The city didn’t really have a name, as such. The nearest translation Cat had been able to come up with was “This Place Right Here.” It was a Cat city; the only one they’d found since the one in the cargo hold back on Red Dwarf, and like that city, this one was also abandoned. Frankly, it didn’t look very different at all, despite having been built only fifty years ago - according the readings Kryten had taken. The novelty of exploration soon faded for most of them because, well, there was very little actual novelty around. The houses were identical, small, and dull. There was no public art - and no private art, either. The Cat, to Lister’s astonishment, showed the least interest of all of them, having retreated into the first house he saw for an after-breakfast nap. Oh well, Lister reasoned; maybe curiosity wasn’t considered a good survival trait for Cats?

Lister, however, was enthralled. He was thrilled whenever he recognized something from a picture he had seen in The Book of Cloister, even when it turned out, in fact, to be something completely different in the human and Cat worlds. He whooped when he thought he had managed to read the street-signs correctly, even though there were precious few ways of being certain he’d gotten it right. Rimmer rolled his eyes at Lister’s enthusiasm, but Lister didn’t care. Even though he wished they didn’t think he was their God, he felt somehow vaguely responsible for Catkind. He had tried to learn as much about them as possible, and this was the first time he had been able to really put that knowledge to the test.

It was early evening by the time he found The Room. It looked just like the houses around it, but Lister could smell that the sign above the door stated just that. A house that was called a room. Cats were strange, Lister thought. He took a few steps back, looking at it thoughtfully. The door was open just enough to allow him to peek into the interior. Slowly, a smile crept across his features, and he stepped inside.

“Oi, Rimmer,” he yelled enthusiastically, “come have a look at this!”

One will always find a lot of mirrors around a Cat City; the ones in this city were grimy with abandonment, but Rimmer had nonetheless stopped to check that his iridescent blue uniform was neat, his hair parted correctly, and that his H was on straight. It was a rather silly exercise, to Lister’s way of thinking, since the H was immovably affixed, but he twiddled it from imaginary askew-ness to imaginary straightness with his lean fingers nonetheless.

"What is it, Listy? You've found the communal litter box?"

Lister poked his head back out. “Don't be like that, man! Come on, ye have to see this!”

Rimmer scrunched up his face in annoyance and looked over to the house that was a room. Lister was just barely visible inside the place, his eager chipmunk cheeks pouched over a broad grin. Rimmer cast about for something he could claim was keeping him, and could find nothing. He heaved a great sigh, as if he were being pulled away from something terribly important, which he was not, and walked over to the door. "Fine, what is it?"

Lister stepped back, into the gloom of the unlit room. “Erm... It's over here. You need to get in close, like.” He hoped the hologram wouldn’t see the crossed fingers behind his back.

Rimmer stuck his impressive nose uncertainly into the house that was a room. "Lister, this is a building built by Cats. It's probably held together with bits of twine and saliva. It could come crashing down on your head any second." As his eyes adjusted, he could start to make out Lister’s shape.

“What? Nah, you'd think they'd risk getting mortar all over their latest fashions?” The shape that was resolving itself into Lister patted the wall he was standing beside. “Solid, this!”

Rimmer jumped, pulling his head back out of the room, expecting it to come crashing down. The bloody impulsive goit! "Listy!"

Lister rolled his eyes at Rimmer. What was he expecting; that the house would fall apart at a single poke? This was turning out to be a lot more work than it might be worth in the end, Lister sighed to himself. Oh please, let it be worth it.

Lister’s continuing non-buried-under-ceiling-ness was an unspoken dare. Rimmer grimaced and walked into the house that was a room very, very nervously. He craned his neck upwards, checking the ceiling for signs of failing structural integrity. This meant he was looking in completely the wrong direction to note that the door was swinging rapidly shut behind him. He jumped as it slammed loudly. "Bloody hell!" he squeaked.

As the door slammed shut with a pleasing finality, Lister couldn’t help but jump as well. Losing his balance somewhat, he clung to the nearest thing at hand, which happened to be Rimmer. When he noticed, he let go, feeling the urge to wipe his hands on the legs of his overalls, for some reason. The irate look on Rimmer’s face did not invite intimacy, which didn’t exactly bode well. “Erm…” He looked around in the dimness. There was nothing else to see. No, nothing to see... “Let’s go.”

"You know what would have been better than going, Listy?" Rimmer hissed, testily, straightening his uniform from where Lister had creased it. There were disadvantages to corporeality, he groused internally. "Not bloody coming in in the first place! I seem to remember recommending that course of action!"

“‘Yeah... Well... It's an old place, innit,” Lister replied, lamely. “The door probably just… jammed.. or something.” He tried to sound convincing, but knew he wasn’t making a very good job of it. He walked over to the door, and made a perfunctory show of trying to open it. It didn’t budge.

Rimmer looked around the dim room, nervously wondering what might be lurking in the unlit corners. He stood behind Lister with his hands on the other man’s shoulders, trying to conceal the fact that he was as jumpy as hell. "Er, Listy - maybe I should try the door. And you take up the rear, OK?"

Lister felt the light touch of Rimmer’s hands, but shrugged them away. They were distracting, and right now he was in the middle of a performance. “What are you doing, man? I can't move my arms right,” he mumbled.

Rimmer whipped his hands away, then seemed to be confused about what to do with them. He tried to strike a confident pose as he looked around the room, but gave it up and turned back to Lister. Lister pulled at the door, which was hard, given that there was nothing to hold on to. Spitting in his hands, he braced his feet and tried harder, putting his back into it. Spit or not, his hands slipped, and he gave an incoherent curse as he fell back against Rimmer. Rimmer staggered backwards with Lister in his arms.

"Stop gadding about, Lister!"

Lister righted himself and started to dust off his legs. He didn’t really know why, as they were already full of the dust and dirty from the city outside. Just… Something about the situation made him want to clean up. The notion shook him a little. “That didn't seem to work.”

Rimmer lifted his chin and walked to the door, peering at it intently. “Let me have a go at it, Listy. Arnie J is the man for getting a door open. A regular old door-opener I was back in school; the doorman, they called me.”

“Were ya, now?” Lister deadpanned, crossing his arms over his chest. He leaned back against the wall to enjoy the show.

"They said I could get it to swing both ways,” Rimmer said, with pride. Lister made a noise like a dog trying to breathe with its mouth stuck in its food bowl. He banged his head against the wall, and tried to glue his mouth shut with a grin.

“Terribly flattering, but it was only competence." He straightened, narrowing his eyes. "They always giggled when they said that, for some reason." He shook his head and latched his fingers into the crevice between the door and the jamb, yanking back on the door. It stubbornly remained closed.

Lister watched Rimmer fight the closed door. He realized he’d never really noticed the other man’s arms before. Now that he had, he couldn’t take his eyes off them. He knew what they looked like, of course, he’d seen them often enough. Although Rimmer tried his best to avoid other people seeing him in various stages of undress, and even shied from looking at himself in a mirror without at least two layers of clothing, there were always t-shirts and his bicycle kit, and… His mind moved, involuntarily, to the psi-moon. He started to wish he wasn’t wearing loose fitting trousers.

Rimmer stood back and crossed his arms. He could feel a sulk coming on. "What was so bloody special about this room again?"

Lister was still watching those arms moving, only barely conscious that a question had been asked. “Oh... Er... What? Look, maybe we should try something else.”

"Something else? Have a party that brings the house down?" Perish the thought that Lister would have a useful suggestion.

This wasn’t going well, Lister thought. He realized he might not have thought this through all that well. Or rather, he’d forgotten that it was Rimmer he was dealing with here. Which was sort of the point, but then… He looked around restlessly, trying to avoid, in essence, the writing on the wall. “Well, there's... I thought…” He paused, looking around even more desperately.

"You thought?" Rimmer asked, snidely. "I admire that you're branching out, Lister, but is this really the time to try new things?”

“Aha!” It was the most unconvincing ‘aha’ in the history of ‘aha-ing’. And that included Petersen’s drunken impression of Morten Harket at the last ever ship’s karaoke night. “This sign here, yeah?” He pointed at a small square that reeked of something unspeakable. “It's on the wall here, smell it? Right where I'm pointing.”

Rimmer looked to where Lister was pointing. "Sign? I don't sniff Cat." He sighed and gave it a try, his cavernous nostrils slurping up a rather grotty scent. His face twisted. "They all smell the same to me."

Lister nodded, sagely. “Yeah, they kind of do at first.” They didn’t, of course, but he had to do something to keep Rimmer from going into hysterics. Somehow, he didn’t think insulting the other man’s demonstrably laughable foreign language skills would help. “I’ve never seen one inside a house before, though.”

Rimmer stepped back. "I can understand that. They smell vile. Almost as bad as your sock basket."

Lister tried his best to sound offended. That’s it, keep him sparring. “Eh, now!”

Rimmer sighed, annoyed that Lister was privy to information he was not. "Fine, curry-breath, tell me what it says!” He paused, considering. "And please tell me it says, 'Exit'!"

Lister stood on his toes and sniffed at the sign, thus actually reading it carefully for the first time. The thing about Cat writing is that, being made up of smells, it made a bee-line to your brain the way no other writing could. The message hit Lister’s brain like a zero-G footballer scoring a winning touch-up. He reeled. No. This had to be wrong. This had got to be smegging wrong! “Well...”

Rimmer stood, tapping his foot, waiting for a sentence to follow the ‘Well.’ A pause meandered up, shagged, sat there pregnant, delivered a little pause, and fled.

“No, “ Lister said, finally. He read it again. And again. Then once more for good measure. Then another time, just in case he’d been wrong the first four times. It stubbornly remained exactly the same.

Rimmer sighed. "Fine. Tell me that it doesn't say, 'Welcome to instant death'."

Lister shook his head, and said, in an oddly quiet voice, “It doesn't say that, either.” Sixth time was not the charm either. All he could think was that Rimmer was going to smegging kill him!

Rimmer nodded. "Brilliant! Now that our possibilities are bracketed..." He trailed off, inviting another pause. He desperately hoped this one would stay celibate.

“It does say something about opening the door, though.” Lister offered. At least that was true. Lucky number seven? He sniffed it again, all his fingers and toes crossed.

Rimmer paced back and forth across the narrow room. His panic at being trapped in a strange, dark Cat room had not ebbed one bit, and Lister’s hedging was only putting him more on edge. He whirled on his boot-tip and glanced at Lister with every pass; the other man continued to sniff intently at the sign. Rimmer did this exactly ten times, then stopped and shouted, "Are you going to tell me, or am I going to have to pull your underwear out through your esophagus?"

Lister looked back at him, images of underpants and entrails filling his mind. “Easy now! This takes time, you know! I'm not exactly the fastest reader in the world, and that's when I've got actual letters to work with. Cat signs are more... Fluid like.” Fluid-like? He mentally slapped himself. What did that even mean?

"Slurp down that sign pronto, Listy," Rimmer growled, continuing to pace. Lister rolled his eyes and sighed as he continued to sniff at the sign. Suddenly, he seemed to relax. Rimmer stopped pacing and stared. “Listy?”

Lister cleared his throat and glanced nervously at Rimmer. It had to be wrong. He’d read it at least two dozen times, but, well, it just had to be wrong, hadn’t it? Yes? Yes. He shook hands with himself, glad to have come to an agreement. “Er.... You absolutely sure you want to know what it says?”

"Lister!!" Rimmer shouted. "Spit it out, you goit!"

“Yer not gonna like it,” Lister warned. This was certainly true, either way.

Rimmer flung his hands open, indicating his pacing area. "As opposed to how much I am just loving standing here waiting for you to tell me how to get the smeg out of here?"

Lister backed away from the sign, towards Rimmer, as though that was somehow going to help. “Well... basically... we have to do something.”

Rimmer raised his hands to Lister’s neck level as the space-bum continued to back towards him. "I hope it's going to be me throttling you. Because I'm just about ready to do that."

Facts first. The safe ones. Lister went into lecture-mode. “Well, in order to get out… there's a sensor up there somewhere,” he pointed to the top of the door, “and that'll pick up our movements, and the proper movement combinations will open the door.”

"And?" Rimmer asked, wishing Lister would stop hedging.

“So we just stand over... well, more or less over there…” he pointed to a spot close to the center of the room in one dimension, and skewed towards the door in the other dimension, ”And we... erm...” his voice moved into deadpan, “Kiss.”

Another tart of a pause came sashaying by and got itself pregnant. The other pause was thrilled and delighted its offspring would now have a playmate.

Rimmer swallowed. "Are you sure it doesn't say 'Welcome to instant death'?"

“I said you wouldn't like it. Why do you think it was taking me that long?”

Rimmer shook his head at the absurdity of it. "I don’t buy it. Why the smeg did Cats make a building with a snog exit?"

“Who knows?? They're Cats!” Lister shouted, frustrated. “They clean their clothes with their own tongues!”

Rimmer backed away from Lister. "My. Clothes. Are. Perfectly. Clean." Lister wrinkled his nose in disgust. Rimmer might look appetizing, but his clothes sure didn’t. “I wasn't offering.”

Rimmer bit his lip. "This is ludicrous. Is this the most complicated form of date rape the universe has yet seen?"

“Better than a whack on the head with a winch, eh?” Lister grinned, and immediately wished he hadn’t, as his grin froze. Yeah, good one, Dave, that’ll set the mood right.

Rimmer started to retort, then thought better of getting himself mired in an argument where the facts were solidly against him. He looked up above the door, into the dimness where Lister indicated the sensors would be. Fine. He would play their game, and then find some imaginative way to raze this place to the ground once he was out. He grabbed Lister by the stained collar and hauled him over to the area he had earlier pointed to.

“Hey, easy!” Lister yelped, surprised by the abrupt action, yet rather excited to see where this was going.

Rimmer paid no attention. He leaned down and gave Lister a swift and clinical peck on the cheek. "Fine." He looked towards the door. It mocked him with its inarguable shut-ness.

Lister cleared his throat. “I don't think that worked, ya know,” he reported, unnecessarily.


The Cat danced his way through the comfortably narrow streets, sniffing at this, investigating that, and feeling generally disappointed. This place was full of places to sleep, but sadly lacking in food, and there was absolutely nothing to have sex with. This was definitely not getting a thumbs-up in the guidebook. Rounding a corner, he suddenly smelled something awfully familiar. Canine teeth gleamed in the early twilight, and he moved his way towards it, pausing only at half a dozen mirrors to check how he was looking. Sure enough; there it was – a Room. Man, he hadn’t seen one of them since he was a one of those short things that you had to be for a while until you got to be big and handsome. Kid. That was it. A kid.

He paused. There were voices coming from inside. It sounded like… goal-post head and dormouse-cheeks? In a Room? He considered this, his face screwed up with disgust for a minute, then shrugged. He never could understand those crazy monkeys anyway. Smelling like they did for one another, and never doing anything about it? Maybe this’d be good for them. He paused again. Their voices seemed agitated. Maybe he should do something. He nodded, agreeing with himself. Yes, he absolutely should. Feeling pleased, he sauntered off to the nearest house for an early-evening snooze.


Rimmer worried at his lower lip. "The sensors must be out. Maybe we can hotwire them..." He tried to look at where the sensors should be, reaching up over the door and feeling only wall. He tried a little jump.

“Look, Rimmer...” Lister sighed. “That's not gonna be enough, is it?” His hands flew to the place on his cheek where Rimmer’s lips had touched him, briefly. It didn’t feel any different, which was somehow disappointing.

Rimmer, engrossed in his search for the sensors, missed the gesture. He licked his lips as he studied the door intently. “Why not? It said a kiss. I gave you a kiss, and I hope the Listerine stocks on Starbug are up-to-date." Listerine, he thought; God, why couldn’t it be called something else? He never wanted anything even remotely connected to the man near his mouth. No, indeedy. He pushed that train of thought away, firmly, and embraced his anger and frustration again.

“That's not what it said,” Lister protested, blushing slightly from the truth that was, oddly, also a lie. “They're different words, in Cat.” He stood very still, at the same place to which Rimmer had dragged him, looking vaguely in Rimmer's direction.

Rimmer sighed and turned to face Lister. "I am getting a feeling that I am going to be very nostalgic for the time when I thought the sign said, 'Welcome to instant death'."

“Thanks for the compliment, man!” Lister snorted.

Rimmer gave a quiet moan. He was trapped in a dark room in a deserted Cat city with the messiest slob JMC had ever seen, and now the man was acting hurt at the insinuation that Rimmer might not be falling over himself with eagerness at the prospect of canoodling with him. "What? Did I just unintentionally insult the champion of the first annual Red Dwarf kiss-off?" He snorted. "I realize that you do, technically, kiss better than any other man alive, but the competition is not doing so well these days, is it?"

“I'm just saying, I'd think kissing me'd be better than instant death, yeah? I'm not that repulsive, am I?” Lister couldn’t help the insecurity from seeping into his voice. He hated feeling like that, and with Rimmer! It was intolerable. But he just couldn’t help it. He was the king of chat up, the prince of charm, the fascist dictator of pulling, so long as he didn’t actually care about the people he was making a move on. And he did care about the smeghead. That was the trouble. It made him feel like he was a short, fat, ugly goit, and not the suave master of seduction he normally knew himself to be.

Rimmer’s eyes narrowed. "Lister, kissing you after your pick-me-up afternoon lager is probably fairly close." In frustration, he kicked the door with the bottom of his booted foot. When that produced no good effect, he banged his head against the stubborn door. "Smeg."

Lister shook his head. It was no use, was it. He was an idiot; once for dragging Rimmer in here, twice for thinking he’d want to kiss him, three times for being attracted to the bastard in the first place. What was wrong with him? How could he despise and lust after someone at the same time? It was stupid! Resignedly, he walked to the wall near the door and sat down with his back to it. It seemed like they were stuck here, then.

Rimmer tried a more enthusiastic jump at where he knew the sensors should be. He could almost see them, almost touch them… just a little higher. He put his hand on the lintel over the door and jumped higher.

“Give it a rest, man,” Lister said, quietly. “It's not helping.” He was deliberately not looking at Rimmer. He was deliberately not looking at anything.

Rimmer bit his lip. If this… thing didn’t budge with what was, technically, a kiss, then there must be some strange Cattish value judgment built into it, and that thought made him feel like the time when his brothers poured a bottle of millipedes down his shorts. He finally burst out, "Listy, I don't particularly feel like being judged on my kissing ability by some smegging long-dead preening egotistical bloody Cats!"

“It's not a contest or anything... It's just... a kiss. All normal, like.”

"Normal??" Rimmer squeaked.

“Yeah?” Lister smirked internally. People kiss, you know, Rimmer, he thought. Normal people do. People who aren’t anal-retentive gimboids do. That’s how come it’s normal. But you wouldn’t know about that, now, would ya?

Rimmer put his back to the door and held his hands out in front of him. He took a deep breath. "Lister, just answer me one thing. Did the sign specify tongues?"

Liquid fire surged down Lister’s spine. Well. That was unexpected. He blushed, actually blushed (what was he, a seventeen-year-old girl?), thankful for the ill-lit room. For one, daring moment he contemplated saying ‘yes’, but that would be wrong in so many ways. “Not... specifically, no.”

Rimmer grumbled under his breath about cats, their heritage, their dubious sexuality, and a host of other unsubstantiated complaints. He kicked the door again with his toe, with no energy. Finally he turned, and muttered, “Fine.”

“Yeah?” Lister climbed to his feet, feeling altogether more cheerful than he had any right to be.

Rimmer continued to mutter offensive words under his breath. "Just smegging bloody get this stupid bloody goitish goddam thing..." popped out as audible before he trailed off again. He glanced at Lister, then looked down at his boots. He realized he’d forgotten to polish them this morning; there hadn’t been time. Wonderful. He was about to kiss a smug-faced gimboid, and his boots were dull.

Lister grinned and hurried over to the spot, trying not to look too eager, before realizing that was probably far too late. “All right then!”

Rimmer frowned with every part of his body, from his eyebrows to his slumped shoulders to the booted feet that dragged him over to Lister, who merely stood there, waiting stiffly. Rimmer stopped when he was about a hands-breadth from Lister; at which point he suddenly realized he had no idea what to do with his hands. This struck him as very important, for some reason. He knew they were supposed to be involved somehow, but in what way? He lifted them as if to put them on Lister's shoulders, then dropped them. He finally settled for wringing them with each other, which at least kept them busy, but didn’t seem to accomplish much.

Lister didn’t know where to look. Then it struck him it might be a good idea to look up at Rimmer. He tilted his head slightly upwards, and saw Rimmer, his eyes squeezed shut, his face scrunched comically, and his lips pursed, moving towards him, his nose on a collision course with Lister’s. Tilting his head to the side to avoid the Hindenburg, Lister found their lips meeting almost by accident, and felt Rimmer freeze up. Rimmer had been bracing himself for an unpleasant taste, but that sense was not involved, yet. Instead, he felt an unexpectedly pleasing softness press itself to his own lips. Lister opened his mouth involuntarily, and Rimmer let his mouth relax from the purse. The novelty of it!

Lister gently grabbed Rimmer’s upper lip with both of his own, forgetting for one brief moment who he was dealing with. Startled, Rimmer swayed backwards. His hands flailed to balance him in the face of the sudden movement, and he grabbed Lister’s shoulders to steady himself. Lister seemed to awaken from a trance. He broke contact suddenly, shaking his head. Rimmer regained his balance, opened his eyes, and jerked his hands off of Lister. He awkwardly licked his lips, staring at the shorter man, who turned away from Rimmer, his hand on his lips.

Rimmer glanced at the door. "Er..." he swallowed, noting its persistent state of closure, to which Lister seemed completely oblivious. “Lister..."

A mumble came in reply. “Yeah?”

Rimmer gathered up his Rimmerness and took a deep breath. "There seems to be a certain lack of door-opening, squire. Are you sure you didn't misread the sign?"

Lister felt dazed. The door? Something about the door? “Wha?” he asked, bemused. He looked towards the item in question. “Oh. Well. That's odd.”

“Odd,” Rimmer sneered. "Are you sure it didn't say 'juggle' or ‘bake a cake’ or ‘lick your own privates,’ and you mis-smelled it as 'snog'?"

“Yeah, I'm sure.” If only, he thought wearily. And if that, pleasant as it had been, was a snog, then he was Jim Bexley Speed.

Rimmer shook his head. "The sensors must be broken."

“Ye can't break them, Rimmer.”

"Watch me," Rimmer growled.

“Maybe... Maybe we did it wrong?” Lister asked, hesitantly.

"Wrong? We were supposed to be facing away from each other? Some strange Cat-snog, where we sniff each others' rears?"

Lister shrugged. “No… well, you know...” he made gestures to indicate something more. “Maybe it needs something more... intense, like.”

"God,” Rimmer groaned. “It did specify tongues, didn't it."

“Well, not really specify…” Lister said, awkwardly, moving away from the subject of specificity. “But you know... Cats are like that. Don't beat around the bush, they don't.” Perhaps he could pass off his unwillingness to discuss details as shyness, Lister thought desperately. It seemed to work, as Rimmer gave him an odd look.

"Are you sure that's what the sign said?" Lister shrugged. "This is getting a leeeetle tough for me to believe, Listy. A dedicated snog-room? Smooch or die?"

“It said we had to kiss. But Cat kisses might be different from ours, is what I'm saying.” He stood up straight, in an attempt to give the impression of forthrightness and honesty. Honest people always stand up straight, his gran had told him. She’d been 78 and crook-backed at the time, and thinking of that statement sometimes made his head hurt.

Rimmer leaned back against the wall, looked up at the invisible ceiling, and then hit Lister with the best glare he could muster, right in the eyes. "You had to smuggle that bloody cat on board." He snorted. "Couldn't be happy with a fish."

Lister gave him an incredulous look. “What??”

"That's where all this started, you know," Rimmer said, accusingly.

“Fer smeg’s sake, Rimmer!” Lister slapped his forehead. “I wouldn't even be alive if it wasn't for that bloody cat, would I? And you; you wouldn't be here, either!” Rimmer grimaced as he tried to argue with that. He couldn’t. “So what? If I'd have brought a goldfish we might have been under water now! Rimmer - what happened, happened! We can't change that.”

Rimmer sighed. "We’d be swimming in a little plastic castle."

Lister couldn’t stifle a giggle. “You'd look good in one of them diving hats, though.”

"I'd look like a condom."

Lister shrugged. “Nothing wrong with a good-looking condom. We used to go fishing for 'em back home.”

A conversation that moved from the subject of him and Lister snogging to condoms was not making Rimmer comfortable. He cast about for a change of topic. “Well.” He shuffled to the center of the room.

Lister eyed the hologram. Why was he looking so tense? What did it take to put the man at ease? Now he was biting his own lower lip and glancing back at Lister. Lister looked down at his own, biker-gloved hands. They had nothing to add on the subject.

“Well…” Rimmer said. He grumbled under his breath again. He was being judged by a nearly extinct race that had evolved from his grotty bunkmate’s pet cat. A herd of felines that considered Lister to be the height of divinity had decided that he, Arnie J., could not kiss well. His hands started to feel cold and clammy, the way they did before every one of his astronavigation exams. God, don’t tell me I’m about to faint, he moaned internally.

“Yeah?” Lister asked.

"Let's get this smeg over with,” Rimmer growled.

Lister walked over to stand in front of Rimmer, trying not to feel one way or another. “Right.” This is what you got into this for, he reminded himself. He leaned forward, taking charge this time. Rimmer squeezed his eyes shut again and pursed his lips, looking astonishingly dorkish. Lister smiled, and let his lips meet Rimmer’s pursed ones, opening his mouth slightly. Rimmer forced himself to relax to the point where he could unpurse his lips, letting them part, as Lister eased the tip of his tongue out to caress the front of Rimmer’s mouth. The hologram shivered, and parted his clamped teeth. Lister grabbed Rimmer’s arms to steady himself, moving his tongue in past Rimmer’s lips, slowly. Rimmer grabbed Lister’s waist and opened his mouth further, flinching as he tasted the cigarettes that hung on Lister’s breath. Rimmer’s tongue twiddled Lister’s with the same nervous wariness a cat uses to prod at a dead mouse, as his mouth flooded with the tastes of Lister’s indulgences. Lister found he was beginning to forget how to breathe, as he felt control slipping away. He wanted, needed, more. If not breathing was the price for that, then, well, so be it. Rimmer focused on correct technique – or what he thought he might have read or heard or seen somewhere was the correct technique – as a distraction from the fact that he had developed a rather insistent erection. Figuring out exactly where he’d read or heard them made itself useful as a further distraction when Lister pulled Rimmer closer and put one hand behind the taller man’s neck. But something very primal in Rimmer responded in a very happy way to this, and he wrapped his own hands around the small of Lister’s back, opening his mouth wider.

Neither of them noticed that the door was still firmly shut.

Rimmer began to lose the capacity for rational thought. He rubbed his groin insistently into Lister's hipbone, only half aware of what he was doing. Lister gasped into Rimmer’s mouth, and Rimmer, with a sharp inhalation, inadvertently sucked Lister’s tongue in deeper, that preternaturally long muscle filling his mouth. Lister began to feel faint, not from Rimmer’s almost painfully tight embrace, but lack of oxygen. He needed air, but desperately did not want to break the kiss to get it. He’d given up on breathing, hadn’t he? He could do it; it was bound to be easier than quitting smoking. He only pulled away when he felt knives in his lungs, and stood there panting. Rimmer stood back, gasping, shocked and surprised. He looked around on the floor, knowing that his composure was scattered around in little pieces. He had a sudden, irrational urge to go look for it and gather it together, like a smashed tea-pot. He licked his lips, tasting cigarette ash with a dusting of curry, and straightened his uniform with trembling hands. Neat. He must appear neat.

Lister stood, swaying. Air flowed mercifully, finally, into his lungs giving his brain the oxygen it needed to make a fatal realization. He turned towards the door. “What?” he cried, in desperation and panic. Smeg no. Oh, no, no, no!

Rimmer looked up from where he stood, bent, with his hands on his knees, mentally willing his erection to subside. He suddenly remembered that he was supposed to care about the door.

Lister threw himself at the door, yelling, kicking, almost biting it in rage. “Smegging hell!”

"I think you mis-smelled the sign, Listy,” Rimmer said with resignation. Lister ignored him, attacking the door. “No way! No smegging way! That wasn't the way it was supposed to go!”

Rimmer turned away to face the dark room. "It probably said we were supposed to give a secret knock,” he grumbled. "And your subconscious just turned that into 'snog.'" All of that paranoia for nothing. Maybe the Cats were very impressed with his kissing ability, after all.

Lister poured all his anger, rage and frustration out on the inanimate object, giving it a painful whack with his elbow. “That's not what it said in the book!” he wailed.

Rimmer stood up straight and looked over his shoulder. "Book?" He turned. "Lister, what smegging book?"

Lister stopped. He turned very, very, slowly.

Rimmer found himself back in comfortably familiar territory. Ire at Lister was flooding into him. He pointed at the sign near the door. "Listy. That is a sign. What is this smeg about a book?"

Lister shrugged. Entrails loomed in his mind. “Oh... You know... Some book.” Rimmer’s eyes narrowed.

“Lister, you never read a book in your life."

“I've smelled a few, though... “ Refusing to look defeat in the eyes, Lister hid his head in his hands and slid down the wall.

Rimmer crossed his arms and glared down at Lister. "Sniff anything good lately?"

“This wasn't how it was supposed to go. I'm sorry, man.”

"Not half as sorry as I'm going to be when you explain this to me," Rimmer grated. "And not half as sorry as you're going to be when I figure out what to do with you after you've explained this to me."

“I thought it would be a laugh!” Lister wailed, wondering idly if there would be enough left of him for Kryten to put together again after he’d gone through this.

Rimmer snapped. "WHAT would be a laugh??" he bellowed.

Lister shrugged, lamely. Why had he done it? “Just seeing what is was like. I was... Curious.” Oh yes. He had been. That smegging, eternal curiosity. The Cats had got it right, hadn’t they? Curiosity only got you into deep smeg. Rimmer still stood, glaring, waiting for the punchline, and Lister, in a quiet voice, gave it to him. “Kissing ya.” He quickly hurried to the next sentence, as if it would erase the last one. “And then I remembered there was this book I'd read, where they'd said there was this room, right, that they'd made, right, for a laugh, yeah?”

Rimmer was almost shellshocked. He licked his lips, and his mouth worked, but nothing sensible came out.

Lister was speaking even more quickly. “And they'd get people in there, and they'd have to kiss to get out, you know, like you'd do when you were at a party when you were a teenager?”

Rimmer was quickly progressing from shock to seethe. His voice hit its nasal, high-pitched peak of indignation. "You wanted to know what it was LIKE... to kiss me? So you locked me in a room where I had to snog you to get out? Only it doesn't work?"

Lister looked slightly pale. Well. When he put it like that... “Erm... Sort of.”

"Couldn't you have done something a little classier and more subtle? Gotten me drunk? Slipped drugs into my tea?" Rimmer felt oddly, ridiculously violated.

“Look, I'm an impulsive guy, aren't I? It wasn't like I'd planned on finding this place or anything... But when we were here, and I saw it...” Lister glanced at the sign on the wall and swallowed.

Rimmer gritted his teeth and continued to glare at Lister in disbelief. "You just decided, 'what the smeg, I'll try to trap a superior officer into a snog'."

Lister raised an eyebrow. “'Superior officer’?”

"I'm a second technician, Lister! You're a third technician! That makes me your superior officer! As per Space Corps Directive 6798433, a superior officer caught in a liaison with a subordinate is subject to penalties including, but not limited to, loss of vacation time and punitive ship-painting shifts!"

Lister’s eyebrows reached for the sky.

"You really need to think your actions through, Lister!" Rimmer was consciously ignoring Space Corps Directive 907632/c, which directly addresses the case of a male subordinate intentionally giving a male superior an erection. That would just make everything too complicated, he reasoned. Besides, where would they get the fishing line?

“So wait - you're objecting to me kissing you on the grounds that yer a superior officer?”

"Lister, these things matter!" The blighter really couldn’t see beyond his own penis, could he? God, he thought, paranoia flaring up irrationally; was it that large?

“Yeah, to YOU, they matter! No one else cares, Rimmer!“

"A sense of discipline and order is the only thing we've got, Lister!" Rimmer was almost shouting, now.

“Yeah?” Lister rose from his seated position, anger filling him.

"Yes!"

“What about friendship, eh?”

"Er..." This was a complete tangent. It had nothing to do with Space Corps directives. Rimmer floundered, still seething.

“What about working together as a team? Supporting one another? What about actually smegging caring about yer crewmates, eh, RIMMer?” He spat the name out in full lavatory disinfectant mode.

He knows, Rimmer thought. He knows that’s the wrong way to pronounce my name. That added insult plucked Rimmer’s taut nerves into a harmonic chord of fury.

"Since when does caring about someone get you anywhere?” he shouted. "Anywhere but dead, on a dingy goddam landing vehicle, running after the dingy goddam ship that, in all of its grottiness, is still a better option than the rust-bucket you're on? With three layabout crewmates who can't stand the sight of you?" He was spitting, now, nearly frothing at the mouth in fury. "And wishing you had done any of a thousand things differently so that you WOULDN'T BE HERE?" Rimmer took a deep breath, and almost choked on it.

‘Can’t stand the sight of you,’ Lister thought. Have you seen yerself, man? When yer like this, so angry you forget to hunch over and look miserable, you take my breath away. Yeah, I can’t stand the sight of ya. But not in the way you think… He bit his lip and scratched his head, moving a little closer to where Rimmer stood, panting and clenching and unclenching his fists. “Eh, now,” he said, softly.

"What?" Rimmer growled, feeling slightly drained and slightly ludicrous after his outburst. "What now? If we shout at each other long enough, will the door open?"

“I do care... about ya, man,” Lister said, self-consciously.

"You care that I remain mobile enough to walk out of the room once in a while and leave you on your smegging own."

Lister raised his head to look Rimmer straight in the eyes. “I care. About you.”

Rimmer swallowed uncomfortably. The rug had been pulled from under his righteous ire far too many times for one day.

“I know I don't show it as much as I should, and I know I can be a bastard sometimes... But man, so can you. But I care. You need to know that.” There was more. But that would have to do… For now. Things were moving way too fast - but whose fault was that but his own?

Rimmer shuddered a deep breath out. Still clenching and unclenching fists, he looked at his boots. He couldn’t look at Lister and stay angry. He would look at those treacherous lying brown eyes and either laugh or cry, and he could not afford to do either.

Lister moved even closer, a careful smile on his lips, daring Rimmer to look up. It took a surprising amount of effort for Rimmer to lift his head. A tired frown was inspecting his face and considering settling in for the long haul. "It's my job to be a bastard, Lister. I'm good at it. God knows I'm not good at much else."

“Look, I'm sorry I brought you here. That wasn't fair. Was a silly thing to do. But hey, I'm a silly guy, yeah?”

"Silly isn't the first word that springs to mind," Rimmer said, grasping at the lifeline of his familiar snark.

“Yeah, yer a right bastard, Rimmer.” But Lister was grinning. “The best I've ever known!” Rimmer smiled wanly back. "And you're the silliest goit I've ever known."

“There ya are then!” Lister’s grin grew wider. “There's the two of us; and all the better for it.”

"That's all very comforting. Meanwhile, we are still stuck in your little feline kisstrap."

Lister’s face fell. “Yeah... There's that.” And they’d been doing so well.

Rimmer kicked the door again, not expecting it to do anything useful. He was not disappointed. The door gave a hollow thud and did not move.

Lister took off his leather deerstalker and started to twist it nervously in his hands. The hat, like his hands earlier, refused to comment on the situation.

That nervous gesture started Rimmer off, and he tapped absently at the small keypad that dangled from his belt and sat against his right thigh. He accidentally hit a button, and his uniform shimmered and turned iridescent purple. He frowned, tapped the button next to it, and was relieved to see his uniform change back to blue.

“Um... Rimmer?”

"Yes?" Rimmer replied, testily.

“Did you know you could do that?”

"I'm still figuring this hard-light body out," he grumbled. “It’s nothing like my soft-light body.”

“Oh.” That purple had looked damn good. He mentally whacked his libido with a stick. “Seems to work all right though... Eh?” He regretted the words as soon as they were out of his mouth. What was he today, Captain Foot-in-Mouth?

"What, my body?" Rimmer asked.

“I mean... You... That is...” He gestured lamely, dropping his hat on the floor, and scratched the back of his ear.

All possible implications of the question hit Rimmer, and he furrowed his brow and coughed. He did not want the subject of conversation to be his body. Especially since he was so new to it, and did not, in fact, know if it worked ‘all right’ for anything more daring than walking and pushing buttons. He had written ‘chewing gum simultaneously’ into his planner for a month from now.

“Never mind.” Lister decided to read the sign again, wishing he were religious so he could have prayed for a miracle.

Rimmer turned and leaned against the wall, his arm up, his head in the crook of his elbow. Lister stood with his back to Rimmer, studying the sign. He seemed unable to stay still, and his dancing from foot to foot flitted at the edges of Rimmer’s peripheral vision. "Smeg," the hologram groaned, pounding on the wall. He had snogged the grottiest bum it had ever been his misfortune to encounter, just to escape this room, and it had not worked. Worst of all, he had actually enjoyed it. Lord help him.

Rimmer heard Lister mumble something under breath. "What?" he asked.

“Nothing,” Lister replied, trying to delay the inevitable. The sign had not changed. He would have to ‘fess up.

A muffled "What is it?" escaped from underneath the iridescent padding of Rimmer’s arm.

Lister closed his eyes, clenching his fists. “If I tell ya... you'll kill me.”

Rimmer raised his head from his arm. "Lister, if you don't tell me, I'll kill you."

Lister laughed nervously. Some fine mess this was, eh? He swallowed, and turned to face Rimmer. “I didn't read the sign wrong earlier. But I didn't tell you what it actually said.”

"Lister, you bloody git," Rimmer groaned at the wall. "Tell me what the blasted sign says."

“See, it's supposed to be that you open the door by kissing. Just kissing, yeah? That's what the book said!” Stupid, bloody book. The pictures had been nice, though.

"You told me that."

“So when I read the sign, I knew it had to be wrong. It just had to be.”

"I actually have to break the sign over your head? I'm ready and willing." That’s what you think, Lister thought.

“But then we did kiss, proper, like, so that's when I knew...”

Rimmer wondered if he were actually blushing. He grabbed onto his growing anger to push away the embarrassment. "Knew what?"

“God, man, don't make me say it!” Lister said, pleading. His voice was approaching falsetto.

"Say what?" Rimmer spun around, frustrated. "Oh, no, communicate it without saying it. Act it out! Play charades! Do an interpretive dance! Make it a haiku!" He was bellowing, now, and Lister had to yell even louder to be heard over him.

“IT SAYS WE HAVE TO SMEGGING SHAG, RIMMER! IT WANTS US TO SHAG!”