Ficlet - Annoyance. PG.
A little followup to kahvi's Heart.
Crit is always good. Written for fanfic100. Little Damn Table.
Rimmer was certain - certain! - that somewhere on Earth, there had been a course offered on how to tick him off. Multiple courses. Smeg With Arnold Rimmer, Beyond Smegging With Arnold Rimmer, Annoying The Ever-Goited Smeg Out Of Arnold Rimmer, and Making Arnold Rimmer's Death A Living Hell. And Lister, who had stared out of the window or tossed paper airplanes or schemed ways to get lucky with the brunette next door instead of paying attention to his courses, who had left art college after less than a day - Lister had taken those courses, paid attention, and passed with flying colors. There was no other way to explain it.
Every one of his loves seemed purpose-designed to annoy the smeg out of Rimmer. Take curries. Could anything be more disgusting than the way he slurped the smegging things down? Using his fingers - lord forbid he would be evolved enough to use cutlery! - to transfer dripping chunks to his mouth. Chewing with his mouth open, arching an eyebrow at Rimmer as if making sure the hologram had noticed. How could a sane human - even a dead one - not notice that fluorescent sauce squishing out from between his teeth and dribbling sickeningly down his front? Then licking his fingers, as if expecting that the action was somehow sultry. Then taking a drink of beer.
Yes, beer. That vile drink of the masses. No culture, no élan, no grace resided in that stale, bitter, alcoholic froth, so of course Lister had to love it. He had to pop the top so that the flecks of rancid foam splatted into Rimmer's tea. He had to slurp down can after can, no matter how often Rimmer reminded him that there were limits to what JMC personnel were allowed to consume in a month - limits that Lister would exceed on a good evening. He even drank on duty! On smegging duty! As if an asteroid or evil alien would just kick back and wait because Lister was slurping down yet another lager. To survive out in deep space in a lander that had less substance than a Jessica Simpson lyric, you had to be constantly attentive, but Lister had no desire to be so. No, he left it to Rimmer to pick up his slack, and Rimmer was smegging tired of it. Lister couldn't even put the smegging toilet lid down. Did he not know that the act of flushing aerosolized the bacteria he had just left behind, and that if he left the lid up, they would mingle with the air he breathed, the air that mixed with the beer he swilled and the curries he slobbed?
Maybe Lister didn't care. This was, after all, the man who trimmed his toenails with his teeth, snipping off little dead, stiff half-moons of tissue, then spitting them on his bunk just as he used to spit them on Rimmer's, back when they bunked together. Could he blame Rimmer for being initially reluctant to stick his tongue into that mouth, where curries and beer and toenails and little molecules of waste might well reside? Could he blame Rimmer for suddenly realizing, after having had Lister's hands and tongue all over him, after having had his tongue and hands all over Lister, having swallowed his semen, that it might be a good, healthy, hygienic thing to do to scrub some of that smeg off, so that he felt halfway clean, not sticky and itchy from saliva and dribbled come? Not that Lister cared. He was always snoring that hideous, mucusy snore that Rimmer hated so much by the time the hologram was out of the shower.
That, perhaps, was the worst thing Lister had done. Because Rimmer was always certain that he would towel off and go back to his clean, comfortable, non-scummy, non-beery, non-farty bunk, to sleep in clean comfort. But he would feel cold, and Lister, even in sleep, would look so inviting, and Rimmer would slip into the bunk next to him, just for a moment. Lister would turn in his sleep, interrupting his snores to bury his head into Rimmer's chest, and Rimmer simply could not leave after that. His own bunk barely saw him anymore. How was Rimmer supposed to resist? He was turning into a catamite, a mistress, a lover for the last man alive.
But he just could not bring himself to mind.
Crit is always good. Written for fanfic100. Little Damn Table.
Rimmer was certain - certain! - that somewhere on Earth, there had been a course offered on how to tick him off. Multiple courses. Smeg With Arnold Rimmer, Beyond Smegging With Arnold Rimmer, Annoying The Ever-Goited Smeg Out Of Arnold Rimmer, and Making Arnold Rimmer's Death A Living Hell. And Lister, who had stared out of the window or tossed paper airplanes or schemed ways to get lucky with the brunette next door instead of paying attention to his courses, who had left art college after less than a day - Lister had taken those courses, paid attention, and passed with flying colors. There was no other way to explain it.
Every one of his loves seemed purpose-designed to annoy the smeg out of Rimmer. Take curries. Could anything be more disgusting than the way he slurped the smegging things down? Using his fingers - lord forbid he would be evolved enough to use cutlery! - to transfer dripping chunks to his mouth. Chewing with his mouth open, arching an eyebrow at Rimmer as if making sure the hologram had noticed. How could a sane human - even a dead one - not notice that fluorescent sauce squishing out from between his teeth and dribbling sickeningly down his front? Then licking his fingers, as if expecting that the action was somehow sultry. Then taking a drink of beer.
Yes, beer. That vile drink of the masses. No culture, no élan, no grace resided in that stale, bitter, alcoholic froth, so of course Lister had to love it. He had to pop the top so that the flecks of rancid foam splatted into Rimmer's tea. He had to slurp down can after can, no matter how often Rimmer reminded him that there were limits to what JMC personnel were allowed to consume in a month - limits that Lister would exceed on a good evening. He even drank on duty! On smegging duty! As if an asteroid or evil alien would just kick back and wait because Lister was slurping down yet another lager. To survive out in deep space in a lander that had less substance than a Jessica Simpson lyric, you had to be constantly attentive, but Lister had no desire to be so. No, he left it to Rimmer to pick up his slack, and Rimmer was smegging tired of it. Lister couldn't even put the smegging toilet lid down. Did he not know that the act of flushing aerosolized the bacteria he had just left behind, and that if he left the lid up, they would mingle with the air he breathed, the air that mixed with the beer he swilled and the curries he slobbed?
Maybe Lister didn't care. This was, after all, the man who trimmed his toenails with his teeth, snipping off little dead, stiff half-moons of tissue, then spitting them on his bunk just as he used to spit them on Rimmer's, back when they bunked together. Could he blame Rimmer for being initially reluctant to stick his tongue into that mouth, where curries and beer and toenails and little molecules of waste might well reside? Could he blame Rimmer for suddenly realizing, after having had Lister's hands and tongue all over him, after having had his tongue and hands all over Lister, having swallowed his semen, that it might be a good, healthy, hygienic thing to do to scrub some of that smeg off, so that he felt halfway clean, not sticky and itchy from saliva and dribbled come? Not that Lister cared. He was always snoring that hideous, mucusy snore that Rimmer hated so much by the time the hologram was out of the shower.
That, perhaps, was the worst thing Lister had done. Because Rimmer was always certain that he would towel off and go back to his clean, comfortable, non-scummy, non-beery, non-farty bunk, to sleep in clean comfort. But he would feel cold, and Lister, even in sleep, would look so inviting, and Rimmer would slip into the bunk next to him, just for a moment. Lister would turn in his sleep, interrupting his snores to bury his head into Rimmer's chest, and Rimmer simply could not leave after that. His own bunk barely saw him anymore. How was Rimmer supposed to resist? He was turning into a catamite, a mistress, a lover for the last man alive.
But he just could not bring himself to mind.