It was colder than usual. Cold enough that even inside the house Buffy’s hands and feet felt like ice and she had ended up in front of the stove, making hot chocolate in the middle of the night in the hopes that it would warm her up some. She’d made a mess trying to do it in the quiet and the dark before she remembered she was alone in the house. Dawn had a sleepover at Janice’s and Willow was at Xander and Anya’s enjoying the traditional Saturday movie night--a tradition Buffy had begged off of with the excuse of much needed sleep. She hadn’t gotten that sleep, though. Instead she’d stirred the chocolate and milk in the pot, watching as the white slowly shifted to light brown and thought that it was a shame that most of it would go to waste--the recipe was for two.

It really shouldn’t have been a surprise that Spike showed up just as she thought this.

Seeing him walk through the back door Buffy immediately tensed, waiting for the expected leer or tongue roll, or the comment about being alone in the house, but none of it came. Instead he took one look at her--standing in her flannel pajama pants and UC Sunnydale sweatshirt, fuzzy slippers on her feet and chocolate dripping from the spoon in her hand--and immediately went to the cupboards, pulling out two mugs and a bag of mini marshmallows with an air of familiarity that made Buffy wonder if he’d shared a cup of hot chocolate with her mother other than the time when he’d been drunk and crying about Drusilla.

Turned out he had.

He told her all about it as they drank, facing each other across the island, leaning forward on their elbows, hands cupped around the mugs to soak up the heat from the chocolate. He shared with her the stories about the gallery her mom shared with him, ridiculous stories about wrong shipments and artists getting mad when their abstract sculptures were displayed upside down and African fertility vases being used as ashtrays and Buffy remembered and laughed until remembering hurt too much and she cried and she stared at Spike over the rim of her cup and begged please, please, make me forget.

Now she was lying on top of the island, back bare against the cold of the ceramic countertop, legs wrapped firmly around a leather clad waist. Spikes fingers were cold and left trails of goose bumps along her skin, mouth hot from the chocolate as it made a wet, sticky path from her neck to her breasts, circling around to mouth at the underside of one before sucking hotly at the puckered nipple of the other. Buffy shivered and arched, headed tilted back and eyes closed.

She thought her mother would be ashamed, if she could see her now. She’d dropped out of college and was working at a fast food restaurant that barely gave them enough money to eat on, Dawn was doing horribly in school and Child Services were threatening to take her away, she had trouble just getting out of bed in the morning and now she was naked in the kitchen, having sex with a vampire on the kitchen counter that her, Dawn and her mom used to eat pancakes on in the morning on Sundays.

I really need to remember to wash the countertop afterwards, she thought. God, I really am a horrible sister--and then cold hands lifted her thighs and rested them on firm shoulders and Spike’s mouth had left her breasts to tease her bellybutton before moving further down and one of her hands clenched the edge of the counter and the other curled and wove into gelled, blond hair and she couldn’t think at all.