#lovelycoris

(thanks again for the help with the shading process on Vanessa, @lovelycoris​ !! :D )

Aaand that’s all for now !

There’s a future drawing I’ll post in a later post, because it’ll spoil one of the upcoming chapters of “Reliving An Old Nightmare” and... I don’t want to spoil anyone. Though, some people already saw it on @static-station​‘s server (amazing server by the way !!!), but still, I won’t post it publically until the associated chapter is posted as well. I can’t wait, because I’m super super super proud of it !

Dib had to admit, when Zim had been gone for four and a half months, he’d figured he was off in space doing training or something like that. Invaders would do that, right? (He’d told Dib he was going to be gone, but not that it was going to be this long, and to be honest, Dib was getting more than a little twitchy. Skool was so boring without Zim, although he had managed to stake the vampires hunting behind the Krazy Taco.) Or maybe he’d be catching up with old alien friends, if he even had any.

Not…. this.

Dib had picked the lock while his EMP shorted out the gnomes. He’d been doing that about twice a month to see if Zim was back yet, but before now there had been nothing. His motion sensors had caught activity twenty minutes ago from the Voot instead of a random squirrel, and he had to know what had taken so long.

There was a lot of noise coming from the living room, but the curtains had been drawn, and honestly, Gir watched so much garbage TV that pretty much anything could be excused until he actually opened the door to see it. He was almost done when the door swung open by itself. He looked up and heard the computer say “-get it.”

With a full visual of the inside of the base, what he saw was quite possibly the furthest thing from ‘normal’. (Man, Zim really had been here long enough to settle a baseline of ‘normal’, hadn’t he? Time flew...) Zim had on a frilly pink apron, but more importantly, he was hovering over several tiny irkens that were crawling around on a blanket. A particularly dark green one was in Zim’s hand, and he was licking their antennae as they squirmed around, making some noise Dib couldn’t quite hear. That was mostly because one with curly antennae was screeching their absolute lungs out, and Dib slapped his hands over his ears.

“Zim, what the hell is going on?” 

Zim looked up, before grinning. “Ah, Dib-human!” He stood up, carefully weaving through the tiny aliens (‘tiny aliens!’ Dib’s brain screamed at him, ‘right in front of you!’) to hold up the one he’d been licking. (Grooming?) “Behold!”

“I’m beholding,” Dib said numbly as he reached up a hand to tentatively hover over them. “Where did you get them?”

“I made them, of course! Hoo boy is that a funny story-”

“You made them?” Dib looked over Zim’s head to see them crawling over each other. “I didn’t even know you could do that.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know, Dib. Secrets of the mighty irken race that I’ve been able to keep secret from your prying-”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re superior and all that.” Dib stepped around him to crouch down in front of them. “So you were pregnant?”

“Eh?”

“Pregnant. Or your partner was, whoever they were.” Dib made a rounded motion over his stomach, freezing when one of the babies grabbed his hand. Zim didn’t start screeching at him to let it go, so he carefully settled on his knees to lift it up, cupping his palms. It made a chirp that sounded almost like it came from an old video game. It was a mixture of clicks and of a ‘pew pew’ sound, and was possibly the best thing he’d heard in his entire life. 

“Yes, I was. I had the smeets a week ago, and here we are!” Zim settled down cross-legged. “That’s Vi in your hand. She’s one of the quiet ones.”

“Hi, Vi,” Dib said as the baby (smeet, Zim had said?) yawned, showing off her gums. “You’re the quiet one, huh? That’s weird, considering your dad.” He looked up. “So who’s the- er, other dad?”

“Other dad?”

“You know, who helped make them? Unless irkens reproduce asexually, which would be pretty weird for a species as advanced as yours. And besides, they all look kind of different.” Dib looked over the smeets on the blanket- except for maybe one, they all had something that distinguished them from Zim, either in color, antennae, or eyes. Zim cleared his throat.

“I don’t see why that should matter, they’re here now.”

Vi squeaked in his hands and turned, reaching out for Zim, and Zim scooped her out of Dib’s hands. “It’s alright, mean stinky Dib won’t hurt you when Zim’s around.”

“Hey, I didn’t do anything!” Dib planted his hands on his hips before there was a tug at his pant leg. Another smeet- this one with eyes that looked frighteningly like Zim’s- had gripped it, staring up at him. “You really made all of these?”

“Why else would they be here?”

“I don’t know, I wouldn’t put it past you to steal a bunch of babies. You’re weirdly maternal when you get in the mood.” Dib carefully picked the smeet up and it cooed happily, making more of the beepy noises. 

“I wouldn’t!” Zim gasped, aghast. “Besides, why would I take this many smeets that weren’t mine? One or two would be perfectly fine, but only I could make nine perfectly healthy ones at one time, thank you!” 

Dib petted at the antennae of the one in his hands, and they kept making happy sounds, so he assumed he was doing something right. “So you had all of them at once? They are pretty small, but- geez, how big even were you?”

“None of your business!” Zim snapped as Dib squinted, trying to mentally shove all nine of the smeets back inside of him. Yeesh, he must have been a complete ball. Dib wished he could have gotten a picture. Now that he was really examining him, though, he could definitely see that Zim looked softer than before. His uniform top was just a bit tighter around the middle, and as Zim shifted, his hips looked larger than usual. Huh. So Zim wasn’t just pulling this out of his ass, he really had…

“Wait, how long even is irken gestation? You were gone for four months and seventeen days, how on Earth-”

“It wasn’t anywhere on Earth,” Zim scoffed. “And it was long enough, obviously.” 

“There wasn’t anyone on Earth, right? Skoodge left a while ago, didn’t he?”

“Yes, he stopped living in my base. That was years ago, Dib, keep up.”

“Ga!” The smeet reached up for Dib’s mouth, curling surprisingly tight fingers around the bottom lip. Dib tried to gently pull it away, but it just clung tighter. As if on cue, two more of the smeets started crawling on top of him, like he was some kind of human jungle gym for them. Zim started snickering.

“It seems that Jash likes you, Dib-worm.”

“Ah tol’ ‘ou- ey!” Jash’s grip tightened as one of his siblings started flicking the buckle on the front of Dib’s boot. The other was just staring up at him and using his pant leg to stand on wobbly legs. They had wide, fascinated eyes, and Dib couldn’t help but feel a little twinge in his chest.

Dammit, why did baby aliens have to be the cutest things ever? He was only a mortal man, and he wasn’t made of stone, no matter how much he tried to remember that they were Zim’s and were thus at least 50% pure hellion.

“Keep this up and I might bring out the freeze ray to make a Dib-statue and let them learn motor skills.” Zim was still grinning, with the smeet with curly antennae had been screaming in his hand. He was running his thumb up their belly and they were making the same happy-noises as Jash had been. Huh, maybe they had just really wanted attention. He knew he’d hate to be one of nine siblings, Gaz was more than enough.

“Hey, one just crawled under the- come on!” Jash grabbed his glasses in an attempt to climb up his face and nearly pulled them off before Dib adjudged them. “What do you want, huh? Huh, little guy?”

Jash lifted his hands up, opening and closing his fist. “You’re already up, what do you- oh, okay, you’re climbing on my face again.” Dib pulled Jash away from his nose before he stuck a hand up it, setting him on top of his head instead. The smeet started batting at his hair lock, and it kind of tickled. 

“I’ll have to clean him,” Zim said, clicking his tongue as he reached under the couch, cheek smushing the tile before pulling one of the smeets out by the scruff of their neck. “That is, unless you’ve improved in your bathing habits since I’ve been gone.”

“Hey, I’m getting better about that! I think!” Dib protested, looking down without turning his head to see that the same smeet as before was still playing with his shoe buckle. “How long are they going to be this size?”

“Eh, ten to fifteen years, give or take a few months?”

If Dib had been drinking something, he would have spat it out. “What?”

“They’ll be speaking within the next few months, of course, and it will be nice to have some intelligent conversation besides you.” Zim was intently watching the group on the blanket, blowing raspberries at a little gaggle of them. They let out high-pitched laughter, especially when he lifted them one at a time to repeat the action directly on their bare bellies.

“Oh, right, Paks probably speed things up, huh? You’re going to have your hands full, though. And I thought Gir was enough. Where is he, anyway?”

“In the lab. He isn’t allowed near the smeets until I can make sure he won’t hurt them. And I can handle anything, I am Zim!” 

“You’ve somehow survived six and a half years on a planet that actively tries to kill you, so you probably can,” Dib admitted. Jash started squeaking, so Dib carefully pulled him off his head and set him down next to the one messing with his boot. After staring at each other a moment, Jash started tugging on their antennae instead, and they began rolling around, pulling at each other’s mouths, arms, and antennae. Their beepy sounds were excited and when they fell apart, they had big baby-grins on their faces. 

Dib scooted a little closer to the blanket, and one with purple eyes stared up at him. Their antennae were curled- maybe they were female? That could be a sex-linked trait, Tak had had curly ones too, hadn’t she?- and they set a hand on his foot before smiling.

Yep, there went his heart. Melted right out of his chest and into a puddle on the orange and red tile.

“I wouldn’t mind babysitting, you know.”

“I told you, I can handle anything! And if you start poking and prodding at them-”

Dib made an ‘X’ over his chest. “Cross my heart, I won’t hurt them. You can even tell the computer to watch to make sure I don’t do anything, but nine is a lot. I can’t imagine irkens raised their kids completely alone. I’m not going to hurt kids.”

Zim narrowed his eyes, but when the one at Dib’s feet chirped up at him, he tapped his chin.

“Perhaps. But I’ll be watching you.”