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‘Yeah, all right then,’ Lister says, and Rimmer is so surprised at the lack of mocking, it takes him a moment to change gears and get his words back.
‘Really?’ he says, and is rewarded with one of those gittish warm smiles Lister seems to be handing out these days like a demented easter bunny distributing chocolate. His own mouth twitches in response. He gets himself under control. ‘I would have thought you’d have more to say on the matter.’
Lister shrugs, but he’s still smiling, and Rimmer’s lightbee hums insistently inside him. ‘Nah, if it’s important to you,’ he says. His face turns wolfish as he leans closer. ‘And your argument was pretty persuasive.’
He looks up at Rimmer under his eyelashes. And honestly, Rimmer has spent too many years with Lister for that to be remotely affecting, whatever the strange twist in his chest suggests. He just nods sharply, and his voice is only a little softer than he intends when he says, ‘‘Of course it was, I am a master persuader.’
Lister laughs and bumps his shoulder against Rimmer’s. And then doesn’t move back, just leans against him, close enough that his breath tickles Rimmer’s ear when he says, ‘Whatever man, I think you’ll find I’ve been able to persuade you once or twice too,’ and waves one hand perilously close to Rimmer’s thigh.
‘Disregarding previous unintentional breaches of the policy,’ Rimmer starts only for Lister to interrupt -
‘Hang on, I hadn’t realised it was a policy, do I need to review documents or sign something before I put my fingers in your -”
“Disregarding previous breaches,’ Rimmer says, aiming for authoritative and landing closer to lightly hysterical, ‘I would prefer if in future -’
‘Rimmer,’ Lister cuts in again, hand finally landing not on his thigh, but on Rimmer’s hand. He squeezes it. ‘You don’t actually have to persuade me.’ He ducks his head, so Rimmer only gets a hint of the expression on his face, but even the hint is enough to make his lightbee go all hummy again. ‘Sounds quite nice, if I’m honest.’
Rimmer doesn’t know what to say to that, just like he never knows what to say when Lister does this, goes all sort of sweet. It is obviously a sign of how he is space-crazy that he does this around Rimmer, but also it pokes at this thing inside Rimmer, this strange wanting creature who squirms in his stomach and makes Rimmer want -
Well, it makes Rimmer want all sorts of things that he knows he shouldn’t. For now, he brings Lister’s hand to his lips and presses a kiss to it. He’s aware of how ludicrous he must look - who does he think he is, a knight from one of Lister’s old AR games? - but it is worth it for another one of those smiles that makes Rimmer’s traitorous breath catch and the wanting creature inside him hum with satisfaction.
‘So are we doing it now or do I need to book an appointment?’ Lister asks, then.
‘In a rush are we, squire?’ Rimmer says, aiming for indifference.
But Lister just shrugs. ‘I mean, it’s not like I’ve planned ahead, but I can imagine wanting to put my fingers in your mouth relatively soonish, yeah,’ he says casually, as if it doesn’t make Rimmer’s gut twist and his skin go hot, and unfortunately the feeling barely abates when Lister adds, ‘one of my favourite ways of shutting you up, actually.’
‘See here, you pea-brained, barely human waste of -’ Rimmer starts, but he can hear the smeggy fondness in his own voice, and trails off in the face of Lister’s laughter. It is strange how it only barely feels like a concession, not really. He clears his throat. ‘We can do it now,’ he allows and disentangles himself from Lister with as much dignity as he can manage.
*
‘Kryten, what on Io are you dragging all of this junk around for?’ Rimmer asks. Kryten is wheeling a trolley piled high with what seems like it must be at least a container’s worth of electrical bits and bobs, random wood and, balancing neatly on top of it, a small china ornament of an auburn-haired shepherdess in a red checked dress, holding a black sheep up to her cheek.
Rimmer grabs it.
‘Sir, I -’ Kryten starts, looking askance at the figurine.
‘I think I asked you a question, you malfunctioning rubber contraption, chop chop,’ he interrupts, not blushing in the slightest.
Kryten does the thing where he’s only just hiding his resentment, and Rimmer is very tempted to remind him just how much, exactly, he owes Rimmer, so he can rein that annoyance in, miladdo, except then Kryten says, ‘I am cleaning out Mr Lister’s room.’
‘Oh,’ Rimmer says. He looks at the china figure in his hand and then back at the overflowing bag. ‘That’s…good.’
‘That’s what I said, sir!’ Kryten says happily, easily warming to his favourite topic, ‘I said, Mr Lister sir, it is so good to see you with renewed vigour for life after such a period of stagnation.’
‘Stagnation?’ Rimmer says. He feels a little lightheaded. Might be time for another diagnostic check up.
‘Yes - collecting all that junk and drinking too much, moping about. Loneliness, I suspect sir, being the last human and all. Still, perhaps it was the cats -‘
‘What, those mangy moggies?’ Rimmer asks, wrinkling his nose.
Kryten tuts disapprovingly. ‘Sir, those are your acolytes!’’
Unfortunately that is a fair point - he doesn’t actually dislike the cats, he reminds himself, they had been surprisingly wise and logical in the end. But he’s hardly going to say that to Kryten, so he keeps himself to the topic at hand.
‘Kryten, the cats, excellent taste in deities aside, are not the point. Is Lister still moping?’
‘Well that’s it, sir, he isn’t! I was worried, you see, but maybe the cats - or maybe there’s news about Miss Kochanski -‘
At that moment Lister rounds the corner, stopping Rimmer from following through on his sudden, inexplicable desire to brain Kryten with a china figurine.
‘Ey, glad you grabbed that, man, I was worried!’ Lister says. He’s pushing his own - admittedly much smaller - trolley, but he reaches out a hand for the figurine. Irrationally, Rimmer holds it away from him. Instead of snapping at him or trying to wrest it from him, Lister just grins. ‘You can hang on to her if you like.’ He glances at the trolley in front of him. ‘Or maybe she could go back to the bunk room. You can see the lower bunk now.’
‘Well, good work Indiana Jones, I am sure whatever ancient artifacts have been revealed will be studied by historians for years to come. Ah yes, an excellent example of the slob era!’ Rimmer says, gesturing with the china figurine and trying not to look at Lister’s still-smiling face too much.
‘Sir, it was a laborious process! I even steam cleaned the mattress.’ Kryten gives a bashful smile. ‘Oh, who am I kidding? It was fun!’
Lister rolls his eyes affectionately, but he’s looking at Rimmer and smiling when he says, ‘see? All clean and ready, in case you wanted to, you know, share her.’ He nods his head towards the figurine and Rimmer -
Rimmer should be saying something, he knows he should. He hasn’t missed bunking with Lister, hasn’t missed hearing his voice thick with sleep when he stirs in the mid-morning or last thing at night before he calls lights, hasn’t missed tripping over his boots and the persistent smell of curry. It is not a tempting offer, and he’s going to tell Lister so any time now.
Lister is lonely, he thinks, and wants to shake himself. Not his problem. ‘Well, tempting as the offer of a mildly less infested bunk room is, Listy, I have got used to having my things neat and unmolested. I will have to think it over carefully.’
Lister’s smile widens further, and something flutters in Rimmer’s stomach. ‘All right, you get yourself a nice pro and con list, guy, colour-code your way to an answer.’
Lister is poking fun at him, Rimmer knows that, despite his idiot brain trying to tell him that his voice sounds fond. Just like he knows - he does know, and he’s not sure why his stomach is doing what it is doing - that Lister is only asking because he gets bored easily. Because he’s lonely.
The thing in Rimmer’s stomach twists. It is almost painful.
*
‘Ow!’ Lister complains, snatching his hand back.
‘If you keep moving, it will only make it more likely to hurt,’ Rimmer lectures and reaches over to grab Lister’s hand. Despite his wounded noise, Lister lets him take it easily. ‘Anyway, if you’d cleaned your nails once in all the time we’ve been in space -’
‘Hey guy, I cut me nails, I wash me hands, you can smeg off with all that!’
‘Lister, you repair machines regularly. There’s probably traces of oil down here from three million years ago,’ Rimmer says, trying to look stern and disgusted, but his stupid traitorous hands gentle, working the file carefully under the nail of Lister’s ring finger and scraping. For long moments, Lister is quiet, and it’s - it is nice. He keeps expecting Lister to stop this - to make some sort of joke or snarky comment to break the calm between them. But Lister has been doing that less and less these days. So Rimmer cleans his nails and tries not to squirm with how much he likes this. Lister’s hands, with those rings and leather gloves which Rimmer has spent years trying not to think about too much, and which he now - for now, he reminds himself - gets to touch, to feel on his own body. Lister’s fingers, which Lister is letting him clean, just because he asked, because Lister wants to touch Rimmer enough to give into his (admittedly entirely reasonable) demands.
Better words than nice suggest themselves, but Rimmer mentally bats them away and catches a bit of dirt stuck at the edge of the nail.
‘You’re not half bad at this,’ Lister notes after a while. ‘How’d you learn, anyway? Surely you can just -’ he flutters the hand Rimmer isn’t currently working on, ‘-and hey presto! Perfectly clean.’
Rimmer looks critically at the nail he’s been working on. ‘I could yes, but I got into the habit when I was Ace.’
‘Oh ey?’ Lister says, raising his eyebrows, and Rimmer’s mouth tightens. Lister’s always been a little too interested in his Ace days.
‘Well, obviously, with Ace being such a blatant fruitshow, of course he enjoyed fussing over things like that,’ Rimmer says with more venom than he intends.
‘Arn,’ Lister says, and Rimmer hates the laughter he can hear in his voice a little bit. ‘I don’t know how to break it to you man, but I think you might be a bit of a fruitshow too.’
‘That’s not the same thing at all, you don’t count,’ he says and wishes he could bite his own tongue off.
When he glances over, Lister looks sem-offended. ‘Excuse me, smeghead? I think you’ll find I am all man, and you haven’t exactly been complaining.’ He pauses and corrects himself. ‘Well, not about that anyway.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Rimmer mumbles and tries to focus on Lister’s little finger in a way that hopefully deters Lister from any further questions. He’s not sure what he can say if Lister pushes it. There’s that wanting thing inside him again, egging him on to say soft and sappy and perfectly idiotic things like it’s different because I know you, or you’re mine, or you’re the smegging sun.
Even the thought makes him want to vomit.
And maybe Lister senses that, or maybe he’s storing this up for a later argument, or maybe it’s just the opportunity to ask more about Ace (flash git), but he drops it in favour of saying, ‘So, what, you decided if the original Ace was into having his nails done, you would be too?’
‘It wasn’t like that!’ Rimmer cries and Lister flinches as the nailfile catches on the tender flesh of his finger. ‘It was - I mean - look, it’s actually - I mean, personal hygiene has always been important -’ He glares at Lister’s hands as if they’ve personally wronged him. Then he takes a breath. ‘Wildfire taught me how to do it properly. It was - useful, sometimes. To have something to do in between, you know.’
‘Being dashingly heroic?’ Lister says gently.
Rimmer snorts. ‘Pretending not to be scared out of my wits, more like.’ He waits for Lister to point out that he hasn’t that many wits to be scared out of.
‘Knitting’s a bit like that,’ Lister says instead, and Rimmer turns his head. Lister looks thoughtful, a little bit sad like he does sometimes, and there’s a twisting, panicky ache inside Rimmer. He rubs his thumb over Lister’s pinky, removing a possibly imaginary speck of dirt. ‘Helps keep me occupied, you know. In the in-between times.’ He slides his eyes across to meet Rimmer’s. ‘Did quite a bit of it while you were away actually. Scarves for years to come.’ He isn’t smiling exactly, but his expression is soft, and when their eyes meet, the corner of his lips tick up, just a little.
‘Amazed you had the time.’ Rimmer says without meaning to, because he doesn’t half know how to ruin a moment. The jealousy in his voice is - well, it is embarrassing, really. He covers it by looking for the nail scissors.
‘Rimmer -’ Lister starts.
And apparently Rimmer’s usual ability to control his smegging voice and not leave himself completely exposed has gone off on shore leave. ‘I still don’t understand you,’ he blurts.
‘Darlin’, I’m pretty confident I am never going to understand you either,’ Lister says.
The endearment paired with the fondness in his voice must short out what little is left of his self-preservation circuits. Because instead of letting it go and being grateful for the smegging out he’s being offered, Rimmer says, ‘No, I mean. I don’t understand why you came back.’
*
‘Helsinki syndrome!’ he shouts, storming into the science labs.
‘Excuse me, sir?’ Kryten says, barely pausing in his dusting to glance at Rimmer. Rimmer squashes down the impulse to put him on report. There’ll be time for that later anyway, and it’s not like Rimmer’s ever struggled to remember an insult. No, the key thing right now is -
‘Helsinki syndrome,’ he says again. ‘It’s that thing, you know, where you’re stuck with someone for such a long time that you start to like them.’
Kryten shifts into what Rimmer not-so-secretly thinks of as his know-it-all git mode. ‘I think you mean Stockholm Syndrome,’ he says. Rimmer heroically doesn’t smack him.
‘Some namby-pamby Scandinavian city where they spend too much time sitting in circles and eating cinnamon,’ he grouses, ‘the point is - that would explain it all, wouldn’t it? It’s - it’s enforced, it’s not actually how they feel, they’re just making the best of the situation.’
Kryten has at least paused in his dusting now. In fact, he’s lowering the duster in a way that makes very clear that he is about to suggest a visit to the medi-bay. ‘Navigation Officer Rimmer,’ Kryten says slowly and almost politely. ‘Are you quite all right?’
And that’s when it dawns on Rimmer that he doesn’t actually want to have this conversation with Kryten - or anyone for that matter, although at least with Kryten he can always erase his memory afterwards. And then it dawns on him that he’s an officer now - properly, not just acting or by default! - and Kryten shouldn’t be questioning him anyway.
‘Aha!’ he says to no-one in particular, and then thrusts out his other hand. ‘Can you fix this?’
Kryten looks at Rimmer’s hand, holding the smashed up cogs and components Rimmer found in his bunk room locker. ‘The skipper, sir?’
‘Yes, well done bog-breath, now answer the question,’ he snaps, trying not to sound too desperate. His hand is barely shaking, but he still tips the parts onto the counter. The slight tingling noise stops.
‘I imagine so, sir, but it might take me a little -’
‘Don’t give me that guff,’ he says, ‘I want it this afternoon at the latest.’ He gives Kryten his sternest, most haughty stare.
It has less effect than he’d like. Instead of hopping to it like a good inferior should, Kryten looks confused. ‘But sir, you’ve got what you always wanted!’ he says and for a brief moment Rimmer -
Rimmer actually, really, thinks about telling him his plan. Maybe Kryten would see a flaw he hadn’t seen. Maybe Kryten would tell him it wasn’t actually a heroic thing to do. Maybe Kryten would tell him that actually Helsinki or Stockholm or Oslo Syndrome didn’t explain it.
It’s clearly some sort of lingering madness, the same kind of madness which made him move back into the bunk room with Lister, which makes something twist and flutter in stomach when Lister smiles at him, the same madness which has had Lister’s stupid point about real heroes leaping around like a demented hare his head.
He dismisses it. ‘Just do it, you melty-headed jumped up calculator,’ he says imperiously, in the tones of someone who knows they’ll be obeyed. But he stays long enough to make sure Kryten actually does start repairing it.
Then he hightails to a storage room to hyperventilate in peace.
*
The moment hangs between them. Rimmer busies himself with Lister’s other hand, starting with his thumb. The scrape of the nail file sounds louder than he’d expected it to.
‘You know, you never told me what you saw in your skips,’ Lister says finally. At Rimmer’s questioning look, he shrugs. His fingers shift a little on the table between them. ‘I told you about mine.’
Rimmer shakes his head. Then he nods. ‘It was like the Ace universes,’ he says eventually, and focuses on making sure he gets the last bit of black out from under the thumbnail.
They’ve never really spoken about this either - about those three decades Rimmer spent being a hero. It’s hard to hold on to; sometimes days pass where Rimmer doesn’t even remember that he was away. Where it feels like a film he watched once, separate from his real life, here on Red Dwarf. When he first came back, Lister had been insatiably curious about what he’d seen and done, but now that’s abated too, deflected with some appropriate Ace-like stories of daring rescues.
He hasn’t told him about all the Listers he met, but something about the quiet between them now makes him say, ‘It’s not like there was a you in every dimension or anything. It would hardly be heroic, mainly rescuing the same three people over and over.’
There’s a huff of laughter. ‘Cat and Kryten too, ey?’ he says. Rimmer rolls his eyes, and when he looks over, Lister has gone serious again. ‘So lots of versions of us all. And none could compare?’
Rimmer thinks about it. Really thinks about it. There had been that one time, when he’d thought, for a brief, shining moment, he was home, but apart from that. ‘I mean, you were unbearable in most of them, of course - slobby and lazy, never going to achieve anything,’ he says. He can hear the unbearable gittishness of his own voice. ‘Ugh, no you weren’t,’ he admits. ‘That would have been too easy. There’s lots of universes where you’re an engineer, or a fighter pilot, or a robotics genius. In most of them you even like me.’
‘Are you having me on?’ Lister asks, but he knocks his knee into Rimmer’s as if to say, I like you. Rimmer’s wanting creature twists and hums, because it’ll believe anything. Git.
‘Oh yes,’ Rimmer says, aiming for breezy, ‘you thought I was the bee's knees.’ Afterwards, that had been the thing that stayed with him. All those Listers who spoke warmly of ‘their friend’ Arn or Ace or Arnold, who clapped him on the shoulder, called him pal without a hint of mockery.
‘So,’ Lister’s voice has dropped, low and warm and familiar, ‘ how many of them, you know -‘
‘None of them,’ Rimmer says, reaching for the nail scissors again. He can feel Lister’s hand tense and release, and he doesn’t look at him. ‘Obviously I didn’t think about it at the time,’ he lies, snipping a scraggly hangnail, ‘but no. Most of the ones I met were either married to Kochanski -‘ he manages to say her name with almost no seething jealousy ‘- or you’d lost her tragically and were moping. If you can imagine.’ He glances at Lister just in time to catch the flinch, and then surprises himself by regretting having said it. Maybe that’s what makes him add, ‘you always had lots of friends though. In almost every universe.’ You weren’t lonely, he thinks, just as he’d thought then, when he’d gone looking for the shattered skipper.
‘So you weren’t -‘ Lister says, and Rimmer’s mind fills in the blanks: you weren’t special; you weren’t keeping me sane; you weren’t tied to me; you were just one of my friends. God, he’s pathetic. He makes himself focus instead on filing Lister’s nail edge as gently as he can.
‘You weren’t stuck with me,’ Lister says.
*
In hindsight, picking the fabric store as his place to process his feelings was a spectacularly bad idea, because of course he’s barely been there more than a minute before Cat shows up.
‘What’s up, goalpost head?’ Cat asks and then looks at him suspiciously. ‘You better not be eyeing up the purple velvet. I’ve already got a pattern picked out.’
‘Purple? Don’t be ridiculous, you flea-ridden furball,’ he spits, almost grateful for the distraction. Although it also causes a completely out-of-the-blue stab of guilt as he realises he hadn’t thought about how Lister leaving might affect Cat - or Kryten for that matter. Maybe this was actually the selfish choice! In fact, maybe Lister was the one being selfish, just like that time with the joy squid when he’d almost -
But no. That’s the thing, isn’t it. Lister deserves - Lister should get a chance to - Lister wants Kochanski, wants a life with her more than anything, and that’s that. And he’s been in enough realities to know that, really, that’s how it’s meant to be: Lister, married and surrounded by friends who more than just barely tolerate him.
‘You all right, non-bud?’ Cat asks with something that might almost pass for concern. ‘You kinda spaced out there.’
‘What? Yes, of course I’m fine, why wouldn’t I be?’ he says all in a rush. For some smegging reason, that makes Cat look at him properly, and of course, Cat is selfish and self-centred, so Rimmer is probably safe, but it still makes him want to squirm. Unfortunately, his brain chooses that moment to remember Cat being insightful about his dad, and that temptation he felt earlier with Kryten is back - to tell someone. To talk to someone.
‘Are you getting younger?’ Cat screeches then. ‘Oh hell no, I am not having that. You don’t even have a moisturising routine! I ain’t looking older than some, some tunnel-nosed fool who can’t tell his toner from his cleanser.’
‘I am not getting younger!’ Rimmer protests. In fact he is feeling every bit of the 60-odd years he should be, aching with the sense of most of his life having passed by.
Except it hasn’t, has it? He’s been dead longer than he’s been alive, and uncoupled from Lister’s lifespan, there’s no reason he shouldn’t live forever. No reason at all. It’s like Ace all over again, suspended in time.
He concentrates hard and feels his hologrammatic image shift.
Cat makes a satisfied noise. ‘Now that’s more like it. Now you look like the old wreck I have come to know and not-love!’
Rimmer wonders how long it would take to strangle Cat. He considers putting him on report for old times’ sake. In the end he doesn’t have the energy to do either, and he suddenly wonders if this is what it felt like - feels like - felt like for Lister. This sense of - pointlessness.
‘Uh, man?’ Cat’s voice is almost gentle and that snaps Rimmer back to reality. ‘Are you okay? You are being more than normally freakish and odd.’
‘I’m fine,’ he repeats and then half-heartedly adds, ‘you cretinous excuse for an evolutionary cul-de-sac.’
Cat looks unmoved. ‘You know, if you’re worried about something, you should go talk to Lister. Anyone’s guess why, but he can usually stand your whining. All those years must have built up a tolerance of your -‘ he gestures expansively as if to encompass everything Rimmer is, and Rimmer is torn between the familiar impulse to insult Cat right back and the new tsunami-like desire to collapse into a heap and sob.
He shakes his head too vigorously. ‘I’ve got inventory to do,’ he says, ‘at least one of us should be doing something to keep this place ship-shape, and given that I am the only officer present, it will have to be me.’ It doesn’t feel as good as he’d hoped, even though it is true. He forces himself to move. Cat is unlikely to follow him, after all.
‘If you say so,’ Cat shrugs and turns back to his fabrics. ‘But hey! No more trying to get younger again.’
Rimmer presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, think who’s trying, and ignores the way his stomach sinks.
*
‘Stuck with you?’ Rimmer repeats, dropping the nail scissors.
Lister shrugs. ‘Not responsible for me, then,’ he offers, but Rimmer barely hears him.
‘Have you lost your last remaining marble?’ he demands, and Lister’s face does something complicated. ‘I’m not stuck! You’re stuck.’
‘What does that mean, then?’ Lister asks, ‘How am I stuck?’
‘You wanted to turn me off and change me into Kochanski, you’re the one who almost died to stay with her in a dream, you’re the one who gets lonely and depressed and -’
‘You tried to skip dimensions to find somewhere better!’ Lister shouts over Rimmer’s increasingly loud ranting.
‘And you knew I would come back,’ Rimmer shoots back, ‘You were already dealing me back into the poker game!’ Lister’s mouth hangs open for a moment, as if he’s just about to say something. Then he closes it with a click. Rimmer looks down at his hands, lying uselessly on the table. ‘I know you shouldn’t be stuck here, the only human left. And I know this thing between us is probably just a form of, of, you know, Helsinki Syndrome or whatever -’
‘Helsinki Syndrome?’ Lister looks confused.
Rimmer inhales. No point in stopping now when he’s already so clearly determined to humiliate himself. ‘That thing where you’re forced to spend so much time with someone that you start to believe you might actually like them.’
‘I’m pretty sure that’s Copenhagen syndrome,’ Lister says, although he sounds like he might be arguing out of habit. ‘And anyway, I am not sure that applies when you have literally hundreds of other dimensions and realities to choose from.’
That drops in Rimmer’s brain like a coin in a wishing well. He can feel his face making some sort of strange expression, because he wants - he wants - the stupid wanting beast twists and twists, because it wants to hear more, it wants to be reassured, it wants -
‘And that’s it, isn’t it? You always come back.’ Lister reaches out and squeezes his hand. ‘You went out to be Ace, but you came back. D’you know how many other times that has happened for me?’ Rimmer shakes his head mutely. ‘Everyone dies or leaves. I even left me self under that smegging pool table! Me mam and dad, you know, the ones who found me, they were both dead before I was seven. And I was lucky, maybe, because me nan loved me, you know, she made me know I was loved, but she was gone before I was even a proper teenager. And I had friends, I got by, except then everyone died. But you came back -’
‘Only because Holly had all the common sense of a concussed cockatiel in a house of mirrors,’ Rimmer points out because he has to say something against the tide of - whatever this strange feeling is which is making his eyes wet, which is making him want to pull Lister close, filling his mouth with sentimental and sympathetic words he tries not to let escape, all jumbled together and overwhelming him. He can’t quite stop himself from closing his hand around Lister’s though and squeezing as if he can push all his confused feelings into Lister that way.
‘Maybe,’ Lister says and his tone is thoughtful. ‘And maybe all your other Listers had a different situation, you know. The ones I saw on my skips did. But I had this one. I am almost sixty, and I haven’t got to keep many good things, you know? I mean, there’s Cat and Kryten, like, I am not being ungrateful. But it’s not a lot, in the whole universe. So Kochanski…I guess I held on, because even the sadness of missing her was almost a good thing, or like even just a ghost of a good thing.’ Rimmer follows his gaze down to where their hands are still linked together. And Rimmer knows he should be doing something, but instead he holds breath and waits. ‘But you’ve been there,’ Lister says. ‘You’re still here.’
‘And I’m a good thing, am I?’ he says as sarcastically as he can manage, waiting for the inevitable joke.
‘Yeah,’ Lister says. Rimmer looks up at him. Time seems to close in around them as they look at each other, a connection soap bubble thin and fragile.
A joke, a deflection, an insult stick behind his teeth, begging to get out.
He takes Lister’s hand, turns it over and kisses his palm.
He hears Lister’s sharp intake of breath and Rimmer is aware he must look like a git, that this is too much, too open, too - ridiculous. But more than the shameful self-consciousness tapping on his brain like the highest achieving woodpecker in the woods, there’s wanting thing in his stomach, wanting and wanting, and it’s like Lister’s quiet ‘yeah’ has removed the fence, allowing it to stampede, knocking over the woodpecker’s tree in their rush and sending it flying off, leaving this fragile new desire - to comfort, to share, to be what Lister needs.
He kisses Lister’s fingertips, just because he wants to. Lister watches him, eyes wide and dark, and Rimmer sees his own feelings reflected back at him in them - this strange wanting fondness, terrifyingly new and well-worn at the same time. There’s a rapid-fire pecking from his shame, but the warmth of the thought is still making the wanting creature twist in pleasure, and he says, ‘I’m not going anywhere.’
And there’s that smile again, that fond, lovely smile. ‘I know, smeghead,’ Lister says, as if he knows that calling him an endearment right now might make Rimmer run. ‘I love you too.’
*
‘She’s back!’ Lister says suddenly, disentangling himself from Rimmer, still half-gone from his third orgasm. In his not-quite sentient haze, Rimmer barely has time to register the cold shard of fear in his stomach before Lister is holding up the china figurine in front of him. ‘I thought you might have lost her.’
Rimmer snorts to cover his relief. ‘Of course I didn’t, I am not the disorganised slob in this -’ he cuts himself off before he can say the word relationship and then reconsiders. ‘relationship,’ he finishes awkwardly, but Lister doesn’t seem to notice. He places the figurine back carefully on the shelf Rimmer had chosen for her not long after Lister had come back from his skips.
‘Where did you even get her from?’ Rimmer asks, rearranging the covers around himself just in time for Lister to squeeze himself back in and undo all Rimmer’s good work. Rimmer pokes him in retaliation and pretends not to enjoy the feel of Lister’s hands - his clean, smooth nailed hands - sliding around him, the increasingly familiar heat of his body along Rimmer’s side.
‘Ha, it’s a bit of a story, that,’ Lister says, wriggling a little bit in a semi-distracting way. ‘While you were away being Ace, we stumbled over this weird simulant ship and I accidentally knocked into this machine. Well, we weren’t sure what it did, but you know -’
‘It was likely to be something deadly,’ Rimmer says, and just about manages not to start a lecture about safe procedures aboard simulant ships.
‘Right, so we’re panicking and Kris is shouting at me about not taking precautions and then the machine makes this weird puh-ftt noise and there she was.’
Rimmer blinks. ‘You found a simulant figurine production machine?’ he asks, because it probably isn’t the most ridiculous things they’ve encountered in the last 30-odd years, but it has got to be in the top 50 at least.
‘So Kryten had a look at it, and he reckons it was some sort of hybrid machine, like they’d slammed two different technologies together, a simulant desire machine and some sort of human china shepherdess reproducer.’
Rimmer takes that in. He looks at the figurine again.
‘Wait,’ he says slowly, a creeping horror dawning. ‘Is that -’
Lister laughs into his shoulder, warm and damp against his bare skin. ‘Yeah guy. Told you I missed you while you were away.’
Rimmer opens his mouth to - do something, complain or demand her removal or - but Lister puts his lovely familiar fingers on his cheek and draws him into a kiss, the kind that makes the wanting creature in his stomach roll over, vulnerable belly all exposed, and he forgets what he was going to say.