Red Dwarf: Lister x Rimmer (Beta)
Fandom: Red Dwarf
Pairing: Dave Lister x Arnold Rimmer
Theme Set: Beta
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up through series 6.
Disclaimer: I don't own Red Dwarf.
#1. Walking
If teaching Kryten to break his programming was like teaching a baby to walk, teaching Rimmer basic human social niceties would be like trying to teach a goldfish to ride a bicycle.
#2. Waltz
Space Corps Directive 2379 read: 'All able-bodied officers attending a Space Corps Ball are expected to dance a formal waltz'; Lister caught Rimmer practicing once and almost keeled over with laughter.
#3. Wishes
Lister wished Rimmer wouldn't view everything he did with such suspicion; sometimes (all right, not 'always') but sometimes, he could do the right thing.
#4. Wonder
Rimmer watched Lister and Ace's easy camaraderie and despaired for how things might have been.
#5. Worry
Rimmer didn't have to worry about food or oxygen, but despite all jokes indicating otherwise, he was concerned for Lister's sake (though after watching him chomp his merry way through a lump of space weevil, Rimmer thought that worry could have been better spent elsewhere).
#6. Whimsy
How many times did one have to be dropped on the head exactly, for a "grown man" (and both those terms were used loosely) to still believe in Fijian farms and girls in silly hats and living happily ever after?
#7. Wasteland
Lister would have said anything to get off Rimmer's psi-moon and by the time they finally managed to escape from the warped, twisted mindscape, he was pissed off enough that he didn't mean a word of it.
#8. Whiskey and Rum
Kryten was familiar with over ten thousand human courtship rituals and having met Mr Rimmer, he could see why Mr Lister would only pick from the nine thousand nine hundred rituals that involved getting completely plastered first.
#9. War
After piecing together the lies and the jokes and the surprisingly deep family revelations, Lister sort of got why Rimmer would glorify leadership, but he still couldn't understand his fascination with war.
#10. Weddings
His brothers' weddings had been grand affairs: the boys decked out in their finest uniforms; their brides in brilliant dresses; their parents bursting with pride; Rimmer would never have had that, never, so it wasn't supposed to ache so much when Lister decided to give everything up for three weeks married to Kochanski.
#11. Birthday
They didn't celebrate much trapped on Starbug: not birthdays, not deathdays, not anniversaries, not holidays, not even Christmas; but Rimmer still took a perverse delight in waking Lister up three hours before his shift started and then switching to soft-light so he wouldn't get hit.
#12. Blessing
The High Lister turned to his counterpart as they boarded Starbug, nodded towards Rimmer and smiled encouragingly.
#13. Bias
Sometimes when he was with Lister, Rimmer would forget that the universe was out to get him.
#14. Burning
"... Don't kid yourself Listy: I wouldn't put you out if you were on fire, you lager-brained curry-soaked slobbering waste of oxygen, gifted with all the intelligence of a shrivelled, dead stick and all the personal hygiene of a blind, one-armed Frenchman."
#15. Breathing
Lister gulped down the oxygen as quickly as possible - ignoring Kryten's advice to take slow, deep breaths; somehow Rimmer had managed to turn off the air supply to their sleeping quarters and Lister was going to smegging kill him.
#16. Breaking
Despite not having a real heart, Rimmer could feel something inside his chest being torn, stomped on and squashed flatter than a hamster that had met an unfortunate end under a bus.
#17. Belief
Lister hadn't always been sure of what he believed in, but decency, caring and not being a Fascist mass murderer had always been somewhere near the top of the list; Rimmer - no Billy - whatever, couldn't be his brother though, for that would just be... wrong.
#18. Balloon
Since he didn't expect Rimmer would be getting much use out of them, Lister had a great time making water balloons out of Rimmer's hand-labelled ship-issue condoms.
#19. Balcony
Sneaking off to the Observation Dome was Rimmer's way of reflecting, but Lister had always done his best thinking sat with a drink in his hand.
#20. Bane
"You are the smegging bane of my life," Rimmer yelled and Lister didn't think it was quite the right moment to mention that Rimmer was stood with half his body shimmering through a table and was, in fact, quite dead.
#21. Quiet
If only Lister had just shut his fat gob every now and again, Rimmer knew he would have been an officer.
#22. Quirks
Rimmer had asked Holly to create a database of all Lister's annoying habits, which he could browse at his leisure and recategorise whenever Lister did something unintentionally nice.
#23. Question
After spending an hour alone with his toaster, Lister snapped; the first chance he got, he backed Rimmer into a corner and begged him to ask a question that had absolutely nothing to do with toast.
#24. Quarrel
Of all the ingenious ways they devised for wasting time those first few years, arguing with Rimmer was the one that did the most to keep Lister relatively sane.
#25. Quitting
Rimmer didn't know what he should be more worried about: that Lister would switch him off first, or that he himself would stop trying, just as soon as things started going well.
#26. Jump
The Cat twirled into the sleeping quarters, 'Hey-heeeeeying' as he went; Rimmer, embarrassed, leapt away from Lister and started star-jumping maniacally.
#27. Jester
"Come on now - he may not be great at telling jokes, but Rimmer, well, he's always good for a bit of a laugh," Lister paused for effect, surveying his domain (the table Petersen had claimed at the beginning of the night), "- so long as you bear in mind that you'll never actually be laughing with him, only at him."
#28. Jousting
"No smegging way, Rimmer - I'm not giving you an excuse to stick a knife in my back."
#29. Jewel
Lister thought that no matter whose brain was actually in his body, the stupid emerald costume just did not suit him.
#30. Just
He had just ten minutes left to live and here he was wasting his final moments, worrying about who Rimmer would argue with once he was gone.
#31. Smirk
Seeing Rimmer smirk was nothing special: but seeing Rimmer smile... man, that was something else.
#32. Sorrow
At the oddest of moments it struck Lister just what it meant to be the last human being alive: everyone else was dead, absolutely everyone, and that was never going to be something he could celebrate.
#33. Stupidity
Humans were stupid, the Cat concluded after several years of watching them - while he was there for them to lust over, how could they possibly want each other?
#34. Serenade
Although true that he didn't have masses in the way of experience, Rimmer was certain that people like him weren't supposed to sing hideously soppy love songs to people like Lister, no matter how many shots they'd knocked back.
#35. Sarcasm
It was safer to say everything sarcastically, Rimmer knew, because that way you could never be accused of really meaning anything.
#36. Sordid
"I don't want to see what kind of sordid activities you get up to in the AR suite... ... ... well I suppose I could supervise just this once."
#37. Soliloquy
"Well Lister, if you're not going to listen to me then this is a complete waste of time; I may as well be voicing my concerns to the wall, here, for all the respect you're going to give my suggestions."
#38. Sojourn
Rimmer thought it was funny how the time and the loneliness and the dark dungeon didn't seem to bother him much anymore and anyway, it didn't really matter if he went mad or depressed or homicidal, since Custer could always reboot him (or reboot that girl, or whoever) when they finally got back to wherever it was they had been going.
#39. Share
The two Rimmers had a lot of things in common, the same tragic past and the same useless mentality, but one of them had shared the first painful days aboard Red Dwarf with Lister and that had changed him, maybe not for ever, maybe not even for the better, but it was something.
#40. Solitary
It would have been so much easier to just let go, give up and die alone, but no, he had the dubious honour of keeping Rimmer's hologram company until the day he finally snuffed it.
#41. Nowhere
It was almost painful for Lister to see Rimmer try, fail and get absolutely nowhere.
#42. Neutral
Lister rolled his eyes: only Rimmer would attempt to surrender to a ship claiming to have no quarrel with Red Dwarf - of course, later, they turned out to be psychotic killing machines infected with a mechanoid plague - but he didn't know that at the time.
#43. Nuance
Once upon a time, Lister had considered Rimmer the most transparent, single-minded smeghead he had ever had been unfortunate enough to meet; somewhere along the way, he had started noticing the layers.
#44. Near
Even when he moved in with his hologrammatic doppelganger, Rimmer still chose quarters within earshot of Lister.
#45. Natural
What they were doing wasn't right, was very likely to cause more problems than it would solve and certainly wasn't natural (here they were both simulations, projections, possible, probable estimations) - but it felt good, felt better than good and they had no one to please but each other.
#46. Horizon
"That's the problem with you Lister, you never expand your horizons, never try anything new," Rimmer goaded, so Lister leant forwards and kissed him.
#47. Valiant
The one time Rimmer ended up doing something courageous, there was no one, not even Lister, left to witness it.
#48. Virtuous
After yet another round with a weird kind of soul-sucking shape-shifting monster - Rimmer came to the deeply disturbing realisation that Lister was perhaps the most virtuous creature left in the universe.
#49. Victory
"One step at a time," Lister coaxed, holding in a whoop of joy as Rimmer stayed, relaxed, and didn't pull away.
#50. Defeat
"All right," Rimmer said, and for that moment his bitterness and distrust lay defeated.
Pairing: Dave Lister x Arnold Rimmer
Theme Set: Beta
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up through series 6.
Disclaimer: I don't own Red Dwarf.
#1. Walking
If teaching Kryten to break his programming was like teaching a baby to walk, teaching Rimmer basic human social niceties would be like trying to teach a goldfish to ride a bicycle.
#2. Waltz
Space Corps Directive 2379 read: 'All able-bodied officers attending a Space Corps Ball are expected to dance a formal waltz'; Lister caught Rimmer practicing once and almost keeled over with laughter.
#3. Wishes
Lister wished Rimmer wouldn't view everything he did with such suspicion; sometimes (all right, not 'always') but sometimes, he could do the right thing.
#4. Wonder
Rimmer watched Lister and Ace's easy camaraderie and despaired for how things might have been.
#5. Worry
Rimmer didn't have to worry about food or oxygen, but despite all jokes indicating otherwise, he was concerned for Lister's sake (though after watching him chomp his merry way through a lump of space weevil, Rimmer thought that worry could have been better spent elsewhere).
#6. Whimsy
How many times did one have to be dropped on the head exactly, for a "grown man" (and both those terms were used loosely) to still believe in Fijian farms and girls in silly hats and living happily ever after?
#7. Wasteland
Lister would have said anything to get off Rimmer's psi-moon and by the time they finally managed to escape from the warped, twisted mindscape, he was pissed off enough that he didn't mean a word of it.
#8. Whiskey and Rum
Kryten was familiar with over ten thousand human courtship rituals and having met Mr Rimmer, he could see why Mr Lister would only pick from the nine thousand nine hundred rituals that involved getting completely plastered first.
#9. War
After piecing together the lies and the jokes and the surprisingly deep family revelations, Lister sort of got why Rimmer would glorify leadership, but he still couldn't understand his fascination with war.
#10. Weddings
His brothers' weddings had been grand affairs: the boys decked out in their finest uniforms; their brides in brilliant dresses; their parents bursting with pride; Rimmer would never have had that, never, so it wasn't supposed to ache so much when Lister decided to give everything up for three weeks married to Kochanski.
#11. Birthday
They didn't celebrate much trapped on Starbug: not birthdays, not deathdays, not anniversaries, not holidays, not even Christmas; but Rimmer still took a perverse delight in waking Lister up three hours before his shift started and then switching to soft-light so he wouldn't get hit.
#12. Blessing
The High Lister turned to his counterpart as they boarded Starbug, nodded towards Rimmer and smiled encouragingly.
#13. Bias
Sometimes when he was with Lister, Rimmer would forget that the universe was out to get him.
#14. Burning
"... Don't kid yourself Listy: I wouldn't put you out if you were on fire, you lager-brained curry-soaked slobbering waste of oxygen, gifted with all the intelligence of a shrivelled, dead stick and all the personal hygiene of a blind, one-armed Frenchman."
#15. Breathing
Lister gulped down the oxygen as quickly as possible - ignoring Kryten's advice to take slow, deep breaths; somehow Rimmer had managed to turn off the air supply to their sleeping quarters and Lister was going to smegging kill him.
#16. Breaking
Despite not having a real heart, Rimmer could feel something inside his chest being torn, stomped on and squashed flatter than a hamster that had met an unfortunate end under a bus.
#17. Belief
Lister hadn't always been sure of what he believed in, but decency, caring and not being a Fascist mass murderer had always been somewhere near the top of the list; Rimmer - no Billy - whatever, couldn't be his brother though, for that would just be... wrong.
#18. Balloon
Since he didn't expect Rimmer would be getting much use out of them, Lister had a great time making water balloons out of Rimmer's hand-labelled ship-issue condoms.
#19. Balcony
Sneaking off to the Observation Dome was Rimmer's way of reflecting, but Lister had always done his best thinking sat with a drink in his hand.
#20. Bane
"You are the smegging bane of my life," Rimmer yelled and Lister didn't think it was quite the right moment to mention that Rimmer was stood with half his body shimmering through a table and was, in fact, quite dead.
#21. Quiet
If only Lister had just shut his fat gob every now and again, Rimmer knew he would have been an officer.
#22. Quirks
Rimmer had asked Holly to create a database of all Lister's annoying habits, which he could browse at his leisure and recategorise whenever Lister did something unintentionally nice.
#23. Question
After spending an hour alone with his toaster, Lister snapped; the first chance he got, he backed Rimmer into a corner and begged him to ask a question that had absolutely nothing to do with toast.
#24. Quarrel
Of all the ingenious ways they devised for wasting time those first few years, arguing with Rimmer was the one that did the most to keep Lister relatively sane.
#25. Quitting
Rimmer didn't know what he should be more worried about: that Lister would switch him off first, or that he himself would stop trying, just as soon as things started going well.
#26. Jump
The Cat twirled into the sleeping quarters, 'Hey-heeeeeying' as he went; Rimmer, embarrassed, leapt away from Lister and started star-jumping maniacally.
#27. Jester
"Come on now - he may not be great at telling jokes, but Rimmer, well, he's always good for a bit of a laugh," Lister paused for effect, surveying his domain (the table Petersen had claimed at the beginning of the night), "- so long as you bear in mind that you'll never actually be laughing with him, only at him."
#28. Jousting
"No smegging way, Rimmer - I'm not giving you an excuse to stick a knife in my back."
#29. Jewel
Lister thought that no matter whose brain was actually in his body, the stupid emerald costume just did not suit him.
#30. Just
He had just ten minutes left to live and here he was wasting his final moments, worrying about who Rimmer would argue with once he was gone.
#31. Smirk
Seeing Rimmer smirk was nothing special: but seeing Rimmer smile... man, that was something else.
#32. Sorrow
At the oddest of moments it struck Lister just what it meant to be the last human being alive: everyone else was dead, absolutely everyone, and that was never going to be something he could celebrate.
#33. Stupidity
Humans were stupid, the Cat concluded after several years of watching them - while he was there for them to lust over, how could they possibly want each other?
#34. Serenade
Although true that he didn't have masses in the way of experience, Rimmer was certain that people like him weren't supposed to sing hideously soppy love songs to people like Lister, no matter how many shots they'd knocked back.
#35. Sarcasm
It was safer to say everything sarcastically, Rimmer knew, because that way you could never be accused of really meaning anything.
#36. Sordid
"I don't want to see what kind of sordid activities you get up to in the AR suite... ... ... well I suppose I could supervise just this once."
#37. Soliloquy
"Well Lister, if you're not going to listen to me then this is a complete waste of time; I may as well be voicing my concerns to the wall, here, for all the respect you're going to give my suggestions."
#38. Sojourn
Rimmer thought it was funny how the time and the loneliness and the dark dungeon didn't seem to bother him much anymore and anyway, it didn't really matter if he went mad or depressed or homicidal, since Custer could always reboot him (or reboot that girl, or whoever) when they finally got back to wherever it was they had been going.
#39. Share
The two Rimmers had a lot of things in common, the same tragic past and the same useless mentality, but one of them had shared the first painful days aboard Red Dwarf with Lister and that had changed him, maybe not for ever, maybe not even for the better, but it was something.
#40. Solitary
It would have been so much easier to just let go, give up and die alone, but no, he had the dubious honour of keeping Rimmer's hologram company until the day he finally snuffed it.
#41. Nowhere
It was almost painful for Lister to see Rimmer try, fail and get absolutely nowhere.
#42. Neutral
Lister rolled his eyes: only Rimmer would attempt to surrender to a ship claiming to have no quarrel with Red Dwarf - of course, later, they turned out to be psychotic killing machines infected with a mechanoid plague - but he didn't know that at the time.
#43. Nuance
Once upon a time, Lister had considered Rimmer the most transparent, single-minded smeghead he had ever had been unfortunate enough to meet; somewhere along the way, he had started noticing the layers.
#44. Near
Even when he moved in with his hologrammatic doppelganger, Rimmer still chose quarters within earshot of Lister.
#45. Natural
What they were doing wasn't right, was very likely to cause more problems than it would solve and certainly wasn't natural (here they were both simulations, projections, possible, probable estimations) - but it felt good, felt better than good and they had no one to please but each other.
#46. Horizon
"That's the problem with you Lister, you never expand your horizons, never try anything new," Rimmer goaded, so Lister leant forwards and kissed him.
#47. Valiant
The one time Rimmer ended up doing something courageous, there was no one, not even Lister, left to witness it.
#48. Virtuous
After yet another round with a weird kind of soul-sucking shape-shifting monster - Rimmer came to the deeply disturbing realisation that Lister was perhaps the most virtuous creature left in the universe.
#49. Victory
"One step at a time," Lister coaxed, holding in a whoop of joy as Rimmer stayed, relaxed, and didn't pull away.
#50. Defeat
"All right," Rimmer said, and for that moment his bitterness and distrust lay defeated.