While some mornings begin with birds chirping outside the window and sunlight streaming into one’s eyes, this one seemed to awaken to an entirely different beat.

Zim sat on his bed, looking dazed as Dib stood before him, the blankets wrapped around his naked waste and a blushing scowl on his face. By the count of three he had fallen to the floor, dry heaving whatever his body believed was left in his stomach. Zim watched him patiently, waiting and watching with his breath help and fingers crossed.

"What...what's wrong with me?" Dib asked, looking sideways up at Zim. "Why am I naked? Why was I in your bed? I..." He closed his eyes, holding his head in his hands. "I can't remember...."

Zim sighed in relief, letting his anger come through, finally, after carrying it around all night. "I guess we figured out why things like this keep happening then. If you can't remember, how are you supposed to learn?" he said sarcastically. "Damn it, Dib, Jax carried your sorry ass home from the club last night cause you were too doped up to do anything else."

Dib shook his head. "I don't do drugs," he said flatly.

"You wanna tell me what the fuck you were on last night then?" Zim narrowed his ruby gaze, a bit annoyed that Dib was still looking into the palms of his hands and not at the Irkin's incredible death glare. "Must have been one hell of a drink! I've been nursing your hangovers all year, Dib. Every time Jax or Nye drags your inebriated ass home, I deal with you. I've never seen you like last night, Dib." He kicked the human in the shoulder, finally grabbing his attention. "Don't lie to me. I just spent half the night watching my worst nightmares dance in your eyes. I deserve to know what was going on."

Dib shook his head. "I don't do drugs, Zim. I'm not stupid."

"If you think I don't know drunk from stoned, then I say you are."

Dib's eyes fell from Zim's and landed on the green chest. There were interesting burns all across his body. "What happened to you?"

Zim winced, memories of the night before flashing in his eyes.

/What happened to you…? you're covered in blood…/

"I tried to get you to snap out of it by throwing you in the tub." He gestured towards Dib's own state of dress. "You hit your head and I was afraid you might have given yourself a concussion, so I had to take your wet things off before I could watch over you."

That sounded innocent enough. Dib swallowed down invisible bile. "I'm sorry about this, Zim. I don't mean to come back like this."

"Yes you do," Zim spat, looking away from Dib's hurt statement. "Hanging around with people like Jax and Nye is trouble to begin with."

"You don't know them."

"I know that whenever something happens they let it fall in my hands, namely you. I know Nye's part of the frat on Seventeenth Street that's rumored to be involved in a lot of bad crap, Dib."

"That's all it is, Zim. Rumors. And I don't remember putting you in charge of my life."

Zim laid his head back against his pillow, crossing his legs over the sheets. "You're so blind, Dib."

Dib took that as the end of discussion and tried to stand, only to fall back to his knees as a wave of nausea passed over him. His whole body felt dirty, like someone had filled his veins full of raw sewage and replaced his brain with space bolts and bottle caps. He weakly crawled the rest of the way to his bed, discarding Zim's blanket in favor of his own and rolling up deep into the security of warmth. The bedside clock flashed noon in irritating red lights. Cursing lightly to himself, Dib rolled over. There was no way he was going to face classes today. Especially not with partial memories beating in his skull. He closed his eyes and prepared to sleep.

/Screaming. She screamed because she was still alive. I could hear her. No one else could, but I could still hear her screaming. Even when they pushed the dirt back into the six-foot deep hole I could hear her. It was just like it had been in the car. The way she had smiled at me.... She never stopped screaming. I could see her face, her mouth wide open and her eyes never blinking. Blood dripped off of her, splashing onto me. Please, mommy, stop bleeding on me! It's icky! Please, mommy. Don't bleed on me..../

Dib's eyes went wide for a moment only to close again, his fingers wanting to claw his them out. Oh god...why did he remember that? He curled up on himself, feeling a dizziness pass over him. He tried to think of the previous night, visions amidst gods and demons in the floating dreams of fantasy and horror. He remembered dancing, not being very good at it originally, but finding that, when all you had to do was rub up against someone, it was rather difficult to be bad. He remembered drinking. Nye was good about hooking minors up with stuff. Dib tried to remember just how much alcohol he'd acquired over the course of the night but gave up in futility. That night was lost to him outside of the flashing images of bodies, music and blood.

His stomach growled. Dib tried to ignore the hunger, knowing pretty well that anything he ate would be flying a round trip. His mouth tasted bad, like someone had used his teeth to clean off the bottom of their shoes while his tongue gave them a good shine. More than all of that, his head hurt. He could feel without touching the supposed spot he'd smacked into the bathroom tile. There was also a hangover to deal with and whatever else decided to join in for the ride. Whatever else....

Dib turned back over to look at the Irkin, embarrassed to admit what he had said was probably true. "Zim?"

Zim looked asleep, his arms thrown to the sides and one leg bent at the knee with the sheet draped over it. He answered as if programmed to do so, his tone neutral and husky in his morning voice. "Yes, Dib?"

"I think someone put something in my drink."

There was a slight pause filled with the rumpling of sheets as Zim turned over, facing Dib's side of the room. "Be more careful next time. Alright?"

Dib nodded, snuggling deeper into his warm recesses of his blanket, not to emerge for hours.

"OUCH! DAMN IT, DIB!"

Dib pulled back, dodging the green fists before tackling him again, pressing down with the medicated pad over Zim's burns. "If you hold still I can be more gentle!"

"Gentle my ass! You'll skewer me!" Zim swatted the human away again, hissing at the stupid ointment his roommate was trying to administer.

Dib pulled back, his eyes lowering in scrutiny. "With a cotton ball?" The Irkin paused, as if seeing the light of the situation. "Look, I know they're tender. If you sit back I'll do my best to make this as painless as possible," Dib promised.

With great deliberation, Zim leaned back against the wall and allowed Dib to dab the medicated cotton swab over the assorted burns. It still stung but he tried to concentrate on other things, like the glitter that still hung in the black hair, that had been recently washed and the eyeliner that hugged the very tips of his lids.

Dib, on the other hand, was playing “name that burn.” As he went over each welted mark of skin, he recognized patterns. Up by Zim's sternum was an almost perfect replica of Dib's ear burned into the green flesh. The curved and mesh design one under his ribs was obviously Dib's shoulder and the mesh material of his shirt. He could follow the length of his own arm from ribs to right hip and under Zim's chin were strands of burns from his hair. "That was a stupid thing to do," he noted out loud.

"What was I supposed to do?" Zim hissed.

Dib took the medication over the shoulder marking again. "Remember that you're an Irkin. Remember your paste bathing stuff is back at your base."

"All while you scream about blood and coffins? Sure, next time I'll remember that." Zim shook his head, gazing towards the opened bathroom door. "You scared me to death last night. If it looks like I wasn't thinking, it's because I wasn't. I was too worried about you."

Dib took the swab from the green skin and set it on the bedside table, reaching for the gauze. "Too worried to look out for yourself?"

Zim didn't dignify him with response. He lifted his arms and leaned forward so Dib could get his arms around him with the gauze. Zim's face hovered by Dib's left ear; his eyes closed as he felt the human gently wrap him, their bodies touching every time the gauze passed behind his back. "Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall," Zim muttered into Dib's ear, "Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn't put Humpty together again."

Dib grimaced. "Why do you always have to say that?" he asked, securing the last of the gauze and slipping off from the bed, though he was still a bit unsteady.

Zim just stared at him, a knowing look on his alien face. "One of these days, Dib, I'm not going to be able to fix you. Jax and Nye are gonna push you down so low that no one will be able to pick up the pieces."

"Will you stop blaming them for everything that happens?" Dib's voice rose, his arm stretching out for the desk to steady himself. "I suppose you blame them for you getting burned?"

"Vicariously, yes!" Zim shouted. "If you hadn't gone out with them and gotten wasted and stoned, you wouldn't have needed my help and I wouldn't have gotten in the water!"

"I never asked for your help!"

"Yes you did!"

Dib bit his tongue, his eyes narrowing in rage. "I don't know how I ended up with you as a roommate anyway! This has to be someone’s sick idea of a joke!"

"I'll tell you a sick joke! You thinking Jax and Nye care anything about your welfare!"

"And you do!?" Dib turned away, going through his desk drawers for money. "Fuck you! You don't run my life, Zim!"

"Well someone has to, because you certainly can't!" Zim walked over and pulled Dib's stash of money from the human's sock drawer, hidden in the one pair of white socks. "Here, this is what you were looking for."

Dib took it, his face red and anger fuming. "You think you know so much? You think you know Jax and Nye? You think you know ME?" Dib restrained himself from throwing the closed fist he’d made at his side. "You don't know anything! So just stay out of my life!"

Zim's face was neutral again, his voice an expressionless mask. "You're so blind, Dib."

In a flash the black-haired human was gone through the front door, the loud slam of it's return to the frame echoing in the small two-person dorm room with the too little space between the beds.