A Bit Of Fluff - Tumblr Posts

Made the backstory of Emily. I want all 3 of the polys to have some sort of trauma in their past cause... why not!

Mr. Bentle

Summary - Emily's past, starring Mr Bentle.

Warnings - sexual assault, homophobia, pedophilia, recovering rape victim, poly! relationship, gn! character, metions of being a stripper, crying, angst, a bit of fluff at the end, child neglect

Words - 1408

When I was a child, everyone thought something was wrong with me. They thought it was weird that I told adults that their jokes weren’t funny, when I didn’t smile, and for having little to no interest in boys. 

In my small hometown in the mostly barren North Dakota, everyone knew me as the town weirdo. I didn’t really mind. I didn’t care when the girls called me names and wrote stuff on my locker. I ignored the silence that would ensue every time I would walk into a room. 

That was all before I had come out as pansexual. After, it wasn’t just teenagers that bullied me. I had grown men and women calling me slurs on the daily. My teachers would completely ignore me. And my parents? They didn’t want to have anything to do with me. To them, I was a fuck up. A mistake that they tried to erase.

The only person that really seemed to care was my dance teacher. Mr. Bentle was the first person I came out to, and he took it in stride. Unlike all of my other relationships, nothing really changed between Mr. Bentle and me… or at least I had thought so.

~

“Emily, you’ve done this routine thousands of times. What’s going on with you today?” Nothing was wrong. I just happened to have a medium-sized laceration on my foot that might have been affecting my movement. It seemed when I left my dance bag at school this Wednesday, someone slipped something sharp into my shoes.

“I apologize, Mr. Bentle. I-” Before I knew it, Mr. Bentle had stridden across the room. His warm breath tickled my neck as he repositioned my arm from behind.

“Like this, Em,” It took him a little longer than usual to back away from my form, “Let’s try to keep that arm there, yes? Again!”

~

That was only the beginning. His lingering touches turned to caresses and then something different altogether. Me being me, I didn’t realize what he was doing. I merely thought he was being kind; it’s not like I had anything to compare it to. When he would invite me over to his house to “hang out”, I thought the touching was normal. I didn’t particularly like it but, he was the only one who cared for me.

Soon, my dance classes turned into inappropriate sessions with Mr. Bentle. This is when I started to realize that something had to change. I love dancing. I’ve been dancing since I could stand up on my own, so I wasn’t fond of losing this time to do my only passion. 

I know now that it wasn’t a good idea, but I asked Mr. Bentle to stop with the caresses and heavy petting. Maybe I should have asked for help, but who would have helped me? Plus, I thought he would have just stopped if I told him I was uncomfortable because I thought he cared.

~

I have no nerves as I walk into Mr. Bentle’s studio. What’s there to be nervous about? This is going to go just how I planned it; I’ll ask Mr. Bentle to resume my lessons and we’ll get on with it. 

“Mr. Bentle,” I start when I see him already sitting toward the back of the studio, “can we please talk?” Mr. Bentle smiles and pats the spot beside him. I sit down and his hand gravities to my thigh. He gives it a gentle squeeze and looks me in the eye.

“What’s going on?” His face is open and nurturing. It almost distracts me from the feeling of his hand drawing higher on my leg.

“I would like to continue my dance lessons, sir,” his grip tightens on my thigh, “I understand that you care for me and I like you too, but I like dancing more than anything. I would rather do that than just hanging out.” His face is no longer open and kind. It is now filled with malice and indignation. I don’t understand why.

“You wanna break up with me?” He sneered.

I was confused, “Since when were we dating?” That made him angrier. The hand that didn’t have my thigh in a death grib went to my upper arm. He wasn’t gentle. I knew it was going to brusie, so I tried to pull away.

“Stay still, bitch,” he spat, “You wound me. After all I’ve done for you, you don’t want to be with me?”

My back touched the seat of the couch as he towered over me. For the first time since I started classes with him, I was scared of him. I’m never scared of anyone. It’s one of my odd traits, I didn’t feel as much as other people did; however, my instincts decided now was the right time to have fear kick in.

His hand traveled up my stomach and onto my chest, “W-what are you doing?” He huffed in annoyance. My heart felt as if it was going to beat out of my chest and I struggled to breathe. I wasn’t sure if my breath stuttered because of my fear or Mr. Bentle’s hands groping on my chest. 

“Just stay quiet. We’ll call this a little apology for breaking up with me.”

~

Anyone with common sense should know what occured in Mr. Bentle’s studio that day. When I had gotten home later at night, my parents had scolded me for staying out past my curfew. They had no idea that it wasn’t my fault at all. 

I went on with my life like normal after that, except without any dance classes. I took it upon myself to dance on my own. You couldn’t really tell I had been raped. The only sign was that I stopped doing ballet, the dance style Mr. Bentle had taught me. It made me sick to even look at the photos of me in my tu-tu that were scattered around my room.

When I turned 18, I left the small, confining town of North Dakota. I didn’t turn back and I never will. I grew to realize through my friends and partners that there was nothing there for me anymore. I’m not sure if there was ever anything there for me.

I turned away from classic dance entirely and started doing a more… provocative type of dance. It helped me release anger and sadness that I never knew I had and the sway of my hips and the cold touch of the pole made me feel free. It was the opposite of the seering hot touch of Mr. Bentle’s hands.

Being with Agatha and Francis, I’ve become more in touch with how I’m feeling. I know how to identify when I’m sad or angry, and if I’m paying attention, I can pick those feelings up on other people. I’m still blunt and straightforward. Francis said I should never get rid of this trait because she loves seeing me piss people off. Agatha needs that kind of straightoforwardness because they hate reading inbetween the lines.

Do my partners know what happened to me? They know to an extent. They know were I grew up and how I was treated… and they know of Mr. Bentle. They don’t know what he did; they both assume it was some popular upperclassmen, and I don’t plan on telling them it was him. Even though he did something terrible to me, I won’t ignore the fact that he opened me up to a whole new world of something I still love dearly; dancing. He encouraged me to dance even when my parents refused to pay for it, and even if that was for some malicious reason, I won’t let myself forget that. 

I will never thank him or be thankful to him. I will never put his name in a positive light and I avoid talking about him in general. He hurt me. Me, only 15 and him the age of 34. I won’t forgive him, but I’ll never forget him.

“Em, you can still come to dinner, right?” Francis called from their shared bedroom. Emily was sat in the living room and was staring down at her paper with a blank face.

“Emily?” Agatha lifted Emily’s face and wiped away tears she hadn’t known were there, “Are you okay?”

“I-” she paused, thoughts going back to the studio. The sizzling hot heat of his hands. Him, “I’ve let him go.”

“Who?”

“Mr. Bentle.”