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Kryten's eyes widened. "I believe we have found the life-form, sirs."

The other four turned, slowly, to note that the hillock they had been resting against was moving. It shuddered from side to side, then rose abruptly to become a... well, a beast, twice the height of your average human, covered in shaggy white fur, with a triangular mouth, pointed ears, and heavily lashed dark eyes. A paw-like hand flashed out, and Rimmer ended up dangling by one leg at the other end of it. Cat fired at the beast with his blaster; five bolts hit it with no effect, and it batted Cat away almost offhandedly with a swipe of its empty paw.

Kochanski fired a tranquilizer dart at it as it turned back to consider the yellow plaything it was holding, and it staggered backwards with a howl. Its eyes narrowed, and it opened a mouth full of jagged yellow teeth. It took a meaningful step towards Kochanski, and swept Rimmer at her like a mace. She fell to the ground as he whistled overhead. Lister looked at that mouth, looked at his lunch, and pitched the latter into the former.

The beast caught the tin in its mouth, and crushed it. Bits of metal and trickles of sauce dribbled out from its lips. It paused for a moment, and howled again - this time in earnest. It dropped Rimmer and plunged its own face in the snow, grabbing double-handfuls of it and stuffing it in its mouth. Kochanski scrambled to her feet, reloaded, and shot it again. It let out a wail of a sigh, and toppled over.

Lister ran to Cat. He lay on the ground, moaning, four parallel slashes on his chest welling up blood. Lister pulled a bandage from the Cat's medical kit and started to do a very bad job of bandaging the wound. Kochanski walked over, pushed him aside, and started to cut away Cat's shirt and bandage it correctly. "Go take care of Rimmer."

Kryten stood over where Rimmer lay, fiddling with the psi-scan. "How's he doing, Krytes?"

"He appears to be horizontal, sir," Kryten replied, looking at the readout.

Lister sighed and bent down next to Rimmer. He was moaning and holding his head, but Lister could see no evidence of cuts or breaks anywhere on his body. "Hey, man," he said, holding up his hand. "How many fingers am I holding up?"

"Just the middle one."

"Who am I?"

"You're a git."

Lister nodded, satisfied that Rimmer was all right. He helped the man to his feet, and walked over to where Kochanski was tending Cat. She had given him a local anesthetic, and followed it with a dose of systemic pep-juice. "Aww, is white the only color you had?" he whinged, looking at the bandage. "Black and yellow is badass. White and yellow? Dweeb city!"

Kochanski ignored him. "Let's get the... thing back to the lander."

Kryten and Lister did most of the work of dragging the beast back. Kochanski herded the Cat, a job for which she was uniquely suited, and Rimmer stared intently at the beast, prodding it every few minutes, despite Kochanski's assurance that it was out very, very cold.

They piled into the lander, then sat there shivering as Lister tried to convince the remote controller back up at flight control that yes, they had the life-form, and no, he wasn't just taking the piss or trying to get back alive without justification. The controller eventually received grudging permission from Ackerman to bring them back up, and the door closed with a jolt. They all hung tight to the bench as the lander made an ungraceful takeoff and spun drunkenly back to Red Dwarf.

Rimmer got more comfortable with the beast the longer it remained motionless. He had taken to kicking it by the time they arrived, and was quite elated that they had captured it alive. Lister was sure that, in his own mind, he had captured it single-handedly. He sighed as Rimmer sauntered jovially out of the lander to join the very small lineup under Ackerman's disappointed stare. The 'lab boys' - a bit of a misnomer, as half were women, but the name stuck - dragged the GELF out of the lander, strapped it to a pitifully undersized gurney, and started to push it to the lab, puffing heavily. Two more of them took the injured Cat with them. "Being the prettiest don't mean nothin' in this bunch," he muttered, glancing disdainfully at his escort.

Lister kept a close watch on Rimmer's smug grin out of the corner of his eye. This did not bode well. Now was the time when Ackerman would be touchiest, and now was the time to scuttle out of his glare with all haste and hide in the dark until he moved on to other things. Cockroaches, Rimmer, Lister tried to project. Think cockroaches. Shouldn't be too hard.

Ackerman strode up and down the short line, his arms crossed, grimacing. "So. It looks like you survived."

"Yes, sir," Rimmer said through a smirk. "So sorry to let you down."

Ackerman halted his stride in front of Rimmer. "You think this is /amusing/, eh?"

Shut /up/, Rimmer, Lister thought fiercely. Just shut up already!

"Hmmm, let me think..." Rimmer tapped his lip with his forefinger, projecting the attitude that always made Lister want to kick him in the nuts, back when they bunked together three million and two hundred-some-odd years ago. And if Lister wanted to kick him in the nuts... "Erm, yes, I do rather think it's actually terribly funny."

Ackerman's fist was out and back in again almost too quickly for Lister to track. Rimmer doubled over with a strangled "Whumph."

"Thank you for the debriefing," Ackerman snarled. He nodded, and the guards started to prod Kochanski, Lister, and Kryten out of the room. Lister tried to turn as he heard something that sounded like a kick, and the guard prodded the small of his back more forcefully with his gun. Kochanski caught his eye and gave a small shrug, as if to say, "what can we do?" What, indeed. And some small part of Lister thought, maybe Rimmer will actually learn something. Isn't that how his Rimmer learned, and became less of a smeghead? Hard knocks?


Lister lay on his bunk a half-hour later, trying to stay awake despite the mandated lights-out. It had been a long day.

His Rimmer. When had he started thinking of him in that way? The dead one, the hologram - his Rimmer? Probably back when he first learned there could be more than one - back when Ace dropped in. Goddam, that had been a revelation. To see what potential Rimmer had in him - what potential his Rimmer had in him. That was also when some part of his mind had started to nag at him with the thought - if his Rimmer were more like Ace, Lister might actually love him. And he did. He loved a dead man. And now the man brought back to life feels more like his corpse.

His brooding was interrupted by Rimmer trying to sneak in unnoticed. He was holding his side awkwardly, and puffed out a painful breath with every step. Lister waited until he had collapsed stiffly onto the bunk below with a quiet moan, and slipped off of his own bunk to sit beside the man.

"Oi, mate, how you doin'?"

"Very badly," Rimmer muttered. The dim lighting was further dimmed by the shadow of the bunk, and Lister had a hard time reading the man's expression.

"Hey, lemme take a look," Lister replied, reaching out for Rimmer's jumpsuit. Rimmer shrank back, crossing his arms over his chest. Lister sighed.

"I won't hurt yeh, man. I just wanna make sure you're all right."

"There's nothing wrong with me that you touching won't make worse," Rimmer snarled, hugging himself more tightly. He winced at that action.

Lister leaned back. "C'mon - I nicked some MJ muscle rub from Baxter two days ago. That'll help some, what?" Lister stood and started to root through his backpack, eventually pulling out a tin labeled 'Veruca Cream.' He sat back down on Rimmer's bunk, noting that the other man had, at least, uncrossed his arms. Lister twisted open the tin, pulling out a handful of slick cream that would be brilliant green in the light, and still showed that color in the dim illumination of the prison night. He waved it at Rimmer. "C'mon, kit off."

Rimmer did not take his eyes off of Lister's face as he unzipped the jumpsuit and awkwardly slid it off of his torso, pulling the yellow shirt off after. Lister sucked in a breath. Even in the semi-darkness, dark bruises still stood out against Rimmer's white skin, taking the form of fists and various parts of boot. "God," he sighed, as he started to rub the cool cream onto Rimmer's too-warm bruises, "why'd you have to mouth off to Ackerman like that?"

"He deserved it," Rimmer sighed, visibly relaxing as the cream did its work.

"And he thinks you deserved to get the crap beaten outta ya," Lister sighed, dipping in for another dose. "When does it end?"

Rimmer was relaxed enough now that he put up no protest as Lister straddled him to rub the bruises on his shoulders and his arms (shoulders? how did he get bruises there?). "Dunno," he sighed as Lister rubbed the second dose of cream into his shoulders, arms, and neck. Lister started to twist the can closed, and looked up. Perhaps it was just the dim illumination, in which stray shafts of light caught in Rimmer's eyes and caused them to glitter from the slight movement of breathing. Maybe it was because, now that he was so close, he could smell that godawful aftershave that Rimmer always seemed to wear, alive or dead, on a ship or in prison. Maybe it was merely because Lister had been thinking about the hologrammatic Rimmer. But for just one moment, Lister saw in this Rimmer everything he shared with Lister's Rimmer, and Lister, unthinkingly, dropped the jar over the side of the bunk and leaned forward to kiss Rimmer. The other man's mouth opened almost immediately, and Lister shoved his tongue in, marveling - but should he really be surprised? - that this Rimmer, too, tasted of mint and peroxide, and had strong, solid arms that raised to Lister's shoulders as Lister rubbed his hands over them and moved to the slightly hairy chest. God, he did not realize until he started how much he missed this, the taste of the man, the warmth of his mouth, the feel of his body underneath. Rimmer started to push at his clothes, and Lister sighed into his mouth. He pulled back for a breath...

And came back to reality.

As soon as his mouth broke contact with Rimmer's, he realized that the other man's mouth had been open to talk, not to kiss. "What the bloody smeg are you doing?" he gasped, pushing at Lister - not at Lister's clothes. Lister sighed, and for a moment, allowed himself the indulgence of dropping his head onto that warm, solid chest - where he heard the beating of a human heart, not the gentle electrical hum that would lull him to sleep in his Rimmer's arms. He sat up, and the look on his face must have been horrid, because Rimmer lay speechless for a moment. Lister brushed his hand over Rimmer's forehead, as if to reassure himself that it was bare, and sat back to regard the man, for just a moment; breathless, pointlessly offended, H-less, alive - everything his Rimmer used to be.

Lister pulled himself up onto his own bunk, his heart sitting in his chest like lead. He tried not to think about his Rimmer, and as the mind will do, the more he tried to think, the more he could not get the hologram out of his head. Lister closed his eyes and tried to breathe evenly.

"Lister..." came that damned voice from below - the voice that was and wasn't Rimmer. There was a pause, and Lister knew, without looking, that Rimmer would be licking his lips, knew just what the tongue would look like when it flicked out to run, like a flash, over those lips. A punctuation mark, it was; a sign that the sentence to follow would be important, somehow. Ah, but this was not his Rimmer. To the man below him, the organization of his sock drawer was critically important. "What was he like?"

That question made the answer leap unbidden into Lister's mind. He had your unruly curls and compulsive need to tame them with gel. He had your nasal, irritating whine of a voice. He had your intolerable smugness. He had your body, god help me. He tasted of mint and peroxide, and smelled of cheap aftershave. He kissed me eagerly, and undressed me gently, his own clothes disappearing in a glow of blue light when I ripped them off. He learned how to run his hands up my neck when we kissed, and how to push my back firmly just like that when I was about to come, and it took me into the clouds. He was a git. He was no longer quite so much of a coward.

"Dunno," Lister muttered somberly. He was achingly hard, and knew that he could not wank with that man lying below him, knowing who he would be thinking about. Lister laced his hands over his chest and sighed, staring unseeingly at the ceiling, lying wide awake until the call for the next morning's duty shift.