Letters to You

It had been a long while since they had ransacked the lockers of the Red Dwarf. Once Rimmer had become corporeal the booby-traps that featured in many of them became genuinely hazardous and as he had the hilarious (to the rest of the crew) misfortune of encountering them frequently he had become a little gun-shy of the activity. But entertainment was down lately and they decided to revive the game.

Kryten was busy with laundry, found the whole thing gauche anyway, so only the Cat followed Rimmer and Lister around sniffing the lockers curiously trying to make educated guesses to their contents. "This one!" he shouted gleefully and Lister chiselled it open. A pile of magazines featuring curved ladies fell out and the Cat gathered them up greedily.

"How could you smell what that was?"

"You really want the answer to that?" the Cat grimaced.

Lister shook his head. "Your turn, Rimmer."

Rimmer tapped his foot, impatient from having to wait so long for the Cat to choose, "Very well then, Number 52."

"You can't have 52, that's my locker."

Rimmer snorted with forceful violent blasts from his ample nostrils. "Very funny Lister, but I know for a fact that yours is Number 25. It was the year the London Jets won the Nationals; that's how you remember it."

"They won in '52, Rimmer. 25 is the year they lost to the Manchester Maines in the Regionals," Lister explained carefully and he had never seen the colour drain from Rimmer's face so fast in all the years he'd know him. "You alright?"

"That's impossible. No no, that's impossible." His lips quivered as he steadied himself against the cursed locker. He bolted upright suddenly, charging past them. "Locker 12 then. This way."

But he was trembling.

Lister dutifully jimmied the door and Rimmer was rewarded with nothing but a half-chewed pen lid, because Lister had yet to sabotage that particular locker. "My go," Lister announced. "I want 25." Lister had barely taken a step when Rimmer's bony fingers dug into the doughy flesh of his shoulder. "Smeg, Rimmer, that hurts!"

He stared into Rimmer's glistening eyes. Rimmer stuttered out, "Any locker besides that one."

"Smeg's wrong with you?"

"Any locker, every locker – you can have every locker, but that one."

Lister shrugged him off. Later, he'd find small crescent-shaped welts in his bruised skin. "Okay," he promised and the weight of the world fell away from Rimmer's expression but something else was left behind, something crucial he couldn't decipher. A creak of metal snapped them out of their mutual gazing.

Cat had promised bugger all.

"What the Cloister is all that?" he marvelled at the waterfall of envelopes that flowed onto the floor. Rimmer sprang on them like a spaniel on a plump pheasant, piling them up into a manageable stack.

"Rimmer," Lister queried cautiously. "What is all that?"

"It's mine, whatever it is," the Cat grumbled unhappily, trying to take a couple before Rimmer got hold of them. "He's stealing my stuff, stop him!"

"It's not your go, Cat," Lister pointed out, the hunched figure knelt before them worrying him immensely. "Just let him have them."

"This game sucks, you both suck. I'm going to my room."

Lister chuckled lightly once he was gone, "Kids today, eh? No respect for their elders." Rimmer nodded forlornly, hugging the envelopes. His ship-commissioned monogrammed personal stationary, Lister noticed. "Why don't I leave you to…" his eyes flicked away, "…whatever you're doing? I'm going to go have a cuppa. Want one?" Rimmer didn't seem to hear him so Lister gave him some space.

"Hey gerbil-features, I'm having trouble with these monkey-words. Read this for me."

"That's not how people usually ask for help," Lister sighed into his mug of sugary tea (or in Kryten's definition, sugar with tea in it) but he took the sheet of paper from the Cat.

"My only friend, it is seven days since I saw you last and three since I confessed my love and I can only imagine…" Lister's voice trailed off. This was Rimmer's handwriting. On Rimmer's stationary. Rimmer's ship-commissioned monogrammed personal stationary. Even though he'd had 200ml of tea within the last five minutes, his mouth was bone dry as he tried to swallow the lump in his throat. "Where did you get this?"

"Managed to snag one before landing-pad-head got it. Didn't even see me do it," he added proudly.

"Cat, this is clearly private."

"So private he put it in a locker he thought was yours?"

Lister slammed his head onto the table, knocking over his mug and spilling what was left of his tea. He'd had an inkling about what those letters were but he'd never imagined he'd be right. What else could it be? Rimmer had panicked over a mistaken locker identity; had tried to hide away a bunch of letters that were clearly written by him and had been fed into what turned out to not be Lister's locker.

But why, when, what and how and every other possible question? And would Rimmer ever give up that information willingly?

Lister expected the terrified gurgling sound Rimmer let out when he handed him the envelope, Rimmer's pale fist almost slamming into his teeth as he began to chew his knuckles and also the resonating creak of knees meeting floor when he fell down in dismay. "Look mate, I just want you to know I didn't read it."

Limpid hazel pools swivelled up in disbelief.

"Well, I read a tiny bit, by accident. Cat made me!" he confessed. Rimmer flinched when he slumped down beside him. "You don't have to explain but…" Lister pulled one of his dreads over his shoulder and stroked it. "Got to admit I'm really smegging curious."

"It's just so bloody typical," Rimmer cringed. "One little mistake and my whole life is wrecked. And just when I think it's done with me it comes back for a good old haunting."

Lister's eyes wandered over him patiently as he gathered his thoughts, putting them in tidy chronological piles.

The teeniest of smiles tiptoed onto Rimmer's face as the memories surfaced one by one. "You were sorting out a temporary forwarding address for your junkmail; you didn't want me to get hold of any of it and throw it away. You couldn't bear to not get any at all so cancelling was out of the question. You were so lonely, especially since Kochanski…

"I remember," Lister said slowly.

"The first day you were in stasis I thought I was in heaven. My first shift for months where nothing went wrong – I didn't have to write down any insubordinations. I was irritation-free!

"But my room. Our room. It felt excruciatingly empty. So I wrote you a letter. Just stuff that had happened on the shift. More of a report really."

Lister chuckled. He could imagine that precisely. How very Rimmer.

"Then as a few days went by their… format changed." A guttural moan made him judder. "There was absolutely no way I was sending it through the normal mail, in case anyone read it. So I posted it directly into your… into a locker." He pressed his face into his hands. "Of course it was the wrong one. I can't get anything right."

He didn't have to say any more. Lister knew exactly what had happened after that. They'd all died, except for him, and he'd come back millions of years later. Rimmer anxiously, fearfully waiting for the day Lister would go to his locker. Spending every functioning moment wondering if this would be the day when Lister would throw the letters in his face crying, "What the smeg?" or crush them to his heart and sob, "I feel the same way!"

But nothing had happened. Not a thing. That had left him in the most awful state of limbo. Had Lister chosen to ignore him, thought that was safer? Continued to insult him, belittle him, even knowing his feelings. What kind of person…

So Rimmer had retaliated. Learned his lesson about opening his heart and all that other emotional crap. Love decaying back into hate.

"I was so horrible to you," he sniffed. "And you didn't deserve it. I thought you were deliberately… all three of you laughing behind my back."

"C'mere," Lister mumbled softly, one arm around him, the other a tender caress of his knee. Flashbacks to the same motion on a terraforming planet made Rimmer retreat internally. "Sorry," said Lister, sensing his discomfort.

"I learned to hate you all over again. I can't just switch that off, Listy. I have a lot of feelings to undo."

"Calling me 'Listy' is a good start though." Lister smiled at Rimmer's mild scoff at the observation. "And hey, this is a lot to get my head around too, yeah? But if it'll help move things along…" Lister brushed his lips over Rimmer's fingers. "Then just so you know, I'd always sort of hoped we'd get past our…"

"Animosity?" Rimmer offered.

"Was going to say shit-flinging, but yeah that." Lister stood brushing down his leathers. "Want that tea now?" he asked, nose in an affectionate scrunch.

"Sounds lovely." Rimmer sighed softly and clasped one hand over the other as if keeping the kiss safe.