Last Humans: 23rd Century Man

[typhonblue.livejournal.com]

Red Dwarf Fanfic: Last Humans
Chapter 19: 23rd Century Man
Summary(flashback): A working-class kid from Liverpool makes good.
Warnings: Language, sexual situations, slash, John/Lister Lister/Rimmer(implicit)
Beta: Rack
Chapter Rating: MA(18+)

First Chapter



(ooo)

23rd Century Man

(ooo)

Lister slipped through the boisterous crowd of Swedish tourists. At the door to the Liverpool hostel he hesitated and stood by it, nodding and smiling at the exiting tourists.

When the last Swede in the group had assembled outside the hostel, Lister chanced a look in.

The coast was clear. None of the hostel staff was in eye-shot. Lister swaggered in, winking at a group of blond girls in braids half asleep on the hostel couches. He made a bee-line for the cafeteria and slipped into the line of late-morning stragglers up for breakfast.

No one questioned him as he waited in line and the bored staff barely registered him as they dished up scrambled eggs, bacon and a tired-looking bun.

Lister cackled as he snuck his prize away from the cafeteria staff. He decided to join a knot of chummy backpackers by the cafeteria entrance.

He slipped into their thickly accented conversation with ease and soon they had decided he was every bit a part of their group as Thorgnyr, Esben and Halvar.

After swapping amusing fishing stories and explaining where to find the best nightlife in Liverpool, Lister excused himself, begging stinkiness.

Lister went through the hostel halls, dodging staff and trying each room door in turn.

Eventually one opened and he stepped inside.

A groggy girl looked up at him from her bed and offered up a word of protest.

Lister smiled fetchingly and explained, via hand gestures, that her cousin Halvar or Esben or Thorgnyr had told him he could use the shower and that he wouldn't be any time at all.
She blinked at him.

He slipped into the bathroom, shut and locked the door.

Lister grinned at himself in the mirror and unzipped the outside pocket of his satchel. I'd been three years since he'd finally got off Red Dwarf and never a day went by he didn't thank a non-existent God that he wasn't still on that stifling gigantic Tonka-toy, slowly turning into a hollowed-out version of himself.

Of course, there was one regret.

Lister shoved it out of his mind. With a flourish he set his picture of Fiji against the mirror and a picture of his dear, departed Frankenstein beside it. A small meow alerted him that someone wanted freedom. Lister unzipped the main part of his satchel and a small black head poked out.

"Vlaad. Come on, yeh." Lister reached in to let Frankenstein's son out of the bag. The cat leapt to the floor, stretching his long legs and inspecting everything. Then he decided all was well and leapt onto Lister's shoulder, setting about grooming himself.

Lister set about cleaning his teeth, then set Vlaad on the toilet, pulled off his clothes and stepped into the shower. He smiled into the hot stream jetting from the showerhead.

Three years of pure slumming. Of sleeping on friend's couches, scrumming breakfasts from hostels, no responsibilities. Three years of detox from that nothing existence on Red Dwarf.

Lister soaped up his chest.

"Lunar city seven…"

He stepped forward to wash off the soap, looking down as he rinsed his privates.

And screamed. He slipped and barked his elbows trying to keep himself upright.

His pubes were grey.

Lister panted. He peeked down. The first look had been such a shock he'd thought all his pubes were grey. But it was just a small thatch, right below his belly button. Lister gave those hairs a sharp tug and winced. They were attached.

He never even thought pubes turned grey.

Shaken, he stepped out of the shower and towelled himself dry, taking care not to look below his waist.

He dressed quickly, put Vlaad back in the satchel and stared at his picture of Fiji.

When he exited the Swedish girl was gone. Lister left.

The rest of the day passed in a haze.

(ooo)

The UPSC office clerk eyed Lister's application. The man looked smart in his brass-buttoned blue over-coat and cap. "So your one qualification is that you spent 3 years onboard a JMC ship as a chicken-soup dispenser repairman?"

Lister grinned and nodded.

"You do realize that the UPSC takes only the absolute cream of the crop. That our standards are light-years beyond the International Space Corps program. Even top-flight ESC personnel have trouble passing them. We require scholastic, physical and psychological excellence." The UPSC clerk eyed Lister imperiously.

"I didn't know," Lister said. "When do I start?"

"Mister Lister. You are six years too old to begin our training program. Not to mention that your… resume… is riddled with year-long gaps in employment. Your academic achievement… dropping out after a week of… Art School, no less, is beyond dismal. Just looking at you tells me you could never pass the physical requirements. And, psychologically—"

Vlaad took that moment to offer up a vocal complaint about his continued imprisonment.

"Ah, sorry. Just a mo'." Lister lifted his hand and caught the zip to his satchel. He opened it a few inches and Vlaad popped his head out.

"What is that?" The clerk asked.

"It's me cat."

"Just. Leave."

"What, now?"

"Yes. Go."

"So yer gonna call me, then?"

A vein above the clerk's eye twitched. He tried to speak several times and seemed about to get something out when another clerk came over and whispered into his ear.

"You've got to be joking!" He squeaked in response.

The second clerk shook his head no and brought a stamp down on Lister's application. Approved.

Lister grinned and brought Vlaad up for a snuggle.

"I can't believe this," the clerk fumed. "This is insane."

The second clerk shrugged. "Orders. Looks like the right stuff isn't workin'. So the brass is gonna try summa the wrong stuff."

(ooo)

Lister slid into the cockpit of the Blaze. Extensive simulations had proven that he of all the many candidates—most with advanced degrees in astronavigation and in perfect physical condition—was the only one capable of handling the strange psychological dynamics of the Blaze's Perpetual Inertia Engine.

He'd had to go through months of intense physical conditioning. A lot of it had involved army grade psychedelic substances. Lister'd excelled at that part; although he'd never quite understood the goal. He just accepted there was one. And the UPSC made top notch marijuana gin. Of course there’d been the running, lots of that. Which hadn’t been fun. Or any of the other physical conditioning. But, over all, it hadn’t been bad. He couldn’t complain. And they’d let him keep Vlaad.

Overall it’d been a good end to a choice made on a whim. “We’re Desperate.” The recruiting poster had said. And far be it from Lister to ignore a cry for help.

Lister turned to give a thumbs up to the mechanics in the bay. They returned his gesture with a cheer.

The Blaze canapé closed. Lister took a deep breath, his mind whirling. He would be the first man ever to be able to use the PIE drive to explore deep space.

They'd given him coordinates that would have him a few light years away from the galactic core. He would see things no human had ever seen in two centuries of space travel.

A test pilot in the space core. Lister shook his head. His grandma had been thrilled when she found out. Even offered Lister one of her precious cigars. And his adopted father? Lister hadn't seen him more baffled or more proud. Lister knew neither of them expected him to do great things. Good things? Yes. Have a happy life? Definitely. But not great things. Not things that ended up in the history books.

As the Blaze taxied down the hanger, Lister looked over to the launch window. All of the former pilot candidates were there, watching him and waving. One stood a bit separate from the others. He was unusually tall, broad-shouldered, dark haired. Lister's buzz fizzed out a bit. It was John Rimmer. Arnold's older brother and the former front-runner for the test pilot position.

Even from fifty feet away, Lister could feel the man's anger and resentment or, at least, some sort of intense emotion emanating from him. Arn's opposite, in confidence and competence. It hadn't surprised Lister to find out that John was a prick. A hard, smug, competent prick with the all the warmth and human feeling of a flash-frozen mastodon.

The moment Lister'd been awarded the honour of flying the Blaze John'd stared at him with astonishment—the perfect man for most historic flight in one hundred and fifty years. Lister saw himself through John's eyes: a short, chubby, slobby scouser in dreads, carrying a cat.

Lister saluted John as he passed. The man turned away in disgust.

The bay doors opened. Jupiter rose above them, Ganymede a dot of dark rock against it. The Blaze engines wound up. Lister settled the helmet over his head and locked it in place. Sensors sucked against his forehead, depositing trails of sticky lubricant.

Lister relaxed into the strange sensation of the PIE drive feeding on his brainwaves, like his cerebral cortex was doing a shimmy while his cerebellum did a jig.

Get off, he thought and the Blaze leapt up from under him like a hot curry.

He didn't see the bay doors pass--too busy trying to take a breath in the overwhelming gravity. The hydraulics in his zoot suit made a faint rushing sound, jumpstarting his stalled circulation and clearing his head. At some point, Jupiter slipped past the aft edge of his canapé. Lister was left in the openness of space. As always he felt a crushing, overwhelming sort of lonesome

Lister glanced over his shoulder. The sun was slipping away by increments. A safe distance sensor on the Blaze dash blinked. He was okay to engage.

Start the PIE.

Lister expanded till he was intimately connected with every single particle in the universe. Then he slipped under them, into a space that constricted him till he was flat as a pancake. He stretched underneath every galaxy in the universe. He centred in on one and started contracting towards it.

In a second he snapped back into his body, remembering in the last instant to click the Blaze back together like a kinder surprise toy.

Lister chuckled. "Like waking up from a Marijuana Gin binge."

Over his right shoulder lay the galactic core. It looked like the dense froth of a good domestic had spilled all over a glossy black bar and each bubble in it was a point of light. Beautiful.

Lister licked his lips and looked back the way he'd come. He could see the arching outer arm of the Milky way and somewhere in that smear of light was home.

"Boss."

(ooo)

The chronometer in the Blaze's cockpit registered just under thirty minutes when Lister returned to the Ganymede station and re-docked.

The Blaze came to a stop the canapé popped open and Lister pulled off his helmet. Ten feet below him the crew of the Ganymede station, the scientists and mechanics of the PIE project and his fellow test-pilots cheered.

Lister grinned down at them, swung his legs out of the cockpit and let himself drop into their raised arms.

They carried him to the recreational area aboard the station where foil sacks of ale—not the synthetic stuff, but high quality Earth-exports—were being cut open.

Someone offered Lister a pint. He poured it over his head and cheered. Everyone followed his lead.

The evening passed in a blur. Eventually Lister had to concede to his exhaustion and—while the Russians seemed to be gaining their second wind—bowed out of any further fun.

Before he could leave he was pulled to the side.

John.

Lister stared unsteadily up at him.

"You're the man of the hour." John offered him a thin smile. "Listen, Dave. I know we haven't always seen eye to eye. I suppose I'm space corps old school. What makes a good pilot is excellent physical condition, years of hard training, intelligence and discipline. Not the ability to weather a bender. Regardless, I'd like to think we could become friends after a fashion." John thumped him. Lister grimaced and grabbed his now-smarting shoulder. "I'm going to invite you to the Rimmer Family Gala. We've been inviting the best and the brightest to come and join us since my uncle landed admiral. Our family practically is the Space Corps. What do you say? Come hang out with the winners."

(ooo)

Lister moved through the crowd of Rimmers towards the bar. Booze was complimentary, and high quality, which was the best thing Lister could say about the "Rimmer Family Gala." Fake chumminess, fake charming ness, fake laughter, fake Formica, fake everything. Lister felt like rolling in baking soda just to get the grease off.

The bartender served up stout in a tall, tapered glass. Pretentious, Lister thought, as he ducked behind a tree fern and knocked back his fifth beer.

None of his friends from the Ganymede Station were there. None of them made the cut. Although Lister recognized lots of the so-called high fliers and they were just as fake as the Rimmers.

Lister was beginning to understand Rimmer's fetishization of right and proper behaviour, his obsession with the superficial trappings of command and prestige. He'd grown up in this… this… mess of starched shirts and cuff-links and fine Cuban cigars. Of pretension.

Lister snorted into his beer. And for a man who'd had to have his feet surgically extracted from his mouth at birth, navigating this maze of manners and wit must have been a nightmare.

Unfortunately for Arn, his family was the right stuff right down to the bone. His uncles were all highly ranked in the space corps, in fact the only one who wasn't was his father and Arn. Arn's mother had pointed that out to Lister no less then seven times while she drank herself into a tizzy and draped herself on each of Arn's uncles in succession.

And his brothers, or half-brothers judging from the way Arn's mum carried on… every single one of them had grit under pressure, finesse and smarts. Too bad they lacked a speck of humanity between them.

The younger up-and-comers had hounded him about every single detail of his life, hanging on his every word, mining him like a prestige deposit, as if trying to find a kernel of wisdom they could use to advance themselves. Lister had answered their questions till he couldn't stand talking about himself anymore.

"There you are." A woman's cackle.

Lister stifled a groan.

"Why are you hiding? You're the man of the hour."

"Yah, I know." Lister turned towards Arn's mum.

"You should be thrilled, you of all people… managing to achieve such a thing." She sloshed martini onto the front of his tee-shirt.

Lister frowned; he didn't care about the martini.

"I'm amazed. A working-class Liverpool boy like you. And an orphan no less. And to think my youngest can't even make it to astronavigation officer first class. I gave that boy everything he needed. And he did nothing with it. Although God knows he likes to complain he got 'none of the advantages.' But you just have look at his brothers to know that's… that's… non… nonse…bullocks!" She steadied herself against the tree fern. "It's not easy being a widow you know, God rest Arnold's soul. He was a good man." She sniffed. "A short man. But a good one. Well, adequate at least."

"I'm not feelin' well, ma'am," Lister said politely. "I think I'll be goin'." He hadn’t found Arnold yet. In fact Lister was afraid Arnold hadn’t come.

"So soon?" Arn's mum hiccoughed. "But you just got here!"

"Yah, well, I've got teh get up early tomorrow. Yeh know, Space Corps business." Lister stepped back, unsettling her. She tripped and Lister caught her.

"Oh my," Arn's mum said. "You're stronger then you look. Must be all that conditioning you Space Core boys do."

Lister's stomach crawled as Arn's mum let her hand wander southwards. "What a handsome lad, you are."

"Sorry, I've got teh go!" Lister pushed her away and ran.

Before he could escape he collided with John.

"Easy there, chum. You spilled my drink."

"I gotta be goin'."

"Nonsense! The party's just started." John leaned close, slipping his arm over Lister's shoulder. "Wait till the ladies have retired." John took a sip of his cordial. "Then the men-folk get to have their fun." John's thigh lightly brushed Lister's crotch.

Lister froze. Was that…? Naw, couldn't be. He took another swallow of beer. "I thought Arnold would be here."

"He's probably cowering in his old bedroom on the third floor. Mum sent him up there after he dropped a pint of bitter down the Rear Admiral's pants. He can't handle the pressure. Pressure? What pressure? You regal an amusing anecdote here, drop a name there, do a bit of brown-nosing… and then you find some wet—" John looked right at Lister, "bird… and you have a good shag."

"Aren't you married?" Lister grimaced.

John lifted his hand, his ring finger was absent a ring. "Not tonight. One night off from being the upstanding, all-around moral and decent husband. I figure it's a fair trade for putting a roof over my wife's head. And for hiring the pool boy." John pushed forward against Lister.

Lister stepped back and found he had nowhere to step to. He realized John had somehow manoeuvred him into a courner behind an outcropping of bonsai spruce. "So..." Lister chuckled. "What… er… lass do you have your eye on?"

John blinked and looked back towards the party. "They're all a bunch of schnitzel-faced, corn-fed Io girls. I'm thinking of something a little more lean and dark." John leaned closer, grinding his hips against Lister's.

Oh crapping smegging crap. Lister's mind churned as he registered John's hard-on and his lips at about the same time. The man stank of cherry liquor and the same wretched sandalwood reeking aftershave Arn used. And, under that, he smelled something like Arn. And he looked a lot like Arn. Lister's reptile brain said, Arn.

John laughed against Lister's lips and put enough distance between them to glance down at Lister's suddenly tight black jeans. "Thought so."

"John!" A laugh behind them. "You rubbing up against some piece of a—?"

John stepped back, revealing Lister. The laugh was cut short.

"Oh, er…" One of John's pilot buddies stared at them both. "I didn't—"

"Shut it." John levelled a look at his friend that gave Lister chills.

The friend backed down and away. "I'll just…er… be going…" He ran.

Lister took that moment to slip past John. John caught his shoulder, stopping him. "I'll see you around."

Lister shrugged out of his grip and fled. He edged the periphery of the party and managed to escape the Rimmer's conservatory into their foyer.

He said the third floor. Lister looked up the main staircase. He glanced around to see if anyone was watching. No one was.

He took the stairs three by three. The second stair case was a bit harder to find. It was tucked into an alcove.

The third floor had a single room with a single door off the landing. Lister leaned against the door, listening. He couldn't hear anything.

Lister tried to catch his breath. He needed to compose himself. He was still hard. Of all people, John Rimmer. But he was damn good looking. And aggressive. Lister bowed his head. It was nice to be on the receiving end of that for once. Not to have to constantly deal with someone else's internal conflicts. But John. The cold, inhuman bastard? Not so cold, really. Warm, actually. Even hot.

New line of thought. Lister gritted his teeth. He thought of Arn's mum. Instant cold shower.

Lister took a deep breath and tried the door. It swung open.

A pair of hazel eyes peered up at him in the dark. Arn sat on his bed, biting his pillow and rocking back and forth.

Lister blinked. So that's it then. The Rimmer family either turns yeh into a neurotic mess or a human barracuda.

"What do you want? Get out!" Arn blustered. There was no strength behind it. There couldn't be. They had too much history.

Lister stepped into the room. "Look. I came here for you, yeah? I don't care about the rest of yer family. Just you."

"Piss off! Do you realize how much I've had to hear about you this past week? The smegging hero of the smegging space corps?"

Lister stepped over to Arn's bed and sat down. "I know. I talked to yeh mum. Or she talked at me. Look, I'm sorry…"

Arn turned away from him.

Lister tsked and grabbed the man's shoulders, pulling him against his chest. "It's hard for you, yeah? I get that." He felt Arn stiffen then relax. Even in three years that hadn't changed. Lister smiled to himself. "I didn't do this to make your family happy."

"Why did you do it? To show me up? To prove you're better then me?"

"Naw. It just happened man. One minute I was on the streets, the next me and me cat were in the corps." Lister caught him up tighter. "I'd give it up in a beat to be with you."

"I don't want to be with you," Arn retorted. "I'm not a damn poof."

Lister sighed. "I love you." When Arn didn't respond in kind, once again Lister felt like he was throwing the words into a pit. It hurt. As always. Stung like anything.

"I don't blame you for sittin' up here. Your family—" Lister shook his head, unable to come up with the right word. He looked around the room. It was small and dusty. The walls were covered in posters of old military heroes, the shelves stacked with strategy games and war history tomes. Lister could feel the dreams of glory Arn'd escaped into as a child. Smeggin' cracked this is.

"You left me," Arn said finally.

There were words Lister wanted to say. Words about how hard it had been, watching himself get old on Red Dwarf, needing to be free to be Lister. Resenting Arn for every minute he had to stay cooped up in that over-regulated tin can. Lister hadn't wanted to leave Arn. He'd wanted Arn to realize that Red Dwarf was a dead end for both of them. And he'd thought him leaving might jump start that realization.

"I want you to come to my ranch on Fiji." Lister said. He pulled out a ticket from his pocket. "It's two way. The fare is completely paid. You can get the time off. I know you've got months comin' to you."

Arn refused to take it. Lister placed it on his nightstand instead.

"It wasn't anything more then frustration." Arn said. "That's it, a bit of sexual frustration."

"However you want to think of it, fine," Lister snapped. Then he slid his hand against the side of Arn's face and cupped the back of his head, pulling him in for a kiss.

Arn pulled back before Lister could make contact. "Go, please."

"You care that much about what your family thinks?" Lister rose, angry.

Arn shook his head.

"Your family isn't exactly what they seem, either. Your mum is a slag. Your brother… You should have been down there tonight…"

"Don't insult my family." Arn glared.

"It makes me so…" Lister's hands fisted. "Why can't you choose me over them? They don't even care about you."

"What do you want from me, Dave?" Arn asked.

The use of his first name drew Lister up short. "What?"

"What am I supposed to do? Go to Fiji and be your bleeding housewife? You're the smegging hero of the universe now. If I can't live up to my brothers how in God's name am I going to live up to you?"

"You don't have to. I don't care about this shite. I don't."

Arn bowed his head. "I do."

Lister swore silently. "Well, that's your problem. You could be happy, man. It's staring you right in the face."

Arn didn't answer.

Lister turned away. There was nothing left to say. Nothing at all. "I'm leaving the ticket with you." Lister paused in the doorway. He didn't want to leave. He wanted to turn around and grovel, beg and plead, bargain… anything but leave. "Bye."

(ooo)

Lister lit a smoke in a remote part of the Rimmers' conservatory. Fuming.

"What is my brother to you?"

Lister started. John seemed to materialize out of thin air. Lister tipped the ash off his cig and shrugged. "We used to be friends."

"Arn? Friends?" John scoffed and stood beside Lister. "What a bizarre notion."

"He's not that bad." Lister set his cig in his ear and took a swig from his mug of ale. "He's a little rough around the edges."

"He's too soft." John slipped out his pipe and lit up. "Way too soft to be raised by mum. And I'm not surprised he's turned into a jittery, obsessive little wierdy what with him being so close in age to those hooligans Harold and Frank."

"He respects you."

"That's part of his problem. Never been able to see past the surface of things. All of us are faking it as we go along." John leaned against an ash tree and puffed on his pipe. "I know I'm a prick, Dave. I chose to survive my bitch-queen of a mother and my lunatic of a father with something of my sanity intact. Harold and Frank were just born pricks. Arnold had a chance to be something else. Something a bit more human. I was too late and too deep into myself to ever help him out in that regard."

Lister stared at him.

John seemed to feel Lister's stare and glanced up at him. "What? Pricks can't be self-aware?"

"I didn't expect…"

"Whatever. Look. Do you want to screw? It'll be meaningless, I promise. My wife is coming up with the kids tomorrow—I mean today and I said I'd at least give an eight hour buffer between her and whoever I pick up. There's a guest house just fifty feet away…"

Lister's eyes flicked towards John. He felt like smeg, rejected—again—by Arn. Shagging his brother… It wasn't right. He knew that. But he was miserable, horny and… drunk. And horny.

“Morals, huh?” John tipped out his pipe and slipped it into his pocket. “If it makes you feel any better, my wife and I have an agreement. Don’t look at me like that.” An expression of absolute defeat crossed John’s face. “If I could have changed anything… Well, that wasn’t my choice, was it? My wife turned out to be very much like my mom, god bless her soul.”

Lister hesitated. John looked so smegging lost. Vulnerable. For a moment he looked like Arn.

Lister held out his hand, hesitant. John took it as some sort of invitation and grabbed Lister by the waist and pushed him down, kissing Lister with a focus and drive that Arn'd never had the balls to show.

Lister let John slip off his shirt, then unbuckle his pants, turn him around, till he was half naked and knee deep in muck. For a moment Lister panicked. What if this was some evil practical joke… but then John moved against him and Lister could tell it was no joke to John.

John's fingers wrapped around the base of Lister's penis as he slid his own between Lister's thighs. They moved together like that, rubbing and teasing, till Lister was panting and wishing there was something more to it.

"It'd hurt like hell," John said, seeming to read Lister's mind.

Instead John got a bit more clever with his hand and Lister came, splattering the mud and ferns.

A few more thrusts and John was done too, leaning heavily into Lister's back, whispering not-very-sweet nonsense into Lister's ear.

Lister felt sleazy.

He was starting to like John and that made him feel even worse.

Neither feeling stopped him from coming twice more that night in the muck with John's hand around his cock.

They never made it to the guest house.