Ah yes, that face of bitter familiarity. Fasten your seat belts, folks,
there's some turbulence ahead.

Title: Open All Night
Author: kindred <alp@magma.ca>
Disclaimer: Joss Whedon owns these characters lock, stock and profitable
barrel.
Rating: NC-17
Feedback: Yes, please! I am happy to receive it.
Summary: Sequel to "No Vacancy". It takes place in S3 in Sunnydale.
Have-itch-will-travel Spike visits Buffy...they enjoy an entrTe of
truth, but it comes with a side order of consequences.

11.

The dimensions of that fist were all too painfully familiar. So too was
the tyrannical silhouette looming over Spike and leering at him with a
look of pitiless repulsion. Angel stood over Spike's sprawling body with
fists clenched at the ready. "Fancy having your sorry ass back in town,
Spike." He spoke with murderous neutrality.

"Ditto, mate," Spike brought his fingers gingerly to his face. "Fuck, I
think you broke my nose."

Angel reached down and grabbed Spike by his lapels, dragging him to his
feet. Angel punched him hard in the gut, sending Spike flying backward
into an old spruce trunk.

"Hey! Watch it. What is your bloody problem?" Spike roared in protest,
shaking off the opening salvo. He spread his feet to gain some balance
in readiness. He knew that face well, that blank, slightly squashed,
Charlie Brown in a bad toupee look. Angel appeared as wound up as
Angelus ever had, hungry for a beating and ready to lay it all on Spike.
It was the same old hackneyed two-step.

When Angel spoke again his voice was pure Angelus venom, poisonous silk
from the tongue of a devil. "Do tell me, William," Angel cooed in velvet
tones. "How is it that you reek of Buffy, hmm?" He cracked a knuckle for
emphasis.

"Just lucky, I guess." The giggle was as evil as Spike's eyebrow flare.
He was enjoying this. Spike hadn't anticipated running into Angel so
soon but he felt a sudden saucy need to gloat and crow. He might just
dance a jig. The result was painful and predictable: Angel rushed him
like a mad bull. Vampire instincts are an odd mix of self preservation
and a compulsion for conquest. Unfazed by Angel's initial attacks, Spike
threw himself at his opponent with equal abandon.

It was not pretty.

Snarling, brutal strikes and counter strikes followed a flash of fangs.
Focused animosity is a lightning rod for unpredictability. Needless to
say, the Marquess of Queensberry would have frowned upon the
opportunistic and unregulated tactics employed by these two aggressive
pugilists. Leather flew in a frenzied duet, sloppy and fierce. The air
filled with growling sounds of a struggle and the scent of blood.

With an acceleration of gritty determination, Spike foisted Angel into
the air and sent him skidding across a patch of grass. Upon righting
himself again, Angel checked his trousers for the telltale grass stain.

"FUCK! Forget your bloody image for once, Narcissus," Spike spat the
words. "Pay attention while I kick your pampered arse!"

"I think you forget who you're dealing with...William." Spike's initial
successes subsided as Angel gained the upper hand. Angel had superior
strength because of his size but Spike was a scrapper. He would not
relent. Long ago he vowed never to be beaten down by Angelus again. From
Spike's perspective, soul boy did a passing Angelus in the hands-on
department.

Angel's large fist smashed into Spike's cheek; an elbow intersected with
his shoulder, and a knee invaded his side. There was little finesse in
such a display of contested dominance. Spike got in a few more good
belts of his own. Punching Angelus was like slamming a dead carcass hung
in a butcher shop. Heavy compressions of fists to flesh slowed with each
subsequent exertion. The resulting damage ricocheted back on Spike as he
merely injured his hands on Angel's brick wall of a body.

Steely emptiness gave Angel the advantage. Spike felt loose from his
lengthy encounter with Buffy, but he hadn't fed properly in the last
twenty-four hours and it began to show in his laboring defenses. As the
fight progressed, Spike dodged fewer blows while more found their mark.
Soon Angel picked Spike up by the throat and slammed him hard against
the stone wall of an abandoned outbuilding of the great mansion.

"What did you do to her, you animal?" Angel's eyes glowed an icy yellow.
Unable to temper his delight, Spike curled the corner of his lip into a
lascivious grin.

"Take a whiff," Spike taunted and wriggled in Angel's meaty hold. The
scent was unavoidable and already deeply imbedded in Angel's nostrils,
burning through his brain and fomenting an accelerating fury. Angel
already knew. Permeating every pore on Spike's body was the distinctive
and recognizable aroma. There was no mistaking the singular sweet smell
of consensual sex. It was the foulest air Angel had ever scented.

"Didn't hurt her, you daft wanker." Spike wriggled, straining to form
the words through Angel's punishing grasp. "Let go!"

It had to be a trick. There was no way it was true. With his mind
swirling in incomprehensible thoughts, Angel dropped Spike to his knees
and towered over him, growling. Vampire instinct kicked in. It had been
an age, but time did not dim the knowledge of how to deal with an unruly
fledge. This needed to be put to rights immediately. Spike would pay
dearly for usurping the territory of his elder.

Time also did little to dim the memory of being disciplined by such an
enthusiastic hand. Spike's eyes widened. He knew that vicious stance,
the look of primal dominance. He'd been on his knees before Angelus
plenty but those days were long gone. He was no one's dog anymore.

"You can bloody well forget it, mate." Spike's jaw drew taut with
muscular rage. He wasn't Angelus' whipping post anymore. A thought
surfaced in Spike's mind. Wasn't Angel supposed to be all soulful and
reformed? Didn't he give up homicide in order to join the pep squad and
do the old remorseful soft-shoe?

There was a distinct scent present that wasn't Angelus, but it wasn't
exactly not Angelus either. The old bugger was just beneath the skin of
this one, a piranha in a paper cup, clamoring to be released. Maybe that
soul wasn't as good a tether as those gypsies thought.

Angel kicked him aside. Scuttling backward to get a bit of distance,
Spike crouched in a defensive posture. The demon fluctuated on Spike's
pained face. Angel's demon receded but his eyes still flamed.

"WHAT FUCKING GAME ARE YOU PLAYING?" Volume gave him away. Angelus was
never loud or hysterical. He was never out of control. That's what made
him so dangerous. Angelus never took anything personally. His excesses
overflowed with the stale breath of ennui and the slow, dry cadence of a
weary and corrupted emptiness.

Angel, on the other hand, was scrambling for footing, trying to make
sense out of the incomprehensible; trying to get the flesh images
floating in that scent out of his head. Buffy and Sp-- He could go no
further. Anything beyond that first sound just wasn't possible.

It was a spell, the Hellmouth, some enchantment, a demon borne
infection, an incantation, sinus congestion; some delirium designed to
drive him insane. Angel's mind whirled with a myriad of nefarious
possibilities. There had to be an explanation, some answer other than
the one tugging at the edges of his brain, trying to assert the plain
old smelly truth. No. That was impossible. She couldn't-- Wouldn't.
Buffy would never-- Not with-- Not ever.

Angel couldn't complete the thoughts let alone the sentences. For the
first time since he stepped to the dark side over two hundred years ago,
Angel doubted the veracity of the one thing that had never betrayed him.
His nose must have got it wrong, confused fighting with...something that
started with an "f".

Spike looked on with wary curiosity. This sideshow was something new.
Rabid, raving, and reckless? Definitely not Angelus. He was precise,
glacial and easily affected a detached air one might foolishly and
fatally mistake for apathy. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Angel was nothing more than a grasping prat slicked up in hair gel and
grass stained trousers. The situation would have struck Spike as far
more hilarious if it wasn't so immediately perilous. Spike moved to
stand and Angel kicked him hard. The snap of breaking ribs filled the
air. With stubborn defiance, Spike stood up.

"It's none of your bloody business, Peaches," Spike sassed with hardened
resolve. Another heavy uppercut and Spike went down again. His inner
resources were waning and he knew it.

"You don't have the sense of a stone, Spike," Angel spoke calmly as his
heel came down solidly on Spike's left hand. "At least a stone knows how
to stay down and stay quiet."

"Fuck you," Spike gurgled, unwillingly to give Angel the satisfaction of
seeing his pain. Again Angel grabbed Spike by his lapels, pulled him
upright and roared into his face.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Playing her? Toying with her? Trying to get to me?"
There it was. Angelus may be all corked up, but that ego shone like a
demented beacon. Whatever he was calling himself, the bugger had cheek.
A giggle wasn't the best response perhaps, but it couldn't be stopped.
Angel dropped Spike in a heap.

"That's it, innit?" Spike shook his head. Bloody, annoying, egomaniacal
bastard. Giddiness gave way to narrowed eyes and a look of abject
disgust. A century came and went and still that monster ego remained as
pompous and overbearing as the first day of their acquaintance. "It's
all about you. Every bloody, fucking thing in this sorry cesspool has to
be about YOU. The great and glorious Angelus-- Oops, sorry, it's sad
sack Angel now, right? Give me a FUCKING break."

"What do you want from her?" Spike could almost pity the bastard. Angel
was totally clueless when it came to women; always was, always would be.
He was too busy polishing up the old ego to see anything beyond the
scope of his own dusty navel.

"That's none of your bleedin' business."

"She know you're feeding?" That blood scent was also unavoidable.

"That bloke's alive, mate." Spike coughed up a little blood at the force
of that retort.

Soon Angel paced a groove in the grass in front of Spike. "How dare you
even look at her. Just the though of you and-- Unhhh! It sickens me."

"She's a big girl. She made up her own mind."

"You're gonna tell me, you sorry sack of shit." Another kick. Spike
groaned and held his arms to his ribs as a shield.

"You're not getting squat from me Angel," Spike spat the words. "You
wanna rip my head off? Stake me? You can bloody well try...but I'm not
telling you jack shit, mate. And this little dance here? It's getting
boring." Spike knew Angelus' repertoire cover to cover. Funnily enough,
boring never made the top one hundred.

Spike's reluctance to brag openly to Angel's face was the most
disturbing and significant piece to this puzzle. Buffy meant something
to Spike. If she hadn't, Spike would be spouting off the candid play by
play tidbits of their sexual escapades. Angelus had done that very thing
himself, torturing Spike over Drusilla, who sadly had only been a pawn
in a wider game of macho strategizing. Buffy was important to Spike.
Angel's fear was that the reverse was also true.

"She's mine, you idiot. MINE."

"You don't bloody own her."

"Oh, you know better than that, William." There was that icy, dark coo
again. What daddy wanted, daddy got; so shall it ever be. Spike looked
into Angel's face, strengthened now by an expression of swaggering
entitlement. That pissed Spike off to no end -- that fucking pansy arse
prerogative -- like Spike was obliged and Angel was due, and no amount
of time or distance would ever alter it.

Soul or no soul, the smirk was one hundred percent Angelus.

"Well then, you'd better not let her off her lead then, huh?" Spike
couldn't help but sass Angel. If he was going to die, he'd do it with
saucy style and fuck up Angel as much as he could. "Or maybe you should
just put her in a warm terrarium with some nice turtle friends so she
can't scamper off and get into mischief." Spike snickered with contempt.

Spike owed Angel pain. Not for himself, but for what Angelus did to
Drusilla. It was difficult for Spike to reconcile that he never really
had a life with Drusilla. She had some phantom life with Angelus, even
when he was absent for decades. It was a tough reconciliation. Just as
Drusilla had been everything for Spike, Angelus was everything for
Drusilla. It was simply the law of hierarchy, the ancient creed of sire
and childe. Drusilla loved Spike like a puppy or a shiny toy, but not
like the storms on the horizon she was always wandering toward. Not like
Daddy. Not like Hurricane Angelus.

It was odd that neither of the vampires sensed Buffy's approach.
Especially since she was the topic of their animated conversation. The
potency of bitter testosterone on full display drowned out even the
sweet scent of the Slayer.

Angry voices caught her attention and she left the quiet cemetery to
investigate. With the last few exchanges ringing in her ears she
quickened her steps. Buffy stepped into the moonlit clearing to find
Angel towering over an injured Spike. The look on Angel's face gave her
pause and then steeled her backbone. Buffy folded her arms across her
chest and spoke with a chilled reserve.

"Oh yes Angel, please tell me how you get to decide my life for me,
because you, um, how did you phrase that? 'Own me'?" That voice held a
razor's edge. Buffy's face hardened to stone.

tbc...