Chapter Text
then
“Hi! Red, right?”
He looks up from his datapad to see a pretty boy he’s seen in some of his classes looking at him. “You’re in combat with me, aren’t you? And… the engineering module?”
“Zim,” he says with a nod, looking around at all the research materials spread out across the table. “Whatcha working on?”
“It's… extracurricular,” Red says hesitantly. Even Purple thinks he’s weird for caring so much about this, and they’ve known each other literally their entire lives.
Zim nods encouragingly, taking a seat at the library table he’s claimed. “I assumed, you’re not in any history classes this session.”
Right. “Well, it’s not technically a history project,” he hedges. “It’s… how much do you know about how paks work?”
His eyes widen, and Red can practically see his thoughts racing. “Are you working on…”
“I'm looking into the programming process right now.” Red cuts him off before he can say anything too incriminating. “Spuds was saying they’re based on an older language than anything we currently use, she thinks the reason there are so-called defective paks is because the base code is deteriorating and needs to be updated and rewritten.”
“Huh.” Zim pauses for a moment. “Which language?”
Red tells him.
“You're joking.”
“I wish I was,” he says wearily. “So, now, if I’d like to tackle that project one day, I get to teach myself a programming language no one’s used in a thousand years. Even pak technicians are mostly trained for hardware fixes and running prewritten programs these days.”
Zim shakes his head. “Well, if anyone can do it, it’s you. You've been top of our year in programming forever. Possibly the whole academy.”
He’s not wrong. There's a reason Spuds has been assigning him special projects and helping him with this pak research instead of making him follow the standard curriculum. “Meanwhile, I'm going to have to actually make myself a little creature to explain the debugging to, Purple’s finally banned me from talking to him about any of this.”
“But why?”
He shrugs. “I mean, in his defense, he barely passed intro programming, so a fair bit of it’s over his head. But I listen to him going on about his anatomy classes that I don't care about, so...”
A beat. “If you need a volunteer, I'm actually interested in hearing more about your project. I'd like to… I mean. It's important, right? Like… socially. Or whatever.”
Red blinks. “Great! Yeah, for sure, let me…”
now
“My Tallest, we have an incoming transmission.”
Red frowns, looking up from his tablet. “From who?”
“I have no idea, we haven’t been able to trace the signal!” the technician exclaims, throwing her arms up in frustration.
“Answer it anyway, main screen,” he replies, intrigued. A signal the Massive can’t trace? This ought to be good.
The screen flares to life, displaying a shadowy image with two pairs of eyes glowing in the middle.
Purple laughs in disbelief. “These guys are still a thing?”
“Right? Since when are they competent enough to block their signal?”
“That would be the reason for my call,” that vortian in charge says pointedly, “to personally introduce the latest member of the Resisty, who is—”
“That’s still a stupid name!” Purple shouts at the screen.
The eyes on the left narrow, and the lights come on, revealing…
“—an irken,” he finishes dramatically, gesturing to the person standing next to him who is, in fact, obviously irken despite his ridiculous outfit. And— wait, he’s actually fairly tall, what the fuck is he doing with the Resisty?
“I told him it was a stupid name, but he wouldn’t let me change it,” the stranger drawls, casually leaning against a computer terminal. “Heavens forbid we have to get new business cards.”
“Was there a point to this call?” Purple asks, nonplussed.
“I simply thought,” the Resisty leader states with the air of someone beginning a long sermon, “you might like to meet my new head of communications. And also, your eventual downfall.”
The Irken on screen rolls his eyes, having obviously heard this speech before. Or maybe he’s simply already sick of listening to the obnoxious vortian ramble on about nothing useful, it’s hard to tell.
All Red is getting from this call so far is that there is a tall (well, twice the size of a vortian, that’s not bad as height goes), reasonably attractive irken somewhere in the universe that he has not yet managed to hook up with. And also that that idiot in charge of the Resisty does not know when to shut up, but that’s nothing new. He’s long since stopped pretending to listen.
Instead, he chooses to stare at the new… whateverthefuck bullshit title they gave him, he’s already forgotten it, and to be honest he doesn’t really care. This new Resisty member’s quite nice to look at, though: legs for days, a really fantastic waist curve, and — Red watches as he turns around to search through a pile of stuff on the terminal — oh, that’s not even fair. It’s like someone ran down a checklist of things he thinks are attractive and put them all together in one person. Shame about his politics. Although…
“…and even your own people don’t benefit from…”
Purple looks over at him and sighs, watching him watch the stranger unwrap a candy bar. “Really?”
“What do you want from me?” he asks in an undertone, gesturing forcefully at the screen. “Look at him!” He raises his voice, addressing the irken onscreen. “Hey, what’s your name, gorgeous?”
He rolls his eyes, takes a bite of candy, and pointedly doesn’t answer.
“I’d take that as a no,” Purple comments dryly.
“No, no, I got this,” he replies under his breath, then pauses, tilting his head. “How’d you end up with those losers, sugar? You’re tall enough, you could’ve had a future in the Empire. Still could if you came home.”
The irken in question exhales slowly. “For the record, calling me obnoxious pet names is not going to get me to tell you anything.”
Damn. He’d gotten the drawl out and everything. “Is there a name you’d prefer I call you, then, cupcake?”
“I would prefer it if you did not refer to me at all.”
“…entire cultures! The whole Fwump system…”
Red stares at him silently for a long moment before getting an idea. “You know what? You’re right.”
He blinks, startled. “I’m…? Yes, of course I’m right. Obviously.”
“And I’d like to offer an apology,” he continues, ignoring Purple’s incredulous look next to him. “Tell you what, there’s this great new Meekrobian restaurant out in Sector 12, they’re fantastic —”
“You are unbelievable!” he exclaims. “You don’t get to just… just because we disagree politically, that doesn’t mean you can talk down to me like that!”
Red blinks, nonplussed. “What, I can’t ask a guy to dinner? Is thinking you’re pretty offensive now? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, don’t give me that, you’re not actually interested —”
“Says who?”
“You are a Tallest,” he says patiently, as if he’s explaining something very simple to a smeet. “In what world would someone like you be interested in someone like me? Be serious, please.”
“I am!” he protests. “I can’t believe I get to be the one to break this to you, but you are, in fact, objectively hot, and anyone with eyes would agree with me.”
(“I wouldn’t,” Purple mutters, and he waves a dismissive hand at his co-ruler.)
“…rise up!” the vortian finishes dramatically, raising a fist. “Anyway, this is… ah.” He glances between the screen and the new Resisty member with a frown.
“You are not!” the irken says. “You are a deeply unserious person, and you know it! This, look, I’m not here to give you dating advice, but if this is how you approach all your conquests I’m personally baffled about how your reputation came to be.”
Ouch. Okay, he gets it, he needs to rethink his strategy. He always does better in person, maybe… “Would —”
He cuts him off. “No, I’m not done.”
Red blinks in shock, antennae standing straight up.
“I’m just beginning, actually, I have a lot more to say to you!” the attractive stranger shouts. “How fucking dare you?! Do you have any idea how fucking disrespectful this is? Like, disagree with my politics all you want, that’s fine even though you’re wrong, but you do NOT get to dismiss me like that! I have a brain! And I use it! I’m not just, fucking, eye candy for you to mindlessly pass the time flirting with. Just. Fuck that, and fuck you. I’m no longer obligated to deal with your condescending bullshit. This is just… how does anyone find you charming? How did… whatever. Fucking… I’m not going to stand here and listen to you anymore. Goodbye, I hope you choke.”
The attractive stranger storms off, and Red tilts his head, watching him leave.
The vortian does a double take, then rushes off after him. “Hey, wait! Z— Zen, what happened? Are you —”
The transmission cuts out, and a grin slowly spreads across Red’s face. “That one. I want that one.”
Purple looks over at him and sighs. “You're an idiot.”
He gestures helplessly at the blank screen. Like it’s his fault that vortian managed to recruit an irken who’s exactly his type.
“First Zim, now this,” Purple mutters to himself, exasperated.
Red flashes him a half-heart finger gesture. “Love you.”
“Yes, yes, I love you too. You moron.”
The new, pretty Resisty member has been very active on social media over the past several weeks, it turns out, and Red spends the next day or so going down a rabbithole.
“Welcome to part seventeen of deconstructing Imperial programming —”
“—episode, we’ll be talking to a former Irken Invader about his experiences —”
“Come with me to get matching tattoos with my boyfriend —”
“Listen, we don’t talk bad about so-called defectives in this house. Loads of people have programming glitches, I’m defective, I promise you many tall and well known people are at least slightly glitchy —”
Red blinks. Rewinds.
“— I’m defective —”
“He's so open about it,” Red tells Purple later, still stunned. “Just, yeah, I'm defective and it’s more common than you think. Wild. Can you fucking imagine?”
“He’s fairly tall, though, isn’t he?” he muses. “He could’ve just kept his head down and done reasonably well for himself, no?”
He shrugs. “Maybe he couldn’t. Not everyone can, you know? Like, I don't think he’s wrong about there being loads of under the radar defectives — I've seen the base code, it’s a mess — but… we’ve also definitely seen people who are… more obvious.”
They share a wordless, knowing look.
“Do we think he’s like that, though?” Purple says dubiously. “I mean, he seemed so…”
“He says online he’s doing the whole… ‘therapy’ thing,” Red says. “His therapist co-hosts a few episodes of his podcast. So… maybe?”
Purple sighs, reaching for his drink. “Do we know anyone defective with purple eyes? There was… what’s her name, but she’s a girl.”
“Was she defective? I figured she was just deeply unlucky.”
“You don’t think anyone’s defective until I point it out, Red,” Purple says, not without affection. “But, that aside…”
Red frowns. He knows it’s going to sound crazy, but he feels like he knows this guy. And not just in a parasocial, spent the last week scrolling through his entire internet presence kind of way. It's like an itch in the back of his brain. He knows him. “No, I really think we do. Like… I can't place him, but he seems so… I know him, Pur.”
He quirks an antenna. “Do you think your atoms are formed from the same star?” he teases him.
“Shut up!” Red retorts. “That’s not what this is about! I genuinely —”
“He’s not going to let you fuck him.”
Red’s jaw drops. “Mean! I will have you know —”
“He quite literally is a member of an organization that wants us both dead, Red.”
Alright. He likes a challenge. “Bet.”
Welcome back to deconstructing Imperial programming, part twenty two…”
“You’re hopeless,” Purple says, and he doesn’t even have to look to know he’s shaking his head in disappointment.
“No, I genuinely think I know him, we went to the Academy at the same time, he said in a video—”
“Will you please just go fuck him and get it out of your system? He’s just some guy, Red. He’s not worth all of this.”
Red glances at him over the back of the couch. “Oh, so you agree, I can pull him?”
“If you don’t, I fear I’m going to have to put up with this for the next decade, so for my sanity, I have to,” he grumbles, rolling his eyes.
He waves a hand dismissively, turning back to his tablet. “No, you’re probably right, a couple rounds and it’ll be out of my system, I’m fine, I’m good, actually.”
“Uh huh,” he says dubiously.
“No, I’ll just, I don’t know, arrange to meet up with him somehow, and then that’ll be the end of it, no problem. Summit season’s coming up, maybe they’ll send him to AUAA this year instead of that obnoxious screwhead. Easy.”
Purple sighs. “A Resisty member, of all things? You couldn’t have picked someone who doesn’t hate us?”
“It’s not my fault everyone else is afraid of me.”
“Red…”
“No, listen, I’m right! People who are part of the empire hook up with us because they want something from us. Which, you know, I’m fine with the bragging rights people, that’s one thing, but I am so tired of people lying to get in our bed, being too worried about pissing us off to be an active participant in their own sex lives, and then the next day we’ve got lawyers in our inbox demanding a favor. I…” He pauses, trying to work out how he wants to phrase it. “I would like to be treated like a person by a one night stand for once in my life, and I think this Resisty guy might be about the only one out there who can do that.”
“Oh, Red.” His voice softens, and he comes to join him on the couch. “That’s the nature of the job. You can’t expect people to respect you as their Tallest and then also tell you you’re being a dick. Even when you are.”
“Well, who made that rule?” he says lightly, shoving down his dissatisfaction. He loves being Tallest, mostly; he loves Irk, he loves getting to be Tallest with his favorite person, he loves all the things he can do for the Empire. It’s just… “I don’t know what I’d do without you, you know? None of this would be any fun otherwise.”
“Hey.” Purple leans over and kisses him. “I know what’ll cheer you up, wanna go get some snacks and find a planet to blow up?”
“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “Yeah, let’s do that.”
“Great! You know, they’ve just come out with a new chip flavor? They’re sending it to us first, I’m so excited to try it! Ooh, we should get those drinks you like too, don’t you think?” He keeps up a constant stream of chatter as he pulls Red off the couch, trying to distract him, which he deeply appreciates. “And by the way, if you did want to hang up the slut thing for a while, I think I can manage to carry our reputation for the both of us.”
Red laughs. “No, no, I’m good. Just in my head, is all. And speaking of in my head, do they make dessert nachos? Because if they don’t, they should.”
Purple gasps. “Yes. With chocolate and caramel —”
“— and candy, and whipped cream!” he finishes dreamily. “We’re doing this. We’re making this happen. Greatest snack of all time, I’m calling it now.”
“Oh, hundred percent. Sweet needs salty, though, right? I’m thinking popcorn.”
They keep up the light banter all the way back to the bridge, and for a brief, shining moment, Red does actually feel better. He even briefly considers getting some actual work done. (Well, for a given quality of work; fixing some of the bad code on the Massive that’s been annoying him for decades totally counts as work.)
“Um… sirs?”
They both sigh simultaneously.
“If this is anything short of an actual emergency,” Purple practically hisses at the shorter irken, who shrinks even further on himself.
“Yes, it, um, My Tallest, I mean, oh… here!” He shoves a datapad in their general direction, and Red takes it with a frown.
Purple shakes his head and holds out a hand. “No, give, you’re relaxing today, no work allowed.” He takes the datapad and starts scanning the text, a frown deepening on his face the further he goes. His already pale mint colored face goes almost white by the end, and he hands it back. “Actually, I lied, you can have this one.”
He laughs. “Oh, come on, it can’t be that bad.”
The entire crew is silent as he reads, as if they’re collectively holding their breath.
“They’re doing what?!”