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Rimmer's very aware of the fact he probably looks like a neurotic, panic-stricken mess. Shivering with anxiety, horribly sweaty, hands gripping onto the starched material of his pajama bottoms.
He feels pathetic. He probably looks pathetic.
God how he hates being reduced to this fear-induced state, rendered useless for anything, and all by an objectively small...flying thing. A bug. A moth specifically.
It's hardly up the top of the list on things likely to kill him. Well. Kill him again, perhaps, seeing as he's already technically dead. Regardless though, it's not like it can bite or sting him. Just fly at him, at his face. That thought alone is enough to make him retch in fear. The concept sounds ridiculous, even to his currently illogical mind.
How the hell the thing is even on the Dwarf itself is anyone's guess - but then, Rimmer reckons, the bloody things always have been good at surviving (unlike himself, his subconscious helpfully adds). The thing is currently situated on the wall of his bunk, crawling and occasionally flying around as moths tend to do. With small crushable wings fluttering in a way that simultaneously makes Rimmer feel sick to his stomach and want to bolt a mile down the corridor, far away from the bunkroom. If he had a working heart, it'd definitely be working overtime.
But obviously, if he leaves, then the thing could get anywhere. Crawl into his bedding, go under his pillow. Catch him unawares from under the table or around the ship-standard strip lights on the ceiling. If he even leaves the room for so much as a minute, who the smeg would be able to find where it had gone? He could never rest again, not for the next few evenings (or for whatever passed as evenings on the ship. Keeping track of the time was always a slightly weird concept in deep space.) at least. And the thought of that too, made him sick to his stomach.
So he settles for standing there, quaking in his hologrammatic slippers, and feeling very much like a terrified small child. Desperately trying not to cry, but failing spectacularly. Humiliating, really. As if it wasn't bad enough to be a coward about dealing with crazed simulants or even more crazed robots with inbuilt killing chips, that seem to be a regular occurrence these days.
Standard weekly occurrences that he'd freak out about, perhaps pass out or be reduced to a glitching light bee that Lister would try and catch before it hit whatever metal ground they happened to be standing on, usually whilst wielding a bazookoid himself. But being scared about stuff like that was fair enough; it was scary by average person standard -- harmless flying insects on the other hand, seemed pitiful in comparison. The sort of thing only an actual child might be scared of, and a young one at that.
Not a supposedly grown man of forty-something, a hard-light hologram who technically couldn't come to any harm. Physical harm, anyway. His poor mental state more than made up for it though, causing him enough distress for decades worth of physical pain or similar.
And this little situation, seems to be the peak of it all.
But what to do? He'll have to call someone he thinks, yell weakly, though the list of available helpers is pretty short. A mechanoid who'll only ask questions, look at him in that judgy way and treat him like a child who'd had an embarrassingly terrifying nightmare. There was no point calling for The Cat, for obvious reasons. Despite his supposedly feline ways, the success rate of his instinctual hunting was relatively poor. Even catching a space weevil often proved too much.
So the last and only available option was...Lister. Smeg. Guaranteed he'd make fun of him, if he even caught the moth at all, that was. But needs must. Aside from anything else, sleeping was something he'd have to do relatively soon.
Unfortunately, there was only so long he could stand there, shivering in panic for. Only so long before his light-bee gave out due to stress, and overheated after crashing down onto the floor. That wouldn't do on many levels...the moth would have disappeared to freak him out later for a start. So he leans back against the wall, weakly, trying to think logically.
It couldn't hurt him, not properly, he knew. It was just a stupid flying bug, albeit not a tiny one, but small in the great scheme of things. Spiders were arguably scarier, not that they'd ever left him in anything like this state.
So what the smegging hell was wrong with him? He should be able to easily deal with something like this. Even a child could manage that.
His brain didn't seem to take much notice of the logic though, quickly reverting back to sheer panic, sick doom at the thought of being essentially trapped here in a prison of his own making. A moth, the lame reason for it all. Utterly pathetic, much like the way he's now shouting for Lister, out of natural instinct. Scrunches his shaking hands into his hair, breathing heavily, leaning back against the cold metal wall like it's a life-line. Waits to be taken out of his misery.
"LISTER!!" He shouts slightly louder, sounding weak even to his own ears. "LISTER!!"
Thundering footsteps are soon coming down the corridor, almost in a run, skidding to a halt outside the open door of the bunkroom. The guy still has half a can of something in his hand that threatens to spill over the recently polished floor (courtesy of Kryten).
"Yeah? You ok, man? What's wrong?" Lister asks cautiously, having instantly noticed the wretched-looking hologram just inside the doorway, eyes watering and hands shaking.
Rimmer swallows in amongst heavy panicked breathing, glancing over to the concerned face of his bunkmate. "...There's a moth. On the wall of my bunk." He chokes out, eyes scrunched in embarrassment, waiting for the inevitable laugh or mocking like his brothers always used to do.
"...Yeah?" Lister replies with a quirk of an eyebrow and only a hint of sarcasm.
"Please get rid of it, Listy." He says, dejectedly. Best to just tell him really, and take the inevitable scoffing as it comes.
Lister looks at him, confused; an air of pity there too surprisingly. And Rimmer doesn't blame him. The whole situation is kind of ridiculous. But he can almost see the cogs turning in the guy's mind, likely wondering how the smeg a (technically) harmless flying bug has managed to bring the hologram to a level of panic -- only topped by the time they were all seconds away from being killed, aboard a simulant death ship sometime last year; a fun experience for all involved.
To his credit though, he skips over the mocking, the laughing at Rimmer's expense about how pathetic and infantile he probably looks. Instead he just nods, doesn't even bother replying in words, and walks towards the bunk - chucking the now empty lager can in the bin on his way. He grabs a cup and tissue off the side, crawls carefully onto the bed and turns to look back at Rimmer.
"Um...I dunno if I should kill it. Y'know, it possibly bein' the last of it's kind." Lister says, hesitating.
"Yes, well. Please just get rid of it. Take it away, kill it, I don't care. Just please make it go away." He begs pathetically, squashing himself back against the side of the lockers, as far in the corner as he can get. Aiming to calm his breathing by following that cliche 'circular breathing' concept, that those self-help videos always encouraged for stressful situations. Annoyingly it does start to help, though it could also be the fact the whole thing will hopefully soon be over, providing Lister concentrates.
"Okay." Lister says with a sigh, leaning forwards to carefully position the cup close underneath the thing. "I'll try."
"You'd better, miladdo." Rimmer retorts, eyes shut in anticipation, forgetting for a second that being bitter to the guy helping him possibly isn't the best thing to do. Luckily though, Lister just snorts in response, not looking particularly offended.
It takes half a minute or so of Lister clearly trying to work out the best way to do it, to prevent the moth escaping and flying elsewhere -- all whilst Rimmer is hyperventilating behind him. Eventually Lister settles for brushing the thing into the cup with his hand, quickly covering it over and mentally congratulating himself on a job well done. He takes the thing out and down the corridor, towards the nearest available airlock. It takes some tricky manoeuvring with his foot to flick open the catch but he manages it somehow, finally releasing his hand from over the cup and watching as the moth flies out. Five seconds later, and the entire thing is sucked out into deep space, cup and all. Smeg.
Rimmer has scurried along behind him, waiting a good few feet back and watching in trepidation as the thing goes out, hopefully never to be seen again. He takes a relieved breath, slumping back against the wall of the corridor, the embarrassed anxiety coming back in a different way. A horribly humiliating queasy feeling of being vulnerable, someone having seen him in that completely panicked and pathetic state over a tiny bug, entirely harmless.
"Rimmer? You okay, guy? It's gone now, I promise."
He nods his head in response, not trusting himself to reply without embarrassing himself further, hugging himself in a fierce grip. Thank god, is his only thought right now. Uneasy relief.
Lister looks at him with a mixture of sympathy and thinly-veiled pity. "C'mon, man." He places his arm gently around Rimmer's shoulders, guides him back to the bunkroom like a nervous animal. A needy, neurotic animal, prone to bolting at the first sight of vague danger.
They get back to the bunkroom, Rimmer taking deep breaths, albeit steadier ones than before, and doing a quick scan of the room; still not entirely trusting that a hoard of moths won't fly out at him from some hypothetical place. And uncharacteristically, Lister doesn't even taunt him in the slightest - not for the skittish way he checks around the room, nor for the still watery eyes he knows he has. Rimmer almost wants him to skit, like his family always used to. Make him feel more shit than he already does - a twisted kind of comfort in making a smegged-up situation even worse.
But Lister doesn't, just looks at him with a sad sort-of smile, messing with the end of one of his dreads. The sort of look that makes Rimmer want to actually bolt, not have to address anything.
"So...I take it ya scared of moths then?"
Rimmer snorts, avoiding his concerned gaze. "You could say that. Scared might be a bit of an understatement." He admits cagily with as much of a withering look as he can manage.
"Ah. A phobia then." Lister nods in understanding. "Just moths? Or all flying insects...?"
"All. But especially moths." He replies with a shudder. Even saying the word itself can make him feel faintly sick, as if voicing it will summon another. His frazzled brain isn't entirely sure it won't.
"Smeg." Lister says, lighting up the cigarette that had been previously left behind his ear. "That's gotta be shit to live with."
Rimmer sighs in resentment, more to himself than anything else. "Mmhm."
Lister lights the fag, letting it hang from his lip. "How come I didn't notice before? We've been livin' together for years now."
"There's never been any here before, not until now. I've got no clue how the little bastard managed to get in anyway. We're in deep space for god's sake!?" He laments, finally giving in to the lightheadedness and pulling out a chair to sit down, instantly slumping down and laying his head on his arms on the table. Lister takes the other chair, taking a drag of the cigarette and looking over at him with something akin to genuine care. That in itself, makes Rimmer feel weird, though he's hardly in the mood for analysing any more of that train of thought right now.
"I dunno, man. These things just happen sometimes." He says with a shrug. "Ya feeling ok now?" Lister asks, a question Rimmer's fairly sure is meant to be rhetorical.
"Hmm? Yes, I suppose."
"Yeah, right. No offence guy, but you look out of it."
"Thanks for the concern, Listy, but I'm fine. I'm used to dealing with the aftermath of panic attacks."
"...I know." Lister takes another puff of the cigarette, leaning back in his chair. "But that amount of stress can't be good for ya. Or good for ya light-bee either."
"Well. It's not, I can assure you. Nothing much I can do about it though. There's only so much self-help videos and medi-bots can do for you." He mumbles, scowling, though the tiredness he's now becoming increasingly aware of is making him want to admit the whole lot of it to Lister, who seems to want to listen. "I'm just tired of it all, Listy. Tired of being a coward, tired of not just spending my life like this, but my death too. It's pathetic, absolutely pathetic."
"Nah, it's not pathetic to be scared, Rimsy. I promise ya." Lister adds with a sigh. "I'm claustrophobic y'know, I get it, kinda. How it feels like bein' trapped in ya mind, feelin' sick to your stomach and not knowin' how to stop it."
Rimmer just nods in response, not quite knowing what to say, instead choosing to stare mindlessly at an old revision timetable stuck on the wall in an attempt to zone out. He does know about the claustrophobia actually, is all too aware of the few times Lister had broken down into sobs when they'd been held hostage on various enemy ships, often in tiny contained cells or the like. And he knows this, sure, but that seems like a worthy phobia. A proper one.
One worth helping someone over, making sure they were ok. It didn't sound half as pathetic as being deathly scared of small flying insects.
This train of thought must have shown somewhat in his expression, because Lister now looks to be contemplating something, staring at him sadly. Eventually he reaches over and gently ruffles Rimmer's curls with a faint smile, who just lets him. It's nice, annoyingly so. Lister shouldn't be treating him nicely, like he's something to be bothered protecting or caring about. Being that pathetically terrified of something harmless and objectively inoffensive shouldn't warrant any sort of comfort. A near-death experience on the other hand, might.
"You mind if I put on a Zero-Gee match, man? I was plannin' on watching it later anyway."
"No- nope. Go ahead." He answers despondently, feeling exhausted if he's honest, the panic having run it's course.
"You sure?"
"Mmhm."
As the telly plays in the background, the ambient noise helping to dull the neurotic part of his mind, Rimmer can finally relax. To be honest, he does feel pretty out of it.
They stay like that for a while, Lister alternating between stroking Rimmer's head like he used to do for that stray cat, long ago before the radiation leak, and taking long drags of the cigarette. The acceptance is unnerving for sure, and smeg knows he's undeserving of it. But it's nice, he supposes.
Even if his previously-gelled curls are being messed up.