While Dave Lister wasn't remotely as bothered as Kochanski by the decaying state of the decorated steel green "skip with thrusters" that was Starbug, worn and battered by years of crashing, ill-advised manoeuvres and alien hostility, he couldn't deny that the rotten atmosphere occasionally began to close in on him, especially with Rimmer's departure. He thought that he'd enjoy the emptiness, but now ever quarter felt like it was closing in on him or sprawling to far for him to see, as if Kryten, The Cat and Kochanski were years away from him at any given time, and even if he hauled himself over the mountainous squalor, he'd always be alone and strangely enclosed in filth. While the JMC were frugal enough to put Rimmer himself to shame and the ship boasted a number of faults and shortcomings, Red Dwarf had a certain quirky slapdash charm to it that was absent aboard Starbug, which seemed to have taken the brunt of maintenance cutbacks. It was suffocating aboard the ship.
Lister never thought for a minute that he could ever miss one person so much. Certainly, he missed humanity as a whole, he missed the feeling of knowing that there were hundreds and hundreds of other people like him at any given time, going about their daily lives, laughing with their loved ones, experiencing things in a human way, he missed that intensely. The uncertainty that usurped it was agonising. But never did he think he could feel such a desperately agonising desire for the company of one single person. One single person who had been dead for three million years. He had thought his want for Christine Kochanski was the extent of how much he could miss one person, but he'd been proved so direly wrong. It confused him profoundly that when he finally felt this specific impassioned aching, it was for Arnold J. Rimmer. He'd always tried to convince himself that he'd pay obscene amounts of money to be moved to a different bunk room back in his early days aboard the JMC craft, but glossed over the fact that he'd never complained to the higher ups once. He'd never requested to be moved even though the offer had been presented to him multiple times, and he was well aware that bunks were going free with some regularity, homesickness and cold feet ran riot aboard Red Dwarf. He continued to subject himself to board with a man he so vehemently insisted that he couldn't stand, even when every bunk on the ship was free except for theirs in that scruffy little dormitory.
Lister very vividly recalled his first day on Red Dwarf, hugging his parents tearfully goodbye at the space vehicle docking in London before filing on board with a plethora of crew members, the large gangway slamming ominously closed behind them, locking them in to this giant, malnourished floating city. Luggage clutched to his chest, he recalled being lead by a senior officer with a group of other technicians to one of the middle decks after a fairly drawn out lift ride and being shown to his room. While busying himself with unpacking his guitar and pouring water into his robotic goldfish tank, a man of his age strode in behind him and deposited his own meticulously packed luggage on to the bottom bunk. Lister turned and examined the man and his mother ironed collection of polo shirts that he was laying out on the bed linen. He was a tall, upstanding man with a gently defined jaw, russet eyes and painstakingly treated hair, somewhat military in it's pedantic keeping. He had extended a hand to this man, but was greeted with an elaborate salute instead of a shake. He noticed a slight scrunch in his nose when the man registered his curry stained logo tee.
"Arnold J. Rimmer, pleasure to meet you!" the young man had announced. Lister raised an eyebrow at his new bunkmate Arnold, scanned him with disbelief at how tightly wound the man seemed, and returned his extended hand to his pocket with a nod, chewing gum wedged in the corner of his wonky smile.
"Dave. Dave Lister. Pleasure."
It had been anything but a pleasure, the two of them discovering each others habits and foibles, the most difficult way possible. They couldn't be more opposed if they tried and oh how they tried. Lister would do anything if he knew that Arnold wouldn't. That was why he kept sandwiches that he never intended to finish for weeks, why he deliberately smeared soap and toothpaste over the mirror, why he neglected to treat his sock basket despite the alarmingly pungent smell. He'd never entertained once that this peculiar obsession with irritating Arnold Rimmer would develop into a strong attachment. And little did either of them like to admit it, but they genuinely had fun together. Neither of them would ever put it past one another that they loved playing chess together. Lister loved it when Rimmer would cheat or play exclusively defensively, and Rimmer loved it when Lister called him out on it. Lister loved having Rimmer put his name down on report for stupid things like whistling and breathing, he provoked Rimmer, not that he needed much excuse because he was more than happy to put his name down. They'd been through so much together, they'd never been separated for such a long period of time and now Lister knew he was gone. He knew that if he ever saw Arnold again, he'd be a tiny yellow blip in an asteroid belt of dead Rimmers. The very notion drove him to the brink of insanity.
Lister scraped his hands through his hair frantically with an exasperated groan, shooting up from his bunk and storming to the main deck. He found Kryten working behind the kitchen counter, merrily preparing onions for a stew that evening. No sign of Kochanski or Cat, but Lister didn't feel particularly inclined to ask. Kryten immediately halted his onion dicing upon Lister's entry, his synthetic eyes igniting his joy expectantly as if he had terrific news to share.
"Mr Lister sir!" He chimed. "How lovely to see you, I'd just began on dinner, coq...well, space weevil au vin, with recyc-red wine, I thought that since Mr Rimmer was no longer here I'd be able to start cooking these things again without him getting all upset like he would. We only have a finite supply of organic meat left, wouldn't want to waste it all now when there are these perfectly good weevils scuttling around in the lower decks"
Lister sighed heavily. "You know how I feel about things that scuttle Kryten."
"Did I say scuttle? It was really more of a...skittering..."
"Skittering is no good either, no skittering, no crawling, no scuttling, no slithering, no slipping, no mincing, no prancing, no sashaying. We'll just have it with carrots or aubergine or something." Lister vaguely gestured in no particular direction, making his way towards the fridge.
"They'll be space aubergines sir." Kryten adopted an earnest tone. Lister bent down, swung open the fridge and fetched himself a can of beer, which he cracked open with a small burst of suds splattering his face and t-shirt, to no reaction.
"'Space aubergines'? Where the hell do you get 'space aubergines'?"
"Well, at the GELF colony, during your wedding night-"
Lister grimaced. "Oof, Kryten, I don' wanna know man. I'll go hungry."
"...Hungry sir?" Kryten concluded a few solid minutes of silence. "You...don't want anything?"
Lister glanced forlornly up from his beer can and shook his head. Kryten ardently placed his cooking utensils on the chopping board with a sniffle.
"Oh! Mr Lister, what ever is the matter?" Lister didn't answer, taking a conveniently timed swig of beer. Kryten noticed and frowned, shaking his head rapidly spluttering out hurt tuts and appeals to a robotic deity. Kryten had noticed Lister's steady decline after Rimmer had left, the slow increase in the amount of beer that he was drinking, his despondency, he spent so much time confined to his room, lying on his bunk and staring at the ceiling but this was the final straw for Kryten. He'd known him for a good seven years and not once had he said that he wasn't hungry. He'd ducked out of meals occasionally to spend an hour chasing around voluptuous computer sprites in a 19th century London generated by the AR suite, but even then he usually turned up to feast on the cold scraps later. Never had he simply not been hungry.
"Should I take you on the Rimmer experience again, sir?" Kryten asked cautiously. Lister shook his head and scrunched his nose in disgust.
"Ugh, no. I keep telling you to throw that bloody thing away. It's not Arn anyway."
"Arn?"
"Rimmer!"
Kryten cast his eyes downward solemnly and resumed chopping onions with a noticeable absence of enthusiasm. He continued to talk without taking his eyes off his culinary duties.
"I know that you're missing him." Lister remained silent, finger tracing the icy metal rim of the beer can. He released a resigned sigh.
"I can't take this any more Kryten, I'm going mad without him. What Chris said, about him...about him keeping me sane...I think she was right. I need him."
"Well, that all sounds terribly passionate." Kryten commented wistfully.
"I guess you could call it that, yeah." Lister chuckled a little, although it was tinged with bitterness. "See the thing is Kryters, I thought I'd be overjoyed when he was gone, I couldn't stand the smeghead, he was always so tidy, so up his own arse, spending all day categorising his socks by how worn the elastic was. And the way he always used to go on and on and on about the Napoleonic wars and..." He mockingly drew out the word wars in a sing song voice, before pressing his beer can to his forehead and sighing. "I miss that. I miss all of that."
"Well, who knows sir!" Kryten attempted to alleviate the morose cloud that hung over the main deck. "He may drop by some day, Ace Rimmer."
"What reason would he have to? He has everything out there, women, looks, charisma."
"Not yet sir" Kryten reminded him. "I think it will take him a while to acquire those skills from his predecessor"
"Yeah maybe." At that moment, Kochanski and Cat strode on to the main deck in unison, both looking considerably perky in comparison to their sub-human and mechanoid ship mates. Kochanski had something of a heightened sensitivity to the atmosphere, her attitude immediately faltering the minute she stepped in to the room, whereas Cat, more fashion than tact, simply ignored it and shuffled to the table, where he sat himself down and took a long swig of Lister's beer to little reaction from the latter. Kochanski moved slowly in to the chair beside Lister and rested a hand delicately on his shoulder, her bottom lip protruding in comforting concern. She rubbed Listers back affectionately, which did manage a smile from him if only briefly. She didn't ask him what was the matter, she was perfectly aware.
"Cheer up Dave." She cooed. "Get some food down your neck, then I'll watch some telly with you. How does that sound?" Lister's heart warmed at the gesture.
"That sounds nice Chris." He spoke lowly. "I'm not all that hungry."
"You've got to eat something, you didn't have much for breakfast. Just a little bit...Look! Kryten's gone to so much trouble to make us something nice with limited supplies, the least you could do is have a tiny plate, hm?" She gestured to Kryten who reluctantly accepted the compliment.
True to her word, Kochanski was very zealous in keeping Lister company that evening, she sat in bed with him, gave him extra pillows and made him several cups of hot tea in a heart-warming attempt to keep his spirits up and Lister would be lying if he said that it didn't improve his mood somewhat. As he sat there, late in the evening with a fast asleep and fully clothed Kochanski hanging precariously from the edge of his bed, television flickering dimly in the dull evening light, Lister found himself reaching for a polaroid stuck above his head, a polaroid of him and Rimmer together that Peterson had taken candidly at the disco, the angle and the happenstance of their expressions making it appear as though they were having a particularly intimate conversation when in reality they had probably just been bickering over the frequency of Rimmer's space corps regulation reciting. He slid back on to his multitude of pillows and rested the picture flat upon his face. He knew that he was unwell.