Blocker
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Chapter Six
Tara walked around her new room in awe. They'd made it look homey and nice and not like a dark hole at all anymore. Now she had places to put her few things. She started emptying her boxes into the closet, thinking it would probably be wise to let the paint dry overnight on the furniture.
"Thank you, Spike, really," she told him as he stepped up to take the cardboard boxes away. "I know you probably didn't have much to do with deciding to redecorate - Claire can be a bit bossy, I know -"
She smiled, thinking that it was nice to have such dedicated friends when she had thought she'd lost her only good friends when she'd left Willow; her whole life had seemed wrapped up in the Scooby gang for so long. She went on, "But you used the money you got last night to pay for it. I'll pay you back, I promise."
Knowing that she had no money and no way to earn money with her all her schoolwork - and that he wouldn't take it anyway - he told her, "Not a problem, luv. I'll just get more next time I go out. Nice thing about us big, nasty monsters - always able to scare a few quid out of something less intimidating."
Tara smiled at that, picturing Spike staring down some seven-foot scaly, blue demon and demanding money from it before he killed it. She stopped smiling - it was kind of scary actually. She hoped Spike didn't go after anything that would hurt him.
She finished hanging up her clothes and walked around trying to figure out where to put her portable stereo. Spike suggested one of the shelves built into the wall over the desk.
"It's a shame I didn't think to pack my cds. They're all still at ho- I mean Buffy's house."
"Can remedy that in a jiff, luv."
He disappeared down the hall and came back with two cds. "Claire said we could borrow these and she'll burn us some more tonight. You aren't one of those Tori Amos fans are you, luv, because I told her to skip those."
"It's all right; I can forego Tori for now."
He seemed relieved. "I wonder what these are," he commented as he put the first unmarked cd in the machine. Some woman started to warble and play the piano and Spike immediately pushed the eject button. He tried the second one and a punk version of 'Talk Dirty to Me' started playing.
"That's more like it."
"I don't mind the music," Tara said, walking over to the stereo, "but we're in a dorm room. We have to keep it turned down." She suited action to word.
"I don't know, luv," Spike said, thinking. "Way back here away from everyone - no one will care how much noise we make."
As the full implications of all that could mean dawned on them both, Tara blushed a deep scarlet and Spike had another new and interesting thing to consider. She'd said she wasn't a fully-fledged member of the 'Girls Only' team. He wondered if she'd ever been with a man.
Who was he kidding? Even if she did go for blokes, she'd never give him a chance. Demon, remember? As the slayer had pointed out only too often.
Demons don't belong with beautiful girls who remind them of sunshine.
But they could still be friends, right?
He rolled his eyes at his own thoughts. This would get him nowhere. She wasn't interested in him like that, demon or not.
But was he interested in her like that? Hmm. He'd been so consumed with the slayer lately that he hadn't given another woman a thought but now that that was thankfully over, he supposed he could look - even if he couldn't touch.
Because she was sunshine.
And brightness.
And efful-
And bringing out the poncy poet in him that was best left far in the past.
"-going?"
Spike came back to what was happening around him.
"What?"
Tara smiled, realizing his mind had wandered for a moment there. She decided to play with him. "I said where are you and Patsy going? She said she has a date with you tonight."
"What? Patsy? What? Date? What date? When date? What?" He must have been daydreaming for some time, but then he saw Tara laughing. Girl was playing him.
"Oh, that's not nice, witch." He went to grab her to tickle her but she pulled away and looked so frightened that he instantly stopped, contrite.
"Wouldn't hurt you, luv."
"I - I know. It's n-not y-you."
He must have done something really wrong; she was back to stuttering again.
"It's - it's n-not you," she reiterated. "M-my fa-father."
What could her father possibly have done to her that would make her run from him when he was just playing with her?
"Ti-tickling. I can't stand to b-be ti-tickled."
He waited and she sat on the bed and looked at her hands.
"He - he used to - w-when I was little - and - and older - he w-would tickle me. Hold me d-down and ti-tickle me."
Maybe she didn't like to be held down? There went a few good fantasies.
"He w-wouldn't let me up."
"Ever? Yer here now." He wasn't getting the point of this.
"Until-"
Spike waited but she didn't seem to want to continue. He pulled one of the big cushions over to the floor next to the bed and sat and waited. However long it took her, he'd wait.
"Until I - I - p-p-p-" Tears fell. "Until I peed myself."
He didn't know what to say to that. Why would someone do that? To his own daughter? What the hell kind of monster was this man? As forms of torture went, it was a subtle one. He reached up to take her hand, give her any kind of comfort she needed, but Tara stood and ran out of the room then and Spike didn't know if he should follow her or not.
He decided to try and catch her, but she ran for the girls bathroom around the corner. He could tell there were other heartbeats in there, so he'd best not run in after her. Maybe this was something she needed another female for.
Tears. Dammit. He headed back to Tara's room.
Humiliation was always the best kind of torture. It was clever, it didn't leave marks and it left emotional scarring like nothing else, especially to a kid. Physical pain as torture was something you could rationalize outside of yourself. The abuser was the sick one; you were just the victim. But humiliation? The victim suffered all the consequences. The victim was embarrassed and degraded little by little until they believed that they were in the wrong, not the abuser. Belittling someone over and over again, making them feel smaller and smaller, less and less worthy - it was a form of torture Angelus had been good at. Witness Drusilla.
He wanted to drive to Alabama and rip her father apart limb from limb. That thought brought such pain to his head that he collapsed on the floor. He couldn't make the hate for her father leave and so the pain went on.
It finally started to subside when he saw Tara standing beside him holding a glass of water and some pills. Reality. She was here now, she was safe, she was all right; she'd gotten past her father's abuse. And she had friends like him to take care of her now.
"I know, Spike. It's all right," she told him as he took the pills and downed them with the water. "I don't like him much either."
She was dressed - or rather, not dressed, in a light purple bathrobe that he didn't think was hers because it wasn't one of the articles of clothing he'd hung up earlier. And a towel was wrapped around her head, holding, he supposed, her wet hair. One of her friends must have gotten her to take a shower while she was in there and loaned her the bathrobe.
She walked over to her closet and pulled out a towel and her bathroom basket with soap and shampoo in it. "Why don't you go take a shower? It'll make you feel better. Besides," she was smiling now, "we have a date later."
"That we do, luv. That we do."
Feeling infinitely better already, he took the proffered items and headed for the men's washroom.
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