[Red Dwarf - fic] A Spinning Fan - Part 06 - WIP (discontinued)

Lister/Rimmer, PG.
One day Lister woke up in a psychiatric ward and a doctor told him it was all a dream brought on by excessive drinking.
Written July 17, 2006.

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Lister tried to while away the hours by watching the ceiling. First he examined the few cracks, and then he examined the lights. The ceiling wasn’t very interesting.

He tried to resist looking to his right, towards Rimmer and Dwayne. He failed at that miserably, and he fell into a pattern of looking to his right every few seconds, then glancing away again.

Whenever he looked back, Dwayne was still watching him through half-opened eyes. Rimmer was sleeping, or faking it.

He forced himself not to look at the cabinet. Sure, reading things would be a way to pass the time, but Lister did not want to touch things here that he didn’t have to. If he did that, maybe this reality would be real and natural and Red Dwarf wrong.

The sandwiches he had gotten from not-Kochanski had tasted like cardboard, in a way. They hadn’t felt real. None of this did. If he looked at the ceiling right, it was a little fuzzy and he was reminded of the AR games he had experimented with on Red Dwarf. They hadn’t felt real enough, so he hadn’t played with them much. He was bored, but he wasn’t that bored. Everything in the game reality had been real, but background objects didn’t do anything if he touched them, characters that weren’t meant to be interacted with repeated themselves, and the sky looked fuzzy if you glanced at it.

Lister knew the ceiling wasn’t a game ceiling. It looked solid, and it only fuzzed if Lister screwed up his eyes just so.

By now, he was sure that this place wasn’t an AR game. Still, he wasn’t going to touch the background objects.

“Leave the cabinet alone…” He muttered softly. Smeg. Now he was curious, but thankfully, not enough to go play with reality.

He stole another glance at his roommates.

Dwayne had closed his eyes, but Rimmer was staring at the ceiling, now.

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An hour later, Rimmer stood up and pulled out a pack of cards from under his bed. He sat cross-legged and began to play Solitaire.

Lister sat up and watched him.

A few minutes later, Rimmer was staring at the cards, and completely missing the red jack on the red queen.

“Hey. Rimmer.” Lister said quietly. For some reason, it sounded entirely too loud in the quiet room.

“Hmm?” Rimmer didn’t look up.

“Red jack on black queen.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Rimmer smiled in his direction and made the move.

Lister smiled faintly and leaned back, listening to the quiet snap of the cards.

He felt content, for the first time since he had arrived here.

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Dinner time arrived with a bell ringing twice. Dwayne jumped to his feet as Rimmer cleaned up the cards, and both of them waved for him to follow as they left the room.

“Hurry. We don’t want to miss the food.” Dwayne muttered to him as they hurried down the corridor. “Thursday’s fish night, and I’m not missing any of it.”

Rimmer bristled at the comment. “You aren’t playing with the fish, Dwayne. I actually want to get to eat today.”

“Hey! You ate at breakfast, right?”

“And I missed lunch, thanks to you.”

Lister started. “You missed lunch?”

“Thanks to Dwayne here…” Rimmer grumbled.

“I would’ve shared my sandwiches with you, you know. All you had to do was ask.” Okay, maybe not. Lister mentally shrugged at himself. He didn’t really know. Anyways, he could make the gesture here.

“You would?” Rimmer seemed surprised at the offer. “Seriously?”

“Yeah, man. Why not?” Lister’s mind helpfully offered up dozens of excuses why not. Lister pushed those away and tried to focus on Rimmer. “I wasn’t that hungry.”

Dwayne laughed. “You’re leading me on. You? Giving food to Rimmer? Ha!”

Lister scowled. Why couldn’t Dwayne be consistent? One moment, he was threatening Lister because he thought he was hurting Rimmer, the next he was casually dismissing Rimmer and Lister.

Rimmer scowled at Dwayne. “Why shouldn’t he? Lister isn’t like you.”

“There ain’t nobody like me!” Dwayne screeched with laughter and danced up the corridor.

“No, there isn’t, thank god.” Rimmer muttered.

Lister sniggered at the remark as Dwayne yowled. What the smeg was going on?

Rimmer noted the confusion and sobered up a bit. “Lister, we’re all crazy here.” He offered quietly. “Don’t forget that.”

Then he sped up to catch up with Dwayne. Lister almost stopped walking.

How could he have forgotten that? He was in a smegging hospital! This wasn’t Red Dwarf. At all. People were crazy here, and just because they looked and acted like his shipmates didn’t mean that they were normal people. Lister couldn’t forget that. Just because he had finally gotten somewhat used to Rimmer and Dwayne wasn’t an excuse for completely forgetting basic alternate dimension survival skills. (Okay, he didn’t have any basic alternate dimension survival skills, but he could make up some as he went along.)

Lister silently vowed not to let himself forget that. If he could forget that people here were crazy, what else could he end up forgetting?

Lister hurried to catch up with his roommates and tried not to shiver too much.

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