Chapter Text
‘Left a bit... right a bit. Nah, it’s gone all wonky on one side now,’ drawled Holly.
Rimmer stood on a step ladder, reaching up to adjust two large photo frames alongside the bunk room door with ‘help’ from Holly, Red Dwarf’s computer. He would normally get the scutters to do a task like this, but they simply weren’t tall enough to reach, and Kryten was busy cleaning.
At this latest ‘instruction’ from Holly, he dropped his arms and grimaced. He was wearing one less layer than usual, sporting braces on top of a deep blue t-shirt.
‘Holly, perhaps you could let me know when your IQ returns home for the day? I’m trying to get this done before Lister comes blundering in.’
‘Oi, I’ll have you know this isn’t easy,’ replied the ship’s computer.
‘Yes, I can see how hanging a piece of glass straight might tax a computer with an IQ of 6000,’ Rimmer deadpanned, now holding a pencil up to the frames in measurement.
‘Arnold, I’m trying to navigate us through an asteroid belt at lightspeed. I’m not the bloke from the hardware aisle at B&Q. I can’t understand why you want that picture up anyway.’
‘Because it’s my picture, and I’m entitled to have it up.’
‘Not that one,’ Holly said, ‘the other one.’
Rimmer looked at the ‘other one’ in question and sighed. ‘I don’t want it up. But if Lister’s is hanging up there too, he can’t complain about mine.’
Even as he said this, Rimmer gave ‘Lister’s frame’ an extra adjustment on the wall.
‘Well... I only hope you know what you’re doing. He might not want a reminder.’
‘One can only hope, Holly.’ The hologram grinned, as the computer disappeared from the bunk room monitor.
Then, from the corridor outside, came Lister’s unmistakable voice. ‘Cat, just give us a sec will yeh, I’ve gotta fetch something outta the sleeping quarters-’
Before Rimmer could say anything, Lister barrelled straight into the step ladder. The pair both fell - Rimmer backwards off the ladder and Lister entangled with it. Lister landed on top of the hologram, and the ladder on top of Lister’s leg, trapping him. One of the picture frames also fell off the wall, smashing onto the floor beside them.
Rimmer groaned, his eyes screwed up.
‘Ooooh, smeg....’ Lister gritted his teeth.
After a moment, he realised their predicament. Pinned by the ladder, their bodies pressed together, all Lister could feel was Rimmer’s trim hard light physique beneath him. He froze, unable to speak.
Rimmer, however, recovered his voice quickly. Even when nervous, he was the wordsmith of the two.
‘Erm, Listy?’
‘Mm?’
‘Do you think maybe you could get off me? I mean, so that I can feel the sensation come back to my limbs before the next millennium?’
Lister tried to ignore the feel of Rimmer’s voice reverberating in his ear and concentrated instead on forming a coherent sentence. ‘Hold on man, give us a sec, I can’t shift me leg-’
He attempted to lift himself and move sideways but Rimmer raised his head at the same time. This resulted in the corner of their lips brushing momentarily.
The pair stared at one another for a second, until Rimmer sharply turned his head away, staring at the wall below the bunk. ‘Lister, you goit!’
Lister shook his head, trying to process what had just happened. ‘S-sorry man, I told yeh to give us a sec! Hold still-’
Lister kicked the step ladder away and rolled himself off the hologram and onto his side. He propped himself up with an elbow and laid facing Rimmer.
And smeg, what a view he was.
His wavy hair was loose from its usual neat parting. A pink blush extended from his cheeks down to his neck where he swallowed thickly, his head still facing away from Lister. His broad chest moved steadily up and down with each deep breath, straining his braces, and his shirt had come loose, exposing a patch of firm belly.
Lister stared. Blood was rushing somewhere he definitely didn’t care to admit.
‘Just so you know, you’re on report for this, Miladdo,’ Rimmer said, cutting through Lister’s reverie.
‘Wha’ for?’
Rimmer finally turned his head back, and Lister wondered whether his bunkmate had always had stormy hazel eyes, or had he just never noticed?
‘Behaving without due care and attention in the workplace and... and attempting to snog a senior technician!’
Lister screwed his face up. ‘Yeh wha’?’
‘You heard. Now hurry and get up, you gimboid. Some of us have work to do. And when I say work, I mean, actual work. Not just sloping around in your long johns leaving trails of poppadom shards behind.’
With that announcement, Rimmer began to sit up, but Lister gently pushed him back down with a hand to his chest. The fact that Rimmer had allowed this made Lister’s heart skip. The hologram was physically stronger than him after all.
‘Rimmeh...’ he said, softly, ‘yeh know it was an accident. All right! I didn’t see the ladder and maybe I shoulda been paying more attention. But the other thing - even if I had done it on purpose - which I didn’t - d’yeh think I woulda done it like tha’?’
Rimmer’s gaze was on Lister’s hand, resting on his chest. His mouth was open slightly. Perhaps he didn’t know why he was allowing this either.
‘But... if it’s somethin’ yeh gonna put me on report for, it might as well be somethin’ I actually did, right?’
Rimmer looked up, asking in a small voice, ‘what?’
‘Well, in for a penny, in for a pound.’ Lister shrugged, feigning nonchalance. In reality, he nearly choked. What the smeg was he doing, trying to proposition Rimmer? And Rimmer wasn’t helping, laying there obediently with an expression stuck somewhere between hope and fear, his hair and shirt still ruffled, and more skin exposed than usual.
Lister cast around for something else to say and eyed the smashed picture frame on the floor beside them. Two chubby babies grinned cheekily out of the picture.
He grinned.
‘And don’t think I haven’t noticed yeh trying to put a picture of me boys up on the wall.’
‘Only so I could put mine up too, Lister,’ Rimmer finally snapped, though his cheeks remained a betraying shade of pink.
‘I know.’ Lister grinned. He had a feeling Rimmer was attempting ‘nice’ under his usual cover of ‘smegger’. After all, he didn’t have to put a picture up belonging to Lister at all, let alone a picture of his twin sons. ‘Yeh still a smeg head. But... I know yeh Rimmeh. I can tell when yeh being a proper smegger and when yeh not. And when yeh not, well, I kinda like yeh. All awkward, flared nostrils and all.’
Lister’s grin was the perfect cross between cheeky and sheepish. He looked down at Rimmer’s soft lips, and then back up at his brown eyes. He wasn’t sure when he’d become so attracted to his bunkmate. They didn’t even like one another...
Of course, that wasn’t strictly true anymore, but the facade was much easier to deal with than the truth. It was certainly true that they drove each other crazy with their opposing personalities and habits but something rather strange had evolved from their long years together in close quarters. They knew each other very well and there was a comforting familiarity in the sparring.
Rimmer was a difficult man but contrary to popular belief he did have redeeming qualities. He was always clean, smartly dressed, and articulate. This, Lister could respect despite not always valuing those qualities for himself. Rimmer was intelligent and witty, albeit cynical. Lister held a more positive outlook, but he did marvel at the man’s command of language often in the most challenging circumstances. His negativity and realism had actually saved them all more than once.
And beneath the smeghead was an uncertain, vulnerable man that Lister wanted to take care of. His childhood had been abusive, demoralising, and devoid of affection, and as a naturally caring person, Lister felt anger on Rimmer’s behalf. No one deserved what he went through, and it was little wonder he treated everyone with contempt as it was his way of striking first before someone hurt him again.
But this fragile ball of neurotic smeghead was especially important to Lister for one other big reason - their shared connection to a long dead past. Rimmer was his only companion to remember life before the extinction of the human race, and despite their differences, he was an equal. Lister’s relationship with Kryten and Cat wasn’t quite the same, though he loved them both. Kryten was pleasant company but he was still a mechanoid clinging to the master/servant role and Cat was fun to hang around until he displayed his feline tactlessness and ignorance.
Looking back, Holly had made the right decision to bring Rimmer back as a hologram rather than Petersen, Chen, or Selby. Naturally, it would have been great to begin with, partying and drinking, but then what? Within a year, they would all be buried beneath dirty plates of curry and empty beer cans and most of the ship would be aflame from half extinguished cigarettes. Rimmer was officious but his discipline actually kept things ticking over, whereas Lister was slovenly and idle, but his carefree attitude helped when the group needed to relax. In this, the pair complemented one another. Without Lister around, Rimmer would be defunct, and without Rimmer as an equal, Lister would go mad. They were dependent on each other.
Considering all this, attraction seemed inevitable. In many ways, it made sense. It also helped that Lister thought Rimmer a tiny bit handsome and just a smidge sexy. All right, he thought he was smegging gorgeous. If he would just drop the smeghead act with his defences occasionally they might actually get somewhere.
Lister knew the one thing that threw Rimmer off completely was something not on the schedule. This was weird since they regularly experienced bizarre situations, none of which were pencilled on a timetable. Perhaps it was his way of trying to maintain order in chaos. He remained very work centric and disciplined, and if someone decided to throw a few personal feelings or non-work-related compliments into the air, Rimmer would either drop them and run or become temporarily inert and defenceless. He had no idea how to respond because such things just didn’t fit with his past experiences. The trick was therefore to stop him from running away before he could deal with them.
Like now... thought Lister as he twisted his fingers around one of his bunkmate’s braces, watching him shiver from the contact. He ensured Rimmer saw him glance at his lips more than once. The hologram’s face was flushed, and he swallowed thickly, breathing like he’d returned from a jog. Beneath his fingers, Lister could just about feel the simulated beat of his heart. I’ve got him cornered...smeg, he’s gorgeous...
Rimmer blinked, licking his lips. Eventually, he settled for what came easiest to him. Talking.
‘Um,’ he breathed, ‘L-Listy, is this what passes for seduction in Liverpool? I mean, can I expect to receive an affectionate bottle of Carlsberg to the back of my head too? Just so I have fair warning-’
‘Rimmeh! This is yeh fair warning. C’mere-’
Rimmer made a funny squeak at the back of his throat as Lister leaned down. His image began to glitch, freezing a couple of times before disappearing into his lightbee. Lister just managed to catch the bee before it dropped onto the bunk room floor.
With an exasperated sigh, he held the bee in his hand. ‘Rimmeh...’