Rimmer inhaled sharply as Lister waddled into the medibay. His already corpulent frame was expanding rapidly and Lister asked the same question of Rimmer on the hour every hour - "Do I look fat?" And each time Rimmer would smile sweetly and say, "Yes, you pregnant manatee with comfort-eating issues and a slow metabolism." The first 20 or so times it had been amusing. Now it was a nuisance. "Rimmer, do I look fat in my leather jacket?"
"No, you look grotesquely obese in your leather jacket. For you to look only fat, try wearing a black bin bag, and standing next to something larger. May I suggest Red Dwarf itself?" Lister swallowed back the tears and took his jacket off. He couldn't stand the fact that Rimmer's insults actually bothered him now. Stupid hormones. He lay back on the trolley bed and let the skutters rub the gel onto his belly for the ultrasound. "I don't see why you're bothering with this, Rimmer. We know they'll be healthy."
"I just like to be sure. Nothing wrong with that," he said and studied the screen. They were still waving their hands about searching for the Holy Beer Can. Lister sighed heavily. "You're more anal than a prostate exam. You quadruple check everythin'. On Z-shift you drove us all crazy with your checks. And still nothin' worked! Even now, when I want a Lion bar I get a tuna sandwich. It's not even the same species!" Rimmer ignored him as always and suddenly asked what size shoe Lister wore. "Why?"
"Because you'll need to wear kayaks soon with those feet." Lister lifted his head with difficulty and caught a glimpse of his poor, swollen footsies. "Oh yeah. I haven't bothered with shoes lately. Too sore."
"You've been barefootin' it?"
"Nah, I've been wearing your slippers."
"My ship-issued, deluxe, slip-on, foot-warmers with the Red Dwarf logo stitched on the left side?!" Rimmer spluttered.
Lister grinned, "Yep. And you wrote your name joined-up on both of the inner soles. Is your middle-name Fido?"
"Judas, you idiot. I can't believe you've been using my stuff again." Lister got down from the bed (which took about 3 minutes) and wiped the gel from his torso. "I don't see why you're so pissed about it. You don't need 'em."
"If you were a hologram, would you let me play your guitar?" Lister paused in kid-wipe and glared at Rimmer. "That's totally smegging different from wearing your clothes. Me guitar has sentimental value."
Rimmer walked with Lister back to their room and continued the debate along the way, "So do my clothes. I wore those slippers every night since boarding. I had some great times in those things."
"Brushin' your teeth before sitting and studying for your exams? Must've been a barrel of laughs."

Somewhere else - not terribly far away - the Cat was busy cutting up all the suits that he was pretty darn sure would never come back into style and making new stylish baby clothes out of them. In the back of his mind, there was a nagging voice saying horrible things like, "This is work, y'know. You're working for monkeys," and, "You're not even being paid! This is a FAVOUR. You're doing something nice and without expecting anything back!" and even worse, "What kind of a cat are you? I'll tell you what kind of a cat - a DOG-cat." The Cat reassured himself that this was far too much fun to be work. And he was still fitting in all his naps and main snoozes. No loss there. This was just spare time in which he'd probably be off insulting Goalpost-head or looking for fish/women that didn't exist, but which he was ever hopeful would do. He checked the seam on one of the bibs. Perfect. He was a genius. "I'm so good at this, I should be gay!" he declared triumphantly.
"Alright then, prove it!" The Cat looked up from his project and saw Rimmer and Lister walk (in Lister's case stagger) past. He neatly bundled everything away and followed them. "Prove I'm a genius or prove I'm not gay?" he asked Rimmer.
"Go away, Cat. We weren't talking to you." The Cat scratched his temple and walked directly behind Lister instead. "I'm a little concerned about such stylish clothing being worn by your offspring. But I can't bring myself to make unfashionable clothes. What'll I do?" Lister shrugged and went into his room, shutting the doors behind him. "Well, how do you like that? After all those minutes of cleaning myself I missed out on to make PVC bibs with optional food-catching pockets." He left Rimmer to frown and rage at the closed doors. After about 5 minutes of pacing up and down with fury he remembered he was a hologram and walked through the wall. It was yet another reminder he was actually dead and he hated drawing attention to his true form but he had to get to the bottom of Lister's mood. There was more to this than hormones.

Lister lay on Rimmer's bunk and enjoyed a little peace. He heard the Cat leave and waited to see if Rimmer would work out that he could just walk through the doors. He flicked through a magazine to pass the time. It was one of Rimmer's and the title seemed innocent enough - War and Pieces - but inside it was full of half-naked women draped over tables covered with miniature soldiers. Sex was everywhere it seemed. He wondered if there were train-spotters magazines called 'Up My Tunnel' or fishing leaflets like 'Which Rod?' and 'The Right Tackle'. It suddenly occurred to Lister how long it had been since he'd had sex. He couldn't really count himself, could he? He didn't even remember much. It suddenly occurred to him that he hadn't had any kind of singular sexual experience since a few weeks ago. He felt almost embarrassed about doing 'that' when he knew he had babies in the vicinity. If this had been a normal situation where he was a dad and he was with the mum, sex would've been fine. A beautiful, natural thing that created the baby in the first place. But this was just far too bizarre. His hand hovered over his crotch for a moment and he laid it to rest on his stomach. He ached for release but he just couldn't do it. Luckily he didn't, for Rimmer walked into the room at that exact moment. "Ugh, I hate that," he sneezed at the wall and sat down on the chair. Lister nodded and turned over for a nice, long sulk. Rimmer decided not to pry and continued to re-read 'Dr. Watson-Smyth's Guide to a First Pregnancy: Platinum Edition'. These were testing times indeed.

Author Notes;
Joined-up - For Americans, joined-up means cursive. Our cursive looks differently to yours but is just as difficult to read.
Masturbation - I've no idea how a guy would react to 'vomiting the bishop' around a baby. Would they fear it to be considered paedophilia, even if the baby wasn't born? What do parents get up to during those 9 months? "Daddy, why am I called Zorro?" "Because I was dressed up as him the night you were conceived, sonny." Anyway, Lister strikes me as the type that would be concerned by it. Check out next time to see if he gets a release or can keep it down for the next 6 months (chances of slash? Mebbe)