Sweet Dreams
A muffled yet loud crying erupted from upstairs.
Zim groaned in his sleep, the crying bringing him slowly back to reality, away from whatever dream land he had been in prior. He opened his tired eyes, yawning as he sat up from his spot on the couch. Beside him, Tak laid peacefully, completely exhausted from the experience as a new mother, nights of non-stop crying that would sometimes last into the late morning where neither the two could get sleep. Their newborn twins would just not let them sleep, but Zim was lucky to notice that only one of his smeets was upset upstairs instead of both of his smeets.
Though he knew if he didn't get upstairs fast enough, his other smeet might break into hysterical crying as well.
Blind with fatigue, he made his way out of the living room and into the kitchen, towards the staircase that lead to the hallway upstairs where the smeets' nursery was located; a staircase that hadn't been there years before when it was just Zim and his crazy little SIR-unit. Now he had a wife, and now kids of his own; he had responsibilities he never thought he'd have.
Nimble in his steps to keep from waking his other sleeping smeet, he crept into the hallway, the crying from the nursery rang in his head loudly, his antenna twitched from the blaring sound of the wailing. Jeez, his kid defiantly had his set of lungs, and he wasn't sure if he should be proud or afraid.
He stood in from of the nursery door. Quietly, he pushed the half-open door fully open, peering into the dark room. Through the beams of moonlight seeping through the window above on the wall, he could see the two cribs sitting there, and noticed which smeet in which crib was shrieking and wailing.
Despite his irritation, he grinned, chuckling to himself, knowing which of his two little ones was in fact crying.
He went up to the crib on the right, the source of the sound so incredible, he cringed. Inside the crib on the left, his young son slept soundly, wrapped in a warm serenity of his fragile little mind. Zim smiled at the small, sleeping form before reaching down into the crib on the left and lifting up his fussing daughter.
Her extremely loud screams and wails reminded him oddly of himself, well, among everything else about her that he saw himself in; her large pink eyes, her personality... She was exactly like him in the way she looked and acted. Demanding the little girl was, and he couldn't help but feel proud at her, proud of them both for just being there.
He held the weeping smeet close, awkwardly rocking her. He was still getting used to this father-gig. "Hey..." he whispered, trying to calm her. He rubbed her small back past the Pak that lay there. "What's wrong, huh?"
The crying subsided after a moment, his daughter sniffling as she looked into his eyes. A small little puppy-dog pout that spoke more than words. He had to chuckle at that.
"You just wanted to be held," he stated matter-of-factly to himself and to her. The rope of sleep still pulled at the sides of his vision, but he pushed it aside.
She simply continued to stare at him with almost a pleading look.
Zim sighed. "Alright..." He spotted the rocking chair in the corner and went over to it, sitting himself down with his little girl in his arms. "I'll stay up here with you."
Almost as though she could understand him and his movements and words, she smiled up at him.
"But just this once," he added sternly, leaning heavily against the chair as she rested her head against his chest, feeling safe and warm than she ever felt in her new life.
He watched her as she laid there against him, all sniffling gone and instead replaced by a content breathing. His hand came up and ran along one of her curled antenna, earning a soft purr of comfort from the smeet.
The thought that scared him only months before had been replaced by disbelief. He stared at his young daughter thinking to himself, Where did you come from? How did you get here? His life had created two smeets, smeets to call his own. A quiet son and a seemingly precocious daughter. Now he couldn't see his life without them.
Zim was brought out of his thoughts by the sound of his daughter's light snoring, and he smiled, readjusting himself to get comfortable in the chair, closing his own eyes as well, quickly falling into a deep slumber with his little one resting peacefully in his arms...
It was the best sleep he had gotten in a long while.
A/N: A little gift to all the readers of my story "Parenthood". :D I really wanted to write a family one-shot of Zim as a dad, and I couldn't wait to finish my other story and keep all you waiting. So, yes, Zim and Tak have a boy and a girl... Twins...
You just have to wait to find out their names. ;)