"Do I still look like a frog, Rimmer?"

This was the series of words that travelled swiftly through the air to Rimmer's ears today. They were always different, sometimes they weren't intended for him, and it was just Lister talking in his sleep. Lister's subconsious seemed to involve Rimmer quite often, and the conversatins Lister had with his inner-Rimmer (well, that was the best term Rimmer could come up with. He wasn't sure what to call this version of himself that seemed to haunt Lister's sleeping hours.) would span hours and change in subject, volume and speed. And, given what had just been said, Rimmer was fairly certain Lister was asleep, and dreaming.

He waited on almost bated breath for Lister to speak again. For in inkling in what he (but not he, no, never he himself, a better he) would reply.

There wasn't a lot of privacy in prison. Everybody knew pretty much anything, and if everybody didn't know it, at least one or two other people knew it. And room-mates, cellmates, rather, knew more about the person they lived with than that person mother. Or significant other. Or whatever.

There also wasn't a lot of entertainment in prison. Some books, sure. Provided you enjoyed reading at a pre-preschool level or about rice. Sometimes both. Your cellmate wasn't just your cellmate, he or she was your whole life. Whatever they did, was your entertainment. It was like a real life soap opera that you got to participate in. Cellmates were closer. Closer than brothers. Closer than parent and child. Closer than lovers. You had to trust your cellmate. But you had to take an interest in the too. Or you'd go insane.

Lister didn't speak again. Rimmer mused that this dream-him must be explaining something very carefully and very long windedly. There was no chance he was ever going ot figure out what he said.

"Well Rimmer, do you?"

Oh. Well. Not asleep then.

"Are you talking to me?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

There is a book, not availiable in the prisoners library, but still a very good book by a Douglas Adams called 'The Salmon of Doubt'. Rimmer has read it. And he knows that within it's pages is an entire essay about the question 'why' and the letter 'y'. He's read that essay twenty three times. He knows it by heart. He thinks it's very funny. And he always feels guilty when he askes that question.

"I want to know. Do.. do you still think I look like a frog?"

"I thought you looked like a frog?"

"Well, you didn't, no, you did. You might."

"Nice to know that prison life hasn't made you strange. Have you arbled enough of the English language to try and speak properly now?"

Lister sighed. A long deep sigh though his nose. He then took a long deep breath in through his mouth and tried again.

"You, the other you... my Rimmer, he once described me as a frog. A dead frog. This was one of the things he said to convince me to trade bodies with him."

"You've been in my body?"

"Yeah. Not to bad really. Nice and tall, bit awkward sometimes. Really, you know sensitive. I'd accidentally hit myself or something, a finger ot mine would poke me and I'd flip out. I guess since that body hadn't, couldn't touch anything, any feeling it did get it was hypersensitive to."

"Ah. I see."

Rimmer puzzled about this. It kind of distrubed him to know that Lister had been in his body. Knew all of it's secrets, as it were. Well, not all of them, he reasoned. As the body couldn't touch anything. But still. He felt strangely violated.

"So do you?"

"Do I?"

"Do you think I still look like a frog?"

"No. I think you look like a person."

The rickety bunk sqeuaked a bit as Lister turned. Then he turned again. Rimmer worried he might have said the wrong thing, though he had no idea what the right thing might be.

"Thank you Rimmer. That is the nicest thing either of you has ever said to me."

The bunk protested a bit more and then soft snores began to meander down from above. Rimmer stared into the dark, horrified.

a/n: Well then, should actually start typing things I've already written now, shouldn't I? cackle