Rimmer lay on his back on the exam bed on Starbug. Coming to terms with his... inexplicable same-sex attraction was one thing, but although Lister had gently praised him - and not-gently done a few other things to him - for it, Rimmer was not prepared to concede that it truly wasn't just some odd malfunction without getting a diagnostic. He was a fairly advanced age, even for a mechanical, after all! It had taken a week, but he had finally convinced Kryten that it was vital that he get a physical, so would the batty mechanical please stop restocking the food stores and airing out the passenger cabins for ten smegging minutes...

He shifted slightly, trying to watch Kryten out of the corner of his eye. The mechanoid had assured him that on a derelict raid, he had located some much more accurate diagnostic machinery than what had been used at his last physical. Kryten hummed as he started to pull implements out of various cabinets and line them up on a small wheeled tray. Rimmer turned his head entirely to the side to get a better view, and immediately regretted it. Kryten pulled a syringe the size of a lager can with a hefty needle on the end out of a cabinet and put it on the tray next to a serrated knife and something that looked like a speculum for an elephant. He bent and pulled a spiky caliper out of a lower cabinet, putting it on the tray, as well.

Rimmer shifted, looking at the collection warily. "Is that all... necessary?" he asked, his voice slightly higher-pitched than normal.

Kryten stopped humming and looked around. "What, sir? Oh, no, these just needed a good cleaning."

Rimmer sighed. "Get on with it, or I might give you a really good reason to clean them."

Kryten smiled and rubbed his hands. "Now then, lets take a look at you." He took a flat black unit off of a bench and brought it over to Rimmer, running it over his chest. He frowned, as the readouts failed to dissolve into anything coherent. "Hm..."

Rimmer shifted, doomsday scenarios swirling in his head. "What?"

Kryten ran the scanner over Rimmer's chest again, pressing buttons as he did so. "Very interesting."

"WHAT?" Rimmer yelped. "Am I about to stop working? Go spare? Blow up? What?"

Kryten looked at the readout, and his non-existent eyebrows leapt skywards. Well, that was certainly out of the ordinary. "Excuse me a moment..." He turned and tapped the scanner against the wall, very gently, almost gentle and loving. He paused, briefly, then banged it violently against exactly the same spot four or five times, rather quickly, as Rimmer held his arms up to his face, protectively. Brushing bits of paint and metal debris from the casing, Kryten re-checked the readout and smiled. "Ah!"

Rimmer sighed and leaned back on the table, his simulated panic slowly ebbing. "Oh, how we wish we were a mickey-mouse outfit," he grumbled. He looked over at Kryten's building-block face. "You have delusions of mediocrity, you know."

Humming again, completely unfazed, Kryten pressed a button on the side of the scanner. It pinged like a toaster that was done with a slice. "There we are then, sir! Your results." He handed the scanner to Rimmer, with the seriousness of a headmaster giving out a school diploma to a particularly apt pupil.

Rimmer took the scanner and attempted to look like he knew what he was doing. It was difficult, as the scanner had no screen or other obvious readout. He turned it on its side, with no enhancement of his ability to understand a smegging thing. "Um. Yes."

"No, the other side, sir."

"Oh." Rimmer turned it over, revealing what looked like a battery housing. He frowned. Stupid goddam stuck-up bogbot, trying to make him look foolish. And, unfortunately, succeeding.

Kryten remained politely helpful. "Down towards the end, where the green light is."

Rimmer turned it again. There was, indeed, a green light at one end. Nothing more. "Er, it's just a green light."

Kryten looked like sincere helpfulness might start to seep out of his ears any moment. "Where it says 'clean bill of health' in binary."

Rimmer twisted his lip as he noted that the green light was pulsing softly. "Really? Are you sure this is working?"

"Oh, quite, sir! A good couple of whacks always does the trick. Of course, before that it was insisting that you were a Peruvian tree-frog, but I had that taken care of." You had to be firm with those non-sentient mechanicals; without the promise of silicon heaven, or threat of silicon hell, there was never any telling what they might do. The poor, lost souls.

Rimmer shook his head and tossed the unit back at Kryten. "It's just not possible. I'm far too old. Something must be off."

Kryten caught the unit, raising his shelf of non-brow. "Old, sir?"

Rimmer nodded vigorously. "Yes! Three million and some...."

Kryten interrupted him with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Oh, pshaw, sir! And how many of those years have you been in actual operation?"

"Almost a thousand," Rimmer snapped, haughtily. He might look like a hale thirty-year-old, but he had experience and wisdom under his belt, yes sir; more than that smegging bogbot, for sure.

"Oh, you young electricity based lifeforms..." Kryten chuckled. He shook his head and started polishing the scanner. The humid climate here was making cleaning ever so much more challenging and interesting.

Rimmer sat up, glaring at Kryten. "Yes, the immense wisdom of all of your years caring for three dead women and watching Androids..." He shook a finger at the mechanoid. "You've had two rebuilds since then! At Lister's hands, which explains a few things."

"I did a fair load of vacuuming, too, sir, to be fair."

"Oh, fabulous."

Kryten paused in his polishing, as a sudden thought occurred. "Now, wait a minute," he exclaimed, in disbelief, "are you actually suggesting that your age could potentially cause malfunctions?"

"Of course! Mechanicals have limited operational lifespans!"

Adjusting his mirth-level several notches, Kryten laughed heartily. "Why, what a novel idea!"

"I think you are walking proof of that," Rimmer grated.

"Modern mechanicals were made to improve with age. Some feature nanobot repair-drones, some specific structural enhancements that improve with time - the list goes on!" Kryten felt a slight stab of worry at the fact that he hadn't seen his own nanobots for quite a while. The little rascals could be so unpredictable. It was just like that time they'd re-constructed his groinal attachment in most absurd fashion. Thankfully, that had been back on the Nova Five, or else Mister Rimmer would never have let him hear the end of it.

Rimmer jumped off of the table. Things got old. Things stopped working as well as they used to. It was a general truism. "I think you are as full of crap as the communal latrine at the end of a week-long folk festival."

It was a very naughty thing to do indeed, but Kryten found he could not resist patting Rimmer reassuringly on the back. "Now, young man," Kryten giggled, as if Rimmer had been a misbehaving child, "that's no way to speak to your elders."

"Elders?" Rimmer shrieked. That aluminum feather duster was trying to pull the maturity card on him? "Just because you cleaned toilets on the Nova 5 for a few millennia..." Rimmer sputtered to a halt, then restarted. "You yearn for the mentality of a teenager!" He shook a finger at Kryten. "Counting from when Lister rebuilt you, I'm older," he finished, sullenly.

"But your hardware isn't," Kryten replied, patiently.

"Yes, it is! My original bee is older than yours, and Legion must have been around for a few million years..."

"And your brain hasn't been operational for nearly as long as mine, sir."

"Depends on your definition of 'operational'," Rimmer grumbled. He sighed. He was not there to argue with a sanitation mechanoid, however. He declared himself the winner of the argument, mentally patted himself on the back, then returned to the reason why he was there. “Nothing wrong. Nothing at all. No little... flaws in the algorithm."

"No, sir," Kryten replied, confused. Perhaps this was a good time to enter Smug Mode? Yes. That always cheered him up. He did so, noting the irritation on Mister Rimmer's face with some satisfaction. "Everything is - as you say - 'tickety boo'."

Rimmer pulled his lips back from his teeth, making a face. He turned and left. Kryten had moved Starbug to a valley near the village, to facilitate his supply runs, so Rimmer now had to walk through the village to get back to his hut. He took the time to ponder. Nothing wrong with him. So all of the... oddities he had been experiencing were just him? He was a fruit, a fairy, a pouf, an arse-bandit? But he had been saying those words to himself so continually over the past week that they had lost all meaning, as common words will do when repeated so excessively. Somehow, the idea that he was gay - or, giving himself the benefit of the doubt, bisexual - had not actually caused anything to change. Gravity still functioned, the sun still shone, Kryten was still a git, he still snarked. It was disconcerting.

"Aw, baby, don't do me like that!"

Cat's shrill voice could penetrate the deepest reverie. Rimmer slowed down, twisting his lip in annoyance. A kitten-like whimper came from inside of a hut he was just about to walk past. Rimmer stopped and looked at it, a smug grin tugging at his mouth. Anything that caused Cat to make a noise like that was worth a looksee.

His curiosity was rewarded more or less immediately, as the beaded curtain parted with a sound like a pair of maracas in a thunderstorm as Cat came running out. Rimmer had never seen the feline so disheveled. Even his polymorphed, uncaring self paled in comparison with this sad display of frazzled hair, bloodshot eyes, a suit in a terrible state of disrepair, and - oh god, how Rimmer wished he hadn't looked in that direction - a crotchal area that looked like it had been attacked by mountain-lions. "Bud, you gotta help me!" this pathetic wretch whimpered.

Rimmer raised an eyebrow, folding his arms and spreading his legs. "Oh, really." Cat would not ask Rimmer for smeg unless he were utterly at the end of his options. Rimmer liked that idea.

Three young ladies, all of them sporting a Lister-like inane grin (and not un-Lister-like shapely bodies, Rimmer's subconscious insisted on informing him), emerged from behind Cat, trying to drag him back in. "Aw man, not again!" Cat whined.

"A little too much pussy, pussy?" Rimmer snickered. If Lister were any judge of his clones, just one of the ladies would have a voracious enough sexual appetite to make a grown man feel faint. Three of them? He’d be dead in a week.

The ladies giggled, caressing whatever parts of the Cat they were able to reach through his feeble protests. Rimmer had seen him catch and skin a space-weevil in ten seconds flat - not a mental image he particularly welcomed back - but now he seemed only barely able to stand up straight. Cat wheezed in response to the caresses. "Ladies, ladies, please! There's only so much of me to go around!"

Rimmer put one finger to his lips and smirked. "Take a double dose of celibacy and call me in a decade. Or... we could go the neutering route. That one worked wonders for our old Tom."

Their attention grabbed by the new and interesting voice, the ladies shared a look. One of them, the one with the longest braids and the widest grin, turned her attention to Rimmer. "Do you share?"

"Do I what?"

The middle girl seemed to bounce between her two friends energetically, simply oozing sultriness. "You and the Sleeper - do you share?" she purred, by way of explanation.

Rimmer wrinkled his nose, pulling his lips back from his teeth. He could feel his nostrils quiver. Smeg, he should have known better than to stop in the village! A pack of little female Listers - and some variations on male - would inevitably follow him and try to get a quick shag, no matter how often, and how clearly, he tried to tell them he was just not interested. He could only try again. "Not interested." Her comment about Lister penetrated. "Not that we... you know."

"Say yes! I don't think I can last much longer!" Cat panted. He did look as though he were about to collapse, but of course, this was a good thing, as far as Rimmer was concerned.

Rimmer shook his head, enjoying that look. "This is your problem, kitty. Don't drag me into it." He started to back away as one of the girls pinched the Cat's buttocks, eliciting a plaintive mew.

A smirk tried to force its way onto Rimmer’s face, but disgust was firmly lodged there, and his face twisted as they battled for dominance. While they were working that out, a deep tenor sounded from behind him. "Watcher."

Rimmer stopped and turned, finding himself disconcertingly close to a young man with tan skin, dark brown hair and big green eyes, which were open wide as the man beamed at him. "That one does not wish to share his glorious difference with us," the man said, pointing at Cat. "Do you and the Sleeper share?"

Rimmer shivered at the very thought of sleeping with someone who found the Cat attractive. "Me and Lister... Look, you're assuming..."

Another man approached, one who looked far too eerily like Lister. He eyed Rimmer lustily as he slid his hand into the first man’s. The lighter one smiled at the newcomer before turning his huge, inane grin back to Rimmer. "So, you do not share?"

"Hey, look, I have a great idea." Rimmer spread his hands, pointing at the women. "They want to have sex." He pointed at the two men. "You want to have sex." He crossed his pointed hands. "I'm sure you can work something out, yes?" And I can get the smeg out of here...

Both men smiled. It was a great fortune just to have met the Watcher; it was well known that he rarely ventured outside of his hut. And of course, now that the Sleeper had awoken, he had even less of a reason to. Still, it would be rude not to offer a sharing of pleasure! "We do not care for women," said the second one.

Rimmer thanked the stars that not a trace of scouse showed in the second man's voice. There was a certain laziness to the intonation of most of these people that almost fooled him time and time again. Linguistic subtleties were not a priority in his mind, however, as he watched the two men caress each other so damned casually. He hadn't gotten used to it in three hundred years; he probably never would be.

"What's wrong with women?" Rimmer asked, plaintively. They looked at him blankly. "Er, look, you don't want to have sex with me. Really. I... snore."

"But you have such beauty, such glorious difference!" said the first man, eyeing the Watcher's wonderfully strange clothes. No one had seen him without them; he never even went swimming!

"If you share, then what is the problem?" asked the second, confused. He had never answered their question.

Glorious difference. Oh, smeg, if he had to hear that again... he was surprised they weren’t running desperately after Kryten. Rimmer slammed the door on the mental images that thought began to evoke. He returned to the issue of extricating himself from the blockade of three frustrated women on one side and two horny men on the other. "Look... It's... er... it's that time of the... millennium. A no-sex time. For, er, religious reasons. I can only have sex with people whose name begins with a D." Rimmer winced. He was babbling.

The men exchanged looks with the women, but neither parties found anything but mutual confusion. "Reli..gi.. on?" asked one woman, who was stroking the Cat's groin as he tried to struggle free. She wondered, idly, if she should mention that her name was Dina.

Rimmer felt ill. "Yes. Religion. It's a... Watcher...y... thing."

The men frowned. "We don't understand," said the darker one. "Don't you want pleasure?"

"Er, yes, which is why I need to go... have a bath. It gives me lots of pleasure. Yes." Cat mewed and collapsed, and the ladies moved to catch him, creating a gap to the side. Rimmer started to back towards it. "Sorry, chaps, some other time... some other fellow, yes?"

So he did go swimming? But where? The men blinked in unison. "Have we offended you?" the first one asked.

"No, no, not at all. You're lovely, really."

"Why will you not share with us?" asked the second. He was feeling more and more put-upon. The Watcher wasn't making any sense. The first tapped him on the shoulder, looking like he had been struck with a wonderful idea. "We can all bathe together, if you like!" he said. The second man beamed at him. Of course! Swimming with the Watcher - they'd be the envy of the village.

"No, I bathe in... acid. Caustic stuff. Not good for you." Rimmer started to slip out of the gap, his lip quivering.

The far-too-Lister-like man moved to cut him off. "Is it that I am too common?" There was doubt and worry in his eyes, but the other man squeezed his arm reassuringly. Surely the Watcher would not be so petty as to consider looks!

Rimmer shook his head and waved his arms. "No, you're really quite strange. Absolutely whacko, I assure you."

With an odd sense of deja-vu, the men exchanged looks yet again, and the smile faded from the first one's face. He had the creeping suspicion they were being insulted. He gave Rimmer a plaintive look. "We have offended you. May we seek out other men with which you might find pleasure, given that you do not find us worthy?"

"No, really, I'm cool. Thanks." Rimmer turned and hightailed it, ignoring the confused mumbling and plaintive Cat-whining behind him. He trotted up the hill to his hut, bursting in with a sigh of relief. Lister sat on the bunk with a pile of dry grass at his feet, weaving it into... something vaguely cylindrical.

Lister looked up as Rimmer entered, but not for long. He couldn't loose his place in the threading; it was hard enough when he was looking close at it and concentrating. "Oh, hey, man. How'd the physical go?"

Rimmer's fume was already halfway out of his mouth. "Those smeggers! They just want to bonk! You can't walk through the village without one of them wanting to put his," Rimmer gestured vaguely, "up your" he made a different vague gesture and shook his head. Lister's question finally penetrated. "Oh, yes. Kryten says I'm... fine." Rimmer let his disbelief show.

"That's good, then, "Lister said automatically. Rimmer's health, given that he had suspected nothing was wrong with it in the first place, was not one of his current priorities. He worked a strand of grass around another strand carefully, hoping it wouldn't slip and cut his finger again this time.

"Er, yes." Rimmer sighed. Well. It hardly mattered. Even sleeping with the lowest and least hygienic technician in the Jupiter Mining Corporation was a fairly sane act, by the standards of this village. Rimmer paced. It nonetheless grated at him, and the bit of brain at the back of his head, where part of his mum still lived, popping out every once in a while to remind him he was crap, was having a fit. Lister cutting his finger on a blade of grass was a welcome distraction. Rimmer watched him suck his finger and shake it. "What the smeg is that?"

Lister held it out, giving it a calculating look, as though he wasn't quite sure himself. "Well, it started out as a hat..."

"And it ended up as a pregnant mammoth?"

Lister put it on his head experimentally. To Rimmer, it looked exactly like he had a pile of badly fitted-together blades of grass on his head, which was, of course, the case. "Nah," Lister decided, as the construction, such as it was, slid down and fell in front of his eyes. "I think it's more of a basket now."

"It's so good to see you in touch with your artistic side," Rimmer deadpanned.

Not fooled for a moment, Lister gave a sarcastic grin. "Yeah, that's nice, Rimmer. I'm just trying to absorb some of the local culture."

"Oh, god, please don't do that," Rimmer groaned, as Lister shook his head and kept weaving. "The last thing I need is you running around trying to boink everyone who has 'glorious difference'."

His eyes and concentration now entirely on his work, Lister replied as best he could. "Is that what they're doing, then?"

"I think they've ruined sex for the Cat, which is the only good thing I can say about them."

One over, keep it steady, fold it under, Lister repeated to himself, pausing to snort, giggle, and shake his head at Rimmer's comment. Or was it fold and then put it over? He could never remember.

Rimmer sat in his hard-backed chair and steepled his fingers, watching Lister weave. He was very intent on his project, whatever the smeg it was, and his tongue stuck half-out of the side of his mouth. The bit at the back of his mind was yelling something else at him that all right-thinking Ionians had thought about those smegging bent folk. "Is that what makes you tick?"

His place in the weave irrevocably lost, Lister looked up. "Eh?"

Rimmer waved one hand between the two of them. "Are you just getting a little," he couldn't have kept snideness out of his voice if he had tried, which he didn't, "glorious difference?"

No, no, no, no, no - smeg no! Lister hadn't spent the last week patiently trying to acclimatize Rimmer to the idea that two men having sex might be both normal and sane to then have him turn around and start questioning Lister's motivations all of a sudden. He cycled rapidly through despair, frustration, annoyance, sadness and amused resignation before settling on worry. He put his work down and turned his body towards Rimmer, giving it one last try. Of course, if this didn't work, he wasn't about to give up. He just liked to think of it as a last try; that way, he'd work harder at it. "I don't even know what that means, man. I just want you."

"For the variety?" Rimmer asked, tartly. He waved in the direction of the door. "They're your clones!"

His clones, yes, and vastly different in so many ways. And Rimmer saw that; even pointed it out when it went in his favor. Lister fretted, wringing his hands. "No, man. Just... because." He felt exasperated. "How am I supposed to know? Love just is, Rimmer."

That word again. At least it wasn't being used in that deceptive post-sex time, when you're liable to say all kinds of things you don't actually mean and regret with a passion later. Rimmer nodded and walked to the bed, looking at the horrid hat/basket with exaggerated interest. "It's all about doing the oddest-looking bugger on the block, for them," he muttered.

This unexpected interest in his crafting made Lister more than a little suspicious. He turned to watch Rimmer watch it, wondering what his angle was. "Oh well, to each their own."

"To each his or her own," Rimmer corrected, absently. Lister was far too intent on that smegging basket-thing. It was annoying enough to not be the center of attention; to be upstaged by a bumpy protobasket was unacceptable. When Lister picked up the sodding thing again, turning it around in his hands like it was one of those babies he still hoped to the stars they would never adopt, Rimmer saw his chance. Snatching it away and holding it off to the side he looked at the blade of grass in Lister's hands, and whistled innocently.

Flabbergasted, Lister looked on in surprise, then extreme annoyance. The bastard! He couldn't tell if he was more annoyed that Rimmer was holding it higher than he could reach, or stunned at the surprised that he had actually done something like that. "Oi!" he shouted, feeling oddly elated, and annoyed that he was elated.

"What?" Rimmer asked. Hell, why had he never thought of this before? With all of the pranks they had pulled on Red Dwarf, why had he never thought of just using the fact that he was taller than the smegger? Oh, Lister was going to go spare.

"Come on, give it back!"

"Give what back?" Rimmer looked around, as if there might have been something of Lister's somewhere that someone might have taken. He was enjoying this far too much.

He would not, Lister decided, start jumping up and down, or show the true degree of his irritation. He would not give Rimmer the pleasure. Instead, he merely rolled his eyes and moaned. "Come on!"

Rimmer looked at Lister, raising an eyebrow. "Come on what?"

His resolution lasting about as long as his average new-year's resolution, Lister did jump, his eyes looking straight into Rimmer's. He regretted his actions mid-jump, turning the movement into a half, or possibly even quarter-hearted thing. This was both pointless and silly, he fumed internally; Rimmer was achieving exactly what he'd set out to do - annoy and ridicule him. Of course, the thought of this only made him feel more annoyed and ridiculous.

Rimmer only had to bend back ever so slightly to keep it well out of Lister's reach. He could see frustration and annoyance building up in Lister's eyes, like in a puppy's when you held its favorite chew toy just out of reach. Oh, this was too good. "What are you doing?" he asked, with faux bemusement.

Lister brought his finger forwards to point and started to say something twice, three times, but no. This was utterly bewildering - Rimmer had never done anything like this before! All his other jokes and jibes Lister had developed a natural defense to - he know how to deal with them. He could retort for his country, but he clearly needed entirely different language skills to be able to cope with this situation. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, very jittery. He just wasn't, he realized, used to Rimmer, quite literally, having the upper hand. Of course, it took a lot to actually outwit David Lister... He finally looked away, like he couldn't care less about the entire spectacle. "That is so childish," he said, with an undertone of amusement he couldn't quite get rid of.

Rimmer raised his eyebrows. Yes, childish, Rimmer thought. Not like the time I had too much to drink at Jeffersen's farewell party, and you put that temporary tattoo on my bum that said 'Take a number and form an orderly queue.' Rimmer kept the basket high. "What is?"

Looking away, examining his nails, Lister gave the appearance of having all the time in the world. He bit one of them, just for good measure, knowing, without turning around, what the look on Rimmer's face would be like. He started whistling through his teeth, and then, when he felt moment had come, jumped around in a manic tackle, pushing Rimmer down on the bed with a whoop of excitement and triumph. "Give it back!"

Rimmer flailed, surprised, but managed to grab Lister's shoulder with one arm, holding the basket out of Lister's reach.

"Give it back," Lister yelled, getting right in Rimmer's face and glaring, but his eyes were sparkling. This was a lot more fun than weaving!

"Or what?" Rimmer asked, slightly breathless from the exertion of holding Lister away.

Lister's face contorted into the widest grin of which it was capable. The result was somewhat disconcerting, even if it hadn't been for the evil glint in his eyes which accompanied it. "You won't like it."

"How do you know?" Rimmer's own grin turned into that of a vulture, as if to match Lister's.

Lister tried to reach the basket without taking both hands off of their tight grip around Rimmer's waist. Rimmer wondered if it were possible to take a basket with your eyebrows, which was what Lister appeared to be attempting. Eventually giving up this impossible task, Lister muttered, "Final warning."

"Calling your bluff, miladdio!" Rimmer said, with authority, grabbing Lister tightly and wiggling to try to keep the basket higher than Lister could reach.

With the firm determination of an Everest-climber, Lister removed one arm from around Rimmer, stretching it up and across him, towards the basket. His mouth opened slightly, as with a quick flick of the tongue, he licked Rimmer's ear.

Rimmer shook his head and tried to push Lister downwards relative to himself and the basket. He wasn't sure what the endpoint of this game was, but it was pretty damn fun to watch Lister get so frustrated, and the something-else that was sparkling in his eyes wasn't utterly objectionable, either. He wrapped his legs around Lister to keep him down.

Lister reacted by pushing the other way, batting uselessly with his hand, still utterly unable to reach the basket. Ah, but there were other ways. He turned his face to look at Rimmer again, and pinched his right buttock with a grin.

Rimmer yelped, his legs loosening their grip. Lister wasn't playing fair! He attempted to say so, but it came out sounding like "Nfaieep!" He tightened his leg-grip again, swatting at Lister's free hand with the hand that had been on the man's shoulders before.

The yelp earned a giggle from Lister before he lost his balance as Rimmer's leg hold was loosened, then tightened. He just barely felt Rimmer's hand brush against his in mid-air, and swore under his breath. One way or the other, he was going to win this!

Rimmer grabbed Lister's dratted pinch-happy hand, trying to twist it behind Lister's back. "None of that!" he gasped, breathlessly.

Yes, he was definitely going to win, Lister giggled to himself, as his arm was twisted. Good thing Rimmer didn't appear to realize what the prize was. Lister gave a short, breathless mock-attempt at struggling free, squirming in Rimmer's grip, an even odder sort of grin playing at the corners of his mouth.

Rimmer flopped about, trying to twist them both so that Lister was underneath. He just needed to get the man pinned under him, then grab his wrists, then... well, he'd think of something.

The trick now, Lister thought, was to keep pretending to struggle, so he'd end up with Rimmer above him. He made what must surely appear to be a valiant effort at pushing Rimmer away from his upper body before, yes, surely, giving up, panting slightly. Soon, it would be time for the Oscar-level performance.

"What is so important..." Rimmer gasped, dropping the basket so that it rolled under the bed, then quickly grabbing Lister's wrists and holding them to the bed, "that you need to put in that basket?"

And here it came. Taking care to make his eyes look dazed as he gazed into Rimmer's Lister bit his lower lip, and slowly murmured, "I forget..."

"Well, it's a good thing you're so eager to get it back, isn't it?" Rimmer asked, raising his eyebrow. Lister swallowed and shifted a little in his grip, and Rimmer couldn't stop his lip quirking. He had won, hadn't he? It certainly looked that way. Lister licked his lips, and Rimmer started to wondered if Lister had actually won. He couldn't move his hands, or Lister would escape, and now he had quite a hard-on. "Kryten's spare heads?" he asked. "For when you need a little?"

That was unexpected. Lister's mask of fevered adoration and lust fell away to an uncontrolled snort that ended in a giggle. Not that he really needed to feign the lust; he found that came rather naturally...

Well, he still had his head free. Rimmer leaned in and licked Lister's cheek. Rimmer despaired of ever getting the man to pay proper attention to hygiene, but at least he swam regularly in the local creek, and stayed reasonably clean. Rimmer suspected it was only because the bare-breasted women bathed there, but he couldn't complain about the results. No, he thought as he licked the other smooth cheek, not at all.

Lister found that his eyes were closing and his back arching, quite of their own accord. There also seemed to be a long, soft moan escaping from his lips, and he had no idea how any of these things had come about. Wasn't he supposed to be in control of all this?

Rimmer rubbed his groin against Lister's, gently. No, that would not do. He would come right away, in his trousers, and would never hear the end of it. He pulled back slightly as Lister arched up, breathing more heavily. "Are you sure you don't have more arts and crafts to do?" Rimmer asked, breathily. "I could leave you alone and go help Cat out..."

The idea of being left alone right brought Lister close to panic, and he struggled against Rimmer's grip, in the process pushing hard against Rimmer's stomach, and moaning.

Rimmer gave a breathy whine. "Or... maybe... not..."

Hot breath caressed Lister's face, and made his bone-marrow all try to escape down his spine and into his groin, or at least that's what it felt like. If Rimmer hadn't been holding him down, Lister would be pinning him to the bed. He brought himself back to coherency for long enough to force out a single, imperative command. "Don't you dare go now."

"If you... absolutely insist." Rimmer rubbed his stomach a little against Lister's crotch, closing his eyes. Even that was a bit much.

Lister pressed even harder, mumbling, "Damn straight I do..."

"Straight?" Rimmer asked, trying to quirk a sarcastic eyebrow. They were not cooperating. "I'm in the wrong hut."

"Stupid man..." Lister mumbled, wishing there was a lot more of the stupid man for him to consume. He stuck his tongue out, trying to lick any bit of face close enough to him.

Rimmer took Lister's tongue in his mouth, slightly concerned about what it would do if it kept flopping around like that. "Yom r shlpn wu a shoopi ma," he replied.

Fair enough, Lister thought as the words decoded themselves to some degree in his mind, giving as much of a nod as the situation allowed. "Mmm..." It was hard to speak with your tongue down someone's throat.

"Gu."

There is only so far down a person's throat your tongue can go, however, and besides, it wasn't just about frantic need. All right, it was very much about frantic need, but it was a need brought on by something deeper. And so Lister started to slow down, practically caressing Rimmer's mouth with his lips and tongue. Arn, he thought. Yes, Arn!

"Mmmm..." Rimmer rubbed his stomach against Lister, almost hypnotized at the man’s sensual kissing.

Even deep, gentle kisses became too rough, so Lister began to break them up with light butterfly touches to Rimmer's lips. Rimmer licked at Lister’s in return, wondering what exactly was happening to his stomach when Lister's short, almost upturned nose rubbed against his own. As he pondered this, Rimmer found his face stretching in an uncomfortable, unfamiliar way, and realized it was trying to give a snarkless smile. Those muscles were not in good condition.

Something odd was happening to Rimmer's face, Lister noted. At first, he thought something was wrong, as the hard-light equivalent of facial muscles seemed to strain against themselves, turning into something Lister had never seen before. He was about to ask what was wrong, when the truth hit him like a hammer to his solar plexus - Rimmer was smiling! Arn - his Arn - was smiling! Lister felt like writing him a sonnet, but all that came out of him was a joyful "Hah!" punctuated by an extra kiss on the lips. He intertwined his legs with Rimmer’s, and leaned his head backwards, exhaling deeply as Rimmer put his face in the join of Lister’s neck and shoulder, licking gamely. A smile. A smile.

Rimmer pulled back, and looked at Lister’s pinned hands, wondering how the smeg he was going to get the man undressed without letting go. He finally ducked his head down and took the zipper of Lister's jumpsuit in his teeth. Working it downwards was difficult, as the fabric bunched and twisted, and Rimmer made slow progress, strange expressions making their way over his face as he tugged. Halfway down, the jumpsuit became completely uncooperative, and Rimmer dropped the zipper, frustrated.

As Arn's teeth grabbed the zipper, Lister's mind packed its bags and waved him goodbye. Whatever odd expressions there might be, Lister did not notice them; he was too busy squirming, arching, and whimpering at what was being done to him. In a high-pitched, quiet voice, he squeezed out, "Yes..."

That gave Rimmer an idea. He took the left top of the jumpsuit in his teeth and tried to stick it in Lister’s mouth. Lister was confused at first, looking at Rimmer like he was asking him to eat the goited thing, but soon got the idea, and bit down. Rimmer took the zipper in his mouth again, mumbling around it, "Damn thing."

"Nngh." It sounded like a general agreement.

This tension allowed Rimmer to pull the zipper all of the way down without further incident, and he spat it out with a triumphant, "Ha! Can’t keep A.J. Rimmer out, no..." He stared at what was revealed. Lister typically skipped his long johns in the heat, and although Rimmer found it terribly unhygienic, he had to grudgingly admit that it was convenient, every now and then.

Lister gasped as he let go of the cloth in his mouth. The sound might have been a laugh, but ended up too breathy.

Rimmer plonked on a finishing "...miladdio," as he nuzzled Lister’s erection, his voice muffled.

Just the mere suggestion was enough to make Lister whisper weakly, oh so quietly, "OhgodyesArnplease..."

Rimmer still wasn’t about to do that. He could not understand how Lister could do it so cavalierly. Hand jobs were only so satisfying, though, he knew... He breathed over it, licking Lister's stomach and navel.

More or less overstimulated at that point, Lister lay oddly still, except for a few quite pronounced shivers. He forced his breath to be something akin to normal, trying not to think about what might be in store.

Rimmer licked his way up to Lister’s chest, then flopped his head down on the man’s chest. "Damn," he muttered. Lister made a noise that landed somewhere between confusion, enjoyment and frustration. Rimmer pulled himself up, looking at Lister’s pinned hands with a look of fierce concentration on his face. "I can't get the oil without letting go of your hands."

Oil. Such a marvelous word. Slippery. Slidey. Sliding. Gliding. Lister flashed a feral look. "Can't... be held responsible for what... might happen if... let go." He bit his lower lip again, sucking it into his mouth. Oh, the things he would do to Arn when he let him go, and he would let him go, Lister would see to that, one way or another.

"I knew I couldn't trust you," Rimmer growled, affecting more frustration than he felt. Not all that much more, however. He quickly let go of just one hand, staring intently at Lister. Lister lay very still, meeting his gaze. Lister voluntarily lying still? Not taking an opportunity to poke or prank? Was the world coming to an end? Rimmer raised his eyebrows, then let go of the other hand, sitting back. He held his hands spread, ready to grab again if Lister tried… something Listery.

Lister took a moment to realize he was now free. Now there was something to contemplate. Free. Free to do whatever he wanted to Arn. To do whatever he wanted, in general. What did he want, he asked himself, and found the answer to be... Somewhat surprising. He slowly raised his eyebrows and spread his lips in a wicked smile as he moved one of his own hands over to grab the other, keeping them in the position they were held. "Was... enjoying tha..."

Rimmer's eyebrows met his hairline. Something was unquestionably and vaguely disturbingly alluring about the idea of a happily pinned Lister. "Waitamin," he squeaked. In a frenzied and uncoordinated rush, he ducked out of the curtain, grabbing one of the bottles that were always smegging sitting there since the Sleeper returned. He cringed as some of the villagers noted his exit; he would never hear the end of that. He ran back in, quickly, dropping the bottle next to the bed and flopping on top of Lister, scrabbling for his hands.

Outside in the village, a group of youngsters shouted eagerly to their parents, who started running towards the hut of the Chosen ones. Soon, smoke began to seep out through the door-curtain...

Lister tried to keep from giggling uncontrollably at this display, despite his acute desire.

"Don't laugh at your superior officer..." Rimmer growled, grabbing Lister's wrists.

That had definitely been the best choice, Lister congratulated himself. He put on a mock serious face, and spluttered "Oh, no, sir!" with an undertone of unashamed laughter.

"Remember that!" Rimmer licked Lister's ear.

Lister’s voice came out an octave above normal. "Try..."

Rimmer nuzzled Lister's neck again, awkwardly spreading his legs so that his jacket rubbed Lister's erection. Rimmer rubbed up and down, moaning into Lister's neck, his own crotch just above Lister's legs. But when Lister pressed back, rubbing his leg against Rimmer’s crotch, Rimmer jerked up with a shock. "DondothatI'llcome!" he squeaked. No, he would never hear the end of that.

Lister grinned at that. "Wouldn't... want that, now, would we?" The exact opposite came through in his voice. He looked on as Rimmer shivered slightly, holding himself off of Lister, making a noise through his nose on every exhale that sounded like "meep..."

Rimmer finally brought himself back under some semblance of control, and gently lowered his jacket to Lister's erection again, sliding gently up and down.

Lister breathed erratically as this happened, and whimpered, "Yes..."

Rimmer licked Lister's lips. "Yes what?"

What do you think, you idiot, Lister thought, close to tears with frustration. There was no anger in him, though; all was love and pleasure, even when he was deprived of it. "More..."

"More." Rimmer could do more. He leaned back, letting go of Lister’s wrists, and yanked off his jacket and undershirt. This was going to be messy. He dropped one hand to pick the bottle off of the floor, pulling out the stopper. He poured a little of it on his hand to warm it, sniffing at it. It smelled cloyingly of sweet cinnamon. Rimmer wrinkled his nose. "Ugh." But the oil was amazingly slippery. It should spice up the hand job nicely. Rimmer put his slicked hand on Lister's cock and started to slide it up and down.

Lister only just had time to grin at Rimmer's discomfort with the aroma before intense sensation threatened to knock him straight through the bed and onto the floor. He wailed and arched his back to keep from doing so; he had to stay there, had to keep this sensation going, had to stay in bed, oh god.

Amazingly slippery. Lister’s cock wanted to slither right out of his hand. Rimmer had to hold on to it very tightly as he stroked.

If he'd been over-stimulated before, this was top of the ziggurat-level stimulation, Lister's confused mind informed him. Ziggurat, that meant something. Something... Oh hell, who cared. "Sh... Sh... gonna... hh... Arn..." His head thrashed from side to side.

Lister’s cock was now covered with the slippery oil, so Rimmer slipped his other hand over it to take over, using his slicked-up hand to pull his own erection out. Blast, why had he never thought of using the dratted clones’ offerings for this? Three centuries and change of using spit. The slick oil felt fantastic; he would not last. He had no smegging idea why it took so long for Lister to come. Given the same stimulation, he could come twice and go watch a movie before Lister finished. But the expressions the man made! Hypnotizing, almost erotic. It was worth pumping him as hard as Rimmer started to, just to watch.

Off in some far-away land, Lister happened to look up in time to see Rimmer starting to stroke himself. It was hard to speak, but he managed, his voice breaking several times during the effort. "Not... fair... I sh.. ou..ld." Some slow mental arithmetic made him realize that he now had the use of his hands. Conveniently, he finally had some use for them.

Rimmer barely noticed. He panted, very close to orgasm, pumping Lister's cock erratically. And so, as fast as humanly possible, Lister reached down and put his own hand on top of the hand Rimmer had on his own erection. That gave him almost two strokes before Rimmer came with a wail of "Gerrhaaaaaiiiinnnnnnn..." Lister laughed, near to tears.

The warm, slick feel of the oil and the unexpected sensation of Lister’s hand atop his lent a certain extra something to Rimmer's orgasm, something that made him spasm with his whole body, gripping Lister's cock almost too tightly for comfort. To Lister, that was irrelevant; he forgot his own erection completely. He held Rimmer’s hand tightly, stroking him, even through his orgasmic spasms.

Rimmer got a grip - so to speak - on himself. He started stroking Lister again, still heaving huge breaths. He shook off Lister’s hand, dropping the hand he had used on himself down to the bed beside Lister for balance.

With a supreme effort, Lister whispered into Rimmer’s ear, "Enjoyed that, did you?"

"I..." Rimmer paused to whine through his teeth as a latecomer shiver took him. "You'll have a full... re... port later... but..." he wheezed, "initial impressions are... positive."

Well, that was probably a good thing, but Rimmer keeping on stroking him like that certainly wasn't. He had plans other than coming so soon. Lister pushed his groin hard against Rimmer, who let go, grabbing the other side of the bed, shaking his head slowly. "I don't get second chances," Lister said into Rimmer’s ear. "And I'm not done with you yet..." He licked the ear, and Rimmer squeaked. Lister slid one hand around Rimmer’s waist, the other gripping the hologram’s shoulder firmly. He tried to move Rimmer around, and was surprised when the man complied as he shivered; a novelty, that, Rimmer being putty in his hands. Something to be treasured. Once on top, he pulled off the holographic boots and trousers, and straddled the hologram in question. Knowing that the oil must be around somewhere, Lister bent and rummaged on the floor. He finally found it and picked it up.

The world had turned around. Wasn’t he supposed to be the one on top, pinning Lister? But this felt rather good, too, and Rimmer’s legs were a little unsteady after his orgasm, anyway. This was probably for the best. He reached up to rest his hands on Lister’s thighs. Comfortable hand rests, those were, he noted absently.

Lister poured out a small measure of oil on Rimmer's stomach, allowing it to trickle down to his groin. Rimmer wheezed in startlement. The oil was too cold. Didn’t the goit know you were supposed to warm it in your hands first... he’d have to give the him a talking to. Oh. If he remembered to, after Lister pressed his erection to the puddle, sliding up and down. It seemed to be taking away his ability to think very coherently. Rimmer sighed and put his head back.

Lister gritted his teeth; coming at this point would mean defeat. He'd fathered a culture based in part on sexual prowess through generosity and kindness. A rather naff basis for a culture, some might say, but did any of those people have cultures of their own? Lister thought not. He also tried to think of pipe-cleaners too cool himself off a bit, but for some reason, it did not help. Nevertheless, he managed to hang on. He grabbed Rimmer’s shoulder with one hand and buttock with another, sliding back and forth. Rimmer moaned in time with the rubs, kneading the thighs that his hands had been resting upon. He whined, starting to harden again.

Lister licked Rimmer’s chest. As he felt Rimmer harden, he moved farther down so that their erections were touching. Raising himself slightly, he poured more oil into hand, rubbing it over both erections at same time. He could not, he found, tell which was which any more, as his hand slid almost frictionlessly from one to the other. Breathing came in short bursts, because unlike Rimmer, he did have to breathe.

Rimmer lay there moaning, the pitch varying in response to the caresses. Lister lowered himself again, almost slipping off of Rimmer as the oil started to seep into new and interesting places. The stuff was almost too slippery, wasn't it? he thought.

Rimmer felt Lister sliding around, and grabbed his hair with one hand and his braid with the other, as Lister applied his own counter-measure by spreading Rimmer's legs so he was resting between them. As he felt Rimmer shiver, he realized where he was; this, coupled with the oil which was now coating damn near everything, led to quite a tempting train of thought. He kept moving against Rimmer, both hands on the hologram’s buttocks, wondering if Rimmer would explode if he asked him. Explode in a bad way, that was.

Rimmer felt Lister move back, and shifted slightly towards Lister, bending his legs and spreading them a little more to get the man closer. He rubbed Lister’s hair, letting go of the braid and starting to buck.

Lister started seriously to pant; the thought was stuck in head now, but surely... He opened his mouth as if to say something, but bit his lip, slowing his movements. He stroked one hand from Rimmer’s buttock up the outside of his thigh and down again. It would be so easy, so damn easy...

"Eeyeah..." Rimmer muttered, shivering again as some excess oil spilled from between then and trickled down between his legs. Well, maybe. He had certainly used his fingers before, and in a moment of panic, back when he was still alive, read a number of books that claimed that this – and even the other thing that was becoming somewhat likely – was perfectly normal for a perfectly normal man, even a straight one, to enjoy. Of course, Rimmer had to wonder about the kind of person who would read a book like that in the first place; maybe they just meant it was normal for the kind of sick pervert who would read a book like that in the first place...

Lister used his other hand to spread the excess trickle of oil across Rimmer’s inner thigh, rubbing it. His mouth opened a little again and stayed open as he hesitated, his cock aching terribly. It was a reasonable reproductive organ, it argued, but there were, after all, limits to what it could and would put up with! "Arn..." Lister whispered.

Rimmer snickered at the breathy voice. "Daaaaa... ve," he said back, then sighed as Lister kneaded his inner thigh with his slick hand.

"Will you... would you..." he asked, nervous as hell.

"Will I would I what?" Rimmer said in singsong, reaching his own hand to touch his own sadly neglected cock.

Shivering, Lister moved back a little and took out the bottle again, pouring a generous measure into his hands. If he'd had any presence of mind at all, he'd see that his lover was now forced to pleasure himself, but Lister did not have any presence of mind. He rather had an absence of mind, and a whole host of other things, chief among them, an orgasm strongly petitioned for by his penis. He slathered the oil all over the organ in question, which did not really sense the difference anymore.

The air was strangely cool, and Lister’s pullback was unwelcome. "Dave..." Rimmer sighed, leaning his head back and closing his eyes.

Lister positioned himself between Rimmer's legs, one hand on either hip, and looked up with nervous worry. He positioned himself so he could easily thrust into Arn, only nudging gently, if there was such a thing in this situation. He was ready to stop at any moment. Hell, he was ready to flee the bed and run away at any moment, and chances were he would have to.

Rimmer wiggled slightly experimentally against the feeling of cock there. It didn’t feel half bad, actually, Almost... titillating. He sighed and gently stroked his own cock.

He had to keep in control, Lister thought, wincing. Perhaps more oil would help? Well, it could hardly hurt. Oh. Yes, it could, couldn't it - that was the problem right there. More oil. He poured it between them, unaware that he was holding Rimmer almost painfully by the hip with his other hand.

Rimmer shifted slightly against the very tight grip, stroking himself more firmly. Whatever Lister had in mind, he'd better hurry up, before Rimmer either finished or wilted due to a bruised hip.

Desperation struck Lister, hard and fast, and he pleaded, "Arn... I'll stop... don't want... may..." His head spun. There didn't seem to be any sort of gravity, or directions like 'up' or 'down' anymore.

Well, what the hell. "Try," Rimmer said, quietly.

Affirmation. OK. OK. Lister nodded and slid in very carefully, as though he would be graded on this later on. It was surprisingly easy - was that the oil? What the smeg was in it?

Pain, for a moment, that passed almost as quickly as he felt it, leaving an intense ache in its wake. It felt pleasurable, but oddly distinct from the pleasing sensation of a finger or two. That increasingly strange sense of fullness - Rimmer couldn't decide if it was painful or pleasurable. Both, somehow, oddly. "Oh," he told the ceiling, in a voice that sounded like someone had just told him at dinner that the pepper was over there. His hand shook on his cock.

There had been pain, Lister fretted; he had caused pain - but he just couldn't stop. All he could do was watch in trepidation, unable to stop his movement farther in. And it was... it was... No words. No smegging words.

Impossibly, the sense of fullness increased as Lister slid all of the way in. "Ah," Rimmer told the ceiling, as if he had found the salt to match.

Lister nearly collapsed with effort, making noises like a frustrated steam-engine. He stayed there for a moment, trying to get a feel for what he was doing, as though someone would appear with an instruction-booklet if he lingered long enough, his whole body screaming at him to move.

"I think..." Rimmer observed to the ceiling, "that's rather... good." Surprisingly, it was. The burning ache was still quite present, but something quite appealing about it. Rimmer decided to leave the analysis for later.

"Oh..." Lister choked. And started to move. Oh smeg. Taking it slowly would be more or less impossible.

"Ohmy." Rimmer moved his hand on his cock in parallel with Lister's movement. That was unsatisfying, so he pumped his hand on his cock much faster, which in turn moved Lister to match his tempo to that of Rimmer's strokes, muttering incoherencies. That - well, to hell with what it was. It was somehow extremely good. Rimmer gave a drawn-out "Ohhhhhhh" and a quiet "Yes." Come squirted out onto his stomach as his body trembled. He stroked almost absently as he came, matching Lister's thrusts.

Lister thrust twice more, then came, with a wail that was tinged with laughter. Describing the emotion - the emotions - even to himself, was pointless. He couldn't. And he didn't need to. He could have this again, whenever Arn would let him. God, what a privilege! He held onto Rimmer's hips like a lifeline, closing his eyes and trying to keep from falling. Because he had to, given that he couldn't actually stay in there forever, no matter much he wanted to, Lister managed to ease himself out, whimpering.

The ridge below Lister's head was still firm, and it sent a painful jerk through Rimmer as it popped out. "Oh," he said in surprise, as if he had found oregano in the salt shaker. He let his legs fall as Lister collapsed on top of him, shifting his buttocks as come tried to seep out. He quailed at the thought of what the sheet must look like. The thought of the horrified look that would surely be on Kryten's face when it came up in the washing was rather appealing, however.

Lister tried to climb up Rimmer's body, but it seemed impossibly tall, much more so than it should be. He moved his mouth, then realized that words did not come out. Rimmer put one arm out to the side, and Lister stumbled into this makeshift embrace. "Hope... not... hurt..." he muttered.

Rimmer took stock, and decided that, on the whole, he wasn't. "No," he said, slightly surprised. He cleared his throat. "But I get to do that next time," he added, officiously. Enjoyable that had indeed been to try out, but he'd be damned if he was going to be a smegging bottom.

Now there was a thought. Lister gave a slight shiver, exploring it fully. "Yesssirrr..." he said, breathily.

Rimmer patted Lister on the waist with the embracing hand. "Oh," he said, as he suddenly remembered something. He shifted slightly, pawing under the bed. He found it, and slung it up to dump on top of Lister. "Here's your smegging basket back."

The badly weaved-together leaves scratched across Lister's chest, but it only made him want to giggle. And so he did, more and more, uncontrollably, gasping for air. Grabbing a hold of the silly thing, he swung it hard, hitting Rimmer squarely in the face.

"Ow!" Rimmer said in a wounded voice, rubbing his nose. Lister kissed where it hit. "Do you know the penalty for hitting a superior officer with a handmade basket post-coitus?" Rimmer chided.

Lister, overcome, started kissing him all over his face. "No, sir!"

Rimmer blinked at the kisses. He shrugged, giving up. "It's not important. I don't know where we'd get a mini trebuchet, anyway."

"C'n build'n," Lister said through happy kisses.

Rimmer picked up the crude, lopsided, gap-filled basket. The holes seemed large enough to roll a full-size trebuchet through. "Riiiight..." He licked Lister's cheek as it passed by.

"Or I c'n stop hit u w'bskt," Lister said, collapsing again. Talking was just too much effort.

"That would be better than the other way of circumventing that directive, certainly," Rimmer agreed, grabbing the basket and dropping it over the side of the bed again. He leaned back, closing his eyes.

"Won' hitcha 'gain."

Rimmer stroked his hip gently. "Go to sleep. And for smeg's sake, don't snore."

"Cn snr r ht u w'bskt. Choice." He started to snore.

Rimmer paused to figure that collection of mumblings out. "Either one will prevent sleep just as effectively." He sighed. "I'll end up with slightly fewer bruises from the snoring." He looked at Lister. "Like I have a choice," he grumbled, turning his head to the side.

Lister hugged Rimmer tightly in his sleep. "Luvarn." Rimmer might have heard, had he not fallen dead asleep.


Lister stood at the edge of the lake as it glittered in the moonlight. Small, non-stinging, slightly luminescent insects buzzed drunkenly across the surface, swarming in the (yes, that, too) fragrant evening air. He shook his head with a dismissive snort - this whole place was one gigantic romantic cliché. He sighed, and looked out over the water, still and serene. It was a rather wonderful cliché, though.

The water looked more than inviting, so Lister wasted no time getting in. The temperature was just right; cool enough to give relief from the warm air, but not so cold as to be uncomfortable. In fact, it was disconcertingly like slipping into rather pleasant, liquid air.

It was so peaceful out here, even with the sounds of the village, where life went on as usual, close by. This was, he realized, as a fish nudged his leg curiously, then moved on, more like home than any place he had ever been. Him. All of this was him. That fish, the tiny, near invisible creatures he knew dwelled in water, those shiny bugs - they all came from him. And while that felt soothing it was also more than a little discomforting. Never having been much of a swimmer, Lister took a few strokes back and forwards, then headed back to the bank.

There was no light in the Watcher's hut, but to Lister's eyes it shone like Red Dwarf's landing lights. He started walking faster as it approached. Home, something inside him hummed. Home. He pulled away the leafy curtain, and turned, looking out towards the lights and sounds in the village. Behind him, he heard the all-too-human nasal breathing he now realized he could not sleep without hearing.

In the distance, there was song.


Rimmer woke up at some point after the sun had gone down. His arm ached where something had been flattening it, but that something was no longer there. He mumbled and scratched his sticky stomach, still feeling the remnants of after-sex lassitude. Lister must have woken and left the bed, his sleep-bleary mind concluded, as if it were a terribly clever bit of deduction. He opened his eyes, and Lister was indeed standing in the doorway. Rimmer frowned. The moon was still fairly full, and its light glowed faintly off of droplets of water that covered Lister's skin, and one trickle that flowed down his back from his hair.

Rimmer rubbed his eyes. "Yer wet," he mumbled in a thick voice.

Lister turned, and his teeth caught the dim light as he grinned. "Yeah, man. I went swimming."

Rimmer stretched. "Should've brought me. I have a silver swimming certificate."

The glow of Lister's dark, water-beaded skin faded as he walked into the hut and out of the moonlight. "Next time," he said quietly, sliding his warm, wet body onto the bed, legs to either side of Rimmer's. And who could have resisted licking off the droplets of water that clung, shivering, to Lister's lips?

Not Arnie J. No, sir.


The sound of several hundred villagers singing at the top of their lungs, when all of said lungs were genetic variants on Lister's, was quite a sound. It was, if you had asked Rimmer for his opinion when he was awake, a hell of a din. If you had asked him when he was asleep, he would have given an answer very similar to the one he gave the singers themselves - an incoherent muttering as he stirred, none too happy about being tugged from half-sleep into a state of annoyed consciousness.

Rimmer scratched the hair behind his ear as listened to the ruckus, audible over Lister as he snored away at Rimmer's armpit. "Dun... 's already clean..." Lister muttered in his sleep, shifting. Rimmer turned onto his side, trying to cover his exposed ear with his forearm. Lister shifted more as he moved, mumbling, "gonna do... 'morrow..."

Rimmer sighed and started to shove Lister onto his own side. "You're snoring..." he muttered. Lister's breath stopped and restarted with a sound of bubbling phlegm as he woke for a split second. "Whut?" he asked, then immediately dropped back to sleep with a louder snore. Outside, the singing became steadily louder, as if the villagers were approaching the hut. Someone musically inclined might have noted that the song was in seven-part harmony, accompanied by crude rhythm-sticks, but to Rimmer, it sounded like a mess. Like that ghastly bit in the operas he'd been forced to bore himself through in school, when everyone would start to sing different tunes at the same time. He had always been surprised by the applause after those segments; he kept thinking they'd all gotten the wrong script, and that he was witnessing some horribly embarrassing mix-up. He groaned quietly, coming to terms with the fact that he might be awake for good. It had been a while since the last big party, after all. They would sing, they would chant, he would get sick of it and tell them to bugger off.

Rimmer sat up on the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes. Behind him, Lister stirred, opening one eye. "Wha..."

Rimmer patted him on the side in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. He had over a lifetime of trying for the opposite effect to overcome. "Villagers. I'm going to tell them to shut up."

"Singing..." Lister mumbled.

"Screeching," Rimmer muttered, rubbing his stiff back.

"Singing 'bout us..." Lister mumbled.

Rimmer paused to listen. That did seem to be the case; most of the song was in indiscernible mess, but now and again, 'watcher' and 'sleeper' were audible.

"All the more reason to tell them to shut up," Rimmer growled. He stood, changing to soft-light to let all kinds of crud that he'd rather not think about fall through him. His uniform re-formed, and persisted as he changed back to hard-light. He yawned, adjusting his unadjustable H and straightening his already-straight jacket.

Lister got up on one elbow. "Whereugoing?" he yawned, scratching his head.

"I'm going to tell the smeggers to keep it bloody well down," Rimmer announced. The sound was clearly approaching, and Rimmer was not going to let them smegging camp out on his hill.

Something was subtly wrong with the environment in which he was in, and it set Lister off enough that he found himself unable to go back to sleep. Singing, he realized. It was the singing; it was getting louder. "Eh, what's going on here?"

Rimmer walked to the door and pulled the curtain open just enough to look out. It did look like a bigger party than they usually had; the Elders must have gotten their hands on some really good root to keep them up so late, and they must have given it to the kiddies, as well. What he would guess to be the entire village stood outside, torches lit, grins wide, clothes - as usual - pretty much absent. They shouted, in fairly decent synchrony, for such an obviously half-drunk and half-stoned bunch, "Oishmegheid!"

"Go away!" Rimmer yelled, stepping out slightly.

Lister wrapped the sheet around himself as best he could, and stumbled to Rimmer's side. It seemed to be light outside, but how could that be? It hadn't been that long since he'd gone for his swim. He blinked a few times, before his brain allowed itself to accept the input from his eyes. It was, indeed, not day outside. Rather, the entire village seemed to have moved to what was, for all intents and purposes, Rimmer's back yard, and had moved every torch they could find with them.

Rimmer looked at Lister's dishevelment, annoyed. This was not the way to get the villagers to pack up and fuck off. They would just eat up his appearance, too - and indeed, as soon as he was visible, the crowd yelled, "Sleeper!" accompanied by general cheering and whoops. Rimmer found himself oddly annoyed that he would be called Smeghead, and Lister the Sleeper. "I will get them to call you jackarse," he muttered to Lister, with certainty. "If it's the last thing I do."

Lister gave a bemused "Hiya" to the crowd, whilst jabbing Rimmer with his elbow and flashing him an evil look.

Rimmer graced him with a lofty expression. One of the Chosen Ones approached, a middle-aged woman with the ever-present braids; Rimmer vaguely recognized her, but could not place her. The sight of her face seemed to trigger a vague sort of headache, which did nothing to improve his mood. "It's too late for this shit, really it is," he told her.

"We come to honor your love for one another!" the woman announced, in the manner of a ritual chant.

Rimmer squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Oh, not more of this," he groaned. "Can't you go celebrate it without us?"

Lister looked from the woman to Rimmer and back, confused.

"You took the oil," the woman announced in her bullhorn voice. "Your love is strong. Your coming together heralds good things for all our people." Laughter and cheers greeted her announcement, and just did not seem to die down.

The times when Rimmer hated being right were few - considering how infrequently he was right, he tended to cherish those moments - but this was a rare moment. He would never hear the last of it. Smegging voyeuristic perverts, indeed. "Wait - we used your lube, so we're blessed? What if he used it to rub a veruca?" he asked, pointing at Lister. The rather horrid thought that some of those smeggers might have been listening in - or watching - hit him, and he wondered if he would ever have sex again.

"Come on, Rimmer, they're just trying to be friendly," Lister chided, more out of habit than anything else. Friendly the clones might be, but something about this situation did not feel right at all to him. But Rimmer was always putting what Lister had begun to think of as 'his people' down, and he was not about to give him more fodder for ridicule.

Rimmer turned to Lister, taking out some of his irritation on the other man. "They're always smegging friendly. This," he yelled, pointing to the crowd, "is meddling."

Lister felt undecided as the crowd started to close in. The clones were chattering amongst themselves, singing, settling down; some had brought food, drink, and smoking rolls, and started to spread out on blankets they had brought, as if it were a picnic. More disturbingly, to both Rimmer and Lister's mind, many of them started to canoodle, as if this were, instead, a warm-up to a group orgy.

"And now," the woman said in her crowd voice, "we would be honored to see you celebrate your love."

"Steady on!" Lister yelped. This was taking the concept of friendliness beyond too far and out the other side.

Rimmer hiccupped. "It's a bad night for your honor, folks."

The crowd had, by this point, lost whatever order it might once have possessed. People were poking around the hut and peeking in the windows and door - those who were not already making out or outright having sex on the hillside. The scent of various aromatic oils filled the air, advancing mercilessly towards Rimmer's nostrils. He sighed. He decided he was officially beyond shock; the clones did that to a person, he thought. However, he now had an escape, something he never would have thought he would voluntarily leave a bevy of naked women to re-enter. The clones did that to a person, he thought, again. "I'm going back to Starbug."

Lister swallowed. "I'm not sure they're gonna let us do that, man."

"What are they going to do to stop us, sing at us?" Rimmer grated as he started walking towards the crowd.

The woman with the penetrating voice noticed, and moved to intercept Rimmer. Her arms were crossed, and she was wearing an exact replica of the look Lister got when blocking Rimmer's access to the storage room where they'd put the slide-projector. "You are the foundations of our culture. Your joining is scared," she said, loudly and sternly. "You cannot leave us now."

"You got along perfectly well for three centuries and change without our 'joining'," Rimmer said, crossing his arms in turn and glaring pointedly downwards at the twonk.

"Yes. We waited. And now, the Sleeper has come. Together, you will bless our people."

Rimmer choked slightly at her phraseology. Yes, they had probably been listening in when the Sleeper had come. "Go bless yourself," he snarled, pushing his way through the crowd.

"Rimmer!" Lister cried, trying to follow him through the laughing, pushing crowd. The crowd was not violent, but was overly curious, like untrained animals. He couldn't even follow Rimmer with his eyes, much less make any progress through the mass of bodies.

Rimmer pushed at bodies with his arms, his nose wrinkling in disgust at the orgy of drinking, smoking, and sex. He was glad he was dressed. "Rimmer!" he heard Lister yell again behind him. "Smeg - let go of me leg!"

"Lister, stop gadding about!" Rimmer yelled back, just about glimpsing, in those few seconds, a laughing, grinning woman, her hands curled possessively around Lister's nether regions.

"I'm trying, man, I'm trying!" Lister yelled, as two entirely different teenage girls grabbed the ends of the sheet he was wrapped in, and tugged. Predictably, he fell, rolling onto something he really, really hoped was a particularly firm, pliant root.

Rimmer sighed. "Do you want to get back to the 'Bug, or do you want to flirt with the ladies?" he asked, tartly, pushing at a man who was trying to lick his ear.

Lister struggled upright and shrugged out of the sheet. Still tugging at it, the girls fell in a confusion of limbs and laughter, which Lister gratefully took advantage of. "Let's go!"

Rimmer tried to leg it, but it was easier thought than done. The clones were thick on the hillside, and they were pushy. Rimmer stumbled as he pushed at arms that tried to grab bits of him. The footing was slick, as it was only about half hillside and half undulating naked people. Yelps sounded now and then, and Rimmer tried to grind his boots in whenever he heard one. Suddenly, a clear voice sounded out somewhere to the right of them. "Over here!" It was a voice that Rimmer was mortified to find that he recognized.

Lister saw Ilse as Rimmer was still turning, and tried to grab her outstretched hand. He looked around at Rimmer, who was frowning at the girl. "Come on!" he hissed. This was not a time for Rimmer to be confronting his sexual hang-ups.

"Shouldn't you be off shagging something?" Rimmer asked acidly, stumbling as the crowd lurched about.

Ilse shook her head. "No time! I can lead you safely from here!" Rimmer's lip twisted as he looked at the large blanket that she carried, which looked like it had been woven from blessed leaf. He wondered how much of it had gone into the blanket, and how much had gone into her as she weaved it. She held it out, shaking it as if she wanted them to cover themselves with it. "Oh, for Jupiter's sake..." he groaned.

"Come on!" Ilse said, in exactly the same tones Lister had used earlier. Rimmer gave an exasperated look at that man, who looked exasperatedly right back at him. Hesitating for a moment, Rimmer suddenly found himself stumbled into Lister as a girl tried to grab his crotch. Seizing the opportunity, Lister grabbed Rimmer and shoved him under the blanket alongside himself within two seconds flat.

"I feel like a schmuck," Rimmer muttered. He was taller than just about all of the clones, and was wearing a bright blue uniform that looked like nothing they wore. Even the clones weren't that stupid.

"Shhhh..." Ilse hissed at them, and Rimmer, despite himself, grumbled more quietly.

Ilse talked to passers-by as she lead the two. "These two are sick, I'm taking them to the shelter."

"We're sick??" Rimmer shrieked in high-pitched annoyance.

"Shut it, man!" Lister wheezed at him. Rimmer grumbled more quietly.

People randomly patted their backs and make reassuring noises as they were led... somewhere, through a seemingly endless crowd. It was impossible to see out from under the blanket. Rimmer shook his head. Maybe the clones really were that stupid. "Out of sight, out of mind, and the latter isn't much of an effort," he grumbled.

"Hurry... we are almost there..." Ilse hissed.

"Where have I heard that before?" Rimmer asked, tartly.

The crowd seemed to thin out. Ilse urged them on a few feet more, then removed the blanket, revealing, before anything else, her own grinning face. She looked like a dog that just preformed a great trick, and was expecting a treat. Rimmer looked around, fuming. They were close to Starbug; the crowd cheered and laughed behind them, far enough into their party to not notice that the focus of it had run. "Bloody smegging whacko oversexed nutters..."

Lister shook his head. Madness. Running around without their kit on, not a care in the world except where their next drink would come from, and not even that, because it was easier to come by than water. Was that him? Was that the sum of whom he was? "Am I really like them?" He looked to Rimmer, disconcerted that he was turning to the prince of put-downs for reassurance. "I'm not like them, am I?"

Rimmer folded his arms, looking at Lister archly. "Weeeeellll..." he said, and noticed that Ilse was grinning at him. He twisted his lip. "A bit."

With everything else that was going on, it had taken Lister until this moment to realize he was naked. "Smeg," he mumbled, cupping his genitalia in his hands. He was like them. He really was.

"A lot, actually," Rimmer said, looking airily at Lister's cupped genitals. There was a bit of a theme of shamelessness. And, from what he couldn't avoid noting as they had stumbled through the crowd, a certain size advantage.

Ilse waved at the two, urging them. "You should get inside your..." she frowned thoughtfully, "thing."

"Not you, too!" Rimmer said, exasperated. Out of the frying pan and into the smegging fusion cooking flame. What did he expect from that perverted culture?

Lister and Ilse rolled their eyes in unison, like a pair of land-locked synchronized swimmers. "No, ya moron," Lister moaned, "she means the 'Bug!" Ilse nodded eagerly.

"Oh. Yes. Er. Yes," Rimmer said, pointing absently at it. "We should. Go." Smeg, he was probably blushing.

Ilse's grin turned into a sad smile. "We shall miss you. But you must go. I see that now. The others will too, in time."

"I'll miss you smeggers..." Rimmer grumbled, thinking that he would miss them less if he had a better throwing arm. He would have gladly given them a good-bye in the form of a few shied rocks from where he stood.

"I'd shake yer hand but..." Lister looked apologetically at his groin-covering hands, and Ilse giggled.

"Go ahead; she'll probably appreciate it more," Rimmer said. He hardly had time to turn his head, however, before Ilse threw herself around his neck, kissing him. Rimmer stumbled backwards, startled. "Goodbye..." she glanced at Lister.

"Rimmer," Lister provided with a grin.

"Rimmer," Ilse repeated, nodding in satisfaction.

"Erm..." Rimmer's hands hovered awkwardly somewhere around the back of her waist. He wondered if he was going to have to pluck her off of him. But the girl just looked at him oh-so earnestly, in that way they did, and kissed him chastely on the lips. She retreated slowly. Rimmer licked them after she had withdrawn, tasting grass and blessed leaf. "Yes, well." He blinked.

Good girl, Lister thought, stifling a grin. Served him right, the uptight twonk. He turned to Ilse. "Goodbye, darlin'. Ya did good." Ilse beamed back.

"How would you know?" Rimmer hissed quietly to Lister. It suddenly struck him that she had probably told Lister all about... oh, smeg.

"I have to run. Love and share!" she called; it sounded like a greeting. And like the most natural thing in the world, she turned on her heels and ran off.

Rimmer waved with faux enthusiasm, looking at Lister nervously. Smeg, hell, she probably had told him all about it.

Lister watched her, smiling in an almost fatherly manner. "Nice kid."

"Yes." Rimmer said, his voice dry as a bone.

"Wha?" Lister watched Rimmer's face fall into as blank an expression as he could manage. To Lister, it looked highly pompous.

"Is Cat still in the medibay?" Rimmer asked.

Lister had tried very, very hard to forget about that. No one should have to need those parts of themselves put in a cast. It was a sight that stuck with you. "I think so, yeah."

"No reason to stick around, then," Rimmer said, turning to the gangway.

Well, yes. Paradise, perhaps, but not for them. Lister sighed, wondering if they would ever find a place fit for all of them. They could come back here then, maybe, and actually adopt some of those... ah, well. Nothing more for them here, indeed. Although... "Erm... well... Krytes did say there was a few essentials he hadn't gathered yet.."

"Yes, but we won't miss them unless we really care about whether your boxers smell of mint fabric softener or lilac. And quite frankly, I don't." It was past time to leave. Centuries past.

"I like lilac," Lister muttered. He had run out of even semi-plausible excuses.

"I just care that you wear them," Rimmer said, pointedly looking at Lister's cupped hands.

"That so?" Lister asked, raising his eyebrows and shifting his hands subtly. From what he'd found, Rimmer seemed to be quite happy to find he was not wearing them.

Rimmer raised his eyebrows. The man wanted to have sex again? After... that? "They are your clones, aren't they..."

Giggling, Lister added hurriedly, "It is getting kind of chilly. We'd best get inside so I can get into those," he gave a cheeky grin, "boxers."

Rimmer gestured magnanimously towards the gangway. Lister started walking up it purposefully. Rimmer followed, glancing nervously back to make sure none of the clones had noticed their departure. They were still partying what passed for their brains out. Rimmer turned, and almost jammed his nose into Lister's buttocks. Lister had stopped to open the locked airlock. Rimmer stared at the buttocks, his eyebrows clambering upwards.

They finally left his field of vision, allowing some blood to return to his more northerly head. "Oi, Rimmer!" Lister called. "Get a move on!" Rimmer shook his head and climbed in, closing the airlock behind him.


"Thrust figures should be on the navicomp now, Kryten."

Kryten, who had taken over the Cat's seat for the launch, glanced at the display. "That amount of thrust is more than needed to make escape velocity, Mister Rimmer, and the backwash from the engines will likely set the village aflame."

Rimmer sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "No sense of civic duty, Kryten. That's your problem," he said smoothly, as Lister walked into the cockpit, dressed in an old t-shirt and a baggy set of boxers.

Rimmer looked around with something akin to disappointment. "It took you long enough to get dressed!" he chided. It had been at least an hour since Lister had run off to his quarters from the airlock, muttering something about needing to get some clothes on.

"Er... Well..."

"Are we ready to lift off, sir?" Kryten asked Lister, who was quite thankful for being interrupted.

Rimmer sighed. They had been ready to lift off for half an hour, but that smegging mechanoid would not touch the launch controls without the approval of his precious smegging Mister Lister.

"Yeah, man, all set," Lister told Kryten. He turned to Rimmer, fidgeting. "Yer always saying how..." he fished around for something to say, "I need to tidy and that, or I'll never find anything."

"Yes, and that's living proof," Rimmer replied, absently. "Yes, bogbot, we've been ready to lift for half an hour!"

"Starting engines, Mister Lister," Kryten said, pointedly looking at where Lister stood in the middle of the cockpit. Regulations were clear on the fact that all crewmembers must be strapped in during launch for their own safety.

"How's Cat?" Lister asked Rimmer. "He didn't look good last time I saw him."

"Still whimpering," Rimmer said, grinning broadly. "I paid him a visit. It's very important to be solicitous and supportive at a time like this."

"It takes forever to clean the medibay after his visits," Kryten said with a quiet sigh. He could not deny that the Cat had shown more animation during Mister Rimmer's visit than he had shown since he had crawled into the medibay in a whimpering mess, but the resulting broken equipment and wall gouges were not easily mended. "Sir, you should sit down and strap in," Kryten said more loudly to the still-standing Lister.

"Oh, right. Yeah, I suppose." Lister did so, looking distracted. He hadn't quite... well, it would just have to wait.

"Lifting off," Kryten said, flicking switches and pulling back on the joystick. The launch was smooth and trouble-free, and the obvious competence grated on Rimmer. He shifted, looking at the oddly quiet and subdued Lister.

"You're not missing them, are you?" he asked, wondering if Lister missed turds he left behind on a hike, as well.

Lister seemed absorbed in something else. "Wha? No... no... I mean... we could come back and that, yeah? See how they were doing."

"Come back? We're headed for Earth, aren't we?" Rimmer asked, chidingly. "That's a very lengthy round-trip."

"Yeah, well..." Lister trailed off, sighing, and pushing randomly at buttons.

Rimmer frowned. "Well, we have a little bit of them here, don't we," he said, flatly.

"Eh?"

"If you miss them, just look in the mirror and drop your IQ by half."

Lister rolled his eyes. As soon as Kryten announced that they had achieved orbit, and that those passengers on the left side of the 'Bug could see the planet split in half by the terminator in a lovely manner, Lister jumped to his feet. "Gotta... thing," he mumbled, rushing off.

"Leaving orbit," Kryten announced, and stood. "Just time to start on the laundry!"

Rimmer watched Lister leave with a bemused expression. It did not last long, however, as Kryten walked out and left him to realize that he had been left with the first cockpit shift. "Hey!" he yelled, but when neither returned, he turned to his console and irately ran useless system scans.


Kryten relieved him several hours later, muttering something about how Mister Lister needed his rest, and Rimmer walked back to his quarters. He was not in the least bit tired, but he felt it was important to re-establish a routine. After his shift, back before all of... what had happened had happened, he would go back to his room and read. Or stare at the ceiling. Wank, maybe. He stopped as soon as he walked in the door. He did not have many possessions, but they were well-organized and sensibly set out, and he noted their absence immediately. "Oh, for smeg's sake!" he yelled at the empty room.

There were not many suspects for the appropriation of his things, and he stormed over to Lister's quarters. Probably another smegging prank. Well, he was not the Sleeper anymore; he was smegging Lister, and he would smegging well keep his mitts off of Rimmer's belongings. He hit the Door Open button without knocking. Lister stood in the middle of the room, his back to the door; he started at Rimmer's abrupt entry and almost dropped something he was holding.

"What did you do with my things, you goit?" Rimmer bellowed.

Lister turned quickly, hiding the object behind his back. "Oh! Erm..." he looked around, guilty.

Rimmer looked around, as well. His electronic book, his book on astronavigation, his comb and gel, his small box of music - they were all scattered about the room in the haphazard manner that Lister kept his own things. Rimmer looked back at whatever Lister was hiding. "That's not my book of twentieth century license plates, is it? It's the only book I have from the Dwarf!"

"Ah..." Lister looked around again, cursing himself for not keeping proper track of the time. He could have finished his preparations hours ago, but he'd gotten distracted with one of the myriad books in Rimmer's electronic library. It was nice have gotten a few things he'd always wondered about confirmed as completely normal.

Rimmer saw the book in question, leaning next to a potted plant that looked indigenous to the planet they had just left. "Lister, what are you up to?" Rimmer asked, crossing his arms.

"I just..." Lister shrugged, lamely. "I thought you might like it if we, you know..." He shrugged again, at a loss for how to phrase this without sounding like an idiot.

Rimmer raised an eyebrow. "We what?"

Lister gestured around the room with his shoulders; he did not want to move his hands. Well, there went the 'not stupid' idea out of the air-lock.

Rimmer looked around room. Lister had stolen his things, yes. And? "We what?"

"Bunked together," Lister answered, quietly. If stupid was the way it should be, then he might as well embrace it. He met Rimmer's eyes earnestly.

Rimmer opened his mouth, then closed it. Well, this would shoot his routine to smeg, wouldn't it? Then again, it had been fairly well shot to smeg already. "Really..." he said, for lack of anything else to do with his mouth.

"It's all right if ya don't want to," Lister said, looking down.

Rimmer walked over to sit on the spare bunk that the blasted Cat sometimes used, and sat on it weakly. Well, it had been rather... bearable, spending time with Lister in the past week. "It would make the drills easier, certainly."

Lister gave a cautious smile.

"I mean, the emergency drills," Rimmer amended quickly, seeing the smile.

"Good. I'd..." Lister suddenly felt oddly nervous. Why? After all they'd been through? Ah, but that had been another world - another reality, even. This was space, where no one could hear your sighs of boredom; where walls were dubious shades of grey, and people slept in bunks, separated by more metal, plasti-crete, and a few feet of stale-ship air. "I'd like it if ya did. Stay. Here, that is. You know, with me." He was babbling.

Rimmer raised both eyebrows. "Yes, like we did. Back on Red Dwarf." That was safe, wasn't it?

That had not been what he'd meant at all, Lister thought, as he did his best to keep his back away from Rimmer. But it was a start; something he could work with. He decided to go with it. "Well... yes."

Rimmer looked at the bunk, and wrinkled his nose. "This smells like Cat. Fish aftershave."

Lister gave a quiet chuckle. "We'll have Kryten sort that out. Not like he doesn't like to clean."

"Kryten." That infatuated mechanoid would not take this well. He was the one who had sorted them into separate rooms on Starbug when they first lost Red Dwarf, after all. Rimmer stood again, pushing that out of his mind to focus on the current mystery. "What the smeg are you hiding?"

Lister cursed internally, as the object nearly dropped from his hands. He lost his balance, then straightened again, giving Rimmer a wild look. "Erm..."

Rimmer walked over and started to reach his hand around Lister's back. Whatever it was, Rimmer would soon find out; longer arms were a definite plus.

Resisting half-heartedly for a few moments, Lister finally gave in guiltily, showing Rimmer a brown, ceramic-like bottle of the oil that the clones had made.

Rimmer sighed. "It's not the cinnamon, is it? I hate cinnamon."

"Don't think so. Might be mint."

Rimmer opened the bottle and sniffed at it. "Peppermint," he sighed "I like spearmint better."

"All the same to me," Lister mused, in what he hoped was a properly nonchalant tone of voice.

Rimmer shook his head and restoppered the bottle. "Yes, I'm sure." He handed the bottle back to Lister. Lister took it and toyed with it. Scent aside - it had been magnificently slick stuff, Rimmer thought. "You brought it to put in nougat, I'm sure."

"Not really," Lister said, his eyes shining.

The corner of Rimmer's mouth quirked, despite himself. "So you want to bunk together."

"I did promise you you'd get to have a go next."

Rimmer hiccupped. Now that was just not smegging fair.

"Suppose I just wanted my bases covered," Lister continued, toying with the bottle. He was not about to let Rimmer have all the fun. It wouldn't be fair for him to get both multiple orgasms and the joy of receiving every time.

Rimmer hooked one finger in Lister's boxer elastic. Oh, the man probably thought Rimmer was wrapped around his finger. He'd show him. A. J. Rimmer was nobody's boytoy.

Lister bit his lip, but did not look up, possible future scenarios dancing in his head. Oil, peppermint or not, featured heavily in them all. Good thing there were at least five crates of the stuff in the cargo bay. Ilse really was a good girl.

"I'll cover your bases..." Rimmer said, running his hands down the inside of Lister's boxers to cup his buttocks, "whatever the smeg that means."

"I was hoping ya would." Lister let himself be pulled. He whispered into Rimmer's ear, "Ya know... with that... thing ya do, you could go on forever. I could handle it, if ya used enough of that stuff..." He licked Rimmer's ear, imagining Rimmer hardening inside him, pummeling him senseless, then hardening again, and again, and again...

"I haven't the faintest idea how long it goes," Rimmer muttered into Lister's neck. He had a feeling that he would soon find out, however, and would not walk terribly well tomorrow. But it was some consolation to think that Lister probably would not, either.


And it was said that one day, the Sleeper woke, and became whole again, and the Watcher's friends came to take them back to the stars. But people, in their greed, were overcome with grief and anger at the thought of losing their beloved Watcher, and the long-lost father of their people. And so, the Elders came together in the hut of thought.

For days they talked, and smoked, and drank, and remembered. They sang the old songs, the ones that were said to have come from the mouth of the Watcher himself, from the time he had sat by the Sleeper's side day after day. Sung out of tune and rhythm, they were said to be particularly lucky, but they brought no solace to the Elders this time.

It took a group of young ones, barely old enough to share, to bring the news that the two had finally joined in happy coupling, and this was when the Great Mistake was made. In their blindness, the people did not see how the Sleeper and Watcher were different; how the stories were different too, when they told them. How the stories had always told of them going away when the time came, and that this was the time.

And so, a feast of coupling was prepared. The chants were sung, the village gathered and marched to the couple's door, as they always did when people were joined together in new love. But the Watcher fled, and took the Sleeper with him, and for a time, it seemed as though they had been forgotten.

But ah, they had not counted on the blessed prankster nature of the Sleeper.

For in his wisdom, he had brought the friend who never tired, who had spread his pleasure through the people, and shared with all those who were willing, shunning only men - but even they accepted this, when they saw his true purpose. Long after they had left - Watcher, Sleeper, Guardian, Pleasure Seeker - new children were born with a glorious difference never seen before by man, woman or child.

And at the night feasts, these new children would sit with their parents, their eyes reflecting the light from the fire, and their voices would ring out in the songs of memory. And their hands would find those of the other children, common, mutant; all, and together, they would remember.

They would remember.