Dib woke up to Zim straddling him with goggles on, a look of concentration on his face, and his tongue out. He held a strip of cloth in his gloves.
"Zim, what are you doing?"
"Waiting for you to wake up." Zim immediately pressed the cloth to Dib's eyes, reaching around his head to tie it. Dib could see light, but nothing else.
"What the hell-"
"I want to show you something, and I'm not going to let you stumble across it on your own and ruin the surprise." His weight lifted from his mattress, and Dib slid off it behind him, narrowly avoiding banging his knee the bedside table. Zim cleared his throat, so Dib stumbled towards him.
"Can't you just… lead me there without it? I can't exactly see into the room until I get there."
"If you take the blindfold off, I'm going to kick you," Zim warned, moving around Dib to push at his butt and make him move. Dib started for the door, just grazing the frame as he crossed through.
"Okay, okay, sheesh. Are you sure you should be walking this much? How far is this room?"
"Zim is fine, now cease your blabbering." Zim yanked at Dib's shirt from the left to make him turn. "I have the hover disk for moving when you're asleep, for your information."
"Why have you been making me carry you around, then?" Dib couldn't help a smirk, and Zim's grip tightened on his shirt.
"It was just- none of your business!"
"Aw, you like me holding you, don't you?" Dib reached back for where he figured Zim's head was, flailing for a few seconds before managing to pat his head, getting a half-hearted swipe at his arm in return.
"Make quiet, Dib, to prepare for the most surprising surprise!"
Dib stuck his hands out in front of him. "How far is it?"
"Eh, with your legs… maybe three minutes?" Zim swayed against Dib, leaning his full weight on him.
"Zim, if I just take off the blindfold I can carry you wherever-"
"No!" Zim snapped out, sucking in a breath before marching forward. "Just follow my footsteps!"
Dib groaned, hands moving in circles as he followed the sound of Zim's voice. Luckily, he couldn't move very fast anymore. Attempting to take the blindfold off got a hiss from Zim, but more than once, Zim had to stop to get his wind back anyway. Finally, they made it- in probably double the time Zim had predicted. There was the buzz and swish of a door opening, and Dib could hear the whip of air as Zim gestured with a snap. "You may unblind yourself now and behold!"
Dib untied the blindfold, blinking before Zim handed him his glasses. The room was violet, sparkling dots embedded in the walls and on the ceiling to simulate stars. In the corner floated the crib, Gir settled in it and sucking on one of his feet. There was an empty shelf behind it, and the toys they'd bought had been settled in a neat pile on the opposite end. A closet to the pile's left had baby clothes hung inside of it. Soft carpeting was on the ground, a dark blue with swirly green patterns that Dib liked immediately.
"We needed a room, no?" Zim looked up at Dib, who didn't notice until he glanced down at him.
"I was so focused on the little stuff I forgot she'd need somewhere to sleep," Dib admitted, the breath knocked out of him that Zim had even thought of this. "Did you… lookup nurseries online or something?"
"I did!" Zim tried to puff out his chest, but the effect was dampened by the fact that he was mostly just thrusting his stomach forward.
Dib walked into the room, stuffing the blindfold into his pajama pockets as he ran his fingers along the wall. There were tiny dips were the glowing dots were. "Is this a real star map?"
"It's what the stars look like from Irk."
"Not super useful to a baby raised on Earth," Dib said, but his chest twisted at that. "Do you… ever miss Irk?"
"Pssh, no. The only people who stay on-planet are smeets during their training, once you're assigned you're sent somewhere else." Zim waved a hand, his other arm settled on top of his stomach. Dib noted with some amusement that the shirt he was in today had Casper the friendly ghost on it.
"Really? I'll have to mark that one down," Dib said, curling his fingers around the top of the crib. "Hey, you finished it!"
Zim snapped the band of his goggles, "Almost finished it. I dropped the wrench and Gir won't pick it up for me."
"You've gotta lean down, down down, the burning ring of fire~ " Gir sang. Dib raised an eyebrow.
"Didn't I tell you I'd help?"
"It was going to be a surprise! You are adequately surprised, are you not?" His antennae twitched, and Dib looked around the room again.
"Yeah, I am. I should have thought of this before, but I was too focused on you." Dib turned to poke at where Zim's nose would be, and Zim's gloves scrabbled at it.
"As you should be!" Zim huffed, leaning against the crib. "I can't believe just how exhausting it is, fueling- wah!" His weight sent the crib floating backward with Gir laughing inside of it, and if his Pak legs hadn't sprung out, he would have slammed down on his side. His eyes widened before the legs retracted suddenly, and Dib lunged forward to grab him. "Curse you, gravity!"
"I think I need to be the one to finish the crib," Dib said, not wanting to admit how much his heart was pounding as he scooped Zim up. "You've only got a few weeks, can you keep accidents to a minimum? We can finish decorating together."
"I don't have accidents, I get sabotaged by everything around me," Zim grumbled, pouting as he crossed his arms.
"Riiiiiight. Let's just bring you over here," Dib said, setting Zim down on a rocking chair. Well, it mostly looked like a rocking chair, but there was a big bag on the side. He bent over at the waist to pull the bag open, which revealed- rocks? Mostly pebbles and gravel he could find in a yard, but there were some pretty crystals mixed in. "Uh, what are these?"
"Don't these come with rocks? When I was doing my research, I found some that are supposed to have healing properties, and the others are for snacks."
"Zim, humans don't eat rocks."
"What about salt?" Zim raised an eyebrow, and Dib held up his finger before thinking for a moment.
"Okay, I guess salt counts," Dib admitted. "And there's some legitimacy to crystal healing, but you usually need to be a proper witch to get much use out of it or they're just a bunch of rocks." He rummaged around in the back, rubbing his thumb over a hunk of Rose Quartz. "Where did you get these, anyway?"
"Gir likes collecting them. He says it's for a 'rock show' he does for the neighbors."
"I do-di-do!" Gir confirmed.
"Huh." Dib had to admit, it was kind of pretty. "We can keep the gems and minerals, they'd make nice decorations and I'll find a good spell to charge them up. We can use all the luck and good health we can get."
Zim perked up, especially when Dib started picking out a few to set on the shelf across the room. He watched with a big grin as Dib pulled the bag off to stick his hand into.
"They were good, no?"
"Yeah, it's a good idea," Dib muttered distractedly as he tried to find all of the crystals, before hearing a series of clicks from behind him. When he turned around, Zim had his eyes closed, hugging himself and rocking slightly with satisfied chirrs. "You're happy about making the room nice, aren't you?" Zim nodded after a few seconds, like it had taken a moment to process Dib's words.
"Oh man, I need to do another log- be right back." He jogged out of the room, trying to remember how many turns he'd made, but it took a good four minutes before he managed to find his room again in the labyrinthine lower labs, and another three and a half to make it back to the nursery.
How had he forgotten about making the room? He'd just… okay, they were worried about keeping Zim healthy, but still, it was a big thing! At least Zim's sense of decor wasn't that bad, and he could hang up some posters, maybe add a changing table if they needed one. Which they probably would. Eugh.
Zim was hugging himself even more tightly, antennae flat against his head with a blanket draped over him, and Dib winced. "I'm right here, Zim."
Zim turned, eyes wide. " There you are!"
"I was only gone for a couple of minutes, I needed to grab my phone." Dib held it up as proof. Zim growled.
"Don't leave without telling me." His tone was low and threatening. Dib hadn't heard him speak like that in ages. Gir was still singing softly to himself from the crib.
"I did tell you- did you not hear me?"
"If you'd told me, I would have heard it, wouldn't I?"
"You were speaking in irken, maybe you couldn't translate the words?" Dib sighed. "I'll make it a short one, okay?"
Zim leveled his stare at Dib for a blistering half-minute before he dug into his Pak to produce his wig, the goggles serving to cover his eyes for now. Dib started the recording.
"This is log eight. It's the... eighteenth I think? I just woke up, the days kind of blur together sometimes." He rubbed his eyes with his free hand. "Sorry for slipping on these, we've been pretty busy. Zim's starting to become more driven by instinct, since he just slipped into irken and he actually thought of finishing the nursery before I did." Dib paused. "And starting it, for that matter. I take it the computer helped?" He looked up.
"If you mean Zim yelled what design he wanted and then made me make the room, yes, I 'helped'," The computer said. "He just got Gir to dump the stuff in here."
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Dib said, snickering when Zim shook a fist up at the ceiling.
"I came up with the ideas!"
"That's not nothing, Zim. You did good."
"I did good?" Zim turned to Dib before nuzzling against his shoulder.
"As you can see, he's also been pretty clingy as of late. He freaked out when I went to go grab this camera to record this."
"I did not 'freak out'!" Zim protested.
"You kind of did."
"I'm docking your access to the Earth internet for backtalk, you know!"
"That's just going to inconvenience you."
"Silence!"
"Anyway, Zim looks about ready to pop," Dib said, reaching for Zim's shirt, but Zim pulled it up before he could. "How far along are you now?"
"Just under eighty-four percent. It's starting to go faster," Zim said. Dib winced, shifting the camera to try and get Zim's stomach without it just filling the whole screen with it.
"Any projected dates?"
"The fourth or fifth would fit the timeline," Zim said, giving it a pat.
"A new year's baby would be fun, but we'll see how things work out. I'm going to finish up work on the crib." He set his hand next to Zim's, and the camera caught his smile when Zim slid his fingers over Dib's. "Dib out."