Ch 5:

I love yall. Fair warning there will be mentions of genitalia, dysphoria and sexual shenanigans. I have the best Zim and Dib, I keep them in a shoebox and make them look like deviantart ocs for no damn reason and then inflict their tomfoolery on yall :3

tldr I love yall watch out for genitals and vomit rawr eks dee

XxzimisinhellrightnowxX

He flicks between memories. Figures loom over him. He doesn't know who they are. He obeys. He doesn't want to but he does want to and he does exactly what he's told for no reason and everything he does, he does it wrong. His body is barely his to control and nobody gives him the attention he deserves and he sulks, before bouncing back, determined to do better. New figures loom. Everything looms. He is incredibly small. Everything is metal and pink and purple and cold. Until the stark, lavender grey is taken over with explosions. His fault. His wonderful plan is bad. He is very bad. He doesn't know why. Hot painful grease and cold, impossible-to-clean grease surrounds him; the metal is blue and green and rusted. More looming, more obeying, lots of grease and cleaning. No exceptions. No rest. Constant noise. Chatter from every memory clutters his brain; he can't understand any of it. He can't think in words. It's terrifying. Just vague, blurry visuals and concepts and emotions (emotions are bad, feeling is bad, grease and cold and hot and noise are all bad, everything is bad).

Then soft green, under his boots. Blue and grey skies. Quiet, muffled background noise. Something is expected of him. It can wait. Flashing lights he doesn't have to watch. Little noises from tiny, friendly creatures.

Another looming figure. But this one has no control over him. He is free to throw things and scream and lash out when it annoys him. It doesn't dare try to control him. He is dangerous and a threat and an equal.

The DIB.

He can remember one word. And nothing else. And he hurts. And he is free.

Finally.

He vomits all over himself.

Dib and Zim are in a barbed-wire cage, barely big enough to hold both of them sitting. They built the cage, or were each born with their own and got tangled up together, or something. All Dib knows is that pulling away hurts. He has spent years trying to unlock it, or cut his way out, only to come away with torn up hands and broken and rusted tools, never even making a scratch on the offending wire. He hasn't made an inch of progress. He never stops; the gadgets he builds to attempt to break out become more elaborate and dangerous. His hands are burned from the failed gadgets, his body is covered in cuts from the wire. He has no idea where the ideas and materials come from. He never stops building for more than five minutes, just to take a break, and every time he takes a break they fight.

Zim never tries to escape. He just sits there in between fights, staring down, picking at the dirty concrete ground that the wire seems to have grown out of with his claws. Dib stops, panting for breath, and coughs out an insult. The words are garbled nonsense, but the condescension and cadence of whatever he hacks out is innate. Zim's head snaps up, he snarls, pounces at Dib, and they throw each other into the walls in hopes of making room for themselves. In both inhabitants' eyes, it is their cage, they might have spent their whole life in it, and cage living was just as splendid as it could be, until the other one showed up to do naught but shriek and annoy and injure.

Eventually they wear each other out. They sit pressed against the barbed walls. The only way to heal is to sit in the center, but they won't move closer. They certainly aren't taking turns. They can either fucking snuggle, or bleed out. Or someone has to die.

Dib wakes up sweating. Stupid barbed wire dream. Brains can literally conjure up anything; he could be having sex on a beach with the fucking genitalia he wants, inside of him or otherwise, or at a cool concert without being overwhelmed to the point of nausea, or talking to somebody who treats him like a human being. The last two don't count as amazing experiences, they're generally pretty normal things, but the only way they'll happen for Dib is in a particularly lucky dream. God, he's pathetic. Can't even dream about something that isn't the freaky-looking monster who wants to kill him. Can't even have the pleasure of a normal wet dream. Why does the barbed wire dream make him wet every time it happens, even after his hell of a day?

Dib blinks, his glasses digging into his perfectly normal-sized head. The blur of movement in front of him is a Truetube video about the "Top 10 Real, Legitimate sightings of the Fresno Nightcrawlers." The company that runs Truetube keeps getting sued for claiming that everything on the platform is 100% accurate, despite not bothering with any content moderation whatsoever. Nobody has beat them yet. Another mystery Dib has been wanting to solve; surely something so stupid yet so successful must have a supernatural force behind it. Dib is very busy, shamefully undervalued, and remarkably underpaid (he has access to all of Dad's money, but still. He should definitely be paid).

Dib's pity party is gracelessly interrupted by retching, then choking, then more retching. He shoves himself off the desk, adjusts his grime-coated glasses, and pushes his hair out of his eyes. He turns just in time to hear a second round of choking, and a third round of retching. And Dib sees Zim, in all his disgusting viscera, lilac vomit mixed with his pretty pink blood pouring out of his open mouth and pooling on Dib's bedroom floor.

Zim is a hellish parody of every new, sexy reboot of Frankenstein's monster. He is held together with neon thread, most of which is glittery and thick, meant for embroidering threatening symbols on robotic plushies rather than medical use. Blue, pink, purple, and orange thread tug the mismatched patches of skin together — it's only visible in the gaps between bandages, but the difference is glaring. Dib prays that Zim is too out of it to notice. He doesn't want to defend choices made under surgical duress right now. He wants another drink.

Zim's antennae and eyes twitch, trying to gather information about his surroundings between heaves. He hurts. He can barely breathe. Everything is blurry. His abdomen tenses up again; he wishes he could be unconscious again, preferably forever. Thoughts come to him in short, wordless, pain- and terror-fueled bursts. The tall one. Dib. Dib made this happen. Rage builds in him, but it's deftly knocked over by another heave. This is all very bad, very unpleasant, he knows there is a Dib, maybe the Dib would be so gracious as to put Zim out of his agony.

Another heave. Pain bad make pain go away. Tastes bad. Yuck. Bad bad pain bad. Dib fix or end. Please, good fuck. All bad. Dib. Dib. Pain. Dib.

That little croak. It's the first thing Zim has 'said' since his pak shattered and threw him off like dead weight, and it almost sounds like the name of his very least favorite human. It isn't, because Irken vocal cords are good for almost nothing but chirping, not without their pak to auto-translate and project a faux 'voice' so they can properly communicate with and subjugate all the other filthy creatures in the universe. And on top of that, Zim's throat has been subjugated to a hell of a lot of water, and therefore a lot of Earth's pollution. It is torn the fuck up and bleeding. It is about to expel vomit yet again.

Zim knows very little and remembers almost none of this.

Dib knows absolutely none of this. But it certainly sounded like Zim said his name.

Earth's biggest disappointment staggers over to Irk's shortest, most prolific disappointment. Dib turns Zim over and gingerly pats him on the back, wincing as the wet, pasty blood and vomit spills everywhere, smearing across his hands. Zim thanks him by projectile vomiting onto Dib's third favorite shirt. Dib opens his mouth to yell at Zim, as if that might help things or somehow teach him a lesson. He shrieks in pain instead. The vomit burns like acid, like pineapple and bleach on steroids. He rips the shirt off as he runs out of the world's most inadequate hospital room, leaving the shuddering, broken spacebug to fend for himself.

After the most painful shower of his short life, Dib sprints back to his bedroom, praying for either the best or the very worst. The in-between is killing him. Not even Zim deserves whatever this is. Dib certainly doesn't.

Neither of his wishes come true. Zim lies on his stomach, his head hanging off the bed, weakly vomiting a few tablespoons at a time. Dib watches, shivering, wrapped in a towel. Oh. Right. Okay. He lays the towel beside the bed to hopefully soak up any further expulsions, then throws on something resembling clothes and ventures out to find towels.

Naturally, the hall closet is out. Dib tries knocking on Gaz's bedroom door: nothing. Maybe because it's sometime around 4 am. He thinks. He stumbles downstairs and is greeted with the familiar sounds of Bloatykart. Gaz doesn't bother to look away from the screen, and Gir and Minimoose are too enthralled with driving in circles and winning, respectively, to even notice Dib's presence.

Dib bends over, panting. You'd think he would be in better shape with all the constant sparring, but no. That would be too convenient. "Gaz."

"Busy." Gaz's character runs into something, eats something else, and magically teleports to the finish line. It's more complicated than Floopsy Squish, and therefore Dib doesn't have any idea what's going on. In his defense, video games are pointless and stupid, so long as somebody other than Gaz is asking.

"Gaz please, I really need your help, we're out of towels –"

"I think you should leave me alone, Dib."

"But –"

"I still have alien blood matted in my hair. Leave. Me. Alone."

Dib looks over Gaz. She's fortunately in clean pjs, but the post-surgery shower she took, a shower that lasted so long Dib passed out before getting a chance to even rinse off some of his own grime and bodily fluids, barely made a dent in her fucked up hair. At one point, Zim had half-woken up and grabbed onto her hair in a panic, coating it in his blood-slime-goop. Looks like it hardened. Shit.

"Gaz, I'm so sorry."

"Get me a soda."

Dib obliges. Retching sounds echo down from upstairs. Gaz glances up, then returns to gaming, half-assed babysitting, and consuming Poop Stardust and GLOW Cheezos. "Gross."

"Yeah. I came down to ask for towels."

"Use old clothes or something. They don't actually have to be towels, dumbass."

Dib digs through the hallway closet until he finds a bin of his and Gaz's old clothes. He stifles the old familiar worry that when his dad cloned himself, he went a bit heavy on the engineering capabilities and didn't bother putting in any common sense. Gaz gets to just be an ordinary test tube baby with common sense and random genetics like every other kid, and no expectations to run the largest company in the world. Some people have all the luck, and all they have to suffer is some alien blood in their hair. And that one time she got cursed, perhaps on purpose, by Dib. And the time he almost ruined the annual chance they got to eat out with their dad. And the time he made her miss the GameSlave 2 Launch so he could watch an episode of Mysterious Mysteries. And the thing he did to Bitey the Vampire. And all the other things Dib's done to her. Is he really the selfish one?

As he hauls the bin of old, nerdy, emo clothes into his childhood bedroom, Dib decides that of course he's the selfish one; he's just like dad. So technically it's Dad's fault. Not his. But he's still selfish. He makes a note to be bitter towards both himself and his father later, as he mops up alien vomit (more accurately, he scoops it up in old shirts and hopes the washing machine wasn't programmed to be sentient within the past few days).

Zim's soft whimpering and slap of vomit-soaked fabric on more vomit-soaked fabric is an uneasy background to Dib's 200th disgusting task of the day, but it beats listening to screaming and being actively vomited on. He moves quickly and holds his breath, trying not to breathe in any toxic fumes. It doesn't really smell bad, or bad at all — maybe slightly metallic and sweet? But fuck knows what Zim is made out of. For all Dib knows, the Frankenstein's gremlin is coughing up purple bleach. Or radioactive lavender sludge.

Dib makes countless, tiresome trips between the bathroom, to grab cleaning supplies, the laundry room, to throw vomit-covered shirts into the washing machine, and the bedroom, to continue his fool's errand. Zim continues to vomit once every few minutes. Dib pities and hates Zim more with every new pile of vomit, each one a semi-conscious attempt to undo Dib's hard work.

Dib cleans, he washes, he flinches every time he uses a new cleaning chemical, but nothing reacts violently to Zim's body fluids. A load of laundry is finished, a new one is started. Zim vomits less and less often, in decreasing amounts, then not at all. He occasionally croaks out something in Dib's direction. Dib does not know what anything his raspy, shredded vocal cords produce means.

Neither does Zim.

Dib runs another load of laundry. He collapses on a pile of pillows and blankets, and occasionally the floor or his desk chair, in between bursts of cleaning. The sun rises. The soft noise from downstairs peters out; footsteps in the hall pass him and head towards Gaz's room. Dib gingerly lifts Zim down onto the pile of blankets, praying that the stitches will hold. They do. Zim sobs. Dib is so gross, and everything hurts. He changes the sheets and quilt and pillows and literally everything he can pull off of his bed; he runs another load of laundry. The first load is still gross somehow. He'll have to run it again. He changes Zim's bandages as quickly as possible, so he doesn't have to look at the ones that are soaked in blood anymore. Maybe it'll help Zim heal or something, but mainly it will be more pleasant to look at and less likely to get his belongings dirty again. Mothy is in a sorry state, and currently being hurled around in the washing machine. The despicable bug destroys everything he touches. And so does Dib.

As he unwraps the bandages, Dib's eyes glaze over. He can barely process how Zim's body looks now; the transparent windows into unfamiliar organs floating in pink blood will be the most fascinating thing in the world in maybe a week or so. But now they are unhealed and horrifying and puckered at the edges and stitched together haphazardly with green skin and Dib would like to not see any of this anymore. New bandages are applied, eliciting only minor shrieks of pain. He lifts Zim back onto the clean sheets. The laundry is moved over. Dib goes on Zoomazon and orders an air mattress, an air pump, a shit ton of towels and sheets, laundry detergent, bandages, weapon-grade shampoo, and conditioner. And a vintage deadstock Vampire Piggy Hunter keychain and stuffie bundle off of HereTakeIt. It was originally going to be a birthday present; it took ages to find. But Gaz deserves extra presents this year.

More laundry, a well deserved shower, and a half bowl of cereal later, Dib finally gets to rest. He passes out, half of his body lying on the hard, unforgiving floor, half on assorted piles of clean laundry. He curls up three feet away from his sworn enemy, who clutches a small mothman plush in his pained, fitful sleep.