Red Dwarf fic: "On the Table" 2/3
Dec. 31st, 2012 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
veronica_richRed Dwarf fic: "On the Table" (part 2 of 3)
(Part 1 can be found here)
Chars: The Boys, a canon guest star, L/R
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own the concept or the boys, just the thoughts they inspire.
Summary: Spoilers for RDX series through "Entangled." Lister has his work cut out for him convincing Rimmer he doesn't think of him as an object to be lost in a poker game. Even though he totally did.
A/N: Inspired by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
missflibble's Between the Sheets, and a sort-of sequel to that; thanks for the inspiration! Non-betaed, but opinions offered by metalkatt and kronette; all mistakes are my own.
Attempt #4:
Lister kept his eyes on his screen as Rimmer took the seat next to him. He’d found a broad asteroid field that was still a few weeks away at present speed, but had magnified the feed and put extra effort into studying its density. It was both good distraction and would probably become necessary to map at some point. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Rimmer logging in and reading through some data, but said nothing; there was no use to charge like a bull into a china cabinet, when it didn’t work. So he kept at his screen while he ran through a score of likely ways to start a conversation – eventually.
“How far out are those asteroids?”
Not expecting Rimmer to speak first, Lister twitched a little in surprise. “Uh … between forty, fifty thousand clicks. A few weeks.”
“How much space does the field take up?”
“Haven’t figured out yet. Working on it.” He tapped out a few keystrokes, waiting to see if any further questions were forthcoming before saying any more. “I think we can easily go around it.”
“Why are you so fixated on having her back?” Rimmer’s sigh was heavily audible. “Can you tell me that?”
“Her?” Lister inwardly winced. It was a lousy response. He knew who Rimmer meant; he’d been trying to figure out how to address that particular point himself. “You mean …”
“Yes, say the name. Go on, I know you know how to pronounce it.”
“Arn, she left in a little ship with no known way to get back to her dimension, unless she found it after she left, which seems pretty damn unlikely. It’s basic human decency to want to make sure a friend isn’t in danger, and find and help them if they are.” He snapped his fingers to punctuate. “Like we came to find you when you went through that wormhole and made all those clones. We didn’t just abandon you.”
“Lister, if your quest for Kochanski is anything remotely similar to that, I’ll eat my size elevens. Even you don’t believe that smeg you’re spouting.”
“You saying I’m not decent?”
“Never mind.”
“I’m sorry … I’m avoiding the question.” Rimmer said nothing, focusing on his keyboard work. “I am worried for her, and I would be worried about any of you in the same situation. I am telling the truth there.” Still nothing. “Yeah,” he sighed. “There’s more to her than that.” Rimmer didn’t look up, but did stop as if to listen, so Lister lifted his hands from the keyboard and swiveled to face him. “I – I feel like I missed an opportunity with her; the first one, I mean. The original Krissie. Like we should’ve had more time together, but we didn’t.”
“You went into stasis to avoid more time on the same ship with her,” Rimmer pointed out, still not looking at him, but even in profile Lister could see his brow knitted. “You went to rather a lot of trouble and expense, in point of fact, to avoid having to see her until the smegging ship got back to Earth.”
“Give me something here, Arn; I’m trying to be honest with you, and I even know you might hate me for it, but I’m still doing it as best I can. Let me try to explain this, how it’s come to be, but how it’s still you I want.” He watched Rimmer blink and close his eyes briefly, and wanted to touch his shoulder. But he didn’t. “I screwed up with her; I was too needy. I’ve been too needy with every woman who meant anything to me, and it drove all of them off.
“But then Kochanski – this one, Kris – came along, and I thought maybe I’d learned enough that I could fix things through her. And it always felt like there was the chance there, somewhere, between us, that something could happen. But – I couldn’t commit far enough to make it a relationship. Every time I thought I was close to trying, something’d pull me back and tell me she wouldn’t want me that long, that I was being too needy. Or that it wasn’t entirely what I wanted.” He studied Rimmer’s hands, long fingers resting quietly on the edges of his keyboard as the fingertips stroked the edges. “I don’t know what I’d want from her if I find her. Maybe it’s the idea she could have kids with me. I mean, I’ve fathered three children and gotten to raise none of them. You know how depressing that is?”
“Dave, she’s your mother,” Rimmer quietly reminded him. For the first time, he turned his head and fixed Lister with a look. “You remember that? You know what kind of children you’d have? You see him every morning in the mirror.”
“Yeah.” Lister nodded. “I have thought of that, myself. I didn’t say I was entirely bright.” He tried not to put too much hope into the small twitch at the corner of Rimmer’s mouth, but his heart lurched upward, too.
“With parentage like that, neither would they be,” Rimmer continued. “Their DNA strands’d be straighter than Kryten’s iron creases.” He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me on this. I’ve gotten a lot of bull from a lot of people, including my parents, my brothers, the JMC recruiter, women … You’re probably the one person who’s lied to me the least. If you love that woman, just tell me. I’ll handle it.”
Lister took a deep breath. “I’m not sure what I feel about her, but it’s not the same as for you. That’s really, smegging honestly the way it is. I would like to make sure she’s not dead or hurt. She talked about getting back to her dimension, and her Dave – that may be something we could help her do now.” He thought of the quantum rod and the temporarily disabled Trojan still in the ship’s largest cargo bay.
Things were quiet for a few more minutes, during which Lister turned back to his monitor, not wanting to push. Finally, Rimmer stood as if to leave, but came back from halfway to the stairs to stand behind his chair, facing Lister. “I can’t share,” he finally said. “If Kris is just someone you’re concerned about, I won’t try to tell you how to handle that – but I’m not going settle for half. I’m not going to be your bit on the side if we find her, or your main squeeze until we find her, or any of that.” His fingers dug into the top of the chair. “You don’t want me, or you do – even if she does show up here again. You’d better figure it out.”
*****
Faced with the prospect of being without Rimmer for an even longer stretch of time, possibly never again, had decided Lister’s feelings remarkably fast. He would keep sensors tuned for life signs to try to find Kris, but he needed to face the fact she hadn’t wanted him enough to stay or to make an effort on her own to start something with him. Even when she’d been there, he’d consistently chosen to spend most of his time with the guys, especially Arn, and to stay in the same bunkroom with his very male, not-alive roommate over trying hard enough to get into quarters with a live, albeit alternate, Kochanski.
But the real test was that he never wished for her when he was in bed with Arn. Late at night, once in a while, he did think of her when he couldn’t get to sleep, wondering how things might have played out differently if the nuclear blast hadn’t happened (you put yourself in stasis, gimboid – by the time you got out, she would’ve disembarked, or transferred up somewhere else, or gotten married, that’s what) or if Rimmer hadn’t been the one Holly resurrected to keep him from going crazy.
You’re treating him as second-class, and that’s exactly what used to drive you crazy about how he treated you, isn’t it? he chastised himself.
Attempt #5:
He presented himself at the door of Rimmer’s quarters shortly before nine the next morning. Still wearing pajamas and hair sticking up, Rimmer answered the door nearly two minutes later, inspected him briefly, then stuck his head out and looked up and down the corridor. “There an emergency?” he asked. Off Lister’s head-shake, he yawned and asked, “It’s not that nutter Hoagy again, is it? We just saw him a couple of months ago.”
“Just me.”
“Come in, I guess.” He padded back in, Lister following, and the door automatically shut. “I wanted to talk.” Lister hesitated for a deep breath. “About yesterday.”
Rimmer sat at the table, straight-backed. Lister grabbed a chair and turned it backwards, pulling it close to him and straddling it. “I want you,” he told Rimmer. “It doesn’t matter if we’re stuck out here the rest of our lives, or if we find Earth with fifty billion people. I want to be with you.” Rimmer arched an eyebrow at him. “You, not Kris. But I’m still keeping a watch for her in case she needs help,” he warned. “It’s no less than I’d do for Kryten or Cat.”
“I know.” He yawned again, but cut it short at Lister’s impatient, “Well?”
“I’m tired, Lister. You woke me up, and I didn’t sleep all that well. I’m not disagreeing or dismissing you.”
For the first time in several days, he reached out and touched Rimmer, taking his hand. “I can help you get back to sleep,” he promised. Off the man’s look, he shook his head. “Not that; just sleeping.”
“Not – yet.” Rimmer didn’t pull his hand away, but he did stand up. Lister tilted his head back to look up at him. “I’ll forgive you, I’ll get to it … but I have to admit, my ardor is cooled right now. I don’t feel like sharing a bed with you again yet.”
Disappointed, Lister nodded and stood, pushing the chair aside. “Let me know when you want to talk,” he told Rimmer. He leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth chastely, lingering, hoping it might turn into more; it didn’t, and he left.
*****
About a week later, the Cat grew so bored he came to Lister on watch and presented one of their card decks. “Come on,” Cat demanded. “Sounds like you need to work on your game anyhow, bud.”
He rolled his eyes, but cleared a space off the center console in the drive room. “My game wasn’t that bad,” he pointed out. “I was just pissed out of my mind.”
“Whatever you’ve gotta tell yourself; you’re not going home with my shiny things tonight.”
Lister did over the course of the next hour, in fact, win a rather shiny pen from Cat’s jacket pocket, as well as an emergency earring from his on-person backup jewelry stash. “See?” he pointed out.
“How much lager’d you have with those BEGGs, anyway?”
“Wasn’t how much, was how strong,” Lister countered. “And it wasn’t lager. They’ve got some hooch that makes our GELF stash look like fruit punch.”
“So that’s how you ended up betting Cattle-Brand Face.”
“No, wagering Rimmer wasn’t my idea. The chief came up with that because I couldn’t keep my big fat mouth shut about him; getting drunk is just how I ended up betting Starbug in the first place. I didn’t know how to get back here without it and I was desperate – so, he suggested Rimmer, and I thought I could win. Plus, I thought he was just taking the piss. Who expects someone to really bet a person in a card game?” he scoffed, shuffling the cards.
“A hologram’s not a person, buddy. He’s a light bee.”
“Rimmer’s a person,” Lister said, firmly. “I usually forget about the light bee. ‘Sides, it’s his brain – it looks different from ours, but it’s a brain. Or a heart, you want to look at it that way.” He felt the corner of his mouth tug up. “I usually think of it like that, since it sort of floats around the center of his chest. If it’s really quiet and I’m still awake of a night, I can hear it humming-”
“Hey, too much sharing!” Cat pulled a face.
“Wha?” Lister frowned. “You said I could talk about these things all I wanted.”
“I said your old girlfriends. I’ve seen some photos, and I can think of them when you’re describing those things. But I have to draw the line somewhere, and you and Non-Bud’s tickle-time is standing right on top of that.” The felinoid did a slight full-body shudder as he stood up. “Now I need another shower. Thanks a lot!”
As he bounded off, Lister called, “Don’t forget you’re on shift in two hours!” He shuffled the cards to lay out a round of solitaire and paused at the sound of a metallic creak; he thought it was the stairs, but when he listened for a follow-up, there was nothing. He went back to playing until beeps from the monitor demanded his attention. “Just space dust,” he muttered a few minutes later, finding nothing sizable to worry about – but he kept scanning until he heard from above and behind, the creak of the metal staircase. He checked the clock, impressed. “Less than thirty minutes,” he called out. “Didn’t think you could take a bath that fast.”
A few seconds later, he felt familiar hands on his shoulders, thumbs pressed lightly to the back of his neck. “I have some questions you need to answer,” Rimmer said. His voice was even, his hands still. Lister nodded and slid his hands off the console onto his lap. “What did you mean, by your ‘big fat mouth’ and not keeping it shut about me?”
“What?”
“You were telling Cat-”
“I know what I was telling him; I was telling him. Were you eavesdropping?” Lister snapped.
He felt Rimmer bend down, the action putting pressure on his shoulders. “Is this where you’re going to complain that I’m giving you an audience?” he whispered, about an inch from Lister’s ear. He felt the warm breath tickle it, which went straight to his cock – which is why he murmured, rather weakly, “No.”
"So tell me what you meant."
On to part 3
(Part 1 can be found here)
Chars: The Boys, a canon guest star, L/R
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own the concept or the boys, just the thoughts they inspire.
Summary: Spoilers for RDX series through "Entangled." Lister has his work cut out for him convincing Rimmer he doesn't think of him as an object to be lost in a poker game. Even though he totally did.
A/N: Inspired by
missflibble's Between the Sheets, and a sort-of sequel to that; thanks for the inspiration! Non-betaed, but opinions offered by metalkatt and kronette; all mistakes are my own.Attempt #4:
Lister kept his eyes on his screen as Rimmer took the seat next to him. He’d found a broad asteroid field that was still a few weeks away at present speed, but had magnified the feed and put extra effort into studying its density. It was both good distraction and would probably become necessary to map at some point. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Rimmer logging in and reading through some data, but said nothing; there was no use to charge like a bull into a china cabinet, when it didn’t work. So he kept at his screen while he ran through a score of likely ways to start a conversation – eventually.
“How far out are those asteroids?”
Not expecting Rimmer to speak first, Lister twitched a little in surprise. “Uh … between forty, fifty thousand clicks. A few weeks.”
“How much space does the field take up?”
“Haven’t figured out yet. Working on it.” He tapped out a few keystrokes, waiting to see if any further questions were forthcoming before saying any more. “I think we can easily go around it.”
“Why are you so fixated on having her back?” Rimmer’s sigh was heavily audible. “Can you tell me that?”
“Her?” Lister inwardly winced. It was a lousy response. He knew who Rimmer meant; he’d been trying to figure out how to address that particular point himself. “You mean …”
“Yes, say the name. Go on, I know you know how to pronounce it.”
“Arn, she left in a little ship with no known way to get back to her dimension, unless she found it after she left, which seems pretty damn unlikely. It’s basic human decency to want to make sure a friend isn’t in danger, and find and help them if they are.” He snapped his fingers to punctuate. “Like we came to find you when you went through that wormhole and made all those clones. We didn’t just abandon you.”
“Lister, if your quest for Kochanski is anything remotely similar to that, I’ll eat my size elevens. Even you don’t believe that smeg you’re spouting.”
“You saying I’m not decent?”
“Never mind.”
“I’m sorry … I’m avoiding the question.” Rimmer said nothing, focusing on his keyboard work. “I am worried for her, and I would be worried about any of you in the same situation. I am telling the truth there.” Still nothing. “Yeah,” he sighed. “There’s more to her than that.” Rimmer didn’t look up, but did stop as if to listen, so Lister lifted his hands from the keyboard and swiveled to face him. “I – I feel like I missed an opportunity with her; the first one, I mean. The original Krissie. Like we should’ve had more time together, but we didn’t.”
“You went into stasis to avoid more time on the same ship with her,” Rimmer pointed out, still not looking at him, but even in profile Lister could see his brow knitted. “You went to rather a lot of trouble and expense, in point of fact, to avoid having to see her until the smegging ship got back to Earth.”
“Give me something here, Arn; I’m trying to be honest with you, and I even know you might hate me for it, but I’m still doing it as best I can. Let me try to explain this, how it’s come to be, but how it’s still you I want.” He watched Rimmer blink and close his eyes briefly, and wanted to touch his shoulder. But he didn’t. “I screwed up with her; I was too needy. I’ve been too needy with every woman who meant anything to me, and it drove all of them off.
“But then Kochanski – this one, Kris – came along, and I thought maybe I’d learned enough that I could fix things through her. And it always felt like there was the chance there, somewhere, between us, that something could happen. But – I couldn’t commit far enough to make it a relationship. Every time I thought I was close to trying, something’d pull me back and tell me she wouldn’t want me that long, that I was being too needy. Or that it wasn’t entirely what I wanted.” He studied Rimmer’s hands, long fingers resting quietly on the edges of his keyboard as the fingertips stroked the edges. “I don’t know what I’d want from her if I find her. Maybe it’s the idea she could have kids with me. I mean, I’ve fathered three children and gotten to raise none of them. You know how depressing that is?”
“Dave, she’s your mother,” Rimmer quietly reminded him. For the first time, he turned his head and fixed Lister with a look. “You remember that? You know what kind of children you’d have? You see him every morning in the mirror.”
“Yeah.” Lister nodded. “I have thought of that, myself. I didn’t say I was entirely bright.” He tried not to put too much hope into the small twitch at the corner of Rimmer’s mouth, but his heart lurched upward, too.
“With parentage like that, neither would they be,” Rimmer continued. “Their DNA strands’d be straighter than Kryten’s iron creases.” He shook his head. “Don’t lie to me on this. I’ve gotten a lot of bull from a lot of people, including my parents, my brothers, the JMC recruiter, women … You’re probably the one person who’s lied to me the least. If you love that woman, just tell me. I’ll handle it.”
Lister took a deep breath. “I’m not sure what I feel about her, but it’s not the same as for you. That’s really, smegging honestly the way it is. I would like to make sure she’s not dead or hurt. She talked about getting back to her dimension, and her Dave – that may be something we could help her do now.” He thought of the quantum rod and the temporarily disabled Trojan still in the ship’s largest cargo bay.
Things were quiet for a few more minutes, during which Lister turned back to his monitor, not wanting to push. Finally, Rimmer stood as if to leave, but came back from halfway to the stairs to stand behind his chair, facing Lister. “I can’t share,” he finally said. “If Kris is just someone you’re concerned about, I won’t try to tell you how to handle that – but I’m not going settle for half. I’m not going to be your bit on the side if we find her, or your main squeeze until we find her, or any of that.” His fingers dug into the top of the chair. “You don’t want me, or you do – even if she does show up here again. You’d better figure it out.”
*****
Faced with the prospect of being without Rimmer for an even longer stretch of time, possibly never again, had decided Lister’s feelings remarkably fast. He would keep sensors tuned for life signs to try to find Kris, but he needed to face the fact she hadn’t wanted him enough to stay or to make an effort on her own to start something with him. Even when she’d been there, he’d consistently chosen to spend most of his time with the guys, especially Arn, and to stay in the same bunkroom with his very male, not-alive roommate over trying hard enough to get into quarters with a live, albeit alternate, Kochanski.
But the real test was that he never wished for her when he was in bed with Arn. Late at night, once in a while, he did think of her when he couldn’t get to sleep, wondering how things might have played out differently if the nuclear blast hadn’t happened (you put yourself in stasis, gimboid – by the time you got out, she would’ve disembarked, or transferred up somewhere else, or gotten married, that’s what) or if Rimmer hadn’t been the one Holly resurrected to keep him from going crazy.
You’re treating him as second-class, and that’s exactly what used to drive you crazy about how he treated you, isn’t it? he chastised himself.
Attempt #5:
He presented himself at the door of Rimmer’s quarters shortly before nine the next morning. Still wearing pajamas and hair sticking up, Rimmer answered the door nearly two minutes later, inspected him briefly, then stuck his head out and looked up and down the corridor. “There an emergency?” he asked. Off Lister’s head-shake, he yawned and asked, “It’s not that nutter Hoagy again, is it? We just saw him a couple of months ago.”
“Just me.”
“Come in, I guess.” He padded back in, Lister following, and the door automatically shut. “I wanted to talk.” Lister hesitated for a deep breath. “About yesterday.”
Rimmer sat at the table, straight-backed. Lister grabbed a chair and turned it backwards, pulling it close to him and straddling it. “I want you,” he told Rimmer. “It doesn’t matter if we’re stuck out here the rest of our lives, or if we find Earth with fifty billion people. I want to be with you.” Rimmer arched an eyebrow at him. “You, not Kris. But I’m still keeping a watch for her in case she needs help,” he warned. “It’s no less than I’d do for Kryten or Cat.”
“I know.” He yawned again, but cut it short at Lister’s impatient, “Well?”
“I’m tired, Lister. You woke me up, and I didn’t sleep all that well. I’m not disagreeing or dismissing you.”
For the first time in several days, he reached out and touched Rimmer, taking his hand. “I can help you get back to sleep,” he promised. Off the man’s look, he shook his head. “Not that; just sleeping.”
“Not – yet.” Rimmer didn’t pull his hand away, but he did stand up. Lister tilted his head back to look up at him. “I’ll forgive you, I’ll get to it … but I have to admit, my ardor is cooled right now. I don’t feel like sharing a bed with you again yet.”
Disappointed, Lister nodded and stood, pushing the chair aside. “Let me know when you want to talk,” he told Rimmer. He leaned in and kissed the corner of his mouth chastely, lingering, hoping it might turn into more; it didn’t, and he left.
*****
About a week later, the Cat grew so bored he came to Lister on watch and presented one of their card decks. “Come on,” Cat demanded. “Sounds like you need to work on your game anyhow, bud.”
He rolled his eyes, but cleared a space off the center console in the drive room. “My game wasn’t that bad,” he pointed out. “I was just pissed out of my mind.”
“Whatever you’ve gotta tell yourself; you’re not going home with my shiny things tonight.”
Lister did over the course of the next hour, in fact, win a rather shiny pen from Cat’s jacket pocket, as well as an emergency earring from his on-person backup jewelry stash. “See?” he pointed out.
“How much lager’d you have with those BEGGs, anyway?”
“Wasn’t how much, was how strong,” Lister countered. “And it wasn’t lager. They’ve got some hooch that makes our GELF stash look like fruit punch.”
“So that’s how you ended up betting Cattle-Brand Face.”
“No, wagering Rimmer wasn’t my idea. The chief came up with that because I couldn’t keep my big fat mouth shut about him; getting drunk is just how I ended up betting Starbug in the first place. I didn’t know how to get back here without it and I was desperate – so, he suggested Rimmer, and I thought I could win. Plus, I thought he was just taking the piss. Who expects someone to really bet a person in a card game?” he scoffed, shuffling the cards.
“A hologram’s not a person, buddy. He’s a light bee.”
“Rimmer’s a person,” Lister said, firmly. “I usually forget about the light bee. ‘Sides, it’s his brain – it looks different from ours, but it’s a brain. Or a heart, you want to look at it that way.” He felt the corner of his mouth tug up. “I usually think of it like that, since it sort of floats around the center of his chest. If it’s really quiet and I’m still awake of a night, I can hear it humming-”
“Hey, too much sharing!” Cat pulled a face.
“Wha?” Lister frowned. “You said I could talk about these things all I wanted.”
“I said your old girlfriends. I’ve seen some photos, and I can think of them when you’re describing those things. But I have to draw the line somewhere, and you and Non-Bud’s tickle-time is standing right on top of that.” The felinoid did a slight full-body shudder as he stood up. “Now I need another shower. Thanks a lot!”
As he bounded off, Lister called, “Don’t forget you’re on shift in two hours!” He shuffled the cards to lay out a round of solitaire and paused at the sound of a metallic creak; he thought it was the stairs, but when he listened for a follow-up, there was nothing. He went back to playing until beeps from the monitor demanded his attention. “Just space dust,” he muttered a few minutes later, finding nothing sizable to worry about – but he kept scanning until he heard from above and behind, the creak of the metal staircase. He checked the clock, impressed. “Less than thirty minutes,” he called out. “Didn’t think you could take a bath that fast.”
A few seconds later, he felt familiar hands on his shoulders, thumbs pressed lightly to the back of his neck. “I have some questions you need to answer,” Rimmer said. His voice was even, his hands still. Lister nodded and slid his hands off the console onto his lap. “What did you mean, by your ‘big fat mouth’ and not keeping it shut about me?”
“What?”
“You were telling Cat-”
“I know what I was telling him; I was telling him. Were you eavesdropping?” Lister snapped.
He felt Rimmer bend down, the action putting pressure on his shoulders. “Is this where you’re going to complain that I’m giving you an audience?” he whispered, about an inch from Lister’s ear. He felt the warm breath tickle it, which went straight to his cock – which is why he murmured, rather weakly, “No.”
"So tell me what you meant."
On to part 3
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