It was around half past three and Lister still wasn't back from his night out with the lads yet, and Rimmer hated to admit to himself that he was starting to get a tad worried. He was, after all, Lister's superior and he was sure that if anything serious happened to Lister it would be his neck on the line. But, as he had virtually no way of contacting Lister, and as he wasn't about to go out in an unfamiliar and potentially unfriendly Mirandian city in the middle of the night to look for him, all he could do was wait. Even the couple next door had finally given up on their shag fest, so surely all of the other nocturnal creatures would turn in soon, his bunk mate included.

Lying in the ludicrous bed, Rimmer turned to the next page in Morris Dancer Monthly, to an article entitled Morris Dancing: Where in the world did it really originate? But what he read in his mind was David Lister: Where the smeg is he?

Rimmer's whole frame stiffened when he heard something scratching at the door. He heard a familiar drunken snigger and relaxed. It was just Lister trying to slide the key card and missing. After a couple minutes of struggling, Rimmer considering taking pity on him and helping the poor inebriated Scouser, but decided against it. He figured that if Lister wanted to stay out late on an unfamiliar moon getting bladdered, then he deserved all the consequences that went along with it—including the possibility of having to sleep outside the door because he was too incapacitated to navigate his way around the doorknob.

At long last Lister found the slot for the card and stumbled into the room, still doing his machine gun chuckle. Rimmer saw that Lister had acquired some trinkets on his escapade, including a brightly-colored children's flotation device around his waist and someone's decorative lawn gnome tucked under his arm. In his hand were two figurines, the bride and groom off the top of a wedding cake. Lister noticed a spot of icing on the couple's feet and licked it off gleefully.

"Mornin' Rimmer," Lister laughed, kicking the door shut. Rimmer pinched his nose-he could smell the alcohol on Lister from ten feet away.

"Where have you been?" Rimmer demanded as Lister piled his stolen goods on top of the television set. "The pubs must have been closed for a good three hours. I'll be putting you on report for this, miladdio. There must be some sort of Space Corp planet leave curfew, and you can bet that I'm going to find out what it is."

"Rimmer…Rimmer…" Lister struggled to remain upright, swaying where he stood. "I wanna show you something…"

"Show me what?" Rimmer looked uncertain.

Lister took a few unsteady steps toward the bed. "You wanna see it?"

Rimmer could smell an alcoholic graveyard on Lister's breath. "See what?" he squeaked nervously, as Lister started to undo his belt buckle. He knew getting this room was a mistake! He knew he should have moved to the broom cupboard!

"You're gonna like this," Lister slurred, still struggling with the buckle. "I know I do…"

Rimmer gulped, wondering whether or not he should grab the bedside lamp and give Lister a good whack over the head with it.

"Woo, there it goes!" Lister cried triumphantly as his trousers fell down around his ankles so that he was standing mere inches away from Rimmer in his boxer shorts. He wriggled his right leg out of his trousers and put his boot up on the bed. "Look here!" to Rimmer's immense relief, Lister was pointing to a bandage on his inner thigh.

"Oh," said Rimmer, still counting his lucky stars that was all Lister had wanted to show him. "And what is that, exactly?"

"I'm not s'pose to take it off yet, but I'll do it for you," said Lister. He let out a yelp of pain as he ripped the bandage off in one go. Rimmer's jaw dropped. "You got a tattoo?"

"Yep!" said Lister proudly. Rimmer turned the bedside light up a notch to see it better. The skin on Lister's inner thigh was red and inflamed, and in the center of the swelling was a heart in between the words 'I' and 'Petersen'.

"And you're sure you're not going to regret this come tomorrow?"

"No way," Lister giggled. "Petersen got one as well, he loves me too."

Rimmer shook his head in disbelief. "Well, the two of your both seem to love getting drunk out of your skulls and doing completely insensible things like getting tattoos, so there's no denying you're a match made in heaven."

"Hurts like hell, though," Lister yawned, stretching. With one more drunken giggle, he dropped a coin in the vibrator. Rimmer was jostled about as the waterbed began to violently shake, the bed frame knocking against the wall. The next thing Rimmer knew Lister had keeled over face-first into the mattress, one trouser leg still balled up around his ankle. Rimmer glared at the inferior, tattooed technician, passed out in his underpants-and wondered how he'd ever had the misfortune of being quartered with such an onion of a man.

"Ohhh Listy," Rimmer smiled his vulture smile as Lister began to snore, his open mouth already drooling onto the bed sheets. "Boy, are you ever going to hate yourself in the morning…"

Outside of the honeymoon suite, the bellboy had his ear pressed against the door of his earlier clients. He could hear the sound of the bed frame bumping against the wall. "I knew it!" he said triumphantly. He placed a 'Do Not Disturb' sign on the doorway and traipsed away, whistling innocently.

...

Rimmer woke up around ten the next morning to find that his bunk mate was still passed out in his drawers, a fairly routine Sunday morning by now. Thinking it was best to let sleeping dogs lie, especially when they were guaranteed to have hangovers—Rimmer rose and went to catch a late breakfast of poached eggs and toast in the hotel diner. He then took a brisk walk around the outside of the hotel, returning rather quickly when a toothless old man tried to sell him a taxidermied armadillo. He returned to the room to find Lister exactly where he left him. So he put on his swimming trunks under his clothes and decided to go for a swim in the hotel's heated indoor pool.

When he returned back to the room at one o'clock and found that Lister was still asleep, he decided it was time he did something about it.

"Lister?" he prodded his shoulder. "Lister!"

Unresponsive, Lister continued to snore and suck his thumb.

"Well, don't say you didn't ask for it," said Rimmer. He turned on the clock radio on the bedside cabinet and fiddled around with the tuner until he picked up a song heavy on the Leslie B-3 Hammond organ, cranking it up to full volume.

Within seconds Lister began to stir, an agitated expression on his face as if he had an unpleasant smell under his nose, Lister lifted his head up and groaned. "Where am I?" he turned his head a fraction more and saw Rimmer standing over him, "Turn that smeg off, will ya, Rimmer? Me head's killing me…"

"I'm not surprised," Rimmer leered. "You were out drinking till half past three last night, among other things. I'd say good morning, but it's gone one."

Lister stretched and rubbed his eyes. When he opened them, he didn't look at all perturbed to find he was in his underpants. "I feel like I've had a marching band running through me head…" with some strain, he reached out and unplugged the radio.

"Well," said Rimmer. "Perhaps you'd like to freshen up a bit? I don't know about you, but I didn't plan on spending my entire holiday in a hotel room while you sleep off a hangover."

"You're right," said Lister, painstakingly peeling himself up off the bed. "A shower might help to clear me head a bit."

Rimmer couldn't help but smile with savage pleasure as he watched Lister gingerly hobble towards the shower, walking as though he'd had a cheese grater vigorously rubbed up and down the inside of his thigh.

After the bathroom door closed, the second technician stood outside the door and waited. He heard the toilet flush and then the shower turn on. He glanced down at his watch. "Three…two…one…"

"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Right on cue, Rimmer thought. He lightly knocked on the door. "Lister, everything tickety-boo in there?"

"No, it smegging well isn't!"

Rimmer saw the door handle turn and jumped back just in time. The door flew open, banging off the wall. Lister charged out, dripping wet, with nothing but a towel around his waist and a look of wide-eyed horror on his face.

"Whatever is the matter, Listy?" said Rimmer in his best sickeningly sweet voice.

"There's a spider in the shower!" Lister said, his voice shaking. "And it almost touched me! It was this big!" he mimed a spider as big as a football with his hands. "I swear, it was that big! It had to have been a tarantula!"

"So that girlish scream had absolutely nothing to do with that tattoo you got on your inner thigh last night?"

"Tattoo? What tattoo?" Lister checked his thigh and let out another scream to rival the first one. "Smegging hell! I felt me leg burning, I figured it was just some chaffing..."

"Ohhh Listy, Listy, Listy," Rimmer crooned. "I guess this is a lesson to you to never again forever embellish a declaration of undying love on your person during a drunken night out with the lads."

"I am going to kill Petersen!" Lister growled. "He knows how easily persuaded I am when I've had a few...I can't believe this has happened again!"

"Again?" Rimmer exclaimed. "What do you mean, again? This isn't your first tattoo?"

Lister shook his head despairingly, looking furious at himself.

"What about your other tattoo?" asked Rimmer curiously. "Where is it, why have I never seen it before?"

"Because, Rimmer," said Lister tetchily, "it's on a place that I generally try not to display to the public." Lister shuddered, the memory of bright stage lights shining down on him and the hundreds of shocked faces in the audience staring at him as he bore all—the wolf-whistles, jeering and laughter, the ninety-year old woman in the front row that fainted and had to be carried off on a stretcher, then the angry director marching up and slapping his face for ruining her opening night show came flooding back to him.

"I see," said Rimmer. He hadn't lived with him for more than a couple of months but Lister had never struck him as the type to consider modesty a virtue. He certainly hadn't seen any tattoos before or he would have put Lister on report for vandalizing JMC property. Rimmer considered joining the Space Corp to be a lifetime commitment, body and soul. That meant being a living, walking, talking endorsement of the SC from his crew-cut hair to his shiny black boots. If he had been Captain, Petersen's sleeve would be enough for him to be dishonorably discharged.

Sensing Rimmer's unasked questions lingering in the air, Lister took a deep breath and said, "Nearly the exact same thing happened the last time I went on planet leave on Ganymede with Petersen. He got me so drunk I started to think that the geezer on the Glen Fujiyama label looked pretty good, especially after Petersen spiked my cocktail with five-star petrol. Only last time I got a tattoo on me bum—a heart with an arrow through it dripping with curry sauce, and the words 'I Love Vindaloo'. I don't know how he talked me into getting it, I was only there for moral support while he got one! I also ended up enrolling in a Ganymedian monastery as a novice monk. I didn't even remember I'd gotten the tattoo until I had to hand in me habit."

"What a charming story," Rimmer said sardonically. "At least now it makes sense to me why you insisted on standing for two weeks straight after that trip. But why didn't you tell me about it, miladdo?"

"Because I didn't want to be given the third degree for something I can't smegging well change, that's why!"

"Serves you right, having to forever live with the consequences of your actions," Rimmer sniffed, reminding Lister unpleasantly of the hotel clerk.

"What are girls gonna say when they see this? The vindaloo one I can explain, but this?" Lister scratched ineffectively at the tender skin as if this would take it off. Wincing with the pain inflicted by the touch, he groaned. "I'm gonna have to save up for ages to get this removed..."

Rimmer smiled beadily. "Well, Listy, this isn't the first time alcohol has made you wake up filled with regret, and I can say with all confidence that it won't be the last."

"Smeg off," said Lister bad-temperately, as he went off in search of the ice machine. It wasn't until he heard a pair of young girls pointing and laughing behind him that he realized it probably would have been a good idea to put on more than a skimpy towel before venturing out of his hotel room.

…...

AN: I saw the opportunity to explain the origins of the 'I Love Petersen' tattoo, and I took it!

I'm sure that, being bunk mates, Rimmer and Lister must em...*cough* see a whole lot of each other (a la the French movie star story from Series VIII). This is early days for Lister and Rimmer, thus Hollister's excuse that the weekend can be used for the two of them to get to know each other better. So it made perfect sense to me that Lister would be reluctant to confide in Rimmer about the tattoo on his derriere, especially as Rimmer disapproves of that sort of thing. Not that he cares what Rimmer thinks, he just doesn't want one more thing for Rimmer to whinge on about. Yeah, I think I made sense there...

Also, I said 'miladdo' instead of 'miladdio', the word seemed to progress as the series went on, I remember Mr. Barrie once saying in a commentary.

The next chapter will have the big event mentioned in 'Marooned', so yes, they will finally both get out of the hotel room!