The front door of 1630 Revello Drive slammed back on its hinges without so much as a preceding knock and then was closed with equal vehemence.

"Hey!! People trying to sleep here!" Buffy's voice echoed down the stairs.

Xander looked only slightly abashed until he realised that Mrs Summers had made her way through from the kitchen and was giving him an inquiring look, the sort of look that wanted to know when he started treating her house with so little respect.

"Sorry, Mrs Summers! Reporting for Dawn duty."

"Yes, well, maybe you should try knocking, next time. Buffy just got back from patrol a couple of hours ago and she needs her sleep."

"Too right she needs her sleep," came a voice from over Joyce's shoulder, muffled only slighty by the crunchy slurps of half-soggy Weetabix. "'S hard work buryin' an Ipslar demon."

"What is he doing here?" Xander asked, brandishing the bundle of letters and envelopes he held in his hand at the vampire.

"I invited him. Buffy called to say they'd be late getting back and not to stay up to make hot chocolate for them. I told her if it was near dawn when they got here I'd make up the cot in the basement for Spike," Joyce informed him, before she added a hint of warning to her tone. "But the part where I invited him is the only thing that's important."

Xander noted that even while he was chewing, Spike could manage an incredibly smug grin, all unseen by Joyce, of course.

"And now that you've calmed down, maybe you'd like a cup of coffee while you wait for Dawn?" Joyce offered, but her tone was still more polite than warm, and Xander scowled at the vampire as if that were his fault.

This had all gone so differently from the way he'd imagined it. In his mind's eye he'd stormed angrily into the house where Buffy, Willow and Dawn had all been having breakfast in skimpy nightshirts. He'd vented his rage at the heinous crime which had been perpetrated against him 'cause in his head everything was narrated in Giles' voice for some reason. Then, all three scantily clad girls had enveloped him in a group hug, offering him the sort of comfort that a true man who is comfortable with his feminine side can handle, and to finish up, in his imagination at least all the girls had come out to admire his shiny rental car. Of course, the facts that Dawn was never ready on time and that Willow had moved back into her parents' place may also have been slight glitches.

"So... What you got there?" Spike asked, cheerfully pointing at all the papers in Xander's hand as he settled back onto a stool at the kitchen island.

"None of your business, Spike!"

"Xander, Spike's a guest. If you can't be polite to him, then you'll have to leave. It's very nice of you to drop Dawn off at school on your way to work, but it doesn't mean that I'll tolerate bad behaviour. You obviously wanted to say something about those letters or you wouldn't have brought them in with you. From that entrance it looked as if you had plenty to say."

With a sigh of defeat Xander dropped the bundle of envelopes and letters onto the island and accepted the cup of coffee that Joyce handed him. "It looks like the vehicle registration people got my address wrong. It's taken 'til this morning for them to track me down."

Spike was first to rifle through the documents, his grin growing larger with each penalty notice that he came to. When he found the one that said if Xander failed to pay the fines and pick up his car that it would be auctioned, he couldn't hold his laughter in any longer.

"I don't see what's so funny!"

"Well, they say hell hath no fury like a woman scorned... 'Less it's a woman scorned who's got eleven hundred years experience as a vengeance demon."

"This is my car they're talking about. I don't have that sort of money. Do you know how important my car is to me? I—"

"More important than your fiancée, sounds like. Quit whining. The only reason you don't have that sort of money is because you spent it all on a wedding you didn't have the balls to show up for. Stick it on your bloody plastic. You'll pay it off in a year or two."

"How do you know I haven't already maxed out my plastic?"

"'Cause demon bint would never have let you get away with that sort of bad financial management. Just bite the damn bullet an' shut up about it. You got off easy."

"But it's— Have you seen those fines?"

"Yeah, well, you could always wait an' see if you can buy it back for less at the auction. Might happen... unless you end up biddin' against some Mary Kay rep as wants a car to match their new spring range."

Joyce tried to keep her amusement from showing. "Now, Spike, it is quite a bit of money."

"Thank you, Mrs Summers!" Xander responded with a smug grin and an agreeing nod, thinking that he was finally getting the sympathy he deserved.

"That doesn't mean that I don't agree with Spike. You did realise that there was another vengeance demon at that wedding? All Anya had to do was ask her friend and she could have had you boiled in oil for all eternity or any of the other more inventive curses that she might have administered over the years. I heard that someone not too far from here said if anyone did the same to them that they might consider leprosy a suitable punishment."

Xander winced at the thought of his favourite appendages dropping off.

"There are far worse things she could have done. You do seem to ask for trouble, Xander. I mean, even ignoring the moral issues around acting like a bully, did you really think it was a wise idea to bait a vampire constantly for three years and then wish that he'd be able to hurt you?"

"Well— I— I didn't know that that demon was there! It's not my fault."

"Xander, ignorance is no excuse. Believe me, I would have pointed that out if I had been around when you did your demon summoning last year and put my daughters' lives in danger.

You're out of school now. You have an adult job. You live in the adult world and you need to learn that you cannot keep passing off responsibility for what you do. You have to accept that everything you do has consequences." Joyce turned to Spike at this point. "By the way, did you ever find out whether your chip is working again?"

Spike smirked at Xander. "Nobody's pissed me off enough for me to find out... yet." The carpenter could have sworn that the vampire's teeth looked way sharper than they had any right to do when he was wearing his human face, and he gulped deeply.

"Hey!" Dawn bounced into the kitchen and paused at the subdued atmosphere. "What's up?" she demanded, looking from her mother to Xander and finally settling on Spike.

"Harris was just bemoaning the fact that his fiancée would appear to have left his car in the short term parking at LAX when she left town."

"Cooool! Way to go, Anya!" the teenager responded, and then her eyes darted to her mother in case she might be in trouble but Joyce remained as apparently oblivious as Xander had been when he'd been told that Dawn had been taken because it was she who summoned Sweet. The teenager tilted her head and raised one eyebrow. "I mean, Xander, that is kinda getting off easy."