VII.

"The hell…?" she breathed to herself as she lay on his bed, holding back tears. Hard to announce how grown up you are then run to your bed and cry, but she was nearing it fast. There had just been too much, and to get this from the one man she really respected, the one who always cared for her.

She took a deep breath. She opened her eyes, and saw Xander's card and the tickets sitting next to the bed. This wasn't some jerk of a Yalie treating her like a baby because he was a frosh and she wasn't yet. This was Xander. He deserved the benefit of the doubt, after everything he had done, and was doing, for her. She pulled her legs under her, stretching like a cat. Time to make with the sorry.

"Xander?" she called as she stretched and started to get up.

He had been about to knock on the door to talk to her, his hand raised to rap lightly. She had not closed the door completely. When she called his name, he pushed a little harder than he'd intended and the door swung open.

There, peeking out from under the hem of his old Haynes Beefy T, was a perfect ass, square in the middle of his bed. She was stretching and getting up. Even as he saw her, he wildly spun around to look any elsewhere, making Gollum Gollum noises in his throat like he was auditioning for Peter Jackson.

"Whoops!" she grabbed at the back of her shirt as she bolted upright and spun to face him. This of course had the effect of pulling the shirt down in the back, and lifting the front just as she faced him. Luckily he was looking away… to the bathroom mirror, which angled just enough so she flashed him squarely via the mirror as he turned his back to her.

"Glagg umm Mrorft," he said clearly, throwing his hands up and putting his eye down looking for a safe place to look. She pulled hastily at the front of her shirt. It pulled down plenty far to cover her. And far enough to expose a generous slice of cleavage and rub over her nipples, which decided to join the fun by popping up like those meat thermometers that come in the turkeys at the grocery store. "Ding! Turkey's done!" they shouted to her in her head.

It simply could not get any worse, and she collapsed in a blushing heap onto the edge of the bed, arms crossed over her chest, chin tucked down and hair falling forward to cover her face like Cousin Itt.

It got worse.

Xander, having missed the unscheduled Twin Peaks marathon behind him by virtue of shutting his eye and holding his hands up as he rushed towards the safety of the bathroom, managed to kick over the trash can with a thunk as he dragged the door closed while shouting "Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!" like a deranged Milton Bradley pitchman.

Out came tissues, a plastic bag from the pharmacy, an empty can of shave gel… and one very obviously used EPT that had been carefully wrapped in the pharmacy bag.

He stopped, his shouts died in his throat. There was an Early Pregnancy Test kit in his trash, and a blushing, crying half naked teenager in his bed. He was out of his parent's basement, single, and suddenly very nearly rich.

"May I have the Hellmouth back, please?" he muttered as he slowly kneeled to look at the white plastic test kit. He felt vertigo, like he had not felt since he first lost his eye.

"Dawn?" he called softly. No answer.

Carefully he opened the door and saw her softly weeping, sitting on the edge of his bed. If he was reading that thing right, she had reason to weep, especially with the reception he was giving her. Feeling like a complete cad, he tossed the EPT back onto the counter behind him as he moved to kneel in front of her.

She sniffled loudly and took in a ragged breath, but it came back out choked into soft sobs. She didn't flinch when he put his hands on her shoulders and touched his forehead to hers.

"Dawn Summers, I love you. I worry about you and look out for you because I love you and care about you. I always will, and I always have. Not because of whose sister you are, or because how I wanted your mom to trust me, or to get your sister's approval."

"I looked out for you before an evil bitch goddess wanted to kill you to unmake the world, and I've never cared that you were the Key. I love you because you've always been worth loving and no matter what happens, I'm not going to judge you or yell at you or tell you what's best. I'm here for you."

She looked up, the hair parting to reveal those amazing eyes. She looked shocked, shaken and amazed.

"Do you? Do you really love me? For me?" Looking at his face, she finally understood what Giles had meant when he had called Xander the Heart of the Scooby gang. There was Love, capital L. It was basic, axiomatic. Danny is short. Joss can't dance. Xander is Love. It made her toes curl and grip the carpet.

"Of course I love you. Okay?"

"Well, there's so much going on… it's been so awful…"

"Forget it," he interrupted her. "You're here with me now, and you're going to be okay. Everything else can be worked out."

She realized, at that moment, that it was true. As long as she was with Xander, he would love her and she would be okay. Why hadn't she seen it sooner?

She flipped her hair back and it cascaded over his hands on her shoulders. Her mouth, glistening with tears at one corner, opened like she was going to speak. With a glad cry in her throat she slid off the bed into his arms and kissed him hard and firmly on his lips.

VIII.

He kissed her back. His lips parted and she was soft and urgent against him. She trembled in his arms and his hips rocked forward closing the distance between them as they embraced, kneeling next to his bed.

He was kissing Dawn, his thighs pressing against hers, her teeth grating against his and her breasts flattening against his chest. And she was pregnant with another man's child.

"WHOA!" he pushed back, eye open comically wide, and held her at arms' length. "Dawn, what are you doing? The kissing. We. What are we…? And again, the kissing…"

Her eyes opened and she was suddenly wary, hurt. "You love me. And I realized how stupid I've been, looking for someone to love me and trying to make someone fit into my life." She looked at him with glowing eyes and flushed cheeks. "Last night nothing was forced to fit. It was all so perfectly normal. I woke up thinking why can't I find someone who loves me the way you do… and then today you told me. You do love me, you are the one who loves me the way you do. And now we don't have to be alone any more."

She leaned in to kiss him again.

"We have to talk."

"Mmm!" she whimpered. "After, just a minute?" She leaned in again.

"Please, Dawn, trying to avoid total meltdown. No more fuel on the fire?"

"I love it when you all me Dawn. Dawnie is a little girl's name. Dawn is a woman's name… what's wrong?" She looked at him, pulled back and looked again.

"Oh, hell no." Her voice was soft but quick with rising panic. "You love me. But you mean you love me like 'I love puppies, I love sunsets, I love…' Oh, hell no!"

She tried to pull away. Without thinking he pulled her to him, putting his chin on her shoulder so he could hold her close without having to look into those eyes.

He thought about life. Cordelia. Anya. That wonderful-awful time with Faith. Willow, even. What they all had in common, they didn't need him as much as he needed them. He had loved, and been loved, but never had someone needed so completely to take all the love he had to give as this girl, this young woman, in his arms. His heart, always on his sleeve, had nevertheless been shackled, and here was the Key, if only he would reach out for it. And she loved him too. He could feel it like he could have felt the sun on his face. He felt like an idiot, but a damned lucky idiot.

"I grew up in Sunnydale. We don't stop to admire sunsets, Sunnydalers. Too many things going the wrong kind of bump in the night to welcome a sunset." He pulled back and looked her in the eye. Corny as it was, he could not resist, and to his eternal credit, with absolutely straight face, he told her, "But for myself? I've always loved the dawn…"

She stared, amazed and outraged at the total LINEiness of the line. But, as ever in her life, she could not stay mad. Laughing, she hugged him like she never planned on letting him go.

IX.

After a while, Xander realized he could not spend the whole day holding a half naked woman in his bedroom. Okay, well, he could, but he shouldn't. They really needed to talk. Really talk, in a way that was becoming less and less likely the longer she held him like that.

"Let's find you something to wear and get some breakfast. I think we have a lot to talk about."

"No," she said, squeezing him tighter. "Tell me you love me. Tell me we are going to be very happy, or I am not getting up."

He laughed. "I love you." He did. Amazing. "We are going to be very happy. Oh, or I am not getting up, either." He rose, and lifted her up, set her on her feet. God, she was beautiful. Okay, okay, focus, Xander, focus. "Um, clothes?"

She turned and grabbed her jeans, which had been folded neatly over the back of the chair he used as a bedside table. Without pretense or show, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, she started slipping into them while calling back over her shoulder to him.

"Well, I can just 'go commando' till we get some breakfast, but I need to get to the store. Got shelter, getting food, need clothes, 'kay?"

He turned, trying not to watch as she slipped his t-shirt into her jeans and threw on her little black jacket. He grabbed a faded denim shirt, worn but clean, off the back of the door and shrugged off the one he had slept in. He felt more naked changing shirts in front of Dawn than he had being naked-naked with Anya. A matter of expectations, he guessed. He turned to find Dawn eying him appreciatively up and down. He needed a shave, and his hair was doing a 'look at me, wild hair, first time in captivity' thing.

She thought he was gorgeous. Not pretty. Not chiseled, nor broody and mysterious. But his chest was solid, his tummy flat enough to look good and soft enough for hugging. He had broad shoulders and heavily muscled arms, and strong looking hands that raised some vaguely naughty thoughts in her mind.

"How," he asked her, "do girls do that?"

"Do what?"

"You are dressing out of my shirt drawer and whatever you showed up with yesterday. This is my place and everything I own is in it, just about. But I feel like a doggie bag after the doggie tore into it, and you look like you stepped off the cover of Cosmo. It's not natural."

She giggled and did a little half-turn thing he'd seen women do when they were flattered to be looked at. Then she leaned into him, planted a quick kiss on his cheek and breezed past him into the living room, saying, "You are just adorable. Keep that up."

He followed, taking a second to close the bathroom door on the spilled trash and the EPT in the sink. They would have enough to talk about with recent developments, and he could wait for her to find her own time to tell him her story. One mind-blowing shock at a time, he thought.