AnulLikesStuffs

The worst day of Dib's life happens on a Tuesday. Really, it starts on a Monday, when his father--six foot, eight inches of pure, unrelenting focus--gives him The Look (Dib named it that himself) and says: "I think it's time you put yourself out there, son."

Dib is suddenly aware of three things.

One, he's not wearing his trench coat, which is a sentence that should be illegal.

Two, he's still soaked in post-fight-with-Zim sweat, his t-shirt clinging to the small of his back like it was the last thing tethering it to existence.

Three, the universe has a sense of humor, and it wasn't a good one. Mostly, it just existed to humiliate Dib.

"What?" His dad, a stone wall formed from decades of arguing with government officials, refuses to budge. "You're eighteen now, son. It's time for you to learn that life is more than just hunting... aliens and ghosties and whatnot. Remember, this isn't just for me." His dad smiles--full-on smiles, with that commercial glint in his teeth, as if this is just another public service announcement-- "It's for us! For science--" Dib's restraint all but crumbles like a napkin inside of a storm drain. "Aliens and ghosties and whatnot?" Dib yells, throwing his hands up, exasperated down to the marrow. "Really? Is that all you think of me trying to save the world? Zim is a real alien! This isn't a hobby, dad! This is the fate of mankind!"" His dad's gaze hardens. Dib knows that look. It's the same one he gave Dib after he saved the world from Zim's Florpus, only to be thanked by having his life's work waved off as 'a hallucination'. It's the exact same look Dib saw before he spent the rest of his night sobbing like it was the only thing he'd ever done, until his eyes were red and puffy and he couldn't do anything except fall asleep about it. "You will be going to the aquarium tomorrow. Find someone to accompany you, or have me find someone for you. Your success matters to me son, almost more than anything, and I believe an intervention is--" "Fuck. Off." Dib hisses, and it's like a pressure valve going off inside his chest, emotion practically tackling him from behind. He books it to his room like he's being charged per the second, slams the door behind him, and crumples to the floor. The tickets in his pocket seem to weigh more than they actually do. His dad wants him to find a date. His 'dad' cares about Dib finding a date more than he cares about Dib shielding the planet from supernatural threats. Humanity's continued existence being threatened is just a mild inconvenience. This is his life now. The thought sits inside him like wet fabric, soaking everything in it's path. Well. Fine. Dib already had an idea as to who that date would be--he has since before the Florpus even started, the way a nail gets stuck in hardwood.

This was a bad idea. Correction: this was the worst idea, point blank, and Dib was an idiot for even considering it. Zim's base stood in front of him like a priest waiting for confession, all harsh colors and unwavering confidence. Every wall looked like it knew it was meant to be there. The ground beneath him hummed as if it knew something he didn't, impossibly smug machinery working overtime underground. Dib should turn around. He should turn around, go back home, and scrub this plan from his brain, preferably by force. He should ask--no, beg--his dad for a brain transplant, because clearly, clearly his wasn't working. Instead, he walked to Zim's door. Slowly. Like he was navigating through a minefield, and not, say, a door that was so grotesquely purple it'd make any HOA faint. Then he knocked. Once. Twice. Thought about doing it a third, and then--with all the grace of a crane machine lifting a block of metal--GIR opened the door. "Hi Mary!" GIR chirped, offering a wave that was approximately fifty times more enthusiastic than it had any right to be. Dib coughed. Loudly. Awkwardly. It was far from his best moment. "...Hey, GIR. Mind if I come in?" GIR didn't so much as miss a beat before answering: "Yep!" "Ah. Okay. That's... fair. I'll be on my way now." GIR gave an ear-splitting wail that would put even the most irritating fire alarms to shame. If the robot was good at one thing, then it was being agitating to the point it reached professionalism. "But my tacos!" Dib steps back like the space between them might be radioactive. "Your what-now?" "You didn't give me my tacos!" Much like a turbine being spun by a ambitious gust of wind, Dib's brain chooses that exact moment to remind him of one of the many run-ins he's had with GIR. An excellent source of renewable energy, ready to power any European country. Specifically, his brain reminds him of last Thursday, when Dib promised GIR tacos in exchange for a free pass into Zim's base. Cross his heart and all. "Oh, yes, that." A pause, seemingly the size of France, settles between them. "That. I did do that, didn't I. Your, er, tacos are right on the counter, GIR. You really ought to eat them all before they get cold. Without closing the door after you." GIR's face lights up, enthusiasm radiating from him in all directions. "YAY! ITS TACO TIME!" GIR shouts. And then he's off like a missile, smoke forming lazy ribbons in the air behind him. Dib doesn't wait for a cue before sprinting into Zim's base. The floorboards give a small choir of groans beneath his feet in protest. The foyer door shuts like a period. Zim's base smells vaguely of sulfur and whatever chemical process produced the unmistakable scent of a bad idea waiting to happen. ...On second thought, that may have been Dib. "Zim!" he calls out, and there's no answer. "Zim?" a second time--a question tugging at the ends of his voice. The next part seems to happen in stages, as if someone had pushed the slow motion button on reality. Zim drops from the ceiling like a cut elevator cable. Dib is abundantly aware of the fact that Zim is half-naked, his bare green chest hanging from the ceiling panels like an unfinished sentence. Zim squints. Visibly. His entire face seems to crumple up with confusion, as if he was the one completely out of his depth here. "Dib-worm." The word might as well have yanked Dib back into existence. He somehow manages to flinch with his entire body. "Where is your shirt." Zim scoffs, all crossed arms and theatrical offense. "It's a uniform, thank you very much." "Cut it out, space boy. Where is your shirt?" "Off." "Why."

Zim waggles his antennae, which Dib really doesn't want to think of as the Irken approximation for wiggling one's eyebrows. "I like it this way." "Why." "...I was working on a project." "And it required you to take off your shirt?!" "Is that a rhetorical question, Dib-stink?" "Yes! I mean, no! This is completely beside the point. What I mean to ask you was, will you go on a date with me?" Tiny mistake. Huge consequences. The sentence hits them like a rock dropped from orbit. Zim's right antennae twitches. Dib realizes his mistake too late. "Not a date! It's totally not a date! What I really wanted to say was, will you go to the aquarium with me?" "Okay," Zim says, a little breathless--the words coming out frayed at the edges. His eyes are wide, wide enough for Dib to drown in, so pink it made it hard to focus on anything else. "Okay. The aquarium. Large public institutions or buildings where various marine and freshwater life are exhibited for entertainment and scientific study. Zim will... accompany you." Dib's chest folds around the sentence like wet fabric. He immediately forgets every word he's ever been taught. Zim crosses his arms. "Not because Zim desires your company. Duh. This is all for tactical purposes. Yes, studying marine life will allow Zim to learn more about the planets weaknesses. Somehow." Zim pauses for a heartbeat, then shakes his fist in the air with devastating confidence. "No one questions the almighty Zim!" "Thank you." Zim stares at him as if he'd spoken to him in a dead language. "Eh?" "Thank you for... everything. This. It feels appropriate to thank you for this." Zim, to his credit, does not shoot Dib with his PAK lasers out of embarrassment. Instead, his face flashes purple. His antennae start quivering. His PAK lights brighten by the slightest degree, like criminals hoping to go unnoticed. Dib looks, for all the world, as if he'd just swallowed a car. "Yes. Of course it does. GetoutofZim'sbasenow NOW human!" Dib didn't have to be told twice.

The date goes as well as one would suspect. Dib, son of Professor Membrane, humanity's sole savior, the boy born on the pedestal, had confused his hand wash for toothpaste not three hours prior, because of course he had. His trench coat hung off his shoulders like it was trying to escape into the parking lot. The trench coat, clearly, had seen too much. Zim showed up in heels sharp enough to pierce through an aluminum can and a glare hard enough to crush it afterwards. Dib felt his presence before he saw it. In the way Zim's heels would slam against the pavement like a war drum warning of his arrival. In the way the air seemed to shift, as if even barometric pressure was afraid of him. Zim walks towards Dib with the enthusiasm of a man about to attend his own funeral. "Dib-worm." "You're wearing heels." "Correct." "Why." Zim scoffs, as if Dib had asked him why rain falls down instead of up. "They add superiority." "They add drama." "You're one minute and twenty-eight seconds late." "I--" "Twenty-nine seconds, now." "That doesn't even count." "Everything Zim says counts, Dib-fool. This is common knowledge. You may... escort Zim into the large fish container, now." "You know it's called an aquarium, Zim." "Nonsense!" Zim says, and the next five minutes are a blur of being pushed through the entryway like he was made of toothpicks, Zim literally hoisting him up on his shoulder as if he were a pet bird for thirty horrific seconds, and finally--finally--handing the ticket counter his slip and vanishing into the howling void of captured marine life. The aquarium is small. Pathetically small. That is not the problem. The problem, currently, is standing next to Dib, smiling as if he'd won a bet, pacing around Dib like he was trying to wear a trench into the tile. Knowing Zim, he probably was. "You're horrible." "You're horrible-r." Zim bites back. Right then, a shark thudded against the glass, then careened back into its tank with all the dignity of royalty refusing to make eye contact with peasantry. "See. Even the fish agree." "They're fish, Zim. They can't agree." "The manta rays beg to differ, Dib-thing." This, somehow, is not even in the top five weirdest things Zim has said this week. Dib hates that he counts them. He's learned that being around Zim for too long eventually changes your perspective on chaos. Like coastlines shifting over time. Or radiation poisoning. Or the feeling of waking up and discovering that your life-long nemesis isn't actually your life-long nemesis anymore. They keep walking. Dib stands in front of a coral exhibit for five seconds longer than necessary. Zim glares at a frog enclosure like it personally insulted his ancestry. "Vile impersonators." Dib nearly chokes. "What?" Zim points at the frog exhibit as if it committed a crime. "They are frauds. Frauds of the almighty Zim!" Dib looks at Zim. Then at the frogs. Then Zim's hand, which was still pointing at the frogs exhibit with the kind of unwavering certainty that had probably ended civilizations. He laughs. Not a "haha-funny" laugh. The kind of laugh that only comes after seeing your greatest enemy inadvertently compare himself to a frog. An aquarium employee gestures at him to 'shush'. Dib smiles apologetically, tossing him a shrug of his shoulders; what-can-i-say style. Zim is still staring at the enclosure like he's trying to set it on fire telepathically. "Zim." Zim's antennae flinches, like a trigger hearing its own name. "Dib." "They're frogs." "Unfortunately." "They've been alive before you were even a concept." The sentence seems to hit Zim in stages. Like a truck full of dozens of tiny trucks. His eyes widen. Then he coughs. Then he coughs louder. Then he devolves into a full-force coughing fit, the sounds coming out of him like a punctured tire. "Very funny, Dib-worm. You are such the--how do the humans say--the kidder, you revolting little insect." "Zim. How old are you?"

Zim puffs up his chest with all the confidence of a cat that had gotten the laser pointer. "Sixteen Irken years, of course." Dib blinks like somebody had unplugged him from reality. "...Come again?" "I'm sixteen. In Irken years. Older than you will ever be, Dib-idiot." "I'm eighteen, alien scum." Zim gapes, as if he'd been electrocuted. "Impossible! Eighteen in Irken years--you'd have to be one hundred eighty on Earth, then. Do not try and fool Zim! I know how long your human lifespans are. And you do not look like a wrinkly vegetable!" "Okay--wait. How old are you in human years?" "That's easy. One-hundred-sixty-five." It was Dib's turn to be surprised. He stiffens, every inch of him looking like it had touched a live wire. Somewhere in the aquarium, an infant cries, sensing a disturbance. The air between them turns still. "Oh. Oh wow. That's... wow." Zim's face goes nuclear purple. "Yes, yes, Zim knows he is amazing." "No, really, it... it is. I can't imagine having lived for so long--the experiences you've been through--you're amazing, Zim. I can't believe I'm saying it, hell, I can't believe that we're even here right now, but it's true." If Zim was nuclear purple before, then now it was worse. His PAK starts freewheeling a light show. Hot pink, bright enough to make the rest of the aquarium seem to forget to exist, swallows the hallway. His antennae lower, just enough for Dib to notice. Just enough to be catastrophic. "Zim does not think you are completely intolerable either, Dib-stink. If there was one human I'd like to dedicate the rest of my existence to hating, it would be you." "Thanks, space cockroach. For the record, this wasn't the worst date I've ever had." "That's because it's the only date you've ever had." Dib freezes. Zim freezes harder. "...hold on. Was it a date?" Zim seems to pause, for one spectacular second, as if waiting for the galaxy to remember itself and have fate tear them away. It doesn't. "No. Of course not, human. OhTallestwouldyoulookatthetimeZimcannolongergraceyouwithhis beautiful presence now farewell, you disgusting worm!" Zim barks out--the words hitting Dib like a bag full of wet concrete--and then he's off like a leaf in fall, leaving Dib to rake up the consequences. An aquarium employee whistles from behind him. "Better luck next time, man," and Dib doesn't even have the strength to correct him, then. He stands blank-faced in front of the frog exhibit with the posture of a man who’d just aged ten years in one second. Tuesday, he thinks, is a special kind of evil.