From the First Moment
Summary: Dave Lister wasn't the only one who loved Kristine Kochanski from the first moment he saw her.
Arnold Rimmer had been working as a Third Technician for three years when he'd noticed her for the first time, Astronavigation Officer Kristine Kochanski. He'd been taken in by her looks initially. Her shoulder-length auburn hair a touch redder than his own, the slight wave when she didn't straighten it. She wasn't the first person he'd been attracted to on looks alone, those always faded with time when someone new came along.
With her, his attraction didn't fade. Soon he found that he was taken in by was her personality. He loved how she didn't take nonsense from anyone, and her laugh was just charming. With and that the attraction grew stronger, it was the longest he'd been attracted to anyone since Janine, the woman who ended up becoming his sister in law.
It didn't take too long for him to learn her role on the ship. When he discovered that she had the job that he had been aiming for and that she also enjoyed her job, he was hooked, he was in love with a woman who he never had a chance with.
Officer Kochanski would never go for him, he was just a lowly technician, he knew that she was far out of his league, so he started working harder to get her to notice him. So he could be in her league. He'd been too scared to approach her to ask her out while he was so far below her station. He promised himself that he would ask her on a date after he became an officer. The one problem with that plan was it never happened. Six years he'd been trying to make himself better so that she could notice and she never even gave him a second glance, he wasn't even on her radar.
He'd been feeling good when he came into his room after maintenance had gone well and he was ahead of schedule for one. He was able to knock off early, even without Lister's help. It felt like nothing could go wrong today. He planned on giving Lister a piece of his mind when his bunkmate turned again for skipping work for the third time that week. Lister had been seeing someone knew and spending all his time in her room. Eventually, he'd have to turn up, they worked together and lived together, and even Todhunter couldn't ignore Lister not turning up for shifts long term.
He found Lister in his room alright and in the bottom bunk with the so-called new woman he'd been seeing, who'd Lister would get sick of him sooner or later. Lister never stayed in a relationship with anyone long. They lovebirds hadn't even noticed him enter the room.
"Do you really have to do that in my bed," Rimmer asked as he placed his technician's jacket back in his locker.
He was not going to let Lister ruin his day. It was not the first time he'd come back to his room to find Lister in his bed with someone and probably would not be the last. He was annoyed that they had messed up his bed and his sheets. Now his bed was going to smell like Lister and this stranger even after he put fresh sheets on the bed. Lister never cleaned up after himself even when using other peoples belongings. It wasn't the first time and unlikely going to be the last time either.
"Lister, you missed your-." He stopped midsentence when he saw exactly who Lister was with.
"I'm really sorry, I should've realised it was too neat to be his bed," the woman apologised as she pulled her clothes back on.
He couldn't look away, his brain went and left him for several moments when he noticed the woman who Lister had been bedding was none other than the woman he'd been interested in for the past six years. The perfect astronavigation officer who shared some of his interests who he thought would never look at him because he was still only a Second Technician after twelve years working on the ship. And here she was in bed with a Third Technician. The Third Technician he'd been living with and supervisor to ever since he'd started on the ship. A slob who was not dedicated to work in the slightest.
Lister hadn't been around for even a year yet, and here he was ruining everything that Rimmer had ever worked towards. How other's viewed him while not that great, to begin with, was worse with Lister around, constantly undermining him on shift with the other members of Z shift which was bad enough but he did it with the officers as well. Lister would sabotage his study times, would ruin his belongings by using them. Making him a laughing stock of everyone one and now he'd stolen the only woman he'd been interested in on the ship.
He didn't know what to do. It felt like he'd lost everything, lost all hope. His brain decided that staying in shut down was for the best.
Red Dwarf
Several hours later Rimmer woke up hours later in the medibay. He'd fainted in front of Kochanski. He was so embarrassed that he'd fainted in front of the woman he loved, the woman who he could never tell that he loved now that she'd been in bed with his bunkmate. She didn't even come up to the medibay to check if he was alright and neither did Lister. That was how he found himself getting dragged into the bathroom and shagged by McGruder. It didn't help him forget her, and the guilt he felt for being with McGruder although he and Kochanski had never been in a relationship was something that he didn't think was possible until it had happened.
The guild was eating away at him for using McGruder to forget, but she'd used him as well. She'd been trying to forget her own now ex-boyfriend.
Upon his release from the medibay he saw Kochanski in the hallway, she hadn't seen him, he almost confronted her when he realised that she was laughing about him with her friends. Everyone knew that he'd fainted when he walked in on her with Lister.
That eased some of the guilt he felt for sleeping with McGruder, but it didn't reduce all the guilt. The entire time he was with McGruder he pictured that it was Kochanski who had him in that position and because he'd now seen her naked, it was far too easy to imagine. It made him feel sick to his stomach that he couldn't move on despite how betrayed he felt.
How was it that morning had been so perfect and now it felt like it was the worst day of his entire life? That was saying something because he had some pretty awful bad days in the past.
Red Dwarf
Rimmer had been glad when two weeks later Lister and Kochanski had broken up. Lister had already tainted Kochanski for him, and he just could not get past the image of seeing them in bed together. While it didn't seem like it two weeks ago, maybe it was a good thing. It would never work out between himself and Officer Kochanski as much as he wished it.
Hearing her laugh about him was still ringing through his ears, he wanted that he could erase the past two weeks from his mind. He wouldn't even if he was given the chance despite it being something he wanted. Rimmer was determined that he was going to move on. He was going to make an actual effort to meet someone and go out with them instead of trying to make himself into someone that he would never be. He would find someone who didn't mind that he was only a technician, someone who enjoyed playing Risk who he could play with. Someone who wasn't a snooty officer.
Rimmer never got a chance to move on. A few weeks later when he was looking at joining a Risk club on Titan, so he had something to do on planet leave, the ship was subject to a lethal dose of radiation. He was dead along with everyone else, everyone except Kristine Kochanski who was in stasis for having an un-quarantined cat.