***
I remember when pushing someone off the monkey bars meant you liked them. It's a rather sadistic ritual played by the younger of my species, the closer link to our primitive beginnings, elementary skool kids. It was all the same for everyone I think. I remember when Gaz first fell for someone. I thought she was going to kill that poor boy. Maybe his survival was what brought about their relationship, but it began the same as all the others in those first five years of hell. Every time he walked past, my sister would stick out her foot and trip him, only to insult him as he fell and walk over him as the recess bell called them back in. I told her to stop flirting with the battered boy once and got a black eye for thinking she had any feelings for him. That's the second step in skool romance, though. Denial. Of course, once the question is asked, the internal debate begins. It wasn't long before she stopped picking on him and actually started to blush when he walked past. Took a while until he stopped being terrified of her and then only a short period after that until I saw him walking her home from school, locking elbows so they could be close but Gaz still had both hands free to play her Game Slave. Elementary romance. I don't know if it's sad or beautiful. I never had one. I was too busy chasing Zim around.
To say I have an obsessive personality would be the understatement of the day (there seem to be too many understatements in this world to rate it any higher). I'll admit it: it's something I just have to live with. I can never just like something or dislike something. I either love it or hate it, both with a passion so deep it engulfs my existence. Which, I guess, explains my ordeal. When does passionate hate become passionate love? I've come to believe it's kind of like a gradient, two opposite colors creating a blur that is neither of them yet both. My only problem now is figuring out where on the gradient I fall in the spectrum of Zim.
It's not as crazy as it seems. We have a lot in common, if you look past the whole him wanting to destroy all of man kind thing and my wanting him strewn open on an autopsy table. We were children back them. Well, I was anyway. A very lonely child. Not that I'm any less lonely now at seventeen. Still friendless, still a nobody, still teased on a daily basis and still stuck in the same house with the same family, too caught up in their own mindless pursuits to attempt a normal, and what I deem healthy, family relationship. I should really sue all those old, wholesome television shows for implanting the belief in hugs, kisses and "I love you's" before bed. But I really haven't time for that. All my energy for the past five years has been solely devoted to my pursuit of Zim. For a child prodigy, I was a very stupid kid. What made me think I could take on an alien? Probably the same force that told me I could befriend one a week ago and the same force that says I could love one now.
Mental note: figure out the origin of the strange impulses; code name: Masochism.
I must really enjoy rejection cause I keep finding new ways to be ostracized. I've been alone so long, I guess it doesn't really matter. I felt bad for Zim, though. I don't know which of us had it worse: me, being from the planet and practically disowned by it, or Zim, light-years from his home and unaccepted in a strange new place. He lasted longer than I thought he would, truth be told. I thought he'd have cracked by year one. But he still cackled in that menacing fashion and glared with evil intent any time I dared to lock eyes with him, up until just month. He was homesick.
I really should take into account his origins. Zim once told me (or rather his robot Gir let slip a fact that Zim later confirmed) that he is quite a bit older than I am. Around a hundred years, I think it was. For a race that can span millennia in a lifetime, he is young, but to me, a human that can only hope to live to his present years, he's ancient. Maybe to him, those first five years weren't as long as they lasted for me. When you can look forward to thousands of years, a single one looses its value, I suppose. I'll never know for sure. I do know that he missed his planet, though. I would too. Especially if my new planet's most natural weather occurrences caused me great pain. All the food I'd grown to love, the people I'd known all my life, all left behind in military service to people who'd banished me once already for not following orders as well as hoped for (Gir is a very good source of information).
I think it was at Zim's lowest that I felt the most for him. Depression and sadness are very human emotions, something I could understand. So was anger and hatred, another thing we shared, but those aren't the same. Anger is an expression of outward discomfort. Sadness is internal. Anybody can throw a fist, even aliens. But I'd never seen an alien cry. For a moment I almost believed it was just a skin condition that made him green and earless, forgetting everything I'd seen and documented. He was just another lonely teenager, sitting on his couch, watching TV with his moronic robot companion. Whether in my weakness or in his, I offered him compassion and empathy. Do unto others, right? Maybe I just wanted someone to do the same for me (despite wanting to save the entirety of mankind, I'm known to be rather selfish). Those red scornful eyes held me in contempt as he threw me to the ground and beat the bloody shit out of me. And something in me told me to just lay there and let him.
Like I said, some stupid impulse has really got it in for me.
Zim punched, slapped, kicked, pulled, bit, spat and cursed me into the cold floor as he shouted about humanity and how filthy, dishonorable and stupid we were. I didn't say anything, just looked at him with my two, supposedly black eyes and waited for him to finish. It wasn't so much he stopped hitting me, though, as much as it was he started holding me. His hands pulled me close to him, my head nestled against his chest with one arm supporting me and the other's fingers tracing every cut and bruise he'd done to me. And again I let him. His touch was soft and tender, like whispers over my flesh. His fingers began to run through my hair, lulling me into security. His lips grazed my forehead leaving a light tingle of sensation before moving down and capturing my lips.
And I let him.
It was soft and chaste at first, a building pressure of contact that worked onward with hunger and desire as his tongue slipped across my lips in a delicate arch. My gasp in shock left my mouth vulnerable to attack, to which Zim immediately took the offensive, slipping his teasing tongue through and running it against my own.
It had always been him against me and vice versa. Now, for the first time, I relented my opposition.
I moaned, impatiently devouring his mouth as I felt him lay me back on the floor gently. A hand slipped under my shirt, warm and curious as it massaged it's way from my stomach to my chest, giving special attention to my nipples with his callused fingertips, exciting my flesh in ways I'd never felt. He was obviously tired of working blindly though. Zim took my arms and held them over my head with one hand, the other pulling my shirt up to where it hung over my arms and kept me rather restrained. He knelt down, kissing me on my lips once more before pulling away, his face falling to my chest and lips wrapping around my already aroused nipples. Again I gasped. My arms strained against Zim's strong grip and the cloth of my T-shirt. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to slide the cloth off of his body and feel his smooth green skin, kissing and sucking the beautiful jade expanse, as Zim was doing to me. Every motion was erotic, every flip of his tongue and pinch of his teeth drove me slowly into madness. There was some pain as he explored the beaten patches he'd created earlier, but with every hiss that escaped my bruised lips came tender attention with soft apologies whispered through touch.
Now may not be the best time to bring this up, but I wonder where he learned to do half the stuff he did that night. Not that it's impossible, but the chances of him bringing a human into his lair to "experiment" on are pretty slim. He's kind of always had a privacy issue. Comes with being an alien invader.
Anyway, I wasn't sure exactly what was going on after a while. Pleasure and pain mixed, one always following the other in a carousel of passion. Half of me wanted to explode from the building tension and sensory overload. The other wanted it to never end. And of course, there was the third party that nearly jumped ship as the sound of my zipper being pulled down arose from what had once been a silence of whimpers. We'll call it my rational side. Zim was from another planet, sent to destroy everything, a teenager who'd tried to kill me a number of times,and here I was with my pants pulled down to my ankles, my arms secured over my head, and his hand grasping my erection.
Rational was happily subdued as Impulse and Lust blindfolded him and put him in a nice closet in the back of my mind.
No one had ever touched me before. Hell, I'd never been kissed before outside theater class and family reunions. Zim's careful but forceful grip drove me forward on a roller coaster of unfamiliar sensation. I wanted it faster; I wanted more of it, though I couldn't imagine living through much more intensity. My eyes were closed in blissful surrender but my waking dream wasn't of someone else touching me and feeding me with desire. It was Zim. It was Zim's intimate caress, his hungry eyes devouring my body and without hesitation or warning it was his mouth encasing my manhood. My eyes flew wide, my mouth open in a soundless scream of pleasure. It was hot and wet, his tongue that had preformed such miracles in my mouth lapped selfishly and sensuously up and down my shaft. He took me all the way in, grazing lightly with his teeth, like tiny pinpricks, then kissing his way back up, his lips pursed tightly. I knew it couldn't last forever. When I felt sweet release come over me, I tried to hold out but lost the battle, winning the glorious war as unsurpassed bliss passed through me and into Zim. I was exhausted, my head spinning as Reason untied itself and reentered reality. I opened my eyes, watching Zim wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. I vaguely realized my hands were free but left them where they were as Zim gave one last look over my spent body, his fingers touching the taut skin of my stomach one last time before he stood up. I redressed myself in silence, starting to feel the uneasiness that comes in the aftermath of hasty decisions. Hasty, but not regretted.
What does one say after that? Thanks? Considering he had beaten me black and blue beforehand, it seemed a little unnatural. Then again, what was he supposed to say? Sorry? Considering the more resent events, that seemed out of the question, too. So I simply looked at him, watching him look at me.
Finally, I decided to take things back the way I had intended them to go. "We could be friends you know."
Friends. I must have looked so stupid saying something like that while I zipped my pants up. Then again, most experts believe the sort of thing that just had happened is better explained as "working off steam" rather than sexual experimentation. Not that I've researched it or anything.
But Zim had nodded, a small sad smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "I would like that."
And I left. That was a week ago. And now I sit and ponder when I stopped hating him and when I realized I loved him. Maybe I was mistaken. Maybe I did have an elementary crush. Maybe I was just waiting for someone to point it out to me.
"Well, Dib?"
I look up, caught in the ruby gaze that looks over me in worried suspense. "Will you?"
I smile, feeling his relief join mine. "Yes. I wasn't sure but...I think I've loved you since the day I met you."
He opens his arms, beckoning me into them. "Gimme."
Gladly, I fall into his warm embrace, burying my head under his chin. My boyfriend's chin. I like the sound of it already.
"Well, love," I hear his voice resonate in his chest, "How should we celebrate?"
My wicked smile is hidden in his chest, but I know he feels it. "Leave it to me."
I have a favor to return.