Chapter Text
Rimmer was back on the ship, his time as Ace Rimmer over and the baton passed onto a fresh new Arnold Rimmer. Kochanski had found her old crew and hopped back to her reality, and Lister was finally starting to get back to normal after moping around for weeks and weeks after she left.
He hated seeing Lister in such a state, shuffling around in his night robe, drinking more than his usual half a brewery a day. Rimmer knew that comforting people wasn’t his forte, and that he had no idea what to do to make Lister feel better. So, he resorted to leaving him be, letting him get through the worst of it. Lister knew Rimmer was there to talk to - or at - if necessary, though Rimmer was quietly relieved he wasn’t taken up on the offer.
Lister wouldn’t talk about Kochanski. Not to Rimmer, at least. Kryten and the Cat had a front row seat to everything that went down, all the adventures they went through without him. Getting information out of those two was a nightmare though, and Lister seemed reluctant to talk about anything. Had he and Kochanski rekindled their romance? Did she reject him like she did three million years ago? If he didn’t know then he couldn’t help .
Well, that was the excuse he told himself anyway. In actuality, Rimmer just hated being out of the loop. This was information Rimmer wanted to know, and ever since Lister had hid his smegging journal, the hologram had to resort to some slightly more clandestine techniques.
Lister and Rimmer never really talked like they once did, not since Cat deigned to join their ranks and act like a proper crewmember instead of dancing around the halls, eating little fishies and napping all day. The same went for Kryten, who had become very attached to “Mr Lister” ever since his programming had been broken. Lister, Kryten and the Cat had become inseparable, and Rimmer was always on the outside looking in. It reminded him of his childhood, of how his brothers would always treat him as the odd one out.
He tried to pretend it didn't bother him half as much as it did.
Things were so much better when it was just the two of us…
At least this was a way to find out what was going on in the scouser’s mind, as underhanded as it was.
That’ll teach him for cutting me out.
Rimmer was proud of himself for thinking to look in the Dream Recorder. Sure, it wouldn’t be an exact account of what happened during his time away, but it was a start.
Nothing could have prepared him for what he found though.
It’d been a while since Rimmer had operated the Dream Recorder so it took a few minutes to reorient himself with the controls. After he did, Rimmer’s first step was to navigate to the ‘saved’ folder, a way for crewmembers to easily find dreams they wish to relive.
The most recent saved dreams in Lister’s folder were beyond ANYTHING Rimmer could have expected. They were dreams about HIM. Half a dozen of them in fact. They involved the two men being close, worryingly so…
Then, he saw the kiss.
In the cockpit of Starbug, Rimmer having just returned from his adventures as Ace, reuniting with Lister.
Rimmer had to watch it a few times himself to make sure he wasn’t imagining things. Lister was dreaming of him? Why? Didn’t he despise him? Well, okay, despise is a strong word, but they were in no position to be all lovey-dovey with one another. What changed?
Looking at the log information, it had been watched through many times over. Lister had watched the dream where he and Rimmer had kissed over and over again. Lister kissing him. Him kissing Lister. Kissing.
Rimmer’s throat was dry, his heart beating faster with every watchthrough. He simply did not know how to process this information. This was above his pay grade. They didn’t teach you what to do if our bunkmate started crushing on you in basic training.
Crush… is that what this is?
Rimmer never hated Lister. Sure, there were moments when he wanted to wring his neck for being the disgusting, lazy slob that he was. But he never hated the man. In fact, one could go as far as to say he liked him. Admired him. He took no smeg, he was brave, and he stood up for those he cared about. He’d been there for Rimmer, time and time again, even when the hologram tried to keep the man at arm’s length. Truth be told, if anything happened to Lister, he’d be devastated. Not that he’d ever admit such a thing, of course. But he hadn’t cared for another human being as much as him since-...
...ever.
The realisation was crushing.
He cared deeply for the man. They were alone in deep space with barely anyone else. They had been for years, and no doubt would be for the rest of their lives. It’s not unnatural to grow feelings for someone in such a situation. But to go as far as kissing him?
Suppressed deep down, so deep that you’d require spelunking equipment to find it, was Rimmer’s curiosity for Lister. Curiosity that would devastate his father and disappoint his conservative mother. Curiosity like this had occurred before, in his teenage years, but in the city he was from and the people he was around, it wasn’t acceptable. His parents would have disowned him.
So Rimmer convinced himself it wasn’t there anymore. A teenage delusion that he should be ashamed of, and was to never be brought up again. That was his coping mechanism. That is how he dealt with it.
But now, away from his hometown on Io, away from his judgemental parents, he had no-one left to disappoint. No-one but himself, at least.
Still, it didn’t make sense. The man Rimmer had been desperately trying to prove he was macho too, the man he assumed would have ridiculed anything other than staunch hetrosexuality in the hologram… was having dreams like this about him.
And Rimmer had no clue about what to do next.