And sometimes I hate myself
[Temptation]
ooc: co-written with stillacrime and whattingawhat. This falls in with the many other apocalypse storylines
The smell was overwhelming. He was drowning in it and he couldn't get away from it. He could hear their heartbeats separated from him by a wall and Angelus taunted him with images of the things he'd do, the things he wanted to do. They crawled and scratched inside his mind, wearing at his willpower like physical friction. Every second it was abraded more. He didn't bother with the elevator or the stairs, merely jumped out the window and started running. When the whole world smelled like a feast just waiting for him to glut himself upon it, there was only one safe place. He couldn't get away from it because it trickled down the sidewalks and flowed through the gutters. It dripped down into tunnels and secrets places not populated by humans. By the time he reached Buffy's apartment he was covered in blood and he'd given up the struggle against his vamp face a long time ago. He was still fighting the demon but he had to pick his battles and that one he was willing to let go. His pounding on the door was frantic and probably too hard.
Buffy sat up in bed even before she heard the pounding on the door. She knew it was raining outside but she had no idea to the exact nature of the rain. She'd pulled the curtains shut as soon as it had started. "It's Angel," she told Danny as she grabbed a pair of sweats to go with the white wife beater she'd worn to bed. She opened the door to find a blood soaked Angel in full vamp face. She bit her bottom lip and reached out, grabbing his arm to pull him inside, over the threshold. She slammed the door shut behind him and looked up into desperate, panic-stricken golden eyes. She supposed the cat was out of the bag regarding Angel's species now. Her eyes searched hers, asking questions without words.
"I didn't hurt anyone but it's raining blood...and it's human."
Danny crawled out of bed behind Buffy and while he already had a pair of sweat pants on, he grabbed a white tank to pull over his head. When he walked groggily into the living room and noted the blood dripping all over the floor and then Angel's face, he glanced at Buffy to make sure she saw everything too. "Let's hear it for hardwood floors, yeah? Easy clean up." He turned to the kitchen in pursuit of some paper towels. But he knew from experience, blood never really came out of anything, there was always trace.
Angel watched Danny like he was something to eat whole. He stared at him like a predator watching prey. Buffy might be too much of a predator for him to ever look at that way but Danny wasn't. He could hear the man's heart beat in his chest and he heard when it picked up, slamming hummingbird fast against his ribcage. Danny smelled like nicotine, sweat and food to Angel. Everything else was secondary at this moment.
Buffy reached up and grabbed Angel's chin, forcing him to look at her. "Hey, right here. Watch me." She looked back at Danny, biting her bottom lip. "I'm sorry," she told Danny in a quiet voice then she looked back to Angel. "What's going on, Big Guy?" She put her other hand on his bicep, squeezing hard. She kept his chin in her fingers, enough pressure against his jaw to bruise him. She was trying to give him something to steady himself with.
The touch from Buffy at least gave him something to think about besides the fact that there was the smell of blood everywhere. He swallowed hard, his eyes fixated on the scar at the curve of her neck. "I tried to fight it and their heartbeats were too loud. Lucy and Jill...just on the other side of the wall. I could hear their hearts beating and their breath...and everything smelled so good. It's not like pig's blood. No matter how much I tell myself-it's not. I got scared. I was afraid I was going to hurt them and I knew I wouldn't hurt you. I couldn't hurt you like that and you wouldn't let me hurt anyone else."
Buffy nodded, glancing out of the corner of her eye at Danny still getting paper towels in the kitchen. She'd have to check on him to see how he was handling this as soon as she got Angel settled. "Let's get you in the shower and I'll find something for you to put on. Wash your hair and scrub your skin. I've got vanilla body wash in there. Try that."
"Bleach. It'll destroy the smell," Angel said around his fangs. His voice was tight and hoarse, as if he was trying to avoid screaming.
"I'm not letting you bleach your skin, Angel. Come on. Shower first. I'll call the butcher," she said as she physically pushed him toward the bathroom. Once there she turned on the water as hot as it would go and got out a towel. She looked at him a little lost before she pulled herself together. "I don't have anything you can wear," she said then she stepped back out of the bathroom and grabbed a blanket from the couch. She placed it on the sink. "Wrap up in that and come sit on the couch when you're finished." She paused, still watching him. "You'll be alright. Don't leave. Stay here with me and I'll make sure you're okay."
Danny took a moment to light some scented candles and open the balcony door to look outside. What he saw shocked him; red blood falling like rain from the sky. His brow furrowed in confusion as he carried the Windex and paper towels over to the floor to clean up the trail of blood all the way to the closed bathroom door where Buffy was inside with Angel. He could hear voices muffled by the shower spray but couldn't really make out any words. He left the Windex and paper towels by the door and moved back into the living room.
Grabbing his pack of cigarettes off of the table, he lit up and smoked, leaning against the wall next to the screen door. Going outside in that crap was not an option so he stayed just inside with the screen door as a vent of sorts and watched the unspeakable and the impossible outside become reality. He couldn't decide what was more unnerving right now; the blood falling from the sky, that Buffy's ex-boyfriend was a vampire or that she was alone in the bathroom with him while he was taking a shower.
Buffy kept her back to the shower, staying just long enough to make sure Angel got in. She collected all of his clothes in a pile, rolling them in a towel so she didn't have to take a shower when all of this was over. "Angel, I'm just going to be right outside. I'm gonna get rid of these clothes."
"I'll be fine," he said but it was more of a monotone, of a mantra than an actual reassurance.
"I promise you will," she told him as she opened the door to the bathroom and stepped outside, closing the door behind her. She stuffed the towel and the clothes in a garbage bag, tied it up and shoved it down the garbage shoot then stepped over to where Danny was leaning against the wall smoking. She walked up to him hesitantly, gnawing at her bottom lip as she did. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed a kiss to his collarbone. "How you doing, Boyfriend?" she asked, knowing it was a ridiculous question.
Circling his arm with the free hand around Buffy's shoulders, Danny squeezed her close and kissed the top of her head. He took in another long drag of his cigarette before he answered her. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm..." He searched for a good word that would be closest to the truth but came up empty. "Hey, did you know Angel's a vampire? And I don't know what the Hell's goin' on out there." He nodded in the direction of the screen door. "Makes no sense."
"Apocalypse. Rain of blood...makes sense," Buffy said quietly as she rested her head against Danny's chest, listening to his heartbeat for a moment. "He had been one for 227 years before I met him. He's good though. He has a soul and he helps people. The ones I hunt are just evil, a demon inside a body. He's got the demon and the soul to listen to. He doesn't have anywhere else to go, Danny. He's afraid of hurting someone else and he knows I won't let that happen. I'm sorry. I would have told you sooner but...I didn't want to overwhelm you."
In the shower, Angel was scrubbing his skin with vanilla body wash, trying as hard as he could to get Buffy's scent all over him instead of the scent of blood. The hot water was nearly scalding but it didn't turn his skin red because there was no blood to bring to the surface. It heated him up from inside and made him feel a little more human.
So easy math put Buffy with Angel while he had been a vampire. Danny wasn't stupid, but the whole apocalypse thing did not make sense to him. He was standing here looking at it pouring blood and still just didn't comprehend it. And part of him was wondering what the Hell Buffy was doing with a normal Jo Schmo like himself. Her whole world was this big amazing thing. She had dated and still had some kind of thing he couldn't explain with a two-hundred plus year old vampire. The fact that she wanted to be with him made just about as much sense to Danny as the raining blood outside.
He drew another long drag of his cigarette and tried to shrug his thought process off as if it were nothing. "S'alright, Summers. He gonna be okay? Should we like... I dunno... be Cloverfield-ing it or somethin'? Gathering all our loved ones and headin' for the hills with a video camera to document it all in case we don't make it?"
Buffy rested her chin on Danny's chest, watching him. "Only if you don't have any faith in me but if you want to get your Mom and Dad out of here, try LA. Eventually it would reach there but you've got some time. If I don't stop this thing, nothing will be safe ever. I've killed things bigger and badder than what's coming and I'm going to get this one too. I promise." She pressed a kiss to Danny's chest. "As far as Angel...he's going to be okay. I need to call the butcher and get a couple of pints of pig's blood here for him. The less hungry he is, the better he can deal with the smell of human blood around him. That's what he eats, pig's blood. Human blood makes everyone smell like food."
Her confidence was reassuring to Danny and he nodded slightly, brushing back her hair from her forehead as he held his cigarette between his lips. He expertly spoke around it without it dropping to the floor as he cradled either side of her face in his palms. "Well then why don't you do that. Order whatever blood and we'll deal with this." Because he had seen how Angel had looked at him, and it wasn't something he really was okay with.
In truth, he was kind of freaking out. But he was putting on an okay front, which he was glad for because Angel was here. He was not going to freak out in front of Angel if he could help it.
Buffy smiled at him and pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips that didn't hold the cigarette. She pulled away and dialed the butcher shop that dealt with demons and blood pick up. She promised the guy there a big tip if he'd deliver four pints to the apartment. She didn't want anyone in this apartment going back out there. Just as she hung up the phone, Angel came out of the bathroom wrapped up in the blanket she'd left in there for him. The scent of vanilla was almost overwhelming and she was pretty sure Angel had used most of her body wash and shampoo on himself.
"Better?" she asked as she walked over to him. Normally, Angel sent Buffy straight into defensive posture but she knew she couldn't afford that right now. He still had a demon screaming inside of him and she needed to be as dominant as possible. She put one hand on her hip and ran the other through his wet hair as she went up on tip toe.
Angel nodded in answer to her question. "Everything smells like you now."
Buffy shrugged to that. "I wrap up in that blanket when we're watching movies."
"It also smells like Danny but...not in a bad way." In a bad way meaning not like food.
"Okay, come on. Sit down on the couch and we'll wait for your blood to get here. If it gets bad, I'll lock you in our bedroom," Buffy told him as she guided him over to the couch.
He chuckled a little, regaining his sense of humor a bit now that everything wasn't overwhelming scented like blood. "Are you thinking of torturing me?"
"Nah, I just know what it smells like to you and that's not blood."
Angel glanced over at Danny when he sat down then looked down to the floor. "Sorry," he said quietly.
Danny shrugged lightly and took another drag of his cigarette. The apartment was filled with so many scents now that he wasn't sure how Angel could smell the blood outside. Between the scented candles Buffy had brought home, his cigarette, Windex and the scent of vanilla that usually came after Buffy took a shower, he thought that they should be pretty well covered.
"Hey don't worry 'bout it." He paused to take a drag off of his cigarette. "I wouldn't wanna be out there in that either."
The scents were muddled now but Angel had the nose of a dog. He was grateful for the cigarette and the vanilla smell colliding with each other. It helped more than anything else. He could even smell the scent of Danny's fear and confusion woven amongst all the other scents.
"I feel sorry for the delivery boy," Buffy said.
"Don't," Angel told her. "He's a theslla demon. He'll lick himself clean afterwards and be happy about it."
There was a knock on the door and Buffy got up to answer it. She grabbed cash out of her purse so she could give him the big tip she'd promised. The theslla demon was pale green, covered in darker green freckles. He had a Yankees cap pulled down low and a leather jacket with the collar flipped up. He smelled a little like a sewer but he wasn't covered in blood and Buffy knew he had to have taken an underground route. He handed a big paper bag over to Buffy and looked down at her wide eyed.
"Slayer? They didn't tell me I was delivering to no slayer. I stay under the radar, I don't kill no one and I don't hurt anything. I get all my blood from Tony. I swear," the demon was almost sweating bullets.
Buffy shook her head and rolled her eyes. "If I wanted to kill you I wouldn't have invited you to my house. The smell of theslla never comes out of anything." She handed over the cash and the demon scampered away without pause. She carried the blood back into the apartment."Heated?" she asked Angel.
Angel nodded. "About 43 seconds will put it close to 98 degrees."
Buffy nodded as she carried the blood into the kitchen. She poured it into one of her giant cappachino mugs and stuck it in the microwave. She watched Danny where he leaned up against the wall still as the microwave worked. Once it beeped she took it out and carried it over to Angel.
Angel glanced over at Danny then back at the blood. Buffy walked over to Danny and leaned against him. "Go ahead," she told Angel. "He doesn't gross out easy."
Danny's gaze followed Buffy as he stood still leaning back against the wall quietly. She was heating up blood for him like she had to have done so many times before. No, he wasn't grossed out. He was still weirded out. When his cigarette was down to the butt, he lit another one without any hesitation using what was left of the flaming ash on the old butt. It had been a long time since he had chain smoked like this but he couldn't help it.
He looked down to the floor and back out of the screen door so that Angel wouldn't feel uncomfortable drinking in front of him. Far be it for him to kick a guy when he's down. That just wasn't in him to do. Temptation to lose his cool was strong. His nerves were bubbling just beneath the cool exterior. But his faith in Buffy was what he focused on, not the blood raining down, not the vampire drinking blood in his living room, nothing else but faith in Buffy. She said that this was going to be alright. And he believed her. He had to because right now he didn't know what else to believe.
ooc: co-written with stillacrime and whattingawhat. This falls in with the many other apocalypse storylines
The smell was overwhelming. He was drowning in it and he couldn't get away from it. He could hear their heartbeats separated from him by a wall and Angelus taunted him with images of the things he'd do, the things he wanted to do. They crawled and scratched inside his mind, wearing at his willpower like physical friction. Every second it was abraded more. He didn't bother with the elevator or the stairs, merely jumped out the window and started running. When the whole world smelled like a feast just waiting for him to glut himself upon it, there was only one safe place. He couldn't get away from it because it trickled down the sidewalks and flowed through the gutters. It dripped down into tunnels and secrets places not populated by humans. By the time he reached Buffy's apartment he was covered in blood and he'd given up the struggle against his vamp face a long time ago. He was still fighting the demon but he had to pick his battles and that one he was willing to let go. His pounding on the door was frantic and probably too hard.
Buffy sat up in bed even before she heard the pounding on the door. She knew it was raining outside but she had no idea to the exact nature of the rain. She'd pulled the curtains shut as soon as it had started. "It's Angel," she told Danny as she grabbed a pair of sweats to go with the white wife beater she'd worn to bed. She opened the door to find a blood soaked Angel in full vamp face. She bit her bottom lip and reached out, grabbing his arm to pull him inside, over the threshold. She slammed the door shut behind him and looked up into desperate, panic-stricken golden eyes. She supposed the cat was out of the bag regarding Angel's species now. Her eyes searched hers, asking questions without words.
"I didn't hurt anyone but it's raining blood...and it's human."
Danny crawled out of bed behind Buffy and while he already had a pair of sweat pants on, he grabbed a white tank to pull over his head. When he walked groggily into the living room and noted the blood dripping all over the floor and then Angel's face, he glanced at Buffy to make sure she saw everything too. "Let's hear it for hardwood floors, yeah? Easy clean up." He turned to the kitchen in pursuit of some paper towels. But he knew from experience, blood never really came out of anything, there was always trace.
Angel watched Danny like he was something to eat whole. He stared at him like a predator watching prey. Buffy might be too much of a predator for him to ever look at that way but Danny wasn't. He could hear the man's heart beat in his chest and he heard when it picked up, slamming hummingbird fast against his ribcage. Danny smelled like nicotine, sweat and food to Angel. Everything else was secondary at this moment.
Buffy reached up and grabbed Angel's chin, forcing him to look at her. "Hey, right here. Watch me." She looked back at Danny, biting her bottom lip. "I'm sorry," she told Danny in a quiet voice then she looked back to Angel. "What's going on, Big Guy?" She put her other hand on his bicep, squeezing hard. She kept his chin in her fingers, enough pressure against his jaw to bruise him. She was trying to give him something to steady himself with.
The touch from Buffy at least gave him something to think about besides the fact that there was the smell of blood everywhere. He swallowed hard, his eyes fixated on the scar at the curve of her neck. "I tried to fight it and their heartbeats were too loud. Lucy and Jill...just on the other side of the wall. I could hear their hearts beating and their breath...and everything smelled so good. It's not like pig's blood. No matter how much I tell myself-it's not. I got scared. I was afraid I was going to hurt them and I knew I wouldn't hurt you. I couldn't hurt you like that and you wouldn't let me hurt anyone else."
Buffy nodded, glancing out of the corner of her eye at Danny still getting paper towels in the kitchen. She'd have to check on him to see how he was handling this as soon as she got Angel settled. "Let's get you in the shower and I'll find something for you to put on. Wash your hair and scrub your skin. I've got vanilla body wash in there. Try that."
"Bleach. It'll destroy the smell," Angel said around his fangs. His voice was tight and hoarse, as if he was trying to avoid screaming.
"I'm not letting you bleach your skin, Angel. Come on. Shower first. I'll call the butcher," she said as she physically pushed him toward the bathroom. Once there she turned on the water as hot as it would go and got out a towel. She looked at him a little lost before she pulled herself together. "I don't have anything you can wear," she said then she stepped back out of the bathroom and grabbed a blanket from the couch. She placed it on the sink. "Wrap up in that and come sit on the couch when you're finished." She paused, still watching him. "You'll be alright. Don't leave. Stay here with me and I'll make sure you're okay."
Danny took a moment to light some scented candles and open the balcony door to look outside. What he saw shocked him; red blood falling like rain from the sky. His brow furrowed in confusion as he carried the Windex and paper towels over to the floor to clean up the trail of blood all the way to the closed bathroom door where Buffy was inside with Angel. He could hear voices muffled by the shower spray but couldn't really make out any words. He left the Windex and paper towels by the door and moved back into the living room.
Grabbing his pack of cigarettes off of the table, he lit up and smoked, leaning against the wall next to the screen door. Going outside in that crap was not an option so he stayed just inside with the screen door as a vent of sorts and watched the unspeakable and the impossible outside become reality. He couldn't decide what was more unnerving right now; the blood falling from the sky, that Buffy's ex-boyfriend was a vampire or that she was alone in the bathroom with him while he was taking a shower.
Buffy kept her back to the shower, staying just long enough to make sure Angel got in. She collected all of his clothes in a pile, rolling them in a towel so she didn't have to take a shower when all of this was over. "Angel, I'm just going to be right outside. I'm gonna get rid of these clothes."
"I'll be fine," he said but it was more of a monotone, of a mantra than an actual reassurance.
"I promise you will," she told him as she opened the door to the bathroom and stepped outside, closing the door behind her. She stuffed the towel and the clothes in a garbage bag, tied it up and shoved it down the garbage shoot then stepped over to where Danny was leaning against the wall smoking. She walked up to him hesitantly, gnawing at her bottom lip as she did. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed a kiss to his collarbone. "How you doing, Boyfriend?" she asked, knowing it was a ridiculous question.
Circling his arm with the free hand around Buffy's shoulders, Danny squeezed her close and kissed the top of her head. He took in another long drag of his cigarette before he answered her. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm..." He searched for a good word that would be closest to the truth but came up empty. "Hey, did you know Angel's a vampire? And I don't know what the Hell's goin' on out there." He nodded in the direction of the screen door. "Makes no sense."
"Apocalypse. Rain of blood...makes sense," Buffy said quietly as she rested her head against Danny's chest, listening to his heartbeat for a moment. "He had been one for 227 years before I met him. He's good though. He has a soul and he helps people. The ones I hunt are just evil, a demon inside a body. He's got the demon and the soul to listen to. He doesn't have anywhere else to go, Danny. He's afraid of hurting someone else and he knows I won't let that happen. I'm sorry. I would have told you sooner but...I didn't want to overwhelm you."
In the shower, Angel was scrubbing his skin with vanilla body wash, trying as hard as he could to get Buffy's scent all over him instead of the scent of blood. The hot water was nearly scalding but it didn't turn his skin red because there was no blood to bring to the surface. It heated him up from inside and made him feel a little more human.
So easy math put Buffy with Angel while he had been a vampire. Danny wasn't stupid, but the whole apocalypse thing did not make sense to him. He was standing here looking at it pouring blood and still just didn't comprehend it. And part of him was wondering what the Hell Buffy was doing with a normal Jo Schmo like himself. Her whole world was this big amazing thing. She had dated and still had some kind of thing he couldn't explain with a two-hundred plus year old vampire. The fact that she wanted to be with him made just about as much sense to Danny as the raining blood outside.
He drew another long drag of his cigarette and tried to shrug his thought process off as if it were nothing. "S'alright, Summers. He gonna be okay? Should we like... I dunno... be Cloverfield-ing it or somethin'? Gathering all our loved ones and headin' for the hills with a video camera to document it all in case we don't make it?"
Buffy rested her chin on Danny's chest, watching him. "Only if you don't have any faith in me but if you want to get your Mom and Dad out of here, try LA. Eventually it would reach there but you've got some time. If I don't stop this thing, nothing will be safe ever. I've killed things bigger and badder than what's coming and I'm going to get this one too. I promise." She pressed a kiss to Danny's chest. "As far as Angel...he's going to be okay. I need to call the butcher and get a couple of pints of pig's blood here for him. The less hungry he is, the better he can deal with the smell of human blood around him. That's what he eats, pig's blood. Human blood makes everyone smell like food."
Her confidence was reassuring to Danny and he nodded slightly, brushing back her hair from her forehead as he held his cigarette between his lips. He expertly spoke around it without it dropping to the floor as he cradled either side of her face in his palms. "Well then why don't you do that. Order whatever blood and we'll deal with this." Because he had seen how Angel had looked at him, and it wasn't something he really was okay with.
In truth, he was kind of freaking out. But he was putting on an okay front, which he was glad for because Angel was here. He was not going to freak out in front of Angel if he could help it.
Buffy smiled at him and pressed a kiss to the corner of his lips that didn't hold the cigarette. She pulled away and dialed the butcher shop that dealt with demons and blood pick up. She promised the guy there a big tip if he'd deliver four pints to the apartment. She didn't want anyone in this apartment going back out there. Just as she hung up the phone, Angel came out of the bathroom wrapped up in the blanket she'd left in there for him. The scent of vanilla was almost overwhelming and she was pretty sure Angel had used most of her body wash and shampoo on himself.
"Better?" she asked as she walked over to him. Normally, Angel sent Buffy straight into defensive posture but she knew she couldn't afford that right now. He still had a demon screaming inside of him and she needed to be as dominant as possible. She put one hand on her hip and ran the other through his wet hair as she went up on tip toe.
Angel nodded in answer to her question. "Everything smells like you now."
Buffy shrugged to that. "I wrap up in that blanket when we're watching movies."
"It also smells like Danny but...not in a bad way." In a bad way meaning not like food.
"Okay, come on. Sit down on the couch and we'll wait for your blood to get here. If it gets bad, I'll lock you in our bedroom," Buffy told him as she guided him over to the couch.
He chuckled a little, regaining his sense of humor a bit now that everything wasn't overwhelming scented like blood. "Are you thinking of torturing me?"
"Nah, I just know what it smells like to you and that's not blood."
Angel glanced over at Danny when he sat down then looked down to the floor. "Sorry," he said quietly.
Danny shrugged lightly and took another drag of his cigarette. The apartment was filled with so many scents now that he wasn't sure how Angel could smell the blood outside. Between the scented candles Buffy had brought home, his cigarette, Windex and the scent of vanilla that usually came after Buffy took a shower, he thought that they should be pretty well covered.
"Hey don't worry 'bout it." He paused to take a drag off of his cigarette. "I wouldn't wanna be out there in that either."
The scents were muddled now but Angel had the nose of a dog. He was grateful for the cigarette and the vanilla smell colliding with each other. It helped more than anything else. He could even smell the scent of Danny's fear and confusion woven amongst all the other scents.
"I feel sorry for the delivery boy," Buffy said.
"Don't," Angel told her. "He's a theslla demon. He'll lick himself clean afterwards and be happy about it."
There was a knock on the door and Buffy got up to answer it. She grabbed cash out of her purse so she could give him the big tip she'd promised. The theslla demon was pale green, covered in darker green freckles. He had a Yankees cap pulled down low and a leather jacket with the collar flipped up. He smelled a little like a sewer but he wasn't covered in blood and Buffy knew he had to have taken an underground route. He handed a big paper bag over to Buffy and looked down at her wide eyed.
"Slayer? They didn't tell me I was delivering to no slayer. I stay under the radar, I don't kill no one and I don't hurt anything. I get all my blood from Tony. I swear," the demon was almost sweating bullets.
Buffy shook her head and rolled her eyes. "If I wanted to kill you I wouldn't have invited you to my house. The smell of theslla never comes out of anything." She handed over the cash and the demon scampered away without pause. She carried the blood back into the apartment."Heated?" she asked Angel.
Angel nodded. "About 43 seconds will put it close to 98 degrees."
Buffy nodded as she carried the blood into the kitchen. She poured it into one of her giant cappachino mugs and stuck it in the microwave. She watched Danny where he leaned up against the wall still as the microwave worked. Once it beeped she took it out and carried it over to Angel.
Angel glanced over at Danny then back at the blood. Buffy walked over to Danny and leaned against him. "Go ahead," she told Angel. "He doesn't gross out easy."
Danny's gaze followed Buffy as he stood still leaning back against the wall quietly. She was heating up blood for him like she had to have done so many times before. No, he wasn't grossed out. He was still weirded out. When his cigarette was down to the butt, he lit another one without any hesitation using what was left of the flaming ash on the old butt. It had been a long time since he had chain smoked like this but he couldn't help it.
He looked down to the floor and back out of the screen door so that Angel wouldn't feel uncomfortable drinking in front of him. Far be it for him to kick a guy when he's down. That just wasn't in him to do. Temptation to lose his cool was strong. His nerves were bubbling just beneath the cool exterior. But his faith in Buffy was what he focused on, not the blood raining down, not the vampire drinking blood in his living room, nothing else but faith in Buffy. She said that this was going to be alright. And he believed her. He had to because right now he didn't know what else to believe.