[fic] fill up with noise

[unburies]

  

(warnings: underage sex, possible dub-con, unhealthy attitudes/relationship with sex)

The first time Scarlett has sex, she’s three months away from her fifteenth birthday. The height of summer and it’s sometime after two in the morning. The house party slumps, people are drunk, a few spaced out on the night’s selection of recreational drugs. She lies on the bed, silent and still; through the thin walls she can hear the thrum of the bass from the music and not much else.

The boy’s four years older and half-drunk and she’s drunk too but she lets him shove his hand underneath her shirt anyway. His lips are blubbery and wet against her own, repulsive but she finds herself kissing back. These days she can’t feel much but she wonders if maybe this might help; this might make her feel something real, something better, something good. Because she's not real, not made of anything real. It's been almost two years since her father's betrayal, since her mother realised he'd been controlling her their entire marriage. And Scarlett, she's just a child, she's trying to make sense of that, what that means for her.

Her mother didn't love her father, maybe her father didn't love her back. Maybe he just wanted her like he wants everything. There wasn't love between them, no real love. Scarlett wasn't made out of anything real. She's not real. It's how it works in her mind, how she tries to find some sort of clarity in something she can barely understand. Maybe she's not made to feel, not made to love. You can't make something out of nothing, can you?

And the more she thinks about it, the more believes it. The more it terrifies her. She was made out of something terrible, something bad. Is she bad?

The boy spends ten minutes hap-handedly pawing between her legs, asking if she’s wet yet (she isn’t) or if she’s enjoying it (she’s not). She smiles at him coyly underneath her heavy makeup but inside her stomach’s burning.

He fumbles, pushing himself inside of her and the only thing she can feel is pain and she’s not sure why it doesn’t feel right, why it doesn’t feel good. This is where love comes from, isn't it? She’s quiet, listening to him grunt on top of her; scowling against the pain and trying to enjoy it but within minutes, it’s all over. He falls asleep next to her and she’s still quiet, staring up at the ceiling, deeply unsatisfied and bleeding on the sheets. She frowns, pulling her underwear back up and smoothing her skirt down. Maybe it never feels good, maybe it’s a lie – nothing feels good, nothing will for her, not anymore. Maybe pain is the only thing she’ll ever be able to feel.

He’s the first of many boys she allows to clamber on top of her. Instead of chasing any possibility of pleasure, she chases that feeling of pain. She normalises it, as if it’s the only thing she’ll feel ever again. She’s fine with the pain, with the clumsy hands. She never likes them and she’s sure they never really like her and she’s fine with that too. Why would anyone like her anyway?

As the years passed, she began to ask that question. As angry as she was, as terrified as she was of being close to anyone ever again – she was incredibly lonely sometimes. Deep down she craved being close to people as much as she knew she couldn’t afford to be. Moving to Chicago hadn’t helped; being amongst so many demons and angels compared to home as well as all the Wanderers she met – something was stirring up in her chest. There’s Leon and it just fucks everything up. She doesn’t know what to do. She thought she was incapable of love but she found herself capable of caring and she did begin to care about people, as much as she would deny it.

She started searching for something else, something more than pain. Maybe someone could like, or even love someone like her. Maybe she could feel something good after all.

But it doesn’t seem to work. She still never enjoyed the sex. She didn’t stop to think she was maybe sleeping with the wrong people, that maybe she’s looking in the wrong places. She starts asking the question, asking if the men who take her home like her. She hears every reply imaginable but as she lies there after they’re done, a cigarette between her lips and a dull ache between her legs, she never seems to believe them. Of course not, why would anyone like her? They’re using her and she’s using them – trying to feel something in this hellhole of a fucking city. No one likes her, everyone’s just trying to get by.

Maybe she should just shut up. Maybe she should stop looking, stop asking. Maybe she should give up on trying to find anything in this but pain. She’s angry at herself. It was nothing but a stupid fucking false hope.