#steph nordegraf | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

forkanna · 7 years

Link

NOTICE: Scott Pilgrim and related characters are ©Bryan Lee O'Malley. Story/plot content is © me!

Based mostly off the graphic novels but some stuff from the movie and game. There are other Kim/Knives fics but I haven't read them; I wanted to come at this completely based on the source material. Any similarities to those fics is purely coincidental.

Rated M for adult topics (including one brief not-quite-explicit flashback with a 17-year-old), and some sexual content in later chapters. You know, the L word. No, not "lesbian" — the OTHER L word: lesbians.

"... It's something else" - flyafar

I know this one kind of comes from nowhere, but I've actually been wanting to do something in the Pilgrimverse for a long time. Ever since I first saw the movie in theaters. Then a couple of weeks back, I was playing through the game again out of boredom (trying to get some elusive achievements) and I just felt this strong impulse to give Kim and Knives the ending they deserved.

If you haven't read the comics but HAVE seen the movie, I wouldn't be surprised if you view this as a crackship. It still kind of is in the comics to be honest! But don't worry, you don't have to read them to enjoy this fic; I'll cover what happened in later chapters. Plus a lot of little surprises that make up my take on them.

Hope you like this one! It's about medium-length for me, definitely no oneshot but in total it's not even as long as "Bind Us" is so far. And it's only getting started!

Jessex

[AO3 LINK]

CHAPTER ONE

And so, as our band of ragtag heroes exited from the Chaos Theater, Scott Pilgrim was reunited with his great love - well, other than himself. He and Ramona Flowers, the random American rollerblading groupie, went prancing off into Subspace together. Happily fucking ever after.

Both "fucking happily" and "happily fucking", to be honest.

What did I get? The same thing as usual. Nothing. Bitterness and emptiness. Well, I guess that's not completely accurate: Scott said he was sorry. Too little, too late, but hey… at least he tried. A for Effort. He gets Ramona, Stephen gets my old roommate, Wallace gets just about every piece of hot gay ass in Toronto besides Joseph and Stephen. Knives and Young Neil get each other, sort of, kind of. I guess. Who cares? And I'm left with a big bag of nothing.

I'm not Scott, obviously. I'm Kim. I play drums. That's all the introduction you get.

Fine, I'll be nice. You came here for this story, so I'll tell you the rest of the history first. Kim Pine. Red hair and freckles, pointless existence. Born and raised in Ontario, though I've skipped from town to town. Scorpio. My turn-ons are death and destruction, and long walks on the beach.

If you don't know any of the history, then you're probably better off. It's a long, sad story full of sighs and facepalms. But some of you probably have that morbid curiosity you can't shake, so unless you already know this and can skip it, or just care even less than me, here we go: I used to play drums for Sex Bob-omb with Scott and Stephen. Also of importance is the fact that Scott left a string of broken hearts in his wake a kilometer and a half long, with mine thrown in there somewhere. Just because he and I patched it up enough to be civil didn't mean we were "all good", but I sure as fuck wasn't going to be the one to explain it to the manchild. Anyway, we all thought for sure that Knives and Ramona were just going to be his latest casualties, or one of them would Yoko him into quitting the band. And we were right about that last part; the band fell apart, but at least not in a literal sense like The Clash At Demonhead, when their bassist was headbutted into coins and the drummer lost her cybernetic arm before disappearing completely. Not too long after the big showdown with Gideon at the Chaos, Ramona and Scott poofed into the ether and haven't been heard from since.

There, happy?

Anyway, this takes place a year after all that went down.

~ o ~

I don't even know why I was still in Toronto. After Sex Bob-omb exploded and Shatter Band shattered, there really wasn't much else for me to do. Boredom, maybe. At least Stephen was still around, making music with his boyfriend, but they didn't seem to need my drums anymore. Dynamite Headdy sounds better without me. Sure, there are days I still miss Sex Bob-omb. Not so much Shatter Band, which stank on ice. But the Bob-omb had potential, we just had Scott's lack of focus holding us back, and Stephen's too-much-focus sucking all the fun out of everything. So maybe, over the course of this paragraph, I talked myself out of missing either of those bands.

Anyway. Toronto, Delicious Cup.

Nobody wants to hear a drummer all by themselves. So I started doing this thing with Steph Nordegraf after she moved back to Toronto. Stephen introduced us; I'd met her through her brother Neil before though. It's… experimental and stupid, and I hate it. I'm on bongos while she sings and plays the zither. We sound like new age music being recorded by kindergartner, which is why we couldn't book any real coffee houses, like Second Cup or Aroma; only knockoffs like that one.

That's what we were doing in Delicious Cup the day my life stopped being pointless and colourless. So colourless that I didn't even fully realise it was summer until I saw Knives Chau walk in.

"What are you doing?" Steph hissed at me. Didn't even notice my bongos were on the floor until that point.

"What?"

"You went totally dead, like some kind of locust."

"Do locusts go dead? Is that their thing?"

"Just…" She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. "We'll take five."

Frowning up at her, I slipped my bongos into the backpack I normally kept them in. "Chill, Nordegraf. You're going to develop kidney stones."

Okay, so that wasn't really her fault; I was being my usual salty self to cover for the fact that I fucked up our set. Not that anyone in the coffee house was paying the slightest attention to the two weirdos who thought they were musicians; they were all chatting, drinking, and reading through magazines. When one of our ten-minute epics ended, one polite older woman clapped. That was it. We might as well have been ghosts for all the notice we got coming and going.

As I ditched her with the equipment and went up to the counter, slipping in behind Knives in line, I tried not to think too much. Sure, we had a thing once… it's barely worth mentioning. But yeah, it was oddly nice to see a familiar face. Especially with Scott and Ramona off in the ether somewhere.

She looked good. At least, I thought so; she stopped doing that thing where she dyed part of her hair, which I always thought was just a way to compete for Pilgrim's attention, anyway. And a year of college really seemed to have given her something… not that I could tell what it was, but something more. Her adorable face was turned mostly away from me, so I couldn't tell much else. Just that she was wearing clothes a little more grown up than when I last saw her, and that she didn't seem as nervously-excited. That's a good thing: I hate excitable people.

"Green milktea?" she asked when she got up to the counter.

"What… is that?" Julie asked her. "This is a coffee house, not a tea house." Typical Julie. Yeah, I knew the barista, but we don't really talk. She's even more unpleasant than I am.

"Oh… but you have green tea and chai tea on the menu. Right there."

Julie didn't even bother to look over her shoulder. "I think I would know the menu better than you would."

"But I'm serious, it's right-"

"Do you have a problem with the way this business operates? Are you blind or something?"

"No, I'm not blind," Knives said, slowly sounding a little less sure of herself. "My eyes work fine."

"Then why can't you read my lips? No. Milk. Tea."

This was going nowhere. Even though this wasn't how I wanted to reinitiate contact with either of them again, I strode up to the counter and stood next to Knives.

"If you have milk, and you have tea, you can make her fucking milktea. Besides, you know her, so stop being such a rotting tampon."

"What?" Knives breathed, taking an instinctive step away — probably just from my tone.

"Excuse me, carrot top?" Julie snapped. "You don't tell me how to-"

"And you don't own this café, Powers, even if you do seem to work in all of them. Just make the drink. I'll cover whatever extra you want to charge." Digging into my pocket for my meager amount of money that I own, I produced a couple of toonies. "Make it. Now."

"This isn't even enough for a normal cappuccino, or whatever a 'milktea' is supposed to be."

"She can pay for the actual tea herself; I'm just paying for your added mental energy, which you seem to be rationing very carefully due to a tremendous shortage."

By that point, Julie's glasses were literally steaming. Either from her face heating up with rage, or the coffee machines behind her. Knives had been shrinking away from the whole confrontation, but then she blinked a few times, leaning back toward us.

"Kim?"

My cheeks probably would have turned red at the way she breathed my name. What a dumb reaction. But I made myself focus on what I was doing, stepping forward to add another fiver atop the coins on the counter. "And this is for my espresso. Hurry it the fuck up or I'll do that ask-to-see-a-manager thing we all hate." My work done, I turned and went back over to Steph.

It only took her a minute or so to see that I was back without any drinks. "What happened to my soy latte?"

"Sorry…" All at once, I realised I forgot about that. Or about waiting around for my own drink, either. But she noticed I was out of sorts.

"What happened?"

"To what, your face? I've been wondering that for years."

"No, at the counter." She was used to my attitude by now, and could tell when I was deflecting. A skill I loathe in my friends, because it bypasses my defenses. "You look all shook up."

"Thanks, Elvis." Clearly, she wasn't going to let this go. "Okay… I ran into somebody. From the old days."

Her lip curled slightly. "From the Pilgrim Era, or like even earlier?" My face must have said it all because she winced. "Yikes…"

"I don't care," I told her flatly. "This doesn't matter. Tomorrow, I'm going to wake up and go back to No-Account, punch the clock, and stare into space for six hours until Comeau gets in. Probably drink a bunch of Coke and feel myself contracting diabetes."

"Why don't you just drink Coke Zero?"

My scowl said enough. Still, for good measure, I snapped, "Never… mention Coke Zero… in front of me."

"Okay, Hagrid," she snorted as she finished packing up and we headed for the door. Again, she doesn't respect my grumpiness properly. "But I hope you know this isn't the end of thi-"

Before we could escape Delicious Cup, a pair of crossed blades were blocking our path. Behind their gleaming steel was a pair of dark eyes, blazing with intensity.

"I can't let you leave."

To Be Continued…

#kim pine's precious little knives #scott pilgrim vs. the world #scott pilgrim #kim pine #knives chau #forkanna writes #forkanna the writer

8 notes · View notes

quicksilverdaisyday · 3 months

Text

speaking of steph tho

#should i tag this?#sure #scott pilgrim #stephanie nordegraf #steph nordegraf #stephen stills #neil nordegraf #young neil nordegraf #young neil #i like to think stephen and steph literally only became friends bc their names r so similar. they thought it’d be funny

45 notes · View notes

emily-mooon · 1 month

Text

Imagine if Stacey and Neil actually met in high school except they didn’t go to the same school: they met through Kid Chameleon.

One night, Scott brings Stacey to one of their shows and it just so happens that Stephanie (or Steph) brought Neil with her.

Since they were both the youngest people there (Neil’s 17, Stacey’s 16 till December), they decided to talk to each other and they hit it off.

Stacey also develops a bit of a crush on Neil and would always ask Scott if Steph was going to bring her brother with her again, as she wanted to see him and didn’t know if there was another way.

Then one morning, she discovers that they take the same TTC bus and from then on they talk before and after school and become sorta friends. At this point, Neil also starts developing a crush on her.

Things stayed like that for about two months until Neil and his mom moved places (as I agree with the headcanon that the Nordegraf siblings have divorced parents) so they would no longer take the same bus in the morning or after school. They still have Kid Chameleon shows to meet up and talk at right? Ha ha wrong cause at New Years, the famous break up between Scott and Envy happens which in turn, also breaks up the band.

That whole break up was the nail in the coffin that strained Neil and Stacey’s kinda friendship. They didn’t have the others phone number cause they were both too shy to ask and also cause they both kept forgetting.

There also wasn’t a whole ton of opportunities to ask either of their siblings for their phone numbers so they just gave up and went on with their lives.

But then why didn’t they recognize the other in the like three times there were in the same room together? Easy answer: Stacey was distracted by everything around her to even notice Neil, who in turn, was slowly disappearing into the crowd and fully did by the time it was Lisa’s going away dinner.

So when they see each other again properly at the Chaos Theater, something clicks and they fall back into where they once were two years ago. To them it felt like a decade, but no it was just two years. They catch up on what they missed in the others lives on the walk home.

After that these dorks start dating cause the feelings were still there, just buried deep, left dormant, and forgotten. They came back but slightly different as people change.

#and that’s it!#this idea has been cooking for a little bit btw #i am an au fiend and this gets added to my long list #I have another idea where neil lives on the east coast with his mom but spent Christmas with his dad and Stephanie #he also says he’ll come visit Stacey during March break but since kid chameleon broke up after Scott and envy broke up #he didn’t get to (also cause he went on a trip with his mom instead)#the drama is there but I think I’m the only person who headcanons that Neil has family on the east coast sooooo #or hey how about he moves there with his mom since she wanted to be closer to her family #that’s another alternative #anyways try to pry this au headcanon from my cold dead hands #i love it sm #apologies if some things sound cliche deep down I’m a romantic at heart and I’m such a sucker for ppl meeting again after not seeing the #other for awhile #also sorry for any spelling mistakes it’s late at night and I should go to bed now so gn!#scott pilgrim #scott pilgrim comic #young neil #neil nordegraf #stacey pilgrim #nordegrim #emilys headcanons #emilys long list of aus #i guess this counts as canon divergent too #long post #cause it is kinda long ngl

16 notes · View notes

forkanna · 7 years

Link

[AO3 LINK]

NOTE: Apologies for how caustic Kim is at the beginning of this bit haha. Also, rest in peace, Chester Bennington.

You'll probably think I'm being a super lazy storyteller when I start out with "And that's how it went for a week or so." Fuck you, I do what I want. Besides, I'm going to give you some summary stuff, so don't get too bent out of shape.

And that's how it went for a week or so. Knives would disappear for a couple days, then pop back into my life to just chat and hang out, come with me to the library or work, digging through albums at Sonic Boom. Literally a stray dog. None of my attempts to be acerbic and grumpy could drive her off. Sometimes she wanted to get food together, sometimes she wouldn't bring it up. Eventually, she stopped asking about the "challenges" though, which was fine since there weren't any. One thing I had to wonder about, though…

She never invited herself back to my apartment, or asked me to go to her place. Probably the second one is because she's living with her parents while on break from uni. But it was weird; she was spending all this extra time finding me and following me, wanting to have enforced bonding time, but never wanted to see where I lived or make the night longer. It's not so much that I was disappointed by that, of course. Just surprised. Like people who jumbo-size their fast food meal, then order a diet soda. Why go for broke with the eats but then stop short on the drink? Just not logic that I can follow.

Anyway, that was about it until the night Steph and I were going to play an actual show instead of being stuck in the corner of a café. I hadn't been thinking too much about it, because to be honest, the idea of playing this kind of music in front of an audience that actually came specifically to hear live music was terrifying. It took all night for me to psych myself up to not chicken out, since this wasn't exactly my comfort zone with live performance.

"We can do this," she was whispering backstage as we waited anxiously for the emcee to call for us. "We can. We totally can, and we totally will."

"You're going to talk both of us out of it at this rate."

"Shhh." Adjusting her ironic beret, she glanced over at me. "Almost showtime, that guy with the six harmonicas seems close to done."

Nodding, I pushed my coppery bangs out of my face. They were growing out, and finally just long enough that they were almost normal hair. I was just sick of bangs. "Yeah."

"You okay?"

My entire body bristled. "What? Fine. Shut up."

"You've been kind of weird since last week at the Other Cup. Like… we don't talk much outside of band prac-"

"I really don't want to, either," I lied. Sure, it'd be nice to have someone besides the hyper ninja chick to talk to, but Steph didn't have to offer friendship out of pity. We were both above that.

"Suit yourself. Oh, this is us."

Shaking off the vague feeling of nausea, I made myself follow her out onto the tiny stage. The announcer just said our names and encouraged the audience to "give it up", which they did, politely and quietly. We didn't have a band name yet since Steph said she was "over labels" and I didn't want to argue with her. Naming it would be accepting that this was actually the shitty excuse for a band that I was currently part of. The latest of many.

"This one's called 'Garland of Cornelia'," she said into the mic. "And it goes a little something like this."

What a cheeseball.

We played our set, and people actually didn't boo us off. We sounded as good as we possibly could given the kind of crap Steph writes, and dare I say it, we might have been ready for the big time if we could find a flautist. Or a thereminist; that seemed about right for this pretentious bullshit. It made my skin crawl and I really wanted someone else to be playing the bongos instead of me, since really she could play bongos as well as I can — just not at the same time as the zither. But I could fill in with her for now until she found someone who hated the music less than me. Or until I found another rock outfit that wouldn't implode like the others.

Part of the gig was that we got free drinks after our set, so after more polite applause I literally only took enough time to shove my bongos into the bag before heading straight for the bar. "Steam Whistle."

"Can I see some ID?"

"Cute." But the bartender just stared me straight in the face, and he didn't look like the type to mess around. Shrugging, I got it out and showed him, and he got me a beer.

I'd barely had enough time to get two sips in before I spotted Knives at the corner of the bar, far away and close to the door. She wasn't with anybody, and she wasn't looking at me either when I first spotted her. Maybe it was a wild coincidence.

Or maybe the way she did catch me looking at her, gulped, and sprinted for the door meant that it wasn't anything close to a coincidence.

Of course I ran after her. When somebody runs away, it's only natural to want to chase them down and figure out why, isn't it? But when I got outside, she was nowhere to be seen. I thought about trying to follow, asking if anyone saw a speeding Chinese puppy-girl and which way she went, but everybody on that street was either wasted or sleeping it off in doorways. No sense in wasting my time. Disgusted, I turned and went back inside.

What did she want from me? Why didn't she wait? The whole thing was so ridiculously confusing that I focused on downing as much beer as possible for a minute or two.

"What did I miss?" Steph asked when she caught up to me, picking up on my bad mood before she even sat down.

"Life is stupid."

"We weren't that bad. They actually clapped a little. Some of them, anyway."

"Not that. Just… nevermind, I should probably go home."

Her elbow bumped mine on the bar. "Don't be like that. I actually don't hate you, even if the feeling isn't mutual."

"Maybe it should be mutual. Hatred, I mean; just… whatever." My head slumped forward until it connected with the bar. "I'm trying not to care about something that doesn't deserve to be cared about in the first place."

"What's that?"

Another sigh. "The girl from Delicious Cup."

"Oh. You and her are a thing?"

"WHAT? No. Don't jump to conclusions." My hands gently spun the empty pint glass. "She made this proclamation that she's my 'bff' now, I guess. Even though I don't care. Anyway… she was here tonight."

"She came to hear us? That's pretty decent of her."

"No, it's weird. I never told her about this show. How did she know to come see us?"

When I peeked at Steph, I saw one of her eyebrows was raised as she ordered us two more beers. "Uhh, could be the marquee out front that said 'Steph Nordegraf and Kim Pine'? Just a tiny clue."

"Those letters are so tiny, though. Unless she's walking around with a microscope in her bag…"

"Look." The beers arrived, and we both paused to take a swig before she continued, "She clearly looks up to you. Younger girl, right? She needs a role model or something like that. Happens all the time, teenagers latch onto women who are still young enough to be 'friends' but not old enough to be a second mother, and kinda… you know, that word for imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, that thing?"

"Emulate," I guessed.

"Yeah, that's it. Probably all there is to it. Kind of a feather in your cap, if she wants to be like you even with you being the way you are. Don't worry about everything so much."

"And what way am I, exactly?" The point had been to put her on the defensive and shut her down, but of course, it didn't work because nobody takes me seriously anymore. She didn't even hesitate to answer before taking another drink.

"An asshole."

"Thanks."

~ o ~

"Hey!" Knives said cheerfully as she bounced into No-Account the next day.

"What were you doing at Cameron last night?"

She literally froze in mid-high five. Which I hadn't raised my hand to return, anyway; I wanted answers before we moved along to pleasantries. "Uh… what?"

"You were there. I saw you run out."

"Nahhhhh," she drawled out, very slowly thawing from her frozen pose and tucking her non-high-fived hand behind her back with its twin. "That was the other girl."

"What other girl?"

"I don't know? Not me, that's for sure. Why would I be at Cameron House?"

"Because you're stalking me. We kind of already established that part."

Wilting, she finally leaned against the counter and gave me the puppy-dog eyes. "Am not. Well… not that bad, I don't spy through your bedroom window or anything at night. Just wanna see what you do with your days."

"You could have asked to come along."

"How? You didn't tell me you were playing."

The slight pout won me over, and I sighed. "Fine. Just forget it."

"You guys were good, though! Weird, but good. What do you call that kind of music?"

"Trainwreck."

"Trainwreck, huh?" she asked, again missing that I was being facetious. "It's kinda like, soothing, except for Steph's lyrics are brutal in that Nineties lesbian way."

My eyebrows twitched upward a little. "What do you know about Nineties lesbians?"

"N-nothing, except for Ellen," she laughed nervously. "But the music, I mean… I've been trying to learn about music more. Started because of Sex Bob-omb, but then I kinda started branching out from there."

Rolling my eyes, I grunted, "Nobody should start learning anything because of Sex Bob-omb. Those two demos floating around online are going to forever haunt me."

"They were good! You guys rocked, you just… drifted apart."

Knives looked sad. Like, genuinely sad that everything changed, the way high schoolers usually do right after graduation, or — gee, look at that — after their first year of college. Pathetic and dejected, her sweet little face the picture of a child who had lost their favourite toy and finally figured out it wasn't coming back. Maybe that's why I reached up to lay a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey… we sucked. Not worth getting upset over."

"But you didn't suck. I liked it…"

"You just admitted you didn't know much about music before hearing us. Like… angsty young Kim was listening to Linkin Park constantly in junior high, and now I think they're shit. But that nostalgia factor makes me stop myself from completely hating them. You know?"

"Awww," Knives cooed, momentarily distracted. "Angsty young Kim…"

"Shut up. But you get what I'm saying?"

"Yeah." Her hand came up to wipe her eyes. Had she been crying?! I hadn't noticed because no actual tears fell, and she was looking down and pouting. But now when she looked upward with a slight smile, patting my hand, I could see how shiny her eyes were. "Thanks, I guess. Still liked you guys together, though, but… I guess…"

Swallowing hard, I jerked my hand away. The whole 'emoting' thing made me very uncomfortable. But then I winced when I saw her wince. We both ended up doing a lot of wincing lately. I had to smooth that over somehow.

"Um… you can pick the next movie. Got just enough time for it before my shift is up."

Clearing her throat, she grinned up at me, and the signs that she had been crying were way too clear to ignore. It hurt for some stupid reason. "Cool. But I know even less about movies than about music, so… I dunno. That zombie movie?"

"It's not even real," I sighed, looking over at the new releases. Which were still from forever ago.

"Oh? Well then… 'Action Doctor'?"

"Sounds lame. What about 'It Came From Subspace'?"

"That could be cool… what's it about?"

"Hell if I know. But it's a movie, and I haven't seen it yet, either."

That was what we watched. And the whole time, I found myself looking over at Knives and trying to figure out why she was there. Why she cared so much about whether or not I cared the same amount as her about the implosion of the Bob-omb. Why I cared whether or not she cared. Just this annoying circle of caring that made me want to pull my hair out.

About halfway through, she caught me staring. "What?"

"Just… wondered if you wanted a drink." It was the only excuse I could think of.

"Nah. I'm good. Do you?"

"Nah."

"Do you want something else?"

Even though I felt like I might, like to ask her again why she felt it was so important to watch me and Steph play, or any of those caring-related questions that had been spinning through my head, all I did was shrug. That was simpler. Safer. Less threatening to my grumpy way of life.

But definitely not 'better'. And it was getting harder and harder not to admit that.

To Be Continued…

#kim pine's precious little knives #forkanna writes #scott pilgrim vs. the world #kim pine #knives chau #scott pilgrim #forkanna the writer

2 notes · View notes

forkanna · 7 years

Link

[AO3 LINK] [EF LINK]

NOTES: Time to move forward with the plot. I know it probably seemed like there was barely any plot, just fluff-fodder, but I swear I was building to this all along! Really!

"You seem a little distracted."

Looking up from my bongos, I blinked at Steph for a few seconds. "Was I not playing my part? I thought it sounded… like the song. Y'know."

"It's not that. You just aren't focused." Putting down her zither, she picked up her aloe drink and chugged it for a minute. I tried not to make a face of pure disgust. "Like, I can sense it even though you're playing fine, if that makes sense."

"What, with my chakras or some shit?" But again, she was impervious to my acidity. "Fine. But I don't wanna talk about it."

"You and Knives?"

"Don't wanna talk about it."

"How's that going?"

Sighing, I ran my hand down my face and gritted my teeth against my irritation. I knew by now that yelling at Steph to shut the fuck up and leave me alone made little difference. But to be honest, I was in a good enough place with Knives that I wasn't even that irritated.

"Nice. Now, can we get back to practice?"

"I thought you were worried about, like… the lesbian thing."

"Not really. Just…" Should I tell her about Knives? It didn't seem right, for reasons previously stated; that was Knives' information to share as she saw fit. Maybe she wouldn't care, but maybe she would. You never can tell how people will react; I couldn't even tell how I would react before I was told. I decided it was easier, safer, to maintain my vow of silence. "I dunno. It's good. She's really…" I ran out of words.

"Good? Nice?" My grumpy face turned grumpier. "It's okay, I just like seeing you doing better."

"Better than what?"

Another of her usual casual shrugs. "Before."

"Fine." Then I threw my bongos aside and stood, glaring at my current bandmate. "She's great. She's completely changing how I see life. Everything is perfect, especially her. Birds suddenly appear every time that she's near, alright? Fuck."

"Saying that in a sarcastic tone doesn't necessarily mean that it's not true." But I ignored her and went off to pee.

While I was in there, I came to a sudden realisation. Knives wasn't just a girl, wasn't just my girlfriend. Wasn't just a trans girl, either, whatever that meant; I was still kind of working my way through that along with the 'girlfriend' part. It hit me that she was just about every letter in the ever-expanding LGBTQIPA acronym, if you looked at it all in certain ways. Lesbian, for dating me. Gay, for being a person with a dick who didn't mind dating people with dicks — and I know it's not the same, but the sex would be. Bi, for dating me and Scott. The "T" is obvious. Queer because she's more than one letter, since that's kind of what that means as far as I can tell; it's the "gray area" checkbox. Maybe not the "I", since I'm fuzzy on that one, but if she was that would be cool, too. And as for the A…

Okay, so I did some reading at the library. I don't have internet at home, so I go there for email, to print resumes, boring crap like that. But I also have been doing a lot of research there lately. About Knives, about me… about all of this. Trying to wrap my head around a lot of new concepts that are still space alien type shit to me. And the "A" seems to stand for "asexual", which… I was starting to wonder if that was Knives. Or me, even, since I've gone without for a LONG fucking time and didn't really care until I connected with her. Maybe I do care more now. But she's fine if we don't bang, and thought humping my leg was good enough.

So like… I guess what I'm saying is, I'm trying to get comfortable with the idea that she might never want to have any sex. Or not a lot, or not for a while. Somewhere in there. If me literally getting naked in the kitchen — which, in Wallace's battle plans, sends the message that I'm dessert — didn't faze her, then maybe nothing would. And that's alright if it's what she wants. God will I be thirsty, but I'd rather just buy a new vibrator than ever make her uncomfortable again. It's the same shit in the end, right? If she was a normal- wait, no, wrong word. If she was a cis woman, then we'd be buying vibes, anyway. Acting all personally offended that she doesn't want to use a dick I didn't know existed a couple weeks ago to part my pussy lips doesn't seem like a wise use of my energy, does it?

Anyway, the point here is, I was realising that Knives Chau was all of those things, and she was also some kind of Chinese ninja, a college student, way too good at Mario Party, and an adorable little bean that could almost always find a way to stay positive. She was special in about a dozen ways. On top of being hot. And for whatever reason, she wanted to be with me.

Why would anyone like her settle for some failed musician, some misanthropic pessimist?

Someone who could come so close to hurting her just because of a little alcohol?

So when I came back out of the bathroom, I looked about as shaken as I did when I went in. I wasn't crying this time, thank God, but I was stumbling and distracted. Not long passed before Steph came over to me and placed a hand on my shoulder to hold me still.

"Kim… what's up? Seriously, this has to be more than just worrying about being gay."

"Not gay. Bi. Probably. I don't know." Then I cleared my throat. "I want to be… fuck, nevermind."

"Come on, Pine. Out with it."

Another minute of silence passed. I expected her to roll her eyes and walk away, annoyed at me for not responding. She didn't; she just fixed me with an expectant look. Finally, I blurted, "She deserves better than me."

"What?"

"I suck. Even when I'm trying, I'm pathetic. This girl is so…" I wasn't used to praising people. At all. "Good. She's everything that's good, Steph. And I'm everything that's not."

She was quiet for a moment, thinking, before she asked, "You're worried about disappointing her, aren't you?"

"Worried? No. That would imply that I thought it might not happen. It's a matter of when."

"Kim…"

"No, Steph. I'm a frigid bitch and… she should find someone else who knows how to have 'fun' like she wants. Who can do this right instead of blundering around in the dark. But how do you tell somebody they need to go the fuck away for their own good without making them feel like it's their fault instead? Because I can't hurt her. That's not allowed."

"Hey." Her face was full of pity, and I hated it, I wanted to deck her to the floor to keep that look from existing. Wanted to deck myself, but that's pretty hard to do. "You're not a bad person."

"Yes, I am."

"You are n-"

This time, I did push her away, backing toward the front door. My heart was pounding a million times a minute, and I wanted to scream a million things, but they were mostly at myself and she didn't deserve that headache.

"I'm gonna split. See you later."

She was trying to tell me something as I left, but I blocked it out, I ran. All I could see was the pity in her eyes, the pity in my girlfriend's when she saw how guilty I felt about Julie's aunt's. I wanted to drink to forget, but I couldn't let myself get that drunk ever again. What if next time, I did something worse? I'd be no better than the guys I had dumped who got too handsy.

I'd be no better than the guys who dumped her for something she had no control over. Who didn't see just how great she was.

Halfway to the bus stop, I collapsed. Curled into a ball on the grass and cried, but it wasn't the same kind of cry. This was… something else. I don't know, but I wanted all the pain to end. Sure, I wanted to be better, but I didn't see a way to make that happen, so I just wanted it all to be over. For Knives to find someone who could treat her like a star, give her moonbeams in a jar, and to forget about that asshole she briefly thought was "cool".

Which all sounds way over the top and emo. I know. My brain couldn't quite process that I was in love with her and that was why I wanted to give her everything. Guess one of the shapes love can take is self-destruction.

~ o ~

Young Neil was the one who found me and brought me back to the Nordegraf home. He was walking home from the bus stop, so of course we would cross paths. When he first saw a statue curled up on the grass, he probably thought somebody had really fucking odd taste in lawn ornaments. But I mean, he hung around with Sex Bob-omb while we practiced for a long time; he recognised my face. Then somehow managed to drag me the couple of blocks back to her house from there.

Steph was still shocked when she saw me as a stone figure again, despite it being the second time. She called Stephen, who came over right away with one of those bottles of Soft. But this time…

"It didn't work."

That was all he could manage to say at first, eyes round and jaw agape. Steph and Neil had been pacing back and forth behind him, but once he said that she bent down and squinted at my face. "Shit."

"This… I don't know, why didn't it work? Wake up, wake up, wake UP!" He punctuated the last part by slapping my face, which I couldn't feel. "OW!"

"Don't be dumb!" Steph hissed, standing back from my perch on the couch. "What do we do?"

"No idea, but we can't leave her like this forever, right? I mean… look how upset she was, look at her eyes!"

Neil shrugged as they panicked. "Didn't you say this happened before?"

"It did, but we had Soft, and we got to her quicker," Steph told him, smoothing her hand over my hair. Just as unyielding as the rest of my body. "It was about two hours after she left here that you found her, I think…"

"Shit," Stephen breathed, hand pressed into his mouth. "This is a nightmare."

"We have to call Knives. I mean, she's really important to Kim now, we can't-"

"Knives?" Neil whispered, shocked out of his usual silence. "Oh…"

Both of them looked toward him, but it was Stephen who snapped, "What? This isn't as important as whatever your deal with her was, is that it?"

"N-nah, nevermind. Just call her." He sounded faintly embarrassed, but I couldn't see him from my vantage point so I didn't have the visuals to confirm that.

So they called Knives. Now I felt even worse than I did before. The whole reason I was a statue in the first place was because of my guilt over not being able to give Knives everything she deserved, and now here I was putting her through an even worse ordeal. Along with all of my friends. I used to really think that everyone else was the problem, that they all just sucked. But it was me. I'm the weakest link in the chain.

I heard some pleasantries exchanged at the door, quick ones due to the crisis. Once Knives got to the living room, she gasped and put a hand over her mouth.

"Yeah. We don't really have an idea of what else to do." Glancing over at Stephen, who only shook his head, Steph shrugged and went on, "You probably don't, either, but… we thought you should at least be here."

"Thanks for calling. God… my poor Kim…" She dropped to her knees next to the couch and caressed my face, and I would have given anything to actually be able to feel it. "And you said Soft didn't work? I have more…"

Stephen shook his head. "Don't know, but it really seems like it doesn't. We can try another bottle but I hate to waste it if this time we know it's not going to work…"

"Do we, though? Do we know it won't work?" Steph's hands were on her hips as she glanced between the two of them. "Seriously, I'll dump a dozen bottles on her head if it's going to do the job."

"No… I think I know what we need. Do you see that?" Her finger was pointing to my stomach, just barely revealed by my shirt riding up before it turned to stone along with the rest of me. "That's the key."

Everyone watched Knives stand up after that announcement. Including me, since I really didn't have any choice but to watch, given that my eyes were frozen open by concrete. After a few seconds, Neil hesitantly asked, "Um… what?"

"We need to go see my father."

To Be Continued…

#kim pine's precious little knives #scott pilgrim vs. the world #scott pilgrim #scott pilgrim fanfiction #forkanna writes #forkanna the writer

0 notes