He
Title: He
Pairing: Lister/Kochanski, Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Nothing, I tell you! At least not Red Dwarf, and I make no money from this either. Wish I did!
Notes: Written as part of the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
He wasn’t her Dave.
Of course, she’d know that all along. Her Dave was back on her Starbug, in what she liked to think of as her dimension, probably wondering what had happened to her; why she hadn’t come back. But she supposed… Well, she supposed she had expected them to be more or less the same; two version of the same person, who just happened to have taken different paths in life. But they weren’t.
At first, she’d dismissed the differences between them as just being the result of her Dave changing after he’d become a hologram, which this one hadn’t. But that wasn’t it, not entirely. She remembered how her Dave had been before, when they were dating back on Red Dwarf, before the accident. Sure, he’d been a drunken, curry-eating, messy slob, but he hadn’t owned a guitar, or thought he could play one. His favorite movie was Citizen Kane; she knew this because he’d made her watch it with him three nights in a row during the second week of their relationship. It had been rather nice actually, and eventually she’d grown to enjoy it. But this Dave hadn’t even heard of Citizen Kane - which she had refused to believe at first - and his favorite movie was Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Both David Lister’s enjoyed zero G football, but her Dave had actually been a semi-professional player for a while. His hopes of one day playing for the London Jets were crushed when he got a serious leg-injury, which resulted in the drunken night that started the chain of events that ended with him signing up for a five-year stint in the Space Corps. The Dave in this dimension had been out celebrating his birthday. Drinking yourself into such oblivion that you woke up on Mimas with a passport in the name of Emily Berkenstien after having your career ruined was one thing, but doing the same when you were just out celebrating your birthday?
They didn’t look the same either. Not entirely. Oh certainly, they could pass as brothers, even the kind of brothers people mistake for identical twins, but actual identical twins? No. You didn’t notice until you got really close, but the line of their noses were completely different, and her Dave’s jaw was a little more on the square side than this one’s. Their eyes were a different shade of brown; her Dave’s were darker, with small flecks of green. One of her Dave’s ears was smaller than the other, which she’d hard was true of most people, but with him it was quite noticeable. This one seemed to have perfectly similar-sized ears, as well as slightly darker hair. She was willing to bet he didn’t have a third nipple either, although she didn’t particularly want to find out by first-hand experience.
She hadn’t come to this conclusion all at once, of course. It was little things, subtleties she noticed as the days and weeks passed on. And it made her wonder. As it was becoming more and more clear that she would probably never get back to her Dave, it was only natural that she’d begun to explore, in her mind, the possibilities of starting a new life with this one. So far it wasn’t looking too good. They didn’t have the same history as she’d had with the hologramatic Dave. They hadn’t spent years exploring the universe together, facing dangers, solving problems, learning to live with one another’s little quirks, bonding. This Dave had done all of that with Arnold Rimmer.
She vaguely remembered Rimmer from Red Dwarf as this sort of confused, tall, grey shadow that used to follow her Dave around shouting orders at him. Frankly, she’d always suspected the man of having a slight crush on Dave, which is why she’d tried to keep the two of them apart when she and Dave started dating. She needn’t have worried though, as shortly afterwards Dave confided to her that Rimmer was secretly dating the ship’s female boxing champion, but didn’t want anyone to know, on the grounds that he felt it was slightly emasculating to be dating a woman who had, on the first night of their affair together, lifted him off his feet and carried him over the threshold to her quarters. Quite frankly she had a hard time imagining Dave and Rimmer living together in such cramped quarters as Starbug for more than fifteen minutes without strangling each other in frustration. But apparently they had. Dave even seemed to speak of Rimmer with mild affection, even after Kryten had sent them all through the “Arnold Rimmer Experience”.
Ah yes, the Arnold Rimmer Experience. Dave, the not-her-Dave, had sworn and ranted and shuddered at the mention of Rimmer’s name for a whole day afterwards, but a few days later, he’d get that same far-away look on his face when something clearly reminded him of the dead hologram. The fact that he could sit through something like that and still retain positive feelings for the man was what had really started her thinking. Little facts kept clicking in her head; like when she’d pretended that her Dave was gay. Her Dave would have laughed and played along if someone had alluded to the idea that he might prefer men, but this Dave got defensive and worried. And when she’d asked him if Rimmer had missed his girlfriend, he’d just looked at her like she was crazy, and asked “what girlfriend?” Turns out the Rimmer in this dimension hadn’t had one. It hadn’t been the Rimmer she knew. And this was definitely not the David Lister she knew.
Looking at him now, as he sat slumped in his seat in the cockpit, idly picking his teeth with a broken data-disc, that far-away look in his eyes again, she sighed inwardly. She’d never have him. Not in another three million years, not ever. His heart was somewhere else. And so was hers.
He wasn’t her Dave.
Pairing: Lister/Kochanski, Rimmer/Lister
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Nothing, I tell you! At least not Red Dwarf, and I make no money from this either. Wish I did!
Notes: Written as part of the fanfic100 challenge - my table is here.
He wasn’t her Dave.
Of course, she’d know that all along. Her Dave was back on her Starbug, in what she liked to think of as her dimension, probably wondering what had happened to her; why she hadn’t come back. But she supposed… Well, she supposed she had expected them to be more or less the same; two version of the same person, who just happened to have taken different paths in life. But they weren’t.
At first, she’d dismissed the differences between them as just being the result of her Dave changing after he’d become a hologram, which this one hadn’t. But that wasn’t it, not entirely. She remembered how her Dave had been before, when they were dating back on Red Dwarf, before the accident. Sure, he’d been a drunken, curry-eating, messy slob, but he hadn’t owned a guitar, or thought he could play one. His favorite movie was Citizen Kane; she knew this because he’d made her watch it with him three nights in a row during the second week of their relationship. It had been rather nice actually, and eventually she’d grown to enjoy it. But this Dave hadn’t even heard of Citizen Kane - which she had refused to believe at first - and his favorite movie was Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Both David Lister’s enjoyed zero G football, but her Dave had actually been a semi-professional player for a while. His hopes of one day playing for the London Jets were crushed when he got a serious leg-injury, which resulted in the drunken night that started the chain of events that ended with him signing up for a five-year stint in the Space Corps. The Dave in this dimension had been out celebrating his birthday. Drinking yourself into such oblivion that you woke up on Mimas with a passport in the name of Emily Berkenstien after having your career ruined was one thing, but doing the same when you were just out celebrating your birthday?
They didn’t look the same either. Not entirely. Oh certainly, they could pass as brothers, even the kind of brothers people mistake for identical twins, but actual identical twins? No. You didn’t notice until you got really close, but the line of their noses were completely different, and her Dave’s jaw was a little more on the square side than this one’s. Their eyes were a different shade of brown; her Dave’s were darker, with small flecks of green. One of her Dave’s ears was smaller than the other, which she’d hard was true of most people, but with him it was quite noticeable. This one seemed to have perfectly similar-sized ears, as well as slightly darker hair. She was willing to bet he didn’t have a third nipple either, although she didn’t particularly want to find out by first-hand experience.
She hadn’t come to this conclusion all at once, of course. It was little things, subtleties she noticed as the days and weeks passed on. And it made her wonder. As it was becoming more and more clear that she would probably never get back to her Dave, it was only natural that she’d begun to explore, in her mind, the possibilities of starting a new life with this one. So far it wasn’t looking too good. They didn’t have the same history as she’d had with the hologramatic Dave. They hadn’t spent years exploring the universe together, facing dangers, solving problems, learning to live with one another’s little quirks, bonding. This Dave had done all of that with Arnold Rimmer.
She vaguely remembered Rimmer from Red Dwarf as this sort of confused, tall, grey shadow that used to follow her Dave around shouting orders at him. Frankly, she’d always suspected the man of having a slight crush on Dave, which is why she’d tried to keep the two of them apart when she and Dave started dating. She needn’t have worried though, as shortly afterwards Dave confided to her that Rimmer was secretly dating the ship’s female boxing champion, but didn’t want anyone to know, on the grounds that he felt it was slightly emasculating to be dating a woman who had, on the first night of their affair together, lifted him off his feet and carried him over the threshold to her quarters. Quite frankly she had a hard time imagining Dave and Rimmer living together in such cramped quarters as Starbug for more than fifteen minutes without strangling each other in frustration. But apparently they had. Dave even seemed to speak of Rimmer with mild affection, even after Kryten had sent them all through the “Arnold Rimmer Experience”.
Ah yes, the Arnold Rimmer Experience. Dave, the not-her-Dave, had sworn and ranted and shuddered at the mention of Rimmer’s name for a whole day afterwards, but a few days later, he’d get that same far-away look on his face when something clearly reminded him of the dead hologram. The fact that he could sit through something like that and still retain positive feelings for the man was what had really started her thinking. Little facts kept clicking in her head; like when she’d pretended that her Dave was gay. Her Dave would have laughed and played along if someone had alluded to the idea that he might prefer men, but this Dave got defensive and worried. And when she’d asked him if Rimmer had missed his girlfriend, he’d just looked at her like she was crazy, and asked “what girlfriend?” Turns out the Rimmer in this dimension hadn’t had one. It hadn’t been the Rimmer she knew. And this was definitely not the David Lister she knew.
Looking at him now, as he sat slumped in his seat in the cockpit, idly picking his teeth with a broken data-disc, that far-away look in his eyes again, she sighed inwardly. She’d never have him. Not in another three million years, not ever. His heart was somewhere else. And so was hers.
He wasn’t her Dave.