This was written in response to a challenge at the LJ Community
churchofspike.
The Challenge: I went outside the length parameters, because no matter how I trimmed it down, I couldn't get it to 1000 words. Sorry. To be brief, the challenge was to find out through a meme what your ideal episode of "Angel" would be like, and write a ficlet based on that, taking as many or as few elements as you liked--as long as Spike was a character. My ideal episode looked like this:
Angel looks very pretty
Wesley shoots two guns. TWO.
Spike calls Buffy in a drunken haze and says they
are SO over
Gunn goes over to the dark side. Way over.
Fred sticks to a previously-demonstrated skill set
Harmony notices a clue everyone else overlooked
Lorne re-re-opens a nightclub
...and this is what came out. Feedback rocks my world.