Vignette: Fault. PG-13.
Mar. 7th, 2007 10:47 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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kahvi's Broken. Written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
fanfic100; my table. Crit is always good.
Blame was one of Arnold J. Rimmer's favorite things.
It rarely lay at his own feet, of course. What on Io would it be doing there, looking as out-of-place as tits on synthoveal? No, Rimmer was very good at dropping blame into its proper place - at the feet of other people. It was all part of being neat and organized. By all rights, therefore, he should have been quite pleased. Two people shared the blame for his current predicament; he knew the details, he knew exactly how to parcel out the fault between the two, leaving none for himself. But he was nonetheless irate. Even holding an emergency evacuation drill as soon as Lister's first snore of the evening resounded through the lander failed to soothe him. He therefore sat at the midsection table with a lukewarm cup of tea that tasted like the recycled urine it was, and pondered.
Legion bore a very significant portion of the blame. He was the one who had given Rimmer his hard-light body, after all. Yes, it had been what Rimmer had been complaining about not having since the first time Lister swept his hand through Rimmer's incorporeal torso, but nonetheless - it was the manner in which Legion had done it. Not so much as an if-I-may or by-your-leave; he had upgraded Rimmer as nonchalantly as Kryten had upgraded the laundry dispenser to accept powdered detergent. That was only half of it, however. The other half was the fact that after the upgrade, Legion had utterly failed to provide Rimmer with a bevy of slender, busty female flight pilots with long, straight blond hair to stare at him enticingly with parted lips once he reboarded Starbug. An utterly inexcusable oversight. Perhaps this oversight would have been tolerable for another man - but this was Arnold J. Rimmer, BSC; this was the Big Man himself. He had a man's needs, after all, and a hard-light body only made those needs more acute. One did not need Legion's massive intellect to see that. Unconscionable oversight on the gestalt's part, undoubtedly.
Which brought Rimmer's thoughts to the second bearer of blame. Lister. Yes, that smeghead. In the absence of this bevy of Swedish pilots, Rimmer's mind had naturally run to the only human alive. If that human had been someone a touch more macho, more manly, a bit more like Frank; smeg, if he would only cut his smegging hair - well, Rimmer's thoughts would have moved right along. But no, Lister had to be a girlie frou-frou hippie type, with his long braids and full cheeks and pert buttocks. It was simultaneously disgusting and appealing - the idea of giving him one, just as he would to those blond pilots if Legion had only had the common decency to provide them.
If that wasn't bad enough, there was the way Lister would stare at Rimmer from across the midsection table - at dinner, at shift change, at a random break. He stared as if he knew the thoughts going through Rimmer's head, as if he were about to try to lay the blame on Rimmer for having them in the first place. Rimmer had to bite his tongue at those times to keep from yelling out that it was smegging bloody well Lister's fault, and Rimmer was not going to stand for Lister trying to turn the blame back on him. No, that would not be manly and appropriate. So Rimmer merely yelled those thoughts as loudly as he could inside of his head.
It was all Lister's fault. Damn the man.
kahvi's Broken. Written for fanfic100; my table. Crit is always good.Blame was one of Arnold J. Rimmer's favorite things.
It rarely lay at his own feet, of course. What on Io would it be doing there, looking as out-of-place as tits on synthoveal? No, Rimmer was very good at dropping blame into its proper place - at the feet of other people. It was all part of being neat and organized. By all rights, therefore, he should have been quite pleased. Two people shared the blame for his current predicament; he knew the details, he knew exactly how to parcel out the fault between the two, leaving none for himself. But he was nonetheless irate. Even holding an emergency evacuation drill as soon as Lister's first snore of the evening resounded through the lander failed to soothe him. He therefore sat at the midsection table with a lukewarm cup of tea that tasted like the recycled urine it was, and pondered.
Legion bore a very significant portion of the blame. He was the one who had given Rimmer his hard-light body, after all. Yes, it had been what Rimmer had been complaining about not having since the first time Lister swept his hand through Rimmer's incorporeal torso, but nonetheless - it was the manner in which Legion had done it. Not so much as an if-I-may or by-your-leave; he had upgraded Rimmer as nonchalantly as Kryten had upgraded the laundry dispenser to accept powdered detergent. That was only half of it, however. The other half was the fact that after the upgrade, Legion had utterly failed to provide Rimmer with a bevy of slender, busty female flight pilots with long, straight blond hair to stare at him enticingly with parted lips once he reboarded Starbug. An utterly inexcusable oversight. Perhaps this oversight would have been tolerable for another man - but this was Arnold J. Rimmer, BSC; this was the Big Man himself. He had a man's needs, after all, and a hard-light body only made those needs more acute. One did not need Legion's massive intellect to see that. Unconscionable oversight on the gestalt's part, undoubtedly.
Which brought Rimmer's thoughts to the second bearer of blame. Lister. Yes, that smeghead. In the absence of this bevy of Swedish pilots, Rimmer's mind had naturally run to the only human alive. If that human had been someone a touch more macho, more manly, a bit more like Frank; smeg, if he would only cut his smegging hair - well, Rimmer's thoughts would have moved right along. But no, Lister had to be a girlie frou-frou hippie type, with his long braids and full cheeks and pert buttocks. It was simultaneously disgusting and appealing - the idea of giving him one, just as he would to those blond pilots if Legion had only had the common decency to provide them.
If that wasn't bad enough, there was the way Lister would stare at Rimmer from across the midsection table - at dinner, at shift change, at a random break. He stared as if he knew the thoughts going through Rimmer's head, as if he were about to try to lay the blame on Rimmer for having them in the first place. Rimmer had to bite his tongue at those times to keep from yelling out that it was smegging bloody well Lister's fault, and Rimmer was not going to stand for Lister trying to turn the blame back on him. No, that would not be manly and appropriate. So Rimmer merely yelled those thoughts as loudly as he could inside of his head.
It was all Lister's fault. Damn the man.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 06:16 pm (UTC)Synthoveal! :D
An utterly inexcusable oversight.
And it doesn't cross his mind for a moment that Legion was part him...
a bit more like Frank
Oh dear.
But no, Lister had to be a girlie frou-frou hippie type
*dying*
with his long braids and full cheeks and pert buttocks.
I'm scaring the cats!!
So Rimmer merely yelled those thoughts as loudly as he could inside of his head.
Aaah, the intense, claustrophobic goodness that is Arnie J.
Tasty.
no subject
Date: 2007-03-08 09:03 pm (UTC)For Lister to be hand-fed!
Aww, thank you! Glad you ate it. :D
no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 12:53 am (UTC)I always thought there was something a touch creepy about that scene; just grabbing Rimmer, switching him off, and yanking all his wires out.
The other half was the fact that after the upgrade, Legion had utterly failed to provide Rimmer with a bevy of slender, busty female flight pilots with long, straight blond hair to stare at him enticingly with parted lips once he reboarded Starbug
Clever. Very Rimmerish, and nice setting up who he tells himself he wants as totally, totally opposite of a certain someone already on the ship. Let me guess, they're very tall, too? And with totally un-Scouser diction.
If that human had been someone a touch more macho, more manly, a bit more like Frank;
Gaaah! You just made Rimmer more warped! That should not be possible! It was already on the show that his ideal woman was a cross between his sister-in-law and himself and that his first kiss was from his uncle who was actually trying to snog his mum. You had to add one more alarming twist, didn't you?
And didn't his brothers always have him be the Queen of Spain when they'd play Three Musketeers? This just keeps sending my mind off in horrifying new directions.
He stared as if he knew the thoughts going through Rimmer's head, as if he were about to try to lay the blame on Rimmer for having them in the first place.
Very Rimmer. Anybody else, trapped alone in space with one other person, knowing that you were thinking about them that way, would at least think that the staring could mean they were thinking the same thing about you. Not Rimmer. He goes straight to how someone's judging him on it, and why it's not really his fault.