"So just tell me why."
"Tell you what, Lister?"
Rimmer was making a point of appearing very busy with his electronic book, and exceedingly busy ignoring Lister. Unfortunately, Lister was doing a very bad job of recognizing it. The scouser leaned down over the top of his bunk, dreadlocks falling over the edge, and tried again.
"You hate me, man; don't ya?"
"Of course I hate you, Lister."
Measured disinterest. Ah, yes; that was it. Way to go, Rimsy. He cheered and patted himself on the back mentally, keeping all of that from showing on his exterior.
"So why d'you stay 'ere? Why don't ya go off and find some other quarters ta sleep in?"
Rimmer gave an irritated sigh, abandoning his book. Of course the scouser would ask something like that. Something prying and personal and irritating as all hell. He put on his mask of condescension and marshaled his snark.
"I would explain it to you, Listy, but it takes a brain cell bigger than a protozoa to understand simple concepts, so I would obviously be wasting my time."
"See? There ya go again, insultin' me. If you hate me so much, why do you stay?"
Rimmer desperately flipped through his mental catalogue of insulting, false reasons, hoping to stumble across one that would convince the grotty bum and leave him in peace. Instead he came across simple deflection and decided it would do.
Filling his voice with broken glass, he asked, "Why do you care?"
"I'm jus' curious is all," Lister whined plaintively.
'Aha!' Rimmer thought. 'Trying to win me over with those goited, sappy puppy eyes. Well it won't work on me, miladdo!'
"It seems to me that something rather like curiosity killed the cat."
Lister smiled, undaunted by Rimmer's pompous tone.
"But Cat isn't in 'ere, is he? Besides, what's so smeggin' important that you can't tell me?"
"It's not that I can't tell you, Lister. It's that I don't want to."
"Fine. What don't you want to tell me?"
"Well that would be telling you, now wouldn't it?"
Rimmer spun around to glare at his roommate, nostrils flaring and arms crossed over his chest. Lister grinned slowly.
"You're gonna tell me."
"Now why would I do something like that?"
"Because. I'm gonna make yer life miserable until ya do."
Rimmer groaned, rolling his eyes toward heaven (figuratively speaking) and addressing the ceiling.
"Why? Why me? What did I ever do to you?"
"You're gonna tell me, Rimmeh," Lister teased in a sing-song voice, thoroughly enjoying himself. "You're gonna tell me why you stay."
"Or else what?"
"Or else I'll cut me toenails on yer bunk again, and play me music as loud as I please, and get out me guitar and write you a song. Yer own special song, man…."
Rimmer's face went ashen and his hands shook.
"Oh smeg, no…."
"Come on, Rimmeh," the scouser wheedled, jumping down from his bunk and trying very hard to place his face uncomfortably close to Rimmer's, loving how worked up that made him. "Or I'll get out me curries and accidentally… accidentally, mind you… spill 'em all over yer Hammond Organ music discs."
"You wouldn't dare!" Rimmer exploded, his hands twitching. If only he was corporeal, he'd strangle the smegger!
"I can't be held responsible for accidents, Rimmeh," Dave sang, backing out of the hologram's personal space with a shrug.
The second technician's face was currently cycling through its vast repertoire of frustrated expressions, and Lister had to restrain himself from laughing. Just like always, it was usually more fun pestering the smeghead to tell him something than it was actually finding out the answer. Holly was right; Rimmer did keep him sane. Pity for him that Lister was having so much fun driving him insane!
"I… I…." Rimmer choked, his eyes a picture of desperation. "Why does it matter so much to you?"
"Because you obviously don't want to tell me, which means it must be important. Plus, there's smegging little else to do around 'ere."
Rimmer placed a shaking hand to his head and ran it through his hair, then over his forehead and the blasted 'H' that reminded him that he was dead. That blasted, smegging 'H'….
"It's because…." He stopped, swallowing his words along with part of his tongue. Smeg Lister! Smeg Lister to Hades for always managing to get him to talk like this! "I…"
His brain threw him a bone.
'Misdirection! Yes!'
He forced his voice into a trembling parody of his usual arrogance.
"What would you do without me here, miladdo? You're certainly not a paragon of cleanliness or discipline. An example, that's what you need!"
"An example of how to be a smeggy, neurotic coward?"
Rimmer's lip twitched as his nostrils flared. He said nothing for some time, his brain unable to counter that accurate assessment quickly.
"Hey, come on, man. What's the real reason?"
"The real reason? That is the real reason, laddio."
"No it's not, and you know it."
"How do you know? It might be!"
"But it's not, is it?"
Rimmer pouted, re-crossing his arms.
"I don't have to put up with this! I'm a superior officer."
He turned toward the door, but Lister was quicker and blocked the exit. Rimmer's tone dropped back into the ice age.
"Move, squire."
"Not until ya tell me."
"Move!"
"No!"
The hologram took in a grating, emotionally- (though not physically-) necessary breath, then spun back on his heels, marched toward his bunk, and lay down with his back to Lister, pretending to be asleep.
"Come on, Rimmeh. I know you're not asleep."
Rimmer pursed his lips out of Dave's sight, refusing to respond.
"Alright; if that's the way you wanna play it…."
With a wicked grin, Lister cranked up his music, taking great care to pick the artist Rimmer hated most.
Rimmer steamed. If he had been part of a cartoon, smoke would have been coming out of his ears. The man was so difficult! He knew Rimmer hated that smeg! He was doing it on purpose, just to annoy him. Well he wouldn't let him win. He wouldn't let it get to him; oh no sir, not Arnie J.
Another few seconds passed before he sat up quickly in his bunk and glared.
"Will you shut that smeg off!"
Lister grinned, turning it up.
"Sorry, man, can't hear ya."
Rimmer's lips twitched in anger and his nostrils flared.
"You're incorrigible! You know that? You could drive statues to beat themselves to death with their own limbs!"
He simply smiled.
"If ya wanna tell me, I'll turn the music off."
"If I tell you, will you jump out an airlock without a spacesuit?"
Lister grinned at his dry, bitter words.
"Nope. But, hey, the music will be off. Besides, they say tellin' people things makes ya feel better."
"Yes, well, they're partially right. Telling you to 'smeg off!' always cheers my mood significantly."
Lister began bobbing his head to the music and singing along… badly. Rimmer ground his teeth. Surely the Space Corps wouldn't consider it murder if he somehow managed to dump Lister out an airlock. The man was psychological warfare on legs! It was a case of pure self-defense if ever there was one. Any fair-minded jury would certainly judge in his favor.
"Will you shut up!" he finally ground out.
Lister increased his volume, practically shrieking out the lyrics. Rimmer covered his ears and grimaced.
"Be careful, you insensitive smegger!" he yelled. "You'll shatter my light bee with your caterwauling."
As Lister went on to his next verse, grinning broadly and bobbing his head, Rimmer cracked.
"Fine! It's not worth the mental torture! I'll smegging tell you! Just shut that racket off!"
Mercifully, Lister obliged, causing Rimmer to sigh in pleasure.
"Much better…."
"So what about it, man? Why d'ya stay 'ere when ya hate me so much?"
Rimmer glared at him, his lip curled up in abhorrence.
"Well I don't have much of a choice, now do I?"
"Wha'?" Lister asked in disbelief. "'Course ya do. There's a spare room just next door."
"Yes, but that's not the point. A lot of good living by myself does me when I can't touch anything."
"What d'ya need ta touch? The door 'n' the lights 'n' Holly 're all voice activated. Plus, ya have yer electronic books ta read. Ya don't need ta touch."
"Oh, yes, I've forgotten that all one needs to live a meaningful life is the ability to turn the lights on and off and turn the pages of the same smegging books over and over and over!"
"No need ta get upset, man. 'S that all? Ya stay here 'cause I can do things for ya?"
"Not that you ever do," Rimmer muttered sardonically. "But that's not all."
"So what else is there?"
"I'm a smegging ghost, Lister! I can't touch, I can't feel, I can't interact with anything! If I forget what I'm doing for a second I end up walking right through things. Do you have any idea how disconcerting it is to have part of your body, for all intents and purposes, severed by a stationary object?"
Lister looked uncomfortably apologetic.
"Oh, 'ey, I didn't know it bothered you that much…."
Rimmer laughed shrilly in disbelief.
"Of course it bothers me that much! I'm smegging dead! Living by myself would just give me more time to think about that. At least when I'm around someone else, being insulted and harassed and annoyed beyond all reason, I'm being treated like a person! I can forget for just a second that I'm only half a human, and revel in the fact that we hate each other!"
His voice dropped from its hysteria, falling into a lower, more gravelly register.
"I need the interaction, Lister. I need the normalcy, the distraction."
He clenched his hands into fists at his sides, the sad seriousness on his face shocking Lister's words away. He wasn't expecting something like that.
This game suddenly became less fun.
After several moments of silence where Lister tried to figure out the right thing to say, he took a tentative step forward.
"Hey, listen, man…. "
Rimmer looked up at him with a defeated glare, causing Lister to swallow.
"I thought you were a smeghead before. I still do. Nothing's changed."
"Everything's changed, Lister."
"Not everything."
With a look of uncertainty, Lister reached out his hand and made it hover it in the air around where Rimmer's shoulder would be. The hologram looked at it mournfully.
"I still hate you, you know."
Lister smiled.
"I know, man. I wouldn't have it any other way."
Rimmer gave a half, sad smile and stood, angling his shoulder away from Lister's hand so it wouldn't pass right through it.
"If you lay one grotty finger on my music discs, I'll have you court marshaled."
The scouser laughed heartily, nodding at the hologram with a relieved smile. Things were back to normal.
Rimmer remained quiet. Lister had once again managed to get him to reveal what he didn't want to. But he didn't win entirely; Rimmer still didn't tell him everything.
What he wouldn't tell Lister, what he couldn't tell him, was that part of him, deep down, considered the idea that just maybe the universe's last living human and his dead bunkmate had formed a (highly dysfunctional, granted) sort of friendship. And Rimmer needed that more than he knew. So he stayed, and he endured the abuse, because hidden away in the back of his mind he thought, 'At least he's talking to me. You don't talk to the people you truly hate, do you?' And he dreamed, a pitifully tiny dream, that just maybe someday… Lister would admit that back.
"Oy, smeghead!" the man in question called. "The Cat and I were gonna go down to the AR suite. Ya wanna come?"
Rimmer sneered, his emotions cheering back up.
"And spend time with you lot, in some two-bit sex game, no doubt?"
Lister grinned cheekily.
"What if it is a sex game? Ya wouldn't wanna miss out on all those beauties, would ya?"
"Lister, I have standards! I have class!"
His roommate snorted.
"Sure ya do. But fer your information, it's a golf sim."
"Well!" Rimmer declared, his back straightening as he rubbed his hands together. "I wouldn't mind rubbing your gitty faces into the ground with a round or two."
Lister met his words with a smile.
"Yeah, well, you get to go last."
"You know what they say, Listy. Save the best for last."
As the hologram strode purposefully from the room, the third technician shook his head and followed him with a smile. The man was a git; but even gits deserved to be happy every once in a while.
"Are you coming, Lister?"
"Right behind you, man. Right behind you."