Fic: Savior - Part 1/2 - R/L, L/Koch - PG
Dec. 11th, 2009 03:48 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
kahvi.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
reddwarfslashTitle: Savior
Part: 1/2
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister, Lister/Kochanski
Rating: PG (with some raunchy implications)
Disclaimer: I don't even own the fictional series IX and X of Red Dwarf. I make no money from this fannish venture.
Spoilers: Takes place between VIII and Back to Earth.
Notes: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
smaych and roadstergal for their excellent betas, with special thanks to the latter for contributing some fantastic ideas and lines!
Arnold Judas - currently “Ace” - Rimmer was not in the best of moods. Of course, he told himself sternly, he had only himself to blame. When his shipboard computer had notified him of the dimensional signature of the lifeforms on the vessel they had been passing, he should have just let it go. Certainly, when the vessel itself had been identified, he should have dragged his bacofoiled ass off elsewhere, leaving them to solve whichever problems they had that had landed them this far from home. Still, being Ace carried with it an implied contract. You got the fame, the adoration, the girls (and rather often, admittedly, the boys), but you paid for it by actually having to be the hero those people believed you to be, even if every cowardly, self-preserving bone in your body resisted it. A hero didn’t just leave people to fend for themselves.
Even people with whom you shared a… complicated past.
No, all in all, Rimmer had not had a choice in making contact. He should not blame himself for hailing the blasted wreck and giving a pathetically fawning Kryten the full Ace treatment. What he could and fully did, however, was blame himself for the ridiculous conclusions he had dared himself to draw from the conversation that followed.
“Oh, Mister Ace, sir,” the mechanoid had spluttered, “everyone will be so pleased to see you. Mister Lister, especially!”
“Is that so?”
“Absolutely, sir! Why, he’s been talking about you non-stop these past few months. ‘Ace’ this and ‘Ace’ that; it’s like someone flashed his BIOS and installed an infinite loop in lieu of an operating system!”
“Really?” Rimmer’s mind had reeled with dangerous implications. Dangerous for a reason, he chided himself now.
“I’ll run off right away and tell him you’re here!”
And so, Rimmer had proceeded to dock smoothly with the ancient ship – something he had worked at quite hard, thank you very much, so that he no longer fumbled his way in like a virgin trying to find the right hole. He fought to keep his hands steady as he opened the Wildfire’s hatch, stepping out. When his feet hit the hangar bay deck, Rimmer had been disgusted to find he was actually shaking. His mouth had been dry; the dratted simulated body never failing to copy every tedious aspect of the human condition. He’d heard footsteps, running. Then…
Lister had been naked. Stark naked, save for a pair of oddly familiar boxers that had been pulled on the wrong way 'round, and one dirty-gray sock, freckled with the ghosts of impossible to wash out curry stains. Just standing there, panting for breath, his eyes big and brown and belying the age his body claimed to be. They’d been set on Rimmer, but Rimmer had not been looking at them. He’d been looking over Lister’s shoulder, at the tall, sheet-clad mirror image of himself, whose nostrils flared in confused condescension. At that point, Rimmer had realized why the boxers Lister was wearing seemed so familiar; they were his. Or had been his, back when he was alive, and as reedy as the brylcreemed twonk now glaring back at him.
So, all in all, Rimmer wasn’t happy, but neither was he surprised. After all, who else but Arnold Judas Rimmer, Ace or not, would lose out to himself?
Considering that Blue Midget’s midsection could easily be crowded by a single person, its current occupancy of six was certainly pushing the limits. Lister was wedged up against the wall behind a preening Cat; the door to the cockpit whirred open now and then, its proximity sensors whining in confusion. Everyone seemed to want a piece of Ace - everyone except the other Rimmer, who was scowling at him suspiciously from behind a mug of Horlics. Said mug had been provided by a dithering Kryten, who kept interrupting every two minutes to ask if Mister Ace would like any refreshments, only they didn’t have much, but if there was anything he wanted, anything at all, Kryten would do his utmost to… and so on and so on. It was all Rimmer could do to keep his Ace act up during that sort of onslaught, much less remember the details of the story he was relating to – ah, yes – the lovely Ms. Kochanski.
A clearly alternate version of Lister’s lost love being on board the ship was not quite so mind-boggling as Lister chosing to bed a younger, scrawnier, inexplicably living version of Rimmer when there was Kochanski to be had. Judging by the looks Lister were throwing their way though, it was obvious where his true preference lay. It never failed to surprise Rimmer how easily women fell under Ace’s swaggering spell. Kochanski was listening, spellbound, as he related how he'd single-handedly cured a highly advanced GELF tribe of their genetically enforced sterility.
"But an entire population," she breathed for what seemed like the thirtieth time; "an entire race of people! You saved them from extinction!"
“All in a day’s work, my delightful carnation.”
“If I called ya that, you would’ve slapped me down,” Lister protested, accepting a mug of something or other from Kryten, who didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.
“Don’t be silly, Dave; you’d never call me anything that.” Kochanski played with the edge of Rimmer’s flight suit lapels, apparently unaware of what her fingers were doing. Rimmer tried to keep his face from twitching.
“I might,” Lister offered, subtly changing tactics.
“You don’t even know what a carnation is.”
“Some sort of… flower?”
“You shagged half the population of a planet in a day?” Cat sidled up, squeezing himself between Rimmer and Kochanski, who dropped the lapels, and looked at her hand with some amount of confusion. “Man, that’s something even I couldn’t have done!” His eyes glittered in time with his incisors. Rimmer tried to back away, but the room wouldn’t allow for it.
“Not exactly, my feline friend. As I’m sure you know, the various species of GELFs are examples of engineered interordinal genetic hybrids. While capable of sexual activity with almost any placental mammal, Cats included,” he winked, “they are not capable of actual reproduction with any being but their own kind.”
“Of course,” Cat shot back, without blinking.
“These poor chaps were out of luck even there, I’m afraid. Bit of a problem with the chromosomerooskis.”
“Oh yes,” Kochanski exclaimed, elbowing a protesting Cat out of the way, “it’s obvious, when I think about it! With that diversity of genomes, there are bound to be adverse interactions, because each of the genes in each genome must be compatible with all the genes in the others!”
Obvious? Of course it wasn’t obvious! Certainly not to Rimmer, who was merely sprouting what the Wildfire’s computer was patiently feeding him via its uplink to his bee. The ship’s database contained the collected wisdom and experiences of all previous Aces, available at an instant. Rimmer’s own contributions had been minimal, except in the areas of vending-machine repair, scheduling and vintage roadside erections, none of which were usually mission-critical. Biting back the snarky reply he felt on the edge of his tongue, Rimmer let the uplink guide him through the rest of the conversation, interspersing his actual memories of performing the gene therapy that had saved the tribe. Of course, he’d just been following the uplink’s suggestions then, too. So much of being Ace was a puppet show, with himself as the puppet and a sentient computer and the ghost of a long-dead actual hero as the puppeteers.
“I… don’t suppose you’d consider walking me to my room?” Kochanski asked shyly. “We could… talk more.”
Rimmer half-smiled. After all, that was all part of the puppet show, too.
“…and that’s when I realized that, all along, I’d been playing the overture to ‘Siegfried’, when everyone else was playing the overture to ‘Götterdämmerung’!” Kochanski laughed, in that nervous, faux-innocent way Rimmer particularly hated. Whenever anyone did it, he was always reminded of the first princess he’d been forced to rescue, and the horrifying things she’d done to him when he got her back to the ship. His eyebrow twitched, involuntarily.
“I hate when that happens,” he assured her, coughing politely. It had taken less than a minute for them to reach the little curtained-off nook she called ‘her quarters’. They were now lingering outside, Kochanski clearly unwilling to make the first move, while Rimmer, for his part, had not entirely decided what he should do if that move was made. Certainly, shagging her would hurt Lister, and Rimmer was all for that, under the circumstances. On the other hand, one of the things Rimmer had been forced to admit to himself in his life as Ace was that when it came to shagging, he much preferred the company of men. Furthermore, in as much as he had a type when it came to women, Kohcanski was as far away from it as Lister was from the idea of enjoying a nice, organic tofu salad.
“So anyway,” Kochanski interrupted his musings, “that’s what made me decide that life in the symphony orchestra wasn’t for me.”
Rimmer nodded. He hadn’t really been paying attention, and hoped she wouldn’t ask him anything that would require remembering which instrument she had been playing.
“I’m sorry,” she looked away, blushing. “I’m rambling, rather. I tend to do that when I’m nervous. Which doesn’t happen a lot these days. It’s just… you remind me so much of Dave.”
“Lister?!” Rimmer spluttered, nearly dropping out of the Ace-voice.
“Oh!” Kochanski laughed. “Oh no, not that Dave. My Dave.”
“Your Dave?”
“The Dave in my dimension. We were a couple.”
“A couple?” The voice definitely slipped that time. Thankfully, Kochanski didn’t seem to notice.
“Yes. I expect you find that rather odd.”
“Oh, not at all,” Rimmer managed, struggling to keep up his fake grin.
“Us being so different, I mean. Well, my Dave wasn’t… isn’t like that. I suppose he started out that way, but, well, he was a hologram, you see. And it rather changed his perspective on things.”
“I’ve heard it often does.”
“He realized that if he wanted things to work out between us, he needed to make some changes. And he did, he really did; he worked so hard at it, poor thing. He even found a way to iron his shirts while he was still incorporeal. Made sure to have Holly keep his hair trimmed, and always kept his room tidy.”
“His room?”
“Yes, and he was a perfect gentleman, even after he got the hard light bee and could…” she waggled her eyebrows in a rather disturbing manner, “you know; he didn’t try anything. Not until I explicitly told him it was OK.”
Rimmer didn’t quite know how to respond. One could say many things about Lister’s various alternates – and Rimmer had a met a fair few of them – but potential molesters they were not. “Jolly decent of him, I’m sure.” He was starting to get an inkling why she was telling him all this. As Ace, Rimmer had met one or two women (and more than a few men) who had felt the need to explain, in detail, why it was OK for them to cheat on their respective partners before commencing to snog his tonsils out of his throat. Of course, Rimmer didn’t give a toss; he wasn’t responsible for other people’s broken relationships.
“I’m afraid I keep comparing Dave – this Dave, I mean – unfavorably to him all too often. It’s hardly fair to him... I don’t know why I’m telling you all this…”
I do, Rimmer thought to himself.
“…but, well, I suppose it’s sort of a defense mechanism. Before I left my dimension, things weren’t going that well between Dave and I.”
Dave and ME Rimmer corrected, internally. The scales were tipping thoroughly in favor of ‘not shagging’ now.
“We’d drifted apart rather… he just didn’t seem like the same person I fell in love with. And it’s not as if I’ll see him again, and, well, the Dave that’s here is just so… so…” She smiled, apologetically.
Rimmer sighed. So, in other words, the boyfriend she had carefully manipulated into changing every aspect of himself to please her, was no longer the thrillingly proletarian slob she’d fallen for originally, and now, here was an unchanged version of him that she, for reasons unfathomable to her, felt strangely attracted to. Weren’t relationships wonderful? Ah well, on with the show. “So there’s no chance that you and I…” he did his best to mimic her earlier eye-movements.
“Oh!” she giggled disturbingly like a schoolgirl. “Oh no, that wouldn’t do. Not with… everything.”
“I’m sure you’re right, my dear. No need to complicate things.”
Far too late for that, he added, mentally, as Kochanski retreated behind her curtain with a thankful smile.
Blue Midget did have one set of actual crew quarters, and these had been offered to Ace as a matter of course (by Kryten, before anyone else could jump in). Knowing that the regular occupants would have to be Lister and his Rimmerine stud-muffin, however, Rimmer had politely declined. He didn’t actually need much sleep, but he did need some time by himself to think, and so he headed back to the docking bay, by way of the central corridor. Given the size of the ship, he was unsurprised to meet his younger self along the way, but surprise did register when the other fellow refused to yield, continuing to step in front of him, clearing his throat exaggeratedly.
“Did you want something?” Rimmer snapped, finally. The Ace-veneer was wearing thin, and he was getting too tired to care. Dangerous, that.
“Look,” the younger Rimmer began, “I just wanted to let you know… to assure you that… what you saw… might have seen… what you may have thought you might have seen, or might have inferred had occurred…”
“Are you talking about you and Dave shagging?”
“I’m not gay!” the younger Rimmer yelped.
“Oh, snap out of it, Arn! Of course you’re gay. I should know; I’m you!”
“No you’re not; you’re some swutting space-hero, drowning in praise and awash in women! You’ve never been stuck on a lander with a grotty excuse for a man with no sense of personal space and dubious personal hygiene!”
“You’d be surprised.”
“It’s not what you think. If you’re a Rimmer, you went to the same school I did. I know you’ve heard the stories; what happens to men when they’re cooped up together for too long.”
“Arn…”
“Strange things; unnatural things. And you can’t help it; it’s not your fault. It’s just the sort of thing that happens between guys sometimes. Anyway, he started it.”
“Arn, I honestly could not care less.”
“But we’re the same basic template,” the younger Rimmer insisted. “If I’m gay, you’re gay. Don’t you care?”
“I am gay, you goit. Now will you please let me pass?”
“You honestly don’t care that you’re gay?”
Rimmer took a deep breath. He could easily elbow his way past, but that wouldn’t be very Ace-like. Then again, he wasn’t sure how much Ace there was left in him right now. “I honestly, honestly don’t. Now let me pass, pretty please?”
A strange transformation came over the figure blocking his way. The younger Rimmer’s face grew very still, then very, very pale. His entire body stiffened, and for a moment, Rimmer saw, in those terrified brown-green eyes, true recognition of all that Rimmer was. It lasted but a second, however, and then the pallor gave way to a vibrant red. “I knew it!!” He yelled, pointing a shaking finger. “I knew you were just a big gay fraud! You’re worse than Lister! At least he has the decency to be ashamed of what we’re doing!”
An unexpected chill poked at Rimmer’s spine. “Really?” he asked, despite himself.
“Oh, yes!” The younger Rimmer grinned, maliciously. “Every time we go at it, he gets this faraway look in his eyes, like he’s trying to pretend I’m someone else. And when we’re done, and he comes to, and realizes what he’s done, he gives me this look that you wouldn’t believe.”
Rimmer could and did believe. He’d seen that look on Lister’s face after the victory at Wax World, and that had been bad enough; almost as bad going through his digestive system afterwards. But to have that look directed not at what you had done, but at who you were, as a person… He elbowed his younger self out of the way, stomping angrily off, but what use was it? No matter where he went, he'd still be himself.
Part: 1/2
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister, Lister/Kochanski
Rating: PG (with some raunchy implications)
Disclaimer: I don't even own the fictional series IX and X of Red Dwarf. I make no money from this fannish venture.
Spoilers: Takes place between VIII and Back to Earth.
Notes: Thanks to
smaych and roadstergal for their excellent betas, with special thanks to the latter for contributing some fantastic ideas and lines!Arnold Judas - currently “Ace” - Rimmer was not in the best of moods. Of course, he told himself sternly, he had only himself to blame. When his shipboard computer had notified him of the dimensional signature of the lifeforms on the vessel they had been passing, he should have just let it go. Certainly, when the vessel itself had been identified, he should have dragged his bacofoiled ass off elsewhere, leaving them to solve whichever problems they had that had landed them this far from home. Still, being Ace carried with it an implied contract. You got the fame, the adoration, the girls (and rather often, admittedly, the boys), but you paid for it by actually having to be the hero those people believed you to be, even if every cowardly, self-preserving bone in your body resisted it. A hero didn’t just leave people to fend for themselves.
Even people with whom you shared a… complicated past.
No, all in all, Rimmer had not had a choice in making contact. He should not blame himself for hailing the blasted wreck and giving a pathetically fawning Kryten the full Ace treatment. What he could and fully did, however, was blame himself for the ridiculous conclusions he had dared himself to draw from the conversation that followed.
“Oh, Mister Ace, sir,” the mechanoid had spluttered, “everyone will be so pleased to see you. Mister Lister, especially!”
“Is that so?”
“Absolutely, sir! Why, he’s been talking about you non-stop these past few months. ‘Ace’ this and ‘Ace’ that; it’s like someone flashed his BIOS and installed an infinite loop in lieu of an operating system!”
“Really?” Rimmer’s mind had reeled with dangerous implications. Dangerous for a reason, he chided himself now.
“I’ll run off right away and tell him you’re here!”
And so, Rimmer had proceeded to dock smoothly with the ancient ship – something he had worked at quite hard, thank you very much, so that he no longer fumbled his way in like a virgin trying to find the right hole. He fought to keep his hands steady as he opened the Wildfire’s hatch, stepping out. When his feet hit the hangar bay deck, Rimmer had been disgusted to find he was actually shaking. His mouth had been dry; the dratted simulated body never failing to copy every tedious aspect of the human condition. He’d heard footsteps, running. Then…
Lister had been naked. Stark naked, save for a pair of oddly familiar boxers that had been pulled on the wrong way 'round, and one dirty-gray sock, freckled with the ghosts of impossible to wash out curry stains. Just standing there, panting for breath, his eyes big and brown and belying the age his body claimed to be. They’d been set on Rimmer, but Rimmer had not been looking at them. He’d been looking over Lister’s shoulder, at the tall, sheet-clad mirror image of himself, whose nostrils flared in confused condescension. At that point, Rimmer had realized why the boxers Lister was wearing seemed so familiar; they were his. Or had been his, back when he was alive, and as reedy as the brylcreemed twonk now glaring back at him.
So, all in all, Rimmer wasn’t happy, but neither was he surprised. After all, who else but Arnold Judas Rimmer, Ace or not, would lose out to himself?
Considering that Blue Midget’s midsection could easily be crowded by a single person, its current occupancy of six was certainly pushing the limits. Lister was wedged up against the wall behind a preening Cat; the door to the cockpit whirred open now and then, its proximity sensors whining in confusion. Everyone seemed to want a piece of Ace - everyone except the other Rimmer, who was scowling at him suspiciously from behind a mug of Horlics. Said mug had been provided by a dithering Kryten, who kept interrupting every two minutes to ask if Mister Ace would like any refreshments, only they didn’t have much, but if there was anything he wanted, anything at all, Kryten would do his utmost to… and so on and so on. It was all Rimmer could do to keep his Ace act up during that sort of onslaught, much less remember the details of the story he was relating to – ah, yes – the lovely Ms. Kochanski.
A clearly alternate version of Lister’s lost love being on board the ship was not quite so mind-boggling as Lister chosing to bed a younger, scrawnier, inexplicably living version of Rimmer when there was Kochanski to be had. Judging by the looks Lister were throwing their way though, it was obvious where his true preference lay. It never failed to surprise Rimmer how easily women fell under Ace’s swaggering spell. Kochanski was listening, spellbound, as he related how he'd single-handedly cured a highly advanced GELF tribe of their genetically enforced sterility.
"But an entire population," she breathed for what seemed like the thirtieth time; "an entire race of people! You saved them from extinction!"
“All in a day’s work, my delightful carnation.”
“If I called ya that, you would’ve slapped me down,” Lister protested, accepting a mug of something or other from Kryten, who didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.
“Don’t be silly, Dave; you’d never call me anything that.” Kochanski played with the edge of Rimmer’s flight suit lapels, apparently unaware of what her fingers were doing. Rimmer tried to keep his face from twitching.
“I might,” Lister offered, subtly changing tactics.
“You don’t even know what a carnation is.”
“Some sort of… flower?”
“You shagged half the population of a planet in a day?” Cat sidled up, squeezing himself between Rimmer and Kochanski, who dropped the lapels, and looked at her hand with some amount of confusion. “Man, that’s something even I couldn’t have done!” His eyes glittered in time with his incisors. Rimmer tried to back away, but the room wouldn’t allow for it.
“Not exactly, my feline friend. As I’m sure you know, the various species of GELFs are examples of engineered interordinal genetic hybrids. While capable of sexual activity with almost any placental mammal, Cats included,” he winked, “they are not capable of actual reproduction with any being but their own kind.”
“Of course,” Cat shot back, without blinking.
“These poor chaps were out of luck even there, I’m afraid. Bit of a problem with the chromosomerooskis.”
“Oh yes,” Kochanski exclaimed, elbowing a protesting Cat out of the way, “it’s obvious, when I think about it! With that diversity of genomes, there are bound to be adverse interactions, because each of the genes in each genome must be compatible with all the genes in the others!”
Obvious? Of course it wasn’t obvious! Certainly not to Rimmer, who was merely sprouting what the Wildfire’s computer was patiently feeding him via its uplink to his bee. The ship’s database contained the collected wisdom and experiences of all previous Aces, available at an instant. Rimmer’s own contributions had been minimal, except in the areas of vending-machine repair, scheduling and vintage roadside erections, none of which were usually mission-critical. Biting back the snarky reply he felt on the edge of his tongue, Rimmer let the uplink guide him through the rest of the conversation, interspersing his actual memories of performing the gene therapy that had saved the tribe. Of course, he’d just been following the uplink’s suggestions then, too. So much of being Ace was a puppet show, with himself as the puppet and a sentient computer and the ghost of a long-dead actual hero as the puppeteers.
“I… don’t suppose you’d consider walking me to my room?” Kochanski asked shyly. “We could… talk more.”
Rimmer half-smiled. After all, that was all part of the puppet show, too.
“…and that’s when I realized that, all along, I’d been playing the overture to ‘Siegfried’, when everyone else was playing the overture to ‘Götterdämmerung’!” Kochanski laughed, in that nervous, faux-innocent way Rimmer particularly hated. Whenever anyone did it, he was always reminded of the first princess he’d been forced to rescue, and the horrifying things she’d done to him when he got her back to the ship. His eyebrow twitched, involuntarily.
“I hate when that happens,” he assured her, coughing politely. It had taken less than a minute for them to reach the little curtained-off nook she called ‘her quarters’. They were now lingering outside, Kochanski clearly unwilling to make the first move, while Rimmer, for his part, had not entirely decided what he should do if that move was made. Certainly, shagging her would hurt Lister, and Rimmer was all for that, under the circumstances. On the other hand, one of the things Rimmer had been forced to admit to himself in his life as Ace was that when it came to shagging, he much preferred the company of men. Furthermore, in as much as he had a type when it came to women, Kohcanski was as far away from it as Lister was from the idea of enjoying a nice, organic tofu salad.
“So anyway,” Kochanski interrupted his musings, “that’s what made me decide that life in the symphony orchestra wasn’t for me.”
Rimmer nodded. He hadn’t really been paying attention, and hoped she wouldn’t ask him anything that would require remembering which instrument she had been playing.
“I’m sorry,” she looked away, blushing. “I’m rambling, rather. I tend to do that when I’m nervous. Which doesn’t happen a lot these days. It’s just… you remind me so much of Dave.”
“Lister?!” Rimmer spluttered, nearly dropping out of the Ace-voice.
“Oh!” Kochanski laughed. “Oh no, not that Dave. My Dave.”
“Your Dave?”
“The Dave in my dimension. We were a couple.”
“A couple?” The voice definitely slipped that time. Thankfully, Kochanski didn’t seem to notice.
“Yes. I expect you find that rather odd.”
“Oh, not at all,” Rimmer managed, struggling to keep up his fake grin.
“Us being so different, I mean. Well, my Dave wasn’t… isn’t like that. I suppose he started out that way, but, well, he was a hologram, you see. And it rather changed his perspective on things.”
“I’ve heard it often does.”
“He realized that if he wanted things to work out between us, he needed to make some changes. And he did, he really did; he worked so hard at it, poor thing. He even found a way to iron his shirts while he was still incorporeal. Made sure to have Holly keep his hair trimmed, and always kept his room tidy.”
“His room?”
“Yes, and he was a perfect gentleman, even after he got the hard light bee and could…” she waggled her eyebrows in a rather disturbing manner, “you know; he didn’t try anything. Not until I explicitly told him it was OK.”
Rimmer didn’t quite know how to respond. One could say many things about Lister’s various alternates – and Rimmer had a met a fair few of them – but potential molesters they were not. “Jolly decent of him, I’m sure.” He was starting to get an inkling why she was telling him all this. As Ace, Rimmer had met one or two women (and more than a few men) who had felt the need to explain, in detail, why it was OK for them to cheat on their respective partners before commencing to snog his tonsils out of his throat. Of course, Rimmer didn’t give a toss; he wasn’t responsible for other people’s broken relationships.
“I’m afraid I keep comparing Dave – this Dave, I mean – unfavorably to him all too often. It’s hardly fair to him... I don’t know why I’m telling you all this…”
I do, Rimmer thought to himself.
“…but, well, I suppose it’s sort of a defense mechanism. Before I left my dimension, things weren’t going that well between Dave and I.”
Dave and ME Rimmer corrected, internally. The scales were tipping thoroughly in favor of ‘not shagging’ now.
“We’d drifted apart rather… he just didn’t seem like the same person I fell in love with. And it’s not as if I’ll see him again, and, well, the Dave that’s here is just so… so…” She smiled, apologetically.
Rimmer sighed. So, in other words, the boyfriend she had carefully manipulated into changing every aspect of himself to please her, was no longer the thrillingly proletarian slob she’d fallen for originally, and now, here was an unchanged version of him that she, for reasons unfathomable to her, felt strangely attracted to. Weren’t relationships wonderful? Ah well, on with the show. “So there’s no chance that you and I…” he did his best to mimic her earlier eye-movements.
“Oh!” she giggled disturbingly like a schoolgirl. “Oh no, that wouldn’t do. Not with… everything.”
“I’m sure you’re right, my dear. No need to complicate things.”
Far too late for that, he added, mentally, as Kochanski retreated behind her curtain with a thankful smile.
Blue Midget did have one set of actual crew quarters, and these had been offered to Ace as a matter of course (by Kryten, before anyone else could jump in). Knowing that the regular occupants would have to be Lister and his Rimmerine stud-muffin, however, Rimmer had politely declined. He didn’t actually need much sleep, but he did need some time by himself to think, and so he headed back to the docking bay, by way of the central corridor. Given the size of the ship, he was unsurprised to meet his younger self along the way, but surprise did register when the other fellow refused to yield, continuing to step in front of him, clearing his throat exaggeratedly.
“Did you want something?” Rimmer snapped, finally. The Ace-veneer was wearing thin, and he was getting too tired to care. Dangerous, that.
“Look,” the younger Rimmer began, “I just wanted to let you know… to assure you that… what you saw… might have seen… what you may have thought you might have seen, or might have inferred had occurred…”
“Are you talking about you and Dave shagging?”
“I’m not gay!” the younger Rimmer yelped.
“Oh, snap out of it, Arn! Of course you’re gay. I should know; I’m you!”
“No you’re not; you’re some swutting space-hero, drowning in praise and awash in women! You’ve never been stuck on a lander with a grotty excuse for a man with no sense of personal space and dubious personal hygiene!”
“You’d be surprised.”
“It’s not what you think. If you’re a Rimmer, you went to the same school I did. I know you’ve heard the stories; what happens to men when they’re cooped up together for too long.”
“Arn…”
“Strange things; unnatural things. And you can’t help it; it’s not your fault. It’s just the sort of thing that happens between guys sometimes. Anyway, he started it.”
“Arn, I honestly could not care less.”
“But we’re the same basic template,” the younger Rimmer insisted. “If I’m gay, you’re gay. Don’t you care?”
“I am gay, you goit. Now will you please let me pass?”
“You honestly don’t care that you’re gay?”
Rimmer took a deep breath. He could easily elbow his way past, but that wouldn’t be very Ace-like. Then again, he wasn’t sure how much Ace there was left in him right now. “I honestly, honestly don’t. Now let me pass, pretty please?”
A strange transformation came over the figure blocking his way. The younger Rimmer’s face grew very still, then very, very pale. His entire body stiffened, and for a moment, Rimmer saw, in those terrified brown-green eyes, true recognition of all that Rimmer was. It lasted but a second, however, and then the pallor gave way to a vibrant red. “I knew it!!” He yelled, pointing a shaking finger. “I knew you were just a big gay fraud! You’re worse than Lister! At least he has the decency to be ashamed of what we’re doing!”
An unexpected chill poked at Rimmer’s spine. “Really?” he asked, despite himself.
“Oh, yes!” The younger Rimmer grinned, maliciously. “Every time we go at it, he gets this faraway look in his eyes, like he’s trying to pretend I’m someone else. And when we’re done, and he comes to, and realizes what he’s done, he gives me this look that you wouldn’t believe.”
Rimmer could and did believe. He’d seen that look on Lister’s face after the victory at Wax World, and that had been bad enough; almost as bad going through his digestive system afterwards. But to have that look directed not at what you had done, but at who you were, as a person… He elbowed his younger self out of the way, stomping angrily off, but what use was it? No matter where he went, he'd still be himself.
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Date: 2009-12-11 06:36 pm (UTC)Looking forward to seeing where this leads! (Although at the moment it's looking kind of like "one very large bed" might be the ideal solution :P)
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Date: 2009-12-12 08:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-12-12 07:51 pm (UTC)Thanks for reading and commenting!
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Date: 2009-12-12 07:50 pm (UTC)I've just posted the second part... we'll see if you're right. :)