Author: Roadstergal.
Title: Denial.
Censor: R.
Pairing: Rimmer/Lister.
Commentary: Please. roadstergal@gmail.com
Disclaimer: They don’t belong to me, and I make no money off of them.
Notes: Inspired by Kahvi's brilliant Hours.
The voice-activated recorder had a small green LED as its only sign of life and activity. Rimmer focused on that, a steady green beacon, a safer spot to look than behind him. He could hear the man thrashing in the bunk at his back, and the resigned and dispassionate part of his mind knew that the only sound he heard was the rub of hologrammatic clothes on each other. The hologram of Lister would make no noise rubbing against the bedclothes. The non-dispassionate part of his mind was no use, now, because it was screaming many incoherent and mutually contradictory things. That there was now something on Starbug that he could touch. That the blasted spacebum could now touch him. He felt horror at the very idea of Lister's grotty hands on him. He also felt skin-crawling excitement at the idea of anyone's hands on him, and that gave rise to a meta-horror at the very idea of his own excitement at the very idea of Lister's grotty hands on him. It had been too long since anyone had touched him. He didn't think that he could bear it.
And he was here to keep Lister sane? He felt in need of a good century with an analyst himself.
"Rimmer, I’m trying to get some sleep!"
Rimmer found himself muttering something about wanting to record events for posterity. He didn't. He just wanted to stare at that green light. It was safe. It occurred to him that if he just shut up, Lister might actually go to sleep, and let him swim in his fevered thoughts in peace.
He shut up.
And felt a hand on his shoulder.
It didn't feel like a hand, of course. Nothing in this benighted existence felt like it should. The food Holly used to simulate for him tasted like sawdust and electrons. The alcohol made his head swim and made his thoughts muddy, but it never made him truly and satisfyingly blitz-drunk, and so he had stopped trying. Lister's hand on his shoulder might just as well have been a GELF hand, a girder, or a sausage. Light, in that smeggingly ironic fashion that he was now heartily tired of, was the only thing that was unchanged from life for him, and only by looking would he truly know it was Lister's hand.
He didn't look. The hand dropped.
"I was just going a little crazy, you know, not being able to touch anything but meself..." Lister's usually jovial tones were subdued, and, somehow, his bloody accent was even more maddening. Oh, yes, going crazy for one hour as a hologram. Rimmer wanted to tell him how it felt after years as a hologram. How bitter jealousy choked him on his own simulated breath when he saw Lister do something as simple as sit in a chair or pick up a can of lager. How he would desperately touch himself when Lister was asleep, running his hands over his chest and arms and legs to try to feel something, and feeling like he was trying to masturbate with his hands asleep. He had heard that goit Olaf jokingly refer to 'the stranger' - masturbating after sitting on your hand, so it feels like someone else is doing it to you. Rimmer feels, when he tries to masturbate, like he sat on his cock and is now giving a handjob to someone else with his hands asleep. They aren't shining moments. He wanted to tell Lister how he'd gladly scratch himself just to feel anything at all, but his unreal nails float painlessly over his unreal skin.
All he said was, "Really."
And Lister had the gall to ask how he can stay sane. Rimmer turned, then, and looked at the man who is responsible for this not-death, this ludicrously false attempt to mimic life. Oh, Listy, I went insane years ago. My sanity is as superficial and unsatisfying as everything else in this bloody existence as a projection. And the look in Lister's eyes was pity, which Rimmer can take and doesn't want, but now it was tinged with understanding, and that utterly undid the dead man. He turned back to the comforting, soulless, thoughtless green light, and clung to it with desperation.
This time, the hand on his arm spun him around, and even though the sensation of Lister's grip didn't feel distinct from Rimmer's clothes or a triple fried egg sandwich, the sight of Lister, curly hair, filthy overalls, and silly braids, would not let him pretend that it was anything other than Lister who was holding him, staring into his eyes with fear and horror and understanding and an offered friendship. Rimmer wanted nothing more than just to feel him, to touch the other man's human hand and feel human skin with blood underneath. But none of this felt right, and like a junkie trying to capture the lost brilliance of the first hit, he tried to feel more, grabbing Lister's cheeks in his hands and not feeling the cherubic softness that he knows should be there; pressing his lips to Lister's and not feeling their soft texture, pushing his tongue in Lister's mouth and not tasting the stale cigarettes and beer. Every sensation only brought more hollowness, and he was caught in trying to feel more and feeling more of nothing. He pulled and tore at the other hologram's clothing, biting and licking to try to taste something other than static. Lister kissed and grappled him with almost equal fervor, and Rimmer neither knew nor cared if the other man is feeling the same desperate wrongness of sensation that he is; he only knew that the man's long johns ripped like real ones would, and that Lister's erection was as satisfyingly real and beautiful to the sight as it was wrong to the smell and taste. He still suckled it like a drowning man gasping for air, the sounds of Lister groaning and the sight of his raptured face the only things Rimmer could cling to as right and good. Lister's voice grew higher in pitch, and his hands in Rimmer's hair pulled so hard that it was almost pain, and Rimmer was certain with the certainty of the damned that if he just brought Lister to orgasm, the other hologram would yank harder, and dear sweet lord, Rimmer would finally feel something...
And Lister disappeared. Rimmer crouched on his hands and knees, his mouth on nothing, his uniform in puffy red tatters, his head swimming and his breath coming in short gasps. He stood, slowly, his boots on the metal floor making no noise in the empty room. The effort of will needed to bring his uniform back to pristine crispness was second nature by now. He walked to the mirror. His simulated lips were not red and swollen; the fevered rush of simulated blood through his brain had not left his face flushed. The only sign of what happened was his disordered, tangled mat of curls.
He reached one hologrammatic hand to his hologrammatic hair and smoothed it down, parting it painstakingly on the left.
He turned back to his voice-log. Its green light glowed steadily and comfortingly, as it had glowed throughout their bout of madness, recording every gasp and groan.
"Erase."
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