where maisie-rae is controversial and dawson is defensive
"So... Serenity Willstrop, uh?" Maisie-Rae chitters, trying to keep up with Dawson's pace.
He sighs deeply, trying to ignore her, but her squeaky sardonic voice is haunting him all the way down the hallway and she doesn't seem any close to giving up on whatever she's out to discover.
Even the agreeable Maisie-Rae is, all of a sudden, not so agreeable anymore. There exists another side to her, one that Dawson didn't quite get the chance to witness before, but, even now, in the very presence of it, he feels nothing.
There's just so much you can take before losing hope in people entirely and Dawson knows that very well, courtesy of his disillusioning childhood. And he knows there's precious little else left to keep two people together when you look at someone with empty eyes and an arid heart.
That's how he got used to looking at the world, with cowardly indifference, washing his hands of the untuned souls of others, keeping a safe distance so nothing could touch him.
Only something did, and he can never forgive himself for letting that happen.
"Are you gonna kiss her just to try, too?" she scoffs, bringing him back to reality. "Maybe you already have."
Dawson rolls his eyes so hard, he goes blind for a second. He knows she's acting like this because of what he did. She's spitting her vile poison like a snake he sicked on himself.
He shouldn't have kissed her. He had no business kissing her. Didn't like it, wouldn't do it again. And the worst part of it all is that he hoped she would save him. As he free-fell into the arms of his murderous doubts, of his intricate misbeliefs, he hoped she would catch him. And he clung to that hope with both of his hands but wound up dragging her down, too, and he thought she could save him, but she couldn't. No one could.
He's on his own, plummeting at full speed into the unreachable.
"You're not gonna say anything?" she taunts him like a restless kid, tugging at his sleeve.
"What do you want from me, Maisie-Rae?"
"I just want you to be honest with yourself," she declares, "You owe yourself the truth."
Dawson stops in his tracks and furrows his eyebrows in confusion. "The truth?"
Maisie-Rae stares at him hopelessly. "Your truth, Dawson."
"You know everything, why don't you figure it out?" he snarls.
"I don't know everything," she scowls, crossing her arms to her chest defensively.
"Tough luck."
He's walking again, marching in huge leaps towards his dorm. The accelerated heartbeat is constricting his throat, and breathing gets just a little bit harder every passing second.
"You like Hamilton, don't you?"
He freezes.
Maisie-Rae could swear his eyes sparkled when he heard Adam's name.
"Keep your voice down," he mutters walking up to her.
An apologetic look paints on Maisie-Rae's face like the colors of a sky at dawn after an overnight thunderstorm. The gloomy clouds are rolling away on the canvas just like the indignation dissipates into her blue eyes, melting into remorse.
"But you like him..." she trails off.
"I don't like him. He's a fucking pain in the ass." he drawls. "Are we done here?"
"I don't know, are we?" she takes a step forward.
Dawson's eyes dart from one side of the hallway to the other. "I'm not into guys," he mutters again.
"That's why you kissed me, though. That's what you meant when you said you wanted to try."
"I'm not into guys, Maisie-Rae. I'm just not into you," he snaps.
They lapse into a long stunned silence. Dawson can't help but feel a tinge of regret pervade him, until his hard look softens into a tender glance.
He wants to take that back, but he knows there's no way he can.
"I'm not mad at you, Dawson. I get it. It's OK," Maisie-Rae reassures him with a little shrug. "I just want you to talk to me again. I want us to go back to the way we were before."
His eyes are boring into the ground. "You shut me out," he deadpans. There's no emotion altering his voice. There's no frustration, no rage. There's no loneliness.
"It's different now," she chimes, resting her empathetic hand on his shuddering shoulder.
"Different how?" he asks in a lackadaisical voice.
"I know you feel lost right now..." she ventures.
"I don't feel lost," he cuts her out, taking a step back.
"Why are you denying it?"
"Why are you pushing this?" he fires back. "I already told you I'm not gay," he repeats, flushed cheeks and unsteady heartbeat.
"There's nothing wrong with it, you know," she adds.
"Fucking save it, Maisie-Rae," he drawls. His voice makes Maisie-Rae jump a little bit, but she doesn't seem to mind. As a matter of fact, that's exactly the reaction she wanted him to have. She wanted to get under his skin and she did.
"I don't like Hamilton. I don't like guys. And I don't need your sympathy."
Dawson turns around.
He pretends not to notice that a familiar pair of blue eyes is staring at him from across the hallway.
*
Every day is a new beginning, right?
Wrong.
Dawson woke up with a terrible headache and, to Milo's dismay, is even grumpier than usual.
To make matters worse, the first person he meets– not counting his gleeful roommate– is Maisie-Rae, who has been standing outside of his door for the past ten minutes holding a soggy salmon bagel and a cup of black coffee.
"I take it you're sorry about yesterday," he greets her.
"I'm trying, OK?" she huffs.
"I can tell."
"Can you maybe not be an asshole today?" she begs, trying to keep up with his pace. Guess what they say is true: some things never change.
He smirks. "I'm trying."
They talk like yesterday never happened. Or like it didn't matter anymore. And, maybe, it really didn't.
Dawson felt more comfortable when he was allowed to pretend.
Like when his parents told him he was the biggest disappointment of their life and he pretended he didn't care. Or when Mary Ann told him she hated him, and he pretended he was OK with that.
You can never hate me more than I hate myself, he thought, but he put on a smile for the cameras and pretended she didn't just stab him twenty-seven times in the chest.
Twenty-seven like the number of times he let her down. He counted them.
Even now, walking next to Maisie-Rae feels like a game of play pretend. She could pretend not to know, and he could pretend she was wrong about him.
"You think I didn't see you lurking, faggot?"
Maisie-Rae and Dawson halt. Their heads jerk towards the two boys standing in the corner. One is hunched over the other. He's well-built and moves like a gorilla on acid. His hand is slammed against the wall. His rabid mouth almost starts foaming while he preys on his victim. And Dawson can't believe his eyes. That's...
"Hamilton," Maisie-Rae breathes.
Dawson glances at Maisie-Rae. "Who's the prick?"
Maisie-Rae holds back her signature I-told-you-so smile. "You mean Dennis?"
"Why does that sound familiar?"
"Dennis is my ex-boyfriend. He called me a freak when I came out as pan. He also slept with my best friend, Kathryn. Well, we're not best friends anymore, but we used to." she explains, nervously scratching her arm under Dawson's inquisitive look.
"Right. I think I have her business card somewhere," he taps his pockets.
She chuckles in reply.
And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Dawson wants to know more about what happened between them, but his train of thought is interrupted by the unsettling sound of Dennis kicking a locker.
Adam winces.
"Oh, what the hell." Dawson gasps and takes off towards Dennis and Adam before Maisie-Rae can get ahold of his arm.
"Is that the best you've got?" he rumbles, staring right at Dennis. "Faggot?"
"Who the fuck are you?" the boy spits. Adam is impassive.
"Seriously, there has to be a more original insult than that," Dawson continues, blatantly ignoring Dennis' glower. He walks up to them with his hands casually jammed into the front pockets of his jeans. "Can't you think of something else, big boy?"
Dennis clenches his fists, but Dawson doesn't even flinch. His wry smirk is unaltered, unbothered.
"For example, I've been trying to come up with a word to describe you," he jeers. "Sure, I don't mind garbage, but I'm aiming for the sky here, Dennis."
"Listen, I don't know who the fuck you think you are, but..."
A vein is throbbing in his neck.
"Oh, wait, I got it. What about braindead? It's got a nice ring to it, don't you think?" he keeps taunting him. He's restless and he's out for blood and his eyes are so busy with Dennis that he doesn't even notice Adam's attempt at hiding a smile.
Maisie-Rae's laughter fills the entire hallway.
As expected, Dennis doesn't like it one bit. "Stay out of this, Maisie-Rae," he snaps, his body quivering in fury.
"Bite me."
Dawson leans closer to Dennis. "You should probably leave," he whispers loud enough for everyone to hear.
"I'm not leaving," he scoffs, giving Dawson a lopsided grin. Probably the same half-assed grin that got him out of trouble every single time in the past. "You see, my friend Hamilton and I were having a little chat."
Dawson's eyebrows shoot up in feigned surprise. "Were you? Didn't sound very friendly."
Dennis lets out a small chortle, before getting face to face with Dawson again. Their noses are only a few inches apart. The air separating them is greasy with spite.
"Look, I'll give you 10 seconds to get off my face before I make you discover what it's like to be a girl," he mutters. "Then you and your boyfriend Hamilton can go back to spending your time drinking iced-coffee and sticking tampons up each other's ass."
"Sounds lovely."
"Eight..."
"You skipped nine," he teases. "Didn't they teach you how to count from 10 to 0 at the zoo you were raised in?"
"Seven... six..."
"Dawson, let's go," Maisie-Rae pulls at his sleeve.
"I'm not moving," he talks under his breath, yanking away from her grip.
"Five..."
"He's gonna hit you. Trust me, it's better if we..."
"Tell me, Denny, how does it feel to be an absolute fucking waste of space?"
"You think you're funny?" Dennis mutters in disgust.
"Oh," Dawson laughs. "I think I'm hilarious."
A teacher he's never seen before is standing ten feet away from them. She's holding her breath, as well as a pile of books to her chest. Dawson immediately knows that Dennis saw her, too, because his grimace suddenly falls and his hands relax.
Dawson scoffs. "I thought you were going to show me what it's like to be a girl."
"Figured there's no point in doing that," Dennis shrugs. "Like I told Hamilton... can't beat the faggot outta ya."
Dawson blacks out.
All his eyes can visualize is Dennis backing up while holding his face, his sturdy fingers covered in bright red blood. The same blood that's flowing out of his nose. In the background, Hamilton is staring at them in shock and disbelief.
The teacher hurries up to them, then veers in the direction of poor Dennis to try and help him and his broken nose.
She's screaming at Dawson words he cannot fathom. They're muffled and distant, barely audible. The only sound he can hear is a long shrill and its pitch is almost deafening. He's underwater.
He doesn't understand how he blacked out like that. Did he punch him? Was it him? He searches for answers on Maisie-Rae's astonished face. She's gaping at him, looking speechless and mortified.
His hand hurts.
He's never punched anyone before and he somewhat wished his first time would be much more spectacular than that.
In the midst of all the chaos he generated, he manages to sneak out. He runs to the bathroom and yanks the sink open. The chilly water starts running over his hands, over his bruised knuckles. He splashes his face, pulling his skin down.
"Fuck," he grunts.
He's not underwater, but he would very much like to be when he hears the words "Two more strikes and you're out of here." coming out of the principal's lips. In horror, he realizes he doesn't remember why he wanted to leave Wharton High in the first place.
*
"Wanna talk about what happened?" Calliope's mellow voice greets him like a caress he didn't know he longed for.
Milo is standing a few steps behind her, unsure whether he's included in the conversation or not.
"Have you put ice on..."
"No," he mutters, avoiding eye contact.
"No, you haven't put ice or no, you don't want to talk about it?"
"Both."
She muses on Dawson for the longest time before sitting next to him on the bed. She instinctually turns to where Milo is standing, still waiting for a formal invitation to join the conversation happening in his own dorm room. "Are you coming?"
He nods eagerly and sits on his bed with a vigorous bounce.
By now, Dawson has figured out that Milo is not exactly what you would call a big talker. He's that one friend who'd rather listen to others share their stories; the teammate who'd happily ride the bench for the whole game if that means he can cheer for his friends. Even now, he struggles to be an active participant in the conversation. He's sitting there, looking at the both of them with his starry-eyed look and his bashful smile, trying to find the confidence within himself to say something, but the words don't seem to come out. They're lost somewhere between his good intentions and the self-assurance he never had.
"...I mean, I don't get it. Dennis was being a jerk to Hamilton. Why didn't he get punished?" she fusses.
"I punched him in the face," Dawson utters as if it's the most obvious thing in the world and she's just missing the point entirely.
"Yeah, well, he called you..." Cal pauses. "...that wasn't cool at all," she protests, crossing her arms to her chest.
"Faggot."
"Uhm?"
"That's the word you're looking for," he explains, running his hand through his hair.
"You shouldn't take it personal," she affectionately pats him on the knee twice, before resting her hand on it indefinitely, "Dennis is so cognitively limited that faggot is the only insult he can elaborate. You were only helping Hamilton out of that situation."
Dawson almost chokes on his breath.
"Bullying is not allowed at Wharton High," Milo jumps in. "If Adam decided to report what happened to the principal, she might even absolve you. Obviously, you can't be the one to report him. They'd think it's bogus."
"I don't care," he deadpans. "That's what I wanted anyway."
Cal retreats her hand, placing it on her own thigh as she stares uncomfortably at Dawson, not knowing what to say to make things better; wondering if he even wants her to.
"It's getting late. I should probably get back," she announces, shooting up. "I'll let Maisie-Rae know that you're OK."
As promised, she leaves the room a few seconds later and silence plummets on Milo and Dawson like an invisible burden that neither of them knows how to handle.
They share disheartened looks before preparing for bed. Dawson can't be bothered to undress, thus he decides to just slip under the covers wearing his worn-out sweatpants and tee.
They lie in their cots in utter silence, but neither falls asleep just yet. Milo's breathing deepens as a sign he's about to say something. That's one of the signals Dawson learned to recognize with time.
"Hey, Dawson?"
No reply.
"I know you didn't do it to get kicked out," he chirps. "You're a good guy."
Dawson pulls the blankets over his head, curls in on himself, and starts sobbing in quiet woe. He doesn't know why his chest is quaking or why his heart is bleeding, and he doesn't know how to stop it either.
He cries for half an hour until he falls asleep.
*
A/N:
not a lot of #adson action in this chapter, but i believe it was important to show how dawson is dealing with self-acceptance
hope you liked the chapter, please bear with my slow updates. i'm trying my best.
love you.
el