reddwarfslash | Fic: Bad Days - R/L

Title: Bad Days
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own Red Dwarf. I don't make money from this.
Spoilers: Legion
Notes: Just a little flashfic to kill time at work. I am working on bigger things, and it is slow going. I do promise I will post, eventually!

Lister cared.

He couldn't help it. Other people might get upset watching the news, or playing a sad holo novel. Lister couldn't even play holo-novels; he got too involved. They weren't like AR games - the whole point of them was that you couldn't change the ultimate outcome. You could interact with the characters, but the storyline would heal itself, bringing about the pre-ordained result every single time. It was stupid, and pointless, and Lister hated it.

He knew he shouldn't be going anywhere near these letters. For someone who once cried for a week when the character in his favorite soap (which he pretended not to follow) was killed off, reading the letters out of a lost mail-pod they'd picked up, meant for long-dead crew members of some unknown ship, was the opposite of a good idea. Rimmer found him in the middle of the night, lying sniffling and red-eyed in a pile of used handkerchiefs.

There were stages, he explained, as Rimmer started cleaning tissues and torn up letters off the mid-section table. Variations. If the letter looked nice and neat and hand-written, he would first get moved by the fact that someone had taken such obvious care in writing to a person who was no longer living. Then he would start wondering if the recipient had been waiting for the letter which had never arrived; if they had been upset that it hadn't come; if it was important news. If, at this point, he opened the letter and found that it was, in fact, a wedding invitation, he would lose it completely.

Then there were the ones that looked very ordinary all the way until you'd read them through, and realized that it wasn't so much what the person said, as what they didn't say. Lister told Rimmer this as the latter sorted the as-yet-unopened letters into a neat pile, then stuffed them into a box which he resolutely put on the floor beneath the table. Then he looked pointedly at Lister, folding his arms.

Lister looked back, shrugged, then got up.

It wasn't all depressing, he persisted, as they walked towards Lister's quarters. Sometimes there were last notices for bills that would have given someone a bad day had they ever arrived, which they hadn't; there were just plain funny letters; love letters that just made you smile, because the poetry in them was so bad. Rimmer did not respond, but as they went through the door, Lister was was sure he saw a twitch at the corner of the hologram's mouth.

It's not that I'm like this all the time, he told Rimmer, as they undressed, seeing the other man shake his head.

No, really, he insisted, crawling under the covers, I'm just having a bad day. Rimmer got into bed with him, his back towards Lister, and gave a deep sigh. Lister pulled him close, sighing with him, and eventually, he fell asleep.

Smiling.