Fic: Sunset - R/L - PG-13 (for slightly grim bits)
Title: Sunset
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Red Dwarf owns me, not the other way around. And I don't make money from this. Would that I did!
Spoilers: Hm... Just The End, I suppose.
Notes: A follow up, of sorts, to roadstergal's Appliance. Written as part of the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
Lister shuffled his way drunkenly down the corridor, still giggling uncontrollably at the image of three of the scutters very reluctantly pulling Rimmer's voice-activated book out of Lister's laundry-basket. It had taken Rimmer three hours to convince them to even try, and a further two to get them to turn it back on, and place it somewhere he could actually see the screen. Of course, the moment Rimmer had left, Lister had snatched it up, and tossed it underneath his pillow. There was no way the smeghead would ever find it there. The last few nights Lister had fallen asleep to the electronic hum of it, just barely noticeable as a vibration rather than a sound. It had been a pleasing, almost soothing sensation to fall asleep to, and Lister had found himself unwilling to turn it off. Perhaps the battery would wear out, eventually.
The sleeping-quarters door loomed in front of him all of a sudden, and he fumbled at the lock.
It didn't open.
He poked it again. Still no go. Had Rimmer set up some sort of override? Lister groaned, and leaned against the military/ocean/whatever gray surface face first. "Come on, man," he slurred, "open up!"
There was no answer. Because it felt rather comfortable, Lister remained in that position for a few minutes, until his mouth dried up to the point where was worried his lips would stick to the door. It was beginning to dawn on him that something was not quite right. By sheer chance, and the fact that his face just happened to be pointing in that direction, he glanced down towards his boots, and noticed a small black and yellow sticker near floor level. It was one of those semi-holographic promotional ones Leopard Lager had given away with twelve-packs a few - well - millions of years ago. He remembered sticking one to Petersen's door one night, when the Dane had let slip that he sometimes had trouble finding the right door when crawling back from a night of drinking on his hands and knees. "They all look the bloody same," he'd complained. Lister's mind tried to consolidate this new information. Slowly, like icebergs colliding in the North-Sea, neurons fired in his befuddled brain. Petersen! This was Petersen's door! That would, of course, explain why he hadn't had to climb the stairs to get here from the disco. Happily, he punched the correct code into the lock-pad, and, forgetting that he was still leaning against the door, fell painfully onto the dusty, grotty floor of the interior.
He must have fallen asleep, and remained so for quite a while, because when he woke, Lister felt rather more sober than he'd prefer to be. He was able to focus clearly, for one thing, and this was never a good idea in Petersen's quarters. He managed to lift his head, and looked around, warily. The bunks were a mess, blankets and pillows thrown everywhere; empty cans of lager and whiskey forming a small tower on the upper one, which allegedly belonged to Petersen's timid and confused roommate, whom Lister had never seen. From his current vantage point, Lister could see the stacks of 3D porn-magazines stacked underneath the bed, threatening to spill out and flood the floor. A single issue of "Buns and Babes" had escaped, just about visible from where Lister lay, its centerfold featuring a suitably impressive example of the items in the title.
With some difficulty, Lister got to his knees, and finally his feet. He stood there for a moment, swaying slightly, trying to find his balance. Two of Petersen's favorite t-shirts were on the floor next to where he'd lain; one featuring a Danish zero-G football team Lister had never heard off, the other a pattern which Petersen had sworn would make you drunk just by looking at it. Lister stared at it for some time, hopefully, but felt only vaguely sickened by the color combination.
He turned around aimlessly, trying to remember when he'd been here last. There was the non-regulation desk, which Peterson used to convince women that he was studying to become an officer whenever he managed to get them back to his room. It was littered with astro-navigation books that Lister stolen - no, borrowed, he corrected himself - from Rimmer and given to him, various writing implements, some learning tapes and a tape-reader, and two boxes of illegal learning drugs which Lister knew to be empty, having also taken them from Rimmer. It was all just for show, as the only ambition Petersen had ever had involved women and alcohol, preferably in combination.
Small, semi-eroded mountains of paper littered one end of the desk, several sheets of various size and color having fallen to the floor beneath. There were letters, torn out pages from magazines with notes scribbled on them, flyers for various bars in the different ports they'd docked at, napkins with phone numbers written in lipstick and eyeliner - all unreadable now, and a whooping great heap of postcards in all shapes and sizes. Lister picked on up at random. It had a picture of a small dog with a Mimean trade-union flag painted on its side, a copy of "Mimas Times" in its mouth, looking quite miserable and forlorn. Lister frowned, and turned it over. Nothing but coffee-cup stains and illegible scribbles sullied by running, ancient ink, as Petersen had presumably tried, and failed to start a missive to someone. Lister picked another one, and held it close to his face, trying to make sense of it. It seemed to have a picture of a statue of a woman sitting on a rock, but her legs looked all wrong. She wasn't that bad looking though, for a lady made of metal. She sat on her rock, overlooking the sea, a weird kind of non-expression on her artificial face. In the background, the sun was setting behind bold, yellow letters proclaiming "Solnedgang i København".
Lister did a double take. That couldn't be right. He read them again - they stubbornly remained gibberish. He turned the card over, and was surprised to find writing on the back. This was never Petersen's writing though; this had letters you could actually tell apart. Not that any of those letters, alone or in combination, made any kind of sense. Some of the "o"'s had been shot through with a diagonal line, like on the front, and there were rings over some of the "a"'s as well. There were even a few letters that looked like an "a" and an "e" all scrunched up together, like, but that was probably just because the writer was running out of space, Lister reasoned. The icebergs in his mind made another impact into one another as he realized this had to be Danish.
While Lister couldn't understand any of the words, the handwriting was pretty, and the ink a sort of faded violet, and he found himself sitting down on the floor staring at it for some time. Some words were familiar. There was "Olaf" - that was Petersen's first name. And there was a "Dave", which might have been referring to him, but why would any of Petersen's friends be writing about Lister? His eyes flickered to the bottom of the message, where a cheerful looking "Kyss og klem fra Gitte" had been underlined with a wavy line that ended in a sort of curly flourish. Gitte. He looked at it askew. That shouldn't seem familiar, but it did.
Gitte. Sunsets. Denmark. Words swam around in the icy waters of his mind, trying to make sense of one another. Hang on. There was something. Thoughts long buried deep beneath the surface of his conciousness floated slowly upwards into the light. Petersen had a sister, didn't he? He used to talk to Lister about her; saying how he'd take him for a visit once they got back to Earth. When Kochanski dumped him, Petersen had told him not to worry, there was a girl in Copenhagen who was crazy about him, even before she'd ever met him. Gitte. Yeah. That'd been her name. There had been a picture. Lister stumbled to his feet, and started rooting frantically through the desktop debris. There was a picture, he knew it, he'd seen it. He had to find it.
It wasn't on the desk. Why the hell wasn't it on the desk? Lister staggered over to the lockers, toppling back when they opened to reveal a flood of dirty laundry, shoes and disused odds and ends, but no pictures. He ran - in so far as he was able - to the bunks, and started up-ending the mattress; first Petersen's, then the other one. He lifted pillows, ripped open duvets, sifted through the piles of porn, because how smegging hard could it be to find a smegging photo? He shouted obscenities as he tore posters off the wall, looking behind them, emptied whiskey cans, tried to remove the mirror, and settling for smashing it, smashing it into tiny, needle-sharp shards, in which he finally saw himself, red-eyed and mad, mouth open, shirt even more undone and disheveled than when he’d come in, and that’s when he started screaming.
Lister didn’t know how he got back to their quarters. He didn’t know how he got the door open; perhaps it already was. It didn’t matter. All he could do was stumble towards Rimmer, hands flailing, clutching at a body that wasn’t there. He heard shouting, protests yelled in fear, but he couldn’t stop. Finally, his fingers caught something solid; something that was there, and he clutched it to his chest, closing his eyes, gasping, rambling. “They’re dead,” his own voice rang in his ears. “All of them; they’re all dead! Selby; Selby ‘s dead, he had a girlfriend on Europa - he was gonna marry her! Chen’s dead! I never even knew his first name, and now I can’t ask him, because he’s dead, Rimmer, he’s dead!” Someone was trying to speak inside his head, but he wasn’t listening, all he could think of was Copenhagen, and that mermaid in the sunset, and the rock; all sinking into the ocean and disappearing forever. “Petersen,” he choked, “Petersen is dead! I never even met his sister, and now her photograph is gone, and I can’t find her, because she’s dead!”
He sank to his knees, squeezing his eyes shut, clutching whatever-it-was to his chest, realizing somewhere deep inside his far-gone mind that it must be Rimmer’s light-bee, that he was probably hurting him; scaring him, but that idea was too far away for him to process. He needed to touch something. He needed to hug someone; hold someone. Someone who wouldn’t slink away disinterested after half a minute to fix his hair. Someone who knew what it was like to be human. Someone who remembered.
“Kochanski,” he whispered, and felt something sigh irritatedly near his left frontal lobe. “Kris. Kris is dead.” Ain’t gonna be no Fiji, his thoughts jeered. Ain’t gonna be no nothing. He was lost. Utterly lost. His head fell to his knees, and he put his hands behind his neck, pressing it further down, finally letting go of that tiny speck of solidity. He didn’t notice it floating gently up, and stopping, just a few feet to the right of him.
It had been such a simple task, really, Rimmer thought as he reformed, his projection shaking, not just because of the jolts given to his light-bee. Yes, it had been a simple enough task; keep him sane. He looked at the sobbing, cowering pile in front of him. He heard the sounds coming from the last human being alive, and sighed, deeply. And as with other tasks given to him throughout his life, and now death, Rimmer, Arnold J. had managed to fail at it fantastically. With every ounce of dignity left in him, Rimmer straightened, first his back, then his already immaculate uniform. Well. Maybe not this time.
“Lister…” He whispered, leaning down. There was no response, but then again, he wasn’t expecting any. “Look. It’s… All right. I fold. I’ll do it.”
A face turned up to meet him, bloodshot eyes staring in incomprehension. There came a weak “Wha?”
Rimmer got down on his knees, leaning even further towards Lister, resisting the bizarre, sudden urge to reach out and let his incorporeal hands skirt that very human face. “I’m giving you Kochanski.” He tried to smile. He was out of practice, so the result was probably less than satisfactory. Still, it was an honest one. This, pathetic though it was, he thought, was his moment. He couldn’t save Lister, but at least he could step aside and let someone who was actually worth a damn do the job for him.
But Lister’s reaction was not as expected. He still looked upset; dissatisfied. The rotten little smegger; had he no sense of decency? Wasn’t erasing himself to save him good enough for the gerbil-faced procrastinating twonk; what did he want - a public execution with fireworks and toffee apples? Rimmer had the mother and father of some scathing comments prepped and ready for launch when Lister, still clearly off his rocker, got up on his knees to face him. “Dun, man,” he mumbled. “Don’ want ye dying too.”
“Oh, don’t be ab…” surd, Rimmer was about to finish, but at that point Lister stretched across the space between them, and very, very, carefully planted a kiss in the air where Rimmer’s lips were pretending to be.
“Don’t die,” the space bum mumbled again, and Rimmer grunted.
“Well,” he conceded, “I might as well stick around then.” After all, Lister was clearly too far gone to be helped by anyone.
Inside, what was - for all intents and purposes - Rimmer’s heart, hummed.
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Red Dwarf owns me, not the other way around. And I don't make money from this. Would that I did!
Spoilers: Hm... Just The End, I suppose.
Notes: A follow up, of sorts, to roadstergal's Appliance. Written as part of the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
Lister shuffled his way drunkenly down the corridor, still giggling uncontrollably at the image of three of the scutters very reluctantly pulling Rimmer's voice-activated book out of Lister's laundry-basket. It had taken Rimmer three hours to convince them to even try, and a further two to get them to turn it back on, and place it somewhere he could actually see the screen. Of course, the moment Rimmer had left, Lister had snatched it up, and tossed it underneath his pillow. There was no way the smeghead would ever find it there. The last few nights Lister had fallen asleep to the electronic hum of it, just barely noticeable as a vibration rather than a sound. It had been a pleasing, almost soothing sensation to fall asleep to, and Lister had found himself unwilling to turn it off. Perhaps the battery would wear out, eventually.
The sleeping-quarters door loomed in front of him all of a sudden, and he fumbled at the lock.
It didn't open.
He poked it again. Still no go. Had Rimmer set up some sort of override? Lister groaned, and leaned against the military/ocean/whatever gray surface face first. "Come on, man," he slurred, "open up!"
There was no answer. Because it felt rather comfortable, Lister remained in that position for a few minutes, until his mouth dried up to the point where was worried his lips would stick to the door. It was beginning to dawn on him that something was not quite right. By sheer chance, and the fact that his face just happened to be pointing in that direction, he glanced down towards his boots, and noticed a small black and yellow sticker near floor level. It was one of those semi-holographic promotional ones Leopard Lager had given away with twelve-packs a few - well - millions of years ago. He remembered sticking one to Petersen's door one night, when the Dane had let slip that he sometimes had trouble finding the right door when crawling back from a night of drinking on his hands and knees. "They all look the bloody same," he'd complained. Lister's mind tried to consolidate this new information. Slowly, like icebergs colliding in the North-Sea, neurons fired in his befuddled brain. Petersen! This was Petersen's door! That would, of course, explain why he hadn't had to climb the stairs to get here from the disco. Happily, he punched the correct code into the lock-pad, and, forgetting that he was still leaning against the door, fell painfully onto the dusty, grotty floor of the interior.
He must have fallen asleep, and remained so for quite a while, because when he woke, Lister felt rather more sober than he'd prefer to be. He was able to focus clearly, for one thing, and this was never a good idea in Petersen's quarters. He managed to lift his head, and looked around, warily. The bunks were a mess, blankets and pillows thrown everywhere; empty cans of lager and whiskey forming a small tower on the upper one, which allegedly belonged to Petersen's timid and confused roommate, whom Lister had never seen. From his current vantage point, Lister could see the stacks of 3D porn-magazines stacked underneath the bed, threatening to spill out and flood the floor. A single issue of "Buns and Babes" had escaped, just about visible from where Lister lay, its centerfold featuring a suitably impressive example of the items in the title.
With some difficulty, Lister got to his knees, and finally his feet. He stood there for a moment, swaying slightly, trying to find his balance. Two of Petersen's favorite t-shirts were on the floor next to where he'd lain; one featuring a Danish zero-G football team Lister had never heard off, the other a pattern which Petersen had sworn would make you drunk just by looking at it. Lister stared at it for some time, hopefully, but felt only vaguely sickened by the color combination.
He turned around aimlessly, trying to remember when he'd been here last. There was the non-regulation desk, which Peterson used to convince women that he was studying to become an officer whenever he managed to get them back to his room. It was littered with astro-navigation books that Lister stolen - no, borrowed, he corrected himself - from Rimmer and given to him, various writing implements, some learning tapes and a tape-reader, and two boxes of illegal learning drugs which Lister knew to be empty, having also taken them from Rimmer. It was all just for show, as the only ambition Petersen had ever had involved women and alcohol, preferably in combination.
Small, semi-eroded mountains of paper littered one end of the desk, several sheets of various size and color having fallen to the floor beneath. There were letters, torn out pages from magazines with notes scribbled on them, flyers for various bars in the different ports they'd docked at, napkins with phone numbers written in lipstick and eyeliner - all unreadable now, and a whooping great heap of postcards in all shapes and sizes. Lister picked on up at random. It had a picture of a small dog with a Mimean trade-union flag painted on its side, a copy of "Mimas Times" in its mouth, looking quite miserable and forlorn. Lister frowned, and turned it over. Nothing but coffee-cup stains and illegible scribbles sullied by running, ancient ink, as Petersen had presumably tried, and failed to start a missive to someone. Lister picked another one, and held it close to his face, trying to make sense of it. It seemed to have a picture of a statue of a woman sitting on a rock, but her legs looked all wrong. She wasn't that bad looking though, for a lady made of metal. She sat on her rock, overlooking the sea, a weird kind of non-expression on her artificial face. In the background, the sun was setting behind bold, yellow letters proclaiming "Solnedgang i København".
Lister did a double take. That couldn't be right. He read them again - they stubbornly remained gibberish. He turned the card over, and was surprised to find writing on the back. This was never Petersen's writing though; this had letters you could actually tell apart. Not that any of those letters, alone or in combination, made any kind of sense. Some of the "o"'s had been shot through with a diagonal line, like on the front, and there were rings over some of the "a"'s as well. There were even a few letters that looked like an "a" and an "e" all scrunched up together, like, but that was probably just because the writer was running out of space, Lister reasoned. The icebergs in his mind made another impact into one another as he realized this had to be Danish.
While Lister couldn't understand any of the words, the handwriting was pretty, and the ink a sort of faded violet, and he found himself sitting down on the floor staring at it for some time. Some words were familiar. There was "Olaf" - that was Petersen's first name. And there was a "Dave", which might have been referring to him, but why would any of Petersen's friends be writing about Lister? His eyes flickered to the bottom of the message, where a cheerful looking "Kyss og klem fra Gitte" had been underlined with a wavy line that ended in a sort of curly flourish. Gitte. He looked at it askew. That shouldn't seem familiar, but it did.
Gitte. Sunsets. Denmark. Words swam around in the icy waters of his mind, trying to make sense of one another. Hang on. There was something. Thoughts long buried deep beneath the surface of his conciousness floated slowly upwards into the light. Petersen had a sister, didn't he? He used to talk to Lister about her; saying how he'd take him for a visit once they got back to Earth. When Kochanski dumped him, Petersen had told him not to worry, there was a girl in Copenhagen who was crazy about him, even before she'd ever met him. Gitte. Yeah. That'd been her name. There had been a picture. Lister stumbled to his feet, and started rooting frantically through the desktop debris. There was a picture, he knew it, he'd seen it. He had to find it.
It wasn't on the desk. Why the hell wasn't it on the desk? Lister staggered over to the lockers, toppling back when they opened to reveal a flood of dirty laundry, shoes and disused odds and ends, but no pictures. He ran - in so far as he was able - to the bunks, and started up-ending the mattress; first Petersen's, then the other one. He lifted pillows, ripped open duvets, sifted through the piles of porn, because how smegging hard could it be to find a smegging photo? He shouted obscenities as he tore posters off the wall, looking behind them, emptied whiskey cans, tried to remove the mirror, and settling for smashing it, smashing it into tiny, needle-sharp shards, in which he finally saw himself, red-eyed and mad, mouth open, shirt even more undone and disheveled than when he’d come in, and that’s when he started screaming.
Lister didn’t know how he got back to their quarters. He didn’t know how he got the door open; perhaps it already was. It didn’t matter. All he could do was stumble towards Rimmer, hands flailing, clutching at a body that wasn’t there. He heard shouting, protests yelled in fear, but he couldn’t stop. Finally, his fingers caught something solid; something that was there, and he clutched it to his chest, closing his eyes, gasping, rambling. “They’re dead,” his own voice rang in his ears. “All of them; they’re all dead! Selby; Selby ‘s dead, he had a girlfriend on Europa - he was gonna marry her! Chen’s dead! I never even knew his first name, and now I can’t ask him, because he’s dead, Rimmer, he’s dead!” Someone was trying to speak inside his head, but he wasn’t listening, all he could think of was Copenhagen, and that mermaid in the sunset, and the rock; all sinking into the ocean and disappearing forever. “Petersen,” he choked, “Petersen is dead! I never even met his sister, and now her photograph is gone, and I can’t find her, because she’s dead!”
He sank to his knees, squeezing his eyes shut, clutching whatever-it-was to his chest, realizing somewhere deep inside his far-gone mind that it must be Rimmer’s light-bee, that he was probably hurting him; scaring him, but that idea was too far away for him to process. He needed to touch something. He needed to hug someone; hold someone. Someone who wouldn’t slink away disinterested after half a minute to fix his hair. Someone who knew what it was like to be human. Someone who remembered.
“Kochanski,” he whispered, and felt something sigh irritatedly near his left frontal lobe. “Kris. Kris is dead.” Ain’t gonna be no Fiji, his thoughts jeered. Ain’t gonna be no nothing. He was lost. Utterly lost. His head fell to his knees, and he put his hands behind his neck, pressing it further down, finally letting go of that tiny speck of solidity. He didn’t notice it floating gently up, and stopping, just a few feet to the right of him.
It had been such a simple task, really, Rimmer thought as he reformed, his projection shaking, not just because of the jolts given to his light-bee. Yes, it had been a simple enough task; keep him sane. He looked at the sobbing, cowering pile in front of him. He heard the sounds coming from the last human being alive, and sighed, deeply. And as with other tasks given to him throughout his life, and now death, Rimmer, Arnold J. had managed to fail at it fantastically. With every ounce of dignity left in him, Rimmer straightened, first his back, then his already immaculate uniform. Well. Maybe not this time.
“Lister…” He whispered, leaning down. There was no response, but then again, he wasn’t expecting any. “Look. It’s… All right. I fold. I’ll do it.”
A face turned up to meet him, bloodshot eyes staring in incomprehension. There came a weak “Wha?”
Rimmer got down on his knees, leaning even further towards Lister, resisting the bizarre, sudden urge to reach out and let his incorporeal hands skirt that very human face. “I’m giving you Kochanski.” He tried to smile. He was out of practice, so the result was probably less than satisfactory. Still, it was an honest one. This, pathetic though it was, he thought, was his moment. He couldn’t save Lister, but at least he could step aside and let someone who was actually worth a damn do the job for him.
But Lister’s reaction was not as expected. He still looked upset; dissatisfied. The rotten little smegger; had he no sense of decency? Wasn’t erasing himself to save him good enough for the gerbil-faced procrastinating twonk; what did he want - a public execution with fireworks and toffee apples? Rimmer had the mother and father of some scathing comments prepped and ready for launch when Lister, still clearly off his rocker, got up on his knees to face him. “Dun, man,” he mumbled. “Don’ want ye dying too.”
“Oh, don’t be ab…” surd, Rimmer was about to finish, but at that point Lister stretched across the space between them, and very, very, carefully planted a kiss in the air where Rimmer’s lips were pretending to be.
“Don’t die,” the space bum mumbled again, and Rimmer grunted.
“Well,” he conceded, “I might as well stick around then.” After all, Lister was clearly too far gone to be helped by anyone.
Inside, what was - for all intents and purposes - Rimmer’s heart, hummed.