the second kiss of his life, and very different from the first. That was beside the point.

Shortly after that she did something with her tongue and he lost the ability to think coherently and he forgot why any of it was a mistake at all.

Kissing him was…well it was nice, of course. She had known it would be nice from the moment she set eyes on him. But there was something else. Something bedsides the warm softness of his mouth against hers. The gentle roughness of his slightly chapped lips. The scrape of his stubble across her cheek.

Beneath all of those things there was something…more. A hum. A tingle. A buzz. She felt like an idiot, and she knew she had to be imagining it, but…she pressed closer and the kiss deepened and she swore she felt the fine hairs along the back of her neck stand on end. He made a terribly interesting noise in the back of his throat, and she knew she had to stop now or she couldn't be held at all responsible for what might happen next.

She pulled back. Her breath fell away in a gasp. "Who are you?"

He blinked at her. His eyes were big and dark and dazed. She could drown in those eyes and might not regret that, either. "My friends call me Cas."

"Do you kiss all your friends like that, Cas?"

"No. Just two of them, so far."

She let out an ironic little laugh. "So far. I'll keep that in mind."

He might have said something further, but a sound distracted them both. The crunch-and-slide of footsteps on gravel. Their heads turned in near-identical swivels, but it was he who reacted first.

"We should go," he said.

"Probably just someone else out to enjoy the view," she said, but the tightness in her voice belied the light words. Her hands were still against his chest, and without her realizing it her fingers had made fists of his coat. He raised his own hands; carefully loosened her grip.

"We should go," he said again, his voice quieter, deeper.

She gave a jerky nod, and it wasn't until they were back at the car that she let go of his hand. The walk seemed to have cleared her head, and as they faced each other over the roof of the car, she offered him a sardonic smile. "Hey, so, about that…"

"About what?"

"The whole kiss thing…?"

His brow furrowed.

"It was just the moment, you know? The snow and the view and the sun." She shrugged. Smiled. "It could've happened to anyone."

"Anyone?" he said.

"Any good Samaritan traveler and her strangely attractive hitchhiker, yeah."

"I'm the strangely attractive hitchhiker in this scenario?"

"Um. By process of elimination, you would be, wouldn't you?"

"And you're the good Samaritan traveler?"

"Obviously. Not everyone would take you in. You're weird. This whole situation is weird."

He pondered this for a while, his deep blue gaze lost in the distance. Finally, "You find me attractive?"

She rolled her eyes. "Just get in the car, Cas. And no more cows, okay?"

"Very well," he said. "No more cows." He climbed in the car next to her with the sinking feeling that he'd done far more harm than good, and, more than that, that he'd never get the taste of her—honey and snow and sunshine—off his lips.

Infuriating woman.

Ok, I know what you're thinking: that was fast! But give it a chance. There's a reason.