The man's breath is hot on Kim's neck. He's aggressive, pinning her wrists to the brick wall of the alley with just one arm, his other hand reaching to grab at her thigh. She's caked in sweat, and he breathes. so. loud. Like a horrible monster, in and out, these guttural growls.
Her head lolls to the side; he put something in her drink. She picked up on it pretty quickly, but by that point it was too late.
He squeezes her thigh way too roughly, fingers tapping their way up to her crotch. She waits until he's so close, when his breath is the loudest—
—and kicks him in the fucking dick.
He screams and falls off her. Kim slumps for a second, almost tumbling over from her own lack of balance and looks at the man. "Do you have any idea who I am?" she spits. Literally spits at the ground.
He sneers and runs at her. Kim grapples him and turns on her heel, slamming into the wall he pinned her to. She knees him in the groin again, and punches him in the face. She definitely sees blood spray from his mouth. And he falls.
She flips him over with her foot and stabs him in the dick one last time with the pointed heel to her shoe.
"Do it again to anyone else and I will find you, buddy."
Kim sees her breath hover and dissipate in the musty air. She's losing focus fast. Roofied, alone, late. Her head is pounding. If she were any other girl… it'd be over. But she's been trained on how to fight villains while under heavy sedatives. Hell, she's been given sedatives to build up an immunity for when she needs to go.
Not that she does that anymore. But she can last a while longer if she's smart.
She collapses besides the man's unconscious body, kicking off her heels and letting her bare feet rest on the dirty ground. She rubs her bare arms, black dress pulling up way past her thigh. This was such a bad idea.
And fuck, it's going to be expensive getting a Lyft home this late. Like really expensive. In New York City on a Saturday night at 2am? Fuggedaboutit.
In her purse, she has the Kimmunicator. Untouched, possibly in need of a good charge. She could probably call Wade and whip up some kind of easy (and free) transport home. But she'd really prefer not to bother him with her stupid shit. So she gets a Lyft just like any other girl, and it's a full car. Jam-packed with drunks like her, definitely more than is legally allowed. But folks keep calling in Lyfts without being honest about how many people they're bringing, and the drivers are too apathetic to care.
She definitely passes out at some point in the backseat. The only thing that wakes her up is the five different people screaming in her face that they are at her stop.
The first thing she does is vomit inside of the fake plants outside the apartment complex's doors. Though it gives her some kind of relief, though she knows she'll feel it in the morning. Thankfully, when she does get inside, the apartment is empty. The other girls are still out partying, leaving Kim to wallows in her own misery. Hopefully she'll oversleep and no one will know she got roofied and went home without calling for help.
Kim collapses on her bed and gets the spins immediately. She's still but everything is swirling. So she goes to the bathroom and she takes care of it.
Kim's a heavy weight too. Ron was always the one who'd get wasted too fast, and she'd have to spend the next day doting over him. But it was cute. Sort of. For a while. Not always though, that's for sure.
She checks her phone, cheek pressed up against the toilet, just waiting for the next wave to come. There's a few texts. Specifically one from Ron. She knows she really shouldn't be reading that kind of shit from him right now, especially when she's wasted.
So when she wakes up the next morning, she's almost thankful that she fucking passed out over the stupid roofie at that exact moment. When she was most considering actually reading one of Ron's stupid texts for once.
Kim also finds that when she wakes up that she's in her pajamas and also in her bed. Noticeably sleeping on her slide, with a box behind her so she can't turn over. "Huh?" she looks around, her nasty black dress is on the floor. Oh, this is embarrassing.
Kim looks across her small, cramped room to see her roomie sound asleep. She looks so pretty.
How the fuck does she manage it? What, is she doing her hair and makeup before bed? Ugh.
Kim has considered her asking her out but eh… she knows it wouldn't work out. Erica's too much of a normie, and maybe Kim has been playing normie for the past few years, but it's just postponing the inevitable.
Kim squints as she looks into the sunlight. It fucking burns. But getting rid of the light means getting up to close the blinds, and she's hungover as fuck. What day is it, fuck, what time is it? Everything's fuzzy, she doesn't remember too much from last night. Mostly just the text from Ron, not even what it said, just that he texted.
Huh, her phone's off. It was fully charged—
Kim slumps against the bed. Her roomies seriously take such good care of her. She senses an intervention though, so she should probably sleep in to put it off as long as possible. But when she waits up like five hours after that, she feels even worse. Damn.
She doesn't really want to know what time it is, but she figures she should get up. It's very awkward when she goes into the kitchen and finds half her roommates (four of eight) crowded around the counter, looking great and normal.
It's because when they go out together, they support each other and let no one go over the edge. And Kim is stumbling around with bloodshot eyes and frayed hair.
"Hi," she rasps. "Thanks for helping me last night."
"It's alright," one of the girls, Jasmine, says. "We all have those nights, Kim. Just maybe come with us from now on?"
Kim frowns. "Okay. Um. I'm sorry."
"It's okay," one of them says.
It's not okay though. She knows she shouldn't blame herself, but she made the decisions that lead up to that. And even though it was brief, and the creep was unsuccessful, she can feel phantom fingers burn into her thigh. She can feel his raspy breath down her neck. Her skin crawls and it will probably never go away.
"Thanks guys," she sighs.
Kim is a hot mess, she won't deny it. She's felt it coming for the past few years now, it just got worse a few weeks back when it finally happened.
But right after the Lowardian Invasion, Kim had uh, you could call it a mental breakdown. It was just too much. The world just stayed the same. At least on a surface level.
But behind-the-scenes, governments were freaking out and escalating their military budgets to create weaponry that could reasonably stop an alien invasion. Which lead to a blitzkrieg of an arms' race, and no one cared. To the media, it's like nothing ever happened, because Kim Possible saved the day once again .
It's like she was propaganda, or a cover-up or something.
Ron wanted to stay in Middleton and keep doing missions. They both took a gap year to focus on missions, maybe to officially become Global Justice agents. Kim didn't like it, but she went along with it because she wasn't ready for college. Or at least she thought she wasn't.
That year sucked. Kim doesn't like thinking about it. Just lots of fights between her and Ron with the occasional disappointing return of 'reformed' supervillains like Drakken.
Ron knew it sucked too. So they both started college the next year. Together. In Middleton. And that felt more normal. For Ron at least. He was exactly like he was in high school. But Kim didn't want that at all. It was just the same faces every day. Monique, Felix, Ron, Brick, so many, just stayed in Middleton. Where Kim is worshipped.
Kim looked Ron in the eye, covered in dirt, her graduation robes in tatters, and yelled, "Don't you get that I'm scared too?"
And Ron acted like it never happened.
So Kim stopped it. She ended Team Possible, transferred to a different college. Ron and her went long distance while she attended Quinnipiac University. But everyone on campus saw her as some kind of hero, and it got overwhelming. No one wanted to be her friend, or like, they did, but for the wrong reasons. It was never just Kim, it was always Kim Possible, Teenage Hero.
So Kim switched to online school only for her first semester of sophomore year. But then she got lonely, and had to keep visiting her parents in Middleton, and while it felt good in the moment, she'd come home and cry into her pillow because nothing was changing. She wasn't growing.
Then Kim thought about it. She wanted to be near people, but near no one that could clock her as a celebrity. She needed to be a face in the crowd, and immediately thought of those big crowd shots in movies shot in New York City where it's just a wave of faces shifting down the packed sidewalks. So she moved to New York and it worked. For a while at least.
Maybe people clocked her in NYC, but celebrities are so common it was never a big deal. But even still, there was Ron . She was still dating Ron .
Ron who still lived in Middleton, Colorado. Who still called her KP and acted like nothing ever happened during Lowardia. Who didn't understand a goddamned thing she told him about. Who shrugged every problem off to marinate . Who she never even loved that way.
So Kim dumped him. Over the phone. If she did it in person, she knows he'd lure her back in. That was a few weeks ago now, but he won't stop texting her. It's all the same, and she's had to break up with him at least five times now. She doesn't know what else she can say, and now she's becoming bitter with him.
She didn't want that. She didn't want to be bitter. He doesn't deserve that.
But his voice just keeps screaming in her ears, and it won't stop. He needs to go. They're not meant for each other. How does he not understand?
It's two in the afternoon when Kim realizes she has a problem; she's at some random bar drinking hard liquor. She doesn't even really understand the thought process that brought her here. Her girlfriends are all at home, binge watching New Girl or something. There's a party tonight they're all going to, so they're just sticking together for the day. Except for Kim. Who is antsy. And doesn't want to just hang.
Kim is restless. She needs to keep going.
New York City was supposed to be the cure to her depression. Breaking up with Ron was supposed to be freeing. Now she feels more trapped than ever, and alcohol is her vice. She groans and pushes the drink away from her, slumping over the counter. She still hasn't checked her bank account to see how bad that bender last week was for her.
Fucking New York.
"I'm closing my tab," she tells the bartender compulsively. Why is she doing this to herself.
Nothing feels like anything. She's constantly dissociating. She can't even think of the last time she's really been fully happy for an entire day, or even the majority of a day. It's just blips of joy stuck between long silences of dread.
So Kim pulls out the Kimmunicator and turns it on.
"Hey Wade," she says dryly.
" Whoa, Kim? " Wade says in a much deeper voice than she's used to. He's seventeen now. " Hold up, I'm in a meeting, let me just… hey guys, I gotta plug out. Sorry ." He looks to Kim. " H-hey. What's up? Long time no see, Kim. "
"Yeah, hi," she offers a weak smile. She's starting to feel really bad now. Wade clearly wants to catch up and she just wants to do a transaction with him. "I'd love to catch up, but I actually called because um… I was wondering if you could sitch me."
"Yooooo," Wade leans back in stunned wonderment. "Really?"
Kim sighs. Wade was always more emotionally introspective than Ron and he knows there's a problem here. She rests her elbows on the bar, leaning the Kimmunicator up against her empty glass of booze. "Yeah."
"Damn," Wade says. "You okay? Your cheeks are a little flushed."
"I'm drunk."
"Mm, I figured, uh, maybe you don't want to do this..."
"I'll be fine later," Kim snaps. "Sorry, I just… I think it would help. We can catch up when I'm sober."
Wade stares at her completely still. "I'd like that a lot, Kim. Um, I got one thing on my map, you're in New York, right? I don't think you'd like it though so…"
She grimaces and leans in, staring daggers at him. "Why."
"Well," he bites his lip. "It's Shego."