Fic: Red Dwarf: Someone to Watch Over You
Title: “Someone to Watch Over You”
Writers: metalkatt and veronica_rich
Rating: NC-17 overall
Chars: Lister/Rimmer, Cat, Kryten, Kochanski 2.0, Holly, Ocs
Disclaimer: Don't own. Grant Naylor has that privilege.
Summary: Ace Rimmer may have waited too long to go home again, but with some help, he might just get the happy ending none of his predecessors did. Set in and after Series 8
A/N: Thanks to our betas missflibble, cheezdanish, and kahvi. Any mistakes or errors are still our own.
Feedback and concrit: Yes, please!
Stumbling back into the midsection and just barely managing not to fall off the step, Lister steered Rimmer's backside against the table, thankfully bolted to the floor. The whole time he ran his hands down the man's sides, up his back, up to grab his shoulders and arms, and was cradling his face firmly when they landed against the table, kisses deep and long. "Do you have any idea," Rimmer grumbled, getting his hands under Lister's jacket, "how smegging gorgeous you are when you're all defensive like that?"
"Is that what this is all about?" he asked, knowing it was. He liked hearing Rimmer talk to him, tell him what he was feeling about the things they did together.
"You bet your arse it is." Rimmer heard the jacket hit the floor with a soft slap, and got to work getting his fingers under the man's shirt. "So focused." Kiss. "Dedicated." Nip. "Angry ..." He took Lister's mouth for a longer, deeper kiss, letting it draw out before even trying to speak again. "I love that look in your eyes."
"I have got to go around picking fights more often," Lister moaned, lifting the edge of Rimmer's shirt with one hand by sliding it up his flat stomach, and using the other to start pushing his leather jacket to the table.
Rimmer shifted, getting Lister's earlobe between his teeth. The Scouser's ears weren't as sensitive as his own, but they still had quite a few nerve endings. "Possessive. Determined. And a little crazy. Just a touch. Strong, too. Anyone who ever called you Fat Boy when you were a kid would have to eat their words, because you could kick any of their arses."
"Including you just a few years ago?"
"Including me. Make me eat my words, Dave." He gave the earlobe another nip. "Show me what you've become." Instead of getting rough, Lister leaned in and blew across Rimmer's lips, barely a breath, watching the way his pupils reacted. He peppered them with tiny, lingering kisses, keeping his eyes open, stopping every so often to rub the blunt tip of his nose beneath Rimmer's. "When they first tried to threaten you,” Rimmer breathed, “I was ready to twist their heads right off their necks - I might not even have taken the time to figure where the one ended and the other began."
"I wanted to shoot a hole through the middles of all three of them," Lister admitted, sliding his arms around Rimmer tightly. "Hit 'em hard; punish all of them for trying to hurt you."
Rimmer shivered, and he knew by the look on Lister's face that he'd felt it. "We may have to go into AR sometime so I can see that. Smeg, but I want to see that."
Lister suspected this had something to do with the little boy who still lived deep inside Rimmer who'd spent a lifetime not being claimed by anyone - family or otherwise - or having anyone proud of him. Thoughts that were far too tender for the feelings he had at the moment were pushed to the back of Lister's mind for another day. "You do, huh? Want to see me saving you, defending you against a bunch of bad guys?" He pulled Rimmer against him, away from the table, just a tad roughly, their noses mashed together as he angled his head up. "Dragging you back to my bedroll in a cave somewhere?"
"I simply want to see you beat the snot out of people, and then shag you long and well as a reward for my champion ... preferably in a clean bed without any bugs."
Lister smiled, at once relaxed and horribly, horribly horny and hard. "What about a bed in a 'Bug?" he teased, turning them toward the metal stairs and tugging Rimmer along. They both laughed as they mounted the stairs, the relief at being alive and desire for the protective sides of each other making their steps lighter. Rimmer couldn't remember ever wanting to be close to anyone as much as he wanted to be skin-to-skin with Lister right this moment, and he gave the man's backside a squeeze to hasten him even more. Lister stumbled up the stairs at the grab, reaching back to playfully swat away Rimmer's hand. "Hey I have to concentrate to walk, guy!" he laughed.
"Then get a move on. I need my hands on your skin, or my bee is going to short out!"
"Smeg, there's nothin' short about your bee." Lister waited until he was at the top of the steps to make the innuendo, waggling his eyebrows, and ducked Rimmer's grab, racing the short distance to the closest sleeping quarters and palming the door open, barely slipping inside before Rimmer caught up with him.
Rimmer spun Lister around, taking another kiss, palms cupping the round face. "I think that's supposed to be my line for you, isn't it?" he murmured, licking open-mouthed at Lister's teeth as they panted.
They backed toward the closest cot and practically fell on it, Rimmer nearly in his lap, and Lister muttered, "Speaking of lines ... do we need my popup book for this?"
"I'd rather just muddle through this time, and not have to break focus from you to look at print instructions, if that's okay with you. I want to figure out what makes you squirm."
Without speaking, Lister grabbed one of Rimmer's hands and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the center of the palm. He licked it a little in circles, letting his nose brush over the heel of the hand. Rimmer's head fell back as Lister let go of his hands and started to skate those rough palms over his chest. "Hey now," he gasped. "The idea this time was for me to be petting you."
He half-giggled at the slightly offended tone in Rimmer's voice. "Yeah, what about that?" Lister countered. "I'm doing all the work here ..."
"You jammy bastard," he moaned. "You know damn well you make my brain short out." His trousers felt exceedingly tight already; he always had been sensitive to touch. With what felt like monumental effort, he reached up to take Lister's wrists in his hands, removing them from their thought-stealing path. "You take all these thoughts I have of going slow," he panted, "and toss them out the airlock so all I want to do is have you hard and fast."
Lister's eyes darkened, widened, and he leaned close even as his hands were tightly imprisoned. "I want you to go slow. I want you to take your time and go as slow as you can, and drive me absolutely, brilliantly insane with lust."
"You told me once about our Low selves," Rimmer began, turning Lister's palms face up. He began to kiss, lick, and nibble on each one of those short fingers in turn, speaking between caresses. "You said he wanted to tie you down, hurt you, take you, lacerate you with the holo-whip." He shook his head. "I don't want any of that, not like that. But damn, Lister, the things I dreamed of doing to you ..."
Lister watched, rather breathless, at the blatant worship being performed upon his person. "I probably ... wasn't quite ready for it," he admitted in a small voice. Even after a few months of fairly regular sex, he wasn't used to Rimmer having his way like this. "What did you want to do, if not ... hurt me?"
"I told you earlier, Lister ... I wanted to slam you into the wall and kiss you stupid. Make you pant and strain and whimper for me, and not for the idea of someone who dumped you because she didn't see your worth. We fought and argued and bickered, but you always came back for me ... and I'll always come back for you." He released Lister's wrists, reaching out to unbutton the white cloth. "Always." Pushing the thermals off his shoulders, Rimmer resumed his oral attention on the inside of Lister's near arm.
Watching him kiss and lick and suck at his skin, Lister bent to bury his face in the top of Rimmer's head. "I knew there was something decent in you," he finally said, muffled. "I saw hints of it way too much, for years."
Rimmer looked up, intrigue in his eyes. "That's what you consider decency?" he asked in a genuine tone. "Wanting to be over you, petting you, making you feel me, someone extant and there and very much an approximation of alive?"
"That's the cherry on top. I'm talking about someone who can face up to their faults, take a deep breath, and keep on going, try to fix the ones they can and accept what they are on the rest. You were always so unhappy with yourself ... it was hard to watch you like that, sometimes." He grinned a dirty, sly smile. "But I've gotta admit, watching you flex and fist your hands when you get jealous of someone ... that's more than decent, too."
That caught Rimmer's attention as he licked and blew at the inside of Lister's arm, making gooseflesh rise on the skin. "You liked watching me seethe?" he wondered. "What about it did you enjoy?"
"That's a loaded question," he finally answered. "I mean, think about it ... wouldn't you get some secret pleasure out of seeing me slug it out with Yvonne for you?"
Rimmer paused in his attentions, pondering that for a moment. "You know ... I'm not sure I would. No, no, it has nothing to do with being all mature," he muttered, turning his mouth to Lister's bicep. "She never really wanted me."
"None of the things you ever seethed about me were because anyone else was tryin' to drag me away, either!" Lister pointed out, squirming now.
"Are you kidding me?" He worked his way up to nip at Lister's neck. "I was for certain that Ace was going to take you." Lick. "Claim you." Suck. "Make you his."
"Oh, ACE," he repeated, in understanding, tilting his head back to help. "Forgot all about him …"
Rimmer pulled up at that, gazing heatedly into Lister's defocused eyes. "Say that again," he insisted, tone firm. "Tell me you forgot him."
"Until you mentioned him, yeah ... I mean, 's hard to think about him with you right here instead, isn't it?" He said without thought, as if it were a truth. Since it was, and all.
Rimmer leaned in and drank deeply of Lister's mouth, a soft rumbling in his chest. The kiss took on a life of its own as Rimmer stroked and petted Lister's skin, soaking the man in through every sense he possessed. "Hell," Lister swore, barely able to speak past the mouth on his own. The utterance was more of a reflex, anyway; he was already getting his hands beneath Rimmer's shirt and clutching at tightly muscled skin.
Rimmer reached back to take Lister's hands, putting them down at his sides. "No, you don't," he hummed, working his way to nibble at Lister's cleft chin. "It's my turn now. I'm the one who's going to play with you this time, savor every inch."
"I can't even smeggin' touch you?" he whined, his skin tingling, all his blood having boarded an escape pod for parts south.
"No." He shook his head slowly, brushing their noses together. "No, you can touch me when I'm done." He continued on, exploring, tasting, touching, learning everything he could about what made his lover jump, squirm, and gasp. There was a brief break when Rimmer discovered that Lister's sides were ticklish, and he applied his long fingers until Lister’s face was streaming with tears, barely able to breathe. However, as he worked lower, Lister's laughter subsided and turned to low noises of frustrated need as Rimmer bypassed the erection with barely a lick and a brush of a cheek before moving to play with the insides of his thighs.
He wriggled desperately to begin with, trying to escape the confines of those hands and tongue; it was too much, for as long as he'd gone without this depth of attention. Finally, when he realized he was as mired as landing gear in quicksand, Lister gave up and instead concentrated on focusing his labored breathing, which required he keep his hips still and count back from one thousand. "You're a ... bleedin' torturer, damn it, Arn ..." No wonder the man liked military campaigns; even if his energy in them was poorly placed, he seemed good at strategy, at least when it came to something that enthused him.
Past knees, past ankles, Rimmer began to work the muscles in Lister's feet - thankfully they'd been washed and powdered earlier - with his thumbs, smirking to himself as Lister's eyes crossed and his head fell back. "Oh yes," he hummed with a grin. "I'm an evil, sadistic bastard, and you'd do well not to forget it." Releasing Lister's feet, Rimmer crawled back up that body, dragging his own over it. He balanced himself up on his elbows, hovering over Lister with a smug look on his face. "Now you may touch me, Lister ..." He bent down to nip at that dark-cherry mouth, flushed with exertion. "And tell me what you want me to do to you this time."
"What I want." Lister barely managed to get his voice above a squeak. It wasn't very manful, but he was rather past caring as he lay trapped by wicked green eyes. "Anything you can think to do, Arn." He worked his hands back underneath that shirt before Rimmer could change his mind. "Putting your mouth to work is a good start ..."
Rimmer shivered pleasantly, leaning down to kiss. "Like this?"
Lister felt it was important to encourage good work. He made an appreciative noise and nodded, angling his head to fit their mouths together.
Before he'd died, Rimmer had often tried to imagine kissing. He'd seen it in movies and in porn, and it'd been touted in books and magazines as terribly important, but he'd never really understood it. The kisses he'd shared with Yvonne were sloppy and uncoordinated due to her concussion and his inexperience. Nirvanah had been delicate, precise and skilled, but until the very end, they seemed to be lacking in something he couldn't define, but found himself craving when he took out the memories to warm himself.
When he kissed Lister, it was as if someone stuck his bee into a light socket, sending sparks all through his body. His thoughts tended to flee, leaving him at the mercy of emotion and sensation, two things he was unused to dealing without the mitigation of his thoughts. Lister was good at kissing; it wasn't just skilled, it wasn't precise, it was emotive, communicative, it was ... Lister. It pulled Rimmer out, drew him in, brought forth all that simmered under the Ionian's self-control.
With his last three remaining brain cells not being short-circuited by Rimmer's amazing tongue (and there was a phrase he'd never intended to imagine), Lister tugged at the shirt, pulling it up Arn's back, positioning it to yank quickly so as not to break their kiss too long. He kept going, pulling the man's arms above his head; in a fit of inspiration, he grabbed the ends of both sleeves with one hand while Rimmer's arms were still caught in them, and felt down the man's side with his free hand, tickling his side lightly.
Rimmer squirmed, snickering. "Ooh, is it time for payback?" he asked, getting his head free from the cloth. Lister kept at it, grinning. He liked Rimmer like this - laughing, happy, far less smeggy than usual.
Rimmer kept laughing, a large smile on his face. He used the insides of his thighs to grasp onto Lister's knees, bowing his back in an effort to press his stomach into the erection he'd neglected so cruelly earlier. It was a bit awkward sometimes, being so much taller, but it presented an opportunity to find ways to make it work.
Lister gasped. "Oh ... no," he fought. "You're not ... going to distract me from your richly ... deserved punishment, Rimmer ..."
Aha! It was working. He continued squirming under Lister's fingers, using the reflexes to press and roll against him. "You call this punishment?" He tried for a dark chuckle, but the tickling made it come out in a sort of squirrel-toned hiccup. "You'll have to do a lot better than that, miladdio."
It is simply impossible to chuckle low and dirty when someone's tickling you. It was also damn near impossible to keep tickling someone who was doing such lovely things to your squishy bits, Lister decided, especially when the tickling resulted in movements nearly squishing those bits. He stopped tickling, instead sliding his hand slowly up the side of Rimmer's back, then back down to the upper swell of his ass. He did this again, pleased to see the man's hooded eyes and hear the beginnings of a strangled purr.
"Scratch there, just a little bit," Rimmer directed, and let out a long, low groan when he felt those fingernails on his skin. "Smeg, yeah. I love it when you're like that - just - ahh! Just, just a little rough." He took a deep, shuddering breath and pressed his forehead against Lister's temple, breathing hotly into his neck.
He put both hands to work tracing over the muscles of Arn's back. He was rather well put-together for such a skinny git, and it was no great chore to scrape his nails up and down, and once, along his spine. "Y'like that, do you?" he asked, tongue briefly in the man's ear, before lightly biting his earlobe and pulling at it.
"Unh!" Rimmer shuddered again, pressing velour-covered hips into Lister's thighs. "Son of a smegging goddamned smegging fucking bitch," he swore in appreciation.
Lister chewed gently at the earlobe, then licked his way up the shell, getting his hands down inside the back of those too-tight trousers. They were really too obvious. "You're such an exhibitionist," he breathed, barely keeping from chuckling. "Has to be the only reason you wear these."
"They- mm, nn ..." Damn his sensitive ears! "Nn, comf'ble." He knew the moment Lister got his hands on him, his rational thought would speed out the airlock faster than a tachyon; it always did.
Hands around the sides to bare hips, palming and kneading with occasional hard squeezes; mouth on his neck, teeth gently biting folds of skin; hips lifted in earnest offering - Lister felt like he was giving a hell of a show should anyone walk in right now, but it'd be worth even that for the filthy things he'd finally gotten Rimmer to say.
"Bite me harder," Rimmer insisted. Every muscle tensed as he bit into the pillow to stifle the resulting strangled groan. "Mark me, Lister," he demanded, voice hoarse. "I want to look at my neck and see bruises in an hour."
It wasn't the first time a lover had asked for teeth, but it was the first time Lister had felt in a position to comply, since Rimmer was more or less indestructible and amazingly self-healing - he wasn't sure if anything he'd do would last long. Still, he tried. He licked skin, suckled on it, and bit, hard, without piercing - the taut, muscled skin of his shoulder, the slightly loose, pliable skin of his long throat, the tender flesh where jaw met neck. As he did this, Lister dug his fingers into Arn's backside, thrusting up to rub him through the relatively thin, soft, buttery material.
Rimmer let out a string of expletives that would have made Petersen blush, and he curled his fingers hard into the mattress to try to keep himself from going over right there. When Lister slackened his grip, Rimmer collapsed, panting heavily. "Oh, god, yes, Lister. I want it, want you. Take me this time. Give it to me good, you gerbil-faced bastard."
He'd learned early it was prudent to ask instead of just assuming, even if he thought he knew the answer. "This way?" he asked, voice dropped low enough to apply direct current to Rimmer's spine. "Or like this?" He rolled them sideways and partway onto Rimmer's back, his breath coming in aching bursts.
"Pin me down," he insisted, only a thin ring of green showing around his wide-blown pupils. He was flushed, his mouth swollen from abuse, his curls mussed and sticking every which way. "I want to feel you strong, show me. Give me what you're capable of." His lips twisted up in a sort of mad grin as he pushed his hips up into Lister's. "Shut me up, make me listen to you, get in the last goddamned word."
It was definitely among the weirdest sexual encounters Lister had been involved with, but he reflected that for Rimmer to demand all this ... well, didn't seem all that strange. With nearly anyone else, he would've worried about repercussions and tears, but he'd just been with Rimmer too long. He suspected, and knew, too much. He adjusted his balance, grabbing both of Rimmer's wrists and forcing them up behind his head. Looking around, he spotted his thermal shirt still in the bunk, so he shook it out and wound it around Rimmer's wrists, finally tying them to the edge of the bunk by looping the bottom part of a leftover sleeve through a long, narrow punch in the metal frame. "Stay put," he ordered, sitting back on his heels, eyeing his options. "I need to get something." With that, he dismounted, but not without first grabbing handfuls of bunched material at Rimmer's hips and giving a vicious downward tug to finish stripping him.
Rimmer gave the fabric a token tug, looking up at the white material. He bit his lip, grinning up at the tether as he waited. He squirmed a bit, feeling quite exposed, and he tried to see what Lister was doing.
Having dove for supplies and come up successful, Lister bent low over Rimmer's chest. He bit gently around one nipple, gauging, until he felt comfortable applying harder pressure. Were anyone in the hall, they would be able to clearly hear Rimmer's low groans as Lister worked him over. He rolled his head from side to side, enjoying not just the control, but finally having someone he could trust, to let in past his walls and worries.
The harder he scraped and squeezed, the more Rimmer writhed and twisted beneath his touch; more worrying was that Lister had spent far too much time thinking about this, reading up on it once upon a time - and could see why it got him off. When he moved back to Rimmer's neck, he slipped open the bottle he'd found, and put his fingers to work elsewhere. If his teeth and lips were kneading and sucking, he tried to keep his hand steady and to firm but very very careful movements. "Is this it?" he accused, dropping his voice and drawling out the sounds. "Is this what you wanted? Me to use you?"
"Any way you like," Rimmer ground out, trying to push himself against the touches. He felt hypersensitive, the scratch of the sheets at his back, the soft give of the thermal around his wrists ... Lister hovering over him, radiating heat, biting, pressing, surrounding him. "Anything you want, Listy ..." The words came out on a whimper. "Anything you want, just more."
The man beneath him arched and bared his throat as Lister took him, finally, trying to move smoothly despite the way he was having to balance himself, since Rimmer was tied up. Leaning in, he licked at that Adam's apple, delicately, as his hips searched for a rhythm ... soon enough, it turned to mouthing, and then desperate sucking on the warm, simulated flesh, as he found his angle and moved more surely. When Rimmer tried to turn his upper body on its side at one point, Lister suckled higher, along his jaw. Insistently, he cocked his head the other way and angled it over to cover that other mouth in a hard kiss, forcing him back into place.
Only, he didn't abandon the kiss; he mentally counted his thrusts by one hundred, two hundred, three ... twenty-three hundred ... as he licked deep inside, messy, one hand extending upwards and feeling around rather unsuccessfully at first to yank at the knot loosening his wrists. "Arnold," he whispered fiercely, quietly, against his lower lip.
The moment his hands were free, Rimmer brought his arms to hold on, rocking up into the man above him. "Dave ... god, Dave," he murmured. He could feel the tension pooling, building up as they moved, the sounds of sheets and skin and breath seeming to shake the room ... or maybe that was just Lister making his eyes cross. He wasn't sure. Did he even had a name?
Oh, yes, he did. It was "Lister's."
"Almost ... more. Please, more, please, Dave."
Lister nearly cracked at that, desperately thinking of a way not to explode immediately at the sound of that voice saying those things and his name. Gratefully, he realized he'd been sorely neglectful of a rather significant detail; he shifted position to hold himself up better, briefly interrupting what he was doing. Arn actually whined at the loss, but seemed assuaged when Lister's hand wrapped around his unsatisfied cock. "Better?" he asked, breathlessly; he would've laughed at the look on Rimmer's face, if he hadn't been so busy hard at work thinking of other things for the moment. Like, long division he'd never been very good at; naked GELFs; a world without curry.
Rimmer's arms tightened and he curled inward around Lister, gasping as he reached his climax, twitching and shuddering. For all he was vocal during the buildup, he was quiet at the finish. He held on, keeping Lister close through his own orgasm, not wanting to let go.
When he could let go between them, Lister dropped his hand on the mattress and happily swore off math and hairy simulants, unleashing his brain and related bits to think about exactly whatever they wanted to. Which, was pretty much Rimmer the way he was right now. He realized he was being held quite tightly, and only had time for He sure puts the 'hard' in hard light- before thankfully, his own release hit a crescendo, and he was able to give up any sort of control and simply let his sweaty body finish the job.
They both collapsed, breathless and boneless, and Rimmer turned them both a little to the side so he could curl around, pressing his nose happily into Lister's neck. He smiled, contented, as the air cooled them both, aching pleasantly from their exertions. "Thank you," he hummed, feeling sleep creeping up on him. "Do love you; just not easy to say."
Lister was drained, in addition to surprised. He'd put forth considerable exertions, not just physically; maneuvering his brain around Rimmer's erotic roadmap, doing things he'd never engaged in with anyone else, had sapped some of his fortitude. It simply went against his nature to hurt someone he was making love to, and he was amazed here was someone who enjoyed it. "I can tell," he finally said, when he could breathe normally, reaching around to hold Rimmer closer. "Believe me, there's nobody else I know worth chomping into this much."
Rimmer chuckled sleepily, snuggling in. "Remind me to make your next curry myself. Won't fuck it up on purpose, I promise. No dumplings."
"You still have the hazard suit?"
"'M hologram. Don't need it."
"The light bee can explode," Lister pointed out.
"I'll just stop breathing while I'm making it."
Writers: metalkatt and veronica_rich
Rating: NC-17 overall
Chars: Lister/Rimmer, Cat, Kryten, Kochanski 2.0, Holly, Ocs
Disclaimer: Don't own. Grant Naylor has that privilege.
Summary: Ace Rimmer may have waited too long to go home again, but with some help, he might just get the happy ending none of his predecessors did. Set in and after Series 8
A/N: Thanks to our betas missflibble, cheezdanish, and kahvi. Any mistakes or errors are still our own.
Feedback and concrit: Yes, please!
Stumbling back into the midsection and just barely managing not to fall off the step, Lister steered Rimmer's backside against the table, thankfully bolted to the floor. The whole time he ran his hands down the man's sides, up his back, up to grab his shoulders and arms, and was cradling his face firmly when they landed against the table, kisses deep and long. "Do you have any idea," Rimmer grumbled, getting his hands under Lister's jacket, "how smegging gorgeous you are when you're all defensive like that?"
"Is that what this is all about?" he asked, knowing it was. He liked hearing Rimmer talk to him, tell him what he was feeling about the things they did together.
"You bet your arse it is." Rimmer heard the jacket hit the floor with a soft slap, and got to work getting his fingers under the man's shirt. "So focused." Kiss. "Dedicated." Nip. "Angry ..." He took Lister's mouth for a longer, deeper kiss, letting it draw out before even trying to speak again. "I love that look in your eyes."
"I have got to go around picking fights more often," Lister moaned, lifting the edge of Rimmer's shirt with one hand by sliding it up his flat stomach, and using the other to start pushing his leather jacket to the table.
Rimmer shifted, getting Lister's earlobe between his teeth. The Scouser's ears weren't as sensitive as his own, but they still had quite a few nerve endings. "Possessive. Determined. And a little crazy. Just a touch. Strong, too. Anyone who ever called you Fat Boy when you were a kid would have to eat their words, because you could kick any of their arses."
"Including you just a few years ago?"
"Including me. Make me eat my words, Dave." He gave the earlobe another nip. "Show me what you've become." Instead of getting rough, Lister leaned in and blew across Rimmer's lips, barely a breath, watching the way his pupils reacted. He peppered them with tiny, lingering kisses, keeping his eyes open, stopping every so often to rub the blunt tip of his nose beneath Rimmer's. "When they first tried to threaten you,” Rimmer breathed, “I was ready to twist their heads right off their necks - I might not even have taken the time to figure where the one ended and the other began."
"I wanted to shoot a hole through the middles of all three of them," Lister admitted, sliding his arms around Rimmer tightly. "Hit 'em hard; punish all of them for trying to hurt you."
Rimmer shivered, and he knew by the look on Lister's face that he'd felt it. "We may have to go into AR sometime so I can see that. Smeg, but I want to see that."
Lister suspected this had something to do with the little boy who still lived deep inside Rimmer who'd spent a lifetime not being claimed by anyone - family or otherwise - or having anyone proud of him. Thoughts that were far too tender for the feelings he had at the moment were pushed to the back of Lister's mind for another day. "You do, huh? Want to see me saving you, defending you against a bunch of bad guys?" He pulled Rimmer against him, away from the table, just a tad roughly, their noses mashed together as he angled his head up. "Dragging you back to my bedroll in a cave somewhere?"
"I simply want to see you beat the snot out of people, and then shag you long and well as a reward for my champion ... preferably in a clean bed without any bugs."
Lister smiled, at once relaxed and horribly, horribly horny and hard. "What about a bed in a 'Bug?" he teased, turning them toward the metal stairs and tugging Rimmer along. They both laughed as they mounted the stairs, the relief at being alive and desire for the protective sides of each other making their steps lighter. Rimmer couldn't remember ever wanting to be close to anyone as much as he wanted to be skin-to-skin with Lister right this moment, and he gave the man's backside a squeeze to hasten him even more. Lister stumbled up the stairs at the grab, reaching back to playfully swat away Rimmer's hand. "Hey I have to concentrate to walk, guy!" he laughed.
"Then get a move on. I need my hands on your skin, or my bee is going to short out!"
"Smeg, there's nothin' short about your bee." Lister waited until he was at the top of the steps to make the innuendo, waggling his eyebrows, and ducked Rimmer's grab, racing the short distance to the closest sleeping quarters and palming the door open, barely slipping inside before Rimmer caught up with him.
Rimmer spun Lister around, taking another kiss, palms cupping the round face. "I think that's supposed to be my line for you, isn't it?" he murmured, licking open-mouthed at Lister's teeth as they panted.
They backed toward the closest cot and practically fell on it, Rimmer nearly in his lap, and Lister muttered, "Speaking of lines ... do we need my popup book for this?"
"I'd rather just muddle through this time, and not have to break focus from you to look at print instructions, if that's okay with you. I want to figure out what makes you squirm."
Without speaking, Lister grabbed one of Rimmer's hands and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the center of the palm. He licked it a little in circles, letting his nose brush over the heel of the hand. Rimmer's head fell back as Lister let go of his hands and started to skate those rough palms over his chest. "Hey now," he gasped. "The idea this time was for me to be petting you."
He half-giggled at the slightly offended tone in Rimmer's voice. "Yeah, what about that?" Lister countered. "I'm doing all the work here ..."
"You jammy bastard," he moaned. "You know damn well you make my brain short out." His trousers felt exceedingly tight already; he always had been sensitive to touch. With what felt like monumental effort, he reached up to take Lister's wrists in his hands, removing them from their thought-stealing path. "You take all these thoughts I have of going slow," he panted, "and toss them out the airlock so all I want to do is have you hard and fast."
Lister's eyes darkened, widened, and he leaned close even as his hands were tightly imprisoned. "I want you to go slow. I want you to take your time and go as slow as you can, and drive me absolutely, brilliantly insane with lust."
"You told me once about our Low selves," Rimmer began, turning Lister's palms face up. He began to kiss, lick, and nibble on each one of those short fingers in turn, speaking between caresses. "You said he wanted to tie you down, hurt you, take you, lacerate you with the holo-whip." He shook his head. "I don't want any of that, not like that. But damn, Lister, the things I dreamed of doing to you ..."
Lister watched, rather breathless, at the blatant worship being performed upon his person. "I probably ... wasn't quite ready for it," he admitted in a small voice. Even after a few months of fairly regular sex, he wasn't used to Rimmer having his way like this. "What did you want to do, if not ... hurt me?"
"I told you earlier, Lister ... I wanted to slam you into the wall and kiss you stupid. Make you pant and strain and whimper for me, and not for the idea of someone who dumped you because she didn't see your worth. We fought and argued and bickered, but you always came back for me ... and I'll always come back for you." He released Lister's wrists, reaching out to unbutton the white cloth. "Always." Pushing the thermals off his shoulders, Rimmer resumed his oral attention on the inside of Lister's near arm.
Watching him kiss and lick and suck at his skin, Lister bent to bury his face in the top of Rimmer's head. "I knew there was something decent in you," he finally said, muffled. "I saw hints of it way too much, for years."
Rimmer looked up, intrigue in his eyes. "That's what you consider decency?" he asked in a genuine tone. "Wanting to be over you, petting you, making you feel me, someone extant and there and very much an approximation of alive?"
"That's the cherry on top. I'm talking about someone who can face up to their faults, take a deep breath, and keep on going, try to fix the ones they can and accept what they are on the rest. You were always so unhappy with yourself ... it was hard to watch you like that, sometimes." He grinned a dirty, sly smile. "But I've gotta admit, watching you flex and fist your hands when you get jealous of someone ... that's more than decent, too."
That caught Rimmer's attention as he licked and blew at the inside of Lister's arm, making gooseflesh rise on the skin. "You liked watching me seethe?" he wondered. "What about it did you enjoy?"
"That's a loaded question," he finally answered. "I mean, think about it ... wouldn't you get some secret pleasure out of seeing me slug it out with Yvonne for you?"
Rimmer paused in his attentions, pondering that for a moment. "You know ... I'm not sure I would. No, no, it has nothing to do with being all mature," he muttered, turning his mouth to Lister's bicep. "She never really wanted me."
"None of the things you ever seethed about me were because anyone else was tryin' to drag me away, either!" Lister pointed out, squirming now.
"Are you kidding me?" He worked his way up to nip at Lister's neck. "I was for certain that Ace was going to take you." Lick. "Claim you." Suck. "Make you his."
"Oh, ACE," he repeated, in understanding, tilting his head back to help. "Forgot all about him …"
Rimmer pulled up at that, gazing heatedly into Lister's defocused eyes. "Say that again," he insisted, tone firm. "Tell me you forgot him."
"Until you mentioned him, yeah ... I mean, 's hard to think about him with you right here instead, isn't it?" He said without thought, as if it were a truth. Since it was, and all.
Rimmer leaned in and drank deeply of Lister's mouth, a soft rumbling in his chest. The kiss took on a life of its own as Rimmer stroked and petted Lister's skin, soaking the man in through every sense he possessed. "Hell," Lister swore, barely able to speak past the mouth on his own. The utterance was more of a reflex, anyway; he was already getting his hands beneath Rimmer's shirt and clutching at tightly muscled skin.
Rimmer reached back to take Lister's hands, putting them down at his sides. "No, you don't," he hummed, working his way to nibble at Lister's cleft chin. "It's my turn now. I'm the one who's going to play with you this time, savor every inch."
"I can't even smeggin' touch you?" he whined, his skin tingling, all his blood having boarded an escape pod for parts south.
"No." He shook his head slowly, brushing their noses together. "No, you can touch me when I'm done." He continued on, exploring, tasting, touching, learning everything he could about what made his lover jump, squirm, and gasp. There was a brief break when Rimmer discovered that Lister's sides were ticklish, and he applied his long fingers until Lister’s face was streaming with tears, barely able to breathe. However, as he worked lower, Lister's laughter subsided and turned to low noises of frustrated need as Rimmer bypassed the erection with barely a lick and a brush of a cheek before moving to play with the insides of his thighs.
He wriggled desperately to begin with, trying to escape the confines of those hands and tongue; it was too much, for as long as he'd gone without this depth of attention. Finally, when he realized he was as mired as landing gear in quicksand, Lister gave up and instead concentrated on focusing his labored breathing, which required he keep his hips still and count back from one thousand. "You're a ... bleedin' torturer, damn it, Arn ..." No wonder the man liked military campaigns; even if his energy in them was poorly placed, he seemed good at strategy, at least when it came to something that enthused him.
Past knees, past ankles, Rimmer began to work the muscles in Lister's feet - thankfully they'd been washed and powdered earlier - with his thumbs, smirking to himself as Lister's eyes crossed and his head fell back. "Oh yes," he hummed with a grin. "I'm an evil, sadistic bastard, and you'd do well not to forget it." Releasing Lister's feet, Rimmer crawled back up that body, dragging his own over it. He balanced himself up on his elbows, hovering over Lister with a smug look on his face. "Now you may touch me, Lister ..." He bent down to nip at that dark-cherry mouth, flushed with exertion. "And tell me what you want me to do to you this time."
"What I want." Lister barely managed to get his voice above a squeak. It wasn't very manful, but he was rather past caring as he lay trapped by wicked green eyes. "Anything you can think to do, Arn." He worked his hands back underneath that shirt before Rimmer could change his mind. "Putting your mouth to work is a good start ..."
Rimmer shivered pleasantly, leaning down to kiss. "Like this?"
Lister felt it was important to encourage good work. He made an appreciative noise and nodded, angling his head to fit their mouths together.
Before he'd died, Rimmer had often tried to imagine kissing. He'd seen it in movies and in porn, and it'd been touted in books and magazines as terribly important, but he'd never really understood it. The kisses he'd shared with Yvonne were sloppy and uncoordinated due to her concussion and his inexperience. Nirvanah had been delicate, precise and skilled, but until the very end, they seemed to be lacking in something he couldn't define, but found himself craving when he took out the memories to warm himself.
When he kissed Lister, it was as if someone stuck his bee into a light socket, sending sparks all through his body. His thoughts tended to flee, leaving him at the mercy of emotion and sensation, two things he was unused to dealing without the mitigation of his thoughts. Lister was good at kissing; it wasn't just skilled, it wasn't precise, it was emotive, communicative, it was ... Lister. It pulled Rimmer out, drew him in, brought forth all that simmered under the Ionian's self-control.
With his last three remaining brain cells not being short-circuited by Rimmer's amazing tongue (and there was a phrase he'd never intended to imagine), Lister tugged at the shirt, pulling it up Arn's back, positioning it to yank quickly so as not to break their kiss too long. He kept going, pulling the man's arms above his head; in a fit of inspiration, he grabbed the ends of both sleeves with one hand while Rimmer's arms were still caught in them, and felt down the man's side with his free hand, tickling his side lightly.
Rimmer squirmed, snickering. "Ooh, is it time for payback?" he asked, getting his head free from the cloth. Lister kept at it, grinning. He liked Rimmer like this - laughing, happy, far less smeggy than usual.
Rimmer kept laughing, a large smile on his face. He used the insides of his thighs to grasp onto Lister's knees, bowing his back in an effort to press his stomach into the erection he'd neglected so cruelly earlier. It was a bit awkward sometimes, being so much taller, but it presented an opportunity to find ways to make it work.
Lister gasped. "Oh ... no," he fought. "You're not ... going to distract me from your richly ... deserved punishment, Rimmer ..."
Aha! It was working. He continued squirming under Lister's fingers, using the reflexes to press and roll against him. "You call this punishment?" He tried for a dark chuckle, but the tickling made it come out in a sort of squirrel-toned hiccup. "You'll have to do a lot better than that, miladdio."
It is simply impossible to chuckle low and dirty when someone's tickling you. It was also damn near impossible to keep tickling someone who was doing such lovely things to your squishy bits, Lister decided, especially when the tickling resulted in movements nearly squishing those bits. He stopped tickling, instead sliding his hand slowly up the side of Rimmer's back, then back down to the upper swell of his ass. He did this again, pleased to see the man's hooded eyes and hear the beginnings of a strangled purr.
"Scratch there, just a little bit," Rimmer directed, and let out a long, low groan when he felt those fingernails on his skin. "Smeg, yeah. I love it when you're like that - just - ahh! Just, just a little rough." He took a deep, shuddering breath and pressed his forehead against Lister's temple, breathing hotly into his neck.
He put both hands to work tracing over the muscles of Arn's back. He was rather well put-together for such a skinny git, and it was no great chore to scrape his nails up and down, and once, along his spine. "Y'like that, do you?" he asked, tongue briefly in the man's ear, before lightly biting his earlobe and pulling at it.
"Unh!" Rimmer shuddered again, pressing velour-covered hips into Lister's thighs. "Son of a smegging goddamned smegging fucking bitch," he swore in appreciation.
Lister chewed gently at the earlobe, then licked his way up the shell, getting his hands down inside the back of those too-tight trousers. They were really too obvious. "You're such an exhibitionist," he breathed, barely keeping from chuckling. "Has to be the only reason you wear these."
"They- mm, nn ..." Damn his sensitive ears! "Nn, comf'ble." He knew the moment Lister got his hands on him, his rational thought would speed out the airlock faster than a tachyon; it always did.
Hands around the sides to bare hips, palming and kneading with occasional hard squeezes; mouth on his neck, teeth gently biting folds of skin; hips lifted in earnest offering - Lister felt like he was giving a hell of a show should anyone walk in right now, but it'd be worth even that for the filthy things he'd finally gotten Rimmer to say.
"Bite me harder," Rimmer insisted. Every muscle tensed as he bit into the pillow to stifle the resulting strangled groan. "Mark me, Lister," he demanded, voice hoarse. "I want to look at my neck and see bruises in an hour."
It wasn't the first time a lover had asked for teeth, but it was the first time Lister had felt in a position to comply, since Rimmer was more or less indestructible and amazingly self-healing - he wasn't sure if anything he'd do would last long. Still, he tried. He licked skin, suckled on it, and bit, hard, without piercing - the taut, muscled skin of his shoulder, the slightly loose, pliable skin of his long throat, the tender flesh where jaw met neck. As he did this, Lister dug his fingers into Arn's backside, thrusting up to rub him through the relatively thin, soft, buttery material.
Rimmer let out a string of expletives that would have made Petersen blush, and he curled his fingers hard into the mattress to try to keep himself from going over right there. When Lister slackened his grip, Rimmer collapsed, panting heavily. "Oh, god, yes, Lister. I want it, want you. Take me this time. Give it to me good, you gerbil-faced bastard."
He'd learned early it was prudent to ask instead of just assuming, even if he thought he knew the answer. "This way?" he asked, voice dropped low enough to apply direct current to Rimmer's spine. "Or like this?" He rolled them sideways and partway onto Rimmer's back, his breath coming in aching bursts.
"Pin me down," he insisted, only a thin ring of green showing around his wide-blown pupils. He was flushed, his mouth swollen from abuse, his curls mussed and sticking every which way. "I want to feel you strong, show me. Give me what you're capable of." His lips twisted up in a sort of mad grin as he pushed his hips up into Lister's. "Shut me up, make me listen to you, get in the last goddamned word."
It was definitely among the weirdest sexual encounters Lister had been involved with, but he reflected that for Rimmer to demand all this ... well, didn't seem all that strange. With nearly anyone else, he would've worried about repercussions and tears, but he'd just been with Rimmer too long. He suspected, and knew, too much. He adjusted his balance, grabbing both of Rimmer's wrists and forcing them up behind his head. Looking around, he spotted his thermal shirt still in the bunk, so he shook it out and wound it around Rimmer's wrists, finally tying them to the edge of the bunk by looping the bottom part of a leftover sleeve through a long, narrow punch in the metal frame. "Stay put," he ordered, sitting back on his heels, eyeing his options. "I need to get something." With that, he dismounted, but not without first grabbing handfuls of bunched material at Rimmer's hips and giving a vicious downward tug to finish stripping him.
Rimmer gave the fabric a token tug, looking up at the white material. He bit his lip, grinning up at the tether as he waited. He squirmed a bit, feeling quite exposed, and he tried to see what Lister was doing.
Having dove for supplies and come up successful, Lister bent low over Rimmer's chest. He bit gently around one nipple, gauging, until he felt comfortable applying harder pressure. Were anyone in the hall, they would be able to clearly hear Rimmer's low groans as Lister worked him over. He rolled his head from side to side, enjoying not just the control, but finally having someone he could trust, to let in past his walls and worries.
The harder he scraped and squeezed, the more Rimmer writhed and twisted beneath his touch; more worrying was that Lister had spent far too much time thinking about this, reading up on it once upon a time - and could see why it got him off. When he moved back to Rimmer's neck, he slipped open the bottle he'd found, and put his fingers to work elsewhere. If his teeth and lips were kneading and sucking, he tried to keep his hand steady and to firm but very very careful movements. "Is this it?" he accused, dropping his voice and drawling out the sounds. "Is this what you wanted? Me to use you?"
"Any way you like," Rimmer ground out, trying to push himself against the touches. He felt hypersensitive, the scratch of the sheets at his back, the soft give of the thermal around his wrists ... Lister hovering over him, radiating heat, biting, pressing, surrounding him. "Anything you want, Listy ..." The words came out on a whimper. "Anything you want, just more."
The man beneath him arched and bared his throat as Lister took him, finally, trying to move smoothly despite the way he was having to balance himself, since Rimmer was tied up. Leaning in, he licked at that Adam's apple, delicately, as his hips searched for a rhythm ... soon enough, it turned to mouthing, and then desperate sucking on the warm, simulated flesh, as he found his angle and moved more surely. When Rimmer tried to turn his upper body on its side at one point, Lister suckled higher, along his jaw. Insistently, he cocked his head the other way and angled it over to cover that other mouth in a hard kiss, forcing him back into place.
Only, he didn't abandon the kiss; he mentally counted his thrusts by one hundred, two hundred, three ... twenty-three hundred ... as he licked deep inside, messy, one hand extending upwards and feeling around rather unsuccessfully at first to yank at the knot loosening his wrists. "Arnold," he whispered fiercely, quietly, against his lower lip.
The moment his hands were free, Rimmer brought his arms to hold on, rocking up into the man above him. "Dave ... god, Dave," he murmured. He could feel the tension pooling, building up as they moved, the sounds of sheets and skin and breath seeming to shake the room ... or maybe that was just Lister making his eyes cross. He wasn't sure. Did he even had a name?
Oh, yes, he did. It was "Lister's."
"Almost ... more. Please, more, please, Dave."
Lister nearly cracked at that, desperately thinking of a way not to explode immediately at the sound of that voice saying those things and his name. Gratefully, he realized he'd been sorely neglectful of a rather significant detail; he shifted position to hold himself up better, briefly interrupting what he was doing. Arn actually whined at the loss, but seemed assuaged when Lister's hand wrapped around his unsatisfied cock. "Better?" he asked, breathlessly; he would've laughed at the look on Rimmer's face, if he hadn't been so busy hard at work thinking of other things for the moment. Like, long division he'd never been very good at; naked GELFs; a world without curry.
Rimmer's arms tightened and he curled inward around Lister, gasping as he reached his climax, twitching and shuddering. For all he was vocal during the buildup, he was quiet at the finish. He held on, keeping Lister close through his own orgasm, not wanting to let go.
When he could let go between them, Lister dropped his hand on the mattress and happily swore off math and hairy simulants, unleashing his brain and related bits to think about exactly whatever they wanted to. Which, was pretty much Rimmer the way he was right now. He realized he was being held quite tightly, and only had time for He sure puts the 'hard' in hard light- before thankfully, his own release hit a crescendo, and he was able to give up any sort of control and simply let his sweaty body finish the job.
They both collapsed, breathless and boneless, and Rimmer turned them both a little to the side so he could curl around, pressing his nose happily into Lister's neck. He smiled, contented, as the air cooled them both, aching pleasantly from their exertions. "Thank you," he hummed, feeling sleep creeping up on him. "Do love you; just not easy to say."
Lister was drained, in addition to surprised. He'd put forth considerable exertions, not just physically; maneuvering his brain around Rimmer's erotic roadmap, doing things he'd never engaged in with anyone else, had sapped some of his fortitude. It simply went against his nature to hurt someone he was making love to, and he was amazed here was someone who enjoyed it. "I can tell," he finally said, when he could breathe normally, reaching around to hold Rimmer closer. "Believe me, there's nobody else I know worth chomping into this much."
Rimmer chuckled sleepily, snuggling in. "Remind me to make your next curry myself. Won't fuck it up on purpose, I promise. No dumplings."
"You still have the hazard suit?"
"'M hologram. Don't need it."
"The light bee can explode," Lister pointed out.
"I'll just stop breathing while I'm making it."