Chapter Text
“That's 19 times , Earth Stink!” Zim hissed angrily as they drove the Voot back to the base.
“Geez, Zim. If you're going to keep track of the number of times you save my life I’m starting to wish you would just let me die.” Dib grumbled in annoyance. He was not in the mood to hear Zim’s constant whining about everything.
It had been three months since he’d discovered the truth about his father's lab: Professor Membrane had been using a drug called Psychohapptinnoil in all his products for years, essentially ensuring that the population of Earth was always a little high. Now with the release of Membrane Labs for Better Living and their line of “Mood-Drinks,” mind and mood-altering drugs were accessible in every vending machine.
Dib, Zim, and Gaz were the only ones who knew the truth about the Mood-Drinks and Membrane’s vision of a “happier” world. Because of this and Membrane's influence over the government, Zim and Dib were now wanted criminals. The story was that Zim was a Russian terrorist who had manipulated the mentally unstable Dib into helping his attacks. As far as they were able to tell, however, Gaz was only considered missing.
So it had been three months.
Three months of sabotaging trucks and vandalizing vending machines.
Three months of scheming, planning, experimenting, and trying to decide the best long-term plan to stop production and expose membrane labs.
Three months of living in a converted service station in the middle of the desert. Having to sneak into town to steal and scavenge food, which had to be done by Gir and Gaz.
And three long long months of spending almost 24 hours a day with the little ex-invader who complained about everything .
“I’m so fucking sorry that I can’t see what's going on when I’m under a truck, Zim ! Which is exactly why you were there as a lookout in the first place!” The mission hadn’t gone well. They were trying to put trackers on each of the shipment trucks to be able to map out their roots better, but they’d been caught before they could get more than two of the trucks bugged. “Maybe if you hadn’t been so fucking loud and attracted the attention of the guards you wouldn’t have needed to ‘save’ me!”
“Zim?! Loud?!” Zim said loudly, “I am the embodiment of stealth and sneak!”
Dib rolled his eyes, fixing his gaze outside the window so he didn’t have to look at Zim. “Sure, whatever.” He saw the top of Gir’s radio tower come into view. At least they were almost back to the base. He could get a little bit of time away from the alien.
“Saving this stinking Earth is such a waste of Zim’s time!” Zim snapped, preparing the Voot to land and parking it in the station's garage. “We could have just left this filthy planet and found another world to conquer. A world less hostile where no one knows who we are! But you insist on staying here! On this stupid dirt ball that doesn’t even appreciate all you do for it!”
Dib clenched his jaw, trying just to tune Zim out. Why did Zim’s pissy moods always have to sync up with Dib’s desire to be left alone?
“And then you keep throwing your fragile, inferior human body into situations you can’t escape! Explosion backfires, enemy ambushes, sneak attacks, falling buildings!”
“Fuck, Zim!” Dib exploded on the alien as the door to the Voot opened. “Could you stop bitching for 5 fucking minutes! I think you have fully expressed your opinion about everything ! The heat, the inferior tech, the fact that I don’t want to kill people, the fact Gaz and I aren’t indestructible robots and could fucking die if we make the wrong move!”
Zim looked at Dib and then quickly looked away again in a huff, jumping out of the Voot and closing the door. “Not Gaz…” he grumbled something else as well but Dib didn’t hear it.
“What?”
Zim glared at him again. “Zim does not complain about human female's mortality! Your sister doesn’t need worrying about! YOU are the one that keeps needing rescuing! Because you're so worried about the human race you can’t fight back even when they have a gun to your head!”
“That didn’t happen!” Dib shouted, “Don’t make me out to be some helpless damsel in distress!”
Zim glared at him. “Well then, Dib-shit! You should stop ACTING like a distressed damsel with a death wish!” Zim started to walk out of the garage, storming off towards the station.
“That’s bullshit, Zim!” Dib shouted at the alien, almost running out after him. He grabbed Zim by the collar of his shirt, pulling him back to face him. “I don’t act like that at all! And I don’t need you to come and rescue me! I can handle myself fine ! So if you hate everything so much why don't you just fucking leave?!”
Zim looked at Dib’s grip on his shirt and then at Dib’s face, his green face flushed a deep blue color. “Because!”
“Because what!” Dib hissed, “You don’t want to be alone? Bullshit! You spend all your time just bitching about how much you hate Earth and how much you hate living with us stinking humans! Half the time you slink off to the garage to work on the Voot or sulk or whatever the fuck you do out here! The Voot is fixed! You hate it here so much, you hate the Earth, you hate saving it, you hate me ! So why don’t you just fucking leave!” He shoved him back again holding back from hitting him he was so annoyed.
Zim stumbled back, looking away from Dib and glaring down at the ground for a moment. He clenched his jaw, opening his mouth and closing it like he was trying to think of what to say. Dib was about to say something else when Zim finally looked at him. Well glared at him. He looked like he was trying to force down a different emotion. If Dib didn’t know better he would have thought that he’d hurt the alien’s feelings somehow. “Oh, Zim will leave, Earth-Pig.” Zim hissed at him, “But the Voot still needs repairs to be space ready. I don’t need you or your pitiful quest to defend your inferior planet. I will take Gir and leave once I can break through this filthy dirt ball’s atmosphere.” He turned and stormed off, heading back into the garage and closing the big door behind him with a slam.
Dib huffed. Fucking Zim. Fucking stupid Zim. They seemed to fight like this every other mission. Any time Dib so much as stubbed his toe the “superior” Irken would be on a tirade about his vulnerability and stupid squishy human body. But Dib had to admit (to himself he would never say it to Zim) that it had been a close call today. Dib had been focused on setting up the tracking devices under the trucks that he hadn’t seen the security drone creeping around the corner. “Security” for the labs was becoming increasingly more like military guards. This particular drone had rolled a close combat grenade under the truck that Dib had been working on. Zim had seen it just in time and pulled him out from under the truck, using his PAK to create a forcefield shield to protect them from the shrapnel.
So yes, Zim had saved his life. Again. But it was really hard to be grateful to someone when they start yelling at you for being an idiot. And Dib hated how Zim acted like he was some kind of helpless, fragile, little kid. Like he was a fucking glass doll or something.
But there was that moment before he started yelling. Zim had been on top of Dib as the grenade went off. The PAK was protecting him from the explosion but Zim had thrown himself on top of Dib like he was trying to protect him with his own body. It had all happened so fast but when Dib looked up at Zim, the alien… Dib had never seen Zim so scared. And, he couldn’t say why, but he was sure that Zim was scared for him . And it was that more than the explosion that had made Dib’s heart seem to shoot up to his throat. But then the moment was gone. Zim’s horror for Dib’s safety morphed into rage at his stupidity and Dib was being flung into the Voot and subjected to Zim’s tirade.
It had happened, though. But what did it even mean ? His relationship with Zim had changed so much and so fast in a very short period and everything was so confusing. He and Zim had gone from mortal enemies to allies and partners overnight, and nothing had made any sense about their interactions ever since.
Then there was that look. The look Zim would give him as if he had something desperately important to tell him but couldn’t. There had been several times that he had caught the alien staring at him or looking away quickly, and it was always with that look. He’d tried to come up with some kind of pattern of when Zim would look at him like that but there didn’t seem to be any. It wasn’t consistently brought on by anything that Dib did. He would just… look at him. Sometimes when they were just talking, when they were bickering, when Dib was talking to Gaz, or working on something that didn’t even involve Zim at all. The worst part was when they were alone at night. Their beds were across the room from each other yet Dib seemed to feel those magenta eyes boring into him every night. When he would look over at Zim the alien was either usually asleep or doing something on his alien tablet, not looking at him at all. Then it was Dib’s turn to stare.
There was something about watching Zim sleep that was… satisfying? Appealing? Maybe it was the fact that, until Zim had fallen in through his bedroom window three months ago demanding Dib hide him from a swarm of assassins, Dib didn’t think that the alien needed sleep. He’d never seemed to get tired and he always seemed to be doing stuff through the night when they had been enemies. And with all his cameras Dib had never seen a bedroom in Zim’s house. Or maybe his fascination was just because of the direct contrast between loud, aggressive, waking Zim and quiet peaceful sleeping Zim. He just looked… cute asleep. Like some kind of alien cat-bug; curled up into a ball, antennae twitching here and there. Curled up in a cocoon of blankets, occasionally making little grunting chirpy sounds which Dib guessed was him speaking his native Irken in his sleep. Once Dib thought he’d heard the alien say his name in his sleep, but, after about an hour of overthinking, he’d decided that he probably just imagined it.
It was all so weird. Zim was weird. And annoying. Dib would have thought that becoming… well, maybe not friends but teammates with Zim would mean they would fight less. Yet somehow it seemed like they were just bickering more. Zim was constantly complaining about every single thing that happened, but mostly about Dib. Dib was starting to have to be overly careful about everything he did or said, knowing that Zim and Gaz would both gang up on him if he did anything the slightest bit stupid. Honestly, Dib hated how much Gaz and Zim had bonded.
Even with all those weird moments with Zim, the alien was still a bigger agitation in Dib’s life than any kind of help. He should have been relieved at the idea of Zim leaving Earth. Finally leaving him the fuck alone, even if it did mean that he would have to fight his dad's labs with just Gaz. They were both more than capable of taking down MLBL. Gaz would just have to spend less time playing video games and more time helping.
Yet the idea of Zim actually leaving… going away from the earth and never coming back… honestly, he couldn’t describe what that feeling was. It made him want to do something crazy. Made him want to try to change the weather to accommodate Zim’s hatred for the heat, or personally upgrade all of their tech so that it could work as efficiently as The technology that Zim had lost when his house was destroyed by assassins. Or to let Zim go ahead and blow up his dad’s lab to put an end to their whole mission and go with Zim to find a safer world for them both, somewhere they could belong. Craziest of all, it made Dib almost want to go after Zim right now, apologize, and beg him to stay.
Yeah… almost.
Dib huffed and crossed his arms, glaring at the garage door where Zim had disappeared. He turned on his heel and went into the station.
“Fucking weird little space bug…”