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tsukinobun.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
reddwarfslash2009-03-10 09:40 pm
You must be ficcing kidding me! :)
Title: Proximity (Part 1/?)
Pairing: Lister/Rimmer
Spoilers: Legion
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were, they’d get into much different kinds of trouble.
Notes: I’ve read many hardlight fics about Rimmer’s panicked reaction to suddenly being able to touch. Well, this focuses on Lister’s reaction to the overstimulation. Quite angsty, methinks.
Also, I keep trying to do the lj-cut and I'm not sure it's working...any help would be appreciated.
Kryten watched from the ironing alcove as Mr. Lister fell into his thoughts again. The dreadlocked man was pensive, an unnatural characteristic. He sat alone at the table an empty curry plate on the chair beside him, body leaned over the surface with his head laid on folded arms. His breathing indicated he was not asleep, yet Kryten was sure he had not seen the man stir for over an hour.
Just now he was weighing up the best way to help his companion. Normally he might whip up something delicious and spicy – that usually alleviated any momentary sadness in Mr. Lister. Sir was not despondent by nature, but all attempts over the last few days to burn out his ailing with copious spoonfuls of curry powder had gone unrewarded. There was something wrong.
Kryten knew that humans had a thin grasp of sanity and calculated that Mr. Lister would have to be an extraordinary specimen to have gone this long sans same-species contact without pushing at that precarious boundary. Well, he was an extraordinary specimen. But his steadfast self-image and friendly acceptance of change could only hold up for so long. Each day brought a new statistic of probability, and Kryten knew (as he had always known) that time was limited, and eventually his mind would break from the stress of isolation.
Not yet, though. Not just yet. This melancholy had come on too quickly, it must be situational. It could be overcome. Kryten had asked what was wrong several times over the last few days, and each time Mr. Lister had said, “Nothin’.” He avoided asking the question again at this juncture, knowing the reply would be the same. He would have to observe and try a different approach if these symptoms continued.
Mr. Rimmer entered the room, looked at Lister and grinned. It appeared he thought he had caught him snoozing. He walked around the table to face Lister’s hunched figure, made a fist, and brought it down on the table loudly. Lister was startled, and looked up at the offending hand with a confused look on his face.
“A little nap after breakfast, eh, Listy? Did all that eating tire you out?”
Lister put his head down again.
“Smeg off, Rimmer.”
Looking smug, Rimmer proceeded to drum on the table, forcing Lister to raise his head again.
“Wha’ are you doin’? I don’t need this, you smeghead.”
“Ah, well you see, Listy, I’m exercising full use of my hardlight body. I’m making up for lost time, you see, irritating you as I couldn’t before. Payback for years of incorporeality, while you were a total goit to my physical possessions and disrespected my authority.”
He said all this with a self-satisfied smirk on his face, then walked around to stand beside Lister (whose heart-rate sped up with each step, Kryten noted to himself from across the room) and punched him playfully, squarely on the arm.
Lister’s hand went to his arm where he’d been hit, and rubbed it. He was speechless, and the only reaction he had was to lean slightly away from Rimmer and eye him with a strange look on his face. Rimmer was puzzled, because, even though it couldn’t be, it looked like fear. He’d never elicited that kind of reaction before and it tickled a certain powerful feeling deep within him.
Kryten looked on, choosing not to interject just yet. He, too, was nonplussed (if ever an android could be said to have such a feeling) by Mr. Lister’s facial reaction and the sudden reactive tautening of all his muscles. It was a reaction that would be correlated to adrenaline release, he knew, from his human anatomy and physiology files. A distinct overreaction to such a small injury. Judging by the velocity and impact of the hit, there would barely be a bruise, and it though it would cease to hurt in a matter of minutes.
“Payback’s a smegging bitch, isn’t it, Listy?” he declared, smugly, then proceeded out of the room back to his quarters. Lister visibly relaxed with Rimmer’s exit.
“Oh, I do hope he becomes more bearable with time, sir,” Kryten observed. “I’m sure he will become accustomed to his new physicality and hopefully his ego can shrink back to a more tolerable level. It’s only been a few days, he is so glad to have his body back, after all.”
Rimmer had been given the gift of hardlight during contact with a being named Legion a few days previously. It was after returning to Starbug from that encounter that Mr. Lister had seemed so changed in demeanor, while Mr. Rimmer had been causing a ruckus and exploiting his newfound abilities. Perhaps Mr. Lister missed the comfort of Legion’s home which had promised security and happiness if only they had decided to stay. Or perhaps Mr. Rimmer’s new annoyance quotient was affecting Lister in this negative way.
“It’s weird, innit?” Mr. Lister’s voice drifted up, muffled, as his head lay on the table again some ten minutes later.
“What is, sir?” Kryten inquired while folding a shirt.
“Suddenly he can touch,” came the reply.
“Hmm. Yes, it takes some getting-used-to. Of course, now he can be affected by things too, which is a small relief. If he ever needs it, we can easily stomp on his toe or pull his ears, sir.”
Lister snickered.
“I was really happy for him, y’know? I bet it was really hard being all incorporeal and unable to feel stuff. It would drive me crazy, I bet. So I’m glad he’s got this hardlight thing, it’s just…”
“Just what, sir?”
“I dunno. Never mind.”
Lister got up and headed for his quarters. Kryten puzzled over the short interchange for awhile longer, but could not seem to glean further explanation of the man’s melancholy. He filed it away for future reference and turned to pressing one of Cat’s best suits.
~~~~~~~
Lister opened the shower door and pulled the towel tighter around his waistline as he noticed he had company. Smeghead was leaning against the wall by the door, looking down at his fingernails as though he had no interest in this room’s occupant at all. Lister avoided rolling his eyes. Who was Rimmer kidding? He had obviously gone out of his way to visit these quarters, yet now he stood there acting as if his presence was a favor and he had much more important things he’d rather be doing.
He decided he’d do the one thing that upset Rimmer the most: He’d ignore him.
He reached for a shirt on the floor, gave it a once-over, and decided it had one stain too many. It was ripe for a wash. He threw the offending rag into the laundry basket from across the room and it landed precariously on the rim. Sifting through the many objects on his bunk he found another shirt crumpled down the side. He gave it one precautionary sniff, appeared satisfied, and pulled it over his head.
Rimmer walked over to the laundry basket to examine the discarded shirt. Lister took this opportunity, while his unwelcome guest was facing the other way, to grab his long-john bottoms from where they’d been tossed on the ground and pull them up discreetly underneath the towel. Loosened by all the clandestine jostling and having served its purpose, the towel slid to join compatriot discarded clothing brethren on the dormitory floor.
“Ah Listy, gotten a bit more discerning, I see.” He lifted the shirt carefully with one finger. “This must have been a difficult decision. Why, it’s still got an entire section here on the shoulder that’s as yet unsoiled. Or, hold on, no, I was wrong, it’s a stain the same color as the shirt. Goodness me, your slobbiness reaches new lows every smegging day, miladdio.”
Lister was steadily appearing as though he hadn’t heard a word of it, and was standing in front of the mirror fumbling round for his shaving cream.
He suddenly saw what he sought hiding under a sock below the sink. As he bent to grab it, fishing around with outstretched fingers, he felt something on his back. It felt warm and cold simultaneously. His first, visceral, reactive thought was ghost. Then, human. Then, Rimmer. He froze.
“This one’s a testament to your cleanliness, indeed…” Rimmer began, his right hand posed delicately above a shirt stain shaped like an old postbox (and roughly the same color) on the small of Lister’s back. He took a holobreath, for effective pause, and prepared to wax lyrical about this bit of slob artistry when Lister jumped up, hit his head hard on the sink he’d been foraging beneath, then scrambled toward the bunk and away from the hologram.
Lister’s heart was racing and his mind was spinning. There had been a resounding crack when he’d hit his head, but that worry was secondary to his current state of panic. He stood now with one hand on the edge of his bunk and feet planted firmly on the ground, though it felt as though he was sinking. The room looked strange in his periphery, but he didn’t take his frightened eyes of the other man for one second to investigate further.
Rimmer was flummoxed and at a loss for how to react. Being a natural coward, he knew fear when he saw it, but this was unprecedented. Lister? Afraid of him? It didn’t make any sense. For smeg’s sake, why? He watched, unmoving, as Lister’s breathing appeared to speed up rather than slow down. This was beyond bizarre, yet the look of that ribcage, those shoulders driven to expedient trembling…those eyes wide, that jaw tight and clenched, those palms clammy and tingling…it stirred the strange feeling he’d encountered a shadow of earlier. A feeling which liked how much he could affect another person’s suffering, which urged him to push this further, just to see (purely intellectually and scientifically, of course) whether he couldn’t make Lister even more afraid, and this time on purpose.
He decided to take a step forward, that was innocent enough, no harm done. He didn’t even manage to move his foot, Lister had seen his body’s subtle turn and his knee beginning to bend, and had loudly whispered, “Don’t.”
Rimmer acquiesced, remaining stationary.
“Don’t what, exactly, Listy? You’re acting a tad out-of-sorts. Have you finally gone space-crazy?” He said this all in a light mocking tone, though he was starting to think that space-crazy was a fair possibility.
“Don’…Don’t…” Lister’s head fell to the side, his eyes fluttering downward. Rimmer saw something dark and wet congealed against the dark hair near the back of his head.
“Oh, God. Listy! You’re…” He took the step he had been contriving moments before, this time without prior meditation.
Lister reacted quickly, but uncoordinatedly. The colors of his surroundings were spinning faster by the second, he reached out for the chair near the door to catch his fall once he realized he was floorbound. He pulled it down with him in a spectacular thud. He landed on his side, the damaged side of his head hitting the floor, causing sparks to dance behind his eyes. Blood from the wound smeared against the floor.
“Lister! Lister! Are you alright?” Rimmer approached and bent down near the other man’s head. He reached out to move the dreads aside and assess the damage. At the first touch he pulled back when Lister let out a strangled cry.
“What? What is it, did that hurt? Lister! Talk to me, you smegging accident-prone twonk!” He watched in rising apprehension as the hurt man’s eyes rolled in and out of seeing his surroundings. Lister was hyperventilating, water streaming out his eyes, his lips moving and some pathetic, whiny drivel spewing from his vocal chords. Upon leaning closer Rimmer made out that it was three words, repeated over and over again in a high-pitched, panicked voice.
“Don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’t touch me, don’touchme, don’chme, do’no’me, don’, don’, don’,” after which the scouser fell unconscious.
Rimmer took the opportunity to turn Lister’s head to see the wound, and his hologromatic hand was instantly covered in blood. Rimmer’s eyes widened as he noticed how wet the back of Lister’s shirt was with the same crimson fluid.
<3
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Loving this! Can't wait to see what's up with Listy! Marvelously in character Rimsy!
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Love the idea of Rimmer's first plan with the hard-light body being to explore all the fun new ways he can annoy Lister.
"Why, it’s still got an entire section here on the shoulder that’s as yet unsoiled. Or, hold on, no, I was wrong, it’s a stain the same color as the shirt."
XD
"Lister! Talk to me, you smegging accident-prone twonk!"
...I'm sure he means it in the best way possible.
And, oh, man, suspense. Can't wait to see where this goes.
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I like this a lot. Very well in character, well written, can't wait to find out what happens :)
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Looking forward to the next part.
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If this is the sort of fair we can expect from you, you are most assuredly well met. Slightly twisted dark Rimmer exploiting Lister is one of my favourite pairings ^_~.
Great job, can't wait for the rest of it.