RaviKai

Dib had a plan.

A good one, if your definitions of the words "good" and "plan" included "break into the below-ground level of Zim's base using his own bio-signature and rummage through all the alien tech."

He barely made it to the elevator before feeling a shift in the air.

Zim entered like he'd been personally summoned.

His posture was ramrod-straight, hands placed in perfect formation behind his back, as if he'd invented the concept of discipline himself. His heels clicked against the floorboards like exclamation points at the end of an argument.

Dib immediately tensed up.

This was not paranoia.

This was survival instinct.

Zim pointed at him as if he were a burglar and his forefinger was a police flashlight.

"Dib-worm."

The word fell between them with all the elegance of a dropped dinner plate.

Dib's first thought was to bang his head against the wall.

His second thought was to bang Zim's head against the wall.

He settled on responding:

"Hi."

Zim crossed his arms over his chest, like a drawbridge being raised against an invading army.

"You dare enter the base of Zim without permission? Without tribute? Without so much as dignity?"

Dib exhaled slowly through his nose.

It was going to be one of those days. One of those fights. One of those lives, really, but he already knew that.

"I'm not in the mood for fighting today, Zim."

Zim scrutinized him as if he were a bluffer in a game of cards.

He blocked the path to the exit at approximately the speed of bad decisions.

"Hmph. Well maybe you should have thought of that before breaking into my base, Dib-human! You're polluting it with your presence!"

Dib noticed three things.

One, Zim was blushing.

No.

Not blushing.

More like his own biology had performed a hostile takeover on his face.

Purple covered his cheeks like someone had reached inside his skull and pressed the embarrassment button.

Two, his antennae were two degrees higher than usual, the hairs on them standing up like disciplined infantry waiting for an order.

Three, one of the buckles on his boots were missing.

Zim didn't wear boot buckles.

That was the one Dib focused on the hardest.

Zim spoke about his uniform as if it were a religious artifact. He wore it like it was an argument he intended to win through repetition alone. Taking off part of it seemed like the exact opposite of something he'd do, and yet—

The empty buckle remained, with the persistence of a typo refusing to correct itself.

"You're not wearing your boots."

Zim gave him a look, as if he'd just spoken backwards.

"I am wearing my boots, Dib-stink. Did your brain get lost in traffic?"

Dib gestured wildly at Zim's boots as if trying to command the air to make him understand.

"No, I mean—your Invader boots. Those aren't them."

Zim sighed and started talking slowly, as if the only problem here was that Dib's brain had apparently taken the day off.

"Excellent observation skills. You're slightly smarter than a common Earth housefly. Bravo. Not."

"Why are you—"

Zim chuckled to himself, as if he'd just remembered an old joke.

"It's funny because it's sarcastic, you see?"

"Zim—"

Zim waved a hand dismissively. Like swatting a particularly enthusiastic fly.

"I know, I know, I'm fantastic. You may leave now."

Dib reeled Zim in by the PAK, leaving only a thin slice of air between them.

The next part happened slowly.

Zim's face went purple enough to be seen from space.

His legs dangled from where they were being hoisted above ground, limp, like Dib had scooped out his insides and replaced them with something warm and syrupy and entirely unmalleable.

He made a sound similar to an accordion being stepped on.

Dib took a steeling breath.

"Listen to me, bug."

Zim swatted at his face.

The movement, somehow, said more than words ever could.

"I said listen."

Zim kicked his chest.

"Zim!"

Zim gnawed at Dib's hair sprig—eliciting a pained yelp from the human below him, the sound coming out of him like sparks from a struck match.

"I'll put you down if you listen!"

Zim stared at Dib as if he just offered to cut the red wire.

Dib worked his jaw.

"The fighting thing we have going on is great. Don't get me wrong. But I think it just isn't working for—"

Zim jumped out of Dib's grip as if stung, tackling him to the ground in a haze of movement. PAK legs closed around his head hard enough to make the ground beneath them crumble as if it regretted its own existence.

"You can't," he said, voice barely above a whisper, the words soft enough to make Dib's heart feel like it had been stepped on.

"What do you mean by—"

"This is all Zim has. Please. Don't do this, don't take this away, please."

The words are steady.

Too steady.

Almost worn at the edges, as if they'd been said before.

"I'm not—I'm not doing anything. I'm asking for a truce—"

"A truce?" Zim laughs—no, not a laugh. The sound was too derisive, too high-pitched, coming out like it had been torn from something inside of him. "A truce, and then what? You leave Zim? Abandon him? Forget about his name?"

Dib blinks, twice, as if struck.

"What? No! Zim, you're my—"

Zim's eyes narrow. His PAK legs dig further into the ground, like blades remembering their purpose.

"I'm not your enemy, Dib. Not anymore. You said it yourself."

"You're not my enemy." Dib says, thumb trailing circles over Zim's side like it was trying to memorize the fabric of his uniform, pulling a reluctant chirp from out his throat. "You're my best friend."

Zim's response is almost immediate.

"No I'm not."

"You are."

"I hate you."

"I know you do."

"Therefore, I'm not."

Dib smiles despite himself, like sunlight coming through blinds at the worst possible moment.

"I think about you every day, bug."

Zim makes a strangled sound.

Dib immediately looks like he regretted every word he'd ever spoken.

"Oh."

It's a stupid word.

A small one.

One used for dropped pencils, or remembering you had missed a deadline, or finding something you'd spent the past five minutes looking for.

It shouldn't land as hard as it did.

"Yeah," Dib said, and lets the word sit there, collecting dust.

Zim lowers himself onto Dib, carefully, as if the space between them might protest.

"...Stay?" He asks, voice cracking in the middle, fragile enough to make the words feel shrink-wrapped beforehand.

Dib's thoughts scatter like pool balls on a lucky break.

He considers saying no.

He considers running for the hills and not looking back, considers letting Zim become a relic of the past, considers everything and anything and nothing at all, all the way into oblivion. And still, he chooses otherwise.

"Stay," he said, voice warm and fond, impossibly fond, fonder than it had any right to be.

Zim nods. His hands tighten around Dib's shoulders, anyway, like the room might try to steal him away.

Dib runs his hands down the divet in Zim's back—absentmindedly. Reassuringly, he hoped—before finding his PAK and staying there.

Zim's breath stops.

Completely.

Like someone had hit pause on him.

The universe seems to break into fragments after that.

Zim trills.

Not chirps, not clicks, not any other alien sound that had clawed its way into normalcy through repetition.

Trills, the sound leaving him like a pipe burst, as if it had been building up inside his throat, waiting to be let out.

His legs lock around Dib's waist with the automatic precision of clamps slamming shut.

His PAK lights up, the little bastard, smug as a cat that had managed to knock the vase off the shelf without anyone noticing.

Silence stretched thin between them.

"Zim?" Dib asks, voice gentle as a suggestion. "Are you—i can't believe I'm saying this, really, what has my life come to—are you okay?"

Zim's legs clamped tighter.

Another silence, thicker this time. As if two gunmen have suddenly realized they'd forgot to bring their pistols.

"Dib," Zim said—more of a whisper than a sentence. "Dib. Your hand is..."

Dib looked at his hand.

Then at Zim's PAK.

Then at his own stupidity, which was increasingly abundant.

"Fuck—oh God—I'm sorry, Zim. You know I didn't mean to do that."

Zim looked nearly... disappointed, as if Dib had handed him some brilliant gift only to rip it out of his hands.

He sprang onto his PAK legs, casting strange shadows over Dib's face.

"No. No, you didn't," he conceded, nodding solemnly, like a priest hearing confirmation of a miracle denied. He continued before Dib could speak. "Hm. Well, maybe we should try that again, under different circumstances. Now, out with you, Dib. Out!"

"What is that supposed to mea—" Dib asked, only to be launched onto the concrete like a thrown ball halfway through.

All in all, it could be worse.