Chapter Text
Dom felt his breath hitch as he shouldered his backpack and walked down the middle of the main hallway feeling awkward in his stiff school uniform and the bright white cast that covered his right wrist. He just had to break his wrist two days before school started. No one looked at him or spoke to him, or even glanced his way. The few times he tried to make eye contact with previous acquaintances were met with glares and one very aggressive mouthing of fuck you. This was not how his last year was supposed to happen, and for a moment, Dom lost himself in a fantasy of walking down the hallway next to Georgie and J.J laughing at something stupid and felt incredibly jealous of that alternate reality Dom who had friends. The fantasy dissolved into a nightmare as memories of that night flashed in his mind’s eye, followed by the reoccurring wave of emotions that always accompanied the images; fear, shame, anger, disappointment, and dread. It wasn’t fair. None of this was fair. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was the one that had gotten hurt, he was the one that had tried so desperately to help, but yet he was the one that everyone hated. Maybe they all forgot….maybe…..
“Is that him?”
“Yeah, the bloke that called the cops on Martha Cogniski’s party in August,”
“Narc,”
“Snitch,”
Angry hands pushed him into the locker, pulling his backpack off and scattering his books across the hallway as the warning bell rang. Everyone filed into the different classrooms, not daring to be late on the first day. Dom sunk down to the floor and quickly shoved his books back into his bag. People walked by him, either ignoring him or pausing to sneer something. His hands started shaking as he grabbed the loose papers awkwardly, and he felt his eyes burning. How was he going to get through today, let alone the entire year when everyone hated him so much? They didn’t even give him a chance to explain why he had called. Would they even listen if he tried? No one did the first time or the second, and after that, Dom learned it was better just to stay silent.
Dom’s hands shook as he tried to stuff the last book in his backpack. The hallways were a bit quieter now as everyone headed to their class. There were still a few minutes left before the final bell rang. He winced as he heard a tearing sound and watched as the bottom of the backpack gave way, and his books fell back onto the floor. Now, he was going to be late for his first class, and he was nowhere near his locker, so he couldn’t store any of the books why did he have so many notebooks anyway-.
“Here, try this,” a voice said, causing Dom to flinch at the unexpected noise. He looked up and saw….what was his name?..... Matthew…..Matt? He was in his year, but they never really hung out. They had a few classes together last year…. Matt used to drive their teacher crazy by constantly drumming on the desk with his hands and going on long, endless rants about whatever came to his mind. He didn’t seem to care what other people thought of him, and that was a quality that Dom greatly admired.
Matt kneeled down next to him and offered him a fabric shopping bag with The Hobbit printed on one side in large bold yellow letters.
“There’s no use walking around with a bwoken-I mean broken- backpack, books will just spill out every time someone bumps into you. Go ahead, you can use this one it’s an extra one I carry around because I have lots of books you know like snake-sphere, science, and chemistry but not really any notebooks because I like to take notes in my head it just makes more sense but it drives the teachers mental when I don’t take notes so I pretend to take notes and I have all these extra notebooks laying around being totally useless. I think we were in the same science class last year or was it music? Actually, it could have been English but I never pay attention in English anyway it's so boring plus I've already read all the books. Are you alrigh', Dom?” Matt asked
Dom nodded his head, Matt had spoken so fast he had barely caught anything he had been saying. But his smile was sincere, so he couldn’t be making fun of him, right?
Matt reached for the backpack, and Dom felt himself involuntarily flinch away from his hand. After that night, after what happened he couldn’t stand to be touched by anyone. Their touch just felt too much like his touch and he couldn’t think about it, he wouldn’t let himself think about what happened to him because it was too ugly to think that that had happened to him, a thing that only happened in faraway places on the news, never here, never to him.
Matt paused, holding the Hobbit bag in one hand and one of Dom’s textbooks in the other.
Dom felt like he should say something because they had been sitting on the floor for nearly three minutes and he still hadn’t said a word to Matt, but speaking out loud was nearly impossible with the amount of anxiety building in his chest. He had barely spoken to anyone over the summer and no one had seemed to notice.
Matt once again held out the bag, and this time Dom did the normal thing and picked up his books to put in the back, gripping them hard so his hands would stop shaking.
“Do you have your schedule?” Matt asked after all the books and binders and notebooks were safely in the bag.
Dom nodded and shifted so he could pull the folded-up schedule out of his pocket. He unfolded it, wishing his hands would stop trembling for even just a moment so Matt would think that he was normal . If Matt noticed anything, he kept it to himself though.
“Ahh, English lit room 9. That’s right over there I think. I was in that classroom last year for some English class or another…I can't remember which one it was they all blend together. I have math first-room 11 or something. It’s in the same direction though,” Matt said speaking quickly as he pulled himself up to standing, using the locker next to him as support.
Matt looked down at Dom, then offered him his hand. Dom stared at it for a moment, and he knew the social protocol was to take it so Matt could pull him up, it was the polite thing to offer when standing up, it was normal but all Dom could see in his mind’s eye was his hand striking out like a snake to grip his wrist holding it above his head so he couldn’t move. Matt was expecting him to take his hand and it would be weird if he didn’t and then he might get offended and think Dom was even weirder than he already thought he was so Dom reached out and took it. Matt pulled him up to standing with surprising strength from someone who was so tall and skinny. Matt handed him the hobbit bag and smiled.
“I’ll walk this way with you, I'm really sorry about your backpack you can keep the bag as long as you need it,” Matt said as they approached his classroom.
Dom wanted to say thank you for helping me, thank you for talking to me but his voice was still frozen, so he just nodded again.
“Alright well, see you around Dom,”