Set You Free - Part 1/2 - Lister/Rimmer

[katouttathebag.livejournal.com]

Pairing: Lister/Rimmer
Rating: PG
Viewpoint: Lister
Plot description: Lister reflects on his feelings for Rimmer, the man broken by his own life. Lonely, needing human contact and affection, Lister wants to be the one to fix him.
Song: "Cherry" by the Smashing Pumpkins
"Stay with me, I'll set you free, 'Cause I can tell you once were pretty / Rose so sad, you've lost your petals, Lost the lustre off your tattle tales"
"I need a love to help me find my way, I need a strength that I cannot betray"
"What are we waiting for? What are we waiting for? Time has lost its hold on me"
"I need a word to say what I can't say, I need a lover"

071. Broken of my fanfic100  set - my table is found here

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Arnold Rimmer had not always been a terrible person. Lister was certain of it. There was good there, buried beneath the thick veneer of gittiness. Sometimes Lister thought about what he knew of Rimmer's family life. The casual disregard to young Arn's feelings, the constant low grade cruelty shown by his mother, father and brothers. Surely seven year old Rimmer couldn't have deserved any of that? He couldn't have been as much a smeghead at 10 as he was at 28. They had a part in creating that smeghead.

Lister still felt nauseous when he recalled the story of Rimmer's first kiss. The resigned calm way Rimmer had recounted an act of incest on his childhood self, the deadness in his eyes. The quiet voice Rimmer used for his abusive childhood stories was drastically different than the offended whingeing tone he used to complain about current mistreatments.

'It just isn't right,' Lister thought, "they killed anything that could have turned out nice or good in him."

Nice, good, even slightly well adjusted would be an improvement. Lister often vacillated between two techniques. Mocking Rimmer's flaws until he snapped, hoping that Rimmer would simply stop being a git, and the other technique of trying to support him, lending a caring ear and giving gentle advice. Neither tack worked. If only there was a way, a way of holding up a mirror to Rimmer, to show him a reflection that held something worthwhile.

"If only... heh, smeg, then, what?" Lister snorted, "Then Rimmer would be happy, maybe actually be a nice bloke occasionally? Ha, fat smegging chance."

Lister knew that all the abuse piled on Rimmer since he was a child really had convinced him he was worthless. It didn't take a psychologist to smell the self hatred that seeped from every pore of the man. But the problem was getting past that. Something inside Arnold Judas Rimmer seemed to Lister to be broken. If anyone could fix it, Lister was certain that it was him. He'd taught a mechanoid to break his smegging programming, an actual code inserted into a machine specifically to govern their behaviour, and yet he couldn't pull one man out of his self-imposed punishment.

How could it be so hard?

"Possibly the last non crazed/violent life forms left in the universe and we can't talk to each other.What are we even living for out here?" Lister thought, "Four people stranded in space and we can't even pretend to be real around each other. It's all so...so smegging MEANINGLESS." Lister punched his furry hat laying on the bunk. His dreams of getting back to Earth before he died were starting to feel childish and stupid. Everything felt drawn out and empty. Lister was lonely.

Ever since Rimmer had gotten his hard light drive, Lister had been struggling with unfamiliar emotions. Before, whenever Lister got lonely, he consoled himself with the fact that even if he wanted to, there wasn't anyone else. He shared a ship with a non corporeal dead man, a creature evolved from a cat(it still felt like bestiality to Lister), and a robot that would effectively be compelled to obey his orders. The AR machine and cold showers staved off the worst of it, but there was something missing, it was something like eating a TV dinner when you craved good, real food.

Now that Rimmer had the ability to touch, it was like another human had miraculously materialized on the ship. Lister couldn't even bring himself to be horrified by the feelings the other man now caused in him. Especially now that he'd seen past the veneer. He'd seen inside Rimmer's fractured mind on the psi-moon, seen the good the man was capable of when pressed.

If Lister had found these feelings lurking in himself back on Red Dwarf when they were both alive, he'd have vomited his guts out then checked himself into Red Dwarf's psych ward. But now...all bets were off and everything was different. Rimmer was different. They needed each other. They needed something to live for beyond this smeggy ship and their pointless journey. Lister desperately craved romance in all his soul, and the last of it had been dripping steadily away. With every lost mile on Red Dwarf, every technology that failed to bring them home, he lost a little more hope, felt a smidge more alone.

Some nights Lister longed to creep into Rimmer's quarters and ease himself into bed beside the warm hologram. Just for the contact, just for the comfort, just because it might show Rimmer he wasn't all alone. Not alone, not anymore.

Lister was no stranger to being with both sexes. He preferred women, but the right guy could really make him turn his head. Petersen had once gotten him really drunk, but he wasn't the sort of guy Lister would have gotten with sober. Ace had been that type of guy. It had initially disgusted Lister, the schoolgirl like behaviour he couldn't help displaying around the space hero. The horror that it was basically RIMMER, his face, his...body, under that shiny suit. Lister had finally rationalized it that Ace was a totally different person, a wonderful person, unrelated to Lister's old bunkmate in any way. But Rimmer was different now. Closer to Ace than he knew.

There was always something holding Lister back. But he could never figure out why. All the people that could have judged them are dead. Three million years away and long dead. Well, the cat judged them, but he judged them about everything, it was sort of his thing. Lister had a suspicion that complaining was one of the ways the Cat stayed sane, so the more things for him to whinge about the better. If Lister and Rimmer announced they were smegging well getting married Kryten would probably just offer to cater. Still, Lister never took that chance to lay it all out for Rimmer.

Tonight was different. Lister was feeling pensive, and he chewed on his dreadlocks as the end credits of "It's a Wonderful Life" scrolled by. Lister jolted upright, startled, and he realized he hadn't even been paying attention. Normally he sat through the entire film enraptured. No matter how many times he'd seen it, the movie still drew him in and held him, like the arms of the mother he never knew. How many times did Lister wish that Rimmer would get a visit from his own Clarence, that somehow he could show him what things would be like in "a world without Rimmer". Show him that everyone was worthwhile, and everyone gets second chances. Lister had even tried to get Rimmer to watch it, but the hologram had never wanted to watch the movie with him. "Stupid twaddle, Listy," Rimmer would puff, "Romantic slop. Real life is much more smegged up, miladdo."

"The stupid git just doesn't SEE," Lister chomped on his hair determinedly, "Barmy smeghead can't...can't...not worthless, that smegging twonk....Show HIM..."

Listers eyes narrowed. Grabbing his shirt with only the two curry stains on it, Lister started to smile softly.

Comments

[oboetheres.livejournal.com]

Hi, I know it's been a very long time since this was posted, but any chance of the second part ever going up? You set it up so well and got me hooked, but there's no conclusion!