Kim Pine's Precious Little Knives

Chapter 12

WARNING (containing mild spoilers): This chapter is somewhat NSFW. Fairly explicit without going into a lot of detail. Also involving underage drinking and drunken almost-sex.

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This had to be a nightmare. I felt myself beginning to freak out as I glanced between her innocent eyes and the bizarre sight going on down in her lap. Then, as I kept glancing... I started to realise that she wasn't asking more questions. Wasn't moving at all.

Glancing over head, I saw the "PAUSE" had returned, just where I expected. It barely fit in my bathroom.

For a second, I started to turn around and go pace in the living room for a second. But then I thought... no. No, I wasn't having this; it wasn't me who needed to worry about being embarrassed, or having something to hide. I wasn't going to get anywhere by standing around and not confronting the issue. So I took a few deep breaths, trying to calm my breathing, and then smacked the Pause to make it vanish.

"Kim?" Knives asked a moment later. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, I don't know," I burst out, gesturing to the needle. "Gee, what could it be?"

"Um..." She looked a little self-conscious about that, but didn't back down as much as I expected. "Sorry, I thought the door was locked. Some people get pretty queasy about needles, and I didn't know..."

"Lock's broken. And hey, so not the issue right now, Chau."

"What?" After a second, she tried again, eyebrows starting to contract together as she watched me running my fingers through my hair. "Come on, you're starting to freak me out."

"YOU'RE freaked out! I'm staring at my friend, doing... I mean, what even is this? What are you on? Like, heroin or something?"

"Uhhh, these are my hormones. Are you sure you're okay? You look kinda... sick or something, I dunno."

That brought me up short, taking away some of my building rage. "Hormones? Wait... I don't understand."

"Ha, ha," she sighed with a little frown. "It's not really funny when it's about this, Kim."

"What is 'this'?! I'm standing here, staring at an episode of Law And Order and you're being an evasive little douche!"

"You know." I shook my head. "You don't know?"

"No. What, do you have some kind of... glandular condition?"

Not totally sure what she had been thinking before, but it was only at that point that she drew back in mild shock. Then she glanced down at her thigh, up at me, and slowly swallowed. "Oh... um... but wait, there's no way you don't know. Not after Julie's aunt's house."

"What? Don't be weird, this isn't-" Sighing in irritation, I slammed my hand into the sink, and she jumped slightly. "Cut the shit! If you told me that you have to stab yourself in the leg for some condition, I'd remember that! So if you're lying-"

"Omigosh. You really don't remember. Any of it." She both looked shocked and disappointed. Then she looked down at her leg again, and back up at me. "Okay. Um... can you give me a couple minutes? This is pretty uncomfortable."

Beside myself, I wandered back out into the hallway, propping up the wall with my shoulder. What else was I supposed to do? She was being so calm that it started making me feel like the weird one for flipping my lid. And maybe I was. Sure, it looked like she was some drug addict, but of all the friends I'd had in my life, Knives was probably the one I would suspect of being hopped up on anything the least. Anything besides too much sugar, I mean. The only thing was, if she was just taking birth control or something like that, I'd never heard of anybody who took it by syringe. Pills and patches, and even that shove-it-up-your-cunt thing, sure. But this seemed a little out there.