Chapter Text
The game was clearly up. Lister had nowhere to turn; yet again, he found himself in a position of such absurdity that he wondered what in the smeg he’d done to find himself here, on this smegging ship, facing this insurmountable obstacle.
“Not only are you so stupid,” Hollister opined, “that you sneak an unvaccinated cat on board, but you also take a picture of yourself with the cat and take it to be processed at the ship’s lab.” Red Dwarf’s captain held up the offending photo; Lister felt a surge of panic go through him. “Luckily,” Hollister concluded, steepling his fingers, “luckily for you Lister, I love cats.”
Lister blinked, surprised. The conversation had taken a shift that he certainly had not expected. He felt rather like his life had suddenly veered off its established path and was presently chugging along a strange, dirt road into the unknown. “Er … that’s … good?”
“Yes, it is good, Lister. Which is why I’m going to let you keep your cat … so long as you do two things: take it down to the lab and get it smegging vaccinated! And confine it to your quarters. No letting it run around the corridors, or into the heating ducts, or anything like that. If you can’t keep that cat under control, then it’s gone. Am I making myself clear?”
“Uh … yes, sir!” Lister did an approximation of a salute and clicked his heels, grinning. “Yes, sir, Captain Hollister!”
When he returned to his quarters, Frankenstein in his arms, it was nearly three o’clock. Rimmer was sprawled out on the lower bunk, face down, a plastic tag from his visit to the infirmary still around his wrist. He’d stripped down to his undershirt and boxers, and Lister could see there were still traces of black ink covering his arms and legs. Snorting and shaking his head, Lister deposited Frankenstein onto the floor and went in search of some tinned tuna. “You deserve it, girl,” he said after locating the tin and opening it. “I smegging hate needles.” Frankenstein answered with an annoyed mrawr, and he planted a kiss on the top of her head.
A little bit later, Rimmer finally seemed to be returning to life. He made a slight groan and shifted in his bunk. Curious, Frankenstein leapt up onto the bunk and began licking one of his hands.
“Ugggh?” Rimmer murmured into his pillow. “Izzat you … Rachel?”
Lister snorted, and the sound brought Rimmer around. He lifted his head from the pillow and looked around, bleary-eyed. When he spotted the cat, he jerked back, promptly hitting his head on the wall behind him. “What the smeg is that?”
“It’s a cat,” Lister said slowly, as one might speak to a small child.
“Why is there a cat in my bunk, Lister?” Rimmer swatted at Frankenstein, who hissed and then ran to hide behind beneath Lister’s chair.
“She’s my new pet, so you’d best get used to her.”
“Pet!” Rimmer spat, propping himself on an elbow. “Pet! We don’t have pets, Lister! Space Corps directive 18695 clearly states …” He paused, looking lost. “18695 …18695 … slash...”
“Hollister gave me his permission. She’s vaccinated an’ all.”
“This is preposterous!” Rimmer sputtered, having abandoned his sleepy effort to recall the wording of Space Corps directive 18695/whatever. “Did no one think to ask me? I live here too! Tell me, Lister, why didn’t the Captain ask me first?”
“Probably because you were in the infirmary, recovering from your latest psychotic episode, covered in sweat and black permanent marker.”
Lister enjoyed the next few moments, as he watched realization slowly dawn on Rimmer’s face: I’ve failed again … Rimmer moaned and buried his face back into his pillow. “Oh smeg. Ohsmegohsmegohsmeg. I can’t believe it.”
“I can.”
“I was so close this time. So close. But no. This is it. My life is over. I’m never going to pass this smegging exam.”
Lister began to feel a little bad at this point. It was only fun needling Rimmer when he was puffed up with delusions of his own superiority; when he acknowledged his utter failure, it started to get a bit depressing. “Smeg, Rimmer. Relax.”
“Relax?” Rimmer turned his head on his pillow so that his face was directed towards Lister. “Relax? Well, thank you, Dr. Lister. All of my problems are now solved. I expect you’ll be starting up your own private practice soon. Ah, if only the whole world were just as relaxed as you, Lister. What an idyllic place that would be!” Scowling, he buried his face in his pillow again.
Lister reflected on this for a moment, scooping up Frankenstein and placing her in his lap. “Yeah! It probably would be.”
Rimmer made a noise of deep pain and annoyance.
"Look,” Lister said, his general dislike for Rimmer warring with his temporary pity for the smegger, “tonight you and I are going down to the CopaCabana and I am buying you a drink. You just need something to take your mind off of your problems.”
Rimmer, face still down, waved him away with one hand. “No thank you,” he mumbled into the pillow. “I’m staying in tonight and the only thing I’ll be drinking is a glass of diluted cyanide.”
Rolling his eyes, Lister got up and threw Frankenstein onto the prone body of Second Technician Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSc, SSc, who promptly screamed like a little girl. “Mate, get over yourself. I’ll see you at –“ he checked his invisible watch – “21:00 hours.”
“Y’know what really gets me,” Rimmer sputtered, holding forth over his fifth lemon spritzer, his eyes faintly bloodshot. “Y’know what really kills me?”
“Wha’?” Lister responded, fairly certain this conversation had already occurred that night. Smeggin’ hell, Rimmer couldn’t hold his alcohol.
“S’that … I could have been somebody. Maybe. If I’d … tried.” Rimmer picked up his glass and began painting the surface of the bar with its ring of condensation.
“Wha’daya mean, Rimmer? You are somebody! You’re the king of the vending machines on this smegging vessel! Nobody can take that away from you!” Lister giggled.
Rimmer crossed his arms on the bar and rested his head on them, laughing as though this were the funniest thing he had ever heard, until there were tears running out of the corners of his eyes. He was definitely, totally, positively, absolutely very drunk. Lister was pretty soused, himself, but a drunk Rimmer was an unexpectedly delightful experience. He found everything hilarious. He was even more loquacious than normal, which was saying something. All of his myriad fidgety habits were amplified to the point of such excess that they somehow became simultaneously irritating and endearing – he drummed his fingers almost incessantly; he jiggled his legs like a kid on a sugar high; he snatched at his hair in frustration so that now it was a nightmare, insane frizzy curls sticking out everywhere. Most of the time, he grinned like a moron. Lister hadn’t been so entertained in ages.
“No, no …. What I mean is,” Rimmer said, continuing his previous thought stubbornly, like a dog sniffing out a half-buried corpse, “I mean, I had other int’rests. Y’know that, Lister? Being an officer wasn’t even my dream at all! I’ve spent my whole life doing what somebody else wants!”
“Really?” Lister inquired, smiling. He hoped he wasn’t going to be treated to another rant about Rimmer’s parents, or even worse, a story about Rimmer’s love of hammond organ music.
“Yes.” Rimmer turned to him, very serious, and suddenly looking very sober, though his eyes were still bleary and unfocused. “Yes. And that, Lister,” he said, enunciating carefully, “is why I hate you so much.” And then he smiled blissfully.
Unexpectedly blind-sided by this – the words were said so calmly, and yet strangely enough, with no rancor, but just in a completely matter-of-fact way – Lister blinked. “What? Why?”
“Because,” Rimmer said, pointing his finger at him and cocking an eyebrow, “you still have your dreams, Lister. You didn’t … throw them away like a cheap hooker after a weeklong bender.” He drained his glass and slammed it on the bar. This display of aggression was somewhat dimmed by the fact that the glass in question was a fine-stemmed martini glass, with a slice of lemon and a sprig of mint still in it.
“Wait!” Lister said, laughing. “I thought I had no ambition, man! What are you talking about?”
Rimmer, still grinning madly, slid his arm around Lister’s shoulders. “I think,” he said, “I’m going to pass out now.”
“Boss thinkin’!” Lister replied, and then Rimmer fell off of his stool.
There was something warm vibrating on his chest.
Rimmer cracked an eye open and was greeted by two large green eyes, blinking at him. This was followed by an overwhelming wave of nausea.
“Ohhh … smeg.” He rolled off of the bunk, Lister’s cat yowling and scooting away. He barely managed to crawl over to the vicinity of the toilet and command it to fold out from the wall before he began retching up everything he’d ever eaten in his life. He even thought at one point he saw the burnt umber crayon he’d once eaten in nursery school.
Afterwards, he lay down on the floor, leaning his cheek against its coolness. “Ugggh,” he said.
“Mow,” said Frankenstein.
“Rrrrrrrrrrr,” snored Lister, sounding like a cement mixer.
Rimmer fell back to sleep.
He was awoken at some indeterminable time later by the thud of a glass jar being placed in front of his face.
“Whathis?” he slurred, without moving.
Lister stepped over him and turned on the faucet. He didn’t seem to have much of a hangover. The bastard. “Umeboshi.”
“Umawhat?”
Lister began shaking up his can of shaving cream. “Hangover remedy. I learned it from this girl I dated for about a week at Art College. Well, she was at Art College for the week, not me. Anyway, just eat one of those little suckers and you’ll be right as rain in a little bit.”
Rimmer spent a few minutes mulling this information over, and then a few minutes more trying to remember how his arms worked. He pulled himself into sort of a sitting position at last and unscrewed the jar. A sour smell wafted up to him. Wrinkling his nose, he decided he had nothing to lose – the taste couldn’t be any worse than the inside of his mouth currently, which was what he imagined one of Lister’s socks would taste like after having been boiled in a vat of stomach acid. He fished one of the weird, squishy red pickled fruits out and, closing his eyes and hoping he didn’t vomit again, popped it in his mouth.
Lister smirked at him as his face screwed up, chewing the salty and sour plum. “Don’t forget to spit out the pit!” Rimmer spat it into his hand and then swallowed, regretfully. Well … it had certainly taken the taste away, he supposed. He crawled back over to his bunk and curled up into a fetal position. He’d just lay here for a bit … until he felt better … then he’d get ready and study. Study. He winced at the memory of the previous day’s exam. The thought of astronavigation made him fear that Lister’s putrid umeboshi might come up. Perhaps not study, then.
Lister finished shaving and busied himself getting some milk and crispies out for his cat. If anything, the smegger seemed to be more energetic after a night out drinking. Just one more reason Rimmer hated him.
Hated him …
”And that, Lister, is why I hate you so much.”
Ugh, smeg. He’d probably said all sorts of pathetic things last night; it was all a bit of a blur, really. He hoped he hadn’t started singing at one point. The first time he’d ever gotten really, badly drunk was the night before his first lecture at Io Polytechnic. He’d worked himself into going out with some of the other students at his orientation and wound up acting out nearly all the plot of Les Miserables by the end of the night. His nickname had been “Cosette” for the rest of the term. He’d been late the next morning, too, and his father, the lecturer, had made him pay for it dearly.
As he tried to distract himself from memories of himself standing on a chair while belting out “Do You Hear the People Sing?” he discovered that, much to his surprise, Lister’s hangover remedy seemed to be working. He felt markedly better. He slowly uncurled himself and sat up in his bunk, testing the waters. He rubbed his face. “What happened last night?” he asked around a yawn.
“What happened?” Lister turned and looked at him. He was in the middle of shaving, and half of his face was covered with Brillo. “What happened, Rimmer, was that you had a smegging good time, forgot about your smegging troubles for a bit, and are probably all the better for it.” He finished shaving and rinsed off his face. “I’m going to hit up the vending machines. Y’want anything?”
Rimmer waved him away irritably.
“Trust me, Rimmer, you need to eat. I’ll get you a croissant or something. And drink some smegging water.” Lister pulled his hat firmly onto his head and swaggered out of their room.
Rimmer sighed and dragged himself to his feet. He stumbled over to the sink, filled his water glass up, and chugged it down. As he put the glass down he caught sight of his arm -- the smears of black ink and the plastic bracelet he hadn’t bothered to take off last night. Cursing, he looked around for something to cut it with, and finding nothing, ripped it off with his teeth and threw it away. Then he walked over to the wall where his study timetable was still handing, tore it down, ripped it into pieces, and threw that away too.
By the time Lister had returned, laden with food, Rimmer had showered and dressed himself, and felt nearly normal again, and certainly hungry. Luckily, Lister had brought more than just the proffered croissant.
Rimmer paced up and down the room, sipping tea and rubbing restlessly at the marks on his arm, which still hadn’t quite come off in the shower. Lister was sitting with his boots up on the table, stuffing his face with a cinnamon bun.
“So, here’s the thing,” he said abruptly, and Rimmer felt as though Lister were picking up a conversation they’d been having, though he couldn’t remember when. “If y’want to know what I think --”
“Not particularly --”
“I think you should take one of them career assessment tests they give in personnel.”
“What?” Rimmer ceased pacing, cup halfway to his mouth. “What are you talking about?”
“Y’know, they analyze your personality and reactions and figure out what you’re best suited to do. Peterson did it, that’s how he became a caterin’ officer. He’s a dead good cook, too.”
Rimmer scowled and put the tea down. “Absolutely not.” Preposterous! A smegging chef? What kind of officer was that? Dimly, he considered the very real prospect that taking such a test would merely confirm his worst fears, and the often repeated taunts of his family -- that he wasn’t really suited for any profession. He had zero talent and ability. He’d be a second technician for the rest of his days.
“Well,” Lister said with a gusty sigh, “Think on it, will ya?” He balled up the paper bag his breakfast had been packaged in and pitched it into the trash, pumping his fist when it flipped off the wall and landed right in. “Right then. I’m out. Goin’ to see if the mail pod’s arrived yet. See ya, Rimmer. Bye, Frankenstein!” He made some embarrassing smooches towards the cat, which was currently curled up asleep on his bed, and left.
Rimmer stared at the door after he left, then finished his tea and went over his desk. He pulled down one of his astronavigation books, opened it randomly, and stared hard at the page. It might as well have been written in Sanskrit. For a moment he let all the frustration and disgust well up inside of his -- smeg, he was heartily sick of all of this! Then he groaned and laid his head down on the book and closed his eyes.
He’d think about it later.