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“Not today, Zim,” Dib yelled weakly. The alien finally stopped his maniacal laughter and leaned down from his seat on the giant beaver robot thingy that he was trying to brainwash humanity with.
Dib was way too light headed to figure out the stupidity of it.
“Why not?” Zim yelled down.
“I feel sick!” And then as if to prove his point, his throat forced up a few coughs as he sucked air in the wrong way. It did not help his aching chest.
There was a screech of metal on metal as Zim slid down on his PAK legs, landing with a dull thud behind the currently-walking-away Dib.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going home, to stop being sick and all that.”
“That’s not necessary,” Zim waved boredly, “Zim has taken into account that your filthy human bodies are more susceptible to germs compared to the superior Irken race.”
“Uh huh.”
“And since it’s ‘flu season’, I, the bestest friend in the universe, have taken the time to make a remedy to instantaneously cure you of your pathetic ailments. No need to thank me, wormchild.”
With that, Zim stuck a bottle with a needle tip in his face. Dib carefully moved the pointy bit away from his eyes.
“Of course, I’d actually like you to thank me. It’s good ‘manners’, Dib-stink.”
“Uh, thanks Zim. But it’s not that kind of illness.”
Behind them something exploded. He couldn’t stop himself from jumping. Fuck, he’d almost forgotten about his paranoia’s tendency to act up during bad episodes.
No, he was not having an episode. (He obviously was, but he was going to try his damn best to stay in denial until he got to the privacy of his bedroom, where he could curl up in bed and ignore existing for a while.)
He shook his head and soldiered forward determinedly. Zim’s antennae twitched in the way that warned him that he was going to now be pestered with idiotic jabber.
“Your breathing is even more loud and annoying than normal.”
“You’re loud and annoying,” he huffed.
“It would help if you took off that undershirt.”
“Under-?” Dib’s face slacked in realization and he couldn’t stop the blush that followed.
“Yes, you seemed to be struggling in PE the other day, so I went to your house and examined one,” Zim said obliviously, “It’s definitely too tight for you, I’m surprised it hasn’t squashed you ribcage out yet.”
He laughed drily, “Trust me, it very much is squashing out my ribcage.”
“Then why are you wearing the torture cloth?” One magenta eye narrowed in confusion.
Dib rubbed the back of his neck wearily. Oh, boy, how was he even going to explain this to the alien? Zim barely understood simple gender constructs half of the time, which he supposed was actually a good thing, it left more room to learn about meaningful shit.
“So… you know how there are boys and girls, right?”
Zim nodded, clearly not understanding what that had to do with anything.
“Some people... are born in the wrong body.”
“Is this one of your ‘zombie conspiracies’?”
“Goddammit, Zim. No, this is important.”
The Irken stopped in his tracks.
“Something’s more important to you than your paranormal junk?” he asked. Dib sighed a noncommittal,
“Sure.”
Zim, now understanding the gravity of the situation, quieted up to let him continue the explanation.
“Where was I? Right, some people are born in the wrong body. For example, let’s say a baby is born and the doctor’s say that it’s a girl because it has girl organs. Except, when the baby gets older, it realizes that it’s not a girl, it’s actually a boy stuck in a girl’s body. Does that make sense?”
Zim put a gloved hand to his chin to process that.
“Yes, I think so. My internal dictionary is saying this is called ‘transgender’?”
“You’ve got it,” Dib smiled.
“What does that have to do with the thing?” he poked his chest. Dib swatted his hand away.
“That’s a binder. Since I’m going through puberty now, my chest is starting to develop, which is making me uncomfortable because girls have boobs, and I’m not a girl.”
“So your genius solution is to constantly compress your essential organs?”
“...Yes?”
Zim rubbed his face in annoyance.
“What are you going to do about the other girl organ stuff?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like,” Zim shuddered, “That thing where you start bleeding out of your genitals every cycle.”
“You know what periods are?” Dib raised an eyebrow.
“Health class.”
“Thanks, I’d nearly forgotten about that day.”
They stood in silence for a minute out of mutual fear.
“I’ve managed to find some hormone suppressants in dad’s old stuff. I don’t think they’re a permanent solution though,” he groaned.
Zim scoffed, “That is predictable, Earthen research is aeons behind anything resembling acceptable. If this is really important to you, I’m sure we can use my lab to find a proper solution.”
“Really?” Dib nearly fell over. Zim never let him into the lab and… what was he thinking? Priorities, Membrane! Was there actually going to be a solution to these gnawing feelings that have plagued him for as long as he could remember?
Zim’s eyes widened and his posture bent uncomfortably.
“Did I say something offensive?”
“No, why?”
“You are crying?”
“These are tears of happiness! No, wait, they’re sad. And they’re happy again, sorry, I’m feeling a lot of things right now.”
There was an awkward, but sincere pat on his shoulder as he lifted his glasses to wipe his watery eyes. They had finally reached the porch of the Membrane household.
“Could we… go to your lab tomorrow?” he asked hopefully.
“Yes, Dib-thing, it’s no fun fighting you when you are this disadvantaged.”
The paranormal investigator rolled his eyes, but his hand lingered on the doorknob.
“Hey, uh… This won’t change anything between us, right?”
“Don’t worry your abnormally large head,” Zim lowered his own head, “Gender won’t change the fact that you’re an annoying pest who gets on my very last nerves. And that, somehow, you’re the only competent creature on this miserable planet and that I’m glad you decided to be my nemesis.”
“Wow. Thank you, Zim.” Even if the alien didn’t understand how much of an impact his small actions had, Dib would try to show as much gratitude in his expression anyways.
The Irken pursed his lips, clearly disoriented by the outright niceties.
“Yes, be grateful to your future Overlord. I’m going to get the BeaverCleaver now. There’s some modifications I need to make anyhow. This battle isn’t over yet, human!”
“You wish, Alien scum!” he yelled out the doorway as Zim rushed down the street.
Later, Dib was curled up in his bed, laptop on one knee and a bowl of cereal on the other. The sun had long since set, and his stiff joints were nagging him into insomnia. He was using this as an excuse to edit some past exploration logs which might be good to post on TruthShrieker.
He sneezed quietly. Great, he might actually have the flu.
He turned groggily to a knock on his window. Two big magenta eyes stared at him.
“What do you want, Zim?” he unclipped the four window locks he’d installed. (Not that they ever helped.)
“I didn’t think you'd be able to get your required human sleep with that binder on, and I see that the amazing Zim is right, as always,” Zim wriggled over the ledge and into a heap on the mattress, “So I made this for you with some leftover Illusion Fabric I have from last month, it should hide your chest lumps until we’re able to make your hormones.”
Dib took the shirt offered to him. On the front was a small cartoon UFO, glowing green in the dark. He set down his cereal out of Zim’s reach and wriggled out of his pyjama shirt and binder, tossing them unceremoniously onto the floor.
“How did you get it over your big head?”
“Shut up, Spaceboy.”
The shirt slipped comfortably onto him. There wasn’t an immediate noticeable difference. He cautiously poked his chest and didn’t feel any boobs. A grin pushed itself onto his face.
“Please don’t start crying again,” Zim cringed.
“Nah, I’m past that. However… ” his grin turned evil as he reached over to hug the Irken. Zim didn’t reciprocate, but he wasn’t pushed away by flailing limbs either.
“This is horrible,” he whined.
“Yup.”
“You smell awful.”
“And I’m never changing out of this shirt.”
“What have I done? I’ve doomed everyone.”
And then they stayed up until 3am watching bad ghost movies before Dib fell asleep, which is when Zim’s little shit mode activated and he reorganised all of Dib’s computer files into random folders before escaping through the window, cackling inappropriately loudly. In retaliation, Dib didn’t take the shirt off for seven months. It was a pretty nice shirt.