Fic: The Love of a Good Woman - R
Sep. 23rd, 2009 09:52 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
smaych.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
reddwarfslashTitle: The Love of a Good Woman
Rating: R
Pairings: Various. Rimmer, Lister, Nirvanah and Kochanski are all mentioned.
Warnings: Het! Yes, there is heterosexual activity in this story. I hope it is still slashy enough to be considered slash. It's certainly supposed to be.
Disclaimer: I don't own Red Dwarf or make any money from this.
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kahvi and justwolf
Notes: I've not written in a while, so I'm trying to get back in the swing of it. This is a story I've had in my head for a while now. In my head there is more to it, so I may end up writing more if I can find the time!
Let me know what you think, feedback of any sort is always appreciated.
It all started with a photograph. Not just any photograph, of course, but the photograph. The only photograph he had left of her.
He kept it safely in the inner pocket of his jacket, the only pocket with no holes. He liked to think he could feel it there, as if it were somehow warmer, more alive than any inanimate object had a right to be. But this morning (afternoon, really, but who was checking?) it was gone.
He remembered waking in the night from a dream. In the dream he had somehow reached through the depths of time and space and found her, finally, brought her back here to Starbug and finally, oh finally they could be together again as they were meant to be. He remembered the icy feeling in his stomach as he woke and realised it was all just a dream, and he remembered groping in the dark for his jacket, and fumbling for that tiny, dog-eared photograph. He hadn't turned the light on to look at it, hadn't needed to. He could recall every minute detail of her face, and he traced it gently with his thumb. He must have fallen asleep clutching it, though, because now it was not in his jacket and he had turned his quarters upside down looking for it with no luck at all. It was gone, and he couldn't even put on his jacket without feeling a cold, yawning emptiness where it should have been.
“Smeg.”
“Lister?” Rimmer paused in the doorway and surveyed the even-more-wrecked-than-usual sleeping quarters. “What on Io is going on in here?”
“Not now, Rimmer.”
“Is this your pathetic attempt at redecorating?” He looked about the room with open contempt. Clothing in varying stages of dirtiness covered every surface, the bed sheets were on the desk and the walls were spattered with dubious-looking stains. “Well done, Lister. Lawrence-Llewelyn Bowen would be very impressed I'm sure.”
Lister paused his frantic searching and frowned. “Lawrence who?”
“Llewelyn-Bowen, idiot. He was a famous interior designer from the Renaissance era. French, I believe.”
“French? Isn't Llewelyn a Welsh name?” Lister thought for a moment. Llewelyn-Bowen, it sounded familiar. “Wait, are you talkin' about that bloke with the big hair from Changing Rooms?”
Rimmer's notrils flared and he turned a little red. “Look, never mind! Lister, as your superior officer I'm ordering you to tell me what's going on.”
Lister merely shook his head and resumed searching under the bed.
When he eventually gave up and sat back on the floor, kicking the bunk squarely in frustration, Rimmer was still standing in the doorway.
“You've lost something.” He sounded more curious than sympathetic, and Lister, frustrated and angry, found even the sound of Rimmer's voice more annoying than usual. “What is it?”
Lister squeezed his eyes shut. This wasn't happening. End of story. “A photo.”
Rimmer pulled a face. Lister couldn't see it, of course, as his eyes were still shut, but he could tell from the sneer in his voice. “That smeggy photo of Kochanski?”
“Drop dead Rimmer.”
“I'm not surprised you lost it, you know. In fact I'm amazed you kept track of it this long, you carry it around with you everywhere. You're like a child with a blanket.”
“I said drop dead.”
“You're a few millenia late, I'm afraid.”
“Very good.”
Lister kicked the bunk again. His foot was starting to ache. Good.
“You've got no idea, Rimmer. You don't know what love is.”
Slowly Rimmer sat down, stiffly cross-legged, on the floor facing him. “Love is something people tell themselves they're in to excuse the fact that they're acting like idiots.”
“You're sick, you know that?”
“This from the man who uses stale lager as mouthwash.”
“Kris loved me. All right things didn't work out-” Rimmer snorted, and Lister glared at him until he was quiet again. “-but it was real and it was mine, and nothing can ever take that away.” If he closed his eyes he could imagine the crinkle of skin at the corner of her eyes when she smiled, the warm smell of her hair and the way her body fit against his. “You've got no idea what it's like to be that important to someone. You've just... you've got no idea.”
There was a long pause, and then-
“Nirvanah Crane.”
Lister opened his eyes. “Come again?”
Rimmer's face was carefully, almost painfully, blank and his eyes were focused beyond Lister, as if on someone who wasn't there.
“Nirvanah Crane.”
*
Her hands were small, so very small. Pale, too, and soft as milk. She laid them gently on his chest, and he could feel them as if his uniform were skin. Small hands, they were. A woman's hands. Something deep in his stomach roiled with a sense of utter wrongness, but it was easier looking at her hands, he told himself, than at her eyes.
“Arnold,” she murmured.
No no no. “Yes?” His voice came out high pitched and broken.
“Relax.” Her hands were moving now, up to his shoulders, along his arms. His skin crawled, it ached. Deprived of touch for so many years his body responded now as it would to anyone – with a need so deep it nearly went beyond arousal. Rimmer felt like everything in him was pushing him forward, seeking more of the painstakingly light contact, wanting to rush up against it until the hologrammatic boundaries between their two bodies could no longer contain them.
It wasn't until her small hands encircled his wrists and lifted them, endlessly gentle, towards her – wasn't until his hands met the smooth curve of her waist through her uniform and his thumbs spanned the indent above her hips – that he realised he had become hard.
He instinctively started to shift away from her, but she caught his hips quickly and stepped closer, so that they were pressed flush against each other. He swallowed down a rising wave of panic. Should he kiss her? Or was that too personal for this purely recreational sexual act? Smeg, how was he supposed to know the accepted social protocol for meaningless sex with a superior officer? He had kissed McGruder – or rather, had been kissed by her – but that was hardly the same thing. He couldn't suppress a shudder at the thought of McGruder's brutally demanding mouth and mad eyes that never quite focused on him. He felt Nirvana sigh against his neck, and the soft brush of her lips against the skin there. He hoped she had mistaken his shudder for one of sexual pleasure.
“Arnold,” she said, and before he could answer she was kissing him.
It was nothing like kissing McGruder, thank smeg, but still he itched to escape and couldn't for the death of him think why. All he knew was that the feeling of wrongness was rising in his chest like a sob. He had thought with McGruder that the repulsion that bordered on nausea was due to her obvious insanity and quite frightening strength and persistence. It wouldn't be like that with a woman like Nirvana, he'd told himself earlier as the word “sex” left her lips and he'd realised what she was proposing. This was no female boxing champion, this was a woman of unquestionable class and beauty, a woman who surely always had a pen. And he had been right – it was different. He felt nothing as strong as repulsion at her touch – merely a strange longing to be out of his own skin, a longing for this all to be over and to be back on Red Dwarf with Kryten and that smegging Cat and, and...
He kissed her back, suddenly, forcefully, and felt her smile. He brought his hands decisively back to her waist. He was determined this would not be another sexual incident that he would spend the rest of his life lying to Lister about. It would not be another McGruder.
Slowly he drew her closer, until their projected bodies were touching. “Yes,” she murmured, and it sounded like an answer to a question Rimmer couldn't understand. It was the last thing she said until she was naked above him in her bed, black satin sheets pooled around them like water. His fingers gripped her hips so tightly they left small white marks on her pale skin. She took him inside her slowly, resting her forehead on his, whispering something he couldn't quite hear.
It was hot, so so hot and wet and he realised too late that he should be saying something, he should be doing something other than lying there unmoving as stone, so he opened his mouth and tried to focus on making some noise come out of it, some word or sound or – anything!
“G-geronimo,” he managed.
Wordlessly she touched his cheek, once. It was a gesture so tender, so intimate, that it embarrassed him. For a moment there was silence between them. Until she moved. Then everything was oh; and then oh and oh and oh.
*
“I didn't know.”
Rimmer's shoulders sagged and for a moment, just a moment, he looked weary. “Well, now you do.”
Lister sat up and shuffled closer. Before he could stop to think about it his hand reached out, almost of its own accord, towards Rimmer's shoulder. Rimmer tensed, and the hand hovered hesitantly in the air. Lister noticed, as if watching from outside his own body, that his fingers were shaking. “I-” Lister began. He tried again. “I just...” He trailed off, and the tips of his fingers brushed the stiff fabric of Rimmer's uniform. He was wound up, still taut from his frantic search, his whole body thrumming and prickling with something like anticipation, so the lightest brush of his fingers on the hologrammatic cloth felt sweet and hot on his skin.
Rimmer moved so imperceptibly that Lister wasn't sure if he imagined it, leaned ever so slightly into Lister's touch. Still the tips of Lister's fingers were all that was in contact with him. He moved those fingers just the tiniest amount, a quiet up and down along the shiny fabric. Rimmer closed his eyes and swallowed. It was loud in the silence. Lister watched the movement of his throat and tried to work out how he'd never noticed before that Rimmer's neck was pale and slender, that his hair curled at the nape as if it was licking the skin, that his pulse beat visibly in his throat. Or, at least, it did now.
Rimmer opened his eyes and looked back at him. The expression he wore was pained, utterly exposed – naked. Lister licked his lips.
Then Rimmer's eyes hardened. He stood up straight, adjusted his uniform and he was gone so quickly Lister barely registered it. He leant against the cool metal bunk, rested his forehead against it, and tried to remember exactly when the shaking in his fingers had spread to the rest of his body. Tried to work out what had passed between them in that moment Rimmer's eyes met his. Tried to decide whether it had happened at all.
After a few frustrated minutes he gave up trying. What the smeg is goin' on.
Rating: R
Pairings: Various. Rimmer, Lister, Nirvanah and Kochanski are all mentioned.
Warnings: Het! Yes, there is heterosexual activity in this story. I hope it is still slashy enough to be considered slash. It's certainly supposed to be.
Disclaimer: I don't own Red Dwarf or make any money from this.
Beta:
kahvi and justwolfNotes: I've not written in a while, so I'm trying to get back in the swing of it. This is a story I've had in my head for a while now. In my head there is more to it, so I may end up writing more if I can find the time!
Let me know what you think, feedback of any sort is always appreciated.
It all started with a photograph. Not just any photograph, of course, but the photograph. The only photograph he had left of her.
He kept it safely in the inner pocket of his jacket, the only pocket with no holes. He liked to think he could feel it there, as if it were somehow warmer, more alive than any inanimate object had a right to be. But this morning (afternoon, really, but who was checking?) it was gone.
He remembered waking in the night from a dream. In the dream he had somehow reached through the depths of time and space and found her, finally, brought her back here to Starbug and finally, oh finally they could be together again as they were meant to be. He remembered the icy feeling in his stomach as he woke and realised it was all just a dream, and he remembered groping in the dark for his jacket, and fumbling for that tiny, dog-eared photograph. He hadn't turned the light on to look at it, hadn't needed to. He could recall every minute detail of her face, and he traced it gently with his thumb. He must have fallen asleep clutching it, though, because now it was not in his jacket and he had turned his quarters upside down looking for it with no luck at all. It was gone, and he couldn't even put on his jacket without feeling a cold, yawning emptiness where it should have been.
“Smeg.”
“Lister?” Rimmer paused in the doorway and surveyed the even-more-wrecked-than-usual sleeping quarters. “What on Io is going on in here?”
“Not now, Rimmer.”
“Is this your pathetic attempt at redecorating?” He looked about the room with open contempt. Clothing in varying stages of dirtiness covered every surface, the bed sheets were on the desk and the walls were spattered with dubious-looking stains. “Well done, Lister. Lawrence-Llewelyn Bowen would be very impressed I'm sure.”
Lister paused his frantic searching and frowned. “Lawrence who?”
“Llewelyn-Bowen, idiot. He was a famous interior designer from the Renaissance era. French, I believe.”
“French? Isn't Llewelyn a Welsh name?” Lister thought for a moment. Llewelyn-Bowen, it sounded familiar. “Wait, are you talkin' about that bloke with the big hair from Changing Rooms?”
Rimmer's notrils flared and he turned a little red. “Look, never mind! Lister, as your superior officer I'm ordering you to tell me what's going on.”
Lister merely shook his head and resumed searching under the bed.
When he eventually gave up and sat back on the floor, kicking the bunk squarely in frustration, Rimmer was still standing in the doorway.
“You've lost something.” He sounded more curious than sympathetic, and Lister, frustrated and angry, found even the sound of Rimmer's voice more annoying than usual. “What is it?”
Lister squeezed his eyes shut. This wasn't happening. End of story. “A photo.”
Rimmer pulled a face. Lister couldn't see it, of course, as his eyes were still shut, but he could tell from the sneer in his voice. “That smeggy photo of Kochanski?”
“Drop dead Rimmer.”
“I'm not surprised you lost it, you know. In fact I'm amazed you kept track of it this long, you carry it around with you everywhere. You're like a child with a blanket.”
“I said drop dead.”
“You're a few millenia late, I'm afraid.”
“Very good.”
Lister kicked the bunk again. His foot was starting to ache. Good.
“You've got no idea, Rimmer. You don't know what love is.”
Slowly Rimmer sat down, stiffly cross-legged, on the floor facing him. “Love is something people tell themselves they're in to excuse the fact that they're acting like idiots.”
“You're sick, you know that?”
“This from the man who uses stale lager as mouthwash.”
“Kris loved me. All right things didn't work out-” Rimmer snorted, and Lister glared at him until he was quiet again. “-but it was real and it was mine, and nothing can ever take that away.” If he closed his eyes he could imagine the crinkle of skin at the corner of her eyes when she smiled, the warm smell of her hair and the way her body fit against his. “You've got no idea what it's like to be that important to someone. You've just... you've got no idea.”
There was a long pause, and then-
“Nirvanah Crane.”
Lister opened his eyes. “Come again?”
Rimmer's face was carefully, almost painfully, blank and his eyes were focused beyond Lister, as if on someone who wasn't there.
“Nirvanah Crane.”
*
Her hands were small, so very small. Pale, too, and soft as milk. She laid them gently on his chest, and he could feel them as if his uniform were skin. Small hands, they were. A woman's hands. Something deep in his stomach roiled with a sense of utter wrongness, but it was easier looking at her hands, he told himself, than at her eyes.
“Arnold,” she murmured.
No no no. “Yes?” His voice came out high pitched and broken.
“Relax.” Her hands were moving now, up to his shoulders, along his arms. His skin crawled, it ached. Deprived of touch for so many years his body responded now as it would to anyone – with a need so deep it nearly went beyond arousal. Rimmer felt like everything in him was pushing him forward, seeking more of the painstakingly light contact, wanting to rush up against it until the hologrammatic boundaries between their two bodies could no longer contain them.
It wasn't until her small hands encircled his wrists and lifted them, endlessly gentle, towards her – wasn't until his hands met the smooth curve of her waist through her uniform and his thumbs spanned the indent above her hips – that he realised he had become hard.
He instinctively started to shift away from her, but she caught his hips quickly and stepped closer, so that they were pressed flush against each other. He swallowed down a rising wave of panic. Should he kiss her? Or was that too personal for this purely recreational sexual act? Smeg, how was he supposed to know the accepted social protocol for meaningless sex with a superior officer? He had kissed McGruder – or rather, had been kissed by her – but that was hardly the same thing. He couldn't suppress a shudder at the thought of McGruder's brutally demanding mouth and mad eyes that never quite focused on him. He felt Nirvana sigh against his neck, and the soft brush of her lips against the skin there. He hoped she had mistaken his shudder for one of sexual pleasure.
“Arnold,” she said, and before he could answer she was kissing him.
It was nothing like kissing McGruder, thank smeg, but still he itched to escape and couldn't for the death of him think why. All he knew was that the feeling of wrongness was rising in his chest like a sob. He had thought with McGruder that the repulsion that bordered on nausea was due to her obvious insanity and quite frightening strength and persistence. It wouldn't be like that with a woman like Nirvana, he'd told himself earlier as the word “sex” left her lips and he'd realised what she was proposing. This was no female boxing champion, this was a woman of unquestionable class and beauty, a woman who surely always had a pen. And he had been right – it was different. He felt nothing as strong as repulsion at her touch – merely a strange longing to be out of his own skin, a longing for this all to be over and to be back on Red Dwarf with Kryten and that smegging Cat and, and...
He kissed her back, suddenly, forcefully, and felt her smile. He brought his hands decisively back to her waist. He was determined this would not be another sexual incident that he would spend the rest of his life lying to Lister about. It would not be another McGruder.
Slowly he drew her closer, until their projected bodies were touching. “Yes,” she murmured, and it sounded like an answer to a question Rimmer couldn't understand. It was the last thing she said until she was naked above him in her bed, black satin sheets pooled around them like water. His fingers gripped her hips so tightly they left small white marks on her pale skin. She took him inside her slowly, resting her forehead on his, whispering something he couldn't quite hear.
It was hot, so so hot and wet and he realised too late that he should be saying something, he should be doing something other than lying there unmoving as stone, so he opened his mouth and tried to focus on making some noise come out of it, some word or sound or – anything!
“G-geronimo,” he managed.
Wordlessly she touched his cheek, once. It was a gesture so tender, so intimate, that it embarrassed him. For a moment there was silence between them. Until she moved. Then everything was oh; and then oh and oh and oh.
*
“I didn't know.”
Rimmer's shoulders sagged and for a moment, just a moment, he looked weary. “Well, now you do.”
Lister sat up and shuffled closer. Before he could stop to think about it his hand reached out, almost of its own accord, towards Rimmer's shoulder. Rimmer tensed, and the hand hovered hesitantly in the air. Lister noticed, as if watching from outside his own body, that his fingers were shaking. “I-” Lister began. He tried again. “I just...” He trailed off, and the tips of his fingers brushed the stiff fabric of Rimmer's uniform. He was wound up, still taut from his frantic search, his whole body thrumming and prickling with something like anticipation, so the lightest brush of his fingers on the hologrammatic cloth felt sweet and hot on his skin.
Rimmer moved so imperceptibly that Lister wasn't sure if he imagined it, leaned ever so slightly into Lister's touch. Still the tips of Lister's fingers were all that was in contact with him. He moved those fingers just the tiniest amount, a quiet up and down along the shiny fabric. Rimmer closed his eyes and swallowed. It was loud in the silence. Lister watched the movement of his throat and tried to work out how he'd never noticed before that Rimmer's neck was pale and slender, that his hair curled at the nape as if it was licking the skin, that his pulse beat visibly in his throat. Or, at least, it did now.
Rimmer opened his eyes and looked back at him. The expression he wore was pained, utterly exposed – naked. Lister licked his lips.
Then Rimmer's eyes hardened. He stood up straight, adjusted his uniform and he was gone so quickly Lister barely registered it. He leant against the cool metal bunk, rested his forehead against it, and tried to remember exactly when the shaking in his fingers had spread to the rest of his body. Tried to work out what had passed between them in that moment Rimmer's eyes met his. Tried to decide whether it had happened at all.
After a few frustrated minutes he gave up trying. What the smeg is goin' on.
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Date: 2010-01-10 06:18 am (UTC)I never mind a little het in my slash, and with the angst and the UST and that his hair curled at the nape as if it was licking the skin -- did I mention wibble? -- I cannot see anyone objecting to this bit of deliciousness.