AN: Hey guys! Here is the second installment, it's still a bit short but the ACTION IS NOT YET BEGUN. Enjoy!

Chapter 2: Considering Introducing Oneself

He was trying his damndest to pay attention to what the Whining Winchesters were saying to him but he was having a hard time concentrating on what new reason Squirrel hated himself of how Castiel's next poorly construed attempt to save something was inevitably going to fail and destroy creation.

He was fiddling with a flower bud in his left hand. The flower bud. The flower bud that damned infernal girl had made when she brushed against that damned infernal plant. No. A flower bud. A flower bud that had already existed and had been brushed against by some human worm who didn't matter and certainly didn't make flowers bloom. Just a silly girl in a ridiculously floral dress who had made him uncomfortable because he was poisoned with human blood, and not from any quality inherent to her one hundred and forty pounds of worthless meat.

The Winchesters were staring at him and he thought that maybe they had asked him something.

"Are you even paying attention, Crowley?" Dean barked at him in his usual irritated growl. "And stop making a mess." He sneered down at Crowley, "What is that, is that a flower?"

"Look, boys, you've kept me very busy looking for this blade-"

Not Moose scoffed and rolled his eyes, "Very busy? You spent that last five weeks curled up in a hotel room drowning yourself in human blood."

Crowley stared at him and blinked slowly, "Look, boys, you've kept me very busy looking for this blade but I've got matters of my own to deal with."

Moose gaped at him and, in accordance with custom, spat his response in a tone trying desperately to be deeper and gruffer than his brother's, "What matters of your own? You need Abaddon dead just as much as we do."

"Very true, however, there is a small matter I must attend to before I can dip back into the depths of the ocean."

The words had all sort of all tumbled out of his mouth before he entirely had a hold on them. He wasn't entirely sure what he had meant by it. The plan rumbling up on his brain had been to convince them to go after that girl while he searched for the blade. But that was madness. He wasn't going to send Butch Boys after some girl he saw in a café. He couldn't even imagine saying those words out loud. 'Excuse me, darlings, but if you wouldn't mind there is an innocent human girl who looked at me funny and I would really love it if you could find her and bring her to me for no reason.'

That wasn't a road he was dreaming of going down.

"Crowley!"

He jumped and looked up at the Plaid Patrol towering above him, "I think you were pretty clear about you being the only one who can find the blade, so jump to it, we've got a case, call us if you find something."

"Alright, boys, you've won, I'll go back into the deep and find your blade.

He gave the Denim Dyad a withering look and snapped his fingers.

XXXXX

And he did. He really did go looking for that blade and he found a long and very complicated provenance, but come Wednesday afternoon, refilled with human blood via an extremely snarky waiter who had lied quite brazenly about the quality of his establishment's Scotch, he was back in that ridiculously sunny café.

He strode through the obnoxiously tinkling door and to his surprise, or chagrin, or something that tawdry, irritating, floral girl was reading a book at a table drinking a tea, infernal wretch. Without invitation he sat across from her.

"Hello, darling."

She looked up from her book, she did not still have her deer in the headlights look she had graced him with before. She looked at him calmly, carefully marked her page, and closed her book. In the same steady voice as before she said, "You're back."

He wasn't going to take any of this, she didn't get to act like he was the one trailing after her when she had spent an afternoon staring at him across a cup of coffee. He narrowed his eyes.

"It was you who were staring at me, love. And I think, you know me." He had been thinking about this a lot. Not a lot. Some. He had given the matter a few passing moments of consideration and determined that the only possible reason for her prolonged and in no way inherently unsettling staring was because she knew him. And because he had no idea who she was, it was in his best interest to find out. Pragmatically. She could be dangerous.

She fixed him with a long, searching look and laughed. This, he thought with a mixture of irritation and interest, was beautiful. It sounded like springtime, like being alive, like being human. Unconsciously, he leaned forward. She didn't throw her head back, but she tilted it minutely and with her mouth open and smiling, her features aligned spectacularly, like a flower in bloom. When she stopped laughing, the jutting jaw and unremarkable eyes returned and she was ordinary at best. She had been designed to laugh.

She narrowed her eyes at him and he realized his mouth was open. He closed it, and narrowed his eyes right back. She tightened her lips and she looked annoyed at herself.

In a voice much harsher that it had been before she replied to the accusation he had made, "If I knew you, wouldn't I have greeted you, asked you to join me? Instead of leaving as soon as you swooped down at me?"

He tilted his lips in an off kilter smirk, "Pet, if you knew me, you would know that leaving is just what you should do when I swoop."

She smiled as though she might laugh again then clicked her teeth shut. "I just thought you were someone I had known…a long time ago."

Crowley had noticed it again, disregarding the girl, the other patrons of the wretched establishment refused to even look at him. He glanced around as a boy, young, looked up at him from his crayons and, briefly, made eye contact with him. The boy looked down so quickly Crowley was certain he must have strained his neck. Again, this raked against his mood.

She sighed harshly "Stop scaring the children."

He scoffed, and snarled at her, "Stop scaring the children? Do you have any idea who I am?" He hadn't intended to be so harsh, nor did he want to reveal himself as the King of Hell just yet, but his emotions hadn't quite been what he was used to of late.

She looked at him piercingly then said, very evenly, "How could I possibly, you haven't introduced yourself."

He calmed himself and tipped his head to her mockingly, "Crowley."

"Stop scaring the children, Crowley."

"Most people would consider returning an introduction."

"How would you know what I considered?"

He glared at her, flummoxed.

She laughed briefly again before stilling herself, Crowley was irritated at how disappointed he was she had not laughed for longer. He was aesthetically disappointed. She was beautiful when she laughed and he deserved beautiful things. It was nothing more than that.

She looked at him for a very long then gave him an indulgent smile, "Mary." She took a brief sip of her tea and smoothed her skirt, again floral.

He raised an eyebrow elegantly, "You have quite the affinity for flowers, Mary."

He had designed that particular comment with a number of specific goals. Besides wanting her to know that her never ending supply of floral dresses was ridiculous, he first, and most obviously, would very much like to let her know that he had seen the stunt with the flower bud. Which he now firmly believed was a stunt and not happenstance. Second, he was interested in what she did when he said that name.

Being a crossroads salesman taught one many things. But one of its first and most important lessons what how to tell when someone thought information was precious. This skill was infinitely more important that the banal ability to tell if someone was lying. It seemed these days there was some red eyed rookie at every intersection who 'had a particular ability to tell if someone was lying'. Far more importantly there were times when people gave up information that it cost them to tell you. Up the same path as pricy pieces of truths were shadows and hopes that people would be willing to pay everything for.

And, although the girl had wheedled the conversation around as long as she could to keep her name from being given up, and although before she did she had analyzed him like a lab rat, it had cost her nothing to give away. Like Hell her name was Mary. But he would let her have it for awhile.

Her face had tightened and he thought maybe he had given away too much but before he could try to recover a cacophonous, rumbling roar slugged through the open windows accompanied, to the confusion and irritation of Crowley, an uncomfortably familiar Impala.

"You know the meatheads?" She asked, smirking.

"Why would you ask that?" He purred at her.

She tossed her head back and laughed and when she did Crowley's heart …beat arhythmically because his vessel was getting on in years, which was worrying for…purely medical reasons. Her face was filled with life and it was as though the world was bending to get nearer her. The sunlight which, moments ago, had been streaming through the window left its regular path to saunter through her hair and play amongst her colors.

She was a monster.

She was casting actual magic and was a monster and that's what the Hefty Hunters were here for. He put his hands on the table and leaned forward, narrowing his eyes at her, a smile crawling across his face.

"Because as soon as that car went passed you sneered at it and got all growley."

He disregarded her comment, and said forwardly, "I know what you are."

She scoffed briefly then mimicked him, steepling her fingers on the table just as he had and leaning forward, inches from his face. She mirrored his smile unsettlingly well.

"A librarian, in a floral dress."

He furrowed his brow at her, thinking of all those others whose eyes slid passed him and refused to sit near him, "You aren't scared of me."

Still inches from his face, she mimicked his expression again, "You're not scary."

He leaned just a millimeter closer and curled his lips into what he had long considered his most frightening smile. One he had perfected to give to demons who disobeyed him, to let them know they were moments for pleading to be dead. "I'll show you what fear is, Mary."

To his immense distaste, she didn't miss a beat in leaning just a bit closer, till he could feel her breath on his face and giving his smile back to him, "Well, I'm sure you'll try, Crowley."

She held herself still a moment, a hair's breadth from Crowley, smiling in his face, then stood smoothly and walked out of the café.

AN: Thanks for reading! I'm in the process of moving so I'm not entirely sure when I'll be posting chapter three but I'll try to work on it. Drop a review and let me know what you think so far!