Fanfic: Duet
May. 29th, 2009 02:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmic_celeryTitle: Duet
Fandom: Red Dwarf
Summary: original!Rimmer/Lister, season 8 - references to Thanks for the Memory
Alternate link: Red Dwarf Slash Comm
Length: 1,853
Part One: Lister
It had been Lister’s best find yet. Nestled in the cargo hold of an abandoned ship, he’d discovered a box filled with at least twenty soft cover books all labeled Tablature for Guitar. And because they’d also managed to find some useful supplies, the Captain had let him keep the books as a reward. Of course, Rimmer had had to point out that since the guitar now had strings, giving Lister guitar tabs to read from was like giving him bullets for a misfiring and particularly terrible sounding gun.
So Rimmer’s reward had been ear earplugs, and he relished them.
When they got back to the cell, Lister dropped the box down on the table and started going through the individual titles while Rimmer slipped in his earplugs, closed his eyes and lay on the bottom bunk, blissfully ignorant of anything going on around him.
The first book was subtitled “Nursery Rhymes” and Lister got three notes into “Mary Had a Little Lamb” before closing the book. He took them all out of the box, dumped them haphazardly onto the table, and took his time looking through each one, trying a few notes from this or that before moving onto the next. By the time he got to the last one, Rimmer had fallen asleep and was snoring softly.
And there, on the third page of Tablature for Guitar: Broadway Favorites, was a song that Lister recognized.
“Rimmer! It’s your song!” He kicked the side of the bunk, successfully making Rimmer roll over and continue sleeping. He looked back to the page titled “Someone to Watch over Me” and remembered Rimmer after their party, back before he became Ace, drunk and whimpering out the sad lyrics. He had thought then that if he could give Rimmer just one happy memory maybe he wouldn’t be so broken. It had been stupid to try to give Rimmer his own memories. Remembering being in love had changed Rimmer, made him different…and that wasn’t what Lister wanted. Well, it was, but not in that way. And in the end it didn’t work anyway.
But, Lister thought, maybe he’d been going about the whole thing the wrong way. Maybe he didn’t have to pluck the past out of his head and shove it into Rimmer’s like a hippo into a tube top. Maybe Rimmer deserved some happy memories of his own. He looked over at the still sleeping man. The lack of the distinctive forehead H still surprised him sometimes. His Rimmer (when had he started thinking of him as his?) and this Rimmer weren’t exactly the same man, but maybe this time it could be different - if the smeghead would let him.
He started learning the song.
An hour later Rimmer woke up, removed his earplugs, and immediately put them back in. After a great many gestures from Lister’s part that he had no intention of playing any more, Rimmer removed the earplugs again.
“Look, Rimmer, you’ve got to listen to this, I –”
“I just have, and it sounds like your guitar is being slowly tortured. I think you should put it out of its misery.” Rimmer stood and stretched, eyeing the guitar dubiously. Lister frowned, wondering if this plan was just as stupid as the last one.
“Give it a chance, man! Look, it tells ‘ya where to put your fingers an’ everything. How could I go wrong?”
“Probably however you usually do.”
Lister sighed. “But it’s your song! You’ll like it!” Rimmer raised an eyebrow and snatched the book from him.
“My song?” Rimmer looked down at the book and scoffed at the lyrics. “I’m a little lamb lost in the wood? I don’t think so, Listy.” He sneered. “A bit sissy, isn’t it?”
Of course, Lister thought, his Rimmer must have heard the song sometime after he died; sometime when that stupid H was already on his forehead. Now that the smeghead was alive again the song doesn’t mean anything to him.
“Yeah, a bit. Look, forget it.” Rimmer tossed the book back to him. He caught it and looked down at the page.
“Really, Lister, that you’d think I’d like something like that.”
“I said forget it, alright?” He picked his guitar back up and set his fingers up for the next chord. Rimmer interrupted him.
“You’re not actually going to keep playing it, are you?”
“Yeah, I thought that I might.” Lister gave him a defiant glare.
“Fine! You play your sissy song. I’ll just be going...anywhere else. If I leave these plugs in all the time I’ll probably go deaf…and if I stay around here and listen to that I’ll go nuts. ” With that, Rimmer left.
Well that went well, though Lister. He wondered if his Rimmer would have known that he was trying to do one smegging nice thing for him, that maybe it could have been sort of their song, sissy or not.
He tried to position his fingers for the next chord, but couldn’t reach one of the notes, so he compromised and set it on the same fret one string closer. When he strummed the chord it sounded alright to him, so what’s the problem? Besides, the only time he’d actually heard the song at all was when Rimmer had sung it, so he had to guess a bit at how it went. He sang along while his fingers took their time to find the more difficult notes or abandoned them entirely for new ones.
“He may not be the man…some...” He paused to pluck a note he’d missed. “girls think of as hand…” Chord change. “…some, but to my heart he carries the key…”
Another chord change.
Part Two: Rimmer
Rimmer stumbled into the cabin of the Wildfire, ripped the cool-guy wig off of his head and let if fall to the ground. The ship computer sighed in enraptured delight, not noticing or simply unsympathetic to his distress.
“Oh, Ace, thank God you’re back.” It sighed again. “I missed you so much.” The door closed automatically behind him and he took a few unsteady steps before he sunk down into the pilot’s chair. He stared straight ahead at nothing in particular, his face wan from shock.
“I killed him.” He managed to murmur out. The ship cooed in response.
“That’s wonderful, Ace.” Rimmer shook is head.
“No…no, you don’t understand. I killed Lister.”
Earlier that evening, he had followed a distress call from a Starbug and landed on the planet light years and twenty dimensions away from home. He found the ‘Bug easily, but as far as he could tell, it didn’t look damaged. He knocked on the outer door and was let in immediately.
Affecting his best Ace Rimmer smug-bastard swagger, he entered this Starbug like he had all the others. You left for a reason. Think hero. Do what Ace would do.
And then Lister had shot at him. Not his Lister of course (when had he started thinking of him as his?) but one that had looked so similar that for a moment, he didn’t make any move to protect himself, didn’t feel the pain in his shoulder, just stood, shocked by the action.
Then, Lister had shot him again, and the blast of the phase pistol spread pain across his chest and registered panic in his mind. That shot would have killed any normal man.
The way he had come in was locked, so he ran to the back of the ship followed by this mad, alternate Lister. Rimmer reached the far wall and turned around, unholstering his gun and pointing it at Lister, who let off another shot that knocked Rimmer against the wall. He wondered briefly how many shots it would take before his light bee was damaged. He knew he had to do something, and he had to do it soon. There wasn’t time to convince Lister of anything, even if he could. And he never could. So he squeezed the trigger.
The shorter man fell back to the floor and Rimmer scrambled over to him and knocked the pistol away. Rimmer held the man’s face in his hands, pleaded for him to tell him why, searched his eyes for any sort of comprehension, but all he found was anger and defiance. And then nothing.
There was no one else in the Starbug.
Rimmer wondered how long Lister had been alone, and how long it had taken him to go mad.
Now, safely back in the cockpit of the Wildfire, Rimmer questioned if this was what a hero was supposed to be. He still stumbled into each situation, each dimension, and did what the computer told him he should do, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was doing everything completely and irrevocably wrong.
He wondered what his Lister would say if he knew what had happened. Probably something inappropriately cheery, he thought, and probably an insult along with it. Rimmer mumbled out “Good goin’, Smeghead” in the best impersonation he could muster up at the moment.
Yeah, he figured, that sounded about right.
The cabin was all too silent and his head wasn’t offering any reassurances, so he decided to turn on some music. Absently, he flipped through the menu on the computer screen, selected Elevator Jazz Classics: Disk Two, and scanned the track names. In between “You’re Sort of Nice” and “Saturn Spins for You” was a song familiar to him. He didn’t remember being drunk and whimpering out the lyrics in front of Lister, but he did remember watching it later over the ship’s vid. If that was what happened when he got drunk, he was better off never getting drunk again, especially since it was that terrible incident that had given Lister the idea to shove fake memories into his head. The stupid gerbil-faced git. He might not like most of his memories, but at least they were his.
He pressed play and “Someone to Watch over Me” began to filter through the ship’s speakers.
This version of the song wasn’t anything like the one he had first heard back on Red Dwarf. That one had had a soft, feminine voice singing softly affectionate lyrics and a conclusion that had swelled into triumphant violin orgasms. In this version, guitar and piano mixed and played with the structure of the song while a trumpet interrupted in bursts that were more flatulent than orgasmic. It reminded him of…well, he mused, anything vaguely flatulent reminded him of Lister.
He laid his forehead, sans distinctive H, against the control board and tried not to think of the dead look in Lister’s eyes. After a moment, he began to sing along, softly and off-key, to the song, stopping only when it diverged from the version he knew. “…maybe I could always be good to one who’d…watch over me.” Rimmer felt more pathetic, lonely and lost than he had in a very long time. And that was really saying something.
The computer interrupted his singing with its distinctive, lusty voice. “I’ll watch over you, Ace.”
Rimmer groaned in response. “It’s not the same.”
________________________________
As a bonus, I've uploaded the inspiration for the version of the song Rimmer was listening to here
Fandom: Red Dwarf
Summary: original!Rimmer/Lister, season 8 - references to Thanks for the Memory
Alternate link: Red Dwarf Slash Comm
Length: 1,853
Part One: Lister
It had been Lister’s best find yet. Nestled in the cargo hold of an abandoned ship, he’d discovered a box filled with at least twenty soft cover books all labeled Tablature for Guitar. And because they’d also managed to find some useful supplies, the Captain had let him keep the books as a reward. Of course, Rimmer had had to point out that since the guitar now had strings, giving Lister guitar tabs to read from was like giving him bullets for a misfiring and particularly terrible sounding gun.
So Rimmer’s reward had been ear earplugs, and he relished them.
When they got back to the cell, Lister dropped the box down on the table and started going through the individual titles while Rimmer slipped in his earplugs, closed his eyes and lay on the bottom bunk, blissfully ignorant of anything going on around him.
The first book was subtitled “Nursery Rhymes” and Lister got three notes into “Mary Had a Little Lamb” before closing the book. He took them all out of the box, dumped them haphazardly onto the table, and took his time looking through each one, trying a few notes from this or that before moving onto the next. By the time he got to the last one, Rimmer had fallen asleep and was snoring softly.
And there, on the third page of Tablature for Guitar: Broadway Favorites, was a song that Lister recognized.
“Rimmer! It’s your song!” He kicked the side of the bunk, successfully making Rimmer roll over and continue sleeping. He looked back to the page titled “Someone to Watch over Me” and remembered Rimmer after their party, back before he became Ace, drunk and whimpering out the sad lyrics. He had thought then that if he could give Rimmer just one happy memory maybe he wouldn’t be so broken. It had been stupid to try to give Rimmer his own memories. Remembering being in love had changed Rimmer, made him different…and that wasn’t what Lister wanted. Well, it was, but not in that way. And in the end it didn’t work anyway.
But, Lister thought, maybe he’d been going about the whole thing the wrong way. Maybe he didn’t have to pluck the past out of his head and shove it into Rimmer’s like a hippo into a tube top. Maybe Rimmer deserved some happy memories of his own. He looked over at the still sleeping man. The lack of the distinctive forehead H still surprised him sometimes. His Rimmer (when had he started thinking of him as his?) and this Rimmer weren’t exactly the same man, but maybe this time it could be different - if the smeghead would let him.
He started learning the song.
An hour later Rimmer woke up, removed his earplugs, and immediately put them back in. After a great many gestures from Lister’s part that he had no intention of playing any more, Rimmer removed the earplugs again.
“Look, Rimmer, you’ve got to listen to this, I –”
“I just have, and it sounds like your guitar is being slowly tortured. I think you should put it out of its misery.” Rimmer stood and stretched, eyeing the guitar dubiously. Lister frowned, wondering if this plan was just as stupid as the last one.
“Give it a chance, man! Look, it tells ‘ya where to put your fingers an’ everything. How could I go wrong?”
“Probably however you usually do.”
Lister sighed. “But it’s your song! You’ll like it!” Rimmer raised an eyebrow and snatched the book from him.
“My song?” Rimmer looked down at the book and scoffed at the lyrics. “I’m a little lamb lost in the wood? I don’t think so, Listy.” He sneered. “A bit sissy, isn’t it?”
Of course, Lister thought, his Rimmer must have heard the song sometime after he died; sometime when that stupid H was already on his forehead. Now that the smeghead was alive again the song doesn’t mean anything to him.
“Yeah, a bit. Look, forget it.” Rimmer tossed the book back to him. He caught it and looked down at the page.
“Really, Lister, that you’d think I’d like something like that.”
“I said forget it, alright?” He picked his guitar back up and set his fingers up for the next chord. Rimmer interrupted him.
“You’re not actually going to keep playing it, are you?”
“Yeah, I thought that I might.” Lister gave him a defiant glare.
“Fine! You play your sissy song. I’ll just be going...anywhere else. If I leave these plugs in all the time I’ll probably go deaf…and if I stay around here and listen to that I’ll go nuts. ” With that, Rimmer left.
Well that went well, though Lister. He wondered if his Rimmer would have known that he was trying to do one smegging nice thing for him, that maybe it could have been sort of their song, sissy or not.
He tried to position his fingers for the next chord, but couldn’t reach one of the notes, so he compromised and set it on the same fret one string closer. When he strummed the chord it sounded alright to him, so what’s the problem? Besides, the only time he’d actually heard the song at all was when Rimmer had sung it, so he had to guess a bit at how it went. He sang along while his fingers took their time to find the more difficult notes or abandoned them entirely for new ones.
“He may not be the man…some...” He paused to pluck a note he’d missed. “girls think of as hand…” Chord change. “…some, but to my heart he carries the key…”
Another chord change.
Part Two: Rimmer
Rimmer stumbled into the cabin of the Wildfire, ripped the cool-guy wig off of his head and let if fall to the ground. The ship computer sighed in enraptured delight, not noticing or simply unsympathetic to his distress.
“Oh, Ace, thank God you’re back.” It sighed again. “I missed you so much.” The door closed automatically behind him and he took a few unsteady steps before he sunk down into the pilot’s chair. He stared straight ahead at nothing in particular, his face wan from shock.
“I killed him.” He managed to murmur out. The ship cooed in response.
“That’s wonderful, Ace.” Rimmer shook is head.
“No…no, you don’t understand. I killed Lister.”
Earlier that evening, he had followed a distress call from a Starbug and landed on the planet light years and twenty dimensions away from home. He found the ‘Bug easily, but as far as he could tell, it didn’t look damaged. He knocked on the outer door and was let in immediately.
Affecting his best Ace Rimmer smug-bastard swagger, he entered this Starbug like he had all the others. You left for a reason. Think hero. Do what Ace would do.
And then Lister had shot at him. Not his Lister of course (when had he started thinking of him as his?) but one that had looked so similar that for a moment, he didn’t make any move to protect himself, didn’t feel the pain in his shoulder, just stood, shocked by the action.
Then, Lister had shot him again, and the blast of the phase pistol spread pain across his chest and registered panic in his mind. That shot would have killed any normal man.
The way he had come in was locked, so he ran to the back of the ship followed by this mad, alternate Lister. Rimmer reached the far wall and turned around, unholstering his gun and pointing it at Lister, who let off another shot that knocked Rimmer against the wall. He wondered briefly how many shots it would take before his light bee was damaged. He knew he had to do something, and he had to do it soon. There wasn’t time to convince Lister of anything, even if he could. And he never could. So he squeezed the trigger.
The shorter man fell back to the floor and Rimmer scrambled over to him and knocked the pistol away. Rimmer held the man’s face in his hands, pleaded for him to tell him why, searched his eyes for any sort of comprehension, but all he found was anger and defiance. And then nothing.
There was no one else in the Starbug.
Rimmer wondered how long Lister had been alone, and how long it had taken him to go mad.
Now, safely back in the cockpit of the Wildfire, Rimmer questioned if this was what a hero was supposed to be. He still stumbled into each situation, each dimension, and did what the computer told him he should do, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was doing everything completely and irrevocably wrong.
He wondered what his Lister would say if he knew what had happened. Probably something inappropriately cheery, he thought, and probably an insult along with it. Rimmer mumbled out “Good goin’, Smeghead” in the best impersonation he could muster up at the moment.
Yeah, he figured, that sounded about right.
The cabin was all too silent and his head wasn’t offering any reassurances, so he decided to turn on some music. Absently, he flipped through the menu on the computer screen, selected Elevator Jazz Classics: Disk Two, and scanned the track names. In between “You’re Sort of Nice” and “Saturn Spins for You” was a song familiar to him. He didn’t remember being drunk and whimpering out the lyrics in front of Lister, but he did remember watching it later over the ship’s vid. If that was what happened when he got drunk, he was better off never getting drunk again, especially since it was that terrible incident that had given Lister the idea to shove fake memories into his head. The stupid gerbil-faced git. He might not like most of his memories, but at least they were his.
He pressed play and “Someone to Watch over Me” began to filter through the ship’s speakers.
This version of the song wasn’t anything like the one he had first heard back on Red Dwarf. That one had had a soft, feminine voice singing softly affectionate lyrics and a conclusion that had swelled into triumphant violin orgasms. In this version, guitar and piano mixed and played with the structure of the song while a trumpet interrupted in bursts that were more flatulent than orgasmic. It reminded him of…well, he mused, anything vaguely flatulent reminded him of Lister.
He laid his forehead, sans distinctive H, against the control board and tried not to think of the dead look in Lister’s eyes. After a moment, he began to sing along, softly and off-key, to the song, stopping only when it diverged from the version he knew. “…maybe I could always be good to one who’d…watch over me.” Rimmer felt more pathetic, lonely and lost than he had in a very long time. And that was really saying something.
The computer interrupted his singing with its distinctive, lusty voice. “I’ll watch over you, Ace.”
Rimmer groaned in response. “It’s not the same.”
________________________________
As a bonus, I've uploaded the inspiration for the version of the song Rimmer was listening to here