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Chapter Text

          Zim sat back and admired his work, loudly cackling to himself in the empty lab. He'd spent the last week working on his newest plan to take over the planet, and he'd just finished.

This time, there's no way Dib can best the mighty Zim!

Whether or not Dib could have stopped that plan was irrelivant, since Zim never even got the chance to do anything with it.

The computer's tired voice sounded from somewhere in the ceiling, interupting Zim's loud laughter, "Incoming transmission from the massive."

"Send it through, then!"

It'd been months since he'd gotten any sort of response from his Tallest, despite his many attempts to call. He'd assumed that they were just busy, but of course they would make time for their most important invader!

He quickly got to the center of the room, brushing himself off as the large screen on the wall turned on. It displayed the main room of the massive, with Tallests Red and Purple standing in the center. Both of them looked extremely annoyed, and like they would rather be doing literally anything else.

Zim bounced slightly on the balls of his feet as he bowwed, looking up at them excitedly, "Hello, my Tallest. It's been a while since Zim was able to speak with you."

"Not long enough.", Purple muttered under his breath.

Zim stood up straight and put his hands on his hips, showing all of his usual bravado and ego, "Rest assured, despite the lack in communication the mission has been-"

"That's why we called, Zim.", Red interupted him.

Zim's antennae raised slightly, "Eh?"

"It's been how long and you still haven't caught on? How many 'Urth' cycles have you been there?"

"Five, my Tallest."

"And you've done nothing. Even a smeet could have taken over such a primative planet by now. There is no mission, you're not even supposed to be alive right now. And yeah, it was funny watching you fail for a while, but you haven't even done anything worth laughing at in a long time."
 

          Zim looked up at the screen in confusion, what he'd been told still not entirely clicking in his head, "If the speed at which Zim is progressing is unsatisfactory-"

Red sighed, bringing a hand to his face, "No, Zim, I knew you were stupid but I thought I'd said it slowly enough for you to understand. I'll rephrase it in a way your tiny brain can understand: We didn't send you there on a mission, we sent you out in space to die. The fact that you somehow ended up finding some backwater nowhere planet with something living on it was a fluke."

"You're so chaotically stupid that normal exile didn't work, we were hoping you would just starve to death or something.", Purple added.

Red put his hands behind his back, standing up straight to look more official, "Since all previous attempts to actually kill you have failed, we've come up with a new solution: You get to stay there, far, far, away from the rest of the empire to spend the rest of your days alone."

Zim looked up at the screen like a kicked puppy as Red continued, "Consider this an official exile, you are no longer part of the Irken empire, and are to cease any contact with all parts of it. If you're caught in Irken ruled space, you will be killed on sight."

"Consider yourself lucky, you're so worthless we aren't even going to go out of our way to kill you. No point in wasting all that effort on a defective runt like you.", Purple said at the end, evident disgust in his voice.

Zim was on the verge of tears, his antennae flat against his head, "My Tallest-"

"We aren't your Tallest anymore, Zim. Never contact us again."

The screen went dark, leaving Zim alone in the empty lab.

Chapter Text

          It'd been about a week since Dib had seen Zim. Sure, the green pest not coming to skool was a pretty regular thing, but him not showing up at all was something to worry about.

Even though they didn't really get into life or death battles anymore, they were still pretty much enemies. They made sure to insult eachother every chance they got, even if it was more out of habit than anything else at this point, and they still got into fights regularly. Zim's constant need for attention made it so he was never really gone for long.

Come Saturday, though, when Zim still hadn't been seen, Dib decded to go out and figure out what was going on. First stop, the alien's house.

Dib hesitantly stood at the edge of the fence, looking at the lawn gnomes knowing that he could very easilly be turned into swiss cheese by their lazers. He carefully put one foot inside the yard, slowly beginning to walk when nothing happened. He got up to the door, the gnomes not even turning to look at him. He knocked and Gir answered, dog costume only partially on.

"Hi big head!", the little bot screamed at him, waving with large amounts of enthusiasm.

"Hey, Gir. Is Zim here?"

The little robot paused, looking like he was thinking for a second. "No, he left an' hasn't come back yet! He's gonna miss the monkey show!"

"Do you know where he went?"

"Nope!"

"Right... thanks, Gir."

Dib sighed and turned around, resolving to check the places Zim liked to be a menace in on a regular basis.

Gir waved behind him, "Bye, Mary!"

          Dib spent the rest of the day checking various places around town, trying to figure out what Zim might be up to. Hours later, when the sun was going down, he finally managed to find him.

Zim was sitting alone in a clearing in the forest of a nearby park. It was away from literally anything else, and the only reason Dib even bothered to check there was because he'd caught Zim doing something questionable with a duck and some fire there one time.

The alien was sitting on the hill, no disguise on or anything as he looked up at the sky with his antennae flat against his head. Dib cautiously approached from the trees behind him, confused about what Zim was doing out here all alone.

"What, forget to put on your disguise, space-boy?", Dib said with the usual tone used in their arguments.

Zim shrugged, not looking back at him as he sat up a bit more. "What's the point? Not like it matters.", he paused for a second, resting his arms on his knees, "Not like Zim matters."

Dib froze, entirely caught off guard by Zim's response. He sounded so... sad. His voice lacked it's usual ego and extra-ness. It sounded nothing like how he usually spoke.

Dib hesitantly took a step closer to him, "Do you... wanna talk about it?"

"What is there to talk about? Zim has nothing he can do, nothing left."

Dib came over and sat down next to him, finally getting a good look at his face and seeing the look of complete hopelessness he had. Dib knew that look all too well.

Zim glanced at him sideways before looking back up at the sky, deciding to just tell him what happened.

"My- The Tallest have finally decided that Zim is no longer worth anything to them and decided to exile me. There was no mission, they had not intended to actually send me to a planet. Earth had not been on any armada radar, and it still isn't. They expected Zim to die alone in space."

He grabbed his elbow, grip tight as he continued to look ahead, "Zim is nothing more than a 'defective runt' that they don't even wish to put effort into executing. Nothing more than a worthless fake who should already be dead, who cannot actually accomplish anything of value."

He finally looked over at Dib, pink tears forming in the edges of his eyes, "I suppose that means you win, Dib. Not that you were actually defending the Earth from a propper threat, the armada was never coming anyways." 

          Dib put his hand to his chin thinking for a second before he spoke. "That's not true, at least I don't think it is. The threat thing, not the armada bit."

Zim's antennae shot up slightly when Dib said this.

"I mean yeah, the mission they gave you was fake, but that doesn't mean you haven't done anything worthwhile."

Dib scooted a bit closer to him, making the alien lean away in confusion. "Over the last few years, you've made so many big, cool, death rays and robots and stuff. There's been so many times where the only thing that made it so I beat you was just dumb luck. Or bees, but mostly just the dumb luck."

Dib looked up at the sky, whistful expression in his eyes, "My whole life, I've believed in ghosts and bigfoot and aliens and everything in between. No one else ever believed me when I told them it was all real. Even Dad and Gaz didn't listen to me about it. I was the 'crazy' or 'creepy' kid that everyone either avoided or made fun of."

He looked down a bit, hurt now clear on his face, "Like nothing I did or said mattered."

He turned to Zim, a small smile on his lips now, "But then you showed up. You crashed into my life and proved that what I knew was real was actually real. Even if no one else listened to me, I had a purpose: stopping whatever stupid plan you had for the day. Even if alot of them almost killed me at the start. Even though most of your plans weren't actually stupid at all. Even after you stopped really trying to hurt me."

Zim's cheeks darkened slightly, and he had a surprised look on his face, "I-!"

Dib interupted him with a small laugh, "Did you think I didn't notice? It's been a few years since you've actually done anything more than like, maybe bruised my arm or something."

He got a bit closer to Zim again, putting his hand on the alien's arm, "My point is, even if your species doesn't care about you, that doesn't mean you have to listen. The only one who can give you worth is you, don't give them the power to take that away."

          Zim looked Dib in the eye for a second before turning away from him.

"It's funny.", he said, sounding like he was about to cry, "It's funny that it's you here comforting Zim. After the years of figthing, insults, blood shed. Every cruel thing I've done to you, you're the one here attempting to provide comfort."

Dib gave him a warm smile, his hand on the alien's arm tightening reassuringly, "What else are friends for?"

Zim looked at him again when he said that, tears already beginning to fall from his eyes. He finally broke down, grabbing Dib in a hug and clawing at the human's back as he violently began to sob.

Dib froze for a second before returning the hug, doing his best to ignore Zim's sharp claws digging into his back. They sat like that for a while, Zim letting out what he needed to and Dib staying right there to give him the support he needed.

Chapter Text

          On Monday, Zim sat down at the Membrane siblings' table in the hi-skool cafeteria with a dramatic thud of his tray of what was probably meant to be food.

"Jesus Zim, can you please calm down? It isn't even noon yet."

Zim scoffed and folded his arms, "Foolish worm boy, Zim has no need to 'down' his 'calm'. I am always calm."

Dib laughed slightly at that, prompting Zim to fling some of his mystery food at his face. Dib took his glasses off, cleaning them with a napkin while he glared at Zim. "Why are you even sitting with us, don't you have some kind of plan or something to focus on?"

Zim frowned for a second before catching himself and scowling instead. "Of course Zim has plans, fool boy!", he got up and put his foot on the table, laughing loudly, "You have no way of knowing what Zim has planned! You're hideously oversized head couldn't even begin to comprehend what I am preparing!"

Zim continued to cackle loudly until Dib grabbed his books, swiping the alien's foot off of the table and making him fall face first into it. He started laughing, and Zim got up and lunged at him.

They both fell backwards onto the floor, grappling as they fought. No one really gave them more than a glance as they did this, everyone was used to it by now considering the fact that they'd been doing it since elementary skool. They fought on the dirty cafeteria floor until the bell rang that signified the end of lunch.

They separated and Dib stood up, brushing himself off and checking for injuries. He still had some sore scabs on his back from Saturday, and he now had a few bruises on his arms thanks to the fact that he didn't have his coat to cushion some of the impacts. He grabbed his stuff and looked down at Zim who was still on the floor.

The alien had a smug look on his face and Dib raised an eyebrow at him, "What are you up to, space-boy?"

Zim got up, a proud expression on his face as he smirked at Dib, "Nothing you need to worry your large head over, Dib-beast."

Dib just rolled his eyes and left so he wasn't late for class. "Whatever."

          When skool ended, Zim rushed back to his base. Gir was in the livingroom watching some sort of cartoon, and Zim completely ignored him as he rushed to his elevator down to his lab.

Over the years he'd spent on Earth, Zim had grown quite considerably. He wasn't as tall as the Tallest, or even a good majority of the humans around him, but he was still a pretty average human height. Thanks to the Earth's gravity, he'd gone from being only two and a half, maybe three feet tall at most to being a nice five foot four.

As such, he had to upgrade his means of entry to the lab so he actually fit into it. Now, instead of it being in the trashcan, there was a bit of the wall that openned up into a moderately sized elevator.

He quickly made his way down to the lab, completely ignoring the mess he'd made of his last plan. After his call with the Tallest ended, he'd taken out his initial emotions on the nearest object at the time, that being his newly completed 'evil plan'. Not like he needed it now, anyways.

He sat down at a desk in the corner taking a few things out of his pak and pressing a few buttons, making various materials and such appear on the table in front of him. He laughed slightly to himself as he began, "That smelly human won't know what hit him."

          At about two in the morning, Dib was woken up by a considerably loud impatient tapping at his window. He slowly openned his eyes, blinking a few times and fumbling for his glasses. Once he put them on, he was greeted by two big, glowing magenta eyes directly outside his window. He fell bacakwards out of his bed in surprise, hearing muffled cackling outside as he got back up and openned the window.

"Zim?! Do you know what time it is?!!", he said, trying his best not to make too much noise since it was very late and if he woke Gaz up he knew he wouldn't live to see the sunrise.

Zim held up a hand in a motion to make Dib shut up. "The time is unimportant. Zim has a... thing for you.", the alien said, carefully perching himself on the windowsill with his pak legs.

"And you couldn't have waited until tomorrow because???"

Zim put a hand to his chin, thinking for a second before shrugging. "Didn't feel like it."

Zim threw a neatly wrapped package at Dib, almost knocking him off the bed again. Dib eyed it cautiously before looking up at Zim again. "What is it?"

"Why don't you open it and find out, stupid?"

Dib looked back down at the package in his lap, he was suspicious considering the fact that the day before Zim was going off about a new plan. But, since he'd just been woken up at some ungodly hour in the morning from an already restless sleep, he didn't actually have enough self preservation on hand to really think it through as he carefully undid the wrapping on the thing in front of him.

It was something black, and made of what he assumed was fabric. Zim put his hands on his hips and had a proud expression on his face as Dib held it up.

"Zim noticed the lack of your coat of the trenches you always wear, so he has created you a new one. I aquired your measurements earlier when we were fighting in the food room."

Dib stood up so he could get a better look at the coat Zim had given him. He had no idea what material it was made of. The closest he could compare it to was satin, but mixed with flannel or something. It was longer than his old one, going to his ankles rather than his knees, and the collar was also slightly taller.

He was surprised Zim noticed that he wasn't wearing his coat, even more surprised by the fact that he'd gotten him a new one. Dib had attempted to fix the damage Zim had done to his old one, but gave up after wasting a few hours and had resigned to just buying a new one at some point later.

          He looked at the coat a bit longer before putting it on, Zim's face lighting up as Dib checked out how it fit him.

"It's made from a far stronger material than any of your Earth fabrics like 'cott-un' or whatever. It should prove rather difficult to damage.", Zim said from the window.

"Cotton, Zim, it's called cotton." The coat fit Dib quite well, and it was actually pretty comfortable. He looked over at Zim with a raised eyebrow, "This is actually pretty cool. Is there some kind of trick? Is it covered in some kind of flesh eating parasite? Is it gonna fuse onto me and make me some sort of human-coat monster?"

Zim's antennae raised slightly, and he looked like a few gears had started turning in his head, "No, but those are good ideas."

Dib sat back down on his bed, looking unnamused.

Zim finally looked back at him, awkward expression on his face, "Consider it an... apollogy, for the destruction of the previous one."

Dib eyed him for a second, considering his words. "Thanks then, I guess. I appreciate it, Zim."

Zim crossed his arms, a pleased look now on his face as his antennae were completely raised, "O-Of course Zim's actions are worthy of praise!"

"I wasn't praising you, I was th-"

"IT WAS PRAISE, DIB-STINK!"

Dib threw a pillow at Zim, hitting one of his pak legs and almost making him fall out of the window.

"Be quiet, people are trying to sleep."

Zim threw the pillow right back, knocking Dib off of his bed. The alien quickly fled, snickering as he dissapeared into the distance, "See you in skool tomorrow, stupid!"

Dib stared blankly out the window for a few more moments before laying back down and going back to sleep, not even bothering to close the window again. The only thing that kept him from thinking the whole interaction was a dream was the fact that he woke up in the morning still wearing the coat.

Chapter Text

          It had started raining around the end of skool Friday, and pretty heavilly at that. The weather hadn't said anything about it, so of course Dib didn't have his umbrella with him.

He stopped at the top of the steps, just before the roof ended, staring up at the sky as his peers all rushed past him trying their best to get to their cars or the busses before they got soaked. Gaz also kept walking when he stopped, completely dry because even the rain was scared of her.

Dib looked around, trying to think of some way to avoid getting wet. Finding so solution to this problem, he just sighed as he started walking forward.

To his surprise, once he was actually out in the rain he realized that his new coat stayed completely dry. The water just rolled off of it as he walked. He stopped at the bottom of the steps to marvel at his hydrophobic coat, and noticed that Zim was standing in the doorway of the skool looking out at the weather in disgust.

Dib looked from the alien to the skool yard exit, contemplating whether or not he should just leave. After a moment, he sighed as he climbed the steps again.

"Don't you cover yourself in chalk or something?", he asked, looking down at the alien.

"It's paste, idiot. And I only do that on days where I know it's going to rain. Your pathetic human weather predictors said nothing of this.", Zim said while looking out at the moist enviroment again.

"Don't you have your own satelites set up to check the weather by now?"

"Yes, but it's far more convenient to just check the news in the morning before leaving."

Dib thought for a moment, and then sighed again before lifting up the edge of his coat and gesturing for Zim to get under, "Here, get under and I'll walk home with you so you don't get wet."

Zim eyed him suspiciously, "Why would you offer to do that?"

"Consider it propper thanks for the coat."

Zim continued to just look at him, not saying anything as he stood there like an idiot. Dib started to blush slightly out of embarassment.

"Fine, whatever.", he said as he rolled his eyes and started lowering his arm.

Zim quickly slid under before Dib could completely lower his arm, crouching slightly so he fit inside. "Let's get this over with.", he muttered as they started walking.

          Even though Zim had grown, his height was noting in comparison to Dib. Thanks to the genetics from his dad, Dib was six foot three, absolutely towering over Zim. Because of this, it was pretty easy for Zim to stay almost entirely under his coat as they walked. The trip from the skool to Zim's base was mostly quiet, the only bits of conversation being Dib warning Zim about puddles so he didn't have to hear him complain about it.

It took twice the time it normally would to get there, but they did eventually get to the base. They walked up to the door and Dib openned it, Zim almost immediately rushed inside and checked himself over to make sure he was dry and not about to combust from the Earth's polluted sky water.

He looked up at Dib with a disgusted look on his face, "Well? Come inside, you're letting the putrid rain in."

Dib froze for a second before hesitantly coming in and closing the door behind him.

Zim got a tablet out of his back and looked at a few things on it as robotic arms came out from the ceiling to take off his wig and contacts.

"This rain should clear up in an hour or two, no point in subjecting yourself to it again right away. Just because your body is dry doesn't mean you can't get sick from your gargantuan head being soaked.", Zim paused for a second before yelling upwards, "Computer, give the stink boy a towel!"

The computer sighed and a towel was thrown down onto Dib's face, making him fall backwards in surprise. Zim laughed at him as he made his way over to the couch and sat down on the far end of it.

Dib grumbled under his breath and dried his hair as he also went over and sat on the opposite end of the couch from Zim.

"What boring human program do you want to watch? I have the 'net-flicks' and the 'hoo-doos'.", Zim said as he grabbed the remote from the table where Gir had left it.

"Zim for the love of- Do you mean 'Netflix' and 'Hulu? How do you even have access to those?"

"I stole the passwords from the neighbors."

Dib looked at him for a second before bursting out into laughter.

"Zim demands to know what you find so funny! Isn't that how all humans aquire access to these services?!"

That last bit made Dib start laughing even harder, and he had to put some serious effort into calming down enough to tell Zim why he was laughing before he was stabbed or something.

"It- it is but-"

"But what, stupid?"

"But I didn't expect you to do it!"

Zim just glared at him as he continued to laugh, finally calming down a few minutes later.

"I guess we could watch some anime or something?", he said after thinking about what would be a good way to waste time for an hour or two.

"Zim has never heard of this 'Annie-may' show before."

"No, not 'Annie-may', anime. It's japanese cartoons."

"There's a difference between animation from different human cultures?"

"Yeah! Like, in America and England and other western countries animation is seen more as something for kids. But in Japan there's so many shows targeted at teens and adults! Sure, there's also anime geared towards kids, but alot of it still has really interesting stories and what not."

Dib gestured in the air with his hands as he continued, "And yeah, there's tons of bad shows and movies and stuff, but there's enough good that if a show or something isn't entertaining or well made enough you can just stop watching it and move on to something else. Plus, because of all the people who grew up watching anime and stuff in the west, there's alot of cartoons that are picking up the cool traits from it like the on-going plotlines and story arcs and stuff."

He put a hand on the back of his head, "Not to say that the episodic stuff isn't worth watching, alot of that can be a fun time waster, but there's something rewarding about watching stuff that's been hinted at or said throughout a season just come together. And then theres the movies!"

Dib kept talking, and Zim continued to listen to him. He seemed just as invested in this 'anime' stuff (Zim still didn't really get it) as he was in his bigfeets or ghosts and whatnot. After a while longer of Dib gushing about anime, he looked over at Zim before blushing and looking to the side.

Oh my god I just went on a rant about anime to the alien.

He put his hand on the back of his head again and looked back over at Zim, "But yeah, anime is pretty cool."

Zim stared at him for a second before putting the tv on to Netflix.

"Which of these is one of your 'animes'?"

Chapter Text

          It was the last week of skool and Dib couldn't wait. Not only did the end of this year mean that Dib only had one more left before he was done, but the summer meant that he could go full force into his paranormal investigations without having to worry about keeping his grades up. Not that that was hard, he was leagues ahead of everyone else in his grade anyways, but skool meant that he needed a semi-normal sleep schedule so long work sessions were out of the question.

Summer also meant that he could probably just sit down and watch an entire series with Zim in one go instead of just coming over every saturday and watching a few episodes while they both worked on something else. For the last few months, they'd fallen into a comfortable routine of going to eachother's houses every Saturday to just hang out and watch some anime.

Zim had been different since that night on the hill. Different in a good way, definately, but different. Now that they weren't trying to kill eachother constantly, Zim was actually pleasant to be around.

He even complimented something Dib had worked on! Not that he realized he'd done it, but he had. Dib asked Zim his opinion on something he was working on for skool and Zim responded by saying it looked good.

Thinking of the alien, he'd told Dib he wouldn't be in skool for the rest of the week because of a new 'project' he'd started. And despite Dib's attempts at prying, he couldn't get Zim to tell him what it was. He could only hope it wasn't something bad, given the alien's improving track record over the last few months.

          Meanwhile, Zim had been in his lab since Dib had left on Saturday working hard on something he whished he'd thought of sooner.

Even though he didn't really care all that much, he knew that the end of each human skooling year was something that they tended to celebrate in some way. As such, he was preparing a surprise for Dib.

His feeling about the human had... changed, pretty significantly over the last few months. Dib no longer annoyed him by merely existing, and now that Zim was (officially) done trying to take over the planet, the human was less of an obstical and more of just a constant in his life.

As such, he felt obliged to give him some form of surprise in celebration of the beginning of summer vacation.

He poured all of his time and energy into it, only occasionally taking breaks to eat the small amounts of food he actually needed and to watch Gir's stupid show with him so he didn't complain. He finished his project by Thursday, and prepared for the reveal of it.

          At about one A.M. Saturday morning, Dib was woken up by Zim poking him in the face. "Hey, smelly, wake up."

Dib openned his eyes to find Zim extremely close, resulting in him panicking and falling out of bed onto the floor.

"You have to stop doing that.", Zim said, looking down at him.

"That's what I should be saying! How did you even get in?!"

Zim stuck his tounge out at him. "Be quiet, there's people sleeping."

Dib glared at him, unnamused.

"You left the window open, does that answer satisfy you?"

Dib sighed as he grabbed his glasses and phone off his bedside table, checking the time. "And why did you break into my house and wake me up at... one twenty-five in the morning?"

"Because, Zim has prepared a surprise for you, to celebrate the end of the skool year!"

"Ok??? Why couldn't you just show me when I got to your house tomorrow?"

Zim stood up on Dib's bed and pointed down at him, "Zim has spent a week preparing this, now put on non-sleeping clothes and prepare to be surprised!"

Dib raised his hands in defeat and sighed again, standing up, "Alright, alright, stop shouting. But could you go wait on the porch or something while I change at least?"

Zim squinted at him before complying and exiting back out the window. Dib contemplated just locking it behind him and going back to sleep for a second before getting dressed. He knew that Zim would be pissed at him if he did that, and he really didn't feel like dealing with it later.

After about ten minutes, he came outside and almost immediately Zim grabbed his wrist and started dragging him towards whatever destination he had in mind. Eventually, they were out alone in some nearby woods. Zim finally stopped walking and got a remote out of his pak.

"Finally feel like explaining to my why you've dragged me out into the woods in the middle of the night?", Dib asked, feeling slightly anxious after their basically silent walk from his house.

"This,", Zim said as pressed a button on his remote, "is the surprise."

In front of them, the Voot cruiser came into view. It looked different, though. It was bigger, the inside having two chairs now instead of one as well as more room in general.

"Zim had been intending to upgrade it's size anyways, given how tiny it used to be. And I figured-", Zim paused for a second, thinking about his words and if he really wanted to say them out loud, "I figured since you like space and stuff like that, it would be worth it to add an extra seat."

Dib looked at him, eyes wide with surprise, "Did you really add another seat just for me?"

Zim folded his arms, a smug smile on his face. "Don't let it go to your already massive head, Dib-beast."

Zim used his pak legs to climb inside the ship, and then helped Dib get inside as well before closing the windsheild and pilotting the ship out of the Earth's atmosphere.

          Dib had been in space plenty of times before, but every single one of those times was to stop Zim from doing something that could destroy the Earth. He'd never really gotten the chance to just look around at everything. Now, though, he was able to just look out at the vast emptieness in wonder as Zim pilotted the ship around various bits of space junk.

After a while of them sitting in silence as Dib stared out at the galaxy in wonder, Zim looked over at him with a torn expression on his face. "Why did you... actually trust me?"

Dib turned to face him, confused by his question.

"What do you mean?"

"Zim means; why, after every negative interaction we've had with eachother, did you decide to blindly trust me as I took you out of your home at a random point in the night to bring you to an undisclosed location?"

Dib thought about it for a moment. Why did he decide to trust him? They'd been at eachother's throats for years, it was only a fairly recent change that they didn't hate eachother. But it was a change. And a pretty big one at that. The moment they'd shared on the hill, and then all the stuff that'd happened since, it all build up enough that Dib had given Zim the benefit of the doubt.

"I think,", he'd started, hand on his chin, "I think it's because we're friends?"

Zim stuck his tounge out a bit, confused by Dib's answer, "What?! How are we 'friends'? We tried to kill eachother for years!"

Dib shrank down a bit in his chair at that answer, something Zim picked up on almost immediately. He waited a moment before speaking again, looking out the windsheild in front of him, "If you wish to call us that, Zim will not object." Dib perked up again after he processed what Zim had said, surprised by it. "I think it's time to head back, your inferior human body needs rest and what-not."

Zim began steering the ship back towards Earth. On the way back, they talked about various topics ranging from skool to theories about the show they'd started watching. By the time they got back to the planet, the sun had begun to rise. They continued to talk as they made their way downstairs from the Voot room.

Once they made it to the door, Dib started on his way home, turning back to wave at Zim as he left. "See you later, I guess."

Zim waved back at him, a fake annoyed look on his face, "You'd better get some sleep before you come over, Zim will not have you sleeping as we continue watching our show."

"Don't worry, I'm passing out as soon as I get in my bed."

Zim watched as Dib dissapeared down the street before closing the door. He turned around and stood there for a moment, looking down at the floor in front of him. "Friends, huh?"

Chapter Text

          Zim was laying down on his couch as Gir watched tv, thinking about the events of the last few weeks.

Dib was at home, busy with some paranormal thing he didn't give Zim much info on since he didn't think he'd care about it. While that would have been true before, for whatever reason Zim had found himself getting more invested in Dib's interests lately.

Maybe it was because Dib had introduced him to the high-class art form that was anime, or something else, but either way Zim found himself wanting to learn more about the things Dib decided to occupy his time with. He'd also just gotten used to Dib being around more often since summer started, the human was in his base basically every other day at this point.

He rolled over onto his stomach as he continued to think.

He didn't want to admit it, but it was almost like he missed Dib, even if he'd been there just the day before. Friends missed eachother, right?

That was something Zim was still slightly stuck on. The fact that Dib had willingly called him his friend. Thinking about it, that wasn't even the first time, either.

Zim got up and started pacing, his hand on his chin.

Dib had called him his friend that night as well, hadn't he? The night he'd found Zim alone after the Tallest had ripped him of his... he would say 'title' as an invader, but he never really was one to begin with, was he? Regardless, Dib found him that night. Found him and gave him comfort and encouragement, even after all Zim had put him through.

Then, Zim had given the human the coat, which resulted in the shared walk home and the start of their hangouts. Then, as the hangouts continued, Zim's fondness of Dib's company began to grow-

He stopped pacing when he hit that thought. He was fond of Dib's company. He really enjoyed having Dib around him.

          Zim started pacing again, faster than before.

He liked Dib.

That made sense, friends liked eachother. And there were tons of reasons for him to like Dib, definately. Dib was smarter than basically any other human. He'd been the only one who say through his, admittedly quite poor, disguise.

Not to mention the fact that for the few things they'd been forced to work together on over the years, Dib was able to keep up with him fairly well considering he lacked any sort  of formal training. He was also extremely persitant, something Zim used to see as an annoyance before they'd become friends. Now, he saw it as an extremely large positive.

Building onto that, Dib could get so invested in something he was interested in and talk about it for hours. Zim smiled a bit thinking about it, how Dib could go on a rant about something he cared about until someone stopped him if something set him off. It was actually quite adorab-

That train of thought was cut short by him walking into the couch and falling onto Gir. Gir started screaming about the 'hug pile' Zim had appearntly initiated, and Zim just sighed, forgetting what he'd been thinking about before he'd accidentally set Gir off. Oh well, he'd probably remember it later anyways.

          Dib was in his room trying to do research on some new bigfoot sightings a few states over. Emphasis on trying, since he kept getting distracted by his thoughts.

Him thinking about Zim while trying to focus on something else was normal, but the way he was currently thinking about the alien was slightly different than usual.

He sighed and closed his laptop, laying backwards and staring up at the ceiling. It'd been two weeks since they'd gone out into space together. Two weeks since they'd officially decided to say they were friends.He was genuinely surprised that Zim agreed with him on it, thinking about it. He'd genuinely thought Zim didn't agree at first, but given his concession on it, it was pretty clear that was just Zim being Zim.

Dib smiled a bit, thinking about how they'd been spending time since skool ended. They hung out at Zim's place more than his out of fear that Gaz would get annoyed by them making too much noise or something, and Dib was over there pretty much every day. The only reason he decided to do his research at home this time was because he'd figured Zim probably needed a break from him.

They'd already managed to finish half the anime on Netflix since they'd started hanging out, and he was starting to think that they'd be done with all of it by the end of the summer.

He'd been so surprised at first with how invested Zim could get in a show, especially considering that the first few times they hung out he wouldn't shut up about how 'inferior' human entertainment was. He doubted the alien really cared about the cultural aspects of it, but it was still cool for him to have someone else to talk to about something he liked.

          He chuckled as he thought about it. God, if his twelve year old self could see them now, he'd think Zim had done some evil mind-controlly thing to him. Then he'd point with his mouth open for no reason before rushing into danger without any form of plan.

To be fair, it did seem completely out of left field to anyone on the outside looking in. One moment they were at eachother's throats, and now suddenly they were hanging out regularly and getting along like they'd been friends for years.

He thought about how Zim acted when they were alone.

Under the many, many layers of his loud and hyper personality, Zim really liked having long conversations. He liked just sitting down and talking, it didn't really matter the topic.

He also liked spending time with Gir, even if Dib knew with 100 percent certainty that he would never admit it.

Dib also thought about how Zim's antenne would perk up like a cat's ears when he was interested in something. Zim was actually really similar to a cat, minus the fur. The few chanced Dib had actually had to touch Zim's skin, it had been pretty smooth all things considered. The best way he could describe it was somewhere between velvet and scales.

Honestly, Zim's anatomy was something that Dib was still facinated with, even after all these years. From what he knew, Zim didn't need to sleep, and he barely even needed to eat. The only things he'd even actually seen Zim eat had been overly sweet snacks and waffles. His lack of a nose and ears were also something that Dib found interesting, especially since Zim still had pretty normal looking lips.

He continued thinking about Zim's lips for a minute before he caught himself.

He shot up, not at all liking where that was going in his head. He put his hand on his face, blushing slightly as he tried to figure out how his mind had gotten to that point.

He'd been thinking about irken biology and then about Zim's lips and... Nope, he was not going to deal with that right now. He didn't have nearly enough time or braincells on hand to actually unpack any of that.

He openned his laptop back up, doing his best to focus entirely on his research. For now, he was going to avoid the issue entirely, shoving it back down into the recesses of his mind like any other mentally stable person does with their problems.

Chapter Text

          It was late, and they'd been sitting around watching Netflix. Dib had been working on some of his paranormal stuff earlier, but he was too tired by this point to really focus on it so he gave up for the night. He was getting ready to leave, but the episode they were watching ended on a cliffhanger and he wasn't about to just make Zim wait until tomorrow to watch it.

Come the end of that episode, though, Zim looked over to see that Dib had fallen asleep. He rolled his eyes as he quickly turned on something they'd already watched before.

Zim moved over on the couch so that he was a bit closer to Dib and poked his face.

"Hey, wake up."

The only response he got was a quiet groan as Dib stretched out slightly.

Sitting close to him like this, Zim noticed how warm Dib was. He knew humans were warmer than irkens, and he'd been fairly close to Dib while he slept several times before, but he'd never actually really noticed it like this before now. He paused for a second, making sure he really wanted to do what he was considering, before gently pressing his body against Dib's.

Zim was almost immediately comfortable, like a lizard on a heat rock. Dib adjusted again, now entirely laying down on the couch. Zim positioned himself so he was partially on top of Dib's stomach, laying down with his head on his arms as he calmly listened to Dib's breathing. He liked it, laying there with Dib like that. He felt rather content just hearing the human's heartbeat and gently breathing as he slept. Zim watched tv for a while, doing his best to make sure he didn't disturb Dib at all during the night.

          The next morning, Dib woke up slowly and put his arm over his eyes. He didn't actually remember falling asleep, he was watching tv with Zim and now it was morning. He moved his arm and looked around slightly.

He was definately still in Zim's livingroom, and the tv was on the 'Are you still watching?' screen for an entirely different show than what was on when he fell asleep. He woke up a bit more, and noticed the fact that there was something warm on top of him and... it was purring?

It certainly sounded like a cat. But Zim didn't have a cat, and this was way to big to just be a normal tabby. He looked down and saw Zim laying down on top of him, seemingly asleep.

Dib's breathing hitched as he began to blush out of confusion, his going a mile a minute.

Is he asleep? I thought irkens didn't need sleep? Why is he purring? Why is he on top of me?

Almost immediately, Zim's eyes shot open and he looked up at Dib. They made eye contact for a second before Zim let out a panicked squeak and shot to the other end of the couch.

The alien was blushing even more than Dib, his antennae raised as he tried to think of an excuse for why he was in rest mode and purring on top him. Dib sat up as he continued to look at Zim, still blushing and confused. They sat there in silence for god knows how long before Dib finally said something.

"... You really are like a cat, aren't you?"

Zim just looked at him for a second, completely baffled by what he'd just heard. Dib had just woken up to find Zim basically asleep on top of him, and his only response was to compare him to a house pet.

This broke Zim out of his shock as he flew into an ego-fueled fit instead.

"How dare you compare Zim to a human companion animal?! Zim far superior to any creature on this stupid planet, especially something as lowly a pet."

Dib started to laugh as Zim continued, not really sure how else to respond and not wanting to address what had just happened. Dib felt his phone vibrate in his pocket, and checked it to find some missed texts from Gaz. He flinched, knowing that she was going to be mad he was out all night.

          10:14 Fri-Gaz: Did you even come home last night

          10:43 Fri-Gaz: ???

          11:20 Fri-Gaz: An answer would be nice.

          11:24 Fri-Gaz: Did Zim finally decide to kill you or something?

Dib panicked for a second, trying to think of a good excuse.

          11:25 Fri-Dib: Sorry, just woke up

          11:25 Fri-Dib: I ended up falling asleep on his couch by accident

          11:26 Fri-Gaz: Whatever, just let me know next time

          11:26 Fri-Dib: Not really something I planned to do, yknow

          He sighed as he put his phone away, looking back over at Zim who was now on his feet and still going off about how different he was from a cat.

"-And, Zim does not have a tail!", the alien finally finished, crossing his arms with a proud look on his face.

"That you know of."

Zim looked at him, confused, "Eh?"

"You said you don't have a tail, but you don't know that."

"Of course I know I don't have a tail! How would I live for as long as I have without being sure I didn't have a tail?"

"... How long have you been alive for?"

Zim froze for a second before putting a hand to his chin and looking like he was seriously thinking about something.

He stood there like that for a second before shrugging and plopping back down on the couch, "Dunno, eighteen, maybe nieteen years? Somewhere in that range. Earth years are entirely different from irken cycles."

Dib looked at him for a second before turning to face the tv. "Wanna keep going with our show?"

Zim rolled his eyes and grabbed the remote, "Of course I do, you stinky monkey-child. We're re-watching what you slept through so you know what's going on, though."

Chapter Text

          "You won't get away with this, Zim!", Dib yelled as he chased the alien through the woods.

"That's what you think, pig-boy!"

After a year of this, it was basically routine at this point; wake up, go to skool, stop whatever plan Zim had for the day. Currently, he was chasing him through the woods alongside a river in an attempt to stop him from setting off a bomb that was powerful enough that it could take out New-York city.

Zim didn't really have a plan beyond setting it off somewhere, but regardless Dib was determined to stop him.

Turns out, Dib wasn't actually what ended up ruining Zim's plans, at least not directly.

Zim was so focussed on insulting the human that he failed to notice a tree root sticking up on the ground in front of him, resulting in him tumbling forward and throwing the bomb into the river. The result was the bomb being rendered useless by the water and harmlessly floating away.

Dib lunged at him while he was on the ground and they ended up in an all too familiar position; an angry ball of punching, kicking, biting, and stabbing as they tumbled around the forest floor. They ended up tumbling down towards the water, and Zim managed to use his pak legs to catch himself on a tree.

Dib, not being lucky enough to have robotic legs at the ready (what a loser), ended up falling gloriously into the water with a large splash. Thankfully, he landed in a fairly shallow part near the edge. Zim was laughing as the human struggled to sit up, loudly cackling as Dib flailed around in the water.

Once he gathered his bearings, Dib started throwing rocks at the still laughing alien. He managed to hit one of his pak legs, causing Zim to fall down into the water as well. Now it was Dib's turn to laugh as Zim's skin began to burn from the pollutants in the river. He shot out of the water, screeching in pain as he began to retreat.

He screamed something over his shoulder along the lines of "don't think you've won!" as he left, and Dib responded with something equally generic and expected in that situation.

          Dib was running through the abandonned warehouse district, not wanting to be there any longer than he absolutely had to be. A combination of watching way too many horror movies for his own good and fighting Zim for a little over three years had him more than a bit on edge. He had no idea what Zim had planned, but he knew that whatever it was couldn't be good.

He finally came to a large, dark building with it's door open and stopped. He was almost certain he'd seen Zim go inside, but every bone in his body was telling him to just say 'nevermind' and go home.

Even if Zim wasn't inside, there was also a fairly good chance he might just get stabbed by a homeless man if he stuck around. But, as per usual, his legs started moving on their own and before he knew it he was inside the empty warehouse.

The room was large and dark, the only light being supplied by the broken windows high on the walls and the door behind him. He cautiously went further inside, doing his best to stay calm as he surveyed the room for any signs of the invader. Dib just barely saw one of Zim's pak legs jutting out in front of him, reflex taking over as he rolled to the side to avoid any serious damage.

He quickly turned around to see Zim blocking the door, a large grin on his face being illuminated by the faint glow his eyes provided.

"What's the matter, Dib-stink? Can't see in the dark?"

Dib didn't answer him, he was too busy looking around for any other means of escape since the alien had the main entrance blocked. Zim didn't like that he was being ignored, though, and shot another one of his mechanical legs at Dib, aiming for the human's chest. Dib dodged again, running further into the room and doing his best to stay in the scattered beams of light provided by the windows.

"What are you planning, Zim?!", he screamed into the dark.

The only reply he got was laughter from the darkness as Zim managed to trip him with a pak leg. Dib fell backwards, flailing for a second before he rolled the direction opposite of where the attack had come from. Zim was moving fast enough that the glow from his eyes and pak weren't a reliable enough way to tell where he was, and Dib wasn't sure what he should do.

He got to his feet again and decided to just try and make a break for the door, since Zim wasn't directly in front of it anymore.

As he got close, he felt something hit his back hard enough to propel him forward. His face slid against the concrete floor, his glasses falling off and cracking. He grabbed them as he quickly got up, pinching his now heavilly bleeding nose that was probably broken again as he continued running.

He failed to notice that the alien he was running from had all but stopped the moment he fell.

Zim just stood there, not really sure what to do next. He didn't even really have a plan beyond bullying Dib in the dark for a while, and he hadn't even intended to cause harm. He decided it was time to go home, no point in continuing now that damage had been done.

Zim had no desire to be around a blood covered Dib, not when his blood smelled that bad.

          Dib looked up in abject confusion at Zim.

The alien was on top of a poorly constructed structure made of cinderblocks and plywood with Gir and about 12 chickens. Zim was cackling maniacally with his hands on his hips,

"Foolish human! Better give up now, there's absolutely no way you can defeat the mighty Zim this time!"

Zim continued to cackle as Dib tried to figure out what was even going on. "W-what even is your plan???"

"Of course it isn't obvious to you, you large-headed filth child! Zim has the upper hand, as per usual, better surrender now or face your doom!"

Dib looked around for a second as Zim continued to loudly laugh on top of his poorly made tower. Obviously, this plan was foiled when Dib moved one of the lower cinderblocks slightly, causing the whole thing to come crashing to the ground.

Dib approached Zim as he laid there in the ruins of his mess, Gir trying to eat one of the chickens next to him.

"Seriously, dude? That's all you had?"

"No, you didn't let me get to the egg throwing. LIKE THIS!", Zim grabbed an egg from underneath him, throwing it at Dib's face as he quickly got up.

He grabbed Gir and used his pak legs to scuttle away towards his base. Dib just stood there, egg dripping off of his glasses, unsure of how to react to what just happened.

          Dib and Zim were sitting on Zim's couch, something random on the tv as Gir was rolling around on the floor. They were throwing popcorn at him and seeing who could get the most pieces in the robot's mouth. It was Dib's idea, and there was no way Zim was going to back down from a challenge.

Dib won thirteen to five.

Chapter Text

          "Why, pray tell, are humans celebrating a date of all things?", Zim asked Dib as they made their way to the place they'd dubbed their spot out in the woods.

They were going out there so they could watch the fireworks people were setting off in the park from a safe enough distance that they probably wouldn't have to interact with anyone.

"Zim, you've been on Earth, in America, for almost six years. There's no way you don't understand the Fourth of July by now."

Zim scoffed and crossed his arms as they both sat down against some trees, "Zim had no need to pay attention to these holidays before. Things like Christmas or the egg holiday are harder to avoid, but the fourth day in July or the giving of thanks in November weren't prevalent enough for me to pay attention to."

"Yeah, but the Fourth of July has explosions and stuff, it's something you'd be into."

"These explosions aren't intended to cause irreversible and greivous bodily harm, therefore I felt no need invest my time."

Dib raised an eyebrow at him, "You said that like you have a reason now. Do you?"

Zim looked him in the eye for a second before turning the other way, "Of course not! Zim has no reason to care about stupid humans and their stupid traditions."

Dib just stared at him for a second before directing his attention to the fireworks that had begun in the distance, "Whatever, man."

They sat there in silence for a while, just watching the fireworks.

          "Y'know,", Dib said after a while, starting Zim slightly, "I think you do care about stuff on Earth, at least a little bit. If you didn't, you could have just left."

Zim tensed slightly, still just looking at the fireworks, "Oh? And why have you come to that conclusion?"

"Well for one, you used the word 'stupid' more than once, you only do that when you're lying about something."

Zim stuck his tounge out at him, causing Dib to laugh a bit.

"I do appreciate you, you know. Even if we definately didn't get off to the best start."

Zim flinched a bit, still not looking at Dib.

"The last like half a year has been great, though. Just being able to hang out with you like this is really cool."

Zim didn't resond to him for a while, both because he was still processing what he'd been told, but also because he wasn't quite sure how. Obviously he cared about things on Earth, mostly Dib but there was absolutely no way he was actually going to tell him that.

"I've... Zim has also been enjoying time spent with you.", he turned his face to look at Dib, a small smile on his lips, "I'm glad to be your friend, Dib."

Dib blushed slightly when Zim said that, and returned the smile. They sat there in comfortable silence as they watched the remaining set of fireworks in the distance.

An hour later, the exposions had died out and they were just sat there in the dark.

Dib looked up at the sky, sighing as he stood, "We should probably head back, it looks like it's gonna start raining soon."

"There weren't any calls for rain today."

"Yeah, but fireworks can cause it sometimes. Something with the gunpowder I think."

Zim quickly stood up, already beginning to walk awake as he turned around and gestured for Dib to follow, "Come on, then! Zim has no desire to be in pain today!"

"There's times when you do?"

Zim turned back around and continued walking, "Wouldn't you like to know?"

          Sure enough, almost immediately after they got back to Zim's house, the weather outside had shifted from a considerably pleasant summer evening to a torrential downpour. Dib sighed as he looked out the window, knowing he would have to walk back home in that mess.

Zim was checking the weather on his tablet in the corner, a slightly annoyed look on his face, "I can't get a clear time for when it'll clear up."

Dib's shoulders slumped in defeat, "Great."

"You could always just spend the night again."

They both froze when Zim said that.

Zim didn't actually mean to say that thought out loud, and Dib was surprised by the fact that he'd suggested it. Considering the fact that last time was an accident (and they still hadn't propperly addressed it yet), he hadn't been expecting Zim to actually offer for him to stay over for the night.

When Dib hadn't said anything yet, Zim rushed to add to what he said, "I- I mean, you seemed comfortable enough last time, and it's better than having to attempt going home in this stupid, wet, disgusting rain."

"If you're ok with it, I guess?"

Zim folded his arms and scoffed, "Of course Zim is ok with it. I wouldn't have offered if it wasn't an acceptable action. I can go downstairs and work or something while you sleep."

Dib looked at him for a second before responding. "Alright."

He was still slightly unsure about it, but the alternative was trying to walk home in the rain and hoping he didn't get swept away by some flooding. "You wanna watch a movie or something for now?"

"Obviously, idiot."

Dib fell asleep about two and a half movies later, and Zim went to get the blanket that he totally didn't buy in case Dib fell asleep in his base again. He covered the sleeping human before going down to the lab to start on a new project he'd just gotten an idea for.

Chapter Text

          Dib and Zim had decided that they'd hang out in Dib's room for the day, both of them working on seperate projects to pass the time. Dib had some paranormal things he wanted to research, and he'd even gone through the effort of clearing a good majority of the mess off of his desk so Zim had a flat surface so he could work on... whatever he'd been working on for the last week or so.

He refused to tell Dib no matter how many times he'd asked, and it's not like the human could try to read the schematics for himself since they were in irken.

"You should really clean your dwellings, this place is filthy.", Zim said, shuddering slightly as he looked around at all the empty energy drink cans and dirty clothes in various piles around the room.

"It's not that bad. You should have seen it when I was in middle skool, pretty sure some of the stuff I had in here back then could have been classified as a new form of life by the time I actually threw it away."

Zim gagged a bit, "Please, do not remind Zim of such dark times. I actively refrained from sneaking into your home for years because of a pizza box left in the middle of your floor."

Dib chuckled slightly, "Good to know my bad habits were a good deterant."

"Careful, or it will continue to be so."

"Then I'd just go to your house, saves me time with cleaning."

"I will sneak in at three in the morning and throw all of your stuff away."

Dib blew a raspberry at him as he finished moving the unorganized stack of papers on his desk. "There. Is that enough space for you to work on your thing?"

Zim examined the freshly cleaned space, his arms crossed as he eyed it. "It should suffice, however if I do end up needing more surface area I'm just going to push things off onto the floor."

"Not unless you want to go right onto the floor with it you won't."

Zim scoffed, "It's not as though it would make much of a difference to the surrounding mess."

Dib brought a hand to his chin and smirked at him, "True, having you on the floor would just add more garbage, wouldn't it?"

Zim half-heartedly shoved him to the side as he sat down at the desk and got his stuff out. Dib sat down on his bed with his laptop on his legs, and they got started on their respective projects.

          They both worked on their stuff for a while, occasionally holding conversation if one of them thought of something to talk about. But eventually, Zim started to get bored with working on his blueprints and decided that he wanted to take a break and snoop around a bit. He made sure Dib wasn't looking at him and began digging through the mess that still took up the edges of the desk.

Most of the stuff was just trash; scribbled out or crumpled up bits of paper, little doodles on old notes, old homework from, a flat chip bag that was just hidden in a stack of paper. Some of it was old plans and schemes relating to Zim, some he even recognised as things the human had actually tried at one point or another in the past.

Finally, after he'd been digging around for a bit, his eyes settled on an old piece of printer paper. It had an extremely crude drawing of god knows what and a bunch of scribbles that he assumed were supposed to be words.

"What is this???", he asked, holding it up at an angle so Dib could see.

Dib's face went red with embarassment almost immediately when he saw it. He looked to the side and muttered something quiet enough that Zim couldn't hear what he said.

"Speak up, idiot.", Zim said as his antennae lowered in annoyance.

"I said, it was supposed to be blueprints of your base."

Zim squinted at him for a second before looking back at the paper and studying it intensely. "It looks like something scribbled by one of those primative 'cave-people' on a wall somewhere."

Dib got up and  roughly snatched the paper out of Zim's hands, his cheeks still extremely red as he crossed his arms, "Shut up, I made it when I was like twelve!"

"Please don't tell me your drawn plans are still this poorly made."

Dib looked to the side, fighting the deep-seeded urge to just punch Zim as a response. "So what if they are? As long as I can understand what itsays, it doesn't matter how bad it looks."

          Zim looked at Dib with his eyebrow raised for a second before snatching the paper back. He pointed at a circled bit in the corner with a scribble underneath it and scowled, "Alright then, dumbass, since you're so sure of yourself. What does this part here say?"

"Does it matter?"

"Answer Zim's question, Dib-stink."

Dib sighed as he squinted at the spot Zim where was pointing, trying to remember what it was he'd written there. "I think it says that was a blind spot??? Look, it's not like it matters, I don't need blueprints of your base anymore."

"Whether or not you still 'need' this is irrelivant. I cannot believe you've achieved so much with skills this poor."

Dib folded his arms again and glared at him. "Why do you even care anyways, it's not like you have to look at anything I work on."

"Zim 'cares' because I probably will be stuck looking at things you make from now on, and assistance or feedback is hard to provide when the instructions are this poorly made."

"Wait, what?"

Zim roughtly shoved the paper at Dib's chest before turning back towards the desk, "Maybe you should take a break from your paranormy stuff and look up how to not suck at something simple."

Dib let out an offened gasp and rolled his eyes, going back over and sitting on his bed. He looked down at the horrible drawing in his hand and sighed, hating that Zim was right. He saved what he'd been working on, openning up his browser and going to google. Couldn't look up a few things about professional blueprint making for a while, at least to give himself a break from his ghost stuff.

Chapter Text

          Zim was almost done with his latest project, and he'd insisted that Dib had to be there for it's completion. It was a small, black box attatched to a band that looked like elastic. Dib was on his phone as Zim made the final needed adjustments to his creation. After a bit, Zim put his soldering iron down, standing up straight with a triumphant grin on his face.

The alien put his hands on his hips as he looked over at Dib, "It is done!"

Dib put his phone away and raised an eyebrow at him, "Cool, what is it?"

Zim suddenly slapped the device onto Dib's wrist, starting the human and making him fall backwars out of his chair.

"What do you think it is, stupid?", Zim asked, staring down at him expectantly.

Dib was looking at the thing that was now on his wrist, still confused, "I don't know, you didn't tell me anything about it."

Zim started bouncing excitedly on the balls of his feet when Dib answered him. "It works! Zim has completed it successfully!"

Dib chuckled nervously as he got up off of the floor, not sure if it 'working' was a good thing or not. "Zim can you please explain what the thing you slapped on my wrist is??"

"It's a translator, stupid. I am currently speaking to you in irken."

Dib's eyes widened as he looked down at his wrist again. "You're serious?"

"Yes, what benefit would there be to lying about something like that?"

Zim started going into detail about how it worked, and as he talked Dib began unfastening the device from his arm. Sure enough, once it was no longer in contact with his skin, Zim's words went from understandable to an agressive mess of clicks and hisses. As Zim went on with his explaination, Dib repeatedly took the translator off and put it back on, listening as the alien's words switched between understandable and noise.

Zim finally noticed him doing this and swatted at his hand. "Stop that, you'll break it!"

"Sorry, this is just really cool!", Dib tilted his head a bit as he looked back up at Zim, "Why'd you make it, though?"

Zim rolled his eyes, "Isn't it obvious? You can't accompany Zim to other planets and what-not if you're unable to understand when people speak to you."

Dibs eyes lit up, he was also bouncing with excitement now. The thought of going to some kind of alien planet with Zim had him absolutely giddy.

"Did you have something planned? Are we gonna go to some kind of alien market or something?"

Zim smiled as he watched Dib litterally vibrating with excitement. "Zim didn't have anything already planned, however we can go to an 'alien market', as you called it, today, if you want."

Dib suddenly moved out of his chair and hugged Zim around the neck before boarderline running towards the elevator. He turned around when he got over there, a large grin on his face, "C'mon, let's go!"

Zim was about to complain, but the sparkle in Dib's eye shut him up almost immediately. He put a hand to his neck and smiled to himself before getting up, "Yeah, yeah, gimme a moment. Patience isn't your strong suit."

Dib laughed a bit, "You have no room to talk about being patient."

          Zim had to basically force Dib to sit down once they were in the Voot since he was still bouncing around in excitement.

"It's going to take about two hours to get there, please try to calm down slightly by then.", Zim said, turning to Dib with a serious look on his face, "I'm not saying you can't have any fun while we're out, but drawing too much attention to us could cause issues. As long as you cease with the bouncing and wiggling by the time we get there, it should be alright."

Dib nodded enthusiastically, "Right."

Durring the flight, they talked about random things; skool, tv shows they'd watched together, various projects they'd both worked on. They were mostly just jumping from topic to topic to fill the silence durring the trip.

"It's so... frustrating trying to find things to occupy my time with now that I'm not trying to destroy the planet!", Zim said, gripping the ship controlls a bit tighter, " Zim can no longer make giant death machines or weapons of mass destruction to pass the time! I mean I could, but then they'll just sit in the base collecting dust. Either that or Gir will find them and that's a headache neither of us wants. Plus it's not like you're going to be destroying anything now."

Dib chuckled slightly, "I mean, I can destroy your stuff if you want."

"You will do no such thing!"

They laughed, and then sat there silently for a moment as they tried to think of a new topic to talk about.

Dib was the first one to think of something, "Question."

"Hm?"

"I'm gonna be able to understand other people thanks to the translator, how are they gonna understand me?"

Zim rolled his eyes and scoffed, "Oh please, any advanced species has a translator perminantly installed on their body. But, since I know you'd never allow Zim to cut you open and add one, the wrist device was the best solution."

"Maybe you could show me how to make that kind of stuff at some point?", Dib said, putting his hand on the back of his head, "Like, since you can't really think of things to work on, maybe you could teach me some stuff? Only if you wanted to, though, it'd probably be pretty annoy-"

Zim interupted him, "Zim can teach you, if that is what you want. But I would also have to teach you to at least be able to read in irken. I refuse to use english in any of my projects."

Dib laughed a bit, "Fair enough. It shouldn't be that hard for me to learn."

Zim started cackling after Dib said that, causing the human to glare at him. "Irken is an extremely advanced language, you'd be lucky if you were able to say your name after years of studying."

Dib thought for a second as Zim continued to laugh.

"I mean,", Dib started, "you probably aren't wrong. I don't even think human mouths can make some of those noises."

Zim abruptly stopped laughing when Dib responded and snarled a bit, "I was insulting you, moron. But, Zim supposes you have a point, your soft and smooth human mouth would likely have a hard time replicating most syllables."

Dib's cheeks turned light pink as he heard Zim describe his mouth as 'soft and smooth', and he zoned out slightly as the alien continued to talk.

"I suppose you learning to read it would suffice, at the very least. Either way, Zim highly doubts you'll be able to make any significan progress with it any time soon."

Zim looked over, finally noticing that Dib wasn't actually listening anymore. He gave him a light smack to the side of the head,  "Hey, smelly! Were you even paying attention?"

Dib scambled to stay in his chair as he was dragged back out of his thoughts. He shot Zim an apologetic smile.

"Sorry, I guess I got a bit distracted.", he said, pretending he hadn't just been thinking about what differences there might be between human and irken mouths.

Zim just rolled his eyes and went back to looking in front of him as he pilotted the ship, "You're the one that initiated this conversation, don't just ignore someone when they're talking to you."

"Sorry..."

There were a few more sparce bits of conversation, but a good majority of the remaining trip was spent by Dib just looking out of the windshield at all the new space stuff he got to see now that he was a decent distance from his own solar system.

          They finally arrived at their destination, and Zim carefully landed the Voot in something that looked like a weird alien parking garage. Once they were both out of the ship, Zim put on a hooded cloak that covered basically everything but his face.

Dib raised an eyebrow at him, "Why are you putting that on?"

"The average height of an irken is three, maybe four feet tall at most. The Tallest are around six. Zim is five foot four, you figure it out."

"Shouldn't I be covering myself up too, then? None of these aliens are gonna know what I am, and you said we shouldn't draw attention to ourselves."

Zim scoffed at him, "Funny you think about that now when you were so eager before."

"It didn't really cross my mind until you brought it up!"

"People tend to mind their own business, as long as you don't go around causing issues no one will even notice you. Just remain close to Zim and don't wander off on your own. Do you have the translator on?"

Dib raised his arm up to show Zim his wrist.

The alien nodded, "Good. Zim has thought up a list of things we can get while we're here, since you want to learn how to make things. Let's get this over with."

Walking out of the parking area and into the actual market blew Dib's mind. He'd seen other aliens a few times before, mostly ones he'd been trying to save from Zim, but he was completely unprepared for the actual market place itself.

There were hundreds of different types of aliens around, they were all sorts of different colours and sizes. Some were humanoid, while others were just (presumably) sentient masses of gas or goo. Some were only maybe tall enough that they came up to his knees, while others litterally towered over him. He stopped walking, looking around in wonder.

Zim almost immediately noticed that he stopped, impatiently grabbing him by the arm and forcing him to continue moving, "Do not do that. It'd be a problem if Zim lost you in a place like this."

"Right, sorry... There's just so much stuff, it's so cool!"

"This probably won't be you're only time here, you'll have plenty of chances to look around so don't get so worked up over it."

They continued on and started their shopping. The place was made up of semi-neatly organized rows of shop stalls, all selling a variety of things from parts to clothing to food. They would occasionally stop at one, and Zim would get a part of some kind while explaining to Dib what it was and did. Dib didn't really understand most of the technical stuff he was being told, but he did his best to pay attention and figured Zim would probably explain it again later anyways.

          They went around like this for a while, and things had been going relatively well. But eventually, someone actually took notice of Dib.

One of the shopkeepers, a giant, blue creature with about five arms was looking down at Dib with what was presumably a raised eyebrow, "You look interestin'. What species are ya?"

Dib chuckled nervously, not really sure how he should respond as he looked to Zim for help.

Zim was just examining something on the table in front of him, an uninterested expression on his face, "Isn't it rude to ask someone that? I'm sure he could say the same to you."

The man(?) let out an offended scoff, "'Rude', yea. Like yer one ta talk. What language is that, irken? Ye got no business speakin a language like that."

Zim looked up at him, a scowl on his face, "Learn how to mind your own business, maybe then you'd actually have customers."

The vendor was about to retort, but when he actually saw Zim's face he just looked confused as he began to squint, "Wait, are you irken? What's with the size of ye?"

Zim looked ready to pounce, so Dib decided it was best for them to walk away. He grabbed Zim by the arm and dragged him away before he caused a scene.

"Maybe we shouldn't be picking fights right now.", Dib said, sighing slightly.

"Zim was not picking the fight, however I would have been very glad to put an end to it."

"It doesn't matter who started it, continuing it was only gonna end badly. What else do we still need to get for whatever it is we're making?"

Zim looked him in the eye for a second before turning away and grumbling a bit.

"We're making a blaster, I don't know how many times Zim has to say it. There's only a few more parts we need, let's finish this up so we can return to Earth at a reasonable time."

Zim grabbed Dib's hand and started dragging him along, causing the human to squeak a bit in surprise. They finished up without any more issues, and made their way back to the Voot. Zim placed the stuff they bought behind the seats as Dib climbed in, now thoroughly exhausted.

          The return trip was considerably quieter than the first, since Dib fell asleep not too long after they took off. Once they were back to Earth Zim made a weak attempt to wake Dib up, pouting as the human just lamely swatted away his hand. He sighed and checked the time on Dib's phone.

It was around midnight, and they'd left at ten or eleven in the morning. He rolled his eyes as he picked Dib up, carefully carrying him downstairs and tucking him in on the couch. No point in waking him only for him to go home and immediately go back to sleep.

Zim was about to go back up to unpack the Voot before he heard the human's phone ding. He had several texts from Gaz that were only just coming through now that he was back within the range of the satelites.
 

          19:46 Sat-Gaz: Are you coming home tonight
 

          20:22 Sat-Gaz: Hello?
 

          20:35 Sat-Gaz: There's no way you're already asleep

There were a few more messages, all of them along the same lines of "Are you coming home tonight or not?"

Zim looked at the phone for a second, debating if he should send her a reply or not. After a moment, he decided it was better for her to know what they'd been up to so she didn't come over to maim either of them. He took off one of his gloves so he could use the touch screen.
 

          23:43 Sat-Dib: The dib is currently asleep on the couch
 

          23:44 Sat-Dib: Zim had taken him to an outerspace market and we just returned
 

          23:44 Sat-Dib: He fell asleep on the return trip
 

          23:48 Sat-Gaz: He staying there for the night?
 

          23:48 Sat-Dib: Yes, no point in waking him up this late
 

          23:49 Sat-Gaz: Whatever, make sure he tells me next time you guys do shit like that
 

          23:50 Sat-Dib: Zim will be sure to remind him next time

He sighed as he set Dib's phone down on the table next to the couch and put his glove back on. He had to make sure he remembered to tell Dib about the text conversation in the morning.

Chapter Text

          Dib went to Zim's house Saturday so they could watch more of their current show. As he sat on the couch, Dib tossed a small wrapped box into the alien's lap.

Zim jumped slightly and glared at him, caught off guard by the sudden object in front of him. He picked up the box and examined it, "Eh, what's this?"

"I got you a present."

Zim raised his eyebrow, looking at Dib suspiciously, "Why?"

"What, are you the only one allowed to have surprises?"

Zim didn't answer him, instead rolling his eyes before he cautiously unwrapped the present. Inside was a brand new cellphone with a pink protective case on it and a little strawberry charm attatched on the corner.

Dib shrugged as Zim looked at it, "I figured it'd be easier for us to talk outside of hanging out if there was actually a way for me to contact you."

The alien picked the phone up, turning it around in his hands as he examined it, "Zim could have just stolen one of these, you didn't have to buy one."

"Zim, my dad is a world-famous scientist. Trust me, I have rich-kid money to spare."

Zim turned the phone on and attempted to unlock the screen, but it wouldn't register his touch thanks to his gloves.

Dib scooted over a bit on the couch so he was directly next to Zim, grabbing the phone from his hands and unlocking the screen for him, "Oops, guess I didn't really think about that, huh?"

"Idiot, of course your inferior human touchscreen technology doesn't work through gloves. I'll have to tinker with it later." He thought for a second before sighing and taking one of his gloves off. He set it down in his lap and snatched the phone back from Dib, "This will have to do for now."

Dib was looking at Zim's ungloved hand in wonder, his eyes wide and his mouth stuck open in a shocked 'o'.

Oh my god he has toe beans.

Zim noticed him staring at him and flicked him.

"Ow!", Dib exclaimed, putting a hand to his nose as he leaned back out of flicking distance.

"Stop that, it's annoying.", Zim said, snarling a bit.

"Sorry, I've just never actually seen your hands before."

Zim raised an eyebrow at him, not believing that there wasn't at least one other occasion where Dib had seen his bare hands. He searched his memory bank, not actually finding a time where he'd had his gloves off around Dib where the human was concious. He sighed before roughly shoving his hand at Dib, hitting him in the stomach.

"Here, get your gawking out of the way."

Zim had his head turned away as Dib grabbed his hand and started examining it.

         Dib gently moved Zim's hand as he looked at it, turning it over a few times. The back of it was what Dib had expected, just the same unmarked green skin that made up the rest of the alien's body. The only difference being that the hand skin was really soft in comparrison, probably from being in gloves 24/7.

He turned over the hand to look at the palm, the part he'd really been interested in. Zim had bright paw pads like a cat; one in the center of his hand, and then one on each finger towards the tip. Each of his fingers ended in shart points that Dib knew could very easilly break skin, even through the thick gloves that the alien always wore.

Dib glanced up to see if Zim was still looking away before he carefully went to touch the main paw pad in the center of the palm.

Meanwhile, as Dib was touching his hand, Zim was doing his best to stay calm and keep himself distracted. An irken's hand was extemely sensitive, and even just slight touches could-

"Are you... purring?", Dib asked, his eyebrow raised.

Zim's back immediately straightened, his cheeks turning a dark pink as he yanked his hand back. He glared at the human, a sneer on his face, "Zim was doing nothing of the sort! Maybe you need to get your ears checked, they seem to be as dysfunctional as your brain."

He shot Dib a glare before starting to mess around with the phone, hoping Dib took the hint and shut up. Navigating the device was easy for him, he'd used Dib's phone a handful of times before, and all things considered it was just a simplified version of his tablet. Dib's number was the only contact saved into the phone, and there was even already a picture of him next to it.

Zim snickered as he set Dib's nickname as 'Stoopid Pig Boy'.

"Hey, I didn't give you a stupid name in my phone!", Dib said, pretending he hadn't named Zim 'Pickle Boi' in his own phone.

"Zim doesn't see how that's his problem.", the alien said as he turned the phone off and put his glove back on, "Are there any more surprises or may we continue the show?"

"Just the phone.", Dib said as he scooted back to his end of the couch, "Think they'll finally finish the fight this episode?"

Zim laughed as he grabbed the remote, "Doubtful, but hopefully there's gonna be more progression than a mountain being destroyed in the middle of nowhere for the third episode in a row."

Chapter Text

          Dib was in class Friday afternoon, looking back though his texts to Zim from the last fourty-eight hours. It was only the first week of the skool year, and the alien was already skipping class. He hadn't responded to any of Dib's messages since a bit before lunch the previous day, and the alien hadn't even looked at any of the messages since then either.
 

          10:22 Thur-Dib: Why aren't you in skool?
 

          10:25 Thur-Pickle Boi: Zim has managed to catch some sort of illness
 

          10:25 Thur-Pickle Boi: It isn't something serious and my pak should have it dealt with shortly
 

          10:26 Thur-Pickle Boi: Do NOT come over until Zim says it is ok
 

          10:30 Thur-Dib: You good dude?
 

          10:32 Thur-Dib: You're not gonna turn inside out or anything are you?

He'd sent a few more since then, all of them basically asking the same thing, and had garnered no reply. It made Dib feel a bit uneasy, even though he knew Zim was probably fine. He sent another text once skool was over.

          14:34 Fri-Dib: If you don't respond to this text, I'm coming over to check on you

Still no answer. He sighed at his phone, his mouth pulled into a tight frown.

"What, your boyfriend ignoring you?", Gaz asked, not looking up from her game system.

Dib started blushing a bit, "One, he's not my boyfriend. Two, he texted me yesterday saying he was sick and he hasn't even been looking at any of my texts since then. I think I'm gonna go over and make sure he's still alive."

"Whatever, just make sure you don't bring any germs back with you or I'll kick your ass.", Gaz said, rolling her eyes as she continued on ahead of him. Dib sighed again before he started making his way to Zim's house.

          The first red flag when he got there was the lack of any light escaping the windows. Dib started walking up to the door, checking his phone one more time to make sure Zim hadn't responded before he openned the door. The livingroom was dark, the only light coming from the open door. The tv and light above the couch were off, and the windows were covered by some weird blackout curtains that weren't actually visable from the outside.

Dib flicked the light switch on and came in, looking around the room for any sign of the alien. Now that the room was lit up, he could see that the blankets Zim kept around for him were set up in a kind of nest on the floor. He closed the door and ventured further into the house, figuring Zim was probably down in the lab or something.

As soon as Dib entered the kitchen, though, he heard some shuffling from behind him.

Before he had a chance to react, he suddenly felt weight against him as Zim wrapped his arms around his neck. "Zim expressed that you were to stay away until he was better, do you not know how to read, Dib?", Zim whispered into Dib's ear, slurring a bit.

The alien's usually cool body was extremely warm against Dib's back, and his grip was much weaker than normal. "Well someone wasn't answering their texts.", he replied as he carefully peeled Zim off of him, "I came over to make sure you were ok."

Zim wasn't in his usual clothes, instead wearing a tank-top and some shorts (still had his gloves on, though). It was glaringly obvious just by looking at him that Zim wasn't doing too good. His skin was somehow an even lighter shade of green than usual, his cheeks were a dark pink, and he was sweating. On top of that, he was wobbling as he stood and his eyes were partially closed and lacked thei usual dull glow.

"Dude, you look like shit.", Dib said, wincing a bit as he looked at him.

Zim laughed slightly, "I feel like shit."

Dib grabbed Zim by his wrist and led him over to the couch. "Here, you need to sit down."

"And you need to leave, Zim is perfectly capable of taking care of himself."

Dib sat down on the opposite end of the couch and grabbed the remote, turning on something random. "I'm sure you are, But it doesn't hurt for me to stay for a while and keep an eye on you.", he said, pausing for a second, "Y'know, I didn't know you had other clothes."

"Gir stole them from the mall, Zim's normal clothes were too warm."

"Where is Gir anyways?"

"Locked him downstairs so he didn't give me a headache.", Zim muttered as he laid his head down on the armrest.

          Eventually, Dib had started playing a game on his phone, catching Zim's attention. The alien sat back up and just watched Dib for a while, not saying anything. Suddenly, Dib was greeted by Zim laying across his lap and wrapping his arms around his lower torso.

Dib chuckled nervously as he looked down at him, a light blush forming on his cheeks, "Uh, Zim, what are you-"

"Shut. Up."

The alien curled around him, nuzzling closer as he began to purr. Dib was equal parts confused and concearned by this, looking down at him as he tried to figure out what he should do. Zim had a fever, no doubt about that, and it was probably the reason he was acting... not at all like he normally would.

Dib decided he should try to use his hand to feel Zim's forehead and figure out how bad his fever actually was. As soon as his hand came into contact with Zim's face, though, the alien paused for a second before rubbing against it and purring even louder. Dib froze, his blush darkening as he held his hand there and questioned the actions that led him to this point.

After a moment of internal debate, he slowly moved his hand so it was between Zim's antennae and started to actively pet him. This resulted in Zim basically melting, his purring getting even louder as an extremely please smile spread across his face. Dib was facinated by how Zim was acting, the fever had caused him to lower his normal emotional barriers and as a result he was being increadibly affectionate.

He also felt a bit bad about it as well, because he knew damn well that Zim would sooner break his femurs than let this happen on a normal day. Looking down at the happy, purring mess of an alien in his lap at that moment, though, Dib decided there probably wasn't much harm in it for now. Zim definately looked like he was doing better than when he first got there at least, even if it was probably just emotionally and not physically.

          Dib continued to pet Zim's head for a bit, the alien's loud purring overpowering the sound of whatever was on the tv at that point. After a while, Zim adjusted himself so he was straddling Dib's lap, his arms around the human's neck and his face burried in his shoulder.

Dib chuckled nervously again, "Zim, wh- Ow!"

Zim had moved Dib's clothes out of the way and was starting to bite his shoulder. He wasn't biting hard enough to do any actual damage (hopefully), but deep enough for him to break skin. He slowly made his way up Dib's neck, leaving a trail of bleeding bite marks all the way up, stopping under his ear. Zim moved so his face was directly in front of Dib's, leaning his forehead against the human's as he looked him in the eye.

Dib was blushing profuesly, his thoughts going a mile a minute as he tried to process what was going on.

whatthefuckwhatthefuckwhatthe

Zim looked into his eyes for a long second before suddenly pushing his body forward and agressively placing his mouth on Dib's. He moved one hand to the back of Dib's head, and bit down onto his lip as he deepened the kiss.

Once Dib's brain actually caught up to the situation, he very quickly pulled Zim off of him, catching his breath. Both of them had Dib's blood dribbling down their chins, and he could already feel his lip stinging from Zim's sudden removal.

"Zim you aren't... ok, right now. Please, lay down."

Zim's eyed widened when Dib said this, regret immediately on his face as he looked to the side with his antennae flat against his skull. "Zim is... sorry. That was wrong and it won't-"

Dib gently grabbed Zim by the shoulders and made him look at him. "No, Zim... Look, it's not-", he sighed, "I'm only saying no because you're not in a good state of mind right now. Maybe... Maybe when you aren't sick. But not right now."

Zim had an unreadable expression on his face, and his antennae were moving around seemingly at random as he processed what Dib had just told him. "...Ok."

Zim laid back down on Dib's lap, still quietly purring. Dib let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding as he fully processed what just happened.

Zim had kissed him, and then when Dib had told him to stop he looked really upset. Then Dib told him that they could do it later. He looked down at Zim, who was now asleep. He sighed, maybe he should get some sleep too. At least a nap or something, he was exhausted.

          Zim woke up the next morning with a horrible headache. He was wrapped around something warm on his couch, his face nestled between it's side and the armrest. He slowly sat up, wincing and placing a hand to his head as he did so to try to keep the room from spinning. The light and the tv were both on, not something he remembered doing but not too weird.

His pak had finally managed to clear up whatever it was that he caught, but because of how high his temperature had gotten there had been some memory save issues. He remembered feeling terrible on Thursday and now he was waking up.

He finally looked at whatever it was he'd been asleep on and... oh.

Dib was asleep on the couch, sitting there with his coat and boots still on.

Zim then noticed the smell of blood. Human blood. He also noticed the taste of it in his mouth. Dib was definately alright, at least he didn't seem to have any serious injury Zim should worry about.

He noticed Dib's lip, his antennae shooting up almost immediately when he saw the extremely obvious bite mark that he didn't remember making.

He definately smelled more blood than that, though. Zim slowly stood up, careful not to wake Dib as he crossed over to his other side. He carefully moved Dib's coat out of the way, and saw a line of bite marks that he didn't remember making.

They were definately made by him, though. If the lip was anything to go by, he could only assume they were love bites, something that both confused and concearned him. Zim found his phone in the pile of blankets on the floor, and read all the messages he'd missed from the last few days. He looked back at Dib and sighed.

He had no idea what happened the night before, but something did happen. And he seriously doubted that whatever it was could be ignored like the sleeping incident.

Chapter Text

          The first thing Dib noticed when he woke up was that instead of Zim, there was now a blanket on his lap. He got up and stretched, his back sore from the position he'd ended up falling alseep in. He made his way to the bathroom, deciding it was probably a good idea for him to actually look at the bite marks on him and make sure they weren't going to need stitches or something.

Once Dib coming over had become a regular occurance, Zim had the base updated so that there was an actual bathroom that the human could use. Now, there was a small room in the corner of the kitchen that held a toilet, sink, and even a small shower in case Dib ended up getting something on him that needed to be washed off fairly quickly (or if Zim decided he was too smelly).

He went into the bathroom and closed the door behind him, sighing when he took his coat off and saw the large dark brown stain on his shirt from the dried blood. He had to peel at it slightly as he took it off, thanks to how the blood dried. Once he was shirtless, Dib got a proper look at it all.

He cringed at how obvious the bites were, the one on his lip especially. The ones on his neck were in an evenly spaced line, and went in fairly deep from what he could tell. Not deep enough that it hit muscle or anything, but they were deep enough that he'd been bleeding quite a bit. He put a hand to his lip, wincing slightly when he touched it.

Since he'd removed Zim without warning, the alien was still biting down as he was dragged off. This resulted in welted up marks from his teeth scraping Dib's skin.

He was blushing as he cleaned the blood off of himself in the sink, replaying the events of the night before again in his head. He still felt bad about it, even though Zim was the one to start it. He'd thought about doing something like that with Zim a few times before, not that he'd admit it thanks to extreme denial, but it was wrong of him to let it go that far when Zim wasn't fully aware of what he was doing.

Once he was done getting the blood off, Dib looked down at his shirt and sighed again. He doubted he'd be able to get the stain out, not when it'd been sitting for that long. He still put it back on, though, not like he had many options at the moment. He just hoped his coat covered it well enough and left the bathroom.

          When Dib got back out to the livingroom Zim was sitting on the couch, now back in his usual clothes.

The human lingered awkwardly in the doorway for a moment, "Hey, you feeling any better?"

"My pak has dealt with the sick, now all Zim has is a headache.", Zim replied, his antennae half raised.

"Oh, that's good."

"I told you to refrain from coming over until I was better, do you not know how to read?"

Dib crossed the room and sat on the side of the couch oppisite to Zim, "Like I said yesterday, you weren't responding to my texts so I came to check on you."

Zim looked up at Dib's face, wincing slightly when he saw his lip. Now that the blood was gone, the bite mark was even more noticable. He sighed, knowing there really wasn't a way to sidestep this.

"Zim does not recall what occurred yesterday."

Dib's eyes widenned when Zim said this.

"My fever was high enough that my pak was unable to store anything beyond Thursday.", Zim looked him in the eye, "However it is very clear from looking at you that something did occur."

Dib looked away from him, his hands tightening into fists in his lap as he started blushing again, "Um, well-"

"You do not have to go into detail, but please tell me what happened."

Dib looked at him again, looked away, and then sighed.

"I came over to check on you, like I said. You didn't look like you were doing too good so I made you sit down and turned the tv on. After a while you, um, laid down on my lap suddenly and started purring."

His blush got darker slightly.

"I put my hand on your forehead to check your temperature, but you started rubbing your face against it and purring louder so I- I decided to, uh, pet you. Like a cat."

Now Zim was starting to blush, his cheeks a light pink and his antennae raising a bit.

"And you seemed really happy with it so I just did that for a while. But then you sat up and put your arms around my neck and,", Dib started speaking slightly faster, his blush getting darker as he kept going and he subconciously raised a hand to his shoulder, "then you started biting and then you put your forehead against mine and-"

"Zim can assume what happened from there.", Zim said, interupting him. He had a hand over his mouth, embarassed that he'd done all of that.

"Judging by your lip, I assume you pulled me off of you?"

Dib was looking foreward, a slightly guilty expression on his face, "Yeah, it took me a second to actually realize what was going on, but as soon as I did I made you stop. It wouldn't have been right, not when you weren't... all there, I guess is the best way to describe it? It felt like I was taking advantage of you."

Zim was extremely confued by the way Dib described that. From the way it sounded, Dib was the one taken advantage of in the exchange.

"After that you just laid back down and went to sleep, though.", Dib finished, finally hazarding a glance in Zim's direction.

          The alien had his hand on his chin, his antennae raising and lowering at random as he thought about the whole situation.

He'd been openly affectionate towards Dib the night prior, going so far as to give him love bites and make-out with him. From the way Dib had talked about it, though, it didn't seem like he was upset with him.

"So,", Zim started, not really thinking about his words much before saying them thanks to his headache, "the only reason you put an end to the situation was because Zim was delerious?"

Dib's eyes went wide, suprise evident on his face as his already deep blush somehow got even darker, "Uh, well-"

"Yes or no, Dib."

Dib sat there for a second, contemplating whether he should actually answer honestly. He swollowed the lump in his throat as he made eye contact with him, "Yes."

Zim's blush also got darker when Dib answered him, his antennae slowly raising as they just looked eachother in the eye for a few moments.

Then, Zim suddenly jumped to his feet and put his hands on his hips, "Well, glad we dealt with that situation!"

"I don't actually think we-"

"THE SITUATION HAS BEEN DEALT WITH, STUPID."

Zim plopped back down on the couch and crossed his arms, looking over at Dib in disgust, "Go home and shower, you stink."

Dib looked at him for a second, not really sure how he should react. He then laughed a bit as he got up, rolling his eyes as he made his way to the door, "Whatever, space-boy."

Once he was outside and down the street a bit, he got a text.

          14:43 Sat-Pickle Boi: Don't take too long, Zim has discovered a new show he wants to watch

Dib smiled at his phone as he continued walking.

Chapter Text

          "This,", Zim started as he picked up the small, dark grey cube off the table, "is a simple power core. It's almost like a battery, but it doesn't need to be changed or recharged by an outside source."

"How does it work, then?", Dib asked as he scribbled down what Zim said in his notes.

It'd been a few weeks since the... incident, and neither of them had really brought it up. Instead, they'd shifted how they spent their time together from watching tv to Dib progressing through his irken practice and the lessons Zim had promised a while ago in alien technology.

"It has a self-fueling mechanism. As long as you don't use the attatched device too much in one session, in this case the lazer gun, it will be able to maintain it's charge. Small ones like this aren't worth putting in anything else outside of guns or the off-planet equivalents to smart devices like Zim's tablet.", Zim put a hand to his mouth and thought for a second, "Think of it like the battery in your phone, small but effective."

"Right.", Dib said as he wrote that down.

He doubted he would forget anything, but it didn't hurt to have it written down somewhere.

"Connecting it to a device is as simple as soldering wires to these bits here.", Zim pointed to two little nubs on the top of the core.

"Does it have a positive and a negative or does it not really matter what kind of wire you connect to it?"

"Most things have a junction that deals with that issue where the wires meet up. I'll go over how to determine if a part has this already or if you have to make one, it's not hard."

Zim continued to go over the various parts they'd be using for their project, and Dib continued to take extensive notes on it all. He was impressed with how quickly Dib was taking in the information, his questions proving to the alien that he was retaining what he was being told. Not that he was surprised by how easy this was for Dib, since the human had already learned a pretty substantial bit of irken in the span of mere months.

Dib had only started learning it at the beginning of july, and even though Zim liked to give him flak over how sloppy it looked when he wrote in it, Dib had a fairly good grasp on the basics of irken lettering and syllables. Enough so that he could read simple words and phrases without the need of a translator.

Zim had decided that the gun would be a good first project for Dib, since it was one of the first things a smeet was taught to assemble. After a while, he moved on from explaining how the parts worked and began showing Dib how they were put together.

          A few hours of them working on this later, Dib yawned and stretched a bit. This prompted Zim to look up at him. He looked pretty tired, and even though he was still definately paying attention, Zim decided that it was probably better for them to wrap it up for the night.

Zim set the piece they'd been working on down and looked Dib in the eye, "I think we should stop for now, you need sleep."

"Dude, what? I'm fine, it's not even that late."

Zim checked the time on his phone and glared at him, "It's eleven p.m. on a Sunday. Better to get sleep now than pass out in skool tomorrow."

Dib crossed his arms and scoffed, "Eleven isn't late, and I'm not that tired."

Zim ignored him, though, and just started walking toward the elevator.

"You barely sleep enough as is, if I say we are done then we are done.", he stopped and looked back at him, "Better hurry up Dib-stink, before Zim turns the lights off."

Dib sighed before he got up to follow, knowing that at this point Zim had made up his mind.

"Are you sleeping here tonight or back at your own house?", Zim asked him once they were in the livingroom, already knowing the answer.

"Probably better for me to go back home, Gaz might come beat us up if I don't. She wasn't happy that I didn't go home friday before coming over."

Zim sat down on the couch and turned the tv on, trying his best to not look dissapointed, "Then get out and go get some rest. Zim will see you in skool tomorrow."

Dib stared at him for a second before grabbing his bag and making his way to the door, "G'night, I guess."

Dib left, and Zim tried to focus on the tv for a few more moments before bringing a hand to his face and sighing. He was hoping that Dib would sleep there again. Even if he understood the human's reasons for going home, it still ended up annoying him that Dib left. He'd been emotionally struggling with how to act around Dib since the sickness incident, and even if he was hiding it well, he disliked when Dib had to leave his side.

On one hand, he was still extremely embarassed by how openly affectionate he'd appearantly been towards Dib; how vulnerable he'd been without remembering it. But on the other hand, the fact that Dib had admitted that he'd only turned Zim down because he was sick... he was actually pretty happy to know that.

The question he had now was what he should do next.

Chapter Text

          The next Saturday, Dib had come over to Zim's house in the morning so they could watch something on Hulu. The alien had told him he found a new show he wanted to watch, and because of that they were taking a break on the project for the weekend.

Usually when they watched something, they sat on opposite ends of the couch and stayed there for the duration of the binge session.

This time, however, once Dib sat down and the show had started, Zim proceeded to sit down right next to him. Dib jumped a bit in surprise, but otherwise didn't say anything about it as they slid into their usual routine for starting a new show; making predictions for what characters might die, bullying the ones they didn't like, guessing what kind of plot twists might come (not that they were ever right, but it was still fun).

About halfway through episode three, Zim adjusted so he was laying on his stomach with his head and arms resting on Dib's lap. Dib tensed, confused by the fact that Zim was now even closer to him.

Zim just acted like this was normal, though, and continued to jokingly mock the show. Dib relaxed again after the surprise wore off, and even rested his arm across Zim's shoulders. They watched a few more episodes sitting like this, conversation carrying on like it usually did between them.

After a while, Dib moved his hand up and subconciously began scartching Zim between his antennae. This caused Zim to start purring, and that made them both realize what was currently happening. Dib froze, and that made Zim stop purring as his antennae lowered slightly. Dib blushed and went to move his hand away, but Zim started purring again in the hopes that Dib would take the hint and keep going.

Dib looked down at him for a minute, confused about if this was actually happening or not. He started scratching again, and Zim responded by purring louder and snuggling closer as they continued watching tv.

          They ended up finishing the show in one sitting, the final episode being a two-parter that didn't have the best build up but overal ended decently. They didn't regret watching it, but they probably wouldn't go back to it if they felt like re-watching something later. The next show on the list started playing, and Zim used one of his pak legs to carefully grab the remote and turn on something they'd already watched.

They sat there for a bit, not quite sure what to do next. Eventually, Zim sat up and stretched before scooting over and sitting in Dib's lap. He curled up a bit and grabbed Dib's hand, placing it on his head as he started purring again. Dib started scratching, a minorly concearned look on his face.

"Are you sick again or something?", he asked as he awkwardly chuckled.

Zim butted his head against Dib's hand, "Be quiet and continue to scratch Zim's head."

After a bit, Dib decided to see what would happen if he scratched Zim under the chin and around his neck. The result was Zim leaning all of his weight into him and purring even louder.

The whole situation felt weird, but not in a bad way. Unlike the last time this happened, both of them were comfortable with it and mentally stable enough for it to not be questionable in the consent department.

Dib looked at the alien currently curled up in his lap and smiled. Zim had his eyes closed and a large grin on his face as he enjoyed the touch Dib was providing.

Dib leaned in without thinking, and placed a gentle kiss on Zim's lips. Zim's eyes openned very suddenly as he stopped purring in surprise. They looked eachother in the eye for a moment, a nervous feeling growing in the pit of Dib's stomach.

Ok, maybe I shouldn't have-

Dib's thoughts were interupted by Zim leaning foreward and giving him a more forceful, needy kiss, grabbing his arm to support himself as he did it. They looked eachother in the eyes, the only sounds in the room being the tv and Zim's purring.

Zim reached his arms up around Dib's neck and they kissed again.

This one was intense, and after a minute or two Dib pulled back as they both caught their breath.

"So-", Dib started, but was interupted by Zim gently flicking him in the nose.

"Shut up, don't ruin the moment."

Zim leaned in and kissed him again, biting his lip this time as they made out again. After a while, they both settled down and adjusted so they were laying. Dib was just petting Zim for a while before eventually falling asleep.

Chapter Text

          13:43 Wed-Pickle Boi: Zim has done something

          13:45 Wed-Dib: Feel like elaborating?

          13:50 Wed-Pickle Boi: Nope

          Zim had texted Dib at the beginning of his last class for the day, and Dib was convinced that the alien's sole purpose in life was to cause him stress.

Zim's only reply to his message was an emoji stucking it's tounge out, doing nothing to relieve that stress.

He sighed at his phone as he hid it under his desk. It was bad enough he didn't get any sleep the night before, he didn't need to have the looming concearn for whatever Zim was doing making him worry for the rest of the skool day.

His relationship with Zim had been... weird for the last few days.

They'd had their make-out session (that he still couldn't believe happened) on Saturday, and the rest of the weekend consisted of them just cuddling on the couch and watching tv.

Then on Monday, Zim had decided it'd be funny to randomly kiss his cheek or hold his hand when no one was looking durring skool. He'd calmed down a bit with it on Tuesday, but decided to break into Dib's house after skool to hang out for a bit. When the alien went to leave, he gave Dib a surprise goodbye kiss before quickly retreating out of the window.

Now, on Wednesday, Zim hadn't actually come to skool, but they'd been texting the whole day. 

          13:50 Wed-Stoopid Pig Boy: You better no have lit anything on fire

          13:52 Wed-Zim: Zim can add that to the surprise

          13:52 Wed-Stoopid Pig Boy: Do not

Zim snickered down at his phone. Dib was extremely easy to mess with and he found it adorable. He was eagerly waiting in his livingroom for the human to get done with skool for the day, ready to see his reaction to what he'd done.

He knew for a fact it wasn't something Dib would expect, but it was more a question of if he would like it or not.

          Dib openned the door, expecting to see the couch on fire or something. Instead, Zim was standing in the middle of the room using his pak legs to hold up a blanket in front of him, covering everything but his head.

Dib tilted his head in confusion as he came inside and closed the door, "... What are you doing???"

"Hiding the surprise, obviously.", Zim said as he rolled his eyes.

Dib kept a bit of distance, "Should I be worried?"

"Aren't you always?"

"Yes, but I don't need more reasons to be stressed if I can avoid it."

Zim dropped the blanket, standing there with a kind of 'ta-da' stance.

The alien's usual invader uniform had been replaced with an entirely new outfit. He had on a dark-pink turtleneck sweater that was tucked into some red shorts. His large rubber gloves had been replaced with some wrist legnth brown ones, the sleeves of the sweater going inside of them. He had some heeled brown boots on that went above his knees, leaving a small bit of his skin exposed on his thighs.

"Zim decided it was time to change his outfit, since I am no longer required to wear something so stupid."

Thanks to the heels, Zim was now a nice five foot eight, and he could easily look Dib in the eyes without having to crane his neck as much.

He put his hands on his hips as he continued talking, "Another benefit to this change is that I'll only have to cover my head and pak next time we leave the planet to go somewhere, since these clothes cannot be linked to the armada."

Dib hadn't said anything yet, and Zim was starting to worry he didn't like it. Dib got closer before suddenly grabbing him under his arms, lifting him into the air and twirling him around in a circle.

"Aw, you're so cute! It's like a soft-boy outfit!", Dib said as he spun him around.

"Release me! Zim does not know of these boys of the soft!", Zim screamed while he squirmed and kicked at Dib.

Dib just laughed as he avoided the attacks Zim was throwing his way. As soon as Zim was back on the ground, he quickly scuttered away with a heavy blush on his cheeks. 

          Dib continued to laugh as Zim eyed him with betrayal.

"It looks good, though. I like it.", Dib said, finally calming down from his laughing fit.

Zim beamed when he heard Dib compliment his style choices. He'd been meaning to change his outfit for a while, and this was a spur of the moment decision spawned from Gir forcing him to go to the mall with him again. He'd also decided to get some other clothes as well, and the fact that Dib liked this set gave him a sense of pride.

Dib looked at him again, "Is there anything else you wanted you wanted to show me?"

"Just one more thing."

Zim walked back over, grabbed Dib's hand, and pulled him down, kissing him on the nose.

Dib squeaked in surprise, his cheeks darkening a bit.

Zim laughed as he plopped down on the couch in victory, "Well, since you're here, let's watch something."

Dib rolled his eyes and grabbed his backpack, "Not anything new, I gotta do homework."

Zim groaned a bit. "Can't you wait until you go home to do it?"

"Considering I'm probably gonna be here til the sun goes down, it's better that I get it done now so I can actually get some sleep tonight.", Dib said as he sat down.

"You could just spend the night here."

"No, since it's a skool night. I'm pretty sure Gaz is already mad I didn't walk home with her, she'd rip my teeth out through my ass if I spent the night."

"Then Zim would just make you new teeth."

Dib laughed as Zim positioned himself against him and turned the tv on.

"You know that if she comes after me, you're next."

"As if Gaz-sister could do harm to a superior being such as myself!", Zim raised his voice much louder than necesarry when he said that.

Dib laughed again, and Zim crossed his arms.

"You doubt me?", Zim asked with fake offense in his tone.

"No, but Gaz is terrifying enough that I'm pretty sure she could follow you into space without a suit if she really wanted to beat you."

Zim was about to respond, but Dib shut him up by placing a hand between his antennae. Dib continued to scratch Zim's head as he did his homework, and they just watched tv once he was done.

Chapter Text

          Dib rolled onto his back and loudly groaned. It was currently three a.m. on Saturday, and he was looking up at his ceiling just wishing he could get some sleep. His insomnia had started acting up again on Tuesday, not that he could figure out why, and only getting maybe one or two hours of sleep a night was really starting to wear him down.

He was supposed to go over to Zim's house later so they could start working on... something he was way too tired to remember at that moment, and if the alien caught on that Dib hadn't been sleeping he'd be on him like a hawk.

Zim went off about his bad habits on a regular basis anyways, the last thing Dib needed was for Zim to not understand what insomnia was and try to lecture him about it or something.

He was thankful that it was just the insomnia acting up at the moment, though. Dib was pretty sure he'd have a breakdown of some kind if his nightmares decided they wanted to pay a visit and torment him as well. He brought his hands to his face and sighed, wishing he could flip a switch and turn his brain off.

He hated this, he hated how it made him waste so much time, how unproductive he felt. And while he could say nevermind to trying to sleep and work on something instead of laying there, he was too tired to actually focus on anything at this point anyways. That issue persisted durring the time he wasn't meant to be sleeping as well, and it made him feel even more useless than he usually did.

Dib yawned as he sat up, hoping that a change in position might make his brain release the melatonin he so desperately craved as his mind wandered to a different topic.

He though about Zim's new clothes and chuckled a bit, a light blush settling on his cheeks. Zim had been wearing a new outfit every day since Wednesday, and Dib loved every single one. He hadn't even really thought about the fact that what Zim had worn for years was a uniform. It made sense though, any other irken he'd seen over the years had basically the same thing on (Tallest excluded).

The only one that had something even kinda unique on was Tak, and even then it was basically the same thing just purple with some emo kid boots.

That was another thing Zim seemed to like: boots.

Or at least just heels, which made sense given how important height is to irkens. Every pair of shoes Zim had gotten had heels that were at least four inches tall, some of them were even bigger. Dib seriously wondered how Zim could keep his balance in them, let alone walk.

Or run.

Dib had learned fairly soon that Zim could still run at terrifying speeds while wearing heels.

          Dib's rambling, sleep deprived thoughts were interupted by a knock on his window. He jumped a bit, startled by the sudden noise to his right. He looked over to see Zim balancing on windowsil using his pak legs.

Dib put his glasses on before hesitantly openning the window. "Hey-"

"Do not 'hey' at me. Why are you awake?", Zim interuped him, trying to sound more annoyed than worried.

"Well I was trying to sleep before you-"

"Lies! I watched you sit there staring at nothing for an hour."

"wait it's been an hour?"

"Why are you not sleeping when you clearly need it?"

Dib put a hand on the back of his head, "I'm just having issues falling asleep tonight, don't worry about it."

Zim squinted at him as he climbed inside and sat on the bed, "You've been having these issues alot as of late."

Dib looked to the side, nervously squirming a bit as Zim glared at him, "N-no, it's just been tonight."

Zim flicked him in the nose. "Does Zim look stupid, stupid? I've noticed how tired you've been the last few days."

Dib raised his hands in defeat, "Alright, fine, it's been a while. You caught me. It's not a big deal, though, it just happens sometimes."

"It is a big deal if it's causing you issues, though."

"It's not that bad, I'm used to it at this point."

"How long have you been having these issues?"

Dib though for a second. "Definately since before you came to Earth. It goes away for a bit and then I suffer for a while."

"Is there no way around it?"

"I mean, usually when someone has insomnia they take some like, sleeping pills or something but all that really does is make me feel sick."

Zim's antennae raised a bit. "Insomnia is the sleep problems, right?"

"Yeah, it's when a human can't sleep because their brain is doing too much."

The alien nodded a bit. "Zim has studied this before as a possible means to take over the planet in the past. I gave up when I learned how many humans already deal with it without much issue.", he paused for a second, "Though I suppose this does explain behavioural patterns I've notices from you over the years; certain periods of time where you were more irritable than usual, or where you were considerably more playful or rude."

Dib laughed a bit, "Yeah, sorry, I'm a bit of an asshole when I'm exhausted. Honestly, I'm surprised you even noticed. No offense but you don't really seem like you pay much attention to stuff around you, especially when you were still trying to destroy the Earth."

Zim flicked him in the nose again, causing him to giggle even more. "Idiot, of course Zim pays attention to things outside of himself. You especially. As soon as I realized you were a threat to my... mission,", Zim did air quotes when he said the word 'mission', "I made sure to pay close attention to you. Even as we both got older and calmed down slightly, it became habit at that point."

Dib put a hand on the back of his head, "I'd say I was probably the same when it came to you, but alot of what I had to work with was just theories. Most of which have been proven wrong since we started hanging out."

"Like what?"

Dib spent the next couple hours telling Zim about all of the theories he'd come up with that he'd considered the least embarassing.

          By the time Dib was done talking, the sun was starting to come up. Zim looked out the window at the light on the horizon and back at Dib.

The human had very dark circles under his eyes, and looked extremely exhausted. Zim brought a hand to his chin and thought for a second before grabbing Dib and forcing him to lay down.

"Hey! If you wanted me to lay down you could have just said something!", Dib protested as Zim moved him.

"Quiet, it's time to attempt the sleep again."

Zim closed the blinds on the window, making the room a bit darker than before as it blocked out the light coming in from outside.

Dib groaned a bit, "I was already trying that, can't we just talk longer?"

Zim curled up against Dib's side and started purring, "We can talk after you sleep, or at least try again for a while."

"You don't have to waste your time staying here with me, y'know.", Dib said, sounding a bit guilty, "I'll probably go to sleep eventually, and you probably have more important things you could be d-"

"It is not a waste of Zim's time to be here, and nothing is more important at the moment than making sure you get some form of rest. Now get some sleep so we can attempt to actually get something done this weekend."

Dib rolled onto his side and put his arm over Zim, "I'll try, but no promises."

Zim started purring louder. "That's all I ask."

Dib managed to get a few sparse bits of sleep over the next few hours, but otherwise his issues persisted. What little sleep he did manage to get made him feel more rested than any he'd gotten all week, though. Not enough for Zim to let him do anything in the lab, but he considered it a win.

Chapter Text

          Zim was pacing around in his lab, trying to think. Dib's birthday was in a week, and he felt like he had to do something for it.

Aside from the fact that humans made a deal out of birthdays in general, Zim also had alot to make up for. Dib's every birthday since the year he turned thirteen had been spent keeping Zim from commiting some sort of war crime.

Once Zim had figured out birthdays were supposed to be special, he made sure that October 15th was the absolute worst day of the year.

Zim cringed as he thought about it, how bad it had always been. Even after they'd calmed down with the violence, Dib's birthday was pretty much the only time Zim could actually be considered a threat. Year two had been the worst of it, it was directly after the 'time traveller' thing (something he still didn't understand) and to say he'd still been pissed about it would be putting it mildly.

Dib had turned fourteen that year, and Zim decided that instead of doing something to put the planet in danger he'd hit Dib directly where it hurt.

He gave him a card that looked like it was from Professor Membrane that just called him a loser and watched the reaction. Even after Zim had revealed he was the one who sent it, it still took Dib months to get back to his usual self.

At the time, he'd found it hilarious. But now, it left Zim feeling absolutely disgusted with himself. Dib was turning eighteen this year, and Zim was resolute to make sure it was perfect.

But the main problem he'd been facing was how.

Sure, he could just get him a present, but he could do that any other day of the year as well. A trip somewhere, maybe?

Dib still really enjoyed space, even if they did stuff out there on a regular basis at this point. They went to the market for parts fairly often, and Dib was still stunned by it every time.

Zim couldn't just take Dib to the market for his birthday, even if he knew the human would enjoy it, that wouldn't be special enough. The main issue he was faced with when planning to go to other places was the current power of the Voot.

It already took two hours just to get to the market, and that was relatively close compared to literally anything else.

Zim stopped pacing and his antennae raised, an idea forming.

There's probably enough parts already in the lab to enhance the ship, and still enough time to do so.

He made his way to the storage area, pulling up the schematics for the ship on his tablet as he walked.

          While Zim still hadn't formed a complete plan yet, messing with the Voot again was definately a good start. He asked the Computer to bring the ship down to the lab as he dug around in the storage room.

Just as he thought, he had everything he'd need to give the ship a boost. Zim made his way back to the main lab with the parts and set up his work area.

Just as he'd started working on making the adjustments to the blueprints, his phone went off and startled him slightly. He checked the time and frowned before reading the message.

          1:43 Tue- Stoopid Pig Boy: Hey

          1:44 Tue- Zim: Shouldn't you be sleeping

          1:44 Tue- Stoopid Pig Boy: Been trying

          1:45 Tue- Stoopid Pig Boy: Not really going well

          1:46 Tue- Zim: Do you need Zim to come over?

          1:50 Tue- Stoopid Pig Boy: No, I shuold be fine

          1:50 Tue- Zim: Shuold

Dib sent back a row of angry emojis, making Zim chuckle a bit.

          1:52 Tue- Stoopid Pig Boy: But I just kinda wanted to talk I guess

          1:53 Tue-Zim: Then talk

          1:56 Tue-Stoopid Pig Boy: ...

          1:59 Tue-Stoopid Pig Boy: I don't actually know what to talk about

          2:03 Tue-Zim: Would it be easier for Zim to call you?

          2:05 Tue-Stoopid Pig Boy: Yeah, probably

Zim pressed the call button and set it to speaker phone.

It rang a few times before Dib picked up.

"Hey."

"Is that the only greeting you know?"

Dib laughed when Zim said that, definately sounding like he could use some sleep.

"It's the easiest one. Not too long and it gets the point across."

Zim playfully scoffed at that. "There is nothing wrong with longer greetings."

"No, there's not but," Dib interupted himself with a yawn, "I'm not really awake enough right now for a long one."

Zim rolled his eyes (not that Dib could see it). "The 'hey' shall suffice for now then, tired worm-boy."

"That insult was pretty weak by your standards."

"Quiet, you love Zim's insults."

Dib laughed a bit, "Can't deny that."

Zim had learned two things about how Dib acted when he was tired, recently. Firstly, he was much more playful and touchy, boarderline demanding hugs while acting like an absolute bastard. The second was that it was impossible for Dib to focus on one thing for very long before switching topics.

As they talked, Dib would randomly stop mid-sentence before going off about an entirely different subject. Not that Zim minded, listening to Dib was miles better than the silence he was used to while working.

After an hour or two the conversation slowly began dying out, Dib's responses getting shorter and less coherent until eventually all that could be heard on the other end was Dib's soft breathing.

Zim smiled a bit as he looked down at his phone. "Goodnight, Dib."

He hung up and looked over the progress he'd made on the blueprints, satisfied with his work. If everything went according to plan the Voot's speed would be tripled, greatly explanding the list of destinations he could easily bring Dib to.

Zim set an alarm on his phone for the time he was supposed to leave for skool before getting started. Dib was only going to be getting a few hours of sleep, and he wanted to make sure he was there to keep him from passing out in a bathroom stall or closet again.

Chapter Text

          It was finally Saturday, Zim had made sure Dib slept over after skool the day before (and made sure that Dib actually slept) so that he could wake him up early and force him into the newly improved Voot cruiser.

Dib groaned as he climbed in, still half asleep and mildly annoyed that he was awake before the sun was up on a Saturday, "Why are we going somewhere at five a.m???"

"You can very easily go back to sleep durring the ride."

"Nah, then I wouldn't be able to annoy you."

Dib yawned as he settled into his seat. He really wished that Zim would have just let him sleep until a normal time before they left for... "Where are we going anyways?"

"You'll know later."

"...Can I know before we leave?"

Zim reached over and gently flicked Dib's nose, "No, that's not how surprises work."

Ah, there it is.

Dib laughed a bit, and Zim looked at him in confusion.

"Eh? Why are you laughing?"

"Sorry, it's just... You really like surprises, don't you?"

Zim's face scrunched up, and he was about to rebut before he thought about it a bit more. He did surpise Dib alot, didn't he?

Zim blushed slightly and turned his face to the side, "Oh shut up. Zim's enjoyment of surprises is none of your concearn."

Dib laughed some more at his response.

Zim paused for a moment before taking off, glancing up from the ship display at Dib, "You have your translator, correct?"

Dib pulled the device out of his pocket, "Yup, I just keep it in my coat pocket at this point."

"Good, it would suck to travel for four hours only for you to be an idiot and forget something as simple as that."

Dib sputtered a bit, starting Zim. "Four hours??? Where are we going???"

Zim started the ship's engines, smirking as they left the planet, "As Zim already said, you'll know when we get there."

Dib groaned, quickly sending Gaz a text before they were too far away for it to work. "The suspense is gonna kill me first."

"It better not, or I'll leave your body on Mars for someone to find years from now."

Dib snorted a bit, "Bet Elon Musk would tweet about that, pretty cool way to go out."

"Zim will find and leave him there too."

They fell into their usual pattern of conversation after that; talking about anime, their projects, high skool, some stuff inbetween.

          Four hours later, there was a little bloop from the Voot's navigation system. Zim's antennae raised in excitement and he started wiggling a bit in his seat, "We're almost there, close your eyes."

"... Why?"

"So you don't see what it is before we land, now close your eyes before Zim removes them."

Dib sighed as he covered his eyes with his hands, not really feeling like arguing over it. A few minutes later, he could hear the ship powering down and the windshield openning.

"Can I look now?", He asked, peeking to the side at Zim.

Said alien was putting his cloak on and rolling his eyes. "Yes, remove your hands from your oversized cranium."

"Careful, or I'll use my 'oversized cranium' to knock you out of the ship.", Dib said as he lowered his hands. He put his translator on as he looked around, "So are you finally going to tell me where we are?"

"If you would just be patient, you'd know in a few minutes." Zim hopped out and waited a second for Dib to follow.

They left the parking area, and Zim stopped walking as Dib took in their surroundings.

They were on some kind of alien amusement park planet, and Dib's face was lighting up as he looked around at everything.

Zim crossed his arms, trying his best to look smug to hide the happiness he felt seeing Dib that happy, "Even though most of the rides are probably too dangerous for your fragile, squishy body, there's still plenty of things your should be able to partake in."

Dib turned and wrapped Zim in a tight hug, and the alien retuned the gesture before grabbing his hand and leading the way as they got started with their trip. Zim had made sure to research what would be safe for Dib to interact with beforehand, mostly games and attractions but there were a few rides as well; things comparable to Earth rides like bumpercars or a swinging ship ride, simple things like that.

The majority of their time was spent playing games, things like contained shooting ranges or chemical mixing challenges. Dib's favorite thing was a tie between laser tag with actual lasers (and protective suits), and a zero-gravity race across a room.

          Things had been going extremey well until Zim accidentally bumped into a large alien, causing it to spill the drink it was holding onto itself.

It roughtly grabbed Zim by the arm, yanking him to the side and yelling into his face, "Hey! You don't just bump into someone like that!"

He jerked back out of it's grip, visably annoyed, "You also do not just grab someone and shout in their face. Sorry I bumped into you. Happy now?"

The other alien only seemed to be more pissed off by his response, going to grab Zim again. He backed up, easily evading the attempt.

"Zim is in no mood for a fight over something as mundane as a spilled beverage."

The blue alien exhaled out of it's... nose? It exhaled out of a set of holes on it's face, very clearly upset, "Yeah, well you got one now!"

Zim dodged as the alien threw a clumsy punch, now also starting to get angry. A crowd had started to form at this point to watch the fight, and Dib stood to the side trying to decide if he should do something or just wait for Zim to beat the other alien so they could continue with their day. The larger alien just continued throwing poorly coordinated punches, and Zim just continued dodging and slipping away with ease.

Things continued like this for a bit, until eventually it shifted tactics from punching to grabbing and began lunging at him. After a little while longer, Zim's patience was really starting to wear thin and he decided it would be easier to just end the fight so he could get back to spending time with Dib.

He tripped the other alien, causing it to come crashing down to the ground with a loud thud.

As it was falling, however, it grabbed onto Zim's hood trying to stablize itself and ripped the article of clothing off of him.

As soon as Zim was exposed, the whole crowd got quiet before erupting into whispers about Zim's size and why there was such a tall irken in a place like this out of uniform.

Dib immediately felt the shift in atmosphere, sucking in a sharp breath as he tried to think of what they should do next.

The blue alien was looking up at Zim from the ground, previous anger replaced with confusion, "What in the-"

          Dib ran forward, stepping on the larger alien's face as he grabbed Zim's arm, "Use your pak legs to get us over the crowd, we need to get out of here now."

This broke Zim out of whatever shock he'd been in, and he looked around at the on-lookers that had gathered around him for a second before nodding. He grabbed Dib by the waist, holding him tight as he used his pak legs to propel them over the other aliens and in the direction of the parking area. As soon as they were on the ground again, they immediately made a break for it.

They ran through the park, Zim holding Dib's hand to make sure they didn't get separated. Once they were back at the ship, Zim basically threw Dib inside before using his pak legs to climb in himself.

"Has anyone followed us?", Zim asked as he started the Voot.

"Looks good, I think we got out of there fast enough."

"Right."

Zim quickly took off, getting away from the planet and heading towards Earth and taking a slightly different way. They sat in tense silence for a while as both of them caught their breath and calmed down.

"Is it really that uncommon to see a tall irken??", Dib asked after a while.

"Given the reactions once Zim was de-clothed, what do you think?"

"Guess that explains why you always wear the cloak when we go somewhere."

Zim glared at him and hissed a bit, "No, I wore it for fun. I greatly enjoy having my antennae covered."

"Geez, sorry."

Zim let out a long sigh before turning to look at him, his antennae low, "Sorry, Zim is- I'm still annoyed at that hulking mass of waste that ruined our trip."

Dib looked at him for a second before softly smiling. "I wouldn't say the trip was ruined, just ended early. It was still a good day."

Zim's antennae raised a bit, and a light blush settled on his cheeks. He looked back out the windshield and quietly cleared his throat a bit, "Then I suppose it's alright, then. We can watch tv or something once we return."

The rest of the trip back was considerably quieter than the first one, there were sparce bits of conversation but otherwise they both just looked out the windshield.

A little under five hours later, they were back on Earth and back in the base. They made their way down to the lab so Zim could analyze some things from the Voot, sitting in silence for a bit before Dib asked the question that'd been on his mind since they'd gotten back, "Is this something we're gonna have to worry about?"

Zim brought a hand to his chin and thought about it for a moment before speaking. "Nah."

"Incoming transmission from the Massive."

Chapter Text

          Zim and Dib looked up in surprise as the Computer's voice rang out from the ceiling.

"Incoming transmission from the Massive."

They froze, neither sure what they should do. The large screen in the lab lit up as the call started on it's own. Zim's antennae were flat against his skull as he shrank away from the screen slightly.

The Tallest were on the screen in full view, Red looked annoyed while Purple had an expression of curiosity.

"Hello again, Zim.", Red started, venom in his voice when he said Zim's name, "I should have figured we'd end up having to deal with you again. Guess how surprised we were when someone sent us pictures of an interestingly tall irken getting into a fight at a theme park somewhere and it was you."

Purple interupted suddenly, pushing Red to the side and getting closer to the screen. "How did you get so tall???"

Red smacked him, shoving him back again as he growled, "Shut up, we agreed I'd be the one talking."

"Ow, what?! You weren't getting to the interesting part fast enough."

"There's gotta be build-up to it!" Red cleared his throat before continuing. "We'd hoped that just leaving you in the middle of nowhere would would be fine, guess that's what optimism gets us, but you've even messed that up somehow. Not that I'm surprised-"

"Ok but why do you care?"

Dib interupted Red, an irritated look on his face. Zim jumped slightly and looked at the human as he continued.

"He's been staying away from you like you told him. He's been completely avoiding your stupid empire for almost a year. You're the ones who disowned him, why do you care about what he does now? He's not your property." 

          Red looked down at him dumbfounded for a second before scowling, "What is that, your pet?"

"Make it shut up, it's loud.", Purple added. Di

b's eyebrow twitched with irritation, "I'm not his 'pet'. You don't get to tell him what to-!"

Dib was stopped suddenly by Zim gently grabbing him and placing a hand over his mouth. "Please, be quiet for now."

Zim had a pleading look in his eyes, and a frown on his face.

Red looked extremely pleased when Zim did what he was told, smirking as he started talking again, "Now that you've dealt with that, we can get to the main reason we called you. It's obvious now that we can't just leave you alone, you'll keep causing us problems. And since you've somehow found a way to get... taller, we definately can't just ignore you. At this point, we're giving you two options; you can come to the Massive yourself so we can deal with you, or you can stay there and wait for the armada to get to Urth and destroy it."

Dib removed Zim's hand from his mouth, anger in his voice as he interupted again, "Why do you care so much about this?! You didn't give a shit before so why-!"

Zim put his hand back over Dib's mouth, this time there was actual force behind the action.

"Dib, shut up." There was an underlying threat in Zim's tone when he spoke, his teeth bared and his antennae low.

Zim looked back up at the screen, a sneer on his face. He had alot he wanted to say to them, but he knew better than to actually voice any of it at the moment. He bowed his head slightly as he made eye contact with Red, doing his best to hide his contempt, "Zim will come to you, leave this planet alone."

Red smirked, a childish look on his face, "Figured you'd say that, given your obvious attatchment to that rock. The Massive's location has been forwarded to your computer, I expect you to leave immediately."

Zim glared up at red with malice, "Fine, I will be there shortly."

"Bring some snacks!", Purple added, earning him another smack to the back of his head from Red as the transmission cut. 

          After a minute or two, Zim finally let go of Dib. The alien was shaking with anger as he glared at him, his fists balled, "Were you trying to get yourself killed?!"

Dib flinched a bit at Zim's outburst, "I wasn't just gonna let them talk to you like that! And they brought the Earth into it, when have I ever backed-?!"

"Did it not occur to you that they are dictators that have taken over and destroyed more galaxies than you could even count?!"

Dib rolled his eyes. "Well it's not like they're here, are they? They can't do anyhthing to me. You don't have to listen to them-"

Zim smacked Dib across the mouth, silencing him. "If they hadn't been so focussed on Zim, they could have activated the Computer's defense systems remotely and vaporized you. If not that then they might come to the planet solely to capture and torture you. You're so unbelieivably stupid!"

Dib raised a hand to his already swelling cheek, a shocked expression on his face. Zim flinched slightly as he watched him do this, immediately regretting his actions.

Maybe hitting Dib had been a step too far, but he was terrified. The Tallest calling had raised his stress to near unmanagable levels, and he wasn't sure how to deal with it. Zim stepped forward and gently grabbed Dib's hand, causing the human to tense.

"Zim is... sorry, for hitting you. You did not deserve that. I'm just...", he paused and looked up at Dib's face, "Unsure of how to deal with this."

Dib looked into Zim's eyes, seeing the same defeated and lost look that had been there months ago on the hill.

Zim looked down at the floor, his grip on Dib's hand tightening, "However my point remains the same. Provoking the Tallest will not end well for you."

He released Dibs hand and started walking towards the elevator.

Dib's eyes widened as he watched him walk away, "Wait, you're not actually going to do what they want, are you?!"

Zim stopped walking, not looking back as he answered. "What other choice does Zim have? Have them come to Earth and destroy it? I refuse to let that happen."

Dib looked around for a second, snagging his laptop and the gun they'd built off of the table next to him. He shoved the weapon in his coat pocked and tucked the laptop under his arm before running up to Zim and placing his hand on the alien's shoulder. "And I refuse to let you go alone and just get killed. I'm coming too."

Zim whipped around, yelling at him again, "Absolutely not! Zim will not allow you and your stupid large head anywhere near the stupid irken armada!"

Dib put his hand on the side of Zim's cheek, gently forcing him to look him in the eye, "If we both go, there's a better chance that you survive."

"It also greatly increases the chances that you do not."

Zim tried to pull away but Dib held him in place, a stubborn look in his eyes.

"Zim, at this point, if you're not here then I don't want to be either."

Zim looked to the side before returning his gaze back to Dib's face, knowing that the human was serious. He placed his hands on Dib's chest. "Are you absolutely certain you wish to come to the Massive with me?"

Dib nodded, a confident smile on his face, "We're in this together, I'm not letting you deal with it alone."

Zim leaned forward and gently kissed Dib on the lips. "Then we need to leave, the sooner we get there the better."

Chapter Text

          It only took two hours for them to get to the coordinates given by the Tallest. There sat the Massive, as well as a small chunk of the irken armada, waiting for Zim to arrive.

Dib hid in a storage compartment behind the seats as they approached, and Zim landed the Voot inside the Massive's docking bay. Despite being such an advaced species of conquerers and murderers, no one bothered to check Zim's ship after he'd landed. No one even stood around to guard it after Zim had gotten out, every irken in the area was too facinated by his newfound height.

Dib watched from his hiding space as two mildly armed guards led Zim away and out of the room, leaving him alone as he climbed out and tried to figure out a solid plan.

Meanwhile, Zim entered the main control room of the ship, right where the Tallest were.

"It amazes me how low security is on this ship.", Zim said as he entered, scoffing, "Even Zim's poorly constructed base is better off."

The Tallest turned around, suprised. Red narrowed his eyes at Zim, both confused and annoyed, "How did you get here so fast in just a cruiser? Isn't Urth like a shmillion lightyears away or something?"

Zim rolled his eyes, "Do you honestly expect that Zim wouldn't have made any adjustments to such a terrible ship in all this time?"

He didn't actually get an answer to that statement, as the Tallest were far too interested in checking out his body.

"So you really did grow, what kind of war crimes did you commit to manage that?", Red said as he continued looking him over.

Zim still wasn't as tall as them, they were six-foot something, but his height gain was nothing to scoff at.

Zim took a step closer, crossing his arms and trying to appear smug, "Oh, I can assure you no crimes have been enacted to achieve this, maybe Zim's genetics are just far more superior than most of the other smeets around here."

Red glared at him, finally starting to catch on that Zim wasn't going to just grovel and listen like he used to, "Zim, we told you to come here so you could tell us how you did it, not to listen to you be you."

"Really? Because I assumed it was to execute me before I somehow manage to get even taller than you.", Zim said, glaring right back.

"That too but- ow hey!", Purple had started speaking, only for Red to smack him.

"You can't just say that's what we were going to to!", Red hissed at Purple.

"Well he already knew!"

Red stuck his hand on his face and sighed.

          Dib used the Voot's control panel to look at a layout of the Massive, something he was pretty sure Zim shouldn't have the blueprints for but also something he was not at all suprised was there.

He located the ship's server room and uploaded the route on the map to his phone before grabbing his laptop and starting in that direction. There were guards spread throughout the ship, but thanks to all the years spent breaking into and sneaking around Zim's base, it was fairly easy to get past them without being detected.

The server room only had three irkens in it, making it extremely simple for Dib to just shoot them and get to the main console. He openned his laptop, plugging it in and gaining access to the ship's main computer system. It pulled up a command prompt similar to the one on Zim's computer in the base, and Dib was extremely thankful he'd been learning irken for the better part of the last few months.

He now had access to the entire database of the Massive; all the current locations and pak statuses of every invader, the location of every planet in their system (Earth included), and files on every known species the armada had come across up to that point.

Dib made some copies of stuff he wanted to look thorugh later before loading a program of his own making into the ship's console.

He looked up at the larger screen on the wall and laughed in victory as it flashed red before turning off, something in another part of the room fizzing and exploding as it happened.

He quickly unplugged his laptop, tucking it under his arm before running out of the room.

One problem dealt with, now to find Zim.

By this point, there were already guards coming, so Dib didn't bother hiding as he ran back towards the direction he'd seen Zim go earlier, just shooting any guards that got too close and evading the others.

          Red lowered his hand and glared directly at Zim, "Look, either you tell us what you did toget taller or we're going to torture you and make you watch as we destroy that stupid ball of dirt."

"And if Zim does tell you?", Zim was still trying his best to seem like he had some kind of footing in this interaction.

"Then we'll just torture you.", Purple said, earning him another smack.

"We'll also leave that stupid planet alone if you tell us."

Zim brought a hand to his chin, making a show of it as he thought just to get on their nerves.

He honestly had no idea what he should do in this situation. He couldn't just tell them what they wanted to know, it had been Earth's gravity that did it so there was no way they'd just leave it be knowing that. He also couldn't just say nothing, he could already tell that Red's patience was wearing thin and the longer he took the worse it was going to get.

Dib had made mention of having some kind of plan, but he hadn't elaborated at all and Zim wasn't sure there was much that Dib could even do in this situation.

So instead, being how he is, Zim decided that his best option in this situation was to just keep antagonizing them and hope the universe sorted it out. He blew a rasperry in their direction, crossed his arms, and turned his head to the side.

"Hah! As if Zim would tell you his secrets!", he looked back at them, a sly smile on his face, "It's not like I have to answer to you anymore. If Zim recalls, you are no longer his Tallest, as per your own words."

He said that last part with a bow, doing his best to have fun with the fact that he was likely about to be blown up right there.

It took a moment for Red to process what had just come out of Zim's mouth, his confused shock very quickly turning into anger. "Zim.", Red growled at him, "This is your last chance. Cause I'm this close to just killing you myself right now."

          At that moment, the door to the room openned and they all turned to see Dib with the lazer gun raised. Zim moved to the side as Dib shot, hitting Red before he even had a chance to react and knocking him back. Purple was about to do something before Dib shot him as well.

The human ran in and grabbed Zim by the wrist, "Ok, time for us to go!"

Zim looked back at the Tallest before looking Dib in the eyes, "How stupid are you?! Do you even-?!"

Dib cut him off as he started pulling him back towards the door, "Look, we really don't have time to stand here and argue about this! We really need to leave, like, now."

Zim was about to continue yelling at Dib about how completely stupid he was before he heard the Tallest beginning to move around again.

He pulled his wrist free and grabbed Dib's hand, quickly taking the lead, "I'm not done yelling at you, but you need to be alive in order for me to continue."

The hallway outside the main room was littered with irkens, all of them either dead or knocked out. Zim didn't really pay them much mind as he continued running towards the Voot. He threw Dib inside his ship for the second time in the last twenty-four hours before climbing in himself and taking off, going full speed the complete opposite direction of Earth.

Zim was shaking with anger as they made distance, not even looking in Dib's direction. After they'd been flying for a while, Zim finally switched on the ship's autopilot and turned his chair so he was fully facing Dib.

"It's things like this that genuinely make me wonder if there's even a brain inside of that stupid, oversized head of yours.", Zim started, basically hissing as he spoke, trying to refrain from yelling just yet, "They're almost certainly going to come to Earth in search of us now, is that something you even thought about? While Zim is fully capable of admitting he had no plan, running in and shooting the Tallest with the equivalent of a bb-gun most certainly was not part of any even partially conceived idea!"

Dib chuckled nervously, definately not doing anything to calm Zim down.

"Oh, you find this funny?! You find this entire situation funny enough to laugh?!", the irken was screaming now, causing Dib to flinch slightly.

"I did actually have a plan, and from what I can tell it worked.", Dib said as he pulled his laptop out, "I used a malware program that I made a few years ago to mess with you and scrambled their system up."

Zim openned his mouth, ready to say something before Dib continued and interupted. "And yes, I know it works. I used it on the Voot like two years ago and I've made improvements to it since then." 

          Zim looked at him for a second, processing what the human had just said as he searched his memory banks for a time where the Voot had been messed with like that in that time period.

His eyes went wide as he struck what he was looking for, "That was because of you?! I thought Gir messed something up!"

Dib laughed at Zim's reaction, watching as the alien's previous rage was replaced with general annoyance and outrage.

"We should be in the clear, though, as long as we take a long way back without them seeing us we'll be fine.", Dib gave Zim a thumbs up, "They also shouldn't be able to call anymore since I ruined that stuff too."

Zim silently looked at the floor for a moment, taking in what he'd just been told. After a few minutes, he quietly spoke. "And you're sure this actually worked?"

"One hundred percent, we don't need to worry about them anymore."

Out of all the possible reactions Zim could have had to this information, the last one Dib expected at that moment was for Zim to suddenly break down crying. The stress from this whole situation had been slowly building up, and the reveal that he would no longer have to worry about the Tallest looming over him was enough to make him finally let it out.

Dib silently panicked for a moment before pulling Zim onto his lap and doing his best to comfort him. The alien burried his face in Dib's shirt, silently sobbing as they sat there like that for a while.

Eventually, Zim had calmed down enough that he felt ok crawling back to his own chair, messing with the ship's controls even though autopilot was still on.

Checking the navagation screen, they'd finally made it out of irken ruled space and were a safe enough distance away that he could start the long loop he had planned to get back to Earth.

Dib had started talking about the show they'd began watching on Friday to try and lift Zim's mood, making sure to get some stuff wrong so the alien would try to correct him. This plan worked, and they spent the rest of the ride back talking about their usual topics.

Chapter Text

          It was 3:24 in the morning by the time they got back to Earth, and both of them were exhausted. Dib barely waited for the ship's windshield to open before suddenly scooping Zim up out of his chair and climbing out.

Zim protested as this happened, squirming around in his arms, "Release me!"

Dib just laughed and shook his head, "No way, we're gonna go downstairs watch some tv!"

"Zim is perfectly capable of walking!"

The human laughed and held onto him tighter, knowing that Zim could very easilly get away if he really wanted to. He went down to the livingroom, keeping Zim on top of him as he sat down on the couch. Zim used his pak legs to grab the remote, turning on something random before just dropping it on the floor next to them.

They watched tv for a while, Dib scratching Zim's head while the alien sat there purring. After a bit, Zim adjusted himself so he could properly look Dib in the eyes.

The human stared down at him, "What's up?"

"It has just occured to me that Zim never actually said it durring any of the fun things yesterday, but happy birthday, Dib."

Dib paused when Zim said that, looking to the side for a second before sighing and sitting up more, "I honestly forgot it even was my birthday yesterday."

Zim scoffed, whacking Dib in the face with an antennae, "Did you think that Zim just decided to take you somewhere special for an average Saturday?"

Dib shrugged, visably more tense than before. "I kinda don't really celebrate anymore. Gaz doesn't really seem to care, Dad's always busy, and you..."

He trailed off, not finishing his statement even though they both knew what he was going to say.

Zim adjusted and hugged him around the neck, nestling his face into his shoulder. "I'm sorry, about all of that. Every bad thing, I'm sorry for all of it.", he hugged him tighter, "I wish there was a way for me to make it all up to you."

Dib hugged him back, smiling softly even though Zim couldn't see his face. Most of the tension in his shoulders was gone again, and he tried to think of what to say. "There's a C.S. Lewis quote I think fits this pretty well, 'You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.'" Zim leaned back again and tilted his head upwards so they could kiss. They eventually laid down, and Dib almost immediately fell asleep. 

          Dib woke up around seven in the evening, his phone going off in his pocket.

Oh shit I didn't tell Gaz anything.

He carefully reached underneath Zim (who was still in his rest mode or whatever appearantly) and pulled his phone out, quickly pressing the answer call button and immediately regretting it as he heard how angry his sister was on the other end.

"You better have a good reason for ignoring me for over ten hours."

Dib stuttered for a second, fearing for both his and Zim's safety, "S-sorry! Alot happened and when we got back I just kinda fell asleep-" "'Alot' better be something life threatening or else."

"... I mean technically it was?"

There was a long pause on the other end before Gaz spoke again, "Put the roach on the phone."

Dib looked down at Zim, who still had his eyes closed and hand't really moved much. He nudged the alien with the phone, feeling slightly uneasy, "Hey, Zim, give her an answer before she comes here and kicks my ass."

Zim didn't budge, just continuing to lay there with his eyes closed, his antennae limp and a small puddle of drool around his mouth. Dib started to panic slightly, thinking Zim had died or something.

It took him a few seconds to notice that Zim was still making a quiet purring noise, so that porbably wasn't the case. He nudged the alien a few more times, still getting no response.

He set his phone down on the back of the couch and was now poking Zim with both of his hands, "... What the hell?"

"Are you just going to keep ignoring me? What's going on?", Gaz was still on the phone, annoyed by the lack of an answer.

Dib jumped a bit, entirely forgetting he was still on the phone with her. "Sorry! I'm just... confused... I think he's asleep? At least I'm hoping he is, otherwise he died."

"... Yeah, I'm just going to call back later, I don't need to hear you deal with this."

Before Dib could say anthing in response, there was a beep and the call ended.

          He looked down at Zim again, who still hadn't really moved all that much. Since poking him hadn't really yielded much of a result, Dib decided to switch tactics.

"Hey, um, Computer?", Dib said up toward the ceiling.

There was a moment of silence before he heard an annoyed answer, "What do you want?"

"Is he dead?"

"His pak is still functioning, so probably not."

Dib sighed in relief, "Oh, good."

"I would be more worried about the tail, personally."

"the what"

Dib carefully sat up, now trying his best to not wake Zim up so he could get a good look at what the Computer was talking about.

Zim's shorts had been pulled down slightly, and coming out from the base of his spine there was a thin tail that was currently wrapped around Dib's thigh. The tail itself looked like it was about as long as Zim's leg, the tip of it was a kind of spade shape, and the whole thing looked like it was made out of the same material as his antennae.

Dib tried to lean foreward to touch it, but all of his moving around had finally ended up waking Zim.

The alien's eyes slowly openned, and he blinked a few times as he pushed himself up. He looked confused as he wiped some of the drool from around his mouth.

Dib sat back a bit, watching as Zim stretched. "I didn't know you could actually sleep."

Zim groggilly lifted his antennae, yawning and rubbing his eye, "Neither did Zim."

"Neat, then another fun suprise for the day,", Dib leaned foreward and gently grabbed the tail that had uncoiled itself from around his leg, "This is a thing."

Zim froze when Dib touched the tail, the feeling being entirely foreign. He turned his head back to look at whatever it was Dib had grabbed, seeing the tail and panicking.

He went from laying on his stomach to sitting with his knees tucked against his chest while he stared in horror at the tail waving in front of him. "W-what is that?!!"

Dib laughed, standing up and grabbing it, "I made the joke about it before, but the fact that you actually have a tail is hilarious!"

Zim was blushing now, embarassed as Dib examined the tail. He stood up on the couch, yanking his tail out of Dib's hands and looking at it himself now. "This is an abnormality... I need to do some research on it."

"I think I'm gonna go home while you do that," , Dib said as he stretched, "Gaz is angry enough that I didn't message her, if I get home too late on a Sunday I think she's gonna actually hurt me."

Zim looked out the window, realizing that it was, in fact, already nighttime.

Dib placed a kiss on Zim's head as he grabbed his phone off the couch, "Please don't cut the tail off or something if you can't figure out why it's there."

Zim crossed his arms and turned his head to the side, "Zim makes no promises."

Dib looked at him for a second and sighed before leaving.

Chapter Text

          It was a cold day in November, and Dib was falling asleep in class. At least, he would have been if his brain decided to work right for once.

He'd been awake for the last four days thanks to a combination of insomnia and nightmares. He had a particularly bad nightmare on Monday, and the stress from that combined with his usual anxiety about skool and life in general. This resulted in the sparse bits of sleep he was managing to get being plagued with gruesome images that forced him to wake up and try not to have a breakdown.

This happened sometimes, it hadn't happened in a while but of course life couldn't give him a break, and he just had to power through it.

Once he realized it wasn't going to stop for a while, he'd started avoiding Zim. Not the best choice given how needy the alien tended to be, but Dib also wasn't exactly functioning at full capacity. He reasoned with himself that it was because Zim probably wouldn't get it, and not because of the contents of the nightmares themselves.

He couldn't evade Zim forever, though, and the serious lack of sleep was catching up with him. So when Zim suddenly jumped out of a tree as he was walking home and grabbed him, he wasn't able to do anything as the alien picked him up and carried him back to the base.

Dib was unceramoniously dropped onto Zim's couch, said alien standing in front of him with his arms crossed.

He was glaring and did not look happy, "Is there a reason you've been avoiding Zim?"

Dib yawned and tried his best to glare back, "I'm just tired and want to be alone right now."

"Why are you tired?"

"Because I stayed up working on something last night. I was going home so I could sleep before you decided to kidnap me."

Zim didn't say anything in response to that, instead just continuing to stand there with his arms crossed. 

          Dib decided it would just be easier for him try to leave than argue, but his attempt was almost immediately thwarted by Zim pushing him down again.

"Hey!"

"You obviously haven't been sleeping in your own home,", Zim's glare harshened when it looked like Dib was about to interupt him, "And do not tell Zim that you 'only stayed up last night' again, you're a horrible liar. Since you haven't been sleeping at home, you're going to sleep here."

Dib tensed hearing that, nervously shifting a bit and causing Zim's antennae to raise in confusion at his sudden unease.

"No! Um,", Dib struggled to think of an excuse that would be believable enough for Zim to just let him leave, "It's a Thursday, if I spend the night Gaz is going to-"

"Zim has already asked her if it was ok and she agreed."

Dib stared at him blankfaced for a second, "... Since when do you and Gaz talk to eachother?"

"Since it became blatantly obvious that you aren't able to take care of yourself."

Dib tried to get up again, "Look, I don't need you helicoptering me like I'm a little kid who doesn't know how to take care of himself."

Zim shoved him back down, "Obviously, you do."

"Stop doing that!"

"Stop trying to get up!"

Dib sighed and looked to the side, "Zim, I'd really just rather sleep at my house right now."

"Why?"

Because alot of the nightmares happen here. "Because it's easier for me to sleep in my bed when it's been a few days."

"That hasn't stopped you before."

"Well it's stopping me this time."

He tried to get up for a third time, and yet again Zim shoved him back down. "If you're exhausted enough that you can't even avoid something as simple as a light shove, then there's no way Zim is allowing you to leave until you've slept some."

Dib sat there silently glaring for a moment before sighing and laying down. He was too tired to actually think of any way he could get around Zim right now, so he figured it was probably just easier to lay down for a bit til Zim was satisfied enough with his attempt to let him leave.

"There, happy?"

Zim climbed on top of him and started purring, curling up in a way that was comfortable for both of them, "Zim will not be happy until you've rested."

Dib scratched Zim between the antennae, "Guess you're doomed to be miserable, then."

          Try as he might, Dib could only stay awake for so long with Zim purring on top of him. It only took a few minutes for him to fall asleep, and he managed to get a few hours of considerably normal sleep before things started going wrong.

Zim was shaken out of rest mode by Dib moving around much more than usual. The human tended to stay still while he slept, maybe rolling onto his side at some point but otherwise he stayed in the same position he fell asleep in. His breathing was also becoming increasingly erratic as his face contorted in fear and pain as he continued to sleep.

Zim climbed off of the couch, kneeling next to it and peeking over the edge at Dib like a concearned cat. He had no idea how to handle this situation, but he knew he had to do something when Dib started crying.

"Hey,", Zim started shaking Dib slightly, pushing on his shoulder, "wake up. What's wrong?"

After another few attempts at waking him, Dib's eyes slowly openned. He blinked a few times, and Zim leaned a bit closer, "Why were you crying?"

Dib, not fully awake yet, completely panicked when he heard Zim speak. He shot up and scrambled to the other end of the couch, causing Zim to fall backwards in suprise.

Dib looked around with a terrified expression on his face for a moment as he woke up more, his expression quickly shifting from fear to an entire mix of emotions that Zim couldn't even begin to unpack.

Dib brought his hands to his face and let out a struggled sigh as he sat there shaking for a few minutes, his knees tucked tightly against his chest.

Zim just stayed there silently on the floor and watched him, his antennae flat against his skull as he didn't even bother hiding his worry at this point.

Eventually, Dib raised his head and looked down at Zim with an apologetic smile on his face. He looked even more tired than before he'd fallen asleep. "Sorry, that was probably confusing, huh?"

"Only slightly."

Zim got up off of the floor and sat back down on the couch, making sure to give Dib some space since he basically launched himself away from him mere moments ago. 

          Dib didn't look at Zim when he started talking, instead focussing on a spot on the floor in front of him. "I have... nightmares, when I'm stressed. A nightmare is like-"

"Zim is aware of what a nightmare is. Why are you stressed?"

Dib shrugged still not looking anywhere near the alien. "I was worried about something from skool, and then I had one nightmare, and that made me even more stressed and then I couldn't sleep and then even when I do sleep I'm just having more nightmares so I don't even want to try and-", he stopped to take in a breath, "It just kinda happens sometimes, I dunno. Not as often as the insomnia, but it still happens."

"And you decided to just deal with it alone?"

Dib shrugged again. "It's just easier to hide when it's happening. Nightmares aren't anything new, just gotta ride it out til it stops happening every time I try to sleep."

Zim could tell Dib was leaving something out, either intentionally or because he was too tired to know how to phrase it. He waited a moment before scooting a bit closer to Dib, causing the human to noticably tense. "You don't have to, though."

Dib finally looked at him, making eye contact for only a moment before quickly looking away again, a guilty expression on his face.

When Dib didn't give him an answer, he tried to think of something he could do. "Would it help you to talk ab-"

"No!", Dib jumped a bit, accidentally raising his voice. "I mean, no, sorry,", he put his head down in his arms, "I don't really remember alot of it at this point..."

His posture was very guarded, and he was shaking much more than before. Zim's antennae were flat against his head as he watched his human like this, knowing he was lying about not remembering.

"Zim is sorry about forcing you to sleep like that. Had I known the reason you weren't resting I wouldn't have done that.", he got a bit closer again, "However I don't want you to have to deal with this alone. At the very least we can watch some tv or something so you can distract yourself."

Dib lifted his head again, looking down at Zim. He was still extremely shook from the nightmare, but he was also... relieved? Zim was offering him support without trying to pry too hard for details, a welcome suprise given how nosy the alien was.

It took him a few more moments for his brain to catch up and fully process everything the alien had said, and once it did he smiled and uncurled slightly. "Tv sounds good right now, just don't turn on anything new I won't be able to keep up with it."

Zim's antennae perked up as he watched Dib calm down slightly. He was still extremely worried about whatever had caused Dib to completely shut down like that, but he knew better than to keep asking about it. He turned on one of their background noise shows, and they sat there for a while just watching tv.

Eventually, Zim leaned his head against Dib's arm. The human tensed for a moment, but quickly relaxed again. They shifted so they were both laying down and Dib ended up falling asleep at some point without any other issues.

Chapter Text

          It was a Saturday mid-November, first snow of the season and it was merciless. It'd started as just a flurry the night before, but appearantly it'd develouped into a full-blown storm while he was asleep. He looked out his window and sighed.

He was supposed to go over to Zim's house that day so they could continue with their research into unregistered irken biology (sleep not caused by lack of energy, the tail), but the weather was proving to be harsh obstical in the way of that goal.

          8:15 Sat-Dib: This snow is ridiculous
 

          8:16 Sat-Dib: It was only supposed to be a few inches, there's gotta be 3 feet out there at least
 

          8:18 Sat-Pickle Boi: That's what happens when you rely on human weather predictions
 

          8:20 Sat-Dib: Oh like yours said something else

Zim's reply was a string of angry emojis, causing Dib to laugh.

          8:22 Sat-Dib: Seriously though, I don't think it's letting up any time soon
 

          8:23 Sat-Dib: And I really don't think it's a good idea for me to try walking in this
 

          8:25 Sat-Pickle Boi: It would definately not be safe
 

          8:25 Sat-Pickle Boi: Please don't try

Dib looked out his window again at the blizzard raging outside.

          8:27 Sat-Dib: Don't worry, I'm not going to
 

          8:28 Sat-Dib: I'm just sitting in my room at the moment
 

          8:31 Sat-Dib: Any ideas?
 

          8:33 Sat-Pickle Boi: Maybe if you cry, the weather will take pity on you
 

          8:34 Sat-Dib: :(
 

          8:34 Sat-Dib: :,(
 

          8:36 Sat-Dib: Don't think it worked
 

          8:41 Sat-Pickle Boi: Here's a better idea, then
 

          8:41 Sat-Pickle Boi: Open your window

Dib looked at his phone, confused for a second by Zim's last two texts before he heard a knocking at his window. He very quickly moved across his bed and openned it, letting the alien in and closing the window again before his bed got completely soaked by the snow that was blowing in with him.

Zim grabbed a random blanket off of Dib's bed, using it to wipe off snowflakes before they had a chance to melt on him.

"You could have given me some warning before just showing up at my window, y'know.", he watched Zim dry himself with the blanket and sighed, "I could have gotten you a towel or something. Or let you in throught the door."

"Absurd, why use the door when there's a perfectly good window right here?"

Zim tossed the blanket at Dib's face, laughing as the human made a show of falling backwards on the bed.

"Oh no, you've mortally wounded me, sucks to suck I guess."

"So you finally admit that you suck, then?"

"Have I ever actually denied it?"

"Zim can think of several occasions."

Dib sat back up, throwing the now damp blanket into the corner where it was probably going to stay in a heap until it grew some mildew or something. "Dad isn't here, you can take your stuff off."

Zim already had one of his lenses out as Dib said that, perfectly content with taking the whole ensemble off and cramming it in his pak.

Dib got his laptop out, setting it up as Zim scooted next to him, "Netflix or Hulu?"

          They spent the rest of the day just watching stuff on Dib's laptop, only taking a small break around noon when Zim forced Dib to go eat something. They were sitting on the floor, backs against the bed, shoulders touching, and hands intertwined at around ten or eleven that night.

The storm outside had calmed down, snowflakes battering the house now barely audible as they lazily watched the movie Dib had chosen. Dib looked down at their hands, accidentally voicing something he'd been thinking about alot lately.

"What kind of relationship do we have?"

They both paused after he said that; Dib because he hadn't meant to actually say it, and Zim because of how sudden the question was.

Zim sat there thinking about it for a moment before answering, "... We're friends, obviously."

"But friends don't just... cuddle, constantly. Or make out and kiss sometimes. That more like... like what couples do."

Zim was looking at the laptop, pretending to still be paying attention to what they had been watching. Of course he knew that, but he didn't really expect it to be brought up.

A few more minutes passed before he said anything.

"Zim thinks labeling something like that is stupid.", he paused for a moment before resting his head on Dib's shoulder, "However, if that is a label that you would prefer, I will not complain."

It took Dib a second to properly understand what had just happened. He'd basically accidentally asked Zim if he wanted to be his boyfriend, and Zim said yes. Instead of saying anything else at that point, Dib rested his head on top of Zim's, causing the alien to start purring.

He hadn't meant to ask, but he was more than happy with the result. They both ended up falling asleep sitting there like that, content with how things had ended up.

Chapter Text

          Thanksgiving break had just started, and Dib was going over to Zim's house so they could continue their research. He'd fully admit that they'd been neglecting it since the beginning of the month, more focussed on eachother than the harmless entity that was Zim's tail.

They'd already confirmed pretty early on that Zim falling asleep and the tail weren't anything to worry about, so at this point they were more just trying to figure out the why of it.

When Dib got inside, he knew almost immediately that Zim had a surprise or something for him. He'd been getting better at reading Zim's body language and, judging by the way the alien was already waiting at the door and bouncing excitedly, he was definately wanting to show something off.

"Let me guess,", Dib said as he closed the door behind himself, a smile on his face, "you have a surprise for me."

Zim stopped bouncing, now squinting at him with suspicion, "How did you know? Did Gir say something about it?"

Said robot was currently sitting on the couch with some nachos watching a kid show on the tv.

Dib chuckled a bit, "No, you're obviously excited about something."

Zim crossed his arms and turned his upper body to the side, "Zim could just be happy to see you."

"See, I'd believe that but...", Dib pulled Zim into a hug and booped him between his eyes, "You see me every day, there's no way you'd be that hyper about it."

"That's irreivant."

The alien was pouting now and Dib laughed a bit, feeling a little bad that he said anything about it, "So what do you want to show me?"

Zim pulled away, marching towards the kitchen like a grumpy child, "Guess you'll just have to wait now, since you obviously don't know how to be patient."

"You have no room to lecture anyone about patience, Zim."

The alien spun on his heel, smugly looking back from his spot next to the elevator as the human entered the kitchen. "It appears Zim has plenty of room, since you're so slow."

Dib rolled his eyes. "That's not what I meant and you know it."

"The only thing Zim knows currently is that you're going to have to suffer and wait until we're done in the lab to know what my suprise is."

They were in the elevator now and on their way down. Dib playfully groaned, pretending to be annoyed, "Aww, what if I don't wanna wait?"

"I don't care, maybe just play along next time idiot."

The human set his arm on Zim's shoulder, "Not even a hint?"

"Suffer, Dib-stink."

Dib started laughing, "Oh wow, you haven't used that one in a while. Did I really upset you that much, space-boy?"

Zim shrugged Dib's arm off, fliciking him in the nose as the elevator doors openned.

          Zim exited the elevator as soon as the doors finished openning, leaving Dib standing there as he went over to their currently set up research area.

They'd basically finished with the information about him sleeping already, they just had to write that up and put it into the Computer.

There's two types of 'rest mode' that an irken can go into; basic and recharge. The first one is just the normal rest mode, them basically just sitting with their eyes closed to make time pass a bit quicker, but the second type was closer to actual sleep.

Irkens don't really need to rest thanks to energy their paks provide, but that energy is from food. More specifically sugar, which is used to keep everything in the pak (and by extension the irken) running. But, when there isn't enough sugar available, the pak will force the irken to basically pass out and rest until the energy is replenished naturally.

But a lack of food wasn't why Zim was sleeping, especially since it'd happened two more times since the first incident; Zim had even had some fundip before the third time so that definately wasn't the case.

From what they could tell, it wasn't anything to worry about. Zim didn't have any negative effects leftover from it, and it didn't look like an error in his pak at all. Their current theory about the 'why' of it was that Zim gets comfortable and his pak decides it's safe for him to rest, their evidence for that being the fact that he'd been cuddling with Dib every time it happened.

The next thing on the list of stuff to figure out was the tail, something they'd had a bit less luck with.

There were already resources about how irkens handled rest, but there was little to nothing that they could find about irkens having tails. Zim had managed to find an incomplete file on it in some of the info stolen from the Massive, but all that said was that the only irken the empire had found with one before was labeled defective and gotten rid of.

The tail seemed to display Zim's emotions, similar to his antennae, however much to his dismay it was harder to control.

It also had a habit of orbiting towards Dib, something that the human found absolutely hilarious (and adorable). They didn't know how the tail came out still, but Zim had learned pretty quick after the first time that he could bring it back in pretty easilly.

          Zim sat down on a table he'd set up a cushion on, impatiently waiting for Dib to come over so they could get started.

Their goal for the day was to see if Zim could force the tail out, or at least to see if they could figure out the conditions for it to. Dib plopped down in his chair, spinning it a bit as he pushed over to where Zim was.

The alien crossed his arms as he watched, "Stop messing around, we have stuff to do."

"Me spinning in the chair isn't going to make this take any longer."

To punctuate his point, Dib spun around a few more times. Zim stuck out a leg and stopped the chair, almost making Dib fall out of it.

"It'll take longer if you end up making yourself sick."

"Zim, you literally shoved me in a giant washing machine like three years ago. I'm not about to throw up from spinning in a desk chair."

He did actually stop, though, grabbing a notepad off of a nearby table and putting more effort into focussing on the task at hand. "But fine, since you asked so nicely."

Zim stuck his tounge out and Dib threw a pen at him.

"Ok, first thing.", Dib said as he looked over the list he'd written last time they were down there, "What are you usually doing when the tail comes out?"

"You've been there every time it's happened, idiot, Zim doesn't need to tell you."

"I want to hear it in your words. Y'know, since this is about the thing coming out of your butt."

"Zim has no butt! It comes from my spine!"

Dib rolled his eyes. "It's basically where your ass would be if you had one. Now talk about the tail."

Zim sneered at him, embarassed by the fact that the human was making him describe situations that they were both there for.

"It has happened every time Zim has fallen asleep, and a few times when we were just watching television.", he paused and thought for a moment, "And other activities as we got bored with the television."

Dib giggled at how Zim phrased that last bit, he was reffering to them making out and things like that.

Zim blushed when he heard the human giggle, his cheecks turning a light pink as he threw an empty mug at Dib. "Silence! You're the one who demanded that Zim recap these situations!"

Dib dodged the mug, laughing even more at Zim's flustered reaction.

"Sorry, it's just the way you described the 'other activities'.", he quietly cleared his throat as he focussed again, "But ok, especially since it happened every time you've fallen asleep, I'm pretty sure this is a similar situation to that. Like, it's based on how comfortable you are at the time."

"If that were the only common thread, the tail would have emerged much sooner than your birthday."

"True, but it's definately related in some way."

          Dib moved on to the next thing, "Ok, so... going off of that, what were you feeling when it happened? Like, what kind of emotions?"

Zim's face scrunched up and he stuck his tounge out slightly, "What is this, a therapy session?"

"It's probably related to it."

Zim crossed his arms and looked to the side, "I don't know why I trusted you with this, you don't seem to understand it at all."

Dib's eye twitched a bit, "Neither do you! That's literally why we're doing this right now!"

"Talking about moments of intimacy and other unrelated things isn't going to get us anywhere!"

Dib closed his eyes and sharply inhaled through his nose, about to yell back at him before latching on to something Zim had said.

The alien's head was still turned to the side, a stubborn expression on his face. Dib set his notepad to the side as he stood up, getting closert to where Zim was sat on the table.

Zim's antennae perked slightly as he heard Dib move around, but he didn't turn to see what he was doing. Dib lifted the back of Zim's shirt before lightly tracing his fingers up the alien's spine, stopping under the pak.

The alien immediately straightened, a blush settling on his cheeks as he instinctively started purring.

Dib continued to trace his fingers up and down Zim's back, keeping an eye on the spot where the tail usually popped out.

Zim was getting both flustered and frustrated as this continued. "W-why are you doing that when we have something we should be doing?"

"Something you said gave me an idea."

"Would you mind telling Zim what this idea is?"

Dib shifted so he was standing in front of Zim and booped him between the eyes, "Nope."

Zim was still purring, but his antennae lowered slightly to show that he wasn't too happy with that answer. He leaned foreward, an annoyed look on his face. "Why not?" D

ib gave him a small peck on the lips, putting their foreheads together. "Reasons."

Zim put his arms on Dib's shoulders. "We should be focussing on research."

Dib laughed a bit. "You say that as you set your arms on my shoulders."

"Well if you're not going to focus why should Zim?"

Dib wrapped his arms around Zim's waist. "I'm focussing on you, that's the whole point of this."

"That is not what I meant and you know it. And as pleasant as this is, I am against taking a break when we've gotten nothing done."

Dib leaned in to kiss him again, and Zim thwacked him with an antennae.

"Alright, alright.", Dib was still being playful as he pulled back out of antennae range, his hands on Zim's legs, "I think my guess was right, though."

"I would very much like to know what you've been referring to."

Dib leaned foreward again, reaching behind Zim and grabbing the tail that was now out. "You described all the other times as 'intimate'. So I thought that might be part of it."

"Eh? But we've done far more than that before and there was no tail!"

Dib brought a hand to his chin, thinking. "True... We're gonna have to keep working on it, but that's a start."

          They spent the rest of the day testing different theories, working well into the evening.

They came to the conclusion that there were two main things that made Zim's tail come out. The first was what Dib figured out earlier in the day, the tail came out when Zim was doing something he considered 'intimate'. The second factor, at least from what they could tell, was his stress level.

Their only actual evidence for that was the fact that the tail hadn't actually made an appearance until after they'd dealt with the Tallest, something that made Zim incredibly stressed even when he wasn't actively focussing on it.

They'd gotten to the point where they were writing everything out to put into the computer when Dib started yawning more frequently. Zim checked the time on his phone, deciding that it was probably better to force Dib to go to sleep now and finish up the next day. "We're done for the evening."

"There's not that much left to do, though."

"Yes, but you're tired so we're stopping."

"I'm not even that tired yet, let's just get it done."

"You're yawning."

"I yawn even when I have slept."

Zim started walking away, but instead of walking towards the elevator like Dib was expecting him to, he instead started making his way toward a hallway that led further into the lab.

"Come on, it's time for Zim to show you the surprise from earlier."

"Oh yeah,", Dib got up to follow, "I forgot about that."

"Hah! Of course you did, that was my plan all along!"

Dib rolled his eyes as he followed Zim to wherever he was leading him. He'd been in most of the underground at this point for various reasons, but he usually just stuck to the main room since he didn't really have a solid grasp on the current layout just yet. They didn't walk too far, just going past a few storage rooms and an observation room he'd never actually gone into.

Zim stopped in front of a new door and gestured at it, excitedly bouncing like he had been earlier, "Here is the surprise!"

"... A door?"

"It's behind the door, idiot."

A year ago, Dib would have been extremely worried about openning a random door inside of Zim's base. And although there was still some underlying worry, it was less in a 'I might die' way and more in a 'I'm tired what did you do' kind of way.

He openned the door and stepped inside, looking around. It was considerably smaller than most rooms in the base, containing only a bed, desk, and a small dresser.

Zim came in and stood next to him, his arms crossed and a pleased expression on his face. "Zim figures that since you sleep here regularly already, it couldn't hurt to add a bed room for you so you don't have to sleep on the couch."

Dib looked around the room again, feeling extremely touched by the gesture. He put an arm around Zim's waist pulling him closer and kissing the top of his head. "Aw, thanks. But you didn't have to add a new room to the base, I was fine sleeping on the couch."

"Then you can be 'fine' on the bed as well. Zim noticed you sleep better in your bed than on the couch, it made sense to add one eventually."

"Still, though, thank you."

"Time for sleep so you can get up semi-early tomorrow and we can finish writing everything up."

Dib got on the bed, followed by Zim who curled up against him as he fell asleep.

Chapter Text

          It was only the first period of the skool day, and Zim could already tell something was wrong with Dib. He was paler than usual, sweating, and had an overall unwell air about him.

After second period was over, Zim found Dib in the hall. He grabbed the human from behind, wrapping his arms around his waist and forcing him to stop in the middle of the crowded hallway. "What kind of sickness have you contracted?"

Dib looked ahead of him and sighed, doing his best to ignore all the students who were looking at them. He knew this was coming, he wasn't exactly trying to hide the fact that he wasn't feeling well, but he was hoping Zim would wait until skool was over to ask about it.

"I just have a cold, I'm fine.", he was trying to pry Zim's arms off of him.

"You definately do not look 'fine',", he shifted so he could feel Dib's forehead while still holding the human in place, "and you have a fever. Why did you come to skool if you were sick?"

"Because it's not that bad, and if I skip my Dad is gonna find out."

"It's not skipping if you don't feel well."

"It's a cold. I'm fine. People are staring at us. Let me go."

Zim didn't budge. "Humans don't tend to raise in temperature when they simply have a 'cold'."

"Zim, if you don't let go we're both going to be late to class."

The hall was basically empty at this point, and they were still just standing there in the middle of it. "You aren't going to class, you need to rest."

Dib tried to get Zim's arm off of him again, still failing. "Yes, I am. Now get off."

Instead of responding verbally, Zim extended his pak legs and lifted the both of them off the ground. Dib started struggling even more once it registered in his brain what Zim was doing, thrashing around in an exhausted attempt to get out of the alien's grip.

"Zim! Put me down!"

Zim ignored him as he proceeded to exit the skool and carry Dib back to his house.

          Once they were inside of Zim's house, the alien proceeded to plop Dib down on the couch before pulling his tablet out of his pak.

"Ok so you picking me up and whisking me away from the skool is cool and all, but now they're going to call my dad and I'm definately going to get in trouble for skipping class.", Dib said from where he was sat on the couch, glaring at Zim while he spoke.

Zim seemed to be ignoring him, more focussed on his tablet than the human who was currently complaining at him from the couch.

Dib's eye twitched slightly as his mood and headache worsened. "At least listen to me when I'm yelling at you!"

Zim pressed a few more things on his tablet screen before putting it away and crossing his arms, "Zim has hacked into the skool's attendance registry and marked you as excused, your parental figure won't know you've left early."

Dib didn't say anything, still just glaring.

Zim responded with a glare of his own, "Oh what, did you want to suffer through a full seven hours of monotony while you feel like garbage?"

"It would have been nice if I had the option."

"You would have chosen wrong, given your ever-present lack of self care skills."

Dib crossed his arms and turned his face to the side, still outwarly acting mad even though he felt pretty relieved that he didn't have to deal with a whole day of skool feeling like he's going to throw up or pass out at any given moment.

Zim just rolled his eyes at him before turning the tv on, curling up next to him on the couch, and beginning to purr.

Dib didn't move for a moment, feigning anger a bit longer before sighing and knocking Zim's wig to the side. "At least take your stuff off, asshole."

"That's fairly low on Zim's list of priorities currently."

Dib began to scratch the alien between the antennae, causing him to purr louder as they sat there watching tv. 

          After a little while, Zim noticed that Dib was starting to fall asleep. The alien gently got up, finally taking his contacts out and storing them in his pak along with the previously discarded wig before carefully picking Dib up and carrying him down to the bedroom.

When he went to put Dib down on the bed, the human wrapped his arm around his neck and refused to let go. "Funny, you couldn't wait to be released earlier."

The tired Dib blew a raspberry before nuzzling closer, "I'm tired now, I need hugs."

Zim sighed as he easilly removed him from around his neck and set him on the bed. "What you need is rest, you can have hugs after your fever goes down."

"But I thought you liked how warm I am?"

"Your normal temperature is just fine, this is too hot."

Dib giggled a bit as he rolled onto his back and threw his arm over his eyes, "Aww, you think I'm hot."

Zim sad down on the floor, his back against the side of the bed. "You already knew this."

Dib made a small sqeaking noise after Zim said this, not at all expecting that response. "I feel like shit."

"Then go to sleep so your stupid fever goes down, stupid."

Dib moved his arm slightly, peeking over at Zim, "You don't have to be worried, y'know. I've gotten sick before, it's not a big deal."

Zim's antennae raised slightly, he was suprised that Dib had picked up on how he was feeling.

The tired human extened his arm so that his hand was hanging over the edge of the bed and flexxed his fingers a bit, "C'mere."

Zim looked at the hand for a second before scooting over so that Dib could scratch his head. They sat there like that for a while, the only sounds in the room being Zim's purring and Dib's mucus impaired breathing.

"I love you.", Dib said quietly, causing Zim's purr to stutter for a second before continuing at an even louder volume. Dib smiled when he heard the reaction, moving his hand so that it was sitting on the alien's shoulder, "I just realized I hadn't really said it yet."

Zim placed his hand on top of Dib's, a gentle smile on his lips that the human couldn't see, "Zim loves you too."

Eventually, Dib started dozing off again. Once he was asleep Zim joined him in the bed, falling asleep as well.