reddwarfslash | Lister/Rimmer one shot

Erm… hello to everyone in this community! *waves*

I just recently decided to watch Red Dwarf again, and afterwards I wrote this. I hope it belongs here.

Author: pippychick
Fandom: Red Dwarf
Pairing: Lister/Rimmer
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Solo, shameless innuendo, spoilers for last series if you don’t know what happens.
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or their environment. They belong to Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. I make no money from this.

Would You?

It was never really full dark in here. A dull red glow suffused the place, and Arnold Judas Rimmer turned over in annoyance, cursing the fact he only had one pillow. He could put it under his head and bear the blasted red glow, or use it to cover his face and endure the hard mattress beneath his head. Giving in, he put the pillow over his head and lay there for a moment before groaning into the soft pillow against his lips.

“What was that?” Lister. Behind the pillow, Rimmer pulled a face and rolled his eyes. Lister sounded sleepy – perhaps he had been woken up. Good! As he pulled the pillow from his face, Rimmer smirked. It wasn’t pretty.

“I said,” he began, as if repeating himself was a burden he shouldn’t have to bear, “I can’t believe how hard it is.”

“What?!” Well, that was a new reaction. Guilt? Rimmer thought about it for a moment, but when his brain came up with nothing, he shrugged mentally and sighed.

“The mattress, you gimp. I think I’d prefer solid stone.”

“Nah… you only get that in the really good cells. You know… the ones for serial killers.”

Rimmer didn’t bother to answer this time. He had learned over time that replying to Lister always ended in conversation with him, and he didn’t feel up to that at all. Instead he put the pillow beneath his head again and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the red light that seemed made to shine on his eyelids. There was movement in the bunk above him – barely a rustle but even so.

“Do you mind? I can’t sleep.” A sleepy groan answered him… or perhaps not sleepy… Rimmer swallowed. “Oh, God! You’re touching yourself, aren’t you? While I’m laid down here, you’re up there…” Rimmer shuddered in distaste, “touching yourself!”

“What’re you talking about, man?” That same slightly lazy drawl as before, and immediately Rimmer wanted to get up. No! Not get up! He wanted to rise from his bed… no! Inwardly, he tried to think of a word that he could use to make himself move… no, not that either.

“Stop it!” he demanded, managing to sound morally superior. All of a sudden, the image of what Lister was actually doing in the bunk above him came into his mind, and his lips curled away from his teeth as he pulled a face. Actually, he wasn’t going to move anywhere. If he did, he might accidentally look.

There was silence for a long moment between them. There wasn’t actually silence in the cell. Rimmer could hear that slight rustling, and he began to feel like a prisoner in his own bunk, certain that Lister was smirking that annoying smirk of his as he… as he…

A deep, throaty moan came floating down to his ears, and he covered his face with the pillow again. “If you carry on I’ll… I’ll…” Actually, he didn’t know what he’d do. “I’ll pull it off!” Rimmer shook his head in embarrassment behind the pillow and bit into it in self-disgust.

“Promises, promises,” Lister said, his voice somehow softer than usual. Rimmer didn’t want to imagine why but he couldn’t help it. “You should try it sometime. It might make you less of a smeghead.”

“Ah!” Rimmer pounced. “So you admit you’re doing it?”

That all-too-familiar annoying giggle came drifting down to him. “Yeah…” Rimmer bristled, but even so, he found his hand straying down over his torso slowly. “Are you?” His hand stilled immediately.

“No! I am capable of containing my animal urges, thank you!”

“Smeghead…” Lister muttered distractedly, and in the subsequent silence, Rimmer found his hand straying down his body again. His fingertips encountered the waistband of his pyjamas, and he swallowed before he carefully undid the drawstring tie, trying to be silent though he doubted Lister was listening for anything.

With a herculean amount of effort, he slid the bottoms down his hips a little, raising himself from the bed to allow it without making the rusty springs creak. At last he was free to take himself in his hand. His flesh was soft and warm, and Rimmer closed his eyes, trying to ignore the dreadful embarrassment as he fondled his soft cock with his fingers. Another one of those throaty groans sounded above him. Distantly, Rimmer wondered how Lister managed to keep his accent while he was moaning, and completely missed the little jerk of interest his cock showed. All he knew was that when he stopped concentrating on becoming aroused, that was when it happened.

“Is it hard now?” Lister wanted to know. Most likely he was talking about the mattress. Rimmer shivered as he brought his hand up silently, his quickly hardening flesh filling his hand as if it was meant to be there.

“It’s always hard,” Rimmer said, wincing, trying to inject sarcasm into his tone. “It hasn’t become more comfortable in the last five minutes.”

“Oh…” It was a disappointingly devoid of eloquence, even for Lister. Rimmer found himself quite disappointed. “Try it with your other hand. It feels like someone else is doing it.”

Looking faintly horrified, Rimmer tried it. After all, it wasn’t as if Lister could see him. “Oh, God…” he groaned, hoping that it sounded like an interjection of disgust at the advice, because Lister was quite right.

“We were alone together for a long time, you and me,” Lister said from above him, his voice soft and dreamy again. Rimmer gulped, because Lister was referring to that other him – the one who had been a member of their crew, who had gone off to be someone new called ‘Ace’ Rimmer… a hero. A small smile crept onto his face.

“The Cat would go missing for days – no, weeks – at a time at first, on Red Dwarf. It was a long time before we picked Kryten up. We were so alone…” Rimmer began to get a distinctly bad feeling about this. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Rimmer?”

Despite the turn of the conversation, his stiff cock was hard as rock in his more inexperienced left hand, leaking from the tip, and Rimmer knew he wasn’t going to be able to stop now. He stroked up and down, trying to move the foreskin rather than drag his palm up and down over his length because that sound of skin on skin would be unmistakable.

“I’m sorry I don’t. What are you trying to say?” There was a single heavy sigh that Rimmer didn’t like one bit.

“I’m trying to say that we were alone for a long time… without a woman in sight.” A single leg draped over the edge of the top bunk and swung in the air idly. Rimmer swallowed, and he knew Lister must have heard that but he couldn’t stop now! He was so close! Just a few more strokes. Helplessly, his hand began to match the rhythm of Lister’s calf as it swung to and fro by the side of the bunk. To and fro, back and forth, up and down… Rimmer bit into the side of his hand desperately as a groan spilled from his lips, biting so deeply he tasted blood as his body convulsed and raised up slightly in orgasm.

“We…” Lister continued, apparently oblivious to what was going on beneath him, “we had a kind of – arrangement.” To his lasting dismay, even hearing that couldn’t halt his orgasm, and his hard cock spurted its last while he was contemplating what an “arrangement” with Lister might entail.

“Look – to cut it short. We did things for each other.” Moving quickly, Rimmer pulled up his pyjama pants, screwing his eyes up when he felt the cooling stickiness cover his groin and his upper legs. Still, he pulled up the blanket as well, and then prayed his voice would sound suitably scathing.

“Well, it must have been a hard choice for that other me, then. An eternity using his hard light drive to exchange sexual favours with you, or a place as ‘Ace’ Rimmer the hero and adventurer.” Suddenly the gently swinging leg was joined by an upside-down version of Lister’s face with its annoying smirk, his dreadlocks dangling down almost far enough to touch the edge of the bed.

“Just kidding. He was an insufferable prat, just like you.” Rimmer narrowed his eyes, but he could feel colour on his cheeks, and he just knew that Lister could tell everything on his face. “I just wanted to see if you would…”

“If I would… what?” Inside Rimmer’s mind, a loud voice shouted about replies leading to conversations – conversations he didn’t want to have. And not with Lister.

“If you would,” Lister replied, still smirking. Rimmer reflected that it was even more annoying upside down, and he shook his head with a sigh.

“You didn’t, did you?” he asked, dreading the answer, knowing already what it was.

“Course not. But you did.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lister shrugged, and then his head and his foot disappeared from Rimmer’s line of sight back onto the bunk above him. There was silence for a moment. “I do that once I know you’re asleep. There’s no way I’d be able to get off if I knew you were listening.” There was a kind of self-satisfied amusement in Lister’s tone, and Rimmer felt absolutely miserable. Nothing new there.

“I’m going to sleep now,” he said resolutely, closing his eyes to avoid the red glow, and finding that he was tired enough it didn’t matter to him.

“Good,” Lister said, and the last thought Rimmer had before he drifted off was that he absolutely shouldn’t sleep with Lister above him. Absolutely not…

~ finis ~

Feedback welcome and appreciated. Thank you for reading – I hope you enjoyed it. :)