dominic taylor

dominic taylor | 25 | assistant football coach

[dominictaylor]

DOMINIC ORION TAYLOR

BASICS.

NAME: Dominic Orion Taylor

AGE: 25

BIRTH DATE: may 1st, 1998

OCCUPATION: assistant football coach

PRONOUNS/GENDER: he/him, cis male

ORIENTATION: pansexual

FACECLAIM: Cody Christian

NEIGHBORHOOD: Settler’s Valley

CHARACTER ARC.

Dominic is searching for freedom from an ugly past struggling with drug addiction. He is about a month sober as he moves into Whiskey Flats, and he’s hoping that people will take him seriously. Part of his arc is righting the wrongs that his struggle with addiction has caused – mainly, he is actively searching to try and be a better human being than he was before the move. How well that works for him, well, time will only tell. 

BIOGRAPHY.

Dominic Orion Taylor was born to John and Rebecca Taylor in the heart of Austin, Texas – far from the sleepy town he found himself camped in now. But to tell the story of how he wound up here, we should really start at the beginning of the end, shouldn’t we?

He took the divorce hard – as a six year old, you never really get a chance to understand what’s going on, especially when suddenly, mom didn’t live in your house anymore. She didn’t want to. Rebecca wanted to live in Dallas, where the jobs paid slightly better and she could disappear into an entirely new family, shaking the dust off her boots from a marriage that just couldn’t see itself through.

John was a carpenter who’d played football at the University of Texas back in – hell, he didn’t know, the 80s? Big fan of the sport, and somehow, the only means to which he knew how to show love to his son. Dominic was soon registered for the little leagues, and looking back on it now, he was grateful that he’d had athletics to lean into. An outlet. Something about shoving and tackling taught him everything he needed to know about numbing pain. 

Senior year. Your life never looks as wide-open and stuffed to the brim with possibility as when you’re seventeen, and you can feel yourself on the cusp of the rest of your life. Dominic genuinely thought it’d be a breeze, transitioning from high school to college on a full-ride scholarship after being scouted by the big-wig reps from UT. He’d never seen his pops proud before. Turns out, fate had some dirty little tricks up its sleeve for a boy who had yet to discover what it meant to be grown. 

All he really remembered was seeing that left defensive tackle charge towards him on the field – fourth down, all he had to do was throw the damn ball and he was golden. Then everything went blinding white the moment he was sacked. Torn ACL, torn meniscus… Torn apart future. The doctors had said twelve to sixteen weeks before he could expect a full recovery, but even with that news, his football career – and, effectively, the foundation he’d built his entire future on – was shattered. 

What nobody tells a seventeen year old boy with hopes and dreams now dead and buried was that pain killers were highly addictive. It started with taking the prescribed doses, but as any kid with a void inside of him could tell you, it soothed a part of him he didn’t quite realize was broken. Two in the morning, two at lunch, two before bed rapidly turned into four at each interval, and before he knew it he was sleeping through classes with his eyes wide open. Bits and pieces of memory started to fade, but somehow, by the skin of his teeth, he’d managed to graduate.

Dad went ballistic months ago, but the truth was that Dominic never knew if his old man had ever really had it together in the first place. They said it was early onset, and before long he was wandering the streets at night more confused than Dominic was whenever someone asked what he’d done over the weekend. As an only child (not counting his half-brothers and sisters living their happy lives in Dallas), he had no choice but to take care of him as long as he could… Until he couldn’t. He was only 18. 

College came and went in less than two semesters. Dominic was kicked out due to his performance – or lack there of. With no real ambition and absolutely zero desire to stop abusing his prescriptions, he’d finally stumbled across Danny. 

Danny offered him things he’d only seen in movies – and it was a simple deal, really: Try a few things, see what you like, what you don’t – but it was a game of trade. You give me this, I give you that, wash your hands of it the second you get sky-high. Turns out that song and dance could come back to bite you in the ass if you weren’t careful. 

The trade game started relatively innocent, but that was only until Danny had gotten him hooked for sure, and when you’re curious enough to lean over the rabbit hole, sooner or later you were bound to fall in. 

Six years it took him to finally get shaken up. Danny had given him fake blow, and he’d went and sold it to the wrong group on the wrong side of town. If you’ve ever been jumped in a parking garage before, then you’d know the feeling of watching your life flash before your eyes. It only took that one experience, out of all the others he’d taken with him – county jails, shady deals, you name it and he’d probably been there – to get him to flush the stash Danny’d given him and get the hell out. 

He didn’t really know how far his four wheels would take him. He also didn’t know how far he could go to escape a life that seemed to linger over his head. But he did know that if he ran, maybe he’d have a chance. So, he’d closed his eyes and picked a spot on the map and just drove, all the way out into the middle of nowhere, ‘til he wound up right here in Whiskey Flats. Ironic name for an addict to call home. 

[dominictaylor]

closed starter → @colton-reynolds where: whiskey flats high school spring scrimmage

Dominic knew better than anyone that this scrimmage had been Tate's pride and joy -- which he didn't really understand, because it wasn't exactly as important as an actual game. As the new assistant coach, Dom had been trying to have his ideas heard -- which plays to call, which players to swap, everything in between. It wasn't until Tate had told him that he'd be doing the coaching (and thanks for his input) that Dominic finally muttered a fuck this before storming off the sidelines of the field. He'd been looking for the concessions -- these days, instead of using when he was stressed, he just ate and then paid for it in the gym. Today was one of those days he needed to stuff his face with a soft pretzel or a hot dog, and his head was clouded with anger when he ran directly into the other guy with a much deserved oof.

He tried not to clench his jaw, because it wasn't the guy's fault, but damn it if he wasn't angrier these days now that he was off the pills. All those pent up emotions with nowhere to go ended up eating away at him, he supposed. "Sorry, man," he grumbled, noticing the popcorn spilled all over the sidewalk, and then he really felt like an ass. "I'm really sorry. Look, can I just.. Get you another or something?"

[dominictaylor]

closed starter → @livlis

It wasn't Dominic's first time in a hall like this one -- an old building never remodeled probably after the '80s, tile floors and folding chairs in a circle around the room. The speakers in he meeting he'd just attended were all good, but in a lot of ways, Dom didn't feel like they were relatable. He sort of felt like an outsider even showing up here, because after all, at least his dad hadn't kicked the bucket yet. Maybe the grief was in knowing that it would be a matter of time, but he didn't feel like unpacking that right now. Not when everyone else was mingling. He hadn't even realized the meeting had ended, and when it had, he found himself trapped in a social connection ring of fire, and he needed out. He brushed passed a woman standing near the exit -- and he didn't really take much consideration for her presence, because he was bursting through the double doors and desperately breathing in the fresh air. He found his chest rising and falling more rapidly than normal. Reaching into his back pocket, he grabbed a pack of cigarettes and decided to light one up, inhaling the tobacco and exhaling relief. "Fuck, man," he sighed, feeling a bit of sweat trickle down the back of his neck. That's when he noticed the woman he'd nearly ran into behind him, and he shrugged away an apology.

"Look, I'm sorry, I just needed the nicotine."

[dominictaylor]

closed starter → @tatemedina

Nothing shakes you up. Nothing rattles your cage, Taylor.

If that were true, then why the hell were his nerves having his hands fidget and twitch like he was some sort of nervous high schooler, some dumb kid who didn't know anything? When he first even heard that this position was open, he contemplated the application entirely. It'd been, what, thirty-one whole days of being clean at the time of his interview, and he didn't even know if he'd drop dirty or not. But when they'd offered him the job, that's when everything changed, because that's when they told him who the head coach was.

Tate Medina didn't make it very far into the NFL, but it wasn't like his name hadn't been written about somewhere on the internet. What struck Dominic was the fact that he'd actually made it, he made it all the way to where he saw himself going, and life still somehow knocked him down. What kind of bullshit was that?

It didn't matter how much homework he did or how much he'd regret his Google search history in a month or two, he just knew that he was working for him now. And that's probably why he showed up to his office dressed in his nicest athletic polo tucked in to what he could only assume was some sort of dress-pant. He didn't know, he'd never lived a professional life before. Knocking on the metal doorframe, he took a few steps into the space, took a breath, and then just started talking. "Hey," he said, then cleared his throat. "I mean, hi, Coach Medina," suddenly he didn't know what to do with his hands, so he stuck one out for a shake. "Uh, I'm Dominic Taylor, the new assistant coach. I was told today was my first day?"