WARNING: Future ZADR. For those who don't know, this means freaky-deaky interspecies same-sex relations the likes of which have been known to cause nuclear implosions and lion-on-lion violence and indigestion and daytime television and all sorts of horrible things too wretched to mention here. Enter at your own risk. It's too late for me. Save yourselves.
A/N: So this is my first "serious" slash fic. I've outlined about twenty two chapters. I don't know how explicit it will get, but I've rated it T to be on the safe side. (There will be a bit of violence and some light swearing.)
Ooh, and for those of you who prefer pictures to words, THERE IS A COMIC VERSION OF THIS STORY! I put this in bold because I'm desperate to pimp my fancomic. Desperate, I say! The comic version can be found here: .com/art/Detours-1-0-89103110 (If this link fails, it's on deviantart, under The Bog Witch.)
Special thanks to Taylor the Weird, who very kindly beta-read this for me. Any mistakes/awkward sentences/projectile vomiting you may experience due to reading this are my fault and not hers though, because I've been fiddling with it for the past few months.
Disclaimer: Invader Zim belongs to Jhonen Vasquez et al. This is a nonprofit endeavor, perpetrated only because I am totally insane and bananas are delicious.
Detours
1. A little fire burns up a great deal of corn.
—Hebrew Proverb
The beam of his flashlight cut through the darkness. Dib crept into the front yard, tip-toeing past the gnomes. Please, please don't notice, he thought at them. He had a chance. The gnomes were erratic; Gir disabled them half the time anyway.
Sneaking across the grass, he submerged himself in the long shadows cast by the building that loomed to the left of the house. Each step held the power to betray him, so he kept his tread quick and light, like a water strider skimming across a pond.
Suddenly, an electric buzz sliced through the air. Whirring into motion, one gnome turned, its chunky base creaking. He whipped his head around and fumbled his flashlight. A circle of light bounced off one of the gnome's plastic eyes, creating a gleam.
Dib froze, one foot raised off the ground. He held his breath.
Wait for it. Wait for it.
After all this, he hoped it would still be there.
At last the gnome halted, fell back into silence. Dib traversed the yard and snuck around the side of the house and climbed over the huge cables that no one but him ever really seemed to notice.
Pressing up against the back of the house, he willed himself to blend in with the shadows. He inched along, squinting into the darkness. Training the flashlight at the ground, he watched for inconvenient rocks. Finally, he stopped, stood, and tucked the flashlight into his coat pocket. The sheen of the metal in the moonlight was enough.
He found it! Zim's Voot Cruiser. Dib exhaled slowly, releasing a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
Stalking toward the ship, he tugged at the collar of his trench coat. It had turned unexpectedly warm since he came out and now he wished he'd left the coat at home.
Close enough to touch, the Voot Cruiser awaited him. In the dark, it looked different than it had this afternoon, when he caught a glimpse of it through Zim's window. Thanks to Gir, who left the door open again, Dib had almost managed to duck through the back door and reach it before Zim came to chase him out. Then, the ship glimmered in the sunlight, large and haughty in its brazen visibility. Now, obscured in the gloom, it seemed to recede into the background, the metal of its hull melding with the bushes.
Despite its newfound meekness, Dib could see that it wasn't a perfect match for Tak's ship. Patiently awaiting repairs in his garage, Tak's ship possessed more strange outcroppings and a hodgepodge of a hull, probably because planet Dirt didn't have much in the way of spaceship construction materials. Still, he thought the two vessels would be close enough for his purposes.
For the past few weeks, Dib had been trying to fix Tak's ship, but he still hadn't gotten it quite right. For one thing, the cup holder was broken. Plus, there was the little issue of the ship being unable to attain enough velocity to leave the earth's atmosphere. That really put a damper on his space travel plans.
If only he could get a closer look at Zim's ship, he might just be able to patch up Tak's. Then he could finally leave this spinning dirt ball behind.
For surveillance purposes, of course. Of course. He only wanted to prevent Zim from trying anything funny, understand. He would never ever think of leaving for good. Certainly not. Aside from the obvious alien menace, there were zombies and Bigfoot and, and, and—vampire piggies out there! The world needed him, even if sometimes it seemed as though it thought it didn't. No, as Earth's self appointed protector, he could never truly abandon the planet. Never.
(It may have been a worthless spinning dirt ball, but it was his worthless spinning dirt ball.)
Reaching up, he stroked the smooth metallic surface. It was cool to the touch, a pleasant relief from the muggy night air. Now to get inside….
Something clacked and snapped nearby. Dib stiffened. His eyes darted from the ship, to the trees, to the lurid green of Zim's house.
Nothing.
He waited with his head cocked, listening.
The noise again. Closer.
He took his hand off the ship. It was probably just a squirrel or something. Squirrels seemed strangely attracted to Zim's house. Gir was probably feeding them. Either that or Zim was plotting something! Maybe he'd implanted tiny mind-control devices into their rodent brains so that he could rule the world as some kind of mind-controlling squirrel... lord…thing….
Whatever. He couldn't worry about that now. He had to be strong, had to stay focused on his mission.
(The whole world was counting on him, even if they didn't know it yet.)
There had to be some way to get inside. Kneeling, he passed his hands over the ship's underbelly. If it worked anything like Tak's, there would be a button somewhere on the outside to open it.
Hopefully it wasn't locked.
Once again, that noise skittered on the edge of his hearing. It crackled, rustled, crunched towards him. It sounded a lot bigger than a squirrel. Ignore it, he commanded, but his heart hammered in his chest regardless. With barely suppressed urgency, he ran his palm along the side of the ship until he felt the button. Glancing over his shoulder, he pressed it.
The cruiser's clear dome slid back, revealing plush magenta seats. Dib's arm shot out to touch the control panel.
Bam! A sharp bolt of pain, hard and hot like lightning, hit the back of his skull; for a second he winced as his vision darkened. He recovered quickly, used to this kind of treatment from his classmates and his family and random strangers at the bus stop…. He forgave them, though. They didn't understand, that was all.
(Tak's ship was not an escape hatch. He was repairing it for the good of the human race.)
Rubbing the back of his head, he turned around to look for his assailant.
Still nothing.
The shadows flickered in the yard.
Somewhere far away, an owl hooted.
A flash of light on the ground caught his eye. Squinting, he groped in the grass until his hands closed upon the source: a slim wrench. He looked down at it for a second, uncomprehending. What would hit him with a wrench? Robotic squirrels? Or maybe some kind of—
"Hello, Dib," a voice spat, packing eight years of unchecked hatred into a single syllable. Zim stood behind him, much too close for comfort. Dib could feel the chemical closeness of him, the heat radiating off their skin creating an invisible pull between them.
"Zim!" Dib's eyes narrowed. He should've known it was too good to be true. He balled his fists, preparing for yet another heroic struggle for the fate of the earth.
(Because, eventually, they would all realize how much they needed him. They would. They had to.)
"How did you infiltrate my glorious base? How? Tell Zim!" The alien jumped spastically.
"You hit me with a wrench!" Dib said, ignoring his question because he knew Zim hated to be ignored.
"You should get down on your filthy knees and lick the boots of the MIGHTY Zim for the chance to be destroyed so painlessly!"
"Actually that kind of hurt. And it didn't destroy me."
"Silence! You speak lies!" he shrieked.
Zim launched himself at Dib, knocking him into the Voot Cruiser. Caught off balance, Dib slammed against the upholstery harder than he'd expected.
"I'm onto you, Zim!" Dib yelled, nonsensically. He had found that while locked in the heat of battle, it didn't really matter what they were saying, so long as the right sentiment was there. The true meaning seeped out from behind the actual words, and it was always the same: ihateyouihateyouihateyou.
They whacked at each other, evenly matched. While Zim was at least a head shorter than him, Dib was and had always been the epitome of pasty goth kid—not exactly heavyweight champion of the year material.
Zim pinned Dib to the seat; Dib kicked out, trying to dislodge him. A high whine sounded from above as clear plastic folded over the ship, pressing them together. Somehow they'd managed to close the dome. Great. That last thing he wanted to do was have an epic battle with his archenemy in an area roughly the same size as two airplane seats—two airplane seats in coach at that.
"Zim! Wait!" Twisting, he felt for the button to open the dome. Where was it?
"Ha! Pitiful human! It is too late to beg for mercy!" Zim crowed and at that moment Dib was not thinking of the fate of the world but of biting and clawing and scratching and, most of all, winning—any way he could.
Dib delivered an undercut to Zim's jaw and the other bounced against the side of the ship with a crack. However, the space was so small that this hardly made a difference.
On the rebound, Zim kicked him hard in the stomach, landing him once more on his back. Dib's elbow struck the control panel. Jolts of pain raced up his funny bone. Grimacing, he forced himself to prepare for the next blow.
But it didn't come. Antennae twitching, Zim hovered frozen before him.
Then Dib heard it. Soft at first, then gradually growing in speed and volume, a thousand tiny clickings and grindings signaled that somewhere, complicated machinery tumbled into motion.
"Look what you've done now, stink-beast!" Zim hissed.
Dib looked out the dome just in time to watch the world behind them collapse into a pinprick of blue light.