Fic: Storm - R/L - PG-13
Title: Storm
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG-13 for imagery of torture and related mature themes
Disclaimer: I don't own Red Dwarf, only a selection of DVDs. I spend more money on it than I make, because I make none at all.
Spoilers: Legion and Rimmerworld.
Notes: Not entirely happy with this - constructive critisism is welcome as always - here or elsewhere. Written as part of the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
The Cat said there was a storm brewing, so they decided to stay planetside for the night. They’d learned to trust his instincts; he was hardly ever wrong. They’d landed on the small, green planetoid for repairs, nothing serious, but requiring several hours of tedious work outdoor, which, according to Cat, was not an option they should be considering right now. Nor was taking off. The readings they’d gotten back from the scouters indicated that the storms on this planet got pretty rough in the upper layers of the atmosphere, and the chances of getting hit by lightning on the way up there was close to one hundred percent. Not that any of this would be likely to kill them, but you didn’t take chances with damaged three million year old spacecrafts.
It did seem gloomy, not just out of doors, but inside the ‘bug as well. Kryten couldn’t help but feel that Mr. Rimmer was in a particularly weird mood. The hologram tried to pretend he’d been entirely unaffected by his stay on Rimmerworld, but it was painfully obvious that this was far from the case. Kryten had been forced to remove all the mirrors and hide them inside the crate of “Earl Grey” tea that no one had shown any interest in. This had only helped momentarily though. Rimmer seemed to jump at every little noise, flinching when he saw his own shadow on the gritty metal walls. Right now he was brooding in the cockpit, running unnessecary diagnostics, and snapping at anyone who approached him - not that anyone but Kryten did.
The Cat skulked around nervously, jumping and hissing angrily at the smallest sound. He complained about smells that according to Kryten’s olfactory analyzers were non-existent, and had worn the same suit for almost six hours. Finally, he’d disappeared. Kryten had found him curled up into a ball on top of a storage locker, fast asleep. He hardly ever slept on top of tall objects anymore; this storm must really have gotten on his nerves. However, for the first time in months the supply situation was completely in the green, which usually made meal-times a cheerful affair. Frankly, Kryten was looking forward to it.
Lister had been keeping to himself, disappearing into the sleeping quarters with a sullen look, and only coming out once or twice for a quick smoke. He had been astonished to find that Rimmer - impossibly - seemed to have grown even more intolerant of smoking during his absence, and now got huffy if he knew Lister had been smoking at any point during the day, claiming he brought contaminated air into the sleeping quarters with him. In fact, Rimmer got huffy about quite a lot of things. He’d ranted for an hour when he woke to find his slippers facing the wrong way from the bed, and then complained that the shower took too long to heat up. He then proceeded to run out of hot water without telling Lister, who’d yelped like one of those annoying little lap-dogs he could never remember the name of, when the freezing water had hit him. Not for the first time, Lister had considered the fact that if they’d been friends, real friends, they could have showered together. Loads of people on the Dwarf had done. It saved on water, and it was rather nice, really. Of course, Rimmer would have taken any suggestion thereof as a sexual invite, and gone catatonic. Imagining Rimmer’s face as it’d look after such a suggestion, Lister sighed. There needn’t be anything sexual about it. It was just cleaning yerself. Soap, water and naked bodies. The image of him and Rimmer naked together lingered in his mind, and he shook his head to get rid of it. Showers with smeghead. Yeah, right.
Come dinner time, no one had showed up at the mid-section table. Kryten wrung his hands in despair. Everyone seemed to be falling apart at the seams, especially Mr. Rimmer. Kryten had seen him earlier, polishing his boots - a pointless exercise, as they were holographic, and could be buffed at a mental or computer command. He only did that when he was really on edge. The Cat was nowhere to be seen, and Mr. Lister had told him to “go away” when he’d knocked on the door to fetch him. And he hadn’t come out to apologize later. He always apologized! Kryten looked helplessly at the roast he had prepared, standing in the middle of a rather fetching display of fruits and nuts gathered from the last few planets they’d been on. There was even a batch of thick-cut chips, which Mr. Lister so enjoyed. Sighing deeply, he decided to leave it out. Clearly, this was not a situation food would help resolve.
Lister helped himself to a plate, and hurriedly threw about half the chips and a thick slice of roast on it, shrugged, and topped the display with a whole pineapple. He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d eat it, but he’d have fun trying to figure it out. If nothing else, he could use it as a football - there wasn’t much entertainment around here as it was. Clutching the plate to his chest, he was about to leave when he saw Rimmer approaching from the other side of the room. He was wearing a different uniform, Lister noted, wondering why. The padded red, not the padded blue. He nodded, carefully, expecting another tirade.
“Listy,” Rimmer said, looking at the table with an unreadable expression, his voice flat and even.
“Hungry?” Lister asked, hoping that wasn’t the wrong thing to say.
Rimmer frowned. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Just a bit peckish maybe?” Lister suggested.
Rimmer shook his head. “I don’t know,” he repeated, looking thoughtful.
Lister froze, as a horrible thought seeped into his mind. “Rimmer,” he said quietly, “when did you last eat?”
“I…” His eyes narrowed in confusion. “I don’t know. I can’t remember when they stopped feeding me. The hunger just sort of… Went away after a while.”
Lister dropped his plate on the table noisily, chips spilling over the side, the pineapple rolling quietly onto a dish of cashews. “They stopped feeding you?” His mind was a blank, as though it refused to contemplate the scenario presented to it.
Rimmer shrugged. “It wasn’t as bad as all that. It’s not like I need to eat.” He lowered his head, eyeing the various dishes oddly.
No, Lister thought, but your mind thinks you do. That’s why soft-light holograms are given simulated foods, because without them, they’d go insane with hunger. He looked at Rimmer standing there, not knowing what to make of the feast presented before him. Rimmer had passed beyond the point of insanity. He’d gotten so used to the hunger-pangs that he no longer felt them, the way neither of them now heard the quiet hum of Starbug’s engines in the background. Suddenly, something clicked into place in his mind. “Why are you soft-light?”
Without raising his eyes, Rimmer gave a quick smile. “Figured I might as well switch. I don’t need to eat anymore, so I might as well not, to save on supplies. So unless I need to touch something, what’s the point in being hard-light?”
Lister turned his eyes from his discarded plate to the dejected-looking red-green figure on the other side of the room. Picking up the dish of chips resolutely, he crossed the distance to the other man. “What if someone wants to touch you?” he suggested.
Rimmer tilted his head in suspicion. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
Raising an eyebrow, Lister picked up one of the golden, fried to perfection chips, and held it up in front of Rimmer’s face. “Like maybe if they wanted to offer you a chip?”
Rimmer regarded the stick of potato with some disdain. “I told you, I don’t need food anymore.”
“And I don’t need lager, but I still enjoy drinking it. Life isn’t just about what you need, Rimmer; it’s about what you want. ‘Course,” he tossed the chip into his own mouth, and chewed noisily, “sometimes what you need and what you want are the same, and that’s where the fun begins.” He grinned widely.
There was a slight shimmer in the air surrounding Rimmer, and he slipped softly in and out of focus. Presently, his uniform was blue.
“That’s more like it,” Lister cheered, holding out the plate eagerly. “Go on, then!”
With barely noticeably trembling fingers, Rimmer selected one of the larger specimen, and picked it up with his thumb and forefinger. Eyeing Lister, he hesitantly moved it towards his lips and over them. The moment his mouth closed, his eyes opened wide, and he stumbled backwards, grappling for a chair. Lister moved forwards, ready to help, but Rimmer waved him away, almost violently. He sat there for a while, quietly, just breathing. “Bastard,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“You’re a smegging bastard, you know that, Lister?” Rising from his chair, he shot the other man a glance of pure hatred, peppered with disgust. And before Lister could reply, the hologram was half way up the stairs to the sleeping-quarters.
His mind a confusing, angry mixture of emotions, Lister untied his locks from the tight leather strap he had kept them in, and shook them loose, as though the action would help him think. It didn’t. He kicked the table in frustration and chewed a couple of fingernails, before giving in to the inevitable. They just couldn’t go on like this, he thought, climbing the stairs two steps at a time. There was air to be cleared.
“Go away,” Rimmer shouted, even before Lister had reached the door.
“Smeg off,” he replied, hitting the opening-button with his fist, and yelling his clearance-number. When the doors did open, he locked them with the same, angry punch, and swiveled round, expecting to see a smug-faced Rimmer lounging on his bunk. The bunk, however, was empty. Instead, he found Rimmer leaning against the wall, arms crossed, eyes turned downwards.
“Right,” Rimmer said, with a quiet anger that caught Lister somewhat off-guard, “it was stupid of me to suppose you’d respect a person’s privacy.” He looked up briefly, that same hatred glowing in his eyes.
“I was trying to help,” Lister protested.
“Of course you were. That’s what you always do. You try to help; you try to cheer people up; you try to make things better. You push your stupid little up-turned nose into everything, and expect them to turn up roses. Well, did it ever occur to you, Listy, that some things can’t be made better?”
Lister considered this. “No,” he said, easily.
“Alright then.” Rimmer paused. “I was locked up in complete darkness for so many hundreds of years that forgot there was a difference between night and day. Every once in a while my captors would try to kill me. It never worked, but that didn’t stop them trying. They were quite inventive. Do you know what garroting is? You might think you do, but trust me, you don’t. My remote projection-unit wouldn’t let me switch to soft-light either, even when my body wasn’t… Well. There’s no need to dwell on that. I ‘healed’ the moment they removed whichever implement they were torturing me with. I didn’t really think about escaping from the actual prison much. What I mostly wanted to escape from was the pain. When the hunger died, that helped a little.”
Lister slid down into one of the folding chairs, trying not to make any noise. Rimmer cleared his throat, quietly.
“They stopped sending other prisoners down there. I think they must have forgotten about me. I tried to find a way out, but there was no way to open the door, and nothing to fashion into tools to break the walls down. I tried using my hands, but the pain got to be too much; I couldn’t manage to block it out. Besides, where would I go? If anyone, if any single person saw me, I’d be sent right back.”
It was the fact that his voice, throughout the story, was entirely even and calm, that scared Lister, scared him more than the actual words. “But you knew we were coming for ya… Right?”
“I only barely remembered you existed. In the end, all I had were those worry-balls. Anything else I had no way of knowing was real. It was just me, those metal balls and a tiny, dark room. That was the universe. That was it.” Rimmer’s voice was still strong and steady, but he had moved towards the chair opposite Lister, seating himself somewhat awkwardly. “Before I got to that point though, I used to dream about food and drink. I’d make up elaborate fantasies, complete with menus, place-settings, coordinated napkin and table-cloth colors and floral centerpieces. I’d think of a different meal every night, challenging myself not to repeat a course or a beverage.” He swallowed. “Then I realized that was what was keeping me hungry; that just a hint or memory of taste would start the hunger pains back up again, so I stopped.”
Lister, remembering the chips, shifted uncomfortably. For the first time in a long while, he was completely dumb-struck. Rimmer leaned forwards, seeming to dare Lister into meeting his eyes. And Lister did try, although what was to follow made it really difficult.
“I needed something to occupy my mind, so I started day-dreaming about sex instead. I went through everyone I had any sort of intimate relationships with, which didn’t take long. Then I thought about everyone I’d lusted after, but never got. That took considerably longer. Pleasant though this was, in the end, all it reminded me of was that I’d never see them again; that I’d probably never see anyone again. It was like the hunger; why should I torture myself with the idea that someone would actually want to touch me, when I knew that was never going to happen, even if I ever was rescued?”
Lister’s mouth was half-open now. He saw the pain in Rimmer’s face, saw the hurt and loneliness and horror all pent up inside him like a heavy cloud ready to burst.
“Now then,” Rimmer said slowly, “can you fix that, eh? Can you un-do that; make it all better?” His mouth was a contemptuous sneer, his nose twitching nervously.
“I can’t,” Lister said, simply. “I can’t un-do it.” Rimmer looked down, a mix of grim satisfaction and gloom saturating his features. Lister wasn’t finished, however. “But I can do this.” So saying, he took Rimmer’s hand in both of his, and squeezed it tightly. Rimmer looked down at the hand as though it had been chopped off, or slathered in something unspeakable, but then, ever so slowly, he seemed to relax.
Above the ‘bug, clouds had gathered ominously. The first claps of quiet thunder could be heard off in the distance. On top of his closet, the Cat stirred in his sleep, his dreams disrupted. A tiny, almost insubstantial raindrop fell on the right forwards landing-leg, running down it, caressing the metal until it had dispersed itself into nothingness. Then came a sudden quiet, a startling, eerie absence of noise that would have seemed, had there been any observers, to go on for way too long.
Then the rain fell.
Later that evening, Kryten was on his way to collect the week’s laundry, when he passed by the mid-section table. He stopped, running a brief diagnostic on his optical sensors. No error was reported. How extraordinary. He approached the table curiously. Indeed, most of the food seemed to have gone missing. He frowned. He hadn’t noticed anyone sitting down to eat there, and consuming that much food must have taken quite some time. Perhaps Mr. Lister had taken it with him into his quarters? Yes, that must be it. However… He frowned, noticing the unused cutlery. Oh well, he was certain there must be some reasonable explanation. Content that the food he had prepared had at least been consumed, he began to collect the empty bowls. There was an unexpected thumping of feet, as a wildly grinning Lister emerged at the top of the stairs, covered only in a maroon bath-towel. There were several suspicious red marks on the side of his neck.
“Hiya, Krytes,” he said breathlessly.
“Good evening, Mr. Lister. Erm… I trust everything is alright?” He eyed the marks with some alarm.
“Yeah, perfectly, man.” Lister assured him, scratching his head nonchalantly. “D’you know if we’ve any brown sauce?” he asked, craning his neck, trying to see into the kitchen area.
“I believe so, Sir,” Kryten said, shuffling off to retrieve the unopened bottle. “But I thought you didn’t like brown sauce,” he noted, handing it over into Lister’s eager hands.
“I don’t,” Lister grinned, grasping the bottle as though it was a fine vintage of champagne. “Ta!” And with that, he disappeared back up the stairs.
Kryten stared after him for a few moments, then shrugged. Outside, the thrumming of the raindrops on the hull slowly built up into another brilliant crescendo.
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG-13 for imagery of torture and related mature themes
Disclaimer: I don't own Red Dwarf, only a selection of DVDs. I spend more money on it than I make, because I make none at all.
Spoilers: Legion and Rimmerworld.
Notes: Not entirely happy with this - constructive critisism is welcome as always - here or elsewhere. Written as part of the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
The Cat said there was a storm brewing, so they decided to stay planetside for the night. They’d learned to trust his instincts; he was hardly ever wrong. They’d landed on the small, green planetoid for repairs, nothing serious, but requiring several hours of tedious work outdoor, which, according to Cat, was not an option they should be considering right now. Nor was taking off. The readings they’d gotten back from the scouters indicated that the storms on this planet got pretty rough in the upper layers of the atmosphere, and the chances of getting hit by lightning on the way up there was close to one hundred percent. Not that any of this would be likely to kill them, but you didn’t take chances with damaged three million year old spacecrafts.
It did seem gloomy, not just out of doors, but inside the ‘bug as well. Kryten couldn’t help but feel that Mr. Rimmer was in a particularly weird mood. The hologram tried to pretend he’d been entirely unaffected by his stay on Rimmerworld, but it was painfully obvious that this was far from the case. Kryten had been forced to remove all the mirrors and hide them inside the crate of “Earl Grey” tea that no one had shown any interest in. This had only helped momentarily though. Rimmer seemed to jump at every little noise, flinching when he saw his own shadow on the gritty metal walls. Right now he was brooding in the cockpit, running unnessecary diagnostics, and snapping at anyone who approached him - not that anyone but Kryten did.
The Cat skulked around nervously, jumping and hissing angrily at the smallest sound. He complained about smells that according to Kryten’s olfactory analyzers were non-existent, and had worn the same suit for almost six hours. Finally, he’d disappeared. Kryten had found him curled up into a ball on top of a storage locker, fast asleep. He hardly ever slept on top of tall objects anymore; this storm must really have gotten on his nerves. However, for the first time in months the supply situation was completely in the green, which usually made meal-times a cheerful affair. Frankly, Kryten was looking forward to it.
Lister had been keeping to himself, disappearing into the sleeping quarters with a sullen look, and only coming out once or twice for a quick smoke. He had been astonished to find that Rimmer - impossibly - seemed to have grown even more intolerant of smoking during his absence, and now got huffy if he knew Lister had been smoking at any point during the day, claiming he brought contaminated air into the sleeping quarters with him. In fact, Rimmer got huffy about quite a lot of things. He’d ranted for an hour when he woke to find his slippers facing the wrong way from the bed, and then complained that the shower took too long to heat up. He then proceeded to run out of hot water without telling Lister, who’d yelped like one of those annoying little lap-dogs he could never remember the name of, when the freezing water had hit him. Not for the first time, Lister had considered the fact that if they’d been friends, real friends, they could have showered together. Loads of people on the Dwarf had done. It saved on water, and it was rather nice, really. Of course, Rimmer would have taken any suggestion thereof as a sexual invite, and gone catatonic. Imagining Rimmer’s face as it’d look after such a suggestion, Lister sighed. There needn’t be anything sexual about it. It was just cleaning yerself. Soap, water and naked bodies. The image of him and Rimmer naked together lingered in his mind, and he shook his head to get rid of it. Showers with smeghead. Yeah, right.
Come dinner time, no one had showed up at the mid-section table. Kryten wrung his hands in despair. Everyone seemed to be falling apart at the seams, especially Mr. Rimmer. Kryten had seen him earlier, polishing his boots - a pointless exercise, as they were holographic, and could be buffed at a mental or computer command. He only did that when he was really on edge. The Cat was nowhere to be seen, and Mr. Lister had told him to “go away” when he’d knocked on the door to fetch him. And he hadn’t come out to apologize later. He always apologized! Kryten looked helplessly at the roast he had prepared, standing in the middle of a rather fetching display of fruits and nuts gathered from the last few planets they’d been on. There was even a batch of thick-cut chips, which Mr. Lister so enjoyed. Sighing deeply, he decided to leave it out. Clearly, this was not a situation food would help resolve.
Lister helped himself to a plate, and hurriedly threw about half the chips and a thick slice of roast on it, shrugged, and topped the display with a whole pineapple. He wasn’t entirely sure how he’d eat it, but he’d have fun trying to figure it out. If nothing else, he could use it as a football - there wasn’t much entertainment around here as it was. Clutching the plate to his chest, he was about to leave when he saw Rimmer approaching from the other side of the room. He was wearing a different uniform, Lister noted, wondering why. The padded red, not the padded blue. He nodded, carefully, expecting another tirade.
“Listy,” Rimmer said, looking at the table with an unreadable expression, his voice flat and even.
“Hungry?” Lister asked, hoping that wasn’t the wrong thing to say.
Rimmer frowned. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Just a bit peckish maybe?” Lister suggested.
Rimmer shook his head. “I don’t know,” he repeated, looking thoughtful.
Lister froze, as a horrible thought seeped into his mind. “Rimmer,” he said quietly, “when did you last eat?”
“I…” His eyes narrowed in confusion. “I don’t know. I can’t remember when they stopped feeding me. The hunger just sort of… Went away after a while.”
Lister dropped his plate on the table noisily, chips spilling over the side, the pineapple rolling quietly onto a dish of cashews. “They stopped feeding you?” His mind was a blank, as though it refused to contemplate the scenario presented to it.
Rimmer shrugged. “It wasn’t as bad as all that. It’s not like I need to eat.” He lowered his head, eyeing the various dishes oddly.
No, Lister thought, but your mind thinks you do. That’s why soft-light holograms are given simulated foods, because without them, they’d go insane with hunger. He looked at Rimmer standing there, not knowing what to make of the feast presented before him. Rimmer had passed beyond the point of insanity. He’d gotten so used to the hunger-pangs that he no longer felt them, the way neither of them now heard the quiet hum of Starbug’s engines in the background. Suddenly, something clicked into place in his mind. “Why are you soft-light?”
Without raising his eyes, Rimmer gave a quick smile. “Figured I might as well switch. I don’t need to eat anymore, so I might as well not, to save on supplies. So unless I need to touch something, what’s the point in being hard-light?”
Lister turned his eyes from his discarded plate to the dejected-looking red-green figure on the other side of the room. Picking up the dish of chips resolutely, he crossed the distance to the other man. “What if someone wants to touch you?” he suggested.
Rimmer tilted his head in suspicion. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
Raising an eyebrow, Lister picked up one of the golden, fried to perfection chips, and held it up in front of Rimmer’s face. “Like maybe if they wanted to offer you a chip?”
Rimmer regarded the stick of potato with some disdain. “I told you, I don’t need food anymore.”
“And I don’t need lager, but I still enjoy drinking it. Life isn’t just about what you need, Rimmer; it’s about what you want. ‘Course,” he tossed the chip into his own mouth, and chewed noisily, “sometimes what you need and what you want are the same, and that’s where the fun begins.” He grinned widely.
There was a slight shimmer in the air surrounding Rimmer, and he slipped softly in and out of focus. Presently, his uniform was blue.
“That’s more like it,” Lister cheered, holding out the plate eagerly. “Go on, then!”
With barely noticeably trembling fingers, Rimmer selected one of the larger specimen, and picked it up with his thumb and forefinger. Eyeing Lister, he hesitantly moved it towards his lips and over them. The moment his mouth closed, his eyes opened wide, and he stumbled backwards, grappling for a chair. Lister moved forwards, ready to help, but Rimmer waved him away, almost violently. He sat there for a while, quietly, just breathing. “Bastard,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“You’re a smegging bastard, you know that, Lister?” Rising from his chair, he shot the other man a glance of pure hatred, peppered with disgust. And before Lister could reply, the hologram was half way up the stairs to the sleeping-quarters.
His mind a confusing, angry mixture of emotions, Lister untied his locks from the tight leather strap he had kept them in, and shook them loose, as though the action would help him think. It didn’t. He kicked the table in frustration and chewed a couple of fingernails, before giving in to the inevitable. They just couldn’t go on like this, he thought, climbing the stairs two steps at a time. There was air to be cleared.
“Go away,” Rimmer shouted, even before Lister had reached the door.
“Smeg off,” he replied, hitting the opening-button with his fist, and yelling his clearance-number. When the doors did open, he locked them with the same, angry punch, and swiveled round, expecting to see a smug-faced Rimmer lounging on his bunk. The bunk, however, was empty. Instead, he found Rimmer leaning against the wall, arms crossed, eyes turned downwards.
“Right,” Rimmer said, with a quiet anger that caught Lister somewhat off-guard, “it was stupid of me to suppose you’d respect a person’s privacy.” He looked up briefly, that same hatred glowing in his eyes.
“I was trying to help,” Lister protested.
“Of course you were. That’s what you always do. You try to help; you try to cheer people up; you try to make things better. You push your stupid little up-turned nose into everything, and expect them to turn up roses. Well, did it ever occur to you, Listy, that some things can’t be made better?”
Lister considered this. “No,” he said, easily.
“Alright then.” Rimmer paused. “I was locked up in complete darkness for so many hundreds of years that forgot there was a difference between night and day. Every once in a while my captors would try to kill me. It never worked, but that didn’t stop them trying. They were quite inventive. Do you know what garroting is? You might think you do, but trust me, you don’t. My remote projection-unit wouldn’t let me switch to soft-light either, even when my body wasn’t… Well. There’s no need to dwell on that. I ‘healed’ the moment they removed whichever implement they were torturing me with. I didn’t really think about escaping from the actual prison much. What I mostly wanted to escape from was the pain. When the hunger died, that helped a little.”
Lister slid down into one of the folding chairs, trying not to make any noise. Rimmer cleared his throat, quietly.
“They stopped sending other prisoners down there. I think they must have forgotten about me. I tried to find a way out, but there was no way to open the door, and nothing to fashion into tools to break the walls down. I tried using my hands, but the pain got to be too much; I couldn’t manage to block it out. Besides, where would I go? If anyone, if any single person saw me, I’d be sent right back.”
It was the fact that his voice, throughout the story, was entirely even and calm, that scared Lister, scared him more than the actual words. “But you knew we were coming for ya… Right?”
“I only barely remembered you existed. In the end, all I had were those worry-balls. Anything else I had no way of knowing was real. It was just me, those metal balls and a tiny, dark room. That was the universe. That was it.” Rimmer’s voice was still strong and steady, but he had moved towards the chair opposite Lister, seating himself somewhat awkwardly. “Before I got to that point though, I used to dream about food and drink. I’d make up elaborate fantasies, complete with menus, place-settings, coordinated napkin and table-cloth colors and floral centerpieces. I’d think of a different meal every night, challenging myself not to repeat a course or a beverage.” He swallowed. “Then I realized that was what was keeping me hungry; that just a hint or memory of taste would start the hunger pains back up again, so I stopped.”
Lister, remembering the chips, shifted uncomfortably. For the first time in a long while, he was completely dumb-struck. Rimmer leaned forwards, seeming to dare Lister into meeting his eyes. And Lister did try, although what was to follow made it really difficult.
“I needed something to occupy my mind, so I started day-dreaming about sex instead. I went through everyone I had any sort of intimate relationships with, which didn’t take long. Then I thought about everyone I’d lusted after, but never got. That took considerably longer. Pleasant though this was, in the end, all it reminded me of was that I’d never see them again; that I’d probably never see anyone again. It was like the hunger; why should I torture myself with the idea that someone would actually want to touch me, when I knew that was never going to happen, even if I ever was rescued?”
Lister’s mouth was half-open now. He saw the pain in Rimmer’s face, saw the hurt and loneliness and horror all pent up inside him like a heavy cloud ready to burst.
“Now then,” Rimmer said slowly, “can you fix that, eh? Can you un-do that; make it all better?” His mouth was a contemptuous sneer, his nose twitching nervously.
“I can’t,” Lister said, simply. “I can’t un-do it.” Rimmer looked down, a mix of grim satisfaction and gloom saturating his features. Lister wasn’t finished, however. “But I can do this.” So saying, he took Rimmer’s hand in both of his, and squeezed it tightly. Rimmer looked down at the hand as though it had been chopped off, or slathered in something unspeakable, but then, ever so slowly, he seemed to relax.
Above the ‘bug, clouds had gathered ominously. The first claps of quiet thunder could be heard off in the distance. On top of his closet, the Cat stirred in his sleep, his dreams disrupted. A tiny, almost insubstantial raindrop fell on the right forwards landing-leg, running down it, caressing the metal until it had dispersed itself into nothingness. Then came a sudden quiet, a startling, eerie absence of noise that would have seemed, had there been any observers, to go on for way too long.
Then the rain fell.
Later that evening, Kryten was on his way to collect the week’s laundry, when he passed by the mid-section table. He stopped, running a brief diagnostic on his optical sensors. No error was reported. How extraordinary. He approached the table curiously. Indeed, most of the food seemed to have gone missing. He frowned. He hadn’t noticed anyone sitting down to eat there, and consuming that much food must have taken quite some time. Perhaps Mr. Lister had taken it with him into his quarters? Yes, that must be it. However… He frowned, noticing the unused cutlery. Oh well, he was certain there must be some reasonable explanation. Content that the food he had prepared had at least been consumed, he began to collect the empty bowls. There was an unexpected thumping of feet, as a wildly grinning Lister emerged at the top of the stairs, covered only in a maroon bath-towel. There were several suspicious red marks on the side of his neck.
“Hiya, Krytes,” he said breathlessly.
“Good evening, Mr. Lister. Erm… I trust everything is alright?” He eyed the marks with some alarm.
“Yeah, perfectly, man.” Lister assured him, scratching his head nonchalantly. “D’you know if we’ve any brown sauce?” he asked, craning his neck, trying to see into the kitchen area.
“I believe so, Sir,” Kryten said, shuffling off to retrieve the unopened bottle. “But I thought you didn’t like brown sauce,” he noted, handing it over into Lister’s eager hands.
“I don’t,” Lister grinned, grasping the bottle as though it was a fine vintage of champagne. “Ta!” And with that, he disappeared back up the stairs.
Kryten stared after him for a few moments, then shrugged. Outside, the thrumming of the raindrops on the hull slowly built up into another brilliant crescendo.