Author: Roadstergal.
Title: Coward.
Censor: R.
Pairing: Rimmer/OC.
Commentary: Please. roadstergal@gmail.com
Disclaimer: They don’t belong to me, and I make no money off of them.
Notes: Spoilers up through VII.
The bar is designated non-smoking. A haze nevertheless hangs in the air; an almost palpable stench of stale sweat, beer, and vomit. My elbows are in a pool of something sticky and shiny on the worn wooden table; I hope it's beer, and don't look too closely. I don't look at anything too closely, except for my hands. I stare at them, as if I know the city like the back of them and need to memorize the route back to my hotel room.
I don't know the city like the back of them. I would have to think hard to know what city it is, and I'm not interested in knowing at the moment. All I know is that I am holding a glass stein of piss-yellow beer in both hands like a lifeline. The head is long gone. A fly landed for a drink earlier and is now doing the backstroke; I stare at it for a while as it floats lazily around the rim.
I don't take alcohol well at all. This is my fifth beer, and I am far from sober. I am buzzed and a little bit loopy. After one more, I might be in a state to talk to someone. I carefully fish the fly out of the drink by one soggy wing and drop it onto the table, out of the way. I take a sip of the liquid, grateful that it is no worse than bitter and watery. Much like me.
People have been trying to talk to me all night. When you go into a seedy bar dressed in gold lamè flightsuit, people assume you either are drinking off the rejection from an audition for a gay magazine centerfold, or are looking to hook up. Plenty of men who are either interested in sex or interested in knowing which magazine it was have already come up to talk. That would be why I am staring at my hands. I do not want to talk to anyone. Yet.
I feel grateful for not being Ace at the oddest of times. I am feeling it right now. Thank all that smegs that I am not Ace. I am not a self-satisfied git. You don't change your personality with a wig and a new suit. A cowardly gormless incompetent bureaucratic pile of smeg I was, and a cowardly gormless incompetent bureaucratic pile of smeg in tacky clothes I am. I am not too cowardly to run off and play the part of Ace. I am too cowardly to consider why I did. And so I sit here and drink.
I believed it because you did. You believed that one act of mediocre bravery would be enough to overturn more than two lifetimes of cowardice and self-interest. But my belief in that that was short-lived. An Ionian wildebeest does not change its splotches, Lister, and neither will I. Being Arnold Rimmer is beyond habit, now. It was engraved in my DNA; now it is burned into every circuit. Being a hero is surprisingly easy for a coward. I follow the formula. When it comes time to be frightened for my life, I have a script; I pretend I'm in a holo-film until it's over, and when it is, I try to forget it ever happened.
Like I am now. Enough brooding. A man just slid into the booth and sat across from me. He has a bit of a soggy smile, but he speaks saucy words and puts his hand on mine as often as he can. He probably thinks the way he is batting his eyes is coquettish. Then again, I am probably just as far off the mark for thinking the way I am smiling is sexy. He is a bit too fair-skinned and hollow-cheeked, but he will do. I put the beer aside and pull him towards me with my hand on the back of his neck, kissing him as an excuse for closing my eyes.
When we're back at my room and the lights are out, there is nothing to compare him to, anyway. Tongues in mouths, hands on ribs and buttocks, fingers inside, slippery with lube from the industrial-size container I carry with me, followed by a penis of some reasonable proportion, and sex doggy-style with my hands grasping the headboard and rattling it with every thrust. Repeat ad infinitum, or at least until I know I won't walk very well tomorrow. He mutters some slurred endearments and falls asleep. I will not be far behind.
A man who is not a coward might stop to consider what he is doing. He might look honestly at his life and realize that the one thing that Ace had that Arn didn't was loneliness. He might look at how every woman he beds has more than a passing resemblance to McGruder, and every man he beds has more than a passing resemblance to you. He might look at the pattern of heroism-drunk-sex-recover and notice what stands out by its absence. He might listen to the truths - or at least the more honest lies - that sit in his stomach and scratch at him with little angry claws on nights like this. He might hit the brakes, sometime, instead of pushing the throttle all of the way to the floor and hoping that he can stay out of trouble by sawing at the wheel.
But I am not that man, and so I punch the pillow and try to fall asleep. I am the man who can successfully forget that when I crash, you will not notice or care. I have taken that option away from you, you see, and I still think that was rather clever of me.
Wasn't it?
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