Fic: Middles - R/L - PG
Title: Middles
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own Red Dwarf, it owns me. None of us make any money off one another. Well, I buy the DVDs. But you see what I mean.
Spoilers: Legion.
Notes: Rimmer came by for a visit. He wasn't happy. Written as part of the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
David Lister is an idiot. He is a slob, a layabout, an uncultured, gibbering moron. He has no ambition, no stamina, no manners. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t exercise, unless you count running away from any type of actual work or raw vegetables. He sweats madras sauce, he oozes garlic, and he only washes when he feels like it, which really isn’t very often. Spending time with Lister is like postponing a visit to the dentist (which, by the way, he constantly did when there still were dentists around to be avoided); agonizing, just gets worse the longer it goes on, and you know nothing good will come of it in the end.
You might think I’m exaggerating. A fair supposition. I fully understand that it can be hard to believe that a single human being can exhibit all of the traits inherent in one David Lister technician third grade, but I assure you, it is sadly all too true. I wouldn’t have believed it either, except that I’ve had the rather dubious “pleasure” of experiencing them with my own two eyes, nose, ears, and other assorted body parts and senses. I strongly suggest you trust me on this one; it’s not worth trying to find out on your own. You might also think it’s that I’m putting things out of proportion; that I just need to get to know him better. Well, no, it isn’t. After more years than I’d care to enumerate together with the twonk, I’ll happily - although perhaps that isn’t quite the word - state that finding toenail clippings in everything from the insides of your pillow-cases to the cup you keep your tooth brush in, and indeed inside myself when I was incorporeal, is not something that grows on you over time. Nor is having to listen to hour-long guitar sessions consisting entirely of songs he does not know how to play, and that includes the ones he has written himself. What annoys you the first time it happens isn’t going to “grow on you” - it’s going to get on your nerves, that’s what it’s going to do. It’s going to make you want to tear your hair out, and bite your nails down to the bone. It will give you ulcers. It certainly isn’t going to make you fall in love with him.
God, how I wish I wasn’t in love with him.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had only helped. If the insane act of falling in love with this sub-human specimen would have made me coo over his multi-color-stained t-shirts and smelly boots; his curry breakfasts and his lurid stories about sex and drink and debauchery. But it didn’t. If anything, it made it worse. The idea that a man like me could love a man like him drove me almost to the limits of the sanity I was already precariously hanging on to the edge of with my fingernails. It didn’t make sense, and I need for things to make sense. There’s far too little order and discipline in the world if you ask me, and if a man can’t control his own thoughts and desires, well, what can he control? So I did what I had to do. I checked his service records.
I’m not proud of it. Once I realized I’d gone and fallen for the bastard, I spent almost every moment of free time going through the ship’s databases, trying to find something - anything - that would help make sense of it all. Perhaps he was secretly a stamp-collector, or a Hammond-organ enthusiast. Perhaps he had always felt a strong, overpowering need to over-starch his underwear, but been afraid to try it. Maybe he had a well-hidden interest in historical miniature gaming; maybe he had played the odd game of RISK; I was willing to settle for anything! The trouble is, now I know things. Things I wish I didn’t. I didn’t stop digging when by all rights I should have. No, I kept on, not satisfied with the horrendous data I’d already collected - like some information-based masochist I needed more.
You give people the benefit of the doubt. It is a natural, human reaction, especially when you have a vested interest in them being something other than what they by all signs and portents appear to be. So when I saw Lister crawl out of bed in the morning in the same clothes he'd been wearing the previous day, I tried to tell myself he probably changed and washed later in the day; after the breakfast which surely would not consist of last night's strained lager and curried corn-flakes, not every day! When he told me about his disgusting sexual exploits, I wanted to assume he was exaggerating, because honestly, who can fit that much sex into a lifetime? And as for the aubergines, I happened to have an uncle who grew them, and once you've seen those things up close - and we all know how likely Lister is to have seen any sort of vegetable up close - you realize the entire thing is just physically impossible. Yes, I saw the scars on his legs to match his stories, and yes, I even read some of the letters from his old girlfriends when the odd, three-million-years-late mail-pod arrived; took forever to talk the scutters into that one. But still! It was only when I saw the surveillance tapes, heard the recorded conversations and finally read the scanned-in, hand-written notes in his own crummy, illegible hand outlining the things he would like to do to various higher-level female officers, which had, apparently, been shoved under the doors of their quarters and handed in by a jealous boyfriend, that I left the console I was at in disgust, and went off to the diesel-decks for a fortnight to calm down.
That wasn't the worst thing though. No, the results of his last recorded physical was not the worst either, but I'll gladly admit it is up there. The worst was yet to come.
At least, I thought, I didn't have a body, so at least he couldn't touch me, nor I him. Nothing would happen, because nothing could happen. This gave me some comfort for a few years, until, naturally, this too was taken from me. It was hard to enjoy being tangible again when I knew there was a risk I'd break one night and jump the smegger. I was going mad. Very slowly mad. And yet, that wasn't the worst thing. Shall I tell you what the worst thing was? I think I shall.
I told him. Not in any sort of obvious way, of course, but I told him what was bothering me. The little blighter kept nagging me about it, and I'd ran out of things to say to shut him up. So I asked him; how could you possibly love a person you can't even stand to be in the same room with? A person who has done things you find so disgusting you'd rather gnaw your own fingers off than read about again. How can something attract and repel you at the same time? And he looked at me; looked at me with those disgustingly soulful brown eyes, and said; “people are middles. They're not just their good or bad sides, they're both. Both, man.” Yes, that's right; people are middles. I bare my heart and soul to the man, and that's what he comes up with? And I just bet he knows now, too. I bet he understood the moment I opened my big mouth.
People are middles, indeed. What the smeg is that supposed to mean?
Hell, that's what the worst part is. I think I know.
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own Red Dwarf, it owns me. None of us make any money off one another. Well, I buy the DVDs. But you see what I mean.
Spoilers: Legion.
Notes: Rimmer came by for a visit. He wasn't happy. Written as part of the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
David Lister is an idiot. He is a slob, a layabout, an uncultured, gibbering moron. He has no ambition, no stamina, no manners. He doesn’t read. He doesn’t exercise, unless you count running away from any type of actual work or raw vegetables. He sweats madras sauce, he oozes garlic, and he only washes when he feels like it, which really isn’t very often. Spending time with Lister is like postponing a visit to the dentist (which, by the way, he constantly did when there still were dentists around to be avoided); agonizing, just gets worse the longer it goes on, and you know nothing good will come of it in the end.
You might think I’m exaggerating. A fair supposition. I fully understand that it can be hard to believe that a single human being can exhibit all of the traits inherent in one David Lister technician third grade, but I assure you, it is sadly all too true. I wouldn’t have believed it either, except that I’ve had the rather dubious “pleasure” of experiencing them with my own two eyes, nose, ears, and other assorted body parts and senses. I strongly suggest you trust me on this one; it’s not worth trying to find out on your own. You might also think it’s that I’m putting things out of proportion; that I just need to get to know him better. Well, no, it isn’t. After more years than I’d care to enumerate together with the twonk, I’ll happily - although perhaps that isn’t quite the word - state that finding toenail clippings in everything from the insides of your pillow-cases to the cup you keep your tooth brush in, and indeed inside myself when I was incorporeal, is not something that grows on you over time. Nor is having to listen to hour-long guitar sessions consisting entirely of songs he does not know how to play, and that includes the ones he has written himself. What annoys you the first time it happens isn’t going to “grow on you” - it’s going to get on your nerves, that’s what it’s going to do. It’s going to make you want to tear your hair out, and bite your nails down to the bone. It will give you ulcers. It certainly isn’t going to make you fall in love with him.
God, how I wish I wasn’t in love with him.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if it had only helped. If the insane act of falling in love with this sub-human specimen would have made me coo over his multi-color-stained t-shirts and smelly boots; his curry breakfasts and his lurid stories about sex and drink and debauchery. But it didn’t. If anything, it made it worse. The idea that a man like me could love a man like him drove me almost to the limits of the sanity I was already precariously hanging on to the edge of with my fingernails. It didn’t make sense, and I need for things to make sense. There’s far too little order and discipline in the world if you ask me, and if a man can’t control his own thoughts and desires, well, what can he control? So I did what I had to do. I checked his service records.
I’m not proud of it. Once I realized I’d gone and fallen for the bastard, I spent almost every moment of free time going through the ship’s databases, trying to find something - anything - that would help make sense of it all. Perhaps he was secretly a stamp-collector, or a Hammond-organ enthusiast. Perhaps he had always felt a strong, overpowering need to over-starch his underwear, but been afraid to try it. Maybe he had a well-hidden interest in historical miniature gaming; maybe he had played the odd game of RISK; I was willing to settle for anything! The trouble is, now I know things. Things I wish I didn’t. I didn’t stop digging when by all rights I should have. No, I kept on, not satisfied with the horrendous data I’d already collected - like some information-based masochist I needed more.
You give people the benefit of the doubt. It is a natural, human reaction, especially when you have a vested interest in them being something other than what they by all signs and portents appear to be. So when I saw Lister crawl out of bed in the morning in the same clothes he'd been wearing the previous day, I tried to tell myself he probably changed and washed later in the day; after the breakfast which surely would not consist of last night's strained lager and curried corn-flakes, not every day! When he told me about his disgusting sexual exploits, I wanted to assume he was exaggerating, because honestly, who can fit that much sex into a lifetime? And as for the aubergines, I happened to have an uncle who grew them, and once you've seen those things up close - and we all know how likely Lister is to have seen any sort of vegetable up close - you realize the entire thing is just physically impossible. Yes, I saw the scars on his legs to match his stories, and yes, I even read some of the letters from his old girlfriends when the odd, three-million-years-late mail-pod arrived; took forever to talk the scutters into that one. But still! It was only when I saw the surveillance tapes, heard the recorded conversations and finally read the scanned-in, hand-written notes in his own crummy, illegible hand outlining the things he would like to do to various higher-level female officers, which had, apparently, been shoved under the doors of their quarters and handed in by a jealous boyfriend, that I left the console I was at in disgust, and went off to the diesel-decks for a fortnight to calm down.
That wasn't the worst thing though. No, the results of his last recorded physical was not the worst either, but I'll gladly admit it is up there. The worst was yet to come.
At least, I thought, I didn't have a body, so at least he couldn't touch me, nor I him. Nothing would happen, because nothing could happen. This gave me some comfort for a few years, until, naturally, this too was taken from me. It was hard to enjoy being tangible again when I knew there was a risk I'd break one night and jump the smegger. I was going mad. Very slowly mad. And yet, that wasn't the worst thing. Shall I tell you what the worst thing was? I think I shall.
I told him. Not in any sort of obvious way, of course, but I told him what was bothering me. The little blighter kept nagging me about it, and I'd ran out of things to say to shut him up. So I asked him; how could you possibly love a person you can't even stand to be in the same room with? A person who has done things you find so disgusting you'd rather gnaw your own fingers off than read about again. How can something attract and repel you at the same time? And he looked at me; looked at me with those disgustingly soulful brown eyes, and said; “people are middles. They're not just their good or bad sides, they're both. Both, man.” Yes, that's right; people are middles. I bare my heart and soul to the man, and that's what he comes up with? And I just bet he knows now, too. I bet he understood the moment I opened my big mouth.
People are middles, indeed. What the smeg is that supposed to mean?
Hell, that's what the worst part is. I think I know.