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When Lister was thirteen he attempted to pierce his own eyebrow, his Nan's pocket mirror angled up on the kitchen table, and a mainly sanitised needle in his hand. He wasn't entirely careless, he vaguely knew the technique to these things, having seen a kid or two do DIY piercings on each other in the school toilets. But the key word here was attempt, because Lister's version didn't work out quite as well.
Because sure, the needle went through - the jewellery too - but a week and a bit later and the smegging thing was infected. Badly. It had taken a few trips to the doctor and the digital A&E (plus a course of strong antibiotics) and it had been sorted, mainly healed. Obviously his eyebrow was now jewellery-less, which was disappointing. The scar too; years later now a clean white line through his eyebrow, almost invisible when he brushed the hairs the right way.
In some ways it was nice to see when he looked closely in the bathroom mirror, in the living quarters of Red Dwarf. A reminder of what once existed, mistakes other than the entirety of humanity being eradicated over a radiation leak and a few million years. It reminded him of Liverpool, his nan, his long-gone childhood. Nostalgia in a stripe across his eyebrow, a permanent memento of a life he'd never get to go back to.
Rimmer had a scar too, across the bottom of his jaw, visible at certain angles. Despite all their years of living beside each other, having endless conversations about all the crap they could remember and then some - in all those years Rimmer had never mentioned how he'd got the smegging thing. Lister had his theories, obviously. Usually ones to do with the guy's shitty parents, shitty early years of life, long before Red Dwarf. He could ask the man obviously, but it felt intrusive. Too personal. And maybe one day Rimmer would tell him, once every other conversation topic had been exhausted.
Lister was good at waiting. Good at oversharing too, his nan had always said so, fondly. He'd told Rimmer many a time about all the various scars and the few tattoos he'd collected over the years, dotted around his upper arms and shoulders. Most of them done in GlassInk, that new stuff that only showed them at certain angles, or when light reflected. So yeah, Rimmer knew the meaning behind each one, remembered them too every time they were mentioned; and that was sweet, Lister had to admit.
Rimmer himself, had one singular tattoo. Much like the scar though, it was never mentioned, other than Rimmer divulging he had one at all, back when they did a drinking game on one of his death-day celebrations. Lister had never seen it though, and was probably never going to. Unless of course, all the conversation topics really did dry up, Rimmer miraculously got over all of his smegging neuroses and internalised sexuality hang-ups - about as likely as the Cat giving up every shiny thing he owned - and they shagged, for certainly no other reason than out of complete boredom and lack of available women.
All very hypothetical, and very likely to be a long time waiting. But Lister was good at that, waiting.