Fic: Colorless - R/L (imp) - PG-13
Title: Colorless
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister (implied).
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Don't own Red Dwarf, don't make money from it. Man, if only.
Spoilers: Parallel Universe
Notes: A little something while I work on meatier things. :) Based on an idea given to me by person or persons unknown - I have a list of suggestions written down, but have sadly lost the names somewhere along the way. Thank you, whoever you are! Written for the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
It was funny, Lister thought, snuggled up into his bunk with his knitting, how being stuck in space with a dead bunkmate, a senile computer and a man-shaped cat for a year or two could change a person. His definition of 'normal' had been warped beyond recognition. Cat people on roller-skates licking their laundry clean on top of a vending machine? Routine. Bits and pieces of the aforementioned bunkmate detaching at random and floating aimlessly around the hallways, with the rest of him in desperate pursuit? Humdrum. Anthropomorphic toasters hacking into the PA system and waking him up with urgent demands for toasted breakfast treats? Tedious and annoying. Getting impregnated by a female version of yourself from another dimension? All right, that one had been a bit of a surprise. Lister still wasn't entirely sure how he was going to deal with that. He'd gotten his needles and yarn out again with the vague idea of making some sort of baby-related thing, but so far he was just moving the needles around randomly. He wasn't really very good at knitting. Come to that - why was he knitting at all? He never had, before.
He really had changed.
It was the same with Rimmer, he could tell. The hologram was actually getting used to being incorporeal. Oh, he moaned and groaned about it to no end, but he did it while navigating carefully around objects to avoid them interfering with his projection. He had even learned to sit in chairs and lie in bed in such a way as to make it seem like he had mass and weight. Holly's pranks hardly fazed him anymore, which in turn seemed to annoy the computer to no end. Lister was all for that, after the whole Queeg thing.
They even ignored one another differently. Back when there were other people around, they would actively avoid one another, but when they couldn't, they would bicker and argue until they got sick of it, then glare angrily at one another for the rest of their enforced togetherness. Now? It was odd. They had the entire ship to themselves, yet they stuck together like some form of malevolent glue. Apparently human beings needed the company of other human beings, even if the only person on offer was someone you utterly despised. So they couldn't be apart, but they could still smegging well ignore one another. It had gotten to the point where they had constructed their own little individual pockets of privacy, having trained themselves not to notice anything else that was going on around them. Each of them would just go about their business as though the other man was not in the room at all. But the fact that he was - well - that made life a little less intolerable. Somehow.
Lister frowned at the confusing mass of hoops and pins and yarn in his hands. It was hard to tell where the mess of yarn ended and what would eventually become the finished product began. What was obvious was the color; a bland sort of light pink-ish beige. He sighed. It was the only skein he had left. He had no idea where they kept disappearing to. He kept them in his locker, but ever time he went in there, another one seemed to be missing. With a sigh, he started unwinding the loose threads from whatever it was he was working on, trying to remember how many stitches he had started out with.
“Listy.”
Lister did not look up at the curt greeting, knowing it was just Rimmer's way of compensating for the fact that his weightless feet did not make any sounds that would alert Lister to the fact that he was in the room. It certainly wasn't an invitation to start a conversation. Instead, he just nodded, concentrating on moving the stitches from one pin to the other.
Rimmer coughed. Out of the corner of his eye, Lister could just about see him cross the room to where his hologrammatic exercise bike had been faithfully simulated by Holly yet again. Not really knowing why, Lister turned his head to get a closer look. The ridiculous biking gear was back, he noticed. That day-glo yellow shirt and shorts so tight they could easily double as a sausage skins (that threatened to push Lister onto a train of thought he did not want to buy a ticket for); gloves in a color that had probably been in fashion when Rimmer was in his teens back on Io, but now put Lister more in mind of elderly women's raincoats, and to top it off; the helmet! Smegging hell - the helmet! The clothes could possibly be explained away as a psychological aid in having him look just like any other person working out, but who in their right mind wore a helmet on an exercise bike? What did he think could possibly happen? Come to that, he was already dead!
Lister knew better than to actually voice these observations. It was impossible to miss when Rimmer wanted to talk, because he'd just start rambling on about whatever it was he felt he needed to get off his chest. When Rimmer didn't want to talk, however, any attempts at conversation on Lister's part would be met with icy stares or sullen silence; frequently both. Now, all that could be heard was the clicking of Lister's pins, and the sound of Rimmer's measured and pointless breathing, as the soundless wheels made of light went round and round and round.
Those trousers really were amazingly tight. Lister tried not to look at them, most times, but, well, he was more bored than usual. As if being pregnant wasn't confusing and depressing enough, he could no longer drink or smoke, or eat what he liked. All the vending machines on the ship had been instructed not to provide him with cigarettes or alcohol, which vaguely offended him. Did Holly really think Lister was incapable of looking after the health of his embryos inside him? Yeah, he was a mindless, boozing slob, but he wouldn't hurt his own offspring, would he? So no lager, no cigarettes, no cigars. Not even beer milkshakes, because there were trace elements of alcohol in them. It all just added to the blandness; the colorlessness of his stupid, rotten life these days. Was it any wonder he was looking at Rimmer's bum?
Smeg, was he?
Click click click went the pins. Lister knitted faster, as though this would help push his head in another direction; away from those strong thighs, those moving muscles. It didn't. Rimmer was sweating now, sucking his lower lip in with the effort, riding faster. Lister knitted faster in response, the needles ramming into one another and his hands. He wasn't looking at them, after all. He was probably losing and adding stitches by the dozen, but he hoped it would turn out to be an even number, and thus work itself out in the end. He had a vague idea that this wasn't exactly how it worked, but there were other things on his mind right now. Glistening things. Lycra-covered things.
Rimmer exhaled with a heart-felt “ooh,” leaning further forwards, pushing his weight against the handle-bars. Lister's groin twitched. What the goited hell was wrong with him? Was it the hormones he was taking to compensate for what his body was unable to produce on its own in this universe? Kryten had said there would be side-effects, but Lister would never have imagined... dammit, he dropped another stitch. Rimmer was still going at it, his mouth a little open, his whole body pushing forwards, working hard. Lister was transfixed. He felt his own mouth open in response, needles still moving in his hands, leaning forward; breathing rapidly. And then Rimmer met his eyes.
For a moment, all Lister saw on Rimmer's face was absolute shock. But he did not look away. Neither of them did. Instead, they kept going, eyes locked, mouths open, and finally, Lister's kitting dropped into his lap, as Rimmer groaned with effort, pushing himself far beyond his usual limits, until, with a surprised gasp, he lost his balance, falling sideways off the bike and tumbling to the deck. His sensors kept him nicely level with the floor, preventing him from falling all the way through the decks and into space, but the fall couldn't hurt him, of course. He rose with lightning speed, his eyes screwed shut, mumbled “shower,” and bolted from the room.
Stunned, Lister fell back against his pillow. Smegging hormones. Had to be. His head was still spinning, as if Rimmer had been riding it, and not that bike. In a way, Lister supposed, he had.
He looked up again in time to see a color co-ordinated blur rush away from his locker, grinning ingratiatingly. “Hey bud!” The Cat slinked a little closer, carefully. “I wasn't about to go rooting through your locker looking for things. You're crazy - I would never do that! You're just seeing things.”
“I didn't say you were,” Lister said, a little baffled.
Cat beamed. “All right! Glad we cleared that up.” He sniffed the air around Lister, leaning in. “What's that you making?”
It was, Lister realized, a very good question. “Dunno. A cozy, I think.” He nodded, satisfied. He'd actually managed to finish the thing while Rimmer was doing... whatever the smeg he was doing by the end there. “See?” He held the item up for inspection.
Wrinkling his nose, Cat backed away just a little, frowning. “Well, to each their own, buddy. But I generally like to keep that bit of myself warm in other ways.” Raising an eyebrow, he sniffed suspiciously again, then shook his head, and left.
“What was that about?” Lister mumbled to himself, craning his head around to look at the cozy he was still holding up. He'd done a bad job of keeping track of stitches, all right. It started off sort of rounded, then kept the same width for a while, just bending a little at the middle, but as it reached the end, it widened out again into two sort of circular shapes, like... Lister stared at the pale pink construction. Then he ripped the pins out, and started unraveling it violently. He longed for proper blandness. He longed for normalcy that was actually normal. Not this. What the smeg, he thought, as the yarn filled his bunk, curled and twisted from having been knit, was he going to do with this?
In the corner of the room, the holographic bike quietly disappeared.
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister (implied).
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Don't own Red Dwarf, don't make money from it. Man, if only.
Spoilers: Parallel Universe
Notes: A little something while I work on meatier things. :) Based on an idea given to me by person or persons unknown - I have a list of suggestions written down, but have sadly lost the names somewhere along the way. Thank you, whoever you are! Written for the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
It was funny, Lister thought, snuggled up into his bunk with his knitting, how being stuck in space with a dead bunkmate, a senile computer and a man-shaped cat for a year or two could change a person. His definition of 'normal' had been warped beyond recognition. Cat people on roller-skates licking their laundry clean on top of a vending machine? Routine. Bits and pieces of the aforementioned bunkmate detaching at random and floating aimlessly around the hallways, with the rest of him in desperate pursuit? Humdrum. Anthropomorphic toasters hacking into the PA system and waking him up with urgent demands for toasted breakfast treats? Tedious and annoying. Getting impregnated by a female version of yourself from another dimension? All right, that one had been a bit of a surprise. Lister still wasn't entirely sure how he was going to deal with that. He'd gotten his needles and yarn out again with the vague idea of making some sort of baby-related thing, but so far he was just moving the needles around randomly. He wasn't really very good at knitting. Come to that - why was he knitting at all? He never had, before.
He really had changed.
It was the same with Rimmer, he could tell. The hologram was actually getting used to being incorporeal. Oh, he moaned and groaned about it to no end, but he did it while navigating carefully around objects to avoid them interfering with his projection. He had even learned to sit in chairs and lie in bed in such a way as to make it seem like he had mass and weight. Holly's pranks hardly fazed him anymore, which in turn seemed to annoy the computer to no end. Lister was all for that, after the whole Queeg thing.
They even ignored one another differently. Back when there were other people around, they would actively avoid one another, but when they couldn't, they would bicker and argue until they got sick of it, then glare angrily at one another for the rest of their enforced togetherness. Now? It was odd. They had the entire ship to themselves, yet they stuck together like some form of malevolent glue. Apparently human beings needed the company of other human beings, even if the only person on offer was someone you utterly despised. So they couldn't be apart, but they could still smegging well ignore one another. It had gotten to the point where they had constructed their own little individual pockets of privacy, having trained themselves not to notice anything else that was going on around them. Each of them would just go about their business as though the other man was not in the room at all. But the fact that he was - well - that made life a little less intolerable. Somehow.
Lister frowned at the confusing mass of hoops and pins and yarn in his hands. It was hard to tell where the mess of yarn ended and what would eventually become the finished product began. What was obvious was the color; a bland sort of light pink-ish beige. He sighed. It was the only skein he had left. He had no idea where they kept disappearing to. He kept them in his locker, but ever time he went in there, another one seemed to be missing. With a sigh, he started unwinding the loose threads from whatever it was he was working on, trying to remember how many stitches he had started out with.
“Listy.”
Lister did not look up at the curt greeting, knowing it was just Rimmer's way of compensating for the fact that his weightless feet did not make any sounds that would alert Lister to the fact that he was in the room. It certainly wasn't an invitation to start a conversation. Instead, he just nodded, concentrating on moving the stitches from one pin to the other.
Rimmer coughed. Out of the corner of his eye, Lister could just about see him cross the room to where his hologrammatic exercise bike had been faithfully simulated by Holly yet again. Not really knowing why, Lister turned his head to get a closer look. The ridiculous biking gear was back, he noticed. That day-glo yellow shirt and shorts so tight they could easily double as a sausage skins (that threatened to push Lister onto a train of thought he did not want to buy a ticket for); gloves in a color that had probably been in fashion when Rimmer was in his teens back on Io, but now put Lister more in mind of elderly women's raincoats, and to top it off; the helmet! Smegging hell - the helmet! The clothes could possibly be explained away as a psychological aid in having him look just like any other person working out, but who in their right mind wore a helmet on an exercise bike? What did he think could possibly happen? Come to that, he was already dead!
Lister knew better than to actually voice these observations. It was impossible to miss when Rimmer wanted to talk, because he'd just start rambling on about whatever it was he felt he needed to get off his chest. When Rimmer didn't want to talk, however, any attempts at conversation on Lister's part would be met with icy stares or sullen silence; frequently both. Now, all that could be heard was the clicking of Lister's pins, and the sound of Rimmer's measured and pointless breathing, as the soundless wheels made of light went round and round and round.
Those trousers really were amazingly tight. Lister tried not to look at them, most times, but, well, he was more bored than usual. As if being pregnant wasn't confusing and depressing enough, he could no longer drink or smoke, or eat what he liked. All the vending machines on the ship had been instructed not to provide him with cigarettes or alcohol, which vaguely offended him. Did Holly really think Lister was incapable of looking after the health of his embryos inside him? Yeah, he was a mindless, boozing slob, but he wouldn't hurt his own offspring, would he? So no lager, no cigarettes, no cigars. Not even beer milkshakes, because there were trace elements of alcohol in them. It all just added to the blandness; the colorlessness of his stupid, rotten life these days. Was it any wonder he was looking at Rimmer's bum?
Smeg, was he?
Click click click went the pins. Lister knitted faster, as though this would help push his head in another direction; away from those strong thighs, those moving muscles. It didn't. Rimmer was sweating now, sucking his lower lip in with the effort, riding faster. Lister knitted faster in response, the needles ramming into one another and his hands. He wasn't looking at them, after all. He was probably losing and adding stitches by the dozen, but he hoped it would turn out to be an even number, and thus work itself out in the end. He had a vague idea that this wasn't exactly how it worked, but there were other things on his mind right now. Glistening things. Lycra-covered things.
Rimmer exhaled with a heart-felt “ooh,” leaning further forwards, pushing his weight against the handle-bars. Lister's groin twitched. What the goited hell was wrong with him? Was it the hormones he was taking to compensate for what his body was unable to produce on its own in this universe? Kryten had said there would be side-effects, but Lister would never have imagined... dammit, he dropped another stitch. Rimmer was still going at it, his mouth a little open, his whole body pushing forwards, working hard. Lister was transfixed. He felt his own mouth open in response, needles still moving in his hands, leaning forward; breathing rapidly. And then Rimmer met his eyes.
For a moment, all Lister saw on Rimmer's face was absolute shock. But he did not look away. Neither of them did. Instead, they kept going, eyes locked, mouths open, and finally, Lister's kitting dropped into his lap, as Rimmer groaned with effort, pushing himself far beyond his usual limits, until, with a surprised gasp, he lost his balance, falling sideways off the bike and tumbling to the deck. His sensors kept him nicely level with the floor, preventing him from falling all the way through the decks and into space, but the fall couldn't hurt him, of course. He rose with lightning speed, his eyes screwed shut, mumbled “shower,” and bolted from the room.
Stunned, Lister fell back against his pillow. Smegging hormones. Had to be. His head was still spinning, as if Rimmer had been riding it, and not that bike. In a way, Lister supposed, he had.
He looked up again in time to see a color co-ordinated blur rush away from his locker, grinning ingratiatingly. “Hey bud!” The Cat slinked a little closer, carefully. “I wasn't about to go rooting through your locker looking for things. You're crazy - I would never do that! You're just seeing things.”
“I didn't say you were,” Lister said, a little baffled.
Cat beamed. “All right! Glad we cleared that up.” He sniffed the air around Lister, leaning in. “What's that you making?”
It was, Lister realized, a very good question. “Dunno. A cozy, I think.” He nodded, satisfied. He'd actually managed to finish the thing while Rimmer was doing... whatever the smeg he was doing by the end there. “See?” He held the item up for inspection.
Wrinkling his nose, Cat backed away just a little, frowning. “Well, to each their own, buddy. But I generally like to keep that bit of myself warm in other ways.” Raising an eyebrow, he sniffed suspiciously again, then shook his head, and left.
“What was that about?” Lister mumbled to himself, craning his head around to look at the cozy he was still holding up. He'd done a bad job of keeping track of stitches, all right. It started off sort of rounded, then kept the same width for a while, just bending a little at the middle, but as it reached the end, it widened out again into two sort of circular shapes, like... Lister stared at the pale pink construction. Then he ripped the pins out, and started unraveling it violently. He longed for proper blandness. He longed for normalcy that was actually normal. Not this. What the smeg, he thought, as the yarn filled his bunk, curled and twisted from having been knit, was he going to do with this?
In the corner of the room, the holographic bike quietly disappeared.