Author: Roadstergal.
Title: Found.
Censor: R.
Pairing: Lister/m, implied Rimmer/Lister
Commentary: Please. roadstergal@gmail.com
Disclaimer: They don’t belong to me, and I make no money off of them.
Notes: Based on Kahvi's magnificent Not Enough.


My mum used to read me fairytales when I was young. Not the sanitized versions they put on tridee for kids in those days, but the real stuff; old Teutonic tales of gore and sex and overarching love and crippling betrayal. The kind of stories that stay with a kid. I admit that I particularly loved the stories with the absent father who turned out to be prince of the realm, or the son who grew up to avenge his father's death. Yes, I loved the idea of my brave dad, A.J. Rimmer. I loved the thought that he might still be out there, plying the vast reaches of space, doing good, being magnificent, and I loved the thought that I might someday be worthy of his legacy.

Finding out that he was a chicken soup dispenser technician was, naturally, a bit of a blow. It isn't something that I'm proud of, but I have to be honest - in that moment, and for some time after, I hated my father. Hated him for playing such a huge jape on me. I wished, with a ferocity that surprised me, that he had died - not just died and come back as a hologram, but wholly died-died. Before he had a chance to embarrass me and disappoint me with his godawful mediocrity.

How dare my father not live up to my expectations?

Lister has said, many times since then, that what Rimmer did at the end was the bravest thing he has ever done in his... er... life. And I feel pangs of guilt, now and then, for being the cause of it all. He gave me life, and in return, I gave him contempt. I can't say for sure that he would have acted differently if it had not been for me, but it's a fairly decent guess. I regret driving him with my distaste and my unfulfilled expectations.

That being said, let me be clear on one thing - I don't regret his death. We were in a fix, no doubt about it, and there was no way out of there for all of us. It was just a bigger version of the circle of sacre faere; we could either all die together in a touching but rather pointless way, or one of us could die and save the rest of us. And when I look out over the farm that I helped Dave to build and seed; when I hold his boys on my knees and make them laugh as their mother smiles indulgently; when I compliment Cat's newest outfit, or plot an improved irrigation system with Kryten, my heart swells with pride that he made all of this possible. My dad.

Lister was a little surprised when, after several years, I came to him wanting to hear stories of... before. He tried to hide what he thought I did not want to hear, but I had come to terms with the fact that my father was not the man my mother had told me about. I knew, now, that he was a hero; nothing could take that away, and I wanted to know the man he really was, behind it all. And it made me grin until I thought my face would split when Lister tossed his rasta braids in his fingers, smiled that silly and winsome smile, and told me - such stories. Of what an utter, comical smeghead my father had been, of the animosity between the two of them, and of the things he and Lister would do to each other. Lister took pranking to what might be considered an art form; pranks of breathtaking scope and nastiness, every one gut-splittingly funny. And, Lister confessed, Rimmer had started to get a taste for them, too, learning the art of pranking in the way that he could, somehow, just never pick up the art of astronavigation. I kept coming back for more - partly for the stories, but, more and more, for the sheer delight it gave Lister to tell them. Sitting in the sunset glow of a lovely, tranquil summer night, sweet breezes gently touching his face, he was transported back onto an ancient, rickety mining ship, breathing stale, recycled air, sharing too-close quarters and bickering with a man who could not be any more unlike him. And he was, in those moments, truly happy.

It was therefore not entirely surprising when he told me more, when he filled in between the lines that were starting to show gaping chasms near the end. The erotic dreams that he made himself be ashamed of. The words unsaid, that had hung in the fetid ship's air and made it even more stale and unbreathable. The confusion of his love for Krissie and his simultaneous desire for something more...

I understood, all too well, the regret that can choke a man on words unsaid when the one we wish to say them to is gone. I held his hand, then, and made my offer without words. A poor substitute I would be, but a substitute I was; and he took the offer, making love like a man frantic and lost, pouring years of regret and unacted-upon longing into that night. He fell into a coma-like sleep afterwards, but snuck back home while I was still asleep.

The offer I made is one that cannot be rescinded, and so when he came back, so obviously needing, I gave him what I could, saying his name over and over in the voice that, I know, reminds him of my father. That time, and the times since then, he has fucked to the point of physical exhaustion, then curled up afterwards and not wanted to talk. I cannot make him, I know; but sometimes, I wish I could. I wish I could slow him, hold him, let him speak instead of screw, and spill out everything that he still holds back. It might be cathartic; it might make him lose his regrets and his guilt, and it might send him back to Krissie truly sated and complete, for the first time. But I must also admit to my own selfishness, my own reasons for not wanting this to end. He might think that it bothers me to know that he is trying to find another man in my body; he might think that I merely tolerate the way he won't say my name, and sometimes gasps "Arn..." when he is on the brink, and can almost believe I'm somebody else. But it is in those moments that I realize, truly and deeply, how I had misjudged my father; those moments that show me, more clearly than those last, desperate acts of good he did to save us. When I see Lister's eyes shine with love and desire for the man he deceives himself into thinking I am, I know just what kind of man my father was.

And I am proud of him.


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