Chapter Text
The drops of rain they fall all over
This awkward silence makes me crazy
The glow inside burns light upon her
I'll try to kiss you if you let me
-"Down", Blink 182
Rain poured down on the rickety skool roof, leaking puddles of water on some of the less fortunate children's desks. Dib was one of the more fortunate students, as his desk was far out of the way of any leaks in the skool ceiling and he could continue his work uninterrupted by the constant dripping of water.
The problem was, there wasn't really any work to be distracted from. Ms. Bitters was conducting yet another one of her lectures on the world and its problems, and was currently rambling on about how she had once had dreams to aspire to. None of this, as usual, interested Dib, so instead he chose to focus his attention on the green skinned boy to his right.
Zim was sitting at his desk, looking just as bored as Dib. He wasn't as fortunate as Dib in the seating plan, and was currently pinned against his desk as far as he could go in a vain attempt to avoid the nearby splash of water that was ricocheting off the corner of his desk. Somehow the alien seemed to feel his rival's attention on him, and he looked up from his squirming away from the puddle to glower at Dib.
Though he was tempted to glower back at the irritating alien, Dib settled for a bored sigh and focused his attention on the window and the outside world. There were days when fighting his rival wasn't really worth it. There were days where all he wanted to do was surrender, or throw in the towel. Zim had been on Earth for almost a year now, and how far had either of them gotten in their missions during that time? Zim was no closer to conquering Earth thanks to Dib's efforts, and Dib was no closer to exposing Zim to his clueless society.
It was odd how much their relationship had grown in the short time they had known each other. In just a year, Dib had found his greatest nemesis, and then discovered how unsatisfying it could be to hurt someone who felt just like he did. Though he fought to deny it within himself, he knew that somehow, in some weird and insane sounding way, Zim was his equal. Whenever his eyes met the Irken Invader's it was like seeing a piece of himself in those fake violet eyes. Zim was, in a way that he could never hope to explain, his greatest and only friend at times. Sure they threatened to destroy each other each time they met, and Zim still made his tired old threats of world conquest, but somehow, in some way that Dib still couldn't quite grasp, he was growing tired of fighting.
His eyes slowly shifted back to the "mighty" Invader who was now quivering in his desk at the sight of a water puddle. They had a routine, one that they had spent the better part of a year developing, and no matter how much their circumstances made the boy want to scream, he knew that their routine could never change. It was supposed to be this way; it had to be this way. He could never even be friends with the Invader let alone...his boyfriend.
Chills ran down Dib's spine at the word. Boyfriend. It was an intimidating word, even though he knew he would never, could never use it with Zim. He needed Zim, needed him to validate his life, to waste time with, to play around with and he knew that Zim, as much as the Irken denied it, needed him as well. However, this was as far as life seemed to be willing to allow him to get to the Invader. Between their differing missions, there was just no way around the destinies the two had set out before them.
Earth counted on him fighting against Zim, and he was sure that the Irkens were relying on Zim destroying the Earth for whatever reason. Zim and Dib weren't acting on their own, they were always acting on behalf of their differing people which frustrated the boy. Why couldn't he do what he wanted? It wasn't fair...and yet it was right.
It was right. Dib had to repeat that sentence to himself often. He repeated it whenever he snuck into Zim's labs. He repeated it when there was an episode of Mysterious Mysteries that he was just dying to ask Zim about. He repeated it whenever his amber eyes met Zim's natural red ones and the tension, and the sorrow of the weight of their roles began to suffocate him. Him and Zim? Together? It wasn't right. It couldn't be. His destiny wasn't to love Zim, or to feel regret about having to hurt him, it was to destroy him at any cost.
Still...he watched the green skinned student dreamily, lost in a world where fate didn't matter. Zim, for his part seemed utterly clueless to Dib's curious gaze, as his main concern was with the leaky ceiling.
The seconds ticked away on the classroom clock, beginning the countdown to the end of the day. Two minutes left in this dismal place and Dib would be free to go home and...well do nothing all that important. Zim had been lacking in plans lately and Dib had been lacking in resolve to stop him. Why bother? Why should he even be fighting Zim in the first place? It wasn't as if the alien was going to accomplish his mission of world conquest anytime soon, and each time Zim tried, no one besides Dib even noticed. Fighting Zim was pointless, all of it was so pointless.
Zim turned his attention from the dripping roof to the book that lay on his desk. He had been engrossed in that book all day, as if it were crucial to his mission. He didn't even look up from it at lunch when Dib had whipped a spoonful of beans at his head, mostly for the sake of appearance. Dib supposed that it was his job as defender of Earth to find out just what Zim was reading, but somehow, he just couldn't pull himself into his stalker mode. Not today. So Zim was reading. The rational part of him didn't care, no longer wanted to know every detail of Zim's life. Nothing that Zim read could aid him in his conquest; maybe another Invader, but Zim? No.
Zim had found a hobby other than destruction. Dib knew it wouldn't last, and that any reading on Zim's part had to be linked to his ever important mission, but for today, he could dream. Dream of a Zim he didn't have to fight. Oddly enough, he had no trouble picturing that Zim at all. It was a thought that plagued his days and haunted his dreams and an image that could be summoned to his mind without a second thought. It was a dream that would never be realized.
The bell signaling the end of skool sounded, interrupting Dib's thoughts and Zim's bored reading. The book on the Irken Invader's desk snapped shut quickly and Zim shoved it into his PAK before Dib could get a proper glance at the title. Well, he doubted it was important anyway.
The boy reached for the backpack he had taken to carrying to class on the floor warily. He found that a backpack was actually pretty useful, as now he had an actual place to store his laptop and other Zim spying equipment, along with all his books for skool as well. It was a brilliant idea, one he couldn't believe that he didn't think of sooner...and one he had stolen from Zim.
Wincing under the weight of his laptop heavy backpack, he trudged out of the classroom, eyes on the floor as not to stare at the bored alien who was cleaning his desk out for the day. He couldn't stare at Zim, couldn't walk to the door with Zim, couldn't do anything he wanted to do. Enemies weren't friends. They just weren't, no matter how trivial and stupid the war they were fighting seemed sometimes.
Dib was so intensely lost within his brooding that he didn't notice he was falling until he hit the ground. He looked up curiously to see the reason behind his fall and somehow wasn't surprised. Zim was walking confidently past him, smirking sadly.
"Out of my way, Earth-stink," he commanded in a sad glee that Dib could sympathize with. Zim had aggravated him, and now he was supposed to do something in return....
"You'll rue the day you landed on Earth, you horrible alien!" he replied with a dull enthusiasm. "One day the world will see you for the horror that you are and...and...stuff."
The words fell limply from his mouth. They were familiar words, he said them almost every day in some form or another, and yet the feeling wasn't there behind them. In fact, he could barely the last time any feeling had been behind his attempts to expose Zim. Similarly, he had noticed a definite lack of enthusiasm on Zim's part as well. His wild plans to destroy humanity were growing rarer and rarer, and when they did occur, there was something...wrong about them. Something off. There was a dullness behind Zim's natural red eyes, as if the spark of their rivalry were gone. He swore, though he knew that Zim would deny it, that the Invader had been staring at him in the same discontented way Dib had been feeling for a while now. It was almost as if something were missing, like there was something else meant for them that destiny prevented them from claiming. Destiny and their conflicting missions, that is.
Zim stared at the boy on the floor for a moment doubtfully and then caught himself staring for an instant too long and quickly turned towards the door leading out of the skool. He clutched his precious book to his chest and swung the door open proudly as if the awkwardness between him and his nemesis didn't bother him. Pitiful humans and their feelings...feelings that he was obligated by duty to ignore, despite his own emotions. After all, Invaders needed...no one. It was a difficult thing to remember each time he caught the Dib staring at him, but it was what his mission demanded of him.
It was still raining as ruthlessly as it had been during class, and as Dib pulled himself off the floor and made his way towards Zim and the outside world, he almost swore he could see the alien quiver slightly as the water crashed against the pavement.
Dib watched as the green boy stuck his gloved hand out in the rain carefully, and then pulled it back fiercely as his finger began to smoke. It was a wonder that Zim had made it this far in his mission. The logical thing for the alien to do was to watch the local weather stations on his TV, or at the very least, buy an umbrella and keep it with him at all times just in case. Still, that was the logical thing to do, and as Dib knew, Zim never did anything that would be logical or obvious. Dib, on the other hand, was an extremely logical person.
He reached into his backpack and pulled out a retractable umbrella, which he then expanded and used to step into the pouring rain.
"Looks like your all your superiority's worthless on days like these, huh Zim?" he teased and his grin widened as the alien glowered at him in response.
"Stinking human," Zim seethed, looking very much like he wanted to go out in the rain just to prove his nemesis wrong, but was too afraid of the burning consequences to move. "You think that this proves anything? Ha! No human weather can best ZIM!"
However, despite his cocky words, the Invader made no move to venture out into the downpour, a move that while predictable, made Dib smile. That was Zim all right. Good ol' predictable, lovable Zim.
"Whatever, Space Boy," Dib sighed, reaching into his backpack suspiciously. "Are you so superior that you can't accept a little help from your inferior rival?" He made a face while saying the word inferior, one that would have almost made Zim giggle had the situation not been what it was. Dib pulled his hand from his backpack, revealing a black collapsed umbrella, much like the one he was currently holding for himself.
Zim's face softened when he saw what Dib was holding, though he fought the surge of emotions that the action brought him. Their eyes locked for an instant and though no words were said aloud, that one glance held within it all that needed to be said.
'I...." The almighty Zim was at a loss for words for once. It wasn't as if his feelings for the Dib creature weren't known...he just couldn't do anything about them. He was helpless in this game they were playing, just as helpless as Dib. He longed just to talk to Dib like he would to another Irken, to show him the stars, to giggle insanely together over the things GIR watched on TV, but he couldn't. If Dib was any other species, anything but a human!
Hugging the history textbook that had become his daily project on discovering a weakness in human warfare closely to his chest, the alien extended his hand towards Dib to take the umbrella from his rival.
His hand loomed closer and closer to Dib's, and though Dib was actually happy for once, he knew this feeling inside of him was wrong. It was wrong to trust Zim, wrong to love him and especially wrong to help him. And yet here he was, going against everything he believed by helping him out when he should be laughing at Zim's pain. It was ridiculous that he'd actually check the local weather each day, and decide against all reason to pack an extra umbrella for the one being he was destined to hate. It was insane!...But it was what he wanted.
Still, no matter how Dib tried to justify his feelings to himself, he knew it'd be breaking the invisible but always present rules of their cruel game to just give Zim the umbrella. Just as the Irken's finger like claws were about to wrap themselves around the umbrella in Dib's hands, the boy dropped the umbrella on the stairs just in front of Zim...right in the open where it was exposed to the torrential downpour.
Zim looked surprised for a moment, but only for an instant. Surprise was soon replaced with a jaded realization that no matter how hard it was to obey, there were rules in place that neither of them could change. Dib was defying fate just by standing there with an umbrella as it was. As much as it annoyed the great and powerful Zim, he was in no position to argue with the rules. Dib was extending him a kindness and he would have to take it as it was. His Tallest were counting on him to destroy this planet after all, not befriend or love its inhabitants. He had a mission...an empty, hollow mission.
Dib stared at the ground where the tossed umbrella lay, and then focused back on Zim, realizing that he had already been lingering in Zim's presence for far too long without trying to pry information from him, or insult his ego. He should say...something. Something mean.
A thousand insults loitered at the back of his mind, but he didn't have the strength to say them. Not today. He'd save them for a day when he still believed that Zim was a threat to his beloved planet, and that this stupid war between him and the Irken that under any other circumstances would have been his friend was actually still worth fighting. He was only 12, nearing 13 and already he was as jaded as an old war veteran.
"I'll...I'll see you around," he managed to spit out before turning around.
He trudged down the stairs that would lead him away from the skool, quickening his pace so that he wouldn't have to hear Zim's reply. On any other day he'd have the energy to bicker and fight with the alien...just not today. Not when it all seemed so pointless.
But days like these quickly passed. He'd had them before, and though they seemed to be occurring far more often, he always woke up the next morning with a renewed desire to serve out his destiny. But as for today....
He heard the far off screams of Zim as the alien ventured out in the rain to grab the discarded umbrella, and he tried to smile, though today it was a smile that had to be forced. One day they'd be freed from this destiny that as the days progressed, felt more and more like a curse. Until then, he'd just have to shove down the tiny voice inside of him that was crying from the injustice of his life.
Rain pelted harshly against his umbrella and he tried to smile once more, though he felt more like weeping on the inside. One day the sound of Zim's tortured screams wouldn't seem freeze his soul.
...one day.