#reddwarfcember

Rimmer couldn’t sleep. This wasn't an unusual occurrence, since acquiring his hard-light even just lying in bed felt too overwhelming. He turned over again, on his side, and looked out to the bunkroom. His eyes landed on the plate of cookies and glass of milk (probably dog milk) Lister had left out. His reasoning was that it made him think of home– though Rimmer knew he hadn’t even done the tradition while he was on earth,but he decided not to say anything. Io only knows why, somewhere in the back of his mind told him it was because he never had that either. 

A tear slid down his cheek, this wasn’t unusual either, he put it down to tiredness. Maybe just one cookie wouldn’t hurt… He slowly got up, put his slippers on, and crept to the bunkroom table. He sat down tentatively, and just stared at the cookies for a while then he looked up at where Lister was asleep. Tears were still slowly sliding down his cheeks effortlessly. He carefully picked up a cookie, just a small one from the outside, and nibbled at it. 

Eventually, he looked down at a half-empty plate, he really hadn’t meant to eat so much. Now Lister would know, he started to sob, this could ruin Lister’s Christmas. 

“Rimmer?” he heard a distant voice say and he just grunted in reply.

Suddenly he felt a hand on his back and he looked up, startled. “Listy,” he gasped, voice hoarse.

“Rimmer man, why you crying?” Lister asked. Rimmer just looked at the plate guiltily. “What, The cookies? Are they bad? Oh don’t tell me you had the milk with it!”

“I didn’t mean to eat them,” Rimmer mumbled.

“Rimmer, it doesn’t matter. You can have them!”

“But.. isn’t it ruining your christmas?”

“Look, I don’t really get what’s got you so wound up, but of course not!” Lister said, picking up a cookie himself. “Just shame we can’t have the milk, ey?” Rimmer nodded his head.

Lister finished his share of the cookies rather quickly, “These are good!” He exclaimed. Rimmer looked up at Lister, who was perched on the table, and rested his head against his arm before putting his arms around his middle. “What’s this for?” Lister asked while putting his hand gently on the back of Rimmer’s head. Rimmer didn’t answer and just snuggled up further into him, he had never been one for physical touch but he needed it tonight.

“Tell me about your perfect Christmas Listy,” Rimmer eventually whispered.

“Then, or now?”

“Whenever,”

“Well, I suppose it’d just be us.”

“Us?”

“Me and you.”

“Kryten and the cat?”

“Just you. You can be a smeghead at times but you understand, even when you say you don’t. Cat and Kryten, I don’t think they do, and that’s okay. But sometimes I wish I could be away from it all.”

“What else would there be?”

“Proper milk, more cookies, mistletoe…” Rimmer caught on to what Lister meant.

“Who says there needs to be mistletoe?” He said, gently bringing Lister off the table. 

“I suppose you’re right,” Lister smiled, and leant down to peck Rimmer’s lips. Rimmer pulled him onto him and gave him a second, longer kiss.

“I love you Listy,” he said, his hand on Lister’s cheek.

Smeg and the Heads, better known as Gazza, Dobbin, and Dave, pick their way down the slushy, ice-patched sidewalks. They just left another sparsely-attended open mic, having failed to sell any merch that would’ve bought them dinner. Dave’s arms are filled with parts from Dobbin’s drum kit, and his otherwise-empty stomach sloshes with beers he charmed some bourgeoisie babes into buying for him. 

The colorful Christmas displays they shuffle past seem to exist only to highlight the horrible weather and his gnawing hunger. Dave feels the low, dull ache of resentment he always endures this time of year, flaring up into white, hot anger. He trips over a plastic candy cane, knocked loose from its stake beside the sidewalk, nearly losing his balance, and his purchase on the kit.

“Smegging crypto-fascist Christmas crap!” he shouts as he finds his feet again.

Gazza and Dobbin stop to watch as Dave kicks the offending decoration all the way down to the grown, and then does the same to each of its fellows.

Back at the abandoned house the band is squatting in, Dave starts a fire, using rubbish and pieces of a broken chair. He and the others crowd together around the fireplace, thawing their tingling extremities. 

“Christmas tomorrow,” Dobbin observes, “should be a right treat of a meal at the shelters.”

Gazza shakes his head mournfully. “Awful innit? That the masses need some story about some baby that never existed to justify acting generously towards their fellow citizens.”

“Christmas is just another manufactured crypto-fascist holiday,” Dave asserts. 

“And religion is just a smoke screen. It’s all about controlling people when the winter gets fierce and food is scarce, so there won’t be an uprising,” Gazza adds.

“In fact,” Dave says, warming to the topic, “if I had my way, I would live somewhere that didn’t give a smeg about Christmas. A place where no one ever even seens a pine tree, and you can grow food all long.”

“Oh, ey?” Dobbin brushes the hair out of his face to raise a skeptical eyebrow. “And where’s that then?”

“I don’t know,” Dave blusters, scrambling for an answer, and spitting out the first island in the Pacific he can think of. “Someplace like – like Fiji!”

“Fiji?” Dobbin echoes doubtfully. “What would a Scouser do in Fiji?”

Warmed now by the fire, and drunk enough to feel certain that this is an absolutely brilliant plan, Dave replies: “I'm going to buy meself a little farm, right? Then I’ll never have to worry about going hungry. And I'll get a sheep and a cow…and breed horses.”

“You can’t breed horses with cows,” Gazza points out.

“No, no, no; I’d breed the horses with other horses,” Dave says. “Obviously.”

“But you don’t know nothing about farming or taking care of animals neither,” Dobbin retorts.

“Well, I don’t have to know anything about it now, do I?” Dave replies, crossing his arms defensively. “I’ve loads of time to figure all that out when I’m older. Unless, of course, the band goes big.” He grins. “Then we’ll be too busy touring to do anything else.”

“Hmm, s’pose so,” Gazza agrees.

“I’ve heard worse ideas,” Dobbin shrugs.

“Like when you said that going to an open mic on Christmas Eve was a good idea?” Dave teases him.

Arlene watches the twins ripping into their sloppily-wrapped gifts beneath the large, tackily-decorated artificial ficus that Deb and Dog had brought in from the Officer’s Club. She smirks at their childish enthusiasm and leans over to murmur in Deb’s ear, “It’s a miracle you pulled this off.”

Deb, looking knackered with dark circles under her eyes, nods. 

Her parallel universe male version had suddenly returned earlier in the week, bringing with him two nearly-full-grown men, “their sons,” he’d explained, and turned her entire world upside down. She’d gone from spending her time in whatever way she wanted, minus the odd job here and there to keep things going, to trying to be some sort of emotional support and adult example to the emotionally-undeveloped teenagers. 

According to Dave, the boys had grown at an accelerated rate, and would’ve died if they stayed with him. The way they’d grown had left some understandable gaps in their learning. They needed structure and schooling, and to have their endless questions about themselves and their existence answered. Truthfully, Deb thought she was the last person who should be in charge of shaping someone else’s personality. But she hadn’t exactly had a choice in the matter.

It helped that the boys had a sense of humor. Jim and Bexley didn’t take things very seriously, which was lucky, considering their unusual circumstances. They were good lads, and Deb really was trying to make them feel loved and at home.

Which is why, when she’d realized that, by old Earth calendars, it was nearly Christmas, she’d enlisted the Dog to help her hunt down some appropriate gifts and passable decorations. The Dog had also helped her set it up inside the twins’ sleeping quarters on Christmas Eve. Luckily, the boys were used to sleeping through the ruckus of each others’ snoring, so they didn’t wake up, even when Dog accidentally drop-kicked one of the wrapped presents into a wall.

Arelene, of course, being a hologram, couldn’t touch anything. But she’d tagged along while Deb and Dog had pushed everything down to their room on a trolley, nattering on about how the whole thing was bound to go wrong somehow. When Deb had told her to shut the smeg up, she’d sniffed dismissively and marched off. So really, Arlene’s jab was basically a compliment.

“Yeah well, I do things right now and then,” Deb returns, bumping Arlene with her shoulder. 

She’d wrapped up a couple sets of artificial reality goggles, along with a few total immersion video games, the safe ones, like Zero G Kickboxing, Camelot Game, and Conan Doyle World. Deb had also found some London Jets jerseys in someone’s previously-unexplored sleeping quarters, so she’d wrapped them up as well. Then she’d stuffed a clean sock full of sweets for each of them, since she didn’t have Christmas stockings. (Luckily Arelene hadn’t noticed they were hers, as Deb didn’t have any clean socks.)

The twins start to fight over which game to play first as Hilly appears on the video screen. “Happy Christmas,” she says, before bursting into an off-key rendition of “We Wish You a Merry Christmas.” The twins cringe and cover their ears, while Deb and Arlene can hear the Dog howling along with Hilly from somewhere along the nearby corridors.

Arlene’s expression grows stern. “Now, see here, you baboon’s rump! Can’t you see Deb’s trying to have a nice moment with her boys?”

Deb grins, bumping against Arlene again, and this time, staying there to lean against her. “Aw, babe, I didn’t know you cared.”

Lister wanders through the refuse of ghosts long gone, scavenging another derelict vessel. This one, though, stands out from most he’s seen. Usually space vessels had seen commercial use of some sort, but this one was a billionaire’s private pleasure vessel. 

Unfortunately, he and his many companions seemed to prefer silk, so all of the beddings and clothing had fallen apart over time. The once-fresh food, neither canned nor irradiated, had long since rotted, even what had been in refrigeration units. There were no large stockpiles of supplies, either mechanical or medical. 

It seems that there isn’t actually much of anything worth salvaging. But Lister is going through all the rooms and storage spaces just once more. In case he missed something worthwhile. He doesn’t want to go back empty handed, especially since Rimmer and Holly’d already told him it was a waste of time. 

In the expansive kitchen, he paws through the objects beneath the sink. He’d ignored most of them before, after seeing that none of it was edible. But now, he looks more carefully, and selects a few likely-looking cleaning products and an unopened packet of sponges. He shoves them all in a duffel, and moves on.

In the master bedroom, he steps into the spacious closet, and sorts through the scraps of clothes, plucking ornate buttons off their rotting threads, and shoving them in his pockets. By the time he’s gone through all the piles, he’s got enough that they clink against each other as he walks.

At the back of the closet, he stands, swinging the duffel up on his shoulder. It hits the wall panel, knocking it loose. Curious, Lister peers into the dimly lit space. It seems to be a secret compartment. Putting his duffel back down, he pries the loose panel away. Lister kneels, and peers at the object inside what appears to be a hermetically sealed plexiglass display box.

“Oh, no smeggin’ way!” he exclaims to himself. 

Sat inside the box, on a plush crimson pillow, is a bicorne black beaver felt hat. A faded red, white, and blue cockade is affixed to the top right. It’s Napoleon Bonaparte’s hat. Right there for the taking. So take it, he does.

Back on Red Dwarf, Lister finds Kryten in the Drive Room. “Hey there, Krytes. Found ya somethin’.”

He unzips the duffel and pours out the cleaning products. They fall in a heap on the carpet. Lister drops the bag and scoops the bottles and packet of sponges up in his arms. Clumsily, he passes them over to Kryten. The mechanoid’s lipless mouth turned up into a smile.

“Oh, Mr. Lister, sir! I haven’t seen this brand of cleanser since I was on the Nova 5. This does bring back memories. Oh, thank you, sir!”

“No prob, Kryters,” Lister grins. “Enjoy.”

He leaves the duffel on the floor for Kryten to pick up, and returns to the trolley he left in the corridor. Lister pushes the trolley with the hermetically sealed box to the service lift. 

On the way, he spots the Cat, curled up on top of a vending machine, napping. He pulls the handfuls of buttons from his pockets and leaves them in a heap beside the Cat, for him to find when he wakes. Then he keeps on towards the lift.

Lister stops the trolley outside his sleeping quarters and enters to find Rimmer sat at the table with a magazine in front of him, a skutter beside him.

“No, no, no, you moronic mess of metal! Turn the other page! I’ve already read this one.”

Rimmer’s nostrils flare as the skutter makes a rude gesture with his clawed head. He kicks at it in frustration, but his projection, of course, phases right through the skutter, who takes this as its exit cue.

“Sorry to interrupt your fascinating day, Arnie,” Lister smirks, drawing Rimmer’s glare to him. He holds up his hands, placatingly, “I got something to show ya from that ship.”

“Why did you even bother, Listy?” Rimmer tuts, standing and striding closer. “The scans showed there wasn’t a smegging thing worth salvaging.”

“Yeah, well, it wouldn’t be the first time Holly made a mistake, would it?” Lister returns cheerfully. “C’mon, this might make up for your toy soldiers.”

“I hardly think bringing that up will put you on my good side, squire…. Oh, my god,” Rimmer stops just outside the bunkroom, eyes locked on the tricorn hat in its case. “You didn’t – that couldn’t be – it isn’t –”

“Napoleon’s hat, yeah,” Lister taps the small museum-like information card affixed to the front of the case, which identifies the hat’s original owner, and dates the relic to 1815. 

Rimmer takes a knee. He shoves his fist into his mouth to muffle a whine of overwhelming fanboy glee. Then he gets up, jogs down to the end of the corridor and back again. He stops in front of the trolley, trembling with excitement. He phases one hand through the case, and mimics touching the black beaver felt. “I’m touching Napoleon’s tricorne!” he whispered. 

Lister rolls his eyes but doesn’t argue. The poor smegger hasn’t been this excited since he mistook a garbage pod for an alien vessel.

Lister is starting to regret giving Rimmer the stupid hat. He’s become obsessed. He whined and fussed until Holly gave him the white and blue uniform worn to command the Grande Armée, complete with knee-high boots, golden epaulets and white waistcoat. He won’t let anyone else use the cinema, insisting that he’s got weeks worth of Napoleonic War documentaries to binge. And now, he’s found the git trying to actually put the thing on.

Of course, there’s no way for Rimmer to wear it, but he’s got four skutters holding the case above the chair he’s sat in. When they hold it steady, it looks, for a moment, as if the hat is actually on Rimmer’s head…above a pillow, surrounded by a large case, and likely not the grand effect the hologram had been hoping for.

“Hold it steady, you worthless mechanicals,” Rimmer snips, adjusting his white sash. “It was working there for a moment.

Lister draws a hand down his face. “Rimmer, this is low, even for you. You’re being ridiculous. It’s just a hat.”

Rimmer makes eye contact with him in the mirror. “I’ll have you know, miladdo –” he begins.

But then he stops, as one of the skutters loses hold of the case, causing it to swing wildly through Rimmer’s projection. Everything seems to move in slow-motion, but even still, Lister can’t get to the case before it crashes to the metal deck, breaking off a large corner. He watches, horrified, as the hermetic seal breaks, the felt is exposed to air for the first time in millions of years, and it disintegrates. Rimmer staggers to his feet. There’s a moment of utter silence, and then Rimmer starts to scream.

“You utterly smegging worthless skutters!” he hollers, face turning red. “I’ll see you all disassembled for this! You’ll be used for parts! You’ll never work on this ship again!”

Taking advantage of his frothing tirade, the skutters head for the door. Rimmer growls and rushes after them.

“Well?” Spanners asks, unable to keep the anxiety out of his voice. “What do you think?”

Ace leans casually against the counter of the little ring shop, looking cool as ever. In one hand he’s got a small box from which glints the diamond Spanners is hoping to put on Krissie’s finger. But first, he wants Ace’s opinion. After all, the man’s the most romantic, charismatic fellow in the entire Space Corps. He knows more than a thing or two about the way to a woman’s heart.

“Spanners, old geranium,” Ace drawls, snapping the box shut and tossing it towards Lister. “It’s just the ticket. She won’t say no to a rock like that from a man like you.”

Spanners, who caught the ring box, but just barely, holds it tightly between his palms as he receives a hearty slap on the arm from Ace.

“You reckon?”

“I’d say it was a sure bet, if I didn’t want to cheapen the romance,” Ace winks.

Spanners’ cheeks plump up cheerily as he grins. “Well then, I’d better have it rung up.”

Mimas is known, not for the Space Corps Test Base where Ace and Spanners work, but for the holiday opportunities it offers to spaceship crews and civilians alike. As such, it has a great many attractions designed to separate the visitors from their dollarpounds. Some, like the Zero Gee Orgy Center, are unique to the terraformed moon. Others, like the reproduction of Rockefeller Center Plaza with its iconic skating rink, are designed to cash in on Earth nostalgia. In the real New York, the Plaza is long gone, but on Mimas, it looks just like it does in all the old films.

Spanners, being a sucker for both old films and romantic gestures, is going to take Kristine Kochanski, his long-time girlfriend and the most incredible woman he’s ever met, to skate beneath the reproduction Christmas tree tonight, and propose to her there. Lister has never been skating himself, but Krissie loves it, and he’s sure it’ll be fine. He's a brilliant engineer. How hard can it be?

Lister lands hard on the ice, again. Before he scrabbles around on the slick surface to try to stand back up, he takes a moment to curse whoever came up with the idea of strapping knife blades to shoes in the first place. Krissie slides to a stop just beside him. Her pinball smile shines brightly as she reaches her hands for his, and Spanners feels his resentment melt away.

“Why did you insist on coming here if you can’t skate?” Krissie laughs as she hauls him back up onto his blades. 

“I wanted to do something special for you,” Spanners answers, pulling her closer, and not just because it’s easier to balance that way.

Krissie wraps her arms around his waist and presses a soft kiss to his lips. “I thought we were past this, Dave. You don’t have to do anything grand to impress me. I love you just the way you are.”

Spanners returns the kiss, but then slides carefully backwards from her embrace. “And I love you. That’s why,” he clumsily slides down on one knee, “I wanted to ask you this someplace special.”

Krissie’s gloved hands cover her mouth as Lister pulls the ring box from the pocket of his coat.

“Krissie, will you marry me?”

He opens the box, revealing the emerald-cut diamond on its white gold band. Kristine’s eyes tear up. She pulls the glove off her left hand, holding it out towards Lister.

“Oh, David, of course I will!”