Disclaimer: Spike, Anya, Clem, Buffy, Dawn any other characters mentioned here are the property of Joss Whedon, UPN, and Mutant Enemy Inc. No copyright infringement is intended.

Author's Notes: Written for LiveJournal's random(underscore)urges Rare Jossverse Pairings Ficathon. I tried my hardest on this one, but I don't think I realized when I signed up just how far out of the fandom I am. This will probably be my last Buffy piece. I promise that I did put forth every effort, however, so as not to let lodessa down.

I'm not made of steel And your secret's safe with me. --Our Lady Peace

Spike has been back in Sunnydale for nearly a month but still hasn't seen anyone - not Clem, not Buffy, not even Dawn. He aches to; to make that human connection that he inexplicably craves now. But he knows that he doesn't deserve that, not even after this most recent turn of events. So while he searches for answers to questions that are still hesitant and half-formed, he holes himself up in a sleazy motel on the outskirts of town, the shades drawn and the fridge stocked full of fresh pig blood that he talked Willy into delivering.

When he does venture out, it's only on minor errands, like paying his bill or buying cigarettes from the dispenser in the lobby. On one such trip, he nearly does a double-take when he spies Anya heading down the hallway towards him. Her eyes go wide and guilty, but Spike doesn't ask her what she's doing there.

"You're back," she says flatly.

"I am."

"Great..." she lets the word trail off, then brushes past him on her way out.

There are many things Spike knows he should say to her - starting with making her promise not to tell any of the other Scoobies where he is. But before he can convince himself to go after her, she's gone.
It's another week before there's a knock at the door of his motel room. Looking up, Spike frowns, cigarette dangling from his lip. He peers out the peephole before answering and finds that it's Anya, again.

"Thought you might be hungry," she says hesitantly, holding out a brown paper bag that reeks with that familiar tangy, metallic smell.

"Got plenty of blood," Spike says. "Just got a fresh batch in yesterday. What happened? Willow buy too much for some fancy sacrifice spell?" Anya looks down, shifting from one foot to the other.

"No," she says. "I mean, I don't know - I haven't been over there in weeks."

When Spike looks down at her, he realizes that he doesn't see that bright, brassy woman that captured his heart the same way Willow and Tara and Dawn did. She doesn't look like a strong woman with an acid tongue - she looks like a broken doll. Her clothes are rumpled, her hair mussed, dark circles under her eyes. She's never looked more human; more like she might fall apart and shatter at the slightest touch. And Spike realizes then that she bought the blood specifically for him - to have an excuse to have some of that human connection that he himself has been fighting so hard against.

"Come in," he says. She shuffles past him into the darkened room.
Anya begins dropping by once a week, which quickly increases to almost every other day, then each night around eleven. They have the ability to talk for hours, about everything and nothing, and never run out of anything to say.

Anya is reading a lot lately, Spike learns. She's been on the planet longer than he has, but she's never cared enough to read a book before now, but all of the sudden the world is coming to an end, again, but this time it feels like the real thing. They're all scrambling for some sort of foothold, and Anya has found it in classic literature. Spike discovers that he has learned all sorts of things about Anya that he would otherwise have never known, and still feels odd knowing at all.

Her favorite color is a deep, royal purple. She reads incredibly fast - she finished Anna Karenina in three days, but didn't like it. She liked War and Peace, which took her a week - but only because she was sick. She hates pickles and she has incredible aim with a bow staff.

With most women, Spike has found that the more he talks to them, the less he likes them, no matter how alluring they first appeared. With Anya, it's quite the opposite. When she leaves each night, and reaches up to press a kiss to his cheek, he finds himself wishing she would stay just a little longer.
It's not long until their get-togethers turn into sex. It's not surprising, really - they both have a healthy appetite, and have been doing without for a significant amount of time. But when the sex is finished, and they lie silently side-by-side, they are both aware that something is very very wrong.

They're not the same people they were the last time they tried this, and it's far beyond the simple fact that they're sober now. Spike knows his own reason, and suspects what Anya's is, but she never comes out and says so. It's ironic, really - the entered into this searching for comfort, and left with anything but.

Rarely, however, does this stop them.
These days, Spike forgets sometimes that he's living right outside Sunnydale. His life now consists solely of Anya - the life he had as Dawn's protector and Buffy's...whatever seems so long ago. Then again, it stopped being about Buffy the second he regained his soul. He had thought that she was his reason for doing this, but now he sees that the part she plays is insignificant - he has a chance now, at some semblance of a normal life. Nowhere close to actual normality, of course, but closer to it than he ever thought he'd come. Maybe that's why he's been hanging out on the outskirts of town like this - if he can resist the urge to go running back to the Slayer, if he can pack up and leave of his own free will, he can truly move on.

After all - there's nothing tying him here, is there?

Last week was an epiphany as far as Spike is concerned, so he concentrates on separating his life in general from his life with the Slayer. He starts venturing out more, and finds himself almost wishing that he would run into one of the Scoobies, so that he could prove to himself that he doesn't care anymore. Their problems are not his, and he has no obligations to any of them.

Ironically, he runs into Anya instead; but then again, that's just the tone of their entire relationship. If you can even call it that.

He sees her from the back, her jeans-and-t-shirt-clad figure disappearing into an alleyway. Spike frowns reflexively, puts out his cigarette, and follows after her. She doesn't really need his protection, but playing the gentleman is in his blood.

What he sees throws him for a loop - the now-brunette leaning over what appears to be a flaming corpse.

"Anya?" he calls cautiously, taking a few steps into the alley. Anya whips around to face him, and he sees it - the quilt of red veins running across her forehead and cheeks, revealing her true nature. And suddenly, it all starts to make sense.

"Go away," she warns, but Spike of course ignores her, and moves closer. He can tell that she's about to revert back to her human mask, but he reaches out and takes her arm.

"No," he insists, and a few long, slender fingers reach up to trace the uneven terrain of her face. Spike looks into Anya's slightly glazed-over eyes, making sure he has her complete attention before he says urgently: "Never be ashamed of what you are."

He draws her closer, until they're body to body. With practiced ease, he backs her up against one of the cool brick walls as his fingers move down to undo the button-fly of her jeans. Anya meets his gaze head-on, and before he slips into her, he allows his own demon face to shift into place.

They fuck, hard and fast and desperate, in the semi-public darkness of the alley. When they're finished, Spike half-drags, half-carries Anya back to the motel and they collapse onto the bed. For the first time, they abandon the stiff formality that usually follows their sexual encounters, and curl their clothed bodies around one another as they drift into sleep.
There is no clock or calendar in Spike's motel room, but he's fairly certain that he and Anya have not left this bed in a good forty-eight hours. Their clothes have since been removed, and together they've ridden out too many orgasms for him to count, but still they refuse to let go of one another. Be it stroking, caressing, lightly interlacing their fingers...just so long as they are in some sort of physical contact. Anya currently has her head resting on Spike's chest, her long brown curls contrasting starkly with the milky-white pallor of his skin. Her long elegant nails, pale pink with the barest hint of shimmer, are tracing meaningless patterns above where his heart should be beating.

"There's still something...different," she says. "I sensed it awhile ago, but I still just can't quite figure out what it is."

Spike doesn't even know why he hasn't told her yet - he knows that if anyone will understand, it will be Anya. So he spills the entire sordid story, which she doesn't interrupt him until he's finished.

"I think I envy you," she says. A quirk of Spike's eyebrow asks the obvious question. "The demon thing...it was my choice, and it seemed right at the time, but it's not who I am anymore. For the first time, I just want to be human. I want to be normal." Spike snorts.

"Normality is overrated," he says. "All of this would be so much easier if I could just go back to being a vampire - no chip, no soul." Anya props her head up on her elbows, scooting her face closer to Spike's as the sheets slip down the curve of her back.

"Do you really mean that?" she asks. Spike sighs, shrugs.

"I don't know," he admits. "Do you?" Anya doesn't answer him. Instead, she cranes her neck to kiss him.

They've kissed before, of course, but never like this. Never this real or raw. It steals away the breath that Spike takes in but doesn't really need, burning his throat as if he does. One strong hand cups the back of Anya's head and yanks her as close as she can get. This intense struggle between demon and human, all the ins and outs that he never though anyone would ever understand...Anya understands. She's slipped into place like she's always been there, and somehow he thinks that it would take far more work to remove her from his life than it has taken her to integrate herself into it. Spike pours himself into the kiss, attacking her mouth with a ferocity that he can never remember not posessing - always trying to kiss harder, to move faster, to press closer. Sometimes it feels like he's on a desperate quest to find something just out of reach.

The thing is, he thinks he's finally found it.