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Most of the time, when Zim and Dib met, they were still clashing forces, trying to stop the other, expose the other, beat the other, trapped in their eternal dance.
Inevitably, however, they had at one point also started … something else. They weren’t sure when it had started, as with every truce and every breather after a fight they had come closer to it, and before they knew it, things had already snowballed into this reality they were now enacting. And then this new dance had developed its own rhythm as well, a blessed regularity, a script to follow.
And so they sometimes met as not-quite-enemies, and they watched TV, or invented something, or played a game. Dib had room to ramble about his latest supernatural discoveries, Zim had someone to complain to about all the things he needed to complain about.
Sometimes, and they’d never tell a living soul that it meant anything to them, but sometimes they’d even tell each other nice things. Applaud the cleverness and persistence during their latest fight. Agree with each other’s rambling, validate that they had been in the right.
The rhythm was new, unnervingly calm, weirdly simple, but very soon it felt just as stable and comforting as their violent script. Filled with mundane greetings and softer words and the usual insults but with no real heat behind them.
Which was why it hit Zim with so much surprise when Dib stormed into his house while already yelling and spewing insults at him.
“You forgot to turn off the gnomes again! Tell me, is it on purpose after all? Or are you just that stupid?”
Zim opened his mouth, ready to throw back an insult, but Dib was apparently just getting started.
“Though considering how you just tried to destroy the world with fish rain, I’m kind of leaning towards the latter. Why are you this horrible this week?”
Zim blinked at him, still not having sat up from the couch and noting that no, he didn’t want to do this right now. He had had an exhausting morning screaming at Gir already, and he had been prepared for a nice, low-energy movie afternoon. And not this.
“Preposterous! Are you here for movie night or to scream at me?”
“I …” Dib started strongly, then paused. He knew he was in the wrong. He knew that he was being stupid. But his blood was boiling with rage and restlessness, pent up from a day full of disapproval and rejection. “I can do both”, he doubled down, pushing out his chest. “I’ve been angry at you since yesterday, do you know that my arm is still hurting, and …”
“You cannot do both”, Zim growled, deciding to finally jump up. He crossed the room in a few quick steps and pushed his finger into Dib’s chest. “I do not have the energy for this. You’re either going to be a good Dib and shut your mouth-hole, or I will throw you out of my base right now!”
In retaliation, Dib grabbed Zim’s wrist and leaned forward, making him walk a step back. He wasn’t sure why, but he wanted to fight. He needed this to escalate. “You don’t get to tell me to shut up! I had a shit day, why do you have to make it even worse??”
“You’re being ridiculous”, Zim growled back, and then Dib dared to land the first hit, pushing against Zim’s chest. And Zim immediately shoved him back, and then they were grappling. “Zim didn’t do anything.”
“You’re being an asshole”, Dib shot back.
“You’re the one starting a fight out of nowhere!” Zim yelled. “I’m not doing movie night if you’re acting like a trigger-happy insolent child! You would need to be tied down and muzzled before I’d let you stay like this, so get out of my base, now, or I will remove you by force!!”
There was a pause, in which they were both breathing hard, with their hands hanging in the air in a threat of more violence, and Zim waited for either an apology or the agreement to leave.
When Dib finally answered in a quiet voice, it was neither.
“Then do that”, he said, and Zim blinked multiple times.
“Eh? Make you leave?”
It took a while until Dib answered again. “No. The other thing.”
It still didn’t help. Zim frowned, and he let go of Dib again, shoving him away and trying to read his face. But it was nothing like he had ever seen before.
“You want to stay and be good?”
Dib rolled his eyes, and Zim wanted to yell at him but felt too curious now. Dib wouldn’t meet his eyes and there was color clinging to his face, like it did when he was angry or embarrassed.
“I ..nt.. you… ti … n.”
“You’ll need to speak up, Dib-thing.”
“I want you to tie me down”, Dib repeated, hard and angry in spite of the words that made Zim’s mouth fall open. His surprise and confusion must be visible to Dib, as he immediately stumbled to explain himself.
“I just think it might help. Make me feel less on edge. I mean come on, it won’t be the first time you ever tied me down. Uh. You don’t need to, though. If that’s too weird. If you don’t want to.”
Zim stared at him for quite a while, still trying to process the words.
“I want to”, he finally said, and Dib’s head shot up, his eyes finally meeting Zim’s again.
“As much as I do not understand your reasoning behind this at all, I do want to do that”, he explained.
He waited for Dib to reply, but he seemed unusually frozen. So instead, after a few moments, Zim held out his hand and called out for the computer – before he hesitated.
“How long do you want to try this?”
When Dib answered his voice was quiet, and a little deeper than usual. “I don’t know. As long as you want to.”
Zim blinked at him. Something inside him was tingling in an unfamiliar but in a most wonderful way. “An hour, or two, maybe?”
Dib shrugged, and nodded. And Zim nodded back.
“Computer, give me the Flesian ropes, the really soft ones.”
A few moments later, a robot arm came from the ceiling, reaching Zim quite a few handfuls of rope. Dib eyes stuck to them like magnets.
And then Zim reached out, pushing Dib a few steps back, until they were closer to the couch.
“Go on then. Get on your knees”, Zim said.
There was a beat, in which Dib seemed to reconsider once more. But that was to be expected – and when he still knelt down, not once taking his eyes of Zim’s, it made victory all the sweeter.
“Very good. Now lose the coat.”
A frown. “But –“
“It will be in the way”, Zim interrupted him. “I want to do this with you in your t-shirt-garment.”
Another pause. Zim watched Dib bite his lips. And then he pulled the trenchcoat off and threw it on the floor.
“Yes, there you go”, Zim said and walked behind him. Dib’s pulse picked up. This might be his last chance to escape. To opt out, to put a stop to this madness that he had brought upon himself. But somehow still, he didn’t. Zim took his arms, one after the other, and put them tightly behind Dib’s back – and Dib let him.
“Keep them like this.”
Blood thrummed in Zim’s ears as he noticed how effortlessly Dib obeyed. He was feeling breathless, as he took the first of the rope and started to bind it around his arms. He had tied Dib down a million times in the course of their battles already. He didn’t understand why it was different this time. Somehow, Dib’s willingness did something to him that he couldn’t quite comprehend.
“You have to admit, it’s a little stupid for you to let me do this”, he said, while he fastened the ropes around Dib’s wrists, his lower arms, his elbows, his upper arms, snaking the bands tighter and tighter against Dib’s skin. “Getting yourself defenseless, putting yourself completely at my mercy.”
“Shut up”, Dib said, though his voice was weirdly breathless. “We have a truce.”
Zim scoffed, and pulled the ropes tighter, a motion that made Dib take in a sharp breath. “Still”, he smiled. “Years ago, I would have killed to have this kind of power over you. Oh, the things I would have done to you … merely thinking about it makes my skin crawl.”
Dib didn’t answer and for a few moments, silence settled over them, as Zim petted Dib’s head and then started working on his legs, shoving his lower legs closer together before tying the rope around them as well.
When Dib’s voice came again, it was so quiet that Zim nearly didn’t hear. “And now?” he asked, and Zim paused tying the ropes for a moment. “This isn’t years ago. What will you do to do to me now?”
Thoughtfully, Zim let his right hand rest in Dib’s hair. For a while, he played with the strands, furrowing his brow and trying to decide.
“Eh. Probably not that much”, he then answered, honestly. “You’re lucky I had such an exhausting morning! Gir already took all my energy, so for now I’ll just … lean back, enjoy this. Plus, if I don’t start out doing all too horrible things to you, there’s a higher chance you will let me do this again.”
He tangled his finger around some strings of Dib’s hair and pulled harder, angling his face up until he looked at Zim. “Does that sound acceptable?”
Dib, blushing because of the mere mention of a ‘next time’, just rolled his eyes. But when Zim just pulled harder in retaliation, he rolled his eyes again and slipped a quiet “Yes”.
“Very well”, Zim smiled and petted his head, before going back to tying Dib up.
And with every movement, Dib felt his mind slipping deeper. There was just something about being handled and touched and tied up, all his actions becoming controlled by Zim, that made him feel surprisingly … peaceful. He couldn’t do anything. So why choose to do anything at all?
There was a dull nervousness somewhere in there as well, the realization that Zim could now do anything he wanted to him and the fact that Dib had no idea what it would be. It felt, however, like an afterthought – after all Dib knew that it was fully out of his control now.
So instead of focusing on his worries, Dib’s mind was hyper-focused on the sensations of Zim’s hands and the ropes that he bound tightly against his skin.
Zim fastened the next rope around his lower legs and above his lap, so that Dib was forced to keep the kneeling position. And despite Dib being fully immobilized now, Zim couldn’t stop himself from adding two more ropes, snaking them around Dib’s body and tying them as tight as possible without Dib complaining about pain, just so Dib would feel even more restricted. And maybe because he himself thought that Dib looked rather good while completely covered in tight ropes.
“How does it feel?” he asked, his hands on Dib’s shoulders, his legs leaning against his back, and Dib made a thoughtful hum.
“Good”, he answered, noting how slurred his voice sounded.
“Is it painful anywhere?”
“No.”
Zim’s one hand went back to petting his head, and Dib sighed, his shoulders slumping further.
Zim huffed. “You like the touch, don’t you?”
The question made Dib’s face heat, but the shame didn’t feel as intense as it should have right now.
So instead of denying it, he made a pathetic quiet noise that was enough confirmation for Zim.
“Is it just the hair or also the rest of your body?” Zim then asked, and Dib made another one of those quiet noises, and Zim frowned.
“Nod when you like it”, he then said, before letting go of Dib’s hair. And then his fingers covered Dib’s arms, and slowly stroked down.
“Your arms?” he asked.
And after a moment, Dib shyly nodded.
“Your hands?” Zim then asked, brushing Dib’s fingers with his own, painting them, tightening his hands around them.
Dib felt like he couldn’t breathe, as he nodded once more.
And then Zim let go and circled him, kneeled down in front of him and pressed his hand against Dib’s chest.
He let his finger wander over it, one row after another, watching intently as Dib nearly folded in on himself.
“What about your chest?” he asked, and Dib nodded. And closed his eyes, trying to enjoy the touch as much as possible.
“Your legs?” Zim asked then, petting the sides of Dib’s legs and his knees up until his thighs. The motions made Dib squirm a little, but still he obediently nodded.
For a moment after this, Zim stared at the area between Dib’s legs, wondering if this was a place he should also try. He wasn’t leaving any other place out, after all. But he couldn’t deny that this thought made him nervous, made his mouth feel dry, made him unusually insecure – and so, for now, he decided to leave it. He didn’t care if Dib would like that kind of touch. It didn’t matter. This, right now, was something else.
So instead, he stood and moved his hands higher again.
“Your neck and shoulders?” he asked as he gently petted those spaces, and he heard how the Dib’s breath hitched as he closed his claws around his delicate neck. And still, Dib nodded, letting him gently massage those oh-so-vulnerable spaces, his eyes still closed.
“And, I mean we established the hair already, but do you just like the soft petting? Or this as well?” Zim asked, pulling his fingers around some strands of hair, pulling a little firmer – and to his delight, Dib reacted not only with a nod but with the most pathetic of noises he had slipped so far.
“I had no idea you could be this placable and so very submissive, Dib-thing. I have to say, it is a rather good look on you.”
The blush painted his face long before he finally managed to spit out a weak “Fuck you, Zim”.
And Zim let him have that last word and instead just kept petting and pulling at his hair for a while, enjoying how fast Dib’s breath was, and how he sometimes would slip more little breathy moans – but then he announced that he was getting bored.
“I’m going to do some reading now!” he said, sitting down on the couch and letting the computer reach him a tablet. “You just be good and stay there like this.”
Dib opened his eyes, feeling a bit like being ripped out of a dream, and slowly blinked at Zim. And Zim, frowning thoughtfully, reached out his hand and pulled at Dib, leaning him to the side while shuffling closer to Dib himself – until Dib’s body was pressed up against his legs, and his head was on top of his knee.
“Yes, just like this”, Zim said, and let his left hand wander into Dib’s hair again. “Are you still not hurting anywhere?”
“No”, Dib answered, his voice small and like it was coming from far away. He should probably complain about being cushioned against Zim like this. Instead, he instinctively leaned closer and rested his head on its place on Zim’s knee.
He looked at Zim, and for a while, they stared at each other. Zim’s face was unreadable. His hand was unbearably soft in his hair.
“I still don’t get why you’re being like this”, Zim then said. “It’s likely some weird pathetic human-thing that I have no interest in understanding anyway. But –“ he said, and his breath hitched. “- I do like you like this. I really, really do.”
He blinked a few times, looking surprised at his own honesty. And then he looked at his tablet, and after a while, Dib averted his eyes too, instead choosing to look forward so his neck wouldn’t get hurt.
He looked at Zim’s living room floor without really seeing it, watched as it became blurrier and blurrier. His focus laid solely on his own body. On the strain on his arms and on his knees, on how tightly he was bound from every side. On the warm leg he was resting against, on the gentle fingers in his hair. He closed his eyes, noting how his breath evened out, how his pulse got slower, how everything seemed to quiet down.
It felt like no time at all passed until Zim’s voice came to him once more, cutting through the haze like the only thing that mattered.
“How are you feeling? Is your body hurting anywhere?”
Dib managed to press out a “No” as if per default, and then he lost himself again. He felt strangely weightless. And more peaceful than he could remember feeling ever before. He let out a deep sigh, and felt Zim ruffle his hair in turn.
And after not very long, Zim’s voice came to him once more.
“Okay human, that’s been two hours. Is your body hurting by now?”
“No”, Dib answered softly.
Zim hummed skeptically, and leaned forward on the couch, trying to get a better look at Dib. “Regardless”, he said, slowly leaning Dib into a vertical position again and making sure he wouldn’t topple over on his own, before standing up. “The time is up, and I am going to untie you.”
Dib hummed at that, and Zim went to work. Dib focused on the feeling of Zim’s hands against his limbs, on how he was grabbing his arms while loosening the ropes, and the way he put a hand on Dib’s shoulder for support when untying the legs.
And then his limbs started hurting.
The faint movement upon being untied was enough to send pulses of pain crashing through him that made his whole body cramp up.
“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow”, Dib cursed quietly, and slowly started to roll his shoulders and shake his limbs.
“What? What is it?” Zim asked, removing the last of the ropes by now.
“Just … my limbs”, Dib hissed. “My shoulders, ah, my knees. It’s from staying in the same position so long, it’s normal, it’s just …”
He moved his first leg up, trying to stand on it – and let out a string of curses. Zim, who was standing in front of him, reached out his arms the same moment that Dib did, and thankful, Dib leaned his weight on Zim once more.
“You just said you weren’t hurting!” Zim then accused.
“Well, guess I was wrong”, Dib shot back.
“How can you be wrong about something like that??”
“I – I don’t know”, Dib replied, his voice whiny. “I was … pretty dazed. Maybe you should have asked me more insistently.”
And Zim sighed, and then he thumbed Dib’s arms where he was holding him. “Fine. Next time we know to look out for that”, he said, and Dib felt his breath hitch in his throat. And suddenly, without being in the haze from before, he felt embarrassment crash through him so hard he felt he would drown in it. His head turned bright red, and he would have shoved Zim away – but that would probably cause him to fall to the floor.
“Let’s simply … have you sit you on the couch for now, yes? Do you think you can do that?”
“Fine”, Dib answered quietly, and then he took a breath before daring to stand on his second foot as well. He grimaced and whined, but Zim steadily pulled him upwards, and then he sunk down on the couch already, and the pain from his knees lessened again.
“There. Better?”
“It’s fine, really”, Dib answered and rolled his eyes. He was averting looking at Zim and already went on to carefully stretch his limbs once more, trying to get them to a level where they could carry him home as soon as possible.
“Good. Then I’ll get us something to eat”, Zim announced, and Dib froze.
“No, no you don’t need to”, he said and rubbed his face. “It’s – I already spent enough time here. I’ll – in a minute, when my legs are fine again, I’ll just leave. And I’m not even hungry, so –”
Zim loudly scoffed at that. “You lie! Your stomach has betrayed you, it did some of its horrid growling in the last twenty minutes, so I know that your body needs its nutrients!” he accused Dib.
And Dib was honestly surprised and wanted to disagree and call Zim a liar – when his stomach growled again. He looked down at it and blinked.
“It’s just being weird”, he still said. “I really don’t feel hungry.”
“Nonsense!” Zim called out, and then he was walking to the kitchen. “You will eat here! As dizzy as you seem after this, it’s only natural to make sure you won’t keel over the moment you step out of my door.”
He paused in the kitchen doorway, pointing his finger at Dib. “Plus, you probably only have those horrid 5-minute-meals at home, so no way am I letting you eat there. Don’t you dare get up, Dib-thing!”
Dib pouted, but Zim already disappeared around the corner before he could think of a reply. And then it was just him and his thoughts.
For a while, he focused on stretching his limbs and making sure they felt better. But his blush was inevitably getting worse, painting his cheeks and nose and ears. And finally, he hid his face in his hands and let out a pained groan, quiet enough that Zim wouldn’t hear.
God, he had really done this. He had asked Zim to – and Zim had agreed to – wow, he couldn’t even think it out loud without steam coming out of his ears.
He drove his hands through his hair, and suddenly it felt like Zim’s hands were back in his hair, and he shivered and stopped. And carefully pulled again. And stopped.
His face was burning. He should just leave now, watch a marathon of Mysterious Mysteries, busy himself with other things until he fell asleep from exhaustion and could sleep all these memories away.
And then Zim was already back in with the food, and Dib wished that fantasy farewell.
“Feeling better?”
“Yeah”, Dib answered, watching how Zim lowered the food – heated up lasagna – on the table. The smell immediately made Dib’s mouth water and he realized at once how very hungry he had been after all. And then Zim sat down on the couch again, and he sat down right next to Dib, so close their arms touched. Dib’s heart lurched near-painfully, and he immediately scooted to the right, until he was right at the edge of the couch and there was an armlength between them again.
Zim shot him an unimpressed look, and Dib could basically feel his raised eyebrows, even if he didn’t have any.
But then Zim shrugged, and also leaned further away from Dib again, before reaching for the plates of lasagna and reaching Dib his. Dib took it, and their eyes met.
“Do you want to talk about–“
“No”, Dib squeaked, his voice an octave too high.
Zim looked at him, blinking. Then he shrugged again. “Fine. Stupid human with your stupid embarrassment thingies”, he muttered, already fishing for the remote. “But you didn’t hate it, right?” he then asked, looking at the black TV.
There was a pause. Zim’s hand clamped down tightly on the remote and he clenched his jaw, but Dib didn’t notice. He stared at his own hands, trying to fight the words out.
“No. I didn’t”, he then said with a quiet voice, and Zim took a relieved breath. And then he turned on the TV, and they spent another hour or so watching mindless things and not thinking about what had happened before that.