Fic: Liverpool - R/L - PG-13

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

Title: Liverpool
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Disclaimer: I do not now, nor have I ever, owned Red Dwarf. Nor do I make any money from this fannish venture.
Spoilers: Out Of Time
Beta: madlovescience - sorry that I forgot to list you!
Notes: Originally written for yuletide.



A pub. A curry house. Another pub. A betting shop. Curry house. Off-license. Non-addictive tobacco-emporium. Pub. If this really was 23rd century Liverpool, Rimmer thought, it certainly explained a lot of things. He glanced through the window of the latest pub, examining the interior thoughtfully. It had to be here somewhere.

"You going in or not, deadie?" A man the size of a small building was standing between Rimmer and freedom. In light of this, he chose the path of least resistance.

"Oh, in, certainly, sorry, certainly, in, yes, sorry!" He fumbled behind his back for the door knob, remembering just in time that he wasn't supposed to have a physical presence. Hoping the thug wouldn't notice the brief shimmer at the switch of states, Rimmer slipped into his soft-light form, letting the man push through him – his light-bee flitting to and fro to allow him to do so – and open the door. Rimmer slipped in after him, already missing the feel of a solid body. He was so used to corporeality now that the thought of losing it again was enough to induce a panic attack. Gasping for simulated breath, he slumped down into the closest chair, and tried to school himself to calm. Fine. Everything would be…

"Ye all right, man?"

Rimmer froze. "Yes," he breathed, not turning. "Thank you for asking."

"Right," the too-familiar voice went on, "that's a lie, if ever I heard one. Drink?"

Rimmer turned, then, looking right into a face from the past. His heart stopped. Thankfully, he didn't actually need it beating – technically, it didn't even exist. These were the little things that kept his mind occupied while it tried to cope with the fact that a 25 year old Lister was seated opposite him. No, Rimmer realized, with chilling certainty, younger than that. Surely he'd never seen Lister like this; this… boy looked barely out of his teens. Smeg it all to hell; that goited machine had sent him too far back! "Thanks for the offer," he mumbled, "but…" he gestured to the 'H' on his forehead, bracing himself for insults.

Lister merely nodded. "Right. More for me, then." Before Rimmer could protest, he was up and at the bar, returning with two over-flowing pints of lager. "No good drinking alone," he explained, taking a swig from each glass in turn. "So, what's the story, guy?"

"I'm sorry?" Rimmer blinked. This wasn't going at all according to plan.

"Yer story. Come on; I know ye've got one. Not often a dead man comes into a pub, 'cept fer in jokes, and you don't look like the joking type."

Rimmer couldn't fault him there. It was surreal, though; Lister there, across from him, so young, so sincere, so… nice. It made no sense. "Are you David Lister?"

Lister raised his eyebrows in interest, one pint half-way to his mouth. "Yeah?"

"How old are you?"

"Twenty five next Saturday, why?"

Sending off a silent prayer to whomever was watching over space-time, Rimmer breathed a sigh of relief. There was still time. He didn't think he'd get another chance to go back. This was it. Do or die. Literally. "Look, there's no other way to tell you this, and I know it's going to sound crazy…" He paused, aware of a sudden feeling of Déjà vu. He'd been through this before. Just blurting out everything and hoping for the best wasn't going to work. He sighed. "What…" he shifted in the seat he couldn't feel, "what would you say if I told you that I'd come from the future to save a man's life?"

The edges of Lister's mouth flirted with the idea of a smile. His eyes, however, kept watching Rimmer carefully. "I'd probably say ye were a bit to skinny to pass fer Arnold Schwarzenegger."

"Schwarzenegger wasn't the good guy," Rimmer snapped, automatically.

"Eh?"

"Never mind!" Huffing in frustration, his current physical state – or lack thereof – not helping, Rimmer waved his hand through the table… and got an idea. "OK," he said, meeting Lister's still unwavering gaze, "so you're saying you'd need some convincing?"

Lister giggled, taking a good swig at one of the pints. "Yeah! Ye might say that."

Rimmer nodded. "Right." A moment's concentration, and he shifted into hard-light with relief, reaching across the table to grab one of the pints.

"Hang on," Lister cried in alarm, "yer not dead! Why've'ye got an haich stuck to yer forehead, then?"

Rimmer grit his teeth in annoyance. Of course. It was a perfectly logical conclusion; if he could touch, he obviously wasn't a hologram. He would have to do better than that. At least he wouldn't have to drink the foul stuff. Determined, Rimmer sat the half-empty glass in front of himself, and switched back to soft-light, shuddering a little. What he was about to do wouldn't hurt, exactly, so long as he timed it right, but it ran counter to every instinct his electronic mind had carefully simulated in him. Making sure that Lister was paying attention, he held out his hand, palm down. Then, very slowly, he moved it through the pint-glass, until it was sticking straight through him.

Lister stared, clearly not having decided yet on which side of the 'complete and total nutter'-fence Rimmer belonged. "No..." he frowned, looking at the hand stuck through the glass, "ye were just... that doesn't make..."

"Shut up, and pay attention," Rimmer barked. Then he switched to hard light, and lifted the glass with the hand inside it. One goited bastard, two goited bastards, three goited bastards, he counted in his mind, as Lister looked on, jaw practically in his lap.

"FineIbelieveya," Lister wheezed.

Rimmer switched back to soft, and the glass crashed noisily to the tabletop.



"But doesn't it hurt?" Lister asked for the umpteenth time, as they settled into the booth of a second pub, the first one not having responded kindly to Rimmer's treatment of their property.

"Of course it smegging hurts," Rimmer snapped, "it hurts like twonking hell! It just takes a while for my bee to register what's going on, and relay the appropriate sensory response. I've got about ten seconds before the pain hits. It's not the sort of situation my software is designed to cope with, apparently."

Lister's eyes were wide in wonder. He kept trying to grab Rimmer's arm, as if to prove to himself that it was real, but Rimmer had remained safely incorporeal after the barman had threatened him with the cricket bat. "Yeah, but…"

"It's not important," Rimmer groused, counting down a rather large sum in his head. "What's important is, you absolutely cannot sign up to join the Jupiter Mining Corporation. Ever."

Lister frowned. Somehow, it made him seem even younger. "Eh?"

"Do you want to save a man's life or not?"

"Yeah, about that; ye've never mentioned whose life I'm supposed to save."

Smeg. Rimmer bit his lip. For someone so obviously thick and slow, Lister could be impressively bright and perceptive. He'd catch on, and then…

"It's you, isn't it?"

It took tremendous effort for Rimmer to remain apparently nonchalant, but he managed. "Why would you say that?"

"Because," Lister grinned, poking a finger through his chest, "yer dead, aren't ya? Just makes sense. If I was dead, and I could go back and save myself, ye can smegging well believe I would!"

Rimmer sighed. Wonderful. Lister had seemed perfectly willing to help a moment ago, when he'd thought he'd be saving some random stranger. Now that he knew it was one Rimmer, Arnold J. aka Smeghead… "What if it was?" He asked, dejectedly.

Taking a deep pull from the pint he'd somehow managed to procure, Lister nodded. "All right."

Rimmer nodded grimly in return. "Fair enough. I could hardly fault you fo… what?"

Lister grinned. "I'll do it. Not like I was married to the idea, anyway"

Of course. Rimmer nodded again, lamely. This Lister didn't know him. He hadn't spent years in deep space with Rimmer; endless years of bickering and resentment. To this Lister, Rimmer was just a man in need. He swallowed. There were entirely too many implications here. He just needed to make sure the timeline would set, and get out of here. "You're absolutely sure? You'll do it?"

"I will! I mean, I won't. Sign up, that is." Lister took another swig of lager, watching Rimmer over the edge of the glass. "So what happens; is it an accident?"

"What?" Rimmer had been half-prepared to leave. The question caught him unawares.

"How you die; is it an accident?"

"You could say that," Rimmer mumbled. "Excuse me – I have to get going…" He stood up, awkwardly, while Lister waved his hands through him in a futile effort to stop him. His eyes were doing a better job of it, though.

"Ye've got to tell me something; ye owe me that much!"

Rimmer grit his teeth. He couldn't say too much – even talking to Lister at this point in time was a dangerous thing; giving him detailed information about important potential future events could be disastrous. "Yes," he relented, moving away from the table, "it was an accident."

"On a ship, was it? I must have been there, or ye wouldn't have asked this of me. Do I die?"

"Virtually everyone on the ship dies," Rimmer yelled, inching further away. "What do you think?"

"Well then," Lister said, inclining his glass towards him in a toast, "it's not just yerself yer saving then, is it? Cheers, man!" He drank, deeply. A stray drop ran down his neck, along the line of his collarbone, ducking down underneath his shirt. Rimmer followed it with his eyes, mesmerized.

"For what?" Rimmer mumbled.

"Fer saving my life."

Rimmer looked at the young, grinning face, the twinkling eyes, the slope of his neck, and the bare skin just visible where the top buttons of his shirt was open. "Yes, well…" Squeezing his eyes shut, he turned quickly, rushing out the open door. Turning corporeal in the cold night air, he ran without stopping, without thinking, down the street to the alley where he'd first appeared, and started rooting through the old-fashioned, thankfully non-self-cleaning dumpster there. With a little yelp of triumph, he unearthed a small, hand-held device, and quickly pressed a series of controls. .

Seconds later, the pub door slammed open, and a flustered looking Lister appeared, peering into the night. "Hey," he yelled angrily, to the confusion of passers by, "ye didn't even tell me yer name!"



"Did it work?" Rimmer had barely materialized in the medi-bay before bursting out the question. Over by the examining table, a clearly flustered Kryten blinked at him.

"It's too soon to tell, sir. It will take some time for the new timeline to assert itself…"

"How long?" Rimmer interrupted, rushing forwards. By instinct, or rather programming, Kryten sidestepped, blocking his way to the table.

"Depending on the resultant eddies in the spacetime continuum, and the speed of the resultant wavefront…" Kryten faltered, glancing at Rimmer's face, "anything from five minutes to forty eight hours."

"Wonderful." There was a blanket on the slab now, Rimmer noted. Kryten's work, no doubt. As if it mattered.

"Sir…" The mechanoid sounded hesitant.

"Yes, what?" Rimmer wondered if he would feel it, when it came? Would there be a warning? Would those eddies – waves – whatever, ripple across his body as the change took?

"You do realize that when the new timeline takes effect, you will effectively…"

"We talked this over before I left," Rimmer snapped. This was horrible. He'd assumed the change would be instantaneous; that'd he'd come back and find himself… not himself, as it were. But the waiting! Not knowing… Pushing Kryten violently aside, he peered down at the table. All but lifeless, Lister's pale, barely-breathing body was very definitely still there. "You said this would work!" He couldn't turn away. He could feel the metal of the table edge bending in his too-strong hands. Behind him, Kryten's fidgeting was practically audible.

"Sir… if I may… even if it doesn't, there are still options. The accident left his brain fairly intact. We could…"

"No. You said it yourself – they should have let him die. We're them now, Kryten."

The level of patheticness in the mechanoid's voice was almost sickening. Still, Rimmer supposed he couldn't blame him. "But, sir… it's Mister Lister…" For a moment, Rimmer was sure the metal git was going to start crying, which would have been a Bad Thing, as it might just have set Rimmer off too, and if there was any sort of sentience left in Lister, Rimmer wasn't about to have it witness him weep like a girl. He turned around.

"One moment." Kryten's voice had changed character. His face had that faraway look it got while interfacing with his internal database. "I am connecting to Starbug's mainframe. Connected. Hm. Curious."

"What??"

"I… I think the change may already have set, sir. According to the current data, Mister Lister did not join JMC on Earth at the age of 25. He did, however, join several months after the date he was supposed to have joined, on Mimas."

"Mimas? What the smeg was he doing there?" As if the comatose body on the table could answer him, Rimmer spun around… to face an empty slab. Hologram and mechanoid just about had time for a hopeful, exchanged glance before a wave of white noise washed over them, and the world… spun.



Rimmer opened his eyes. The timedrive was in front of him, destroyed. The ship had stopped shaking. His face fell. No. This was wrong. This was how it had all gotten started in the first place! He swayed backwards, clutching at his bee, remembering.

They'd stopped caring about where the drinks had come from, after a while. The taste wasn't actually that prominent, and alcohol dulled your senses, anyway. For Rimmer though, the alcohol wasn't what was making his head spin.

They'd called him a hero.

Well, perhaps not called him one as much as agreed with his own sentiments that he was one, but nonetheless! And now Lister was sitting next to him, all drunk and chatty, and looking at him, in a way no one really ever had before.

And then the drinking had stopped, and Lister had kept looking at him all the way back to Rimmer's quarters, and had just kept going, like the most natural thing in the world, following Rimmer inside and wrapping his arms around him, and suddenly they had been kissing, and ended up in Rimmer's bunk, and then the world had stopped.

There had been skin and heat and lips, and a whole host of confusing feelings, but mostly fantastic ones. Lister had fallen asleep instantly, while Rimmer had lain awake worrying about the conversation they would have the next morning.

Like a fool.

The next morning had never come, for Lister. Amidst the festivities, no one had actually remembered to set the autopilot, or whose shift it was. Even Kryten had been blitzed out on mechanoid hooch, and so it was that no one had actually noticed the asteroid before they crashed into it. The inertial stabilizers had been the first to go. The Cat, awake and with feline reflexes, had gotten away with minor bruises. Rimmer had found Lister, eventually, inside one of the metal closets, across the room from the bunk he'd been in, in a mess of clothes and shoes and blood.

Rimmer yelped, the mental image jolting him back to whatever reality this was supposed to be. Then, somewhat to his relief, he exploded.



"So, as you can see," Kryten concluded, cheerfully, "by killing us, our future selves killed themselves, because once we were dead it was impossible for us to become them in the future, and return in time to kill ourselves in the past." He frowned. "Or rather, present. Or rather…"

Picking at his teeth, an expression of boredom incarnated on his face, Lister waved him to silence. "We get it, Krytes."

In the pilot's seat, Cat looked up from his snooze. "Was tuna-can head saying something? Because I'm thinking it's way past lunch time, and this isn't the kitchen. So why is he here?"

Behind his console, Rimmer said nothing. There had been no accolades this time; no hero's welcome. No looks from anyone except to ascertain that he was in one piece, and even barely that. Good. If there was a price to be paid…

Everything was back to normal. Lister complained about his curries, and how he couldn't live without them, and Rimmer dutifully refrained from comment. He was the only one remembering now, the only one who would ever know all those alternate presents that had passed now, out of time. They went on with things. And in the evening, Lister nodded curtly to Rimmer as they went their separate ways, to quarters on opposite sides of the ship. Except…

"Hey," Lister said, over his shoulder, "Schwarzenegger was the good guy."

"Excuse me?"

"It was only in the first film he was bad. In the rest of them, it was him doing the rescuing. Killing the evil robots, and that." He stood there, grinning, encouraging Rimmer with exaggerated eyebrow movements.

Rimmer made a face at him. Maybe he was still suffering from the multiple time-distortions. Shaking his head, he went into his quarters, locked the door, and went to bed.



It was 4 AM, ship's standard time, when he finally realized.

With any luck, Lister hadn't gone to bed yet.

Comments

[akuni.livejournal.com]

Ohh, what a lovely turnaround at the end! I feared for a moment it would be a bittersweet triumph for Rimmer, which happens to him so often. I'm glad this could be one of his rare wins. :)

[kahvi.livejournal.com]

He did earn it, really. It fits nicely in with his bravery in Out of Time, which is the first and only time he tries a stunt like that. No wonder, when it goes unrewarded. I wanted to show a way that it might not have been. :)

Thank you for the lovely feedback - I'm glad you enjoyed it!