Loveletter

by Tronella

aziraphale@angelwings.co.uk

A/N A story with a happy ending, to revive me from the evilness of Worth It. And therefore is dedicated to Poet. This is a post-Thanks For The Memory fic, so spoilers for that (and slash warnings, of course). Because this doesn’t fall in one of the L/R-slashable areas (pre-The End, between Legion and Stoke Me a Clipper, Series 8 onwards or in an AR game), it’s slightly AU to make Rimmer hard-light. But never mind.

The only bits of this that are mine are the plot and Simon, both of which are imaginary and also profitless.

Warnings: slash, some rude words

Dedicated to Chriss, to try to persuade her not to eat me again. (I’m no longer made of gingerbread!)



Loveletter
by Tronella

Rimmer was, understandably, out for revenge. Lister had once again overstepped the mark. The whole Lise Yates fiasco was bad enough (although possibly excusable), but telling Cat that he’d only made love once? That was beyond heartless.

He’d watched the Black Box recording over and over, looking for inspiration, when suddenly it hit him. The tape showed him finding Lister’s loveletters. There was bound to be something that he could use for blackmail material, and the tape meant that there wouldn’t be much of a search.

A few hours later saw Rimmer sitting on the floor of the now-vacant quarters that Lister used to store his personal belongings, surrounded by piles of Lister’s old correspondence. None of which were as interesting as the long and rather, ah, ‘descriptive’ letter he held in his ands, addressed to Lister from one Simon Hamilton. Obsessed with Lister and most definitely male. Every other letter that Lister had decided to keep was, without exception, from an old girlfriend. So that would make this Simon… what? An old boyfriend? The things he’d written certainly didn’t contradict that.

Lister had never mentioned a Simon. If this guy had been his lover, he could see why. Rimmer’s original intention had been to reveal any juicy secrets in front of the Cat and Holly, to increase the level of embarrassment as much as possible. But something like this… he didn’t want anyone else to find out, somehow. Like it or not, he thought of Lister as a friend now, he couldn’t bring himself to accuse Lister of… of this in front of the others, it was too cruel, even for him.

But he couldn’t just forget about it, either. He’d just have to confront him about it.

The next day was one of those rare ones which saw Lister and Rimmer both eating at once - although for Rimmer it was lunch while Lister was still on breakfast- providing the perfect opportunity to ask him about it. The Cat was having another nap, and Holly was busy navigating the ship through a particularly tricky vast expanse of nothingness.

Being Rimmer, he waited until Lister had just put a heaped spoonful of cornflakes before asking.

"So, Lister… who’s Simon?"

Predictably, Lister was more than a little surprised at the question, resulting in projectile cereal being coughed all over the table.

"What?"

"Lister, you obviously hear me, or I wouldn’t have half-chewed cornflakes in my hair. Who’s Simon Hamilton?"

"He’s just a guy I used to know… why?"

"Oh, I just found some letter he’d sent you, that’s all."

Lister slowly looked up from his bowl to meet Rimmer’s eyes, knowing full well that he’d only ever received one letter from Simon and remembering exactly what it had said.

"Ah… he was just- it was-" he stuttered, trying to think of an excuse.

"Don’t bother, Lister, I’m not going to tell anyone. I mean, there’s only two people I could possibly tell, and neither of them are going to care." He tried to sound reassuring, but Lister was just suspicious.

"If you’re not going to tell anyone, why are you so interested?" Rimmer held up his hands in a parody of self-defence.

"Just taking an interest, Listy, no need to be so paranoid."

Lister shook his head in exasperation and went back to his breakfast.

Rimmer, bored with his daily goal list, decided he needed more time to think about exactly what this letter meant. Lister hadn’t bothered trying to deny it; there was no doubt that he’d had at least one… gay lover. But he’d looked terrified at the possibility of other people finding out… maybe it had just been a regrettable experiment.

Maybe not.

Thinking about the kind of people Lister used to choose as friends, he could see why hiding something like this would be a good idea. Maybe Lister had just got into the habit of pretending it had never happened.

Wait, what was he doing? He was trying to persuade himself that Lister was just in denial, that he only pretended to be straight for the benefit of his homophobic friends, that he was gay and just didn’t want anyone to find out? Why? Did he want Lister to be gay?

Rimmer inhaled sharply as this last thought hit him. He wanted him to be gay? Did that mean that he wa- no, it couldn’t… but then how could he be sure? He’d only made love once (to the semi-conscious Yvonne), and that hadn’t exactly been the amazing experience he’d been led to expect.

Rimmer picked the letter back up, deciding to reread it. If he could picture all of this happening to him, but feel nothing… surely that would prove once and for all that he was straight.

He began to read.

/I wrote this letter because I wanted to make sure you never forgot me. I know you were uneasy about sleeping with another guy, about the possibility of anyone finding out that you’d even considered the fact that you might not be straight. I just wanted to that you for giving me the chance to help you work things out. /

Rimmer found himself I'm patiently skimming through this introductory mush, hurrying to get to the more… interesting parts.

/After that first kiss all your nervousness seemed to melt away, as if it had proved to you that this was nothing bad. You seemed to know exactly what you were doing… it worked for me, anyway. /

Boring, boring… kissing is just kissing, how was that supposed to help him prove anything?

/I want to kiss you until you forget how to breathe, fuck you until you forget how to scream. I want to touch every part of your body, so that every time you make love you think of me. I want you to tell me you’ll be mine forever. /

Rimmer’s plan didn’t seem to be working… he was half-hard already, just from imagining that this was happening to him.

From imagining that Lister was doing this to him.

He knew he’d gone too far, that thinking like this about the man he shared a room with was nothing short of dangerous, but… he didn’t want to stop.

/I want to taste you, for you to feel my mouth on your cock, for you to- /

"Rimmer??"

Oh, smeg…

Lister had run out of things to do not long after Rimmer, and had gone looking for his habitual sparring partner. He’d looked for quite a while before remembering Rimmer’s questions about his loveletters, and made his way to the room he was now certain contained the hologram.

He’d been right about that, of course, but what he saw when the door slid open was definitely not what he’d expected. Rimmer, blatantly jacking off, and apparently using his letter as a basis for his fantasy.

"Rimmer, what…?" he trailed off, not even sure what he was asking.

"I just, I - I was trying to see if I was gay." He knew it was a stupid thing to say as soon as he had said it, and looked away.

"You what?" Lister tried to make sense of this. He was trying to see if he was gay? Well, judging by the rather impressive tent in his - no! He wasn’t looking, this was serious.

"And - are you? Gay, I mean?" Rimmer looked down at the hand that encircled his still-hard penis, then back up at Lister. "… I suppose I must be."

Lister closed his eyes, trying to stop the image in front of him from stopping him thinking straight. Rimmer… thought he was gay. And he’d been turned on by picturing someone fucking Lister. The question was, did Lister want this too? He thought back to that one night with Simon. It had been mind-blowing, there was no denying it.

He tried picturing doing that with Rimmer, borrowing his testing method, so to speak. Oh… my… God. He did want this.

He opened his eyes to see that Rimmer had stood up, and was watching him warily. He stepped closer, wrapped his arms around him, and looked into his eyes.

"So… d’you fancy giving it a go?"

Rimmer’s eyes widened in shock, and they just stood there, looking at each other, until finally, hesitantly, he nodded. Lister needed no more encouragement as he moved one hand behind Rimmer’s head, pulling him down for a kiss.

"Were you thinking about Simon?"

"Not for a moment."



END

A/N This is weird (especially the Rimmer thinking bit), cause I only did the one draft… mainly in the middle of the night, to get as much slash done as possible before school starts back.