reddwarfslash | Fic: Death - 2/2 - R/L, Koch/C

Title: Death pt. 2/2
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own these boys, I just play with them. Don't make money from them either.
Spoilers: Everything - set post-VIII.
Notes: The first part is here. You'll need to read that to understand this one. :) Written for the

fanfic100 challenge - my table is here. Thanks to

lady_draco for help with word variation. ;)
Beta: The always fantastic and lovely

roadstergal *klem*

It took the better part of an hour to get Rimmer off of Lister and calmed down enough to stay in the same room with him, and a further three hours to convince Kryten not to kill Rimmer. This would have been a lot easier if Kryten had been willing to accept outright that Rimmer was a human being, but as Kochanski and Lister told him soothingly, they had no problem understanding the difficulty involved in making that judgment. A fragile sort of cease-fire had now been established in the mid-section, where Rimmer was trying to enjoy a mug of piping hot tea whilst avoiding Lister. This was becoming increasingly difficult, as Lister insisted on sitting opposite him, staring. Finally, Rimmer snapped.

"What? What is it, you bumbling idiot? Are you just going to sit there and make googly eyes at me until they make like Kryten's, or are you going smegging tell me what it is you want?"

Lister shifted in his seat, a little startled at the sudden onslaught of words. "It's just... you know," he said, giving an apologetic shrug.

Rimmer sighed. "No, I smegging well don't. I wouldn't be asking you if I knew. If I knew I would be sitting here quietly enjoying my tea, secure in the knowledge that whatever reason you had for staring your eyes out of your skull at me was a goited good one!" He put the mug down resignedly. It would get cold by the time they had finished this conversation, if he knew Lister. And he knew Lister far, far too well. The smell of freshly brewed tea wafted up towards his ample nostrils, and he gritted his teeth. He hated cold tea.

"Can I have some tea?" Lister got up, ambling backwards towards the kitchen area, waving in the general direction of the cupboards.

"Yes, you may," Rimmer grunted. Anything to get the little git away from him for a few blessed moments, even if did help him avoid answering Rimmer's question. "What's the matter? I didn't think you'd drink anything that wasn't alcoholic, or at least horribly detrimental to your health."

"I drink tea, Rimmer." There came a dull sort of thud, followed by a porcelain-y sort of crash from the kitchen.

Rimmer sighed. He was getting rather used to sighing. He'd been doing a lot of it since he'd come here, and it had barely been a day, half of which had been spent screaming obscenities. He was beginning to think coming here had been a bad idea. He didn't know quite what he'd expected. In truth, he hadn't thought things through terribly well. It wasn't like he didn't have options, after all. Maybe he should just tell Lister the truth? All of it? It might be worth it just to see the smegger's jaw drop. "You know, I'm starting to think coming here wasn't the best of ideas."

Lister inched his way toward the table, balancing what appeared to be a small breakfast-cereal bowl half full of tea. The hot liquid sloshed about ominously. "What, like you have a smegging lot of options?"

"Never you mind what options I have, Listy." Tea in cereal bowls! The man was a Neanderthal. No, he did not want to come clean to Earl Grey and cornflakes man. Not just yet, at any rate.

Now it was Lister's turn to sigh. "Look man," he began as he dropped unceremoniously down into the chair he had been occupying before, holding the tea up as though not to spill it, which he obviously did anyway. Yelping in surprise, he promptly dropped the entire bowl, which slammed onto the table, spilling its guts all over Rimmer in an explosion of scalding brown water. Rimmer similarly exploded, jumping to his feet and brushing furiously at his now soaked uniform. "You cocking smegging bastard! Can you do anything right? Can't you even get yourself a sodding drink without turning the space around you into a disaster area?"

"I'm sorry," Lister whined, looking about helplessly, and clutching his hat to his head. "It's not like I meant to do it!"

"You never mean to do anything!" Rimmer gave up on his shirt, which was soaked enough to show the outline of his chest - and, he realized with some degree of mortification - his left nipple. "That's the trouble. You never plan anything, you just let things happen. And then people get hurt, and you just shrug it off like it's nothing."

Lister looked vaguely offended. "Don't be like that, man. I know I can be a bit absent-minded, but I'd never hurt anyone on purpose." He crossed his arms almost defiantly.

Rimmer glared. The nerve of the smegger! "Oh, really? And leaving me to die on a ship that was slowly being eaten away into nothing would be a good example of you not hurting anyone on purpose, then?" The dull heat on his chest and groin had subsided, and now he was feeling cold and miserable, like his abandoned cup. The only thing keeping him from freezing his bits off was his anger.

There was a moment of hurt and angry silence as Lister sucked in his lower lip and stared at his boots, clearly trying to come up with some excuse or other. Well, this was inexcusable. Wasn't it? Finally, the scouser looked back up, his eyes filled with... something. It was damned hard to read the man, sometimes. "I didn't want to leave ya. Kryten was furious; he said you wasn't worth the risk."

Rimmer felt his cheeks flush at this, but kept his mouth firmly shut. Let the goit sweat it out a little. It took some time before Lister continued; when he did, his voice was eerily quiet.

"Cat didn't care. And Kris, she went into this whole tirade about how it was a very noble suggestion, but how there was a time for everything, and relative morality, and the good of the many, and all sorts of smeg like that." He swallowed, his cheeks a subtle dark red; clearly rushing his next words, "so I kissed her on the cheek before knocking her out and handing her to Kryten.”

Rimmer stared. "You knocked her out?"

Lister glared. “I'm not proud of it! I don't like hitting people; I like words me. And I tried that, but there was a ship falling apart around us, yeah? Anyway, I appologized beforehand, and I made sure to hit her face where it wouldn't hurt so much, or leave marks or nothing.” He shuffled his feet, face flushing.

“You punched her in the face?” Rimmer gaped, unable to get beyond this point. Lister had always struck Rimmer as the sort of person who captured spiders in cups rather than smash them, like some kind of pacifist hippie freak. He'd even tried to keep a space weevil for a pet for a week or two. He'd cried when it died. It was a wonder he wasn't a vegetarian.

"Yeah, 'cause Kryten had to take care of her then, see? It's his programming. He can't allow a human being to come to harm, and you never knew what could come from being punched in the face like that. He had to take her to get a medical scan right away." Lister was babbling, chewing at a disturbingly dirty-looking dreadlock. Rimmer couldn't remember the last time he'd seen him so distraught.

Rimmer put a finger to his lips, resisting the urge to chew on it. Something about this whole scenario was rubbing him the wrong way. "So let me get this straight. You. Punched Kochanski in the face."

Lister shrugged. "Yeah. In the nose." He sniffed, as though in sympathy. "Had to do something, didn't I? They was gonna leave you there, man!" Somewhat agitated now, he kicked the leg of the chair closest to him, and seemed a little calmer for it. Then he looked at it as though he wanted to appologize, still chewing his much-abused locks.

"And then they left without you? But..." Rimmer frowned, trying to make sense of this new information. It was like an odd-shaped puzzle-piece that didn't look like anything in the picture on the box.

"Nah. Kryten was hopping mad and all, but he said they would wait fer me as long as they could." He kicked the chair again a couple of times, watching it bounce up against the table and back again. "Holly had managed to hide away one of the Starbugs; something about faking its signature so they'd think it couldn't get spaceborne. That'd be this one, yeah?" He indicated their surroundings with a pointing of his chin. Rimmer nodded. "So they went down there to fix Kris up, and I waited for ya."

Honest, brown eyes met Rimmer's, and he found he had no reply ready. "Erm," he began. "How did you..." He gestured uselessly. "I mean, you obviously..."

The chair bounced back and forth. "Kryten came back to get me in the end. Had to carry me."

The wet shirt clung to Rimmer's chest, and he scratched at it without really thinking. "Were you hurt?"

A quick smile. "Nah. But I wasn't leaving, either. Took several hours and most of the ship's supply of polish to get rid of the scratch marks I made on him." Lister pushed his hat back on his head, suddenly more cheerful. "Anyway, that's that. All in the past, yeah?"

Rimmer's tongue was doing odd things inside his mouth. Was it trying to form letters? In any event, nothing came out. He tried to re-capture that lovely, comfortable anger he'd just wallowed in, but it was gone, all of it. Lister just stood there, looking at him, his head slightly tilted. Rimmer knew he should say something. Something suitable. Something appropriate. Something eloquent. He opened his mouth. "I... erm... bed. Should. Going to be. Now." Smeg.

Rimmer lay on his bunk, or rather the bunk that had been assigned to him. It didn't feel like his bunk; nothing on this ship felt like his. It was as though it had all been saturated already with Cat and Kryten and Lister and bloody Kochanski-ness, so that there was no room for anything Rimmerine within. Lister had tried to rescue him. He'd failed spectacularly, but he had tried. And Rimmer had been trying, for the last few hours, to understand what exactly that meant.

For one thing, it meant that he should not have come here.

He sighed. Bloody sighs. Useless things; doubly useless in his case. He considered, for the twenty-fifth time, his options. He could stay here. Make this space his own, as much as he was able, and spend his time bickering, sniping and generally being miserable in between short bouts of mild complacency. Yes, a lovely prospect that. He could throw himself out of the nearest air-lock and take his chances in deep space. He snorted to himself in the darkness. Well, no. It had not quite come to that, as yet. He could... His train of thought was interrupted by the hiss of an opening door. Goited hell; he'd forgotten to lock it!

"Hey." Lister stood in the doorway, his face barely visible.

"What do you want?" Rimmer mumbled, looking away. He was not in the mood for this. Not at all.

Booted footsteps crossed the distance between them, and Rimmer felt forced to turn and look directly into a face that was far too close. Hell, Lister had even hunkered down so they were at eye-level to one another. Rimmer could reach out and touch him if he just extended an arm. Too close by far! "Kris was just nagging me again about getting ya to take that physical," the face informed him.

"I told her, I'm fine."

"You should take her up on it. That was some ride you went through."

"I'm well aware of that, Listy." There was an undertone to Lister's voice that Rimmer didn't quite catch, and it irked him. It irked him because there was a chance it meant something horrible. There was a chance it meant that Lister cared; cared about him, which was smegged up, because... well, because of what had happened after they'd left. After Death had come for Arnold Rimmer. If Lister cared about... Rimmer, then how the hell was he going to explain that one?

Each time Lister spoke, hot, lager-flavored breath moved over Rimmer's face. Dammit, the man was too close; couldn't he see that? "Kris said those oxygen tanks you was carrying were empty. You wouldn't have lasted much longer."

Good old Listy, supreme grand master of stating the obvious. "Lasted long enough, didn't I?"

The expression on that dark face shifted a little, but it was impossible to tell what to. "Yeah, I suppose ya did," Lister admitted, slowly.

"No supposing about it." He didn't want to deal with any of this. He was tired, he was upset, and he'd spent so long cramped up inside a disused garbage pod that even a standard JMC bunk felt blissfully comfortable. As long as he was left alone in it. Dammit, yes; that was very, very important!

"Right."

A disconcerting silence followed, but Lister did not leave. No, he just stood there, watching Rimmer like he was some kind of particularly confusing work of modern art. "What?"

Lister leaned an arm against the pole by Rimmer's head, and leaned in even closer; impossibly close! Rudely, inexcusably, close! "It's just that pod you stowed away in. How did ya know to point it in the right direction? Must have taken some tricky calculations, that. And I know you never learned to program them – you always said that was a third technician's job."

Rimmer pushed back against his pillow, needing to get away from those dark, piercing eyes; that hot breath. "Couldn't have been that hard, given that I managed."

"Well no," Lister agreed. "there's that." He smiled, and in one gentle motion, swung himself up and into the bunk, straddling Rimmer, pinning down his arms. And before Rimmer could react, soft, full lips pressed against his own, moaning, as the tip of a long, agile tongue played between them. For a moment, Rimmer allowed himself to enjoy it. He wrung his arms from Lister's grip and embraced him, pulling that compact, smaller body closer to himself with a fierceness that almost scared him. But it could not last, because hell - he'd been right. Lister did care. And he deserved to know the truth.

With effort, he pushed Lister away, holding him at arm's length, panting desperately. "No," he choked, not managing to look away.

Lister, his face flushed, though nigh-on unreadable in this low light, merely smiled. "Why? Don't you want this?"

Dammit, this was what he had been trying so hard to avoid! He could still salvage the situation. All he had to do was tell Lister he didn't want him, and that would be that. And then, eventually, he could tell Lister everything. When things had settled down. In a few years or so. Maybe never. "Smeg, yes, I do." So much for that, then.

Warm, gentle smile. So easy to just give in, but he couldn't! "Then why not?"

A fair question, wasn't it? "Dave..."

"Yeah?"

"You don't understand. I'm not who you think I am. The man you want... isn't here. It's not me."

Lister just shook his head. "Nah, man. I know who you are. It's you I want."

"You don't understand," Rimmer yelled. God, he was such a stubborn git! Such a lovely, gorgeous, irresistible stubborn git! "That other me... I don't know what you saw in him, but obviously it's something you didn't see in me. And I wish I was him, smeg knows I do, right now. But I'm not, Lister. I'm not."

A chuckle. A smegging chuckle. "I know who you are, Rimmer. I've known ever since I came into this room."

Something midways between horror and relief flooded Rimmer's spine. "What?"

"Oh, I suspected, of course, but I wasn't sure until I saw you just now." Lister gave a deep, highly satisfied exhale, and reached out to stroke Rimmer's cheek, but Rimmer caught his hand angrily.

"Dammit, you're not listening! You never listen! I am not your precious living boyfriend, I'm..."

With that same, annoying smile, Lister moved his captured hand up in front of Rimmer's face. "Rimmer," he said. "Arn. I know."

Annoyance giving way to anger now, Rimmer opened his mouth about to give a scathing reply, when he finally noticed the hand that was holding Lister's. His own hand. He stared at it. In the darkness of ship's night, it gave off the unmistakable soft glow of a hologrammatic projection. "Oh." And, feeling that this was, perhaps, somewhat lacking in terms of explanation, he drew in an unnecessary breath out of habit, and prepared to speak.

His arm now free, Lister put a finger across Rimmer's half-open lips. "Later," he grinned.

And as Rimmer let himself be pushed back against his bedding, his hands slowly getting used to the idea that they were allowed now to do all the things they had wanted for a very long time, he could not help but agree.

Explanations could come later. Well. At least after he had, himself. Once or twice.

"Remember - only the good die young!"

Rimmer ran. He had gotten as far as the hallway to the officer's recreational lounge when his legs suddenly stopped working. He looked down in puzzlement, and realized it was because they were no longer touching the ground. Someone had picked him up bodily, and was holding him steady about one inch off the ground. He tried to whimper 'help', but it came out sounding more like "mmnffhgh!"

Whomever was holding him put him down, very gently, and turned him around, still keeping his shoulders in a tight grip. Rimmer squealed when he saw who it was; a tall, hooded figure. "Terribly sorry about that, old bean!" A hooded figure with the accent of a bad World War II B-movie lead. Rimmer frowned.

"Who the smeg are you?"

The figure seemed to start a little. "Oh. Terribly sorry." Removing one hand from Rimmer, it reached towards its hood, and pulled it down. Rimmer, who had braced himself for any number of horrific sights found himself nonetheless entirely unprepared.

The figure was him.

"Bad form, I know." The man who looked like him (but with rampantly homosexual hair) shrugged the black cloak off, leaving it hanging on the arm that was still holding Rimmer. "A bit of a test, you see." He eyed the arm. "Would you mind?"

Rimmer swallowed. "Erm..."

"Promise to not run away now?" There was a disgusting note of humor in the man's voice that made Rimmer want to strangle him. Multiple times, just to make sure the job was done properly.

Beneath the cloak, a ridiculous golden flight-suit was revealed. Rimmer sighed. He was being manhandled by a gay pin-up version of himself. "I promise nothing."

Mister October gave a chuckle, the released his grip. "Good man. Don't trust anyone, is what I always say."

Rimmer glared at him, but remained where he was. Where was there for him to run to, after all? "That's what I always say!"

"Same thing, old mongoose, same thing." The pin-up reached into the breast pocket of his jacket, and pulled out a packet of cheroots. He expertly tilted it just-so, and a thin, brown cylinder slid into his hand. He promptly stuck it into his mouth, produced a lighter from some other, unseen pocket, lit it, and took a long pull. "Filthy habit, but you tend to pick it up."

"No, I don't!"

The poncy arsed wanker ignored the comment. "Looking for a chap by the name of Lister. David Lister. Supposed to be here. Got a bit worried when I saw the place was disintegrating. I passed some pods on my way over here - they won't stand a chance, you know. Most were infected already." He took another, deep pull. "Wouldn't know where I could find him, would you?"

"Me?" Rimmer snorted. "How should I know? Bastard ran off with his girlfriend and his little friends and left me here to die!"

A quality selection of expressions ran across the bacofoiled git's face fleetingly, as though he were trying them on for size. Disappointment made a guest appearance. So did sadness, closely followed by worry, frustration and finally, seething anger. Then, all of a sudden, it was blank and vaguely pleasant once again. "Did he now?" the fruit seemed to think for a moment, before dropping the cheroot on the ground and stomping on it with an overly polished boot. "Well. I'd still jolly well like to see him. He shall need a stern talking to." He turned a pair of steady eyes towards Rimmer. "How would you like to be a space hero, miladdio?"

"What, me?" Rimmer could not have been more surprised if he had been asked to preform a short musical number dressed as a penguin. "How on Io could I become a space hero?"

The man in the flight suit told him.

Some time later, Rimmer saw the ambiguously sexually orientated man run away in his own, hastily donned clothes. The flight suit was itchy, and the wig... he turned it over in his hands, thoughtfully.

Well. He put it on.

Perhaps it wasn't such a bad fit after all?