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Maybe picking the Cat as his husband hadn’t been his best idea.
In Lister’s defense, he’d felt on the verge of sick for two days and was sure he was running a low-grade fever from sleeping so close to damp ground. Being tied near a crackling fire intended to turn him into a tribal feast wasn’t helping matters, and Cat bemoaning sparks landing on his boot-cut sparkle trousers was getting seriously on his pecs. “This outfit’s going to be RUINED,” the felinoid whined. “I don’t have any other snazzy bottoms to go with this jacket besides-”
“Shut it,” Lister hissed over his shoulder. “You’re going to draw more attention to us.”
“Buddy, this material melts, I ain’t going to be drawing NOBODY’S attention anymore!” the Cat yowled, and Lister felt him kicking at the flighty embers drifting over from the small bonfire. “Do you appreciate how hard it was to come by this blend of silk millions of years from the closest Neiman Marcus?”
“How would you know?” Lister retorted. “You’ve never been to one! You’ve never even been to a department store of any sort.”
“Hey, I can read history, can’t I?”
Could he? “Can you?”
Cat’s “Can I!” cut him off. “Now I don’t do battles and wars and shit like that. I’m talking about real history, bud. When they found the first silkworms, or how to make purple.” Lister sighed. “All the cutting and pleating, and the little knots I had to tie for the sewing machine …”
Lister let it become a drone, wondering at what point the Kinitawawe had caught wise that he and Cat weren’t matrimonial. It had been the best idea when the GELFs showed up demanding Lister make good on that long-ago marriage – it had been roughly a century, but apparently not long enough for the tribe to forget the shame the human had brought on their then-leader. Worse, Lister’s bride (there was no way he was even attempting to pronounce her name) was the now-leader, decades wiser but no less inclined to let him off the hook. Rather than try to outrun them, he’d agreed to meet with them in hopes of trusting his fast-talking to get him out of this smeg.
Because the GELFs had him on a clock and he could only bring two others along, he’d chosen Kryten for translation and general assistance in negotiation, and Cat because … well, Rimmer was off on a lower-decks sabbatical (or some such; Lister still didn’t pretend to understand him completely) and Kochanski was most qualified to run the Dwarf anyway. He didn’t figure he’d be gone long, namely since he didn’t know what he was going to do in the first place.
That was two days ago, and Lister reflected that he was a lousy leader. Like, if he’d been in charge of the campaign against Troy, Rome would never have had need to originate, lousy. Not only were he and Cat in danger of becoming the meat dish at tonight’s festivities, but he didn’t even know where Kryten was or what had happened to him. He hoped the GELFs hadn’t shut him off … then again, depending what the Kinitawawe may alternately plan to do to the mechanoid, perhaps that would be a kindness.
Lister shifted in his bonds, surveying the camp and trying to find anything that could get him and Cat free. He was not the master of escape, but he’d gotten out a fair few scrapes in his time, surprising considering how much of his adult life had been spent in deep space where no rules of fighting that he’d ever learned while growing up carried over. His annoyance with the Cat would abate for little stretches of time – after all, he didn’t come along knowing Lister was going to seize upon the desperate idea of pretending to already be married for a long time, back before he’d been forced into the ceremony with the GELF princess. Er, queen? And Cat had played along – but only to a point.
Remembering that is what would send the dark raincloud back over Lister’s mood to rain on his better nature again and again as they waited in their guarded tent for punishment, then being tied here to await their fate. Would it have been so hard, really, for Cat to go along with the kiss he’d reached over and planted on the corner of his mouth? It wasn’t like Lister had enjoyed it, but smeg, they’d needed to look married. Getting slapped upside the head and ending up on the dirt with Cat crouched over him, fangs bared, didn’t look good – no matter how much Lister tried to pass it off as merely kinky. The chief hadn’t believed him, and had apparently not been reassured by her spy finding them sleeping on opposite sides of their connubial tent in the wee hours of the following morning.
Lister didn’t realize he was grinding his teeth until he felt something sharp poke him in the side and Cat hissing. Looking around, he saw two guards looming over them as a third untied them from the tree they’d been lashed tightly to. They were being poked in the direction of the growing fire, and Lister tried to play dumb, since he didn’t have a translator handy anymore. They’d poke, he’d look quizzical and refuse to move, they’d yell and it started all over again. While Lister felt reassured the beasts seemed to not be catching on to a pattern here, he also knew the chief wouldn’t order them cooked without the pleasure of watching, so she had to be on her way – and she was a lot smarter than her goons. This can’t be how I die, he lamented. Not when we’ve lived through so much other, worse smeg … and not now, man, just when things have started to get good again …
They must’ve poked Cat with the spear-lance hybrid, because he let out a sound Lister hadn’t heard before. “You’re going to make me bleed!” he was chastising the guard, not caring apparently that the goon couldn’t understand English. “Red doesn’t GO with this shade of lemon, you big, stupid dog!”
A blast of hot air hit them as Lister was about to chime in to help out; he looked up, what passed for weak morning sunlight blotted out suddenly by something large and rectangular. He didn’t try to figure it out, he didn’t know what he was going to do with it, he simply thanked Whatever for the distraction and started lurching forward, hoping the Cat would take unexplained direction now better than he had in Lister’s attempts at fake romance.
It was a bad escape. Had he been watching it in a movie, Lister would have wet himself laughing, but since it was him, he just kept trying to move them until he heard engines and saw something dangling out of the corner of his eye. He paused, moved, then did a double-take and looked up again. “No way,” he muttered. “No smegging WAY.”
Dropping in on a line from the hovering craft was a figure even the GELFs would have heard of, bewigged, bacofoiled, and, by the way the sun was glinting off him, apparently bedazzled. From about fifteen feet in the air, Ace Rimmer let go of his rope and angled himself to land on the two befuddled guards, rolling and tussling with them for about twenty seconds before leaving them unconscious and getting up to greet the meaty, hairy fist of another coming at him.
It took Lister a moment to realize Cat was shouting a question at him, his attention fixed instead on this figure of legend beating the snot out of a contingent of pissed-off genetically engineered life forms. “HEY!” he finally yelled, to which Lister could only answer, “Wha? Huh?” from a temporary state of horny fugue.
“You can’t tell me THAT’S Goalpost Head!”
As if hearing the question, Ace dropped his opponent and crossed to them, his strides long and sure. “Quite a fix you and Catster here’ve insinuated yourselves into, Davey-boy,” he observed, one eyebrow arched as he pulled a knife from somewhere to cut into the tough rope binding them. “Kryters said you were trying to pull the ol’ matrimonial wool over the tribe’s eyes?”
Lister wasn’t fooled by the casual words, not with the way Rimmer was eyeing him with an improbable mixture of fury and bemusement. “It was fairly well the only plan I had available, given my circumstances,” he pointed out, as the little knife sawed through rope.
“That’s what you get for haring off without your space hero, old chum,” Rimmer replied.
It had been kind of hot the way Rimmer had basically airlifted in and kicked ass to save them, but now Lister felt he was being played with, and not nicely. “Excuse me?” he scoffed. “I’ve been in plenty worse situations where you were absolutely no help at ALL, you arrogant git.”
“I’d leave you here to finesse your way out of this one,” Rimmer shot back, his voice veering more into its natural nasal register, “except then I wouldn’t get the pleasure of lecturing you later on taking on situations you have no idea how to get yourself out OF.” He snapped the last of the rope and yanked it from around the two of them. “You cheese-for-brains bum.”
“Hey, don’t do me any favors, you-” Lister began, then spotted a GELF lumbering up behind Rimmer. He grabbed the unsuspecting hologram and yanked him out of the way, while sticking out a foot and tripping the attacker. “Look out!” he yelled to both his shipmates, spotting more guards coming with his wronged bride on their heels. He looked up and around. “Where’d that bloody ship go?”
“I told Nona to go pick up Kryten,” Rimmer answered tightly, facing the crowd and stepping between it and Lister. “Since he was good enough to signal us that you were in over your head.”
There was that patronizing tone again. “Not all of us can parachute in from the nearest ship or asteroid in a thirty billion-dollarpounds police box,” he snapped back.
“No, but some of us could pick a more convincing spouse,” Rimmer pointed out. “Honestly, you’d have been better off pretending you were hitched to Kryten; at least he could have pulled off ‘adoring and devoted!’”
He chuffed out a laugh. “Oh man, don’t tell me that’s how you see yourself.”
“I am concerned and caring, miladdo,” Rimmer corrected. “I’ll show up out of nowhere and save your goodies when they need saving – like this!”
“’Cause I see you showed up so very fast!” Lister fired back. “Two whole days after we got here, and not so much as an intercom call when we were fired on in the first place!”
Rimmer spun, eyeing him with something between extreme annoyance and anger. “You’re the one who wanted me to leave you alone, Lister,” he said, dangerously.
“No, you’re the one who wanted to dictate your own long list of made-up protocols for searching a derelict to me, when I’ve been doing it just fine for close on twelve years,” he answered, resisting the urge to stand on his toes to gain some height. Instead, he held up two fingers only millimeters apart. “I told you to back off just a little – and you went on vacation, man!” Rimmer moved his mouth to speak, but hesitated; he touched the bruised spot below Lister’s left eye, just a little darker than his skin. “Let off; I just got socked by one of the guards for insubordination,” Lister explained, wondering why he was being reassuring when he still felt like yelling.
“Yes, hmm … you would,” the hologram muttered, not unkindly, as his thumb brushed the tender skin. The gesture was so at odds with the badassery Ace projected that Lister couldn’t help smiling. “It’s not a compliment,” Rimmer insisted.
“You knew what I was when you came to find me,” the Scouser pointed out.
Rimmer’s eyes softened briefly, then narrowed and hardened again, along with his clenched jaw, as he made a fist of his same hand, stepped back suddenly, and drove his elbow hard into the soft belly of another GELF charging from behind. It staggered, stumbled a little, and stayed up just long enough for Rimmer to turn and clock it in the neck, robbing it of breath and making it go down, choking.
The battle might have gone on much longer had reinforcements not arrived with the chief. Lister knew even Ace and Fiona couldn’t help him against these odds, and he threw himself between his friends and the chief’s guards, waving his arms and shaking his head. “Wait!” he told them all, cutting through the air with impatient gestures. “WAIT! STOP! DON’T!”
“What are you doing?” Rimmer asked, breathing heavily and balling and releasing a fist, eyeing him skeptically. Cat hissed in what could have been rare agreement, his nonexistent fur clearly up.
“I gotta fix this, Rimmer.” He arched his brows to ask for indulgence, then turned slowly to the chief a few feet away, hands up and out to his sides in truce. He didn’t know how to communicate without Kryten, but remembered a few words he’d picked up in context the past couple of days, including “wait” and “talk?” He looked halfway over his shoulder and said, “Can Fiona get Kryten here quick?”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t speak GELF, that’s why.” He heard Rimmer draw in a long breath. “Can she, or not? Did she find him?” He waited, knowing the hologram’s light bee had a transmitter patched in with his ship’s A.I. by which he could communicate remotely – though it was difficult and distracting. “Well?”
“Give me a minute!” Rimmer snapped. “She’s looking, still. But she- can help me, with that, at least.” Lister turned slightly more to look at him. “’Translating.” He nodded toward the chief. “Talk, Lister.”
And Lister did. He chose his words carefully, explaining delicately why he hadn’t been interested in the chief when she was a girl (he hoped she would realize it extended to “now” too), but that he would be glad to trade or make payment on the old oxygen unit they’d needed. At one point he thought to lawyer his way through and throw in that he’d technically satisfied the terms of the trade by going through the marriage ceremony itself, but Rimmer had paused in his translating and merely shook his head at Lister. “Unwise,” he murmured in English. “Insult, meet injury.”
The break apparently signaled the terminus of Lister’s argument, for the GELF chief began addressing Rimmer, looking between him and Lister. Rimmer waited a moment, then began speaking. “I don’t think she’s impressed,” he said slowly. “Or that she’s buying it. She doesn’t seem terribly sympathetic to your inability to get it up for her.” An eyebrow quirk told Lister that was Rimmer’s phrasing.
“Can you-” He hated invoking the label, both because it didn’t feel entirely truthful and it felt like an excuse rather than a reason. “Can you explain to her the concept of me being gay, in a way she’ll get it?”
Rimmer brushed back some of the wig’s fringe from his eye; Lister missed his real hair. “I don’t think I was precise enough.” He sighed. “She doesn’t seem to particularly care if you want her, or not – she’s got a thing for you, Dave.” There was a fleeting expression in the hologram’s eyes that could have been empathy with the chief, which made him briefly want to hug Rimmer.
Might as well go for broke, then. “Okay, you’re right; I lied about us being married.” He gestured toward Cat and waited for Rimmer to translate. Expressions didn’t change so much for the Kinitawawe, but Lister could tell when the chief felt triumphant. “However …” He moved closer to Rimmer and took his hand, lacing their fingers. “I only said it because … Ace, here, wasn’t here with me. I had to stall for time.”
Rimmer blinked. “How do you imagine this is going to help?” But he didn’t shake off Lister’s hand.
“Tell her,” he ordered. He watched the chief carefully as Rimmer did – but was not prepared for her and the other Kinitawawe around them to break out into laughter. At first, he didn’t get it, but when the chief calmed down enough to address Rimmer again, he thought he knew what might be coming by the way his cheeks colored and the small, pleased smile gracing his lips. “Rimmer,” he prodded when the man wasn’t translating for him, yanking gently at his hand.
“It was something fairly complimentary to me and not so much toward you,” he finally said, looking at his companion. Was that smugness in his expression?
“As in?”
At that, Rimmer’s face fell a little in what could have been compassion. “For the record, I really don’t agree with her.” Lister squeezed, hard. “Listy, I don’t want-”
“She said she was always given to believe Ace Rimmer could have any leggy lady he wants, so why should she believe he would take up with someone with more years and penis than his legend generally leads others to believe about him?” Kryten stopped at Rimmer’s other side, still in one piece.
“Fiona found you!” Even in the middle of all this, Lister felt relief; he didn’t know he’d been holding his breath but now that his little family was all accounted for again, he let it out, affectionately rubbing his thumb across Rimmer’s knuckles.
“Yes, sir. Sorry it took me so long to get here, but I insisted on walking when Mr. Rimmer’s ship informed me what was going on. I didn’t want its landing to let me out to interrupt negotiations.” He gestured at the chief. “I believe she is awaiting a response, sirs.”
Rimmer started to speak GELF, then stopped, screwing up his face in frustration. “Dammit, Nona!” he exclaimed to the air. “This is a shit time to cut me off.”
“I believe I can provide translation now that I’m here, Mr. … Ace,” Kryten interjected. Lister wondered at the significance of him choosing to address Rimmer by what Kryten considered an honorific; it was a far cry from “Smee Hee.” He didn’t understand why Rimmer looked so discomfited. “Go on, in English, sir,” Kryten encouraged.
“Yes, I- Well.” Rimmer cleared his throat and glanced down at his boots. “While I appreciate your assessment of my attractiveness, I’m …” He trailed off, glanced at his and Lister’s joined hands, then raised his eyes to the chief’s. “He’s telling the truth. We are together.” Kryten translated, waited for the chief to respond, then addressed Rimmer. “She wants to know if you are married.”
Rimmer chewed at his bottom lip. “What do I say?” he asked Kryten, then shook his head. “No – don’t say that. Give me a minute.” He looked up into the sky, then shook his hair and smiled at the chief. “Unfortunately – there’s no way we can, on our ship. There’s no captain or holy man, or even a mid-level clerk to write it down in triplicate somewhere. But-” He cleared his throat. “We have been together for a number of years, and I have loved him far longer than you have.” This at least was true; the Kinitawawe might be long-lived, but he’d spent well over a century working as Ace, with an undefined ache in his heart at leaving Lister behind. It was something he’d only reluctantly admitted to Kochanski after several drinks late one night and, bless her, she’d been good enough to rat him out to Lister – in private, of course – once they were all aware he and Rimmer were finally carrying on together.
Kryten was translating words, of which Lister was only dimly aware as he looked sideways at the hologram, who was clearly embarrassed. Lister edged closer, circling his thumb on the heel of Rimmer’s palm; Rimmer kept his eyes ahead, but Lister saw the miniscule lift of the corner of his mouth that accompanied the equally imperceptible tightening around his fingers. “Unfortunately?” he repeated sotto voce, arching a brow.
“You’re reading too much into a nervous word,” Rimmer replied as quietly, but that blush wouldn’t go away.
The chief, meanwhile, was studying them. Lister noted the way her eyes took in each of them, their hands, the way Rimmer was angled toward and slightly further forward than him, their stances. For all her guards’ hamfistedness, she seemed quietly considering – but there was still no way to really discern an expression other than “angry/constipated.” He wondered what she made of their differences, superficial and otherwise; or if it mattered, given her own interspecies interest in him. Finally, she spoke. And spoke … and kept speaking. Kryten merely tilted his head and listened, making no effort to convey during the exposition. Finally, she gestured at him and pointed to Lister and Rimmer.
“Given the reputation Mr. Rimmer enjoys in his Ace persona, coupled with his actions here today, and yours, the chief seems hesitant to press her claim, rightful though it may be, to you as her husband. She seems to feel it might be unwise to infuriate a rival as formidable as Mr. Ace by trying to restrain one he views as his mate.”
“Is that so,” mused Lister, as Rimmer blinked. He didn’t look much like a space hero just then – he resembled more a gaping fish trying not to gape. The man sucked in his cheeks, held the breath, then blew it out. “You all right, Arn?” The hologram nodded curtly, and Lister moved closer, moving his hand up to his shoulder. “Sure?”
“It seems too easy,” Rimmer grumbled, shaking his head. “That there’s no fight. She clearly wanted you, went to the trouble of keeping you here two days and did all this.” He gestured around, at the fire and the ropes and the goons, then at his head. “Surely me and this bad rug isn’t enough to dissuade her alone.”
“Sirs?” Kryten held up a finger. “If I may – I was not finished. Perhaps there is yet insight to be gleamed from her other remarks.” They and Cat waited for clarification. “Given all of this, and Mr. Rimmer’s explanation of lack of matrimonial authority aboard the Red Dwarf, she has graciously offered the use of her shaman for such a service.”
It was actually the Cat who spoke first. “Say how, now?”
“She is offering to allow Mr. Lister and Mr.-”
“We know what she’s offering, Kryten!” Lister interrupted, surprised.
Rimmer’s head shaking was being lifted to an art form. “There’s no ‘offering’ to it.” When Lister interjected, “But she can’t make us …” and trailed off, Rimmer watched the light bulb go off in his head, a wry twist to his lips as his shaking finally switched to nodding.
“I told you it was too easy.”
The two of them silently considered this, each to his own thoughts. But before Lister could get too deep into his, Cat hove into their line of vision. “So let me get this straight – Monkey and Fridge Magnet say ‘I do’ and we all get to leave?”
“I believe that is the implication, yes,” Kryten supplied.
“Then get to the doing!” Cat snapped his fingers. “My suits miss me, bud.”
“We’re not gonna just jump in and do this,” Lister growled. “Nobody should be forced into getting hitched.”
“Sir, if I may,” Kryten disagreed, “weren’t Mr. Rimmer’s words technically that you could not in your present circumstances – not that you would not?”
“Hmm,” Rimmer muttered, rocking back on his heels. “The thought occurs, Listy, that we really don’t have much choice if we want to get out of here.” He looked sidelong at Lister. “It really doesn’t obligate you to anything, except to them.”
Had he still been the excitable young buck who regularly plotted ways to piss off his roommate shortly after signing up with JMC, Lister would have argued until someone’s eyes were crossed. Now, he shut his mouth and thought better of his moral objections. Sure, forced marriage was still rotten and unfair to both him and Rimmer – but so was being stuck on the Planet of the Murderous Yet Amorous Hairy Beasts. He caught Rimmer’s eye, gave him a small, answering nod, then looked to Kryten. “Can we get it over with now?”
*****
As it turned out, they could not. The chief had the four of them escorted into a holding tent and given two hours while her minions prepared … well, whatever. Lister chewed his thumbnail and paced, the Cat removed his jacket and began licking the lapels to clean it, and Kryten circled the tent slowly from the inside, inspecting it. Rimmer sat fairly calmly and still for about four minutes, then got up and declared he had to go back to his ship for something. “I’ll be back in less than the two hours,” he assured them all, leaving. The guards did nothing to impede him, which infuriated and confused Lister for about thirty seconds, at which point he realized nobody here was trying to keep Rimmer married to someone in the GELF tribe.
Lister didn’t think much about it at first, but the longer time passed and no Rimmer, he grew worried, then furious. “That low-life’s done another runner, hasn’t he?” he groused to Cat and Kryten. “Just like the escape pod.”
“I doubt that highly, sir,” Kryten answered. “The Wildfire has not moved. He could not have gone far without it.”
Lister blew out a big puff of air, unconvinced. “Where the hell is he, then? We’re supposed to be discussing this, not …” He let it trail off, taking a seat and nibbling at his fingertips, stewing quietly. He kept doing this until, much later, there was a noise out front, followed by Rimmer ducking back into the tent. Lister glared, feeling like he had to burn off his toxicity somehow, and what better way. What the smeg kind of situation was this, anyway? His blood was a roiling brew of anger at being controlled by the GELFs, the now-defunct but still heavily-adrenalized worry of being abandoned by an unreliable ally (once-unreliable, logic tried to remind him, he hasn’t bailed on you once since he got back), lust, fear, and nerves. Finally, he broke. “So, you didn’t do a full runner, then,” he challenged Rimmer. “Fiona refuse to leave without us, that what stopped you?”
The look Rimmer gave him was a curious crossover between constrained fury and contemplation, he thought. “I had to get something from the ship.”
“What, something blue?” he smarmed. “Or old?”
“No, I have me for that,” Rimmer smoothly quipped. “Almost eight hundred years online, remember?”
“Still need to borrow something,” Lister muttered, unheard. Why did he feel so out of sorts, when Rimmer looked as cool as you please, unaffected by any of this? He’d looked briefly discomfited earlier. What had been on that trip to the Wildfire, some good weed? He felt a brief, irrational flare of anger that Rimmer hadn’t brought any back to share.
Only a couple of moments later, guards came in to begin herding them back outside, Lister and Rimmer in front and Kryten and Cat behind. “What’s got you so nonchalant?” Lister finally leaned in sideways to ask, voice low.
“Panic takes up a lot of brainpower,” Rimmer answered, reaching up to adjust the circlet of flowers each of them had been forced to shove in their hair. “Hard to think straight that way.”
It wasn’t a long walk, and Lister felt déjà vu crawl around his stomach as he took in the torches on poles, the formation of attendants, the makeshift aisle. He felt a little pang as he considered this was his second marriage, and neither had involved any sort of proposal or planning, or pleasant anticipation. Worse, while he hadn’t given one short smeg about the first one, this time it bothered him precisely because there was something between him and Rimmer, but they hadn’t even identified it themselves yet; not beyond sex and occasional affection. It was too late in their time together for a wacky sham marriage, but too early for a genuine one … if one would have ever been in the cards anyway. Lister wasn’t much for rice and a piece of paper to force him to be loyal to the person he loved.
He turned all this over in his mind as the chief arrived and took her place, managing a knowing smile, looking between them. (Gods, he hoped she wasn’t expecting a public consummation before letting them leave.) She began speaking, Kryten to Rimmer’s right translating each phrase, as directed by the chief, and Cat beside Lister, discreetly grooming his eyebrows and hairline with a well-licked finger throughout. C’mon, get it over with, Lister thought. The last one didn’t take this long. He nodded when directed, as did Rimmer; if he remembered right, there wasn’t much to do after this.
“And now,” Kryten finally said, “it is nearly complete. If you will-”
“Wait,” Rimmer interrupted, holding up both hands, then reaching into the bacofoil jacket. He dug around a moment, and the brief, clear panic on his face nearly made Lister laugh; then, he withdrew something and held it out for the chief’s inspection. She looked puzzled initially, but just as her confusion faded, Lister’s knotted up and Rimmer turned and held the small object out to him. “Here,” he said. “Have it.”
"What is it?” He took the chunky ring.
The hologram shrugged. “I went back to the ship for it. I hid it a little too well, that’s what took me a while.” Lister noted several tiny strands of different-colored metals twisted and woven into a small, intricate pattern. Light glinted off of parts of it, the ones that had been shined or were cleaner than the rest, though none of it was dirty. “It’s, uh, got parts in it. Leftover bits and shavings and wires from repairs on the Wildfire and Starbug, and an old bit of copper I had for some reason from the Dwarf – the original one I left.”
“Who put this together?” Lister wondered quietly, turning it over. The outside had all the textures and weaving, but the inside had been crudely melted or sanded or something, and then rubbed down to be smooth – it had obviously been done by hand, and it had just as obviously taken time, since these were not all pure metal, but also some harder alloys. He took the silver ring off his left hand and tried the homemade ring on, surprised it fit well; was a bit snug, but not much once it was past the knuckle.
“Me, mostly. I had some help from a blacksmith who owed me a favor in another dimension; showed me how to solder on a micro-scale.”
Lister looked up to catch Rimmer eyeing his hand. The metal was only a little rough, and warm and light against his skin. It felt different from the silver signet he’d been wearing, which he still cupped in his other palm; not wanting to lose it, he shoved it in his jeans pocket. Rimmer looked into his face and smiled with half-confidence. “Thought it might help make it more convincing for her.”
It took only took two small steps for Lister to nearly trip against him, angling his head for the kiss. Rimmer seemed briefly startled, then returned it, parting his lips when Lister felt an arm go around his back. Stupidly joyous, he began chuckling against Rimmer’s mouth, letting the kiss slip as he dipped his head, his forehead mashed into Rimmer’s nose. “I don’t even-” he tried to say, slightly shaking his head and recovering his breath.
“You doing okay?” Rimmer murmured against his nose. Lister nodded at that, and felt immediately stupid for having a sniffle. “This isn’t sad – is it?” Rimmer wondered, his hand making small circles on the small of his back.
Lister shook his head. “Just mush,” he explained, eliciting a low, knowing laugh from Rimmer. He grinned suddenly, briefly, at the idea this man knew him so well to understand this particular emotion without needing it spelled out further. His fingers tightly gripped the front of Rimmer’s jacket before he wound his arms around the man and put his face into his shoulder. Long-fingered hands moved minutely against Lister’s back, warm even through three layers of clothing.
Which, naturally, is when the giant insects showed up to crash the wedding.
Lister had shut his eyes briefly to savor the solidity of that hard-light body in his arms, but when he opened them, something was off. It took him a few seconds to realize the hunched, tall, multi-limbed creature several yards behind Kryten didn’t belong there (namely because Kryten’s expression was distracting, somewhere between nervously twitchy and inexplicably constipated, which Lister bet had nothing to do with any awareness of oversized bugs). “Oh, smeg,” he murmured, slowly backing away.
Rimmer eyed him with a frown and looked down at his shoulder, then lifted his arm and sniffed under it as if his light bee had suddenly developed odorous capabilities. His mouth moved to form words, then stopped as he watched Lister’s expression. Casually, he turned to look behind him, and Lister heard, “Right, then,” just before he lifted his wrist and spoke to the black band around it, instead of messing about with that infernally slow bee transmitter. “Nona, dear, could you be a love and swoop in over here? We’ve got roaches to scatter.”
Lister took a few seconds to compose himself and try to look unaffected again. “Aliens?” he squeaked skeptically (Smooth as satin, he thought).
Rimmer shook his head. “No, they’re Terran,” he said, keeping his voice down as he withdrew the pair of pistols from his belt. Keeping his right hand behind him, he waved one toward Lister, giving him the silent hint to take it. “To begin with, anyway. Sort of like the felinoids – evolved from Earth cockroaches over millions of years.”
“So that’s where the ugly stick went to live,” Cat remarked. “It was off beating them.”
Keeping his voice pitched low, Rimmer said, “Listy … you know how a cockroach’ll eat anything, anywhere, and can’t be killed short of stepping on it?” Lister made an affirmative noise through his nose, keeping his eye on the huge insectoid twitching and starting to move their way. “Multiply that by about fifty for the Cocherel. But,” he added, “they do have two notable gaps in their exoskeleton, at their belly and throat. Not from the back of the neck, but the front.” He took in a long breath, and Lister watched him sidelong as Rimmer straightened subtly, rolled his shoulder, and shifted his stance to become Ace. His expression dropped about twenty degrees, his eyes half-lidded and one corner of his mouth lifted in something resembling amusement.
It was then he also noticed the GLEF chief and the few guards he could see were still, looking toward Ace – presumably for direction.
Almost immediately, the Wildfire under Fiona’s power just … appeared about fifty feet hovering over them. And in Lister’s peripheral vision, perhaps a score more of the Cocherel began beaming, or popping, into existence around them and the GELFs, twitching limbs and mandibles and moving slowly toward them.
And then, Ace tossed his bangs – while managing to keep the skewed flower circlet stuck in the wig on his head.
And it was on.
Lister knew he shot; Ace’s pistol was varying levels of energy, rather than bullets, and worked off a near-inexhaustible charge. He knew GELF guards were charging the invaders. He saw Rimmer shouting into his wrist at one point and then his ship dropped dangerously low over all of them, opening the hatch and unfurling an emergency flexi-ladder. Kryten and the Cat were shooed aboard – after much coaxing and none at all, respectively – before Rimmer fairly shoved Lister ahead of him toward it. But at its foot, he turned and shook his head. “We can’t just run out and leave them to it.”
“Get on the ship, Lister.”
“No.” He stopped shaking his head. “They’re not a violent people, Rimmer; they don’t deserve – THAT.” He pointed at two Cocherel grabbing a GELF’s staff and whipping it around swiftly to spear him through the midsection, then shoved at Rimmer as to go around him. “We’ve got to help them!”
“David. Get. On. The. SHIP.” Rimmer stood his ground and gritted through his teeth, almost nothing of Ace’s magnanimous calm in there now. Lister glared at him. Finally, Rimmer blew a “Fuck!” through compressed lips. “You and that smegging … thrice-damned misplaced nobility.” He gave Lister a murderous look before turning away to survey the camp again. “There’s still more of them than us, but they’ve stopped beaming in …” He trailed off, taking a couple of heavy breaths, then Lister watched him calm himself. “Nona,” he said into his wristband, “roll up and go find their ship. The Cat’s got a spooky nose, he might be able to help. Work fast, please; I need to know if it’s just a scout, or an invasion force.”
He grabbed Lister’s sleeve. “YOU. Stay with me. Do not get separated. These smeggers are plenty dangerous.” He didn’t let go until Lister nodded, then began sighting and shooting off to his left again, leaving Lister in charge of his right side, still pressed to the Scouser. The fact he didn’t even spare a glance his way told Lister he was either incredibly angry or extremely trusting of Lister’s abilities. Or both.
After a few more minutes of moving in a circular sort of crabwalk with Rimmer and shooting a few Cocherel away from them and some GELFs, Lister figured out what was bothering him about the bugs’ movements – the one who’d grabbed the staff earlier used it with fast, frightening facility, but none of them were moving with nearly that speed. In fact, it seemed almost a chore. And they hunched. Ponderously. And Lister started thinking back to school and learning about the moon and space and floating and Zero-G leagues, and noticing how tall and heavy most of the GELFs were and how slowly they moved, but more gracefully than the invaders …
“Hey!” He nudged Rimmer in the back with his elbow, causing him to turn abruptly, scowling. “These guys are not moving so fast – what kind of gravity’d they have on their home planet, or moon, or whatever? Where they evolved?”
“It was-” Rimmer paused, licking his lips and considering.
“Was it less than here? Less than Earth?”
“Maybe. Wait – yesss …” Rimmer trailed off again, then fixed Lister with only a partial scowl. “Wait, why are we having a tea and a chat? I’m busy just now!” But then his visible confusion and annoyance cleared, and he regarded Lister with something that looked like wonder. “My stars, Listy … you’re a genius.”
He preened briefly. “Now what’re we going to do about it?” he pointed out.
Rimmer digested the observation only a moment before answering. “Shoot their legs; if you can’t hit the thorax around the exoskeleton easily, hit a leg or both, and then when you get close, shoot to kill. Once they go down, they’re not going to easily get back up; if we hobble them, we can buy some time and keep them off the GELFs!”
*****
The wig and circlet of limp flowers went first, as Lister pushed Rimmer into the Xpress Elevator aboard Red Dwarf three hours later and slapped the door closed. They stumbled briefly as Lister licked at his neck and shrugged off his own heavy leather jacket. “Sit,” he commanded, maneuvering Rimmer to the long bench. He went down hard and Lister climbed up on his knees, straddling those strong thighs. Rimmer craned his long neck up as Lister leaned in to kiss him, digging his fingertips into the man’s real hair, slightly sweaty and tight against his scalp. He felt hands on his hips, balancing him, then trailing up his sides; even over his clothes, it was enough to make him purr. “You make incredible sounds,” Rimmer garbled into his mouth.
“Give me time and I’ll give you some real noises,” he promised, bumping his forehead gently against the other man’s. They laughed breathlessly as he wound his fingers more into the short auburn waves, up past his knuckles, and placed kisses down the bridge of Rimmer’s sizable schnoz. He eased more comfortably onto Rimmer’s lap, held closer by hands on his lower back. “So all those run-ins with GELFs over all those decades, and you couldn’t remember any words without Fiona’s help?” he needled as he kissed.
“You know what crap I am at languages,” Rimmer hummed, mouthing and licking at Lister’s chin.
“I’ve heard you speak Italian …”
“Just enough to get you into bed,” he pointed out, moaning, “Listy … mmm, Listy, Lis- HEY, OW!”
Lister yanked upright, startled out of his sensual coma. He frowned, about to ask, then tried to pull his hands back and realized the new ring was caught on a couple of strands of auburn hair. “Bollocks,” he muttered, holding the hair roots with his other fingers as he carefully untangled the metal ring from the snarl. He got it loose with a strand still trapped between the twisted coils – but when he lifted his hand away from Rimmer’s body, it sparkled out of existence like any other part of his image separated from the projection. He noticed Rimmer watching and shrugged with a little grin. “That’ll never not be fascinating, sorry.”
He followed Rimmer’s gaze to the ring, and moved his attention back and forth slowly between it and the man’s eyes. “You know, she did offer to annul us. And she would’ve left me alone, too,” Lister pointed out, referring to the grateful chief’s offer after the Cocherel invasion was neutralized and a body count showed only three GELFs had died thanks to the Dwarfers’ leadership. He hauled himself backward onto his feet and sat next to Rimmer instead, his knee turned to press against the man’s thigh.
“I know.”
“So we didn’t take her up on it because why?” Lister pressed. “Just because it’s not really legal anywhere else?” When Rimmer didn’t answer, he sighed. “You and I – we’re not ready for this thing, are we?” He said it hesitantly, taking Rimmer’s hand as he spoke, hoping he’d realize it wasn’t a rejection. “I only mean it’s too-”
“I know what you mean.” Rimmer looked down at his hand being clutched by Lister’s. “It’s a fiction, right. We both know that.” Did he sound disappointed? “No, I’m not sure we’re ready for it yet.”
Lister quietly processed that yet. “Is it a feelings thing?”
Rimmer shook his head, eyes still pointed down. “No.”
He was sort of pleased to find he felt relieved; maybe he was growing up. “Just bad timing, then?”
“Something like that. It’s not the kind of thing I want to be forced into,” Rimmer explained. “Having no choice in the matter is about the least romantic thing I can think of. Aside from being measured for my trousseau by Kryten.”
Lister nodded in agreement, lifting the pale knuckles to kiss. “Or being given away by your mum.” Rimmer made a face, and Lister laughed.
“So,” Rimmer said after they were quiet a moment. “I suppose you want to give the ring back, then. Hold out for something less melted- and destitute-looking?”
“You’re not getting this back. Just think of all those crap birthday gifts you pawned off on me for years; it’ll start to make up for them. Feel free to do more, obviously.” Rimmer’s eyebrows went into his hairline, and Lister bit his lip in an effort to look stern.
After departing the lift a few minutes later, they separated with a quick last brush of fingers, Rimmer heading off wherever while Lister went to the drive room. He relieved Kochanski on watch with a mildly dramatically reenactment of the bug battle, skimming over the afternoon’s earlier details. It wasn’t until she’d pointedly eyed his left hand for a couple of minutes, going back and forth between it and his head, that he remembered, and sheepishly reached up to untangle the circlet’s wire ends from his hair. “What,” she finally said, “no veil?”
“Kris-”
“I would have liked to have been invited, you know. Am I persona non grata just because I’m an ex?” she continued, clearly enjoying taking the smeg.
“Isn’t there a nap that needs taking?” he hinted.
“Yes, that’s going to happen,” she remarked dryly, stretching her arms above her head and yawning despite the sarcasm. “I want to hear about this wedding.”
“Ask Kryten; he’d be glad to give you the rundown, I’m sure.”
She cocked her head. “I’m surprised he didn’t have a meltdown.” She yawned again, showing how little sleep she’d managed in their absence, after all. “Oh, hell; I do need to get to bed. I’ve managed to keep this crate up for the last couple of days, so do try not to ram it into a planet, or stellar array while I have a sleep, would you?” She softened the gibe by leaning over and giving him a quick kiss on the forehead.
“What was that for?” he asked.
She stood and stepped away from her seat. “Everybody knows you’re supposed to kiss the bride on her happy day.”
“How am I the-” Kochanski toodle-oohed with her fingers and disappeared. Rolling his eyes, Lister flipped his locks back over his shoulder and swiveled back to the control panels to do a cursory check; as if there’d be anything wrong after Kris had been on the job, but he’d learned through hard lessons that taking shit for granted is what landed them on GELF planets and in smack in the middle of “Starship Troopers” reenactments. As he moved, something sharp poked him in the upper thigh – he patted himself and realized the signet was still in his tight jeans pocket. He pulled it out, eyeing it a moment before testing it on his middle left finger; it sat, snugly, but serviceably, against Rimmer’s ring.
He took the multicolored ring off and held it up to examine more closely. After getting it near some better light and rotating it slowly, he realized something was scratched inside the band, on a worn, flat part; it was Rimmer’s initials, presumably so he could pick it out of a lineup if it went missing among other homemade rings. Lister chuckled to himself, turning his attention to its outside. The little twinings of various metals turned out to be more intricate and regimented than he’d initially realized – perfectly reflective of its creator, he thought.
“I was going to put little stones in there, but I thought they might get snagged on something while you were working.” The voice startled Lister into straightening his back, and he wondered why he hadn’t heard the footsteps. Then he realized, not for the first time, that between being a soft-light hologram for years and Ace for even longer, Rimmer knew how to move quietly.
“Stones?”
“A gem or two. Something to break up the metal.” He turned and watched Rimmer, who had changed into soft maroon pajamas and a robe, lower himself fluidly into the seat Kochanski had vacated some time earlier. He sat forward, hands clasped between his knees. “But – oh, hell, I didn’t think it was very manly anyway.”
Lister was unaccountably amused. “And that’s a word you associate with me? You once said if I were any more girly with my soaps and trashy movies, you could’ve taken me home to your mum as a bad date.”
“Don’t feel pressured; you still would’ve been a bad date just like you already are, to her.” Rimmer rubbed his palms slowly and looked embarrassed. “Besides, believe me, I’ve had opportunity to … uh, revise my opinion of your … status as a male since. Plenty,” he added, pinkish. Lister smirked.
He pushed the ring back onto his finger and leaned back, slightly turned toward Rimmer. “Just bored, then?”
Rimmer made an inarticulate noise, stalling, then blew out a big breath. “Not exactly.” Lister waited. And waited. “I don’t think I represented myself entirely truthfully in our conversation earlier.”
“About?” Just as quickly, he added, “Ohhh – the whole wedding thing?” Rimmer nodded, after hesitating. Lister crossed his arms and waited.
“Here’s the thing.” Rimmer gesticulated as he talked, and right now he was pumping his forearms and looked like he was setting posts repeatedly into concrete as he made his points – it reminded Lister of how Second Technician Rimmer used to practice from those stupid self-help guides for upper management, to Zed Shift during his morning “pep” talks. “I made that ring. I didn’t just make it for any old bloke, or any lady. I think it should be pretty obvious to even you that it might’ve had a purpose.” Now he looked a little less constipated, but still ran his hands back through his unruly hair. “Okay?”
“Let me save you some mental anguish, Arn. I don’t really need all that.”
“What?”
“I don’t need any law or ritual to tell me how to behave or if I should be loyal to who I love. You choose to stay here with me, we like each other rather a lot more than we started out doing. We’ve got each other’s back in a tough spot – like today. What’s mine is yours-”
“Like a big red metal trash can?” Rimmer put in, bemused.
“Hey, I can’t speak for Jupiter Mining’s property.” He waved a hand and shook his head. “You know if someone from the company showed up somehow three million years out into space, they’d find a way to repossess it and put us out into the vacuum until we paid three thousand millennia’s rent.” Lister found another point to make. “Besides, who out here’s going to try to enforce a marriage contract anyway?”
“Other than your missus?” Rimmer raised an eyebrow. “I’m really surprised at you. You’re the giant romantic, all about meaningful gestures and forever emotion. A ‘contract’ is how you see it?” His expression fell a little. “Unless it’s just me, and-”
He growled a little at that. “Arnold Judas! We’ve been over this. It’s not her versus you. Name me once I ever said anything about having to marry Krissie. Go on.” Rimmer opened his mouth; stopped. He raised a finger, then stopped, screwing up his face to think. “I’ll save you some time there, too – it didn’t happen. I talked about being with her, and I would’ve stayed with her and been in love, and had fifteen kids, and if she’d wanted to get married, I would’ve done that. For her; because it was important to her. Not to me.”
“What about ME?”
“Is it important to you?”
“Well, maybe it is!” A vein Lister hadn’t seen in a while stood out on Rimmer’s neck, and Lister leaned toward him in his seat, raising his own voice to match.
“Then ASK, man!” Rimmer’s nostrils quivered a little, but he stayed silent. “What’s the problem?” He realized he was still shouting, and scaled back his tone. “Arn?”
“It wouldn’t mean the same thing to you it does to me.”
“Says the last registered member of the Red Dwarf Love Celibates Society,” he threw out.
“Yes, I was young and disillusioned. I hadn’t been through all the smeg I’ve seen since. Had you?” Lister, impressed by the graceful admission, shook his head. “Look, Dave … there was this other Lister I met while out there as Ace; about ten or so years ago. I stayed with him for about a week before I left. We had a thing.” He’d told Lister he’d never slept with another version of him, and now he was coming clean? “When you asked, we’d just started up together. I didn’t want to ruin it. I also didn’t want to tell you because the only reason I did it was that I missed you. A lot, Listy.” His face colored. “You might’ve been scared off if I looked that desperate and lonely.”
He was remembering the recurring dreams he used to have about Rimmer coming back with a better sense of humor, some humility, and a more favorable outlook on Lister himself. A far more favorable outlook. “Come on. You know I missed you too,” he said gently.
“Not the same way. Not for as long.” Rimmer sighed, looking away. “Not so deeply.” Lister’s chest ached. “If you get a better prospect, I feel like you’ll go to her. Or even him, maybe.”
“Oh.” He closed his eyes briefly and shook his head. “No, I haven’t been thinking that at all.” He had been considering, in fact, for nearly the duration of their relationship how seriously he hoped Rimmer wasn’t going to Ace-up again and take off for better dimension. “I’m the one who ought to be worrying you’ll want to leave me.”
“After all the time and trouble I went to to track you down again? TWICE? And spent the better part of a year in prison for you?” His voice was going all nasal again, in that Are you mad? tone; quite perversely, Lister loved it. He flashed Rimmer his best ray-of-sunshine smile and watched his expression come down from haughty to something far softer. “And there’s why I did it,” he said, nodding toward Lister.
“Me smiling?”
“You smiling, you complaining, you arguing with me. You.”
And Lister said the only thing he could. “You realize it’s done, right? We didn’t get annulled. Neither one of us went along with it when she offered.”
“You don’t consider that real, though …” Rimmer trailed off, visibly thinking.
“It’s as real as Kryten doing it, isn’t it? Or Cat, or Kris? Who else here is going to do it? You?”
“Technically, Ace is captain of his own vessel.” Rimmer gave him a small smile. “And you’re de facto captain of this bucket of rusty bolts.”
“Stop,” Lister deadpanned. “I can’t handle all the flattery.” He cut Rimmer off by shaking his head and twisting his own ring off his middle finger, then leaning forward and taking Rimmer’s left hand. “I’ve had this since I was in Smeg and the Heads. Bought it with my share of our first gig’s pay. Never even loaned it to anyone else.” He tested the silver signet ring on a couple of knuckles, and found it slid comfortably over Rimmer’s pinky finger. “You’d better not pawn it anywhere. Congratulations, Mr. Lister. Might want to get that resized sometime.”
He couldn’t tell if Rimmer was about to start crying, or burst into laughter; likely, the man himself didn’t know, either. Finally, he got his expression under control and nodded. “To you too, Mr. Rimmer.”
“You know, I don’t know how to break this nicely to you, but nobody wants to take that name on purpose.”
“Mum did.”
“I think that tells you everything about her.” He smirked, and Rimmer laughed. “I think I’ll stick with ‘Rimmer’ or ‘Arn’ or ‘smeghead,’ or if you’re really super-good and deserve it, sometimes, I’ll call you ‘Captain.’” He drew it out in the low voice he knew revved the man’s libido, then popped forward out of his seat briefly to kiss him.
“And you can stay ‘git’ or ‘gimboid’ or ‘Listy’ or ‘you great twonk,’” Rimmer informed him as they separated, with a glance down at the signet ring. “Just as long as we can have our first dance to ‘OHM.’” He rolled his eyes up and exaggerated the word, forming his lips into the big O and smacking them on the end.
“Sod off, you cheeky fucker!”
And they lived reasonably content ever after. And decades later, Lister died. And then they lived reasonably content again, thanks to Rimmer’s penchant for hoarding undamaged hard-light bees from all the expired himselves he’d come across in his travels.
Besides, Rimmer had no interest in captaining a rusty bucket of bolts.