BVQA: I actually have nothing to say for this chapter, other than the fact that it sprung from a conversation I had with aforementioned ZADR fan, ZADRgir55. I'm caught between wanting to say, "pay it no mind," and wanting to say "heck yeah I just wrote this!"

Also, school's starting back up– boo– and updates could get spotty. I apologize in advance, but would also like to mention that I don't typically update this fast anyway. . .


Dib stood on the front steps of the old, dilapidated mansion, trying to decide whether or not he actually wanted to cross the threshold. While it wasn't entirely pleasant outside at the moment- it never was in this town- he was predicting a much more hostile atmosphere inside. Unlike the weatherman, he was usually reliable when it came to this particular house and this particular vampire.

Dib lifted a hand and traced it over the worn paint on the door, fingers catching slightly over the occasional rough, bare patch of wood. Dib sighed heavily and dropped his arm so that the tips of his fingers barely brushed the frigid metal of the door handle.

You're not considering this. He told himself sternly. You are not considering this.

And yet, he was remembering a certain conversation he and Zim had had several days prior. Involuntarily, of course, as he was doing his very best to convince himself.

As per the norm, Zim had been happily sprawled out on the floor with Dib, significantly less happily, on his lap with a couple of puncture marks on his jugular vein. That kind of scenario had become so familiar to Dib that the background had eventually blurred in his mind, but he vaguely recalled a defunct, crumbling high school. Or a dark alley plastered with band posters. Whichever it was, Dib had been slightly kooky with blood loss and Zim had been, well, insane just like always. Dib remembered some incoherent babbling, mostly done on his part, about how frustrating it was to be unable to protect humanity from the. . . he was pretty sure he'd used the term "vampiric threat" but he couldn't be positive. Zim had replied in the drowsy, absent voice he always got when Dib was down almost four pints of blood.

"Dib, if I wasn't already full I could bite you for being so stupid. There'd be a lot more people dying if I didn't keep biting you. . . you and your giant head. . . urgh, I can't even think straight, what are you on?"

"Massive blood loss."

"Well stop taking that!"

". . .that goes against everything you just said. Zim? Hey, Zim?"

But Zim had fallen asleep out. Dib had followed a few seconds later.

And now he was here. On Zim's doorstep. Trying to decide if he actually wanted to enter. It'd been a while since Zim had last. . .eaten. . . and ever since the vampire had decided to camp out in Dib's hometown he'd gotten used to the amount of time Zim tolerated between feedings. If it was gonna happen, it would be today.

Now he just needed to figure out if he was actually going through with this.

This is insane. Half of him said. The other half said, he hasn't killed you yet, you're already here, and you'll be saving lives.

Dib growled under his breath and opened the door. He knew for a fact he was going to regret this. . .

The inside of the mansion was dark, as per usual, and Dib cursed the whole 'vampires hate sunlight' thing under his breath as he groped around for a light switch. When he finally found one, he made the unpleasant discovery that there were no lightbulbs in the freaking sockets. It was the middle of the night! Zim could at least have the common curtsy to have some lighting installed, considering that his only regular visitor was, in fact, human.

"Zim? Hey, Zim? Where are you, you fanged freak of nature?"

No answer.

Dib growled, considered turning back, and then stalked forwards into the blackness. Almost immediately, he kicked over something about knee-high that bounced over the ground with a clink, rolling to rest against several other similarly sized objects. Dib frowned and bent, scooping up one of the. . . things.

"A. . . margarita in a can? What?" He picked up another, then another. "Beer? Wine? What is this? Did some college kids break in here and throw a party?" Then another, more important thought. "Crap! Did Zim freaking kill them?!"

Dib jumped to his feet and spun around, ready to see dead bodies scatted about in the eyes-barely-even-adjusted-to darkness. Instead he caught sight of a pale-skinned teenager reclining on the floor with an excessively happy smile on his excessively fanged face.

"Zim. . ." Dib whispered hesitantly, moving closer with extreme caution. The vampire was completely still. . . almost as if he were dead. Dib leaned over him, brushing a strand of dark hair out of Zim's eyes. He wasn't breathing, but that was normal. . .

Then Zim's head jerked under Dib's fingers and his mismatched eyes slid open, cloudy and unfocused. Dib jumped in surprise, then clamped down on the instinct telling him to run. He was not scared of Zim, not in the slightest. And when he yanked his hand away from Zim's face it was just. . . caution that it was trembling from. After all, everything in this room was pointing towards Zim having just done a bit of serial killing, right down to the loopy smile on his face. In Dib's experience, Zim only got this happy after someone was wandering around with a punctured jugular, and he hadn't been known to leave anyone other than Dib alive after he'd gotten his fangs into them.

"Yo! Zim! You awake, fang boy?" Dib called, trying to snap the vampire out of whatever daze he was in. It worked- the smile slipped away and Zim tilted his chin up slightly as he struggled to focus on Dib's face.

"Oh! Hi Dib! When did you get here?" Dib blinked, confused. That was definitely not Zim's normal tone of voice. It was lilting, high-pitched, and kind of. . . wobbly, in a weird way.

"Zim. . ?" Dib asked again, drawing back slightly, less sure of the answer this time.

"Mmm-hmm. Oooh, what's that thing you always say after I eat? It's. . . eh. . ." Zim trailed off, confusion etched on his features, then giggled and continued happily when he came across the right words. "Oh yeah, 'I can't feel my feet!'" Zim let out a breathy chuckle, then went back to staring absently at the ceiling.

Dib's node wrinkled as he finally placed the smell coming off of Zim's breath; alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol. Oh my God. Dib thought, eyes widening. He's freaking drunk.

Then, as an archenemy usually did when finding his enemy in a moment of weakness, his thoughts strayed to how he could twist this situation to his advantage. Almost without him thinking about it, his fingers slowly slipped to rest on the holster of his stake, toying with the thick, braided binding.

And then he was slamming into something hard, sliding to rest against the floor with his eyes tearing up from the stinging in his back and side. He blinked away the blur and realized, rather belatedly, that he was now about fifty feet away from Zim, at the very end of a corridor leading off from the entryway. Dib straightened up, rather painfully, and started making his way back over the worn carpet that eventually gave way to equally worn floorboards.

Did he just. . . toss me all the way over here? I mean, Zim's strong and all, but he's never thrown me that far before. . .

Zim just lay there, blowing bubbles out of his own spit and humming happily to himself.

"Uh. . . Zim, did you just. . ." Urgh, it hurt to breathe. Zim seemed to get the gist of what Dib was saying though, because he popped the latest bubble and replied in a roundabout sort of way.

"Sorry about that, Dibbers. . . Dibberino. . . Dee-dee. . . I just kinda like my chest un-pin-cushioned. . . heheh, 'cushion'. . . that's a funny word! Shh. . . shh. . . cushh. . ."

Realizing that any moment Zim was about to go back to blowing spit bubbles, Dib swung the conversation back on track as he flopped down, cross-legged, next to Zim. His ribs felt like they might be shifting back into place by now. . .

"So do you, like. . . hold back when you're usually fighting with me?"

"Mebbe a li'l bit. Jus' a li'l." The idea terrified Dib. Zim was already too much for him to handle, if he was actually more powerful than he was letting on there was no way Dib was going to be able to take him down as things stood. It looked like plan follow-Zim-until-he-slips-up was back in place over plan stake-Zim-when-he's-drunk, if only because apparently he was even more dangerous now.

Speaking of which. "Okay, the beer and wine I understand. Kind of. But. . . what's with the margaritas in a can?"

Zim rolled his eyes, as well as his entire head. He had trouble refocusing on Dib afterwards and had to blow his shock of electric green hair out of his eyes. "They're not margaritas in a can. They're parties in a can." And so saying, Zim started trying to make a snow angel out of the landscape of black his jacket made underneath him. Dib wondered when exactly he'd taken it off- this house was by no means warm- then cut the wondering in favor of gratitude that he hadn't taken off any other articles of clothing. Like his pants.

"Parties in a can? Wha. . . even if that was true, why would you drink that? You're so drunk you look about ready to. . . to. . ." Dib couldn't even think of a scenario stupid enough for how drunk Zim was.

"Vampires don't get drunk, Dib. Duh." Zim had given up on his angel and was staring at his feet like he'd never seen them before in his life.

Oooh, look, he's only wearing one shoe. "Zim, who the flirk told you that vampires can't get drunk?"

"Th. . . the purple elephant. . ." Zim gestured to the general area off of his left side, then reached out with both hands to try to get to his feet. When he couldn't reach without sitting up- something that was beyond his power at this point- he dropped his arms to the floor before picking them up and trying again.

"And. . . there was a purple elephant in the room talking to you. . . before you drank enough alcohol to kill a water buffalo? Zim, when you're sober, I'm taking you in for testing because either you were already high or you're just plain crazy."

"My feet don't match." Zim muttered despondently. He was still trying to grab his foot, so Dib growled under his breath and reluctantly wrapped his hand around Zim's ankle. He lifted it up into the range of Zim's hand and Zim made a happy, babylike noise before he began hugging his knee.

"You look like a three-year old." Dib remarked. Zim either didn't hear him or was too preoccupied with his foot to notice. "Still. . . I can't really leave you here. . ." Dib trailed off. He could, in fact, leave Zim right here, but the fact of the matter was that with the door unlocked and bottles of booze tossed around the room like confetti the place was going to attract teenagers like flies to roadkill. He wasn't so much worried about Zim as he was worried that Zim would decide he was hungry. . .

Flirk, he shouldn't have to be dealing with this! This was what a vampire's zombie servants were for, helping to assist their master when he was weakened in any way. Vampire slayers weren't supposed to have to be the designated drivers!

Oh, God, that reminded him. . . "Zim, where's Gir and Mimi?"

Zim stopped trying to cram his foot in his mouth for a moment as he replied, still in that lilting tone. "I dunno. Maybe they're on a date? They should be on a date. Are we on a date? We should kiss."

Dib leapt to his feet and smiled pleasantly, changing the subject while feeling a mad heat rising to his cheeks. If you say yes now, then it's your fault. Every other time he's kissed you it's been the blood loss, but now you're fine and he's fall-down drunk. That's just wrong, no matter how you look at it. Even if you. . . really don't want to look at it that closely. . .

"You know what Zim? You're going to have a killer headache in the morning, so I think you should go up to your room now, okay?"

"But I don' wanna. . ." Zim whined, big, mismatched eyes pouting up at Dib. Jesus, he was three.

"Zim, you gotta go to sleep now alright?"

Zim turned his nose up and looked away from Dib, doing his best to radiate contempt while gnawing absently on his big toe. "I'm not listnin to you. Th' pink elephant says you. . . you're a bad infl. . . influew. . . influence."

"I thought the elephant was purple."

Zim rolled his eyes. Dib barely caught it through the dark curtain of hair that had flopped back over his eyes, and had to fight the urge to brush it away. "No, that one's pink. Th' one over yer head is purple."

Dib actually looked up to check before confirming to himself, yep, no flying purple elephants.

"Come on, Zim! You're going to be exhausted in the morning, in a crappy mood, and you'll have a migraine the size of freaking Texas. The least you can do is go to sleep."

"You're not my mother. You can't tell me what to do."

Your mother's probably been dead for hundreds of years, Dib thought. Then, well, when in Rome. . .

"Actually, Zim, I am your mother. I'm going to go set up your bed, then you're going to climb up those stairs and get into it or. . . or you're grounded, young man! Do you hear me?"

"Yes mom. . ." Zim muttered.

Dib nodded in satisfaction, tried not to burst into laughter, and swept up the stairs.

His only mistake was leaving Zim alone.

"Zim? Look, I made your bed- I don't want to know why your pillow was on the roof- and. . . Zim? Zim?"

The door was open.

Zim was gone.