AN: I just re-read Invader Zim's four pages comic about him ruling the Earth. It shows. And also, I want a ruling hat.

December 22

On the ninth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…nine intrusive questions.

Dib loved going into space. The fulfillment of his childhood dream always brought a giddy feeling inside his belly, and he couldn't suppress a smile watching the stars from the cockpit of Tak's ship. Even if he had to do something as boring as haul the Megadoomer to the lunar base, he enjoyed every second of it.

"No one can ever grow tired of this," he thought to himself.

'Dib-monkey!' said Zim trough the communicator. 'I'm boooooooooooooooored!'

"…except Zim…" completed Dib to himself, before answering: 'What do you want me to do about it?'

'Entertain me!'

'…How? Do you want me to tell you jokes, or what?'

'Pff, human humor is laughable! In the not-funny way! And GIR has already told me all the blonde jokes in existence. Propose something else!'

'Damn, you're a difficult one,' he grumbled to Zim's face on the screen. 'Okay, huh… How about we play "I spy"? No, screw that, there's nothing besides stars in the black void of space. Or maybe we can play Twenty Questions.'

'What is that foolishness?'

'I think of a word, and you ask me questions I can only answer by yes or no and…'

'BO-RING!'

'Then why don't you propose something, misterAlmighty Invader?'

'HA! You finally admit that Zim is an AMAZING IRKEN INVADER THAT WILL RULE YOUR FILTHY PLANET WITH AN IRON FIST AND SMASH ALL OF YOU UNDER MY INCREDIBLY FASHIONABLE PLATFORM BOOTS!'

'Stop yelling in the communicator,' sighed Dib. 'You're such a diva…'

'Oh, Zim knows!' he smiled. 'Zim will ask YOU questions, and you will answer them!'

'And why would I do that?' asked Dib irritably.

'Because I have photographic evidence of you stealing your sibling-unit's Gameslave batteries when you forgot to charge your laptop.'

'You… you wouldn't do that!' said Dib, his voice breaking in fear. 'That's below the belt!'

A small smirk appeared on Zim's face for a second when he heard the words "below the belt". It was gone in a flash, though.

'You're right, I won't do it… during our truce,' smirked the Invader. ' But I promise nothing after Christmas… Are you going to cooperate, Dibbeh?'

'All right, I will,' groaned Dib, wondering where the "Dibbeh" had come from. 'Ask away.'

Zim seemed to think for a moment, then lifted both his antennas.

'You don't seem to have a mother unit like the rest of the worm-babies,' he noted. 'Aren't you supposed to have one?'

Dib frowned, unsure about how to answer that. Could this information be useful to his enemy in the future? Maybe. But he had to admit, he was curious about the questions Zim would ask him. And the thought of Gaz finding about that battery theft was enough to make him comply.

'I don't have a mother,' he answered in a neutral voice. 'I discovered recently that I'm one of dad's many experiments.'

'What, did he try to clone a mongoose and failed?'

'Har har, now who's the comedian?' said Dib. 'No, he cloned himself. I was one of the first successfully cloned humans. Although the scientists say I'm a failed prototype because I don't think and act like my dad…'

'Thank Irk,' mumbled Zim. 'Your parental unit may be very nice and a good conversationalist, he is still boring as a parking structure planet.'

'I think my dad keeps me because he doesn't like to fail his experiments. He's been trying to brainwash me for years now, leading me to REAL SCIENCE instead of paranormal studies…'

'But I remember you leaving your paradigm-moral studies before. Didn't you try working with your parental unit?'

'Yeah, for a while…'

'Why did you leave, if it was what he wanted?'

'Because it was boring as hell!' exclaimed Dib, louder than he expected. 'Everything was so easy! There was no life and death situation, just research! Almost all the Earth's mysteries have already been uncovered, half of them by my dad! The only remaining stuff I had a small chance of discovering by myself was the paranormal, because he refused to touch any of it!'

He stopped ranting and tried to catch his breath. It was surprisingly relieving to let it out like that in the open. On the screen, Zim had raised an interrogative antenna but kept to himself in contemplative silence.

'So that's what motivated you to pursue Bigfeet and Count Chocula,' realized Zim. 'The human craving to do exactly the opposite of what the parental-units want.'

'It sounds so lame put like that…' grumbled Dib.

'Should I thank your progenitor for all the times you almost dissected me, then?' asked Zim with a heavy dose of sarcasm.

'Nah, that's just you, Zim,' replied Dib with a amused smile. 'I'm just dying to see what a squeedly-spooch looks like.'

'Why don't you use your X-ray goggles?'

'But it's not the same thiiiiing,' whined Dib playfully. 'Putting alien guts into labeled jars just has this wonderful appeal, you know?'

'So why do I still have my precious squeedly-spooch? You had the occasion to remove it several times over the years, Dib.'

The teenager lost his smile. On the screen, Zim's face was serious, almost inquisitive.

'I… I… I don't really know… I… Why are you asking me this, anyway?'

'Curiosity.'

'That's not a good reason!'

'Just answer, Dib.'

'I… I never dissected you for the same reason you never got around to kill me, is that good enough?'

Zim kept silent for a moment, then nodded.

'It is satisfying,' he answered.

An awkward silence stretched. Dib fidgeted under Zim's stare.

'How about another question?' proposed Dib, trying to change the subject.

'Well enough. Hm… Oh! Zim knows! Why haven't you managed to find a pitiful mate yet?'

'A mate?' repeated Dib. 'What, like a girlfriend?'

'…take it as you want,' answered the Invader. 'So, why? Are you too ugly or too stinky for any hyumun female to choose? Oh, I know! Your head is too big!'

'It's not!' came the automatic answer. 'And I'm not dating because I find all girls my age to be shallow and dumb. I wouldn't go out with a girl that's pretty but that thinks Fibonacci is an Italian shoe designer!'

'Fibo…huh?'

'A human scientist that elaborated a sequence using numbers and bunnies,' explained Dib with a roll of the eyes. 'The truth is, I never found any of them interesting enough so I could risk covering myself in shame trying to ask them out. Not like the other guys in Hi Skool. Their ridiculous macho male antics get on my nerves. I'm not that desperate of getting laid,' he concluded with a scoff.

Zim opened his mouth to retort something, seemed to change his mind, closed it and tried to suppress an amused smile.

'…Maybe you don't like human girls…' he proposed very helpfully.

'I do like them!' snapped back Dib. 'They're pretty, and, huh… sometimes funny, and… very, huh… complicated… And… Hey, I did almost go out with a girl! So I'm not a total dating virgin!'

'Huh? Who was that? Zim does not recall any of these pig-smellies ever approaching you, except the metal-mouth-monster, of course.'

Dib grumbled something, his eyes shifting away from the screen.

'What was that?' asked Zim.

'…It was Tak,' repeated Dib, still not catching his eye.

One or two seconds passed in complete silence. Then Zim burst out laughing.

'Oh, Irk, this is PRICELESS!' he shouted with glee. 'The only female that managed to catch your eye in all these years was not even HUMAN!'

'I didn't know that at first!' retorted Dib

While Zim kept giggling, Dib crossed his arms and frowned.

'She was the first one that was actually nice to me,' he mumbled. 'She listened. And she hated you. It was good enough for me, at the time…'

Zim took a moment to calm himself and tried to suppress his remaining snickers.

'Sooooooo… You have a thing for aliens,' he concluded. 'I am not surprised.'

'Don't generalize,' warned Dib.

'Do you like her?'

'Huh?' said Dib. 'I don't know, I haven't seen her in ages, and… I think I may have liked her before… I'm not sure, it's been a really long time, you know?'

'Would you do her?'

'What?!? What kind of question is that?'

'The interesting kind.'

'It has no relevance whatsoever!'

'You would be surprised, Dibbeh. Aaaaaaand don't forget I have these photos…'

'But… but… Geez, alright. I'll answer, just let me think a moment. You mean, would I want to sleep with her as an Irken or as a human?'

'A hologram is only good for the eyes,' noted Zim. 'So?'

'…maybe,' mumbled Dib. 'I'm not totally… adverse… to experimenting…' he said without meeting Zim's eye.

'Yes, I know that,' answered the Invader without thinking.

Dib crossed his arms and kept his frown on the moon that kept getting bigger against the blackness of space. There was this touchy subject again.

'…Dib?' asked Zim tentatively. 'If the occasion ever presents itself… Let's say that I manage to rule the Earth but I realize the humans are still morons so I want to leave this ball of filth… Would you come with me to ride giant bunnies and drink space sodas?'

Dib's eyebrows rose up, surprise evident on his face. He wasn't expecting anything like that.

'…Where did that came from?' he asked, bewildered.

'Just answer, Dib,' asked Zim with a serious tone.

'I… No! I'm pretty sure you'd leave the Earth with giant robots that would terrorize the humans and… What am I saying, of course you won't ever be able to rule the Earth, because I'll be stopping you at every turn! And why would you leave it anyway? Do you want to leave?' he finished with a panicked edge.

'…Maybe. Would you come with me?'

'…Maybe…'

The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken revelations. There it was, the undeniable truth between them, the one that refused to be spoken out loud but existed nonetheless.

'You said lots of things, last Christmas,' said Zim. 'Have you changed your mind, since?'

'…I don't know why you ask me that…' whispered Dib. 'Please don't talk about this, it's been hard enough without you mocking me, Zim…'

But Zim only got closer to the screen and narrowed his eyes, antennas alert.

'Tell me, Dib, what you remember from the other night.'

'The other night? The one where I fell asleep during the movie?'

Zim nodded.

'Huh, nothing much,' admitted Dib, puzzled by the sudden subject change. 'I remember being annoyed and tired and hungry and horn… yeah. Hem. And after that I ate pizza and drank that Vortian alcohol and talked with you and I guess I must have fallen asleep during that, sorry. Next thing I knew I was waking up the next morning, why do you…'

He stopped right in the middle of the sentence. He did remember something out of the ordinary. The dream. The very vivid, very graphic, very detailed, very imaginative dream he had that night.

'I remember your smell,' he realized out loud. 'And the texture of your skin. I remember your claws scratching my back and your teeth on my neck. I remember… Zim, why do I remember the face you make when you come?!?'

Zim kept silent, his antennas flattened against his head in a posture akin to shame, or at least embarrassment. But that couldn't be, Zim was unable to even get the concept of these emotions.

'ZIM!' yelled Dib over the communicator. 'Tell me what happened that night! Tell me it was all a dream!'

'It wasn't, Dib,' answered Zim.

'…did we… did we have…'

'We had hot, sweaty, kinky sex on my living room couch,' completed the alien.

Dib's mouth hung open for a moment, trying to place together the pieces of the puzzle. If they did… Oh my God… How come he didn't remember any of it? The only think that felt real was the warm feeling of the Linaru in his system…

'You FUCKER!' he shouted. 'You DRUGGED me!'

'Wait, Linaru is not a drug, not by Universal standards…' tried to explain Zim.

'Don't try to diminish it! You fucking drugged me so you could abuse of my drunken state! You knew I wouldn't say no! And you knew I would forget everything come the morning! You BASTARD!'

'Dib, wait, you don't…'

Dib cut the transmission before he got the urge to smash his fist into Zim's face on the screen.

"This cannot be happening! Why?!? That damned little alien FUCKER! Fuck, I wanted this, but not like that!"

He realized with relief that they were close to the lunar base. They entered the hangar, placed both Megadoomers on the floor and closed the garage-like door behind them. As soon as he turned off his engines, Dib got off Tak's ship and walked out of the room, without a word.

Zim watched him go, antennas dropped with an emotion that made his squeedly-spooch turn upside-down. It felt as if Minimoose was gently chewing on his head…

AN: Yeah, it couldn't all be sunshine and happiness between those two, we still have three days left ;)