Work Text:
After they get back to Red Dwarf, once they’ve come down from the rush of escape, and they’re in the bunk room alone for the first time, Rimmer looks down at himself, touches the edge of the table and looks up at Lister with an expression on his face which can only be described as hungry.
And maybe the hit he took back on Legion’s planet has messed him up more than he’d realised, because the next thing Lister knows, he is pushing Rimmer up against the wall and kissing him.
More surprising than that is Rimmer, who opens for him, eager and easy, in a way Lister would never have thought he would be, even if he had spent any time at all thinking about Rimmer like this, which he’s not about to admit, even to himself. But Rimmer does, opens easily and pants straight into Lister’s mouth, already so clearly wound up tight and eager.
It is hotter than it has any right to be, and Lister’s hands can’t stop moving, can’t stop trying to paw Rimmer’s clothes right off him, and God, if he feels like this, what must Rimmer feel like, finally able to touch?
It is a softer thought than Lister feels even remotely comfortable contemplating, so instead he focuses on getting Rimmer’s smegging clothes off, on the high-pitched whining noises he’s making, the way he writhes when Lister pushes his thigh in between his legs, like he could get off like this, desperate and pathetic and so, so needy. It is so ingrained in Lister that he almost wants to stop, to make fun of him - oh ho, not so bloody straight and narrow now! - but he’s too gone himself and anyway, it feels too much like making it real, acknowledging who he’s with, what he - they - are doing together.
So he settles for getting Rimmer’s fly open, shoving at trousers, shorts and finally getting his hands on him.
‘Turn around,’ he groans, the first thing either of them have said. It’s only after he’s said it that he realises what it sounds like. Rimmer’s eyes go wide, and Lister is sure he’s going to say no, that Lister has managed to smeg it up despite everything - and why does that feel like a wrench? - but then Rimmer closes his eyes, licks his lips and - turns around.
It goes straight to Lister’s cock, the sight of Rimmer - smegging Rimmer! - bared from the waist down, leaning his forehead on the wall and waiting. Waiting for Lister.
There’s a moment where it feels like he might very well come right there and then, which is awful - he is absolutely not coming before Rimmer, no smegging way - and then he is pushing down his own trousers and shorts, and plastering himself to Rimmer’s back. Rimmer makes a gasping noise which turns into a moan when Lister’s cock presses against his arse, and the angle is awkward, but Lister has to kiss him, has to push his tongue into his mouth and swallow those noises, even as he pushes his cock even more firmly against Rimmer. He wraps a hand around Rimmer’s cock which jolts flatteringly, and pushes again.
Rimmer whines into his mouth, hands scrabbling at the bare wall, and Lister has to break away to watch them, those long fingers catching on nothing at all. To watch Rimmer like this, hitching his hips like he can’t decide which way he wants to move. He’s wet too, sliding smoothly through Lister’s hand and oh smeg, Lister wants to get his mouth on him. He loves it when his partners get like this, so lost in it, just chasing sensation, and Rimmer is one of the neediest people he’s ever been with, and he knows it's probably just being hard light and the sudden overwhelm of sensation, but it is also really, really working for him, driving him to thrust against Rimmer a little harder than he intends to, tightening his hand a little meanly, sucking at Rimmer’s neck, and Rimmer is gasping and gasping, like he’s running out of air, like sounds are too much for him and then -
Then he is shaking, shaking and coming, hands curling into fists, and Lister kisses him, kisses all the air out of him, and keeps thrusting, pressing close and not letting up until he’s coming too, making a mess all over Rimmer’s new, solid arse.
The thought gives him another little kick, like an echo of the rush of coming.
They stay there for a long, long moment. Lister reckons they’re both mostly avoiding the inevitable moment of facing up to reality, but it is also just sort of…nice. Being close to someone. Letting the high come down slowly as he exhales against the back of Rimmer’s neck.
Of course, that lasts as long as Rimmer can keep his mouth shut, which turns out to be about two minutes.
‘Lister, you complete and utter slob, you’ve made a total, disgusting mess of me,’ Rimmer says, his voice high pitched and shrill with anxiety. So he’s realised what just happened then. Lister sighs and pulls himself away.
‘Weren’t complaining a moment ago, were you?’ he snaps even as he steps out of his own trousers. ‘Anyway, can’t you just -‘ he waves a hand vaguely, even though Rimmer hasn’t moved and isn’t looking at him, ‘- hologram it away?’
He’s taking off his leather jacket - next time he’s getting undressed before he comes - but he still manages to catch the strange expression that passes across Rimmer’s face, like - like reluctance, which - and then he hears his own thoughts and pulls a face of his own. What does he mean next time? Probably best to blame that one on post-orgasm git-brain.
There’s a strange not-quite sound, and when he looks up, Rimmer has indeed hologrammed himself clean - he’s fully dressed too, the smeghead, leaving Lister standing there half naked and all too aware he probably looks ridiculous.
Rimmer stares at him. Then he blinks and his face resets into his usual sneer, but his voice wobbles just a little when he says, ‘Clearly there’s some sort of temporary malfunction with the hard light, but I am sure it won’t happen again, so you keep your disgusting, filthy hands to yourself in future, miladdo.’ He’s not quite looking at Lister when he says it, too busy backing towards the door, and then he stumbles out of it before Lister can even think of a suitable comeback.
Which he was definitely going to.
‘Not hard, smeghead,’ he says to the closed door. It isn’t particularly satisfying.
Rimmer doesn’t return to their room for three nights, and then Lister comes in one afternoon to find him reading his book in the lower bunk as if nothing had happened.
And they don’t talk about it.
*
It’s not that Lister thinks about it. Not often, anyway, just sometimes, when Rimmer gets particularly annoying or when he is particularly smug or cowardly or pedantic.
Which, given that it is Rimmer, maybe actually is pretty often.
The point is, it is not even a particularly sexy thought, more a kind of mean I know what you really want. The arousal is basically just background to the meanness.
But it doesn’t happen again, and Rimmer acts as if it never happened at all. He’s much better than Lister thought he would be - if he’d been asked (if anyone had known to ask, which thankfully they do not) he would have expected more snivelling assertions of Rimmer’s heterosexuality, or ostentatious flinches when Lister comes too close. Not that that happens a lot, actually. Lister isn’t trying to avoid touching Rimmer, exactly, he just - doesn’t. But Rimmer acts entirely normally, which is to say he is an utter smeghead, a coward, and an anal retentive obsessive, who still argues with Lister about absolutely anything and everything.
And really, Lister has to hand it to Rimmer’s repression, because sometimes Lister finds himself doubting whether it even happened at all, or he just suffered from some sort of post-Legion false memory. It is very nearly a comforting thought. It certainly makes more sense than: a) the fact that he had sex with Rimmer and b) it was really smegging good sex.
He’s almost, almost convinced himself, when they rescue Rimmer from Rimmerworld. There’s a moment, after the adrenaline wears off and Rimmer, still shaky and sort of spaced out, sits down on his bunk, and looks up at him, looks at him, eyes wide and scared but also - also -
It is more tempting than it has any right to be - to press himself to Rimmer, reassure himself that he’s there. To push himself into him, work out the anger and betrayal still simmering beneath his skin at Rimmer’s cowardice. He thinks - no, he knows, looking down at Rimmer split open like this - that Rimmer would let him. Would let him fuck him. Would let him punish him.
The thought sparks a sort of sticky, uneasy arousal, the kind that makes his stomach roil.
‘Sleep it off, yeah?’ he says, and his voice is softer than he intends.
‘You came for me,’ Rimmer says, and his eyes are still so smegging wide, like he can’t quite believe where he is. Lister looks away.
‘Yeah, of course. You’re a smeghead, but you know. You’re also one of us.’ It is too close to something sincere. Lister stretches showily, and shucks off his coat. ‘Doesn’t mean you’re not a git for what you did,’ he says as he strips efficiently and without looking back at the bottom bunk, so he doesn’t know what Rimmer’s expression is doing. He hears his small murmur though, and is sort of surprised to find he hates it. He wishes Rimmer would defend himself again or at least claim that he’d acted rationally, or - well, anything that would shift this strange soft-queasy feeling that seems to have gripped Lister. When nothing comes, he settles for pulling himself up into his bunk and calling for lights out.
He lies awake for a long time, pretending he isn’t listening to Rimmer breathing beneath him.