AN: Hello so I have been sitting on this story for a while and I've finally decided to post it. This is from Zim's POV, they are older (around seventeen), and is slightly angst-y. Um ZADR and their usual fights(possibly abuse?).
The blows feel softer than they actually are, and the bruises I know will form are still going to be a shocking black and olive. I don't really care, I just hit him back. My fire-truck red blood smears against his paper-like skin and down my chin where my own skin has come apart over my bones against the strain, and my lip throbs after his fists assault it. My arm swings around to kiss his sneering face, my attempt to rid it from my presence, like an adult would deal with an annoying overinflated beach ball. There is something distinctly wrong with us, I know. I just don't care.
Our personalities clash, just like our fists, but sometimes we mesh pretty well, like gears of a windup toy, our minds coming together and creating something impressive, something perfect. But then the key is taken away. Then we are at a stalemate once again. The gears stop turning, stop complimenting each other, and we fight again and I can't stop. Can't bring myself to walk away. This has gone on for too long, but to stop it now would be too much, too little, too late. This broken doll of a boy owns my life, and I own his, so much of our blood has been drawn by each other. Payments of a sort. Because I know, I am painfully aware, that we've saved each other nearly as often as we beat each other into the dirt and woodchips.
A swift kick to the back of my legs sends me tumbling to the ground, a fall like that of a slinky down a flight of stairs, but I hold tight to his trench coat and we meet the ground together. I know that there is dirt collecting on my shirt, it's on his as well. But I have no will to rise; I haven't had that will since we were ten. So we lie there, together in the dirt staring up at a gray smoggy sky. They are tiny gatherings of mud were blood has mixed with the loose dirt around our bodies. It reminds me of the sandbox at school. The way it would shift under my body, pliable and gentle and sticking everywhere. It was inescapable, it was inevitable. It is so similar to this, to him.
He hovers over me now, fingers clutching my chin gently, thumb swiping against the split flesh of my lip that he caused. In a moment he is kissing me, pressure just enough to cause pain. This lasts for all but a second, and he is lying beside me in the bloody dirt. The slate sky and thrum of agony from my fresh wounds dull my mind again, and I just stare up, thoughts of us from not so long ago surfacing.
I remember, the sand was worse when it was wet, when it was saturated with tears that have become sobs after long suffering traumas that made it weak. But when it was like that, it was impossible to hold onto. But I also remember when it was just damp. I could create something with it then, something wonderful, something strong, something perfect even. But no matter what the sand clung to me. It was inescapable. Just like these fights; just like him. So I will leave him there in the dirt, so similar to it but so much better than the other filth on this planet, so much more beautiful. So much more inevitable. But even after he is out of sight he still clings to me, like the sand that has followed me home from the playground.