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If it wasn't for Holly's insistence that Rimmer was just what the crew needed, Lister would have found his off-switch ages ago. That, and the holo-whip. After all these years, Lister's back and sides were criss-crossed with nasty burn scars from its extreme setting. Whoever designed that vicious thing, Lister thought, had to have been a stone-cold, heartless sadist. A man after his own heart, maybe, but he still would like to rip his guts out and stuff them up his arse.
However, Holly had not been entirely wrong. With Rimmer, even more than with the Cat, Lister shared certain proclivities; certain tastes. The Cat just wanted to kill, play and eat. He had no sense of finesse, of psychological torture, or the beauty of pain that was happening to someone else. He was just too shallow. Even the squeaking and screeching of his victims were just attractive sounds to him. And Kryten, well, that droid was just insane. Neither of them could hold a candle to him.
When it came to pain, Arnold J. Rimmer was a smegging genius, as well as a work of art.
Lister couldn't touch him, of course, and had never got his hands on the holo-whip long enough to be on the giving end. He held his own, though. There was something soft and vulnerable still underneath that bold depravity, something Lister had squashed in himself a long time ago. Every now and then he'd find a way into that core of self-hate, and squeeze.
Things changed when they stole Legion's technology for creating a hard light hologram.
The last wreckage of the explosion was still skimming in space around the Red Dwarf when Lister walked into the berth Rimmer had taken for himself. Rimmer was walking around it, touching and crushing and smashing things with the glee of a five-year-old. As Lister watched from the doorway, he picked up a close-range firearm and shot the bowl of mechanoid piranhas. Water and glass splattered across the cabin walls, and the piranhas scattered on the floor, their mechanical bellies exposed by the exploding shards, still flapping.
Lister closed the door with a thump, making Rimmer twist around to face him. There was a slightly mad grin on the man's face, his usually languid eyes lit up with excitement.
"There you are," he said. "Just the man, Listy. I've drunk, I've smashed, I've bled." He held out his arm, where three red shallow cuts graced his forearm. "Now I want to fuck." He took a step forward, reaching out and taking off Lister's hat. His tongue flicked out, moistening lips Lister could barely believe were now solid. "I've been waiting for this. I'm going to fuck you raw."
"Me, I've been waiting for this." Lister took a step back and punched Rimmer on the mouth.
Rimmer staggered back a step and rubbed his jaw. His freshly split lip was beginning to ooze dark blood. "You know this is just a surface cut," he hissed. "You can't really damage me."
"That's all right," Lister said, strode forward and punched Rimmer again.
His fist met with an iron hard hologram hand, which caught it and squeezed. Lister grit his teeth, but he knew he was inches away from crushed finger bones, and his hand felt like it was on fire.
Rimmer stepped up and kissed him. Lister's lips were drawn back in a snarl and it was a messy clash of teeth, but this wasn't about pleasure. Yet. Rimmer shoved him back and delivered a punch like a horse's kick right on his jaw. It flashed like fire across his frame, his bones reverberating at the impact. He could taste his own blood.
He pulled himself back up, grabbed Rimmer and kissed him, more tongue now than teeth, his cock throbbing even as his jaw still did.
Forget about girls. Or boys, for that matter. This was smegging it.
He slammed Rimmer against the wall, hard, and threw off his jacket to the side. Rimmer was already undoing his leather shorts. Lister slipped his hand inside those shorts and closed it around Rimmer's cock, pulling it.
"Ah, smeg, yes," Rimmer hissed and grabbed Lister's head with one hand and a buttock with another. Lister sunk his teeth into Rimmer's neck, biting, gnawing, and he kept pulling.
He slid down Rimmer's body, across that ridiculous corset, and pulled down his shorts. "Not exactly a big boy, are you?" he said as the cock popped out of its confines.
"Shut up and suck it," Rimmer ordered.
What the hell. Lister closed his lips around the tip and sucked it in tight. Rimmer bucked up, filling his mouth. It tasted like nothing, but it was hot and slick in his mouth, and Lister rejoiced in the proximity of sensitive flesh and his teeth. He did not bite. Instead, he licked and sucked and fondled, and Rimmer moaned and bucked up against him, his big hands lost in Lister's dirty hair, pulling it, making his scalp sting.
Rimmer's cum, when it came, stung his tongue. Like licking a battery.
It was only then that he started biting.
*
Lister's body was sore and hurting, from the red scratched skin to the burgeoning bruises and the steady, raw ache of stretched and broken skin. He was lying on the bunk, Rimmer's slick and naked body covering his hip to hip, ankle to ankle, mouth to mouth, their tongues circling each other lazily.
There was no night or day in space, but Holly had dimmed the corridor lights and the toaster was asleep. The fish had stopped twitching. Rimmer's ripped corset lay on the floor among the shards.
Lister wondered briefly how a hologram could have saliva, or cum and sweat for that matter. Probably some kind of a subatomic tension mimicking the consistency of fluids. How close was this sex to wanking in AR?
"Does it hurt?" he asked, tracing the bruises on Rimmer's body, matching his. "Or are you just programmed to hurt?" he squeezed a bruise, making Rimmer hiss in pain.
"You weren't asking so many questions with my cock in your mouth, bitch."
Lister grinned. This was going to work out just fine.