Eep! Sorry this is late - but it's nice and long, and there's some actual plot going on, so hopefully that makes up for it.

enjoy.

All Xander wanted was to get up and brush his teeth. Or maybe stand under the icy shower spray for a while; the opportunity to be clean was a rare thing in Xander's new world, and he wanted to take advantage of every opportunity. If the water weren't so cold he would live under it, pruning and peeling and slipping down the drain to drown, but it was freezing, and he sat here instead feeling filthy. It was his own fault. Probably. Xander should have known better, after weeks of scraps and bugs and whatever he could beg, to stuff his mouth at the first opportunity; shades of Willow in his head pointing to poor starving children and weren't they lucky to live on a Hellmouth in the first world where rations didn't have to be stinted so they would stay down. Unbelievably lucky. He had reached uncomfortably full before Spike started asking him questions, and kept eating to avoid them. So it was his own fault that he sat here, tasting vomit and greasy Chinese, but he was reluctant to move because Spike was still holding his hand, infusing him with warm peace like milky tea.

The kindness was unexpected. Unexpected seemed to be the order of the day though, there was nothing about this week that made sense, and Xander was forcing himself to ride it out, not to make a nuisance of himself. More of a nuisance than he was – he was sure that the vampire would eventually like his fingers back, but Xander couldn't bring himself to let go. Couldn't bring himself to look either, because the look on Spike's face was likely to be priceless, and he couldn't quite bring himself to turn around and face it. Xander wanted to ask questions, wanted to ask why Spike was allowing this when his memories, coming back clearer all the time as the fog left his mind and his body consumed enough to fuel them, informed him that he deserved none of it. Deserved, in fact, to be thrown out on his ass at the very least.

He remembered all-too-clearly, almost fondly, those moments in his parents basement when Spike had threatened him with a brutal death beyond his imagining, and he'd been so serious about it, pale face awash with loathing and he knew it was only a piece of plastic keeping him alive. He remembered the orange chair, and how wrong Spike had looked in it, how inhuman in the bland light from cheap bulbs, shifting and squeaking all night on cheap vinyl, and how very badly the vampire wanted to rip the flesh from his bones. There was no reason to think anything would be different, except for the obvious fact that it was, fundamentally altered and Xander was so confused, trying not to be apprehensive. Spike was letting him hold his hand, clutching back with a strength that would have been terrifying if it weren't so reassuring.

It was as if Spike were not himself, which gave Xander permission to be not himself. He had been such a mess when he'd come to Spike, and those memories were a dizzy blue swirl that occasionally slipped around his ankles and caused his thoughts to trip and catch dangerously close to falling into the quaking clinging terror he had visited mere moments ago. He couldn't see the girls, was desperate to, but wouldn't be allowed, wouldn't see them as they were, and wouldn't be able to touch and hug and affirm that they were real and his without knowing other things as well. Xander didn't think he could face that, knew that would be the straw that broke him, and the very thought had ripped the floor from under his feet, sent him back to that uncertain place where blood whistled in his ears and the air sucked out of his lungs and he couldn't fight his body anymore or its clenching, churning gut. And Spike was letting it happen, allowing him too many liberties, letting him live in that place where he'd been so recently trapped, where his head was a dangerous field of oil-slicks and ghosts, malingering yellow fog that choked him. Spike was allowing. Perhaps that was a state of affairs he should address, and maybe if the vampire weren't so understanding, so damnably adaptative even as Xander was scrambling to be anything else, then Xander would be more himself.

It would be easier, he thought, if he could be who he remembered being, the sharp, sarcastic, talkative, temperamental Xander. The Xander that could never hold Spike's hand, but never felt so lost and so afraid either. He could be the Xander he remembered, and Spike could be Spike. He thought it had to be better to have his old face to hide behind, the way he sometimes saw the dove grey softness of this new Spike, the peace he sought in the center of the twisting green maelstrom that was pure demon, protected and invulnerable. He longed, as much as he wanted the peace, for that solidity, for the possibility that he might, one day, be invulnerable, or at least be enough of himself to reclaim his life, his girls. He wanted to let Spike be free of him, let him be who he was as well, which was a person Xander hadn't quite figured out. He thought it might be a good idea to start trying, for Spike's sake, and tried to break the silence that could have stretched on indefinitely, started to say, as he let their hands slip apart, "I think I should brush my teeth."

Spike's whole body went rigid, and the vampire leapt to his feet, toppling Xander in the grass as a voice that left Xander stricken with dismay called out, too near, too familiar, too much, "Spike? Are you here?"

"What have I told you about calling out in graveyards?" The vampire in question demanded while Xander's stomach heaved and rolled.

He fought with himself, as they bickered, to emerge from behind his headstone, "I'm standing like, two feet from your crypt." The voice was subdued, sounded tearful even through three inches of thirteen-year-old attitude.

It would have been easier to hide, but he couldn't hide for the rest of his life, didn't want to, "What if I hadn't been here? You think it makes a difference to some nasty wanting to eat you if you're in my crypt? Just means it's got you cornered."

Because there was never a time when the Xander Harris that was would let the presence of Dawn Summers go unremarked upon. "But you are here. Spike, I'm so glad you're here."

"Course I'm here. What's wrong, bit?"

Xander stood up. "Mom said…" And locked eyes with her in time to see them widen in horror, saw her mouth open to shriek and she was sprinting away, screaming loud and long enough to bring every demon for miles dashing towards them. But Spike was running too, managed to intercept her less than twenty feet away, and wrapped her in a hug that Xander knew was like running into steel girders, holding her there with no effort at all while she fought him, squirming and thrashing to get away.

Xander might have been hurt by her reaction, hurt that Dawn, a girl he loved like family, ran screaming from the sight of him, if there had been any room in him, but he was too stunned by her. His Dawn, sparkling, ethereal mist that danced at the edges of understanding, she was purest light, the perfect sublime moment that sang beauty and left him reeling in terror, living, somehow as part of a teenaged girl who was skin and bone and fear. He couldn't stop himself gawping at her, half in love and stunned because there was power there too, under her cheap human skin.

"Harris!" Spike was calling, sharp and a little too reasonable, holding Dawn's face on his chest as he stared at the pair of them and wondered, panicking a little, how Spike could stand to hold on to something that so clearly burned with a purity like religion was beyond him, frightened him, and for a moment he couldn't even breathe. "Go brush your teeth, yeah? Gimme a minute with the nibblet?"

The Xander that had been would not have left Spike and Dawn alone for a moment, wouldn't have let them out of his sight if he could even stand to see them in the same room together, but that Xander that had been knocked ass over teakettle and he was all that was left. He didn't even put up a token protest, just shuffled off to the crypt in his strange new flip-flops and gave up on the idea of resurrecting the Xander of old, who had been kind of a jerk about some things, and who had never had seen who, or what, Dawn was.

He felt a little drunk as he slipped around the narrow wooden door and down the ladder, adrenaline and dizziness washing over him in waves as he tried to sort it all out. He had always known the women in his life were extraordinary, but Dawnie was special, or less special, she was just a kid, like he had been just a kid, the last-ditch effort of two vastly different people trying to stay in love and producing a child instead. She wasn't the slayer, she wasn't a witch, she was just a human girl who liked Red-Hots and would throw absolutely anything into pancake batter. She was unlike any human he had ever seen, glowing and new and dying all at once, confined in a human body that was in love with Lance Bass.

Xander had been terrified of seeing his friends for what they might show him, but now that he'd seen this one those fears were temporarily relegated to a position of unimportance and he worried instead about what it might mean, and what he had left the vampire with. Xander spat out his toothpaste with an ironic snort, taking a swig from one of Spike's ever-present water bottles to rinse the last of the foam and bile off his tongue. He realized in that moment that for the Xander who had been Dawn's babysitter and Buffy's big brother, the world had spun on its axis and there was no getting it back. But there was the possibility of reclaiming whatever sanity he'd managed to cling to, and that meant climbing back up the ladder towards the vampire and the... thing that filled him with awe and fear, and hoping that it didn't come back to bite him.

When he emerged, minty fresh, from the crypt, it was with a certain resolve. Dawn, the light, was perched on a headstone and Spike's hands rested on her shoulders, his lips pressed on the top of her head, a gesture of comfort more than imprisonment, though effectively serving both purposes. The vampire clearly couldn't see it or he'd be shrinking from the radiance, but she didn't seem dangerous, exactly, sitting there looking, when he could see past the brightness, forlorn and leaning forward into Spike like he was her own pet monster. She looked up at him, chubby little girl face full of resentment and Xander could feel the ice in his chest start to melt because, until he could prove otherwise, she was still Dawn. Xander sketched a wave, "Hey."

"Harris," Spike acknowledged briefly, moving into a more casual embrace with one arm around Dawn's shoulders and his hip resting lightly on the headstone.

She sagged against him, looked away from Xander, then back with a glower, "Spike says you're real."

There wasn't much he could say to that, "I, um, am?"

"How?" She asked, and he understood her confusion, but didn't understand the betrayal, or why she was glaring at him like he'd kicked her dog. "Why are you here?"

"Nibblet." The warning tone in Spike's voice came as a surprise, though perhaps it shouldn't have. Xander couldn't help the grateful smile that slipped onto his face and away, but not before Spike smiled back, bemused. "She's had a rough night, Harris. Doesn't mean anything by it." He said with a shrug that rocked Dawn closer.

"It's okay, Dawnie. I… didn't expect to be back either."

A moment of silence spun in the air between them, a small vortex that sucked away his ability to speak and with it his hopes of a simple reunion. It was so unlike the Dawn who used to throw herself into his arms whenever she saw him and who could yammer his ear off with the excited rambling thoughts of a pre-teen girl. But she wasn't a pre-teen anymore, he remembered, and there was bound to be change. Xander couldn't decide if the new silence was indicative of the impostor, or part of the back-from-the-dead-surprise package – there were too many variables, too soon to make a mistake.

It was Spike who broke the tension with unprecedented diplomacy as he placed himself at an equidistant point between the two humans in his front yard and asked, "Right. Who's up for pancakes?"

There was not a Scooby alive, dead, or in a state somewhere in between that would turn down breakfast food at any hour of the day. After a brief debate that Dawn won, they trooped off between the row of mausoleums towards Sunnydale's only IHOP because, despite having the worst coffee, theirs were the best pancakes. Xander trailed along behind, watching the sway of the duster and Dawn's long hair as the unlikely pair ahead of him leaned in close to one another, bumping elbows and rebounding off one another as they talked. Snatches of conversation floated back towards him, and Xander felt like a voyeur, intruding on something intimate between them, but it was hard to ignore when Dawn's voice, tinged with hysteria, exclaimed, "She said I wasn't real!" and "Buffy doesn't…" before fading into the quieter rhythms of talking. Spike's voice, low and surreally gentle when faced with this teenaged melodrama, rarely remained audible as it drifted backwards and into Xander's eager ears, but he could see that it was doing its work well as her shoulders gently crept downwards towards relaxation and her feet stopped hitting the pavement with the force of a small wrecking ball. "Knicked himself shaving" Spike said, quite audibly to both their ears, and apparently in response to a question, and Xander could imagine what that was about, supposed he was meant to play along.

At the IHOP, Spike gestured for them to wait for a moment and headed towards a bank of payphones in the waiting area, rifling in his pants pocket for change and leaving Dawn and Xander to stand awkwardly beside the doors trying not to look at each other. For a brief and horrible moment, Xander felt resentment swell in his chest, felt his heart pounding as he panicked at the thought of being alone with her. Across the room, Spike said, "S'me, Slayer."

"You're really real?"

Dawn's face was hopeful, wide watery eyes pinning him to the spot, and he saw that she'd been crying. Xander decided to be honest. "I think I am. Spike thinks I am."

"Dawn's with me, she's fine."

"You don't know?" She backed off sharply.

"Stopping for pancakes first." A brief chuckle, "Make her pay then, yeah?"

He shrugged, "Does anyone?" The question had been rhetorical, but Xander could help but pursue the question with the thought that had been plaguing him, "How do you know you're you?"

Dawn looked stymied, face falling into a contemplative scowl while Spike said into the phone, "Thought you could use a break."

He finally took pity on her and broke the silence, "I don't know how to prove it, Dawnie. And I think I'd be suspicious of me if I could 'cause… who has contingency plans for proving that they're real?" This earned him an appreciative snort, but the uncomfortable silence remained and Xander didn't know how to fix it.

"I'll have her back before midnight."

Midnight seemed like such a late curfew for a girl her age. Spike was probably bending the rules by two or three hours for Buffy's benefit, like Xander had done on the nights he was babysitting and Dawn was falling asleep on his shoulder before he drove her home. Long enough for Buffy to pummel whatever monster was threatening her family's safety and get the resultant goop out of her hair, and he was sorry he had been too out-of-touch to know what was happening in their lives. He had missed so much by being gone, and hated himself for not having the courage to face them now, a feeling at odds with how much he loved them, but there was no way to explain that to himself, or to Spike, let alone to a thirteen-year-old girl, so he settled for saying, sincerely, "I'm sorry I missed your birthday."

Which apparently did the trick. Dawn stopped staring at him like he was a slightly contemptible bug under a microscope and flung herself forward, all long limbs and high temper, to give him the hug of a life time, burying her face in his chest and clutching him so tightly he almost couldn't breathe. Didn't breathe because the pain of her skin pressing gently against his stripped him of the ability. It was all he could do not to cry out, not to rip himself out of her grasp, innocent as it was, and hide behind Spike. Spike, who was saying into the phone, "Reminds me, I took care of your little Dracula problem" as Xander experienced the moment when the weight in his chest, her chest, was too much to bear and tissues that had worked so hard at expanding and collapsing for the last eighty years gave way under the pressure, refused to inflate even one last time, and her heart beat out a brief tattoo, struggling to pump oxygen that simply wasn't there any more while machines that had been gently beeping went berserk and she was lifted, out and away and free of pain that Xander was trapped in by being locked in her embrace.

"Nope. No such luck. Plonker in a cape."

Xander heaved in a sharp breath, trying to pull himself out of the moment without pulling himself away from Dawn, living, breathing, innocently clueless thirteen-year-old Dawn who was finally convinced she had her brother back. He forced himself to wrap his arms around her, rest his hand on her narrow shoulders and hold her back. It was a constant pain, this moment, a dull firey ache in his chest, and as much as he wanted to let go, he couldn't, or wouldn't, push Dawn away. Only hoped that Spike would finish his phone call before his heart exploded with it.

"I'm so glad you're back," She told him tearfully, slightly muffled by his shirt, "Even though you're dressed like an idiot. I've missed you so much."

"Right. Course. You just take care of your mum. There anything we can bring you?"

"I've missed you too." The statement was entirely genuine, as was the relief as he pulled away when Spike hung up the phone and joined them again with his customary quiet smirk. "Everything okay?"

"Sis says you should pay," the vampire addressed the comment to the still sniffling Dawn as he ushered them through the second set of doors and into the cheerily lit restaurant that advertised heaping stacks of perfectly browned pancakes and bacon that was entirely too-perfect to have come from a real pig.

Dawn snorted, an unlady like and entirely appropriate noise given the company, "Right. If that's the case, I hope you enjoy your big glass of ice water." She sat first, as their waitress, an entirely-too-cheerful thirty-something ushered them into a booth, and Xander slid in opposite her, trying to ignore the pout as he rejected her closeness. In a way it was nice to know that Dawn, and he had decided, the moment she hugged him, that this really was Dawn because whatever else it had been it was now undoubtedly human, wasn't going to die full of fear and skewered on the end of some demon's claws, but the idea of sitting next to it, experiencing that pain and the futility of breathing every time they brushed elbows for the course of an entire meal… that was too much. Bad enough he had to see it across the table.

Spike pushed himself into the booth beside Dawn, ready to protect her from the world, and his presence was enough to erase the pout as he said, "Order what you like, Nibblet. Celebrating Harris' first meal back in the real world, yeah?"

Dawn grinned at them both, bouncing a little in her seat as she perused the menu and Xander tried not to stare at her, or at Spike, or at the table of teenagers babbling at each other at a table clear across the restaurant. He tried very hard not to make eye contact with their waitress as she came by to take their orders and hastily ordered the first thing his eyes landed on, not prepared to make a decision or for the surge of panic her physical closeness inspired in him. Xander wanted to be back in the crypt, where it was calm and quiet and there weren't any people that he had to see alive and happy and scant moments from the alternative. He wasn't prepared to be, as Spike put it, back in the real world, or even a mostly-empty pancake joint, and tried to convey this message to Spike, but the vampire either hadn't noticed, or didn't care, and didn't sense his alarm as Dawn chattered at him and their waitress came back with heaping plates of food. Xander didn't even remember what he'd ordered.

"Did Spike tell you Anya left?" Dawn asked him cheekily through a cheesy mouthful of blueberry blintz, "Is that why you keep staring at our waitress like that?"

An omelet, apparently, stuffed with hash browns, ham, and smothered with cheese, he discovered when he poked it with his fork. There was a side of pancakes. "Christ, Spike, I can't eat all this…" Xander said genuinely, grateful to have something else to look at while he processed Dawn's question, "Wait. Anya left?"

"You didn't tell him?" Dawn did scandalized almost as well as Buffy these days, and he found it was easier to grin when he didn't have to look at her. Her tone, when she stopped glaring at her vampire, was surprisingly low and sympathetic, "Yeah, Anya left just before your… funeral. Can I say funeral? It's so weird…"

"She…" Xander did not know what to think about that, or even how to begin. He hadn't given her a second thought. When his head was full of hell and fear for his girls she hadn't entered the equation, and he would like to think that it was because he had confidence in her savvy and her ability, as a former vengeance demon, to survive against all odds, but he would have been lying to himself. The swell of strange relief at not having to explain this to his intractable girlfriend was swamped by guilt, heavy and stinking and threatening to swallow him whole. He hadn't thought of her at all, and now it was even more of a relief not to have to face her and face having to be sane and whole for her because there was no way she could have coped with the way Xander had fallen apart. Certainly not in the way that Spike had, and Spike was now staring at him with open concern. "Huh."

"Pet – Xander. Sorry. I should've told you."

Xander waved this away and took a bite of his second dinner, determined that this time he would be cautious and it would stay down. He managed a smile for the vampire, teased him gently, "Yeah, gosh. I mean, I show up crazy and hijack your life and you let me puke on you but you forget to tell me my girlfriend left? How could you?"

Spike snorted, "Pillock."

"It's okay," Spike lifted an eyebrow at him, prompted a grin that he absolutely meant, and wanted to reach out and touch the vampire that Dawn was bogarting, wanted to prove it to him, even though the peace that Spike brought him did not work both ways. "Really. It wasn't working anyway and… she didn't even stay for my funeral? Not cool."

"Not like you were really dead," Dawn chimed in, heavy with skepticism while she covetously eyed his untouched pancakes. He shoved them in her direction and she snatched them up with the howling appetite of a young girl who was, for once, too preoccupied to worry about her figure and slathered them with syrup.

Xander enjoyed watching her stuff her face with them, even as he corrected her assumption, "I was. Really dead. At least for a few days, I think."

"A few days?" Xander could have kicked himself, "Then where have you been? Spike said you showed up last week."

"I was…" panic, and he looked to the vampire for help, grateful for a pause in conversation as the waitress came by again and re-filled Dawn's coke. He stared at her for a moment, eternally thirty-something and jerked his head back towards the table when she smiled, mistaking his unintentional interest for something more licentious. "I was… Spike…?"

"He was in a hell dimension." The vampire invented on the spot, and it was a horrible thing to say to a young girl whose eyes welled with unshed tears and whose jaw sagged with emotion, revealing particles of half-eaten pancake, but convenient. A horrible, convenient, almost accurate excuse, and Xander was so thrilled to not have to explain the Master that he would have happily accepted traveling with a circus as an excuse so long as Dawn stopped asking. Spike continued, "Fought his way back for you, yeah? Showed up a couple of days ago, half-starved and half-mad, so let's change the subject?"

Dawn sniffled, "Is that why you haven't told Buffy?"

Xander nodded, somehow grateful and irritated with Spike in the same breath, because now he had an excuse not to be himself for Dawn, for any of them. "It took… some time to figure out I wasn't still there and…" Irritated, grateful, trying like hell not to let this ruin Dawn's tenuous acceptance of this, "I didn't want her to see me be… crazy."

"But you're not!" Dawn protested, and Xander loved her for it because she would always be in his corner, "Are you?"

"Change the subject," The vampire said again, and this time it was less of a friendly request. He stole a bite from Xander's half eaten omelet.

"Yeah, Dawnie. Catch me up on everything. Anya's gone, what else did Spike forget to tell me?"

The subject change, as it turned out, wasn't a lot better. Dawn's face slipped from sad on his behalf to sad on everyone else's, but she told him everything, about her mom, about Buffy and Riley and how purely lonely Dawn had been since Joyce fell ill. But eventually the sorrow wore through and the conversation turned towards happier moments from Dawn's life, things that weren't about sickness and hellmouth and chaos in Scoobyville. She told him about Janice and the failed blue hair-dye experiment, and one of the many boys she was apparently too cool for, and it felt like old times. New old times with Spike's chuckling encouragement in her ear and promising to gruesomely disembowel her first official boyfriend, as if that was incentive to find one. Xander managed to sit back and enjoy it, forgetting everything else for a moment, for just long enough, but three Dr. Peppers and half of Spike's tomato juice took their toll on Dawn's bladder, and all-too-soon she was shoving Spike out of the booth and darting towards the bathroom. They watched her go, laughing.

Apropos of nothing, Spike said, "I may've had a word with Anya" at the same moment that Xander said "Our waitress is going to die tomorrow."

"What?"

"You win."

"You talked to Anya?"

"That why you've been staring at her all night?"

"I haven't been staring!"

"No, you're right. It's worse. Like Dawn when she sees a boy."

A pause and Xander chuckled in spite of himself, pushed his face into his hands and closed his eyes to block out the swirls of light and color blinking at the edges of his peripheral vision, even Spike, who he ordinarily loved to look at but just couldn't stand right now on top of Dawn and the kids across the room and their waitress who… would be dead tomorrow night. And maybe he'd been staring, but he'd been trying really hard not to in case he saw, somewhere in the murk, the teeth that would do the deed. "One thing at a time, please?"

Cool fingers pried his hands away, and Xander let his head fall forward, narrowly missing his abandoned omelet. "Think I can about manage that," Spike told his fingers, and when Xander looked up he was smirking and it was almost the same fond exasperation he'd been using with Dawn all evening. Xander made no effort whatsoever to reclaim his fingers. "Which first?"

"Anya?"

"Not important."

"Spike." The smirk broke into a smile, a little too charming to be believed, and Xander grinned back with the sudden realization that having this conversation was going to be like pulling teeth if he insisted on pursuing it. "You're right. It doesn't matter."

"The waitress?" Spike glanced away towards the restrooms and back, "Before Dawn comes back?"

Xander shrugged, looked at her more closely as she carried a tray full of empty glasses away from the table of teenagers. Really looked at her instead of a quick furtive glances he'd been taking all night; she was afraid, violently so, bloody and red and streaked with terror under her skin, and it was true that he had to look away the moment his eyes landed on her, but not because, as Dawn had implied, she was cute. It broke his heart. "Three vampires. Tomorrow night, maybe… twenty six hours?"

"Just after her shift," Spike said grimly, strangely relaxed as he dug a fork through Xander's dinner, reducing it to eggy rubble. Xander watched him take a breath and let it out again, "Okay, Harris, here's the thing…"

"I sound like a crazy person, don't I? 'I see dead people'?" Spike snorted wryly, did some more hash brown excavation, and waited for Xander to make sense. He wasn't sure if he was capable of it, "Anya and I went to see that, the week it came out."

"I could about kill Bruce Willis."

"No kidding. I don't see ghosts, thank Christ, 'cept for yours. Just everything else, and it's different it's… it's all… layers and everyone I see is dead. And alive of course, except for when they're not and… now I really sound like a crazy person. Wow." Xander replayed the last thirty seconds of conversation in his head, wondered where Dawn was because she was supposed to be saving him from these moments of madness. Still in the bathroom, though there was their waitress with their check, indefatigable and so vulnerable. Xander managed to lower his voice, bring a thread of reason back to it by the time she walked away, "Apparently I sound like a lunatic. But she's gonna die tomorrow, Spike."

"So… what're we gonna do about it?" Xander's face must have betrayed some of his bafflement because Spike laughed at him, took a swig of Dawn's melting soda, making a face at its sticky sweetness, "I spent a century dancing around the whims of a genuine madwoman, Harris. I can spare a night stalking a waitress with you."

"You'd do that for me?" Spike shrugged, slurped, and dug around in his pocket, peeling two twenties off a wad that made Xander's eyebrows crawl up towards his hairline, "Even though I'm crazy?"

"Sounds like more fun than anything else I'd be doing tomorrow night."

"What are we doing tomorrow?" Dawn, back at last, and shiny with a fresh coat of lip-gloss, plunked down next to Spike, pushing her skinny shoulder against him until he slid over again.

"Harris is takin' me on a date," the vampire said with all seriousness and Xander didn't exactly remember that part of the arrangement but couldn't keep the grin off his face when Dawn snorted soda out her nose, "You about ready to head home?"

For half a second, Dawn's face, dripping with soda and still lip-gloss sticky, fell into a miserable pout, but she managed to hide it behind a paper napkin as she cleaned herself up. Took a speculative look at Xander and perked up again, "Are you gonna come home with me? Buffy'll be so happy to see you!"

"Dawnie…"

"What? You need somewhere to stay, right? No offense, Spike."

"None taken, Nibblet."

"Don't you want to come stay with us?" The night was dark and cool, a crisp November evening, Spike ushered them out into it, letting Dawn snuggle into his side and wrapping the sides of the duster around her to protect her from the chill as they walked towards Revello Drive. But it wasn't the temperature swirling around Xander's exposed knees that froze the blood in his veins, "You are gonna let Buffy know… right?"

"Yes." Because that was an answer he could give, Buffy knowing was an inevitability, it was just a question of when.

"But…?" Far more savvy than she looked, shuffling clumsily between Spike's feet, though whether that was the cold or the closeness, Xander didn't care to speculate. "Not tonight, huh?"

"I can't, Dawnie. I can't. I'm not… right yet."

She snorted richly, "No kidding. A Nascar shirt?"

"Would you believe me if I told you Spike dressed me?"

"No, not even for a second."

Spike squeezed her until she "oomphed" and pressed a smacking kiss against her face, all affection for a girl who, a few years ago, he wouldn't have given a thought to killing for a quick snack. Xander wondered if his protectiveness, his obvious love of her, was a knock on from what Dawn was, wondered if the chip would even react if one day he smushed her too hard, or pinched her harder than playfully, but Xander would never ask. And not just because Spike was likely to bite his head off. "That's my girl," he told her, spinning her out of the coat and making her giggle while Xander, once again, tagged along behind, smiling, "let it be our secret, yeah? Just for a little while."

"You guys owe me."

Half a block down from 1630, Xander stopped and snagged Dawn's wrist, and yanking her into a fierce hug, committing himself to the pain of it in absolute silence, though it meant nearly biting through his own lip. "Thank you," he told her, for willing to be secretive, for being Dawn, for being the impetus that dragged him into the world of the living again and, quite possibly, saving the life of a waitress. "Thank you."