#was he trying to get back to his universe (and his lister) or was it pure dumb luck

[a-literal-toaster-wtf]

anyone ever think about how collectively the aces ultimate goal is to die because . boy do i

[immoralkombat]

feeling(s)

Kenshi has been blind for maybe an hour or two.

Johnny looks over at him with sympathy. He's not sure what he could possibly do or say to make things seem any less bleak for him. The man was just trying to get his family's heirloom back and now, after months of training and dedication, one of his five senses is gone permanently through no fault of his own. If Johnny were in Kenshi's position, he's sure he'd be feeling just as desolate, if not more so.

Kung Lao is sitting in the far corner, talking to Baraka. He seems genuinely fascinated by Tarkat as a disease. Were Johnny not in the same situation as them, he would find that particular conversation topic a bit morbid. Right now, it's really all they have to talk about. They've already exhausted all the small talk options you normally go through when first meeting someone. They might as well start talking about the disease that'll eventually kill Baraka.

The salve on the cloth seems to have worked a little, because at least Kenshi isn't moaning in pain every few seconds anymore. Not that it makes things significantly more cheerful, but it does help the atmosphere a bit.

Johnny taps on his knees as he sits, eyes darting between looking at Kung Lao and Kenshi. He's kind of in between where the two have sat themselves, a visual and metaphorical median between the two ways one could possibly react to getting imprisoned by a sorcerer that's almost 100% going to kill you. (To be fair, there isn't much that connects the points of "casually talking about a stranger's terminal illness with them as though you're both standing by the office water cooler talking about whatever hit TV show is airing these days" and "rocking back in forth in the corner about how a different terminally ill stranger took your eyes and you have nothing left in this world." Johnny supposes the best middle point is "looking anxiously between your two co-workers and not saying anything because Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you supposed to say in this situation besides aforementioned terminal illness.")

He really wishes that Kenshi still had his eyes, because every time he looked at Johnny, it always seemed to make everything feel okay.

Johnny thinks for a second and then scoots closer to Kenshi. It's only once he accidentally bumps up against Kenshi's foot and scares the living shit out of everyone in the cell that he realizes he probably should've given an audible cue that he was going to be approaching the newly blind guy.

After Kenshi's done having a mini panic attack over the sudden Hollywood A-lister jumpscare he's gotten, Johnny looks at him and asks, quietly, "Do you want to hold Sento for a bit?"

Kenshi turns to face him and even underneath the newly christened blindfold, Johnny can tell that Kenshi is looking at him with the most surprised and reverent eyes in the universe. The kind of look that you'd get and say "fuck this stupid sword, I'd pay $3 million just to get this guy to look at me like that again."

Kenshi's mouth opens as though he's going to say something, but it shuts again before any words or sounds can come out. He opts to nod in response and Johnny takes the scabbard from off his back, holds it in his hands gently and passes it to Kenshi. Their fingertips graze one another, a way to indicate that the blind man is in the right spot. The touch sends crackles of electricity through Johnny and he wonders if Kenshi feels them too.

It's like the tattoos on Kenshi's hands are swirling around him, colors dancing in front of his eyes. It's more beautiful than any lame fucking Disney movie ever could be.

The yakuza's voice is hoarse as he says "Thanks." It's so small that Johnny can almost see it breaking in the air. He wants to put his hand on Kenshi's and tell him that things will be okay, that he's going to pay for a sight companion, any kind of corrective surgeries he wants, whatever it takes. He wants to tell him that he's still just as strong and fierce and goddamn handsome now as he was before. He wants to kiss him so fucking badly it makes his entire being ache.

He settles for saying "You're welcome," and then sitting next to Kenshi in silence.

He watches the way that he holds Sento in his hands, feels every single nick in the scabbard, every single imperfection. It's the first time in Johnny's life that he's ever wanted to be a sword and, if he keeps hanging out with Kenshi after this, (which he hopes he can), it almost certainly won't be the last.

Johnny wishes that Mileena had taken Kenshi's tear ducts with her after she'd stabbed his eyes out, because the short sad sobs that wrack through his body are almost too much to bear witness to. When he cries, it moves through his entire being. It sends a shockwave from his gut upward, makes him lurch his shoulders forward and hug himself.

"H-Hey, what's wrong?" Johnny asks. He knows it's a stupid fucking question, obviously everyone knows what's wrong, most of all the guy it happened to. But it's all he can think to ask as he watches Kenshi continue to awkwardly jerk alongside his cries.

Kenshi's head turns to face Johnny. From beyond the thin red cloth that covers his eye sockets, Johnny can feel them boring into him.

"Cage, could I touch you? I want to remember what your face looks like."

If Johnny were operating on his full mental capacity, he would probably explode at this question. He would become the fireworks they popped last night at the banquet over their heads as they feasted. He would be attached to one end of a fuse with Li Mei holding the other end, readying herself to spark it and send him to the stratosphere.

"Y-Yeah, of course you can, Ken-doll. Just make sure not to damage the goods - people pay good money for this mug to show up on their big screens."

The smugness in his voice would normally earn him a "tch" or a groan, (or an eye roll), from Kenshi. Hearing him chuckle under his breath makes his heart soar.

He turns his face toward him and waits, but no touch comes. His eyes close, he anticipates the electricity to come back... and instead he hears Kenshi clearing his throat awkwardly.

Johnny opens his eyes and finds that Kenshi's still got his hands on Sento. He tries not to be jealous of the sword again, but as with any other time he's tried not to be jealous of someone or something that has what he wants, he fails miserably.

"Could you get closer, Cage?"

"Not the first time I'm hearing that question, won't be the last. How close you need me, handsome?"

The words come out before he can even process them. Jesus Christ, is he really that much of a disaster that he can just openly call a guy he's been crushing on for at least a month handsome without even thinking about it? He's a fucking mess. His wife left him and now he doesn't know how to act. She was gonna be the only person he'd ever be able to trick into loving him and now she was gone.

"I'm going to turn, and I suggest you do the same. I want to be facing you. You can sit with your legs touching mine if it helps."

Great, now Kenshi has a colorful blindfold that also serves as a perfect swatch for the shade of red Johnny's face turns every time the man says something that's totally fucking normal for two people that are acquainted with one another.

Johnny does as he's told, because if there's one thing he's good at, it's taking directions. (Ignoring literally every single major motion picture he's ever been in, every statement he's ever made to the press after consulting his legal teams and public consultants, and generally living life up until this point.)

His knees knock against Kenshi's and it takes him aback for a second, how giddy and childish the butterflies he feels in his stomach are. Getting to know Kenshi was so simple. He wishes he had just taken a second and been less of a dickwad back when they'd first met, because maybe then it'd be easier for him to grow a pair of cajones and tell Kenshi that he doesn't spend a single night without thinking about how much he wants to trace the tattoos on his hands and arms. Maybe if he had just given Sento over, it'd be easier to admit that the low rumble of Kenshi's voice does something to stir up the pool of heat in his stomach that he thought had been long since gone after getting married to Cristal. Maybe if he hadn't tied Kenshi to one of his kitchen chairs, it'd be easier to ask him if kissing washed-up celebrities was something he'd be interested in doing.

"I'll put my hand out, you lean forward to match it."

Kenshi's palm is extended and it takes every ounce of willpower in Johnny's aching body to not press his lips against it. He leans forward until his cheek is lightly touching the yakuza's hand.

He must be hearing things, because he swears he hears Kenshi's breath hitch when they make contact for the first time. Nah, surely not. Must've been the wind.

If Kenshi's senses are heightened because of the loss of his vision, then Johnny's senses are heightened because of the gain of his touch. He purses his lips together to stop from letting out some sort of obscene sound as he feels Kenshi's hand slowly smooth over his cheek. He thanks whatever fucked up Gods exist other than Liu Kang that he finally got on that moisturizing routine that he learned off of TikTok three months ago.

As Kenshi's hand slowly feels out every angle and curve of Johnny's face, his thoughts rush a mile a minute. He wonders if he should've done a closer shave today - maybe his stubble is gonna be too sharp and it'll hurt Kenshi and leave him with little cuts or rug burn on his pretty perfect wrap-around-my-throat-please hands. He wonders if his nose is too big. He wonders if he maybe should've invested in hair plugs after that one weird SNL dropout made a comment about his weird square hairline back when he guest starred on the Comedy Central roast of Megan Fox. He wonders if his eyes are too small or too large or too close together or too far apart. He wonders if he should smile so Kenshi can feel his dimples.

"Yep, it all feels just like how I remember it. Although the stubble has gotten a little longer."

That is certainly not the answer he was expecting to hear.

His voice is small, barely there, as he chokes out his question. "You remember what I look like?"

Kenshi nods. "I do."

Johnny goes to open his mouth to ask, "Then why did you ask to touch it if you already knew?"

But then Kenshi's fingers are on his lips, tracing them with the reverence he'd have holding Sento, and for a moment, Johnny finally thinks he's better than that stupid fucking sword. His smile has the same curves, the same edges. The only difference is that Kenshi can't accidentally hurt himself this way. (He can, however, accidentally hurt Johnny. But even that would be better than the alternative, he thinks.)

Kenshi's thumb is on his bottom lip, the rest of his hand now holding Johnny's chin. If he tilts it up even one degree, Johnny thinks it'll be over for him, that he'll be kissing Kenshi before he can even think to stop himself. He'd always had poor impulse control - why else would he have spent $3 million on a fucking sword to hang up in his living room?

"These are the same, too. I'm glad you weren't hurt in the fight, Cage."

Johnny feels so fucking overwhelmed. He wants to ask so many things. First of all, what does "these are the same, too" mean? Second, why does he care about the guy who bought his fucking family heirloom and refuses to give it back? Third, why does he insist on calling him Cage like one day he won't end up calling him Johnny and breaking his heart? Fourth, what in the goddamn fuck does he mean about Johnny's fucking lips being the goddamn motherfucking same?!

Johnny decides to play it up like he always does. "Well, 'course. Gotta keep my pretty mouth. It's what makes the big bucks. I wouldn't be the same without it."

Kenshi smirks, and thank Liu Kang's weird god siblings that he's blind right now, because Johnny is beet red, mouth agape, with his eyebrows raised (and he's fairly certain that something else also rises).

"That's true. You would not be the same without that infamous mouth." Kenshi accents the compliment(?) with a playful slap to Johnny's cheek, and then his hand is withdrawn entirely, leaving an empty ghost where he should still be holding Johnny's face in his hands.

He bites back the urge to immediately ask if Kenshi wants to know just how infamous the mouth is, and settles for clearing his throat and moving back to sitting against the wall next to Kenshi.

He looks over at him after he's gotten calmed down. His heart is still jackhammering against his ribs, but as long as Kenshi can't feel his pulse, he doesn't have to know. Kenshi seems to sense Johnny's eyes on him because he turns to face him, red blindfold all that stands between the gaping holes where Kenshi's eyes used to be and Johnny's gaze full of adoration.

The yakuza grabs Sento from his lap and hands it back to Johnny.

"Thank you. I appreciate you letting me hold it. And I appreciate your help in grounding me back to reality."

Johnny nods, taking Sento back and putting it where it so wrongfully deserves to be, strapped against Johnny's sore fucking back.

"No problem. Lemme know whenever you get the urge to feel out what an Adonis looks like, I'm happy to oblige." His comment is a means to an end. He plays up the egoism to ignore the shock that courses through him as Kenshi's fingertips touch his one last time.

He resolves then and there to give Sento back as soon as they escape from here, and they will escape.

This cannot be the last time he feels Kenshi's hands on him.

Baraka whispers, about as well as he can without lips or an inside voice, "Do they not realize how much they yearn for one another?"

Kung Lao shakes his head, putting a hand on Baraka's shoulder and immediately regretting it once he feels a spike tear into his palm. "They've just gotta be stupid about it for a bit longer. They'll figure it out."

"Surely their pining has to cause some sort of agony for you as well, does it not, Earthrealmer?" Baraka looks genuinely confused, or as close to it as he can get from what Kung Lao can tell.

Kung Lao hangs his head, sighing languidly. "Of course it does. But what else am I gonna do about it? Tell them? They're not gonna believe me. Trust me, they've got to figure it out on their own time, or they never will."

And as he sees Johnny's hand inch closer to Kenshi's, finally overlapping the tattoos and interlocking their fingers, Kung Lao thinks that maybe the agony won't last much longer.

[a-sterling-rose]

Danny Phantom Writing Prompt: The Lack of a Hero Complex

Once Danny publicly shames Vlad into returning the status quo of Amity Park, Danny also stops ghost fighting.

The Human Trio and Vlad confront Danny about his lack of action. The Human Trio finally gets a taste of the sleep deprivation Danny experienced when he didn't want to burden them from their schedules while the property damage continued to tarnish Vlad's public reputation. Danny just laughs.

Sam, completely livid at the lack of reaction: Who’s going to protect the town, Danny?

Danny gets up from the couch and looks directly into Vlad's eyes: Yeah, Vlad, how do you plan on protecting your town?

Danny lightly chuckles while he goes down to the lab where the Fenton Parents were working. He was just gonna play on the family computer while his Dad would boast about their latest idea.

The human trio:

Vlad:

When the ghosts who come to directly harass Danny, he decides he just needs to be completely honest with each of them.

Danny: Listen, I'll admit I kinda had fun with the bantering, but I want to focus on better things now. I was never really interested in any of you.

The Ghosts:

The results?

Vlad has to set up legit ghost detectors all over the city and properly hire the Fentons for protection. Vlad hoped that the hiring would gain him favor from Maddie, but he finally got to see how she really was compared to his idealized version. Their constant public damages made Vlad's reputation even more tarnished, and their lack of change despite him personally talking to them about it makes him grow equal resentment towards both of them. It gets to the point where Vlad just sets up the same ecto repellent he uses to keep ghosts from escaping his portal back in Winsconsin. The extra paperwork he has to do now governing is not worth the mess he caused. Political power wasn't as worth it as he thought it would be.

The Human Trio gave Danny the cold shoulder for a while, but that just gave him some well needed alone time to raise his grades. He even finally got to join the astronomy club like he planned before the portal accident. They were a very chill group and welcomed him to sit with them at lunch, so he was never alone. Dash tried to start their usual routine, but that was immediately hauled by the club leader.

Dash wasn't clever enough to figure out how to respond to being called 'Pussy Lips' by a girl, so he just kinda sulked away.

Dash will say the occasional snarky comment, but he never bring himself to get too close to Danny after a club member told Danny to tell Dash and the other football players they could take turns sucking him off after their club meeting. Dash just wasn't clever enough to get things back to normal.

Though the club members weren't A-listers, they weren't at the bottom, so Danny social life became better.

The Human Trio tried to continue on like before, but they were soon caught ghost hunting by the Fentons. There was no punishment, just overactive excitement, seeing they were finally interested in Ghost Hunting. Now, having to join the Fentons whenever there was a ghost detected, the fun of it is zapped away for them, making the tiredness not worth it anymore. The three eventually apologized to Danny, which he accepts, and the group finally accepts the new changes.

There are many things that can upset a ghost, but the universal act that can anger any core is being ignored. Even with the ecto repellent, the stronger ghosts manage to get through and try to get Danny's attention. The boy always just texts Vlad about how he sucks at his job and to take care of the disruption. The ghost eventually pick up that their violent outburst aren't working, so it gets to the point that they try to get his attention another way.

They tried to coax him with things they believed he liked. It is comparable to how Hyper Cat-lovers try to get a shy cat to love them.

Lunch Lady offers him a freshly made meal when he's low on money one day. He thanks her but says he had a big breakfast.

Ember tries to act like their best friends in front of the A-listers, so Danny will become more popular at school. He greets her but continues on his stroll like she was a typical citizen.

Technus offers to give Danny the answer key to all the tests for his classes, but he denies this offer instantly. He'll never cheat on a test ever again.

It got to the point that Skulker said he would drop the promise of getting Danny's pelt if he just let him see his ghostly form. Creeped out, Danny just backed away. He was thankful Valerie was close by.

Box Ghost actually got somewhere when he offered a three-dimensional solar system model. It was in a box he had, so Box Ghost offered it to Danny. He accepted it as the one in the club was showing its age.

This seemed to make these random ghost visits even more frequent. Danny guessed Box Ghost bragged about his 'accomplishment'.

Basically, the ghosts' obsession to defeat Danny changes to them wanting his attention. Vlad’s obsession becomes solely focused on Danny as he just finds Maddie and Jack so annoying now. Like, Vlad just wants to get custody of Danny and get the hell out of Amity Park. He doesn't even want to kill the Fentons now out of fear that they will become ghosts.

After the Ember incident, the A-listers kept trying to buddy up to him. However, Danny learned how they really were, so he just treated them the way he treated ghosts. Now, it seemed they were just as desperate.

Danny will turn into Phantom only when it's necessary, that or he's in the mood to fly. The downside to this change is that whenever he does transform, he always has an entourage of attention-starved ghosts following behind him. He can't even imagine how things would be if he went to the Ghost Zone.

Additions:

For those who want to know the members of the astronomy club-

For those who want to see the club room-

[siltyriver]

Get In Loser, We’re Going Ghost Hunting

(Danny Phantom DanDash Prompt #2)

Mean Girls AU in which Danny and Jazz have been homeschooled and/or taken online classes so their parents could travel the country (and sometimes abroad) to further their studies in the paranormal/clean energy (ectoplasm) but Maddie gets offered a position at a prestigious university or lab and they finally settle down enough to go to public school.

Danny is NOT Phantom (…yet?) as his parents never got around to actually building the portal (that would require a stable place of living, and their priorities shifted to ectoplasmic energy more so than ecto-entities) so he’s just plain old Danny Fenton, son of the weirdo ghost hunting scientists.

He is rightfully pretty nervous but finds himself making quick friends with Sam and Tucker who take him under their wing for the first couple of days until he gets invited to sit with the ‘A-Listers’ at lunch (Wes stops him in the middle of the cafeteria to grill him about his parents’ work and research and Dash or Paulina tell him to leave Danny alone, cue the ‘why don’t we know you?’ plastic spiel) and thus springs a revenge plot for Sam and Tucker who have both been wronged by one or multiple of the group.

They make Danny their inside man, passing along the stuff that is talked about and trying to bring the downfall of Paulina Sanchez and Dash Baxter.

But, the more time he spends with the group the more he finds himself just having fun and genuinely enjoying himself (minus the reality checks when one of them ends up bullying someone and no one in the group sticks up for the victim and get uncomfortable when Danny does so — but surprisingly Dash never bullies anyone past a few stinging words and Danny finds himself curious as to why, and maybe there’s angst later if Dash does get physical with someone that pissed him off and Danny realizes he’s not the type of guy he thought he was and Dash has to face the consequences or smth… maybe…)

He finds that Dash and Paulina aren’t actually a couple, they just pretend so that they can stay in the hierarchy of ‘power couple’ that gives them like ultimate status in the school. They’re not in love, they aren’t dating, they’re just really close friends (Paulina is in fact in love with Sam who she spread rumors about being gay in a twisted way to protect herself. Gotta love that internalized homophobia and denial.)

Which then opens the floodgates of Realization and he finds himself getting flustered around Dash, wanting to spend time with him and creating his own schemes to put the two of them together whenever he can. He knows it’s a disaster waiting to happen and he knows that it’s just going to be painful for him, but he can’t stop it from happening, especially not when Dash seems to be flirting back sometimes ???

Yada yada, maybe there’s a burn book, maybe not, maybe someone gets hit by a bus, maybe not, idk I just work here, man

(The school-wide therapy session would be hilarious and it wouldn’t just be the girls in this version which opens even more funny possibilities, but who knows?)

It obviously ends with prom and the couples getting together, finally, so woo hoo that’s a win for love and a wrap

—

(… alternate version where Danny IS Phantom and is also dealing with ghost shenanigans the entire time and trying to maintain his secret identity on top of the new battle of high school drama. enter Wes Weston who is suspicious and keeps trying to get people on board with the conspiracy lmao)

(also bonus points if Jazz actually graduated early so she doesn’t attend school with Danny and is just there for the therapy session ‘why can’t everyone just get along?’ ‘she doesn’t even go here!’ scene lol)

[found-family-tournament]

Found Family Tournament Round 1 Part 17 Group 84

Propaganda and further pictures under the cut

Seven Birds: Taako, Magnus, Merle, Lup, Lucretia, Davenport, Barry

Boys from the Dwarf: Arnold Rimmer, David Lister, Kryten and The Cat

Submissions are still open!

Seven Birds:

they literally spent a hundred years becoming a family and lucretia tried her best to protect the but they could only save the world after all of them had been reunited and they LOVE each other they deserve to win this whole thing

Boys from the Dwarf:

Listen. These guys actually canonically have nobody else, the entire rest of the crew of this spaceship died in a nuclear incident which TECHNICALLY was Rimmer's fault. Forced family. Lister is the last human alive, Rimmer is technically a ghost kept alive by technology, Kryten is a robot and Cat is a cat. They live on this massive spaceship yet still choose to spend all their time together, it has been like 30 years at this point. I cannot stress to you how they had the option to leave and go elsewhere in this ship the size of a city at any given time yet chose to stick together after 30 years. Every opportunity any of them has had to get off this godforsaken ship, they have turned down. They would do anything for eachother but also would leave eachother on a random planet without hesitation (and actually have done). They are best buddies, they even have a handsign/handshake.

They’re an unlikely crew but ultimately they’re all each other has. Dave wakes up from stasis as the last human alive and to keep him sane the ship’s computer brought his dead bunk mate back as a hologram. They don’t usually get along but after being all each other has they ultimately need each other and do care about each other. They’re just hard assess about it. Also on board is a humanoid being called The Cat, who is from a species that evolved from a cat that was smuggled on board the ship before the accident that killed the crew. He’s usually self-centred but even after finding his own species again he ultimately decides his home is with the boys from the dwarf. And then there’s Kryten, a service mechanoid with an over-active guilt chip that they rescued from a crashed ship along the way. They’re dysfunctional and complete opposites to each other in many ways, but they are always together in every parallel universe they come across. And even when they do separate to try to do their own thing, ultimately they always come back to each other. They’ll act like they all dislike each other at times, but ultimately if trouble threatens one of them then the rest will band together. Also their dynamic together is just extremely funny.

[lixxen]

hello beloved mutual lixxen. im curious of about danny phantom! ive seen your reblogs of it, and i was wondering if you could explain the premise of it? bc my memory of it was a kids show from nickelodeon, but it seems super popular. is it still running??

anyways it seems kind of fun, im thinking of starting it

Welcome back to Lixx explaining hyperfixations!!

Danny Phantom is a children's cartoon from 2004 that has three seasons and a graphic novel (that came out last year) (the show has been done for twenty years)

It focuses on Daniel Fenton, who is a 14 year old who lives in a small town somewhere in the northern Midwest of the US (near Wisconsin but not in it). His parents are scientists/inventors who are obsessed with ghosts. They create a portal that should bring them to the Ghost Zone, a special realm that ghosts come from, but it doesn't work. Danny does inside of it and turns it on, which turns him into a Halfa. A Halfa is a half ghost, half human. He canonically dies twice in the show. I will not elaborate on how this kid just dies a few times.

The show follows Danny and his friends (and various classmates and reoccurring cast) as he learns how to use his powers and fight off ghosts along the way!

The cast includes:

His older sister Jazz, who is actually a really good big sister who cares a lot even if she's overbearing

Sam, his main love interest who is a Jewish goth girl and doesn't eat meat

His best friend Tucker, who is a techno nerd who loves meat

The A-Listers, who are the popular kids

Valerie, who is a love interest and enemy at certain points

His parents Maddie and Jack, who are overbearing and can be kinda crazy at times

Vlad, his not uncle who is fucking insane and a main bad guy. In love with Maddie

Plus various others!!

The fandom is very active and old. There are regular Tumblr/AO3 events that happen every year with a schedule and there is a steady fanon that has been built around the show that is basically canon (or supported by the canon). The creator, Butch Hartman, is a bigoted asshole who everyone hates.

The show is very fun and it is bingeable. It has a specific formula and is predictable at times. But also, it's very grim because you slowly realize that this 14 year old kid is literally carrying the weight of a realm on his shoulders and is living a double life where his parents basically want him dead and gone while loving his alive self

The fandom loves gore/whump.

I'm not kidding.

I have written a handful of gore fics for this show and tbh they're not even the worst things ever. If you've ever want to see some of the most jaw dropping whump and gore, this fandom has it.

We have fics that are literally the best written alternate universes and have nothing to do with the original show besides characters and death. Like. There's bound books of that specific fic. I haven't read it but it's long and it will make you sob

Some things that are lore building/fanon shit that everyone knows:

Ghost obsessions (you'll know it when you see it)

Ghost cores having specific effects on ghosts (it's canon but not really talked about in canon for more than two seconds)

Danny having allergic reactions to blood blossoms outside of his ghost form

Ghost speak being a ghost language all ghosts speak

Wes Weston and Kyle Weston being unnamed background characters that the fans took and made into full characters. It's actually cool as fuck. They're fully functioning characters and I love them

Death echoes/death days

I will warn that whatever feelings you have regarding to ships needs to be kicked to the side. All things go for ships here. Don't like the ship/don't condone it, don't interact with ir. You will waste your breath trying to play police over ship

Ships also have names. Platonic AND romantic ships. Here's some I can name off the top of my head:

Pitch pearl: Danny/Phantom (Danny gets split into a ghost and human form at one point)

Amethyst ocean: Danny/Sam

Savant Par: Danny/Tucker

Everlasting trio: Danny/Tucker/Sam

Badger cereal: Danny & Vlad (I think????)

Swagger Bishie/Golden Twinkie: dash/Danny

Pink astronaut: Danny/Paulina

Gray Ghost: Danny/Valerie

So yeah lol

This is my most read fic I think. I am gonna start writing again for DP soon. I love reading them

(here's my AO3 fic tags from my bookmarks for DP)

[celticcrossanon]

Do you really believe that Meghan would ever let Harry humiliate her with a divorce? I don’t. I think their ‘marriage’ is so twisted and toxic - and he’s basically a willing hostage. I truly believe she would never, ever allow “this one”(aka her property) to leave her of his own volition; and if he dare tried she would do everything in her power to coerce him into staying, mainly using the ‘children’, which I only believe she had (most likely not of body) to prolong her grift/ con and control over him and obviously as insurance if a divorce was forced by the BRF. I don’t believe he’ll ever be able to get rid of her because Meghan has no prospects and is universally despised. People are sick of Harry too, but see him as somewhat of a victim of her abuse, which I do agree with also. He’s not innocent, but she is so much worse and deserves to be dealt with harshly. It’s exhausting never seeing that bottom feeding parasite not getting her karma. The injustice is actually beyond intolerable. I’ve given up hope and feel that the gruesome twosome aren’t even worth hate watching at this point. It’s the same old stale crap with two overgrown children and their lack of shame and self awareness is mortifying. She will still be maligning the BRF and trying to destroy William and Catherine’s marriage until her last miserable breath because that is the kind of unrelenting, venomous, evil, (again miserable) piece of shite she is to her malevolent, rotten core. I hope she stays in this jail of a marriage and I hope it eats and eats and eats away at her every single day. Someday she’ll f*ck over the wrong person and it will all come crashing down, albeit at a snail’s pace, apparently 🙄

Hi Nonny,

I actually think Meghan is suffering quite a bit at the moment. The people she wants to adore her (the Hollywood A Listers) are mocking her and ignoring her, she has no deals that are remotely top tier, and she is back to her pre Suits days of hustling for minor jobs. For someone with her ego, this must be dreadfully humiliating, no matter how she spins it to herself. People are bored with her antics, and for a person like Meghan, having people bored with your presence and deliberately ignoring you is the worst fate possible.

As for the divorce, I agree that I can't see Meghan leaving Harry until she has another sucker lined up to take her on and foot her bills. What I can see is Harry leaving Meghan and going away somewhere. I agree that Meghan is an abuser and Harry started out as the abused person in the relationship, although now he seems to have willingly participated in some of it (I also think that Harry is not a nice person, but even horrible people can be victims of abuse by others, and that is what I see happening here, at least in the beginning). What could happen, and what may be happening now, is that Harry slowly wakes up to the fact that he is being manipulated, and then he decides he has had enough and leaves. If that happens then I think that Harry will not be swayed by any threats about the children to stay, because he will put himself first (as he always does). The question for me is will Harry wake up and start ot realise what is going on, or will he remain as he is for the rest of his life. Only time can answer that.

[lightofraye]

New followers of your blog! Love your posts and deep answers. SupNat was part of my younger years when it was aired originally. I stopped watching after the 5th season and I will never rewatch past that but I am here for the tee. Especially about the personal connections because I love to try to understand human emotions and the reasons behind their actions. What do you think about the fact that Jensen went behind Jared’s back with The Winchesters? (a show shouldn’t be exist at the first place)

Hello there!

First off, love the username! Big fan of Practical Magic myself.

And thank you so much for appreciating my posts!

Can I just say though? You're missing some gems in season 6 and beyond of Supernatural. (One favorite? The French Mistake. I still can't stop cackling over that one. Sam and Dean find themselves in an alternative universe as actors, Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles.)

As for the tea, well... it's largely centric on Danneel, but you will find some things about Jensen and perhaps others. I hope you, uh, well I can't say "enjoy" regarding emotional abuse, etc, but um, perhaps glean some understanding? There we go.

And woof. You came with a loaded question.

So... initially, I'll be honest. I believed Jensen's side of things. But as I delved deeper into it, seeing deleted tweets and screenshots and the timing of it all...

I was disappointed. Vastly. Jensen essentially betrayed Jared. He knew Jared was working on Walker, was told of the whole process if I'm not mistaken and yet he couldn't tell Jared that he was thinking of a prequel? That he approached Robbie Thompson about it? Not one word?

No, I don't buy his excuse of being superstitious. He still could've spoken and confided into his longtime friend, his fellow co-star, the person he said was a brother to him? Because even if it "failed", at least he would've had Jared there for support.

Plus, the leak (and there's a popular theory that it was Danneel who prematurely leaked it, but nothing is confirmed) came... and Jensen lied about not having phones while on set of The Boys.

Plus, after all of it... Jensen never formally apologized. He didn't humble himself. Jared sucked it up and took the dive... because he was, sadly, the better man.

I get it. Jensen couldn't let go of Dean. Believe me, I really get it. But there were so many ways he could've done this.

I'm disappointed in him. I feel the fame of his time on Supernatural, the cult following, as it were, got to his head. Jensen started to get too big for his britches. Whether that's Danneel's influence, the c-lister fame, his fan following, or a combination, it got to him.

So yeah. Disappointed. I hope he looks back and humbles himself.

[deadgit]

Red Dwarf story ideas I’ve had while intoxicated: Hologram ghost story: In a future, distant even from the point of the show, Lister and the Cat have passed on. Kryten has stopped working. Red Dwarf itself is slowly deteriorating. Holly has mostly stopped working; the ship can only move forward, still picking up enough fuel as it does to continue shuffling forward, lights flickering through the massive gaps gouged into the sides. A hologram is still running, even though the hologram suite was badly damaged in a trip through an asteroid belt. He can’t store any new memories, and many of his old memories are lost, but he wanders around the deteriorating ship, and sometimes wonders where everybody has gone and why he’s alone, and if it’s all his fault.

Changing the past: Lister and Rimmer have gotten old in deep space. As Lister’s health begins to decline, they discover a technology that allows someone to force their current consciousness into a past form of themselves. Lister could go back to before the disaster and avoid everything. In one universe, he decides that he can’t do that - he’s lived an entire life, and that’s enough for him. In another universe, he and Rimmer suddenly wake up on Red Dwarf, young and alive and surrounded by people, with decades of memories of the lonely end of humanity. Lister is aware that if he saves himself from the disaster, he’s condemning Kryten to millions of years more in total isolation and making it so Cat will never be born. Despite how badly he wanted to be surrounded by people again, he finds it hard to spend time with anyone but Rimmer. All of his friends think that there’s something wrong with him, because overnight he’s changed completely. He and Rimmer try to warm people about the faulty drive plate, but they feel like no one listens to them. They both get off of Red Dwarf at Titan, adopt Frankenstein, and try not to think about the past or the future too much.

[yaminerua]

I think one little thing about Dimension Jump that gets me is the fact that like… Rimmer is going off on a jealousy fuelled rant about how he can’t stand Ace and he keeps making all these remarks assuming Ace must be gay and doing lots of mental gymnastics to try to explain how Ace may literally be a version of himself but he can still call him gay without it meaning he himself is also gay. (And then in the deleted scene he hastily shuts Kryten up when he tries to point out the flaws in what he’s saying lmao)

But this swiftly evolves from simply saying ‘Ace is gay gay homosexual gay!!’ to saying ‘Ace is gay with Lister’ because he starts making all these remarks about the two of them, like the infamous “Now I know where I’ve seen you two! Weren’t you the double-action centrefold in July’s edition of Big Boys in Boots?” and “Yes, the sooner we get back the sooner you two can climb into a nice hot soapy bath and play spot the submarine” and then later on he’s still doing it when it’s just him and Lister in the room, saying stuff like “so is it a simple registry office or a full church do for you two?” and “Go on, he’s probably picked a ring”.

So he’s fully just bitterly saying Ace and Lister are so nauseatingly buddy-buddy together they might as well be getting married. What I find fun about all this is that at No Point does Lister ever leap to defend his own sexuality. Sure he knows Rimmer is just being Rimmer and most of his answers to these remarks are to remind Rimmer that anything he says and implies about Ace also bounces back to refer to himself because they were the same person at one point until their lives went in those different directions.

But he never bothers to also go hey man I don’t even like guys what the smeg are you on about? I know it’s intended to be like oh he doesn’t have to say that, that it goes without saying and we’re expected to assume Lister is straight and he doesn’t have to defend that when Rimmer’s just being an irrational smeghead. But I’d rather read a little more than may have been intended into it and I’m glad he doesn’t try to shut that particular little insinuation down there.

It is funny comparing it to the much later Duct Soup though, when Kochanski is trying to distract him from his claustrophobia by saying her universe version of him is gay and it throws him into an immediately defensive response going on about how he’s not gay, he couldn’t possibly be gay!!

Well, okay, Dave, you’re definitely bi tho

[kitkatopinions]

I’m gobsmacked that people are still like “honestly I think Ironwood’s arc is super well done because if you look back at some of the things he did in the earlier seasons, not all of it was perfect and his character has flaws. Such art being made! His villainy is undeniable!” Like, my friends?? What??

First of all. No amount of foreshadowing no matter how excellently done can make a fall of villainy look well done if the actual fall itself is still rushed or badly written. I was introduced to the character of Kylo Ren through him being a massive unapologetic evil villain, but when the Last Jedi was like “yeah, Luke ‘saw darkness’ in the future of the young training jedi son of Leia and Han and almost murdered him... so he went on a massive murder spree and turned into a sith lord working for an evil Empire trying to subjugate everything” I was still sitting here feeling like that was really hard to believe. Ironwood went from being a struggling leader trying to save as many people as he could while being backed into a wall and was launched into a maniacally laughing evil for the sake of evil villain trying to bomb people over the course of two in-universe days. Over the course of just over one season that was jam packed full of too many characters fighting for the spotlight. And the writers didn’t let their characters ever sit with or deal with his ever-escalating villainy so that it feels like Oscar just kinda forgot that Ironwood shot him and Ruby never even knew. And nobody reacted to the villainy like it was actually surprising, or even kinda weird, not even Oz or Qrow. I could go on, but my point is that the complaint of rw/de posers is usually ‘this fall to villainy was so badly done that it was unbelievable’ and not ‘Ironwood had never done anything that might indicate a future fall to villainy.’

Second of all. This is a show where the characters are supposed to be more than two-dimensional characterless blobs of shallow nothing, right? They’re all supposed to have flaws! Any character who matters more to the story and has more screen time than Velvet the side character from seasons 1-3 should have both good traits and bad traits, should make mistakes, and have instances where they’re kinda fucking up. A character having flaws doesn’t make them evil. A character being stressed out doesn’t mean they’re definitely gonna be a villain. A character doing the wrong thing doesn’t mean they’re going to be fine with torture later. And the thing is, RW/BY as a show does have all of their main characters or B-listers have flaws, they just also refuse to acknowledge some of the flaws or refuse to give consequences to some characters and let them grow. So there’s this really weird idea in the fn/dm sometimes that seeing Ironwood do something wrong or display a flaw is ‘proof’ that his villainy was always just under the surface and therefore anyone who says it doesn’t make sense for him to try to murder children is just a stupid lying fake, when in reality, every single somewhat important RW/BY character from Ruby Rose herself to Professor Ooblek makes mistakes or has flaws. Take Weiss, for example. Weiss was a spoiled brat who was actively anti-Faunus, wanted to call the police on Blake, never apologized, accidentally attacked some lady at a party, fell into the Salem fight more or less on accident, has drawn her weapon on an ally for the crime of stepping forward and saying hey, put her own needs above the world-saving mission in the ‘steal a plane to get over the Atlas boarder’ plot, stuck her weapon in the face of an auraless teenage civilian for not immediately springing to the side without being asked upon seeing her in his doorway while she was a badge carrying law enforcement officer, and her entire motivation has been wanting the name of her billionaire family with a sketchy at best history to be reclaimed from the ‘bad apple’ non-blood-relation by her and she treated losing her status as a billionaire heiress like a massive blow to her morality and exchanges funny quips with her one faunus friend about how her family owns so much. And she was also, you know, involved in sitting around in a tearoom while people died around her, and trapping everyone in Atlas in Salem’s direct line of fire and putting Mantle and the world at risk at the same time. And she could easily be seen as the actual ‘Evil Queen’ of her own Snow White story with enough work, with her song Path to Isolation being about being a bitter and angry hard cold person who creates her own isolation after her losses and also the fact that she’s got White Witch from Narnia vibes on top of that. Weiss is a character with a lot of great potential to be a villain, all it would take is work and dedication and good writing and her fall to villainy could be super well done, heartbreaking, and convincing. And yet it would still be really out of character and freaking weird and bad writing if she started trying to kill Jaune next season and then randomly tried to destroy Vacuo, and said Ruby was an enemy she wished she’d tortured, and started maniacally laughing and shooting down Whitley when he tried to be like ‘what the fuck, Weiss.’ Like, I’d be right here on Tumblr talking about how horrible and badly done it was. Ironwood having flaws and making mistakes isn’t proof of evil, it doesn’t make what became of him automatically good.

Like guys, please stop saying this dumb thing.

[jeffersonhairpie]

8 shows to get to know me

I was tagged by @haahka​ to deliver the good news of these self-defining TV shows! Wahoo alright let’s go - in alpabetical order so no one feels shafted

1. Bojack Horseman

The terrible tale of a washed up actor from the nineties trying and failing to regain their mojo - also he’s a depressed horse. Equal parts comedy and devastatingly morose commentary on the human condition. If you finish it and need more please go check out Tuca and Bertie.

2. Chernobyl

It’s the story of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster! Woohoo everybody party! I’m sure nothing depressing will happen and we’ll all be feeling extremely normal by the end. (Is the best bit of television I’ve ever seen though)

3. House MD

Hilson shown for...reasons. Anyway I haven’t watched this show in years, I am comstantly battling a demon on my shoulder telling me to change that BUT I say say with great confidence that it’s a foundational text of my media enjoyment. The terrible tale of a drug addled doctor who gets away with eye watering quantities of malpractice due to him being the only guy who can solve medicine’s toughest riddles. Proceedural television never felt so good

4. Red Dwarf

The terrible tale of the last human in the universe waking up from stasis more than a million years since the rest of the species died off. Dave Lister is stranded on the space ship that was his place of work for the rest of his life, with nothing but a gobby computer, a creature that evolved from his pet cat, a robot and a hologram of his dead bunkmate. Yes, it’s a British comedy from the early nineties. Yes, there are only six episodes a season. Yes, there’s a laugh track. Wait, come back! Where are you going I thought you wanted to watch Red Dwarf!

5. Steven Universe

The terrible tale of a boy who lives with a piece of his dead mother so visible on his body that most of the galaxy expects him to fulfil her destiny rather than writing his own. The funny thing about Steven Universe is that people are still so mad about it for so many reasons but it remains one of the best TV shows of all time so who’s really winning? Don’t watch unless you can handle kids shows trusting their audience doesn’t need everything spoonfed to them lmao

6. Succession

The terrible tale of a family who couldn’t lose everything if they tried, and the kids who failed to keep themselves together. If you’re following me and don’t know this show by now then you need to start putting in more hours on tumblr. Also, that’s Tom!

7. Taskmaster

A despotic control freak and his extremely pathetic and wet assistant force people to compete in a variety of cruel and unusual tasks. Some for the game show to turn your brain off to, stay for the most insane dynamic between two men that you will ever have seen. Then, once you’ve polished off all 15 seasons of the British version, go and enjoy the international Taskmasters. This ride is never going to stop because they’ve discovered the perfect television formula

8. Twin Peaks

The terrible tale of Laura Palmer, who washes up on the shore of a lake, already dead, and then we get to learn everything about her. TV nerds the world over are ready to gush about this show at a moment’s notice and it’s with good reason. One of the few pieces of anything that really can more or less be all things to all people. Plus, it’s a David Lynch show so it’s weird as hell without apology

tagging @valoricky​ @crustacean-frustrations​ @hickeywiththegoodhair​ @duelsong​ @holy-yeosang​ @tomshivyuri​ @fuckyeahashes​ @bby-daesung​ and anyone else who feels like sharing. You can do it or not. It’s fun to talk about things you like though!

[movedtodykedvonte]

Sorry I made the silly Spamton’s the Queens like in universe little blorbo au like I haven’t been thinking about it for days. Here’s thoughts on it:

Spamton still was given world shattering knowledge by the phone but they kinda stopped at shattering his perception on reality

Rather than trying to hide his mental state or the breakdown he was going through he actively started telling people in hopes for help and understanding

No one really took it seriously but the Queen thought it was funny in a meta way so when it started affecting his sales she just ignored it

She ignores a lot of his more concerning statements and just lets him stay in the mansion cuz he’s refreshing

He has a room and a shop that he can sell stuff from but he mostly just talks as no one really needs car things as BS Autos is defunct

He’s still a celebrity by proxy. everyone now knows him as the Queens weird favorite little guy and getting in with him is brownie points

Not like an A-lister or unanimously liked but he’s pretty liked/tolerated. A lot of cyber citizens envy his life not knowing half of what he went through

Super paranoid about everything and slightly annoyed he’s been reduced to nothing more than the funny man but it beats being kicked out

Sorta allowed to do whatever as long as he doesn’t insight panic/unrest amongst the people or disrupt mansion staff

Is letting his hair grow back out to be white but it’s really slow. Dresses like a snazzier addison and less like a big shot tm

Like really anxious/depressed but too busy masking it with goofy to deal with it.

Would have an optional side quest to help him deal with his stresses and paranoia at the request of Swatch or something

The quest effectively leads to him still being the “secret boss” do not ask me how I’m working on it

I love creating a plethora of stupid little aus that only I will ever care about.

[brenna-ofmd]

Fully Ramblomatic Essays "Arnold Rimmer"

Fully Ramblomatic.com - Essays

If you've never seen Red Dwarf, then you might as well click the 'back' button now and forget it, you have no hope of understanding this article. Actually, if you've never seen Red Dwarf, what the hell are you doing surfing the Net?

If you have seen Red Dwarf, you're probably wondering something along the lines of "WHAT? Arnold J. Rimmer? The same emotionally crippled, underappreciated, above all DEAD Arnold J. Rimmer? It would kick arse to be HIM? Are we talking about the same guy?" Well yes, we are talking about the same guy (unless there's some other Arnold J. Rimmer I don't know about, which seems unlikely, as he'll have changed his name long ago to end the jokes), and yes, it would kick arse to be him. Here's why.

1. Being a hologram

OK, arguably he wasn't a hologram in series 8. Let's discount that for now. He did get a hard-light drive in series 6 which made him solid and indestructible, which kicks arse on its own, but what I want to talk about is why it would kick arse to be the pre-series 6, non-solid hologram. I mean, think about it. I don't know why it never occurred to our Arnie, but surely everyone has dreamed of having an X-files-like ability to walk through walls. You could hide in solid objects, wait for your crewmates to come by, and then leap out going BLEEERRRGH!!!! And with a little adjustment to your projection disc, you could make your face melt as you did so. Ho, ho, ho! You could also climb up into a wall and stick your head out to look like one of those stuffed and mounted animal heads to scare the shite out of anyone who brought home classy friends.

2. Being a hologram, part two (actually I have so much cool stuff on being a hologram I'm bleeding it into two reasons)

Hey, if you could rig up a device to alternate your form between hard and soft light at the touch of a button, you could become a superhero! There's a man lost in a hedge maze? A bank robber has locked himself in the time-locked vault with fifteen hostages? You've been buried alive? No problem! Bullets bounce off/go through him! He can tear down walls with a single badly-thrown blow! He's very good at Risk! (Cue seventies B-movie music) BAM BA BA! Bam bam bam bam BAM BA BA! By day, mild mannered Arnold Rimmer, space corpse! Whukka chakka whukka chakka chakka chakka whukka chakka BAM BA BA! BAM BA! But when duty calls, Arnie can leap behind a dressing screen and emerge, several minutes later, as WALK THROUGH WALLS MAN! Whukka chakka BAM BA whukka chakka BA! Whukka chakka BAM BA whukka chakka BA! Starring John Rugged as Arnold Rimmer! Whukka chakka - etc. That's a working title, obviously.

3. Getting all the girls

I have every episode of Red Dwarf on tape (I'm that sad) and, through thorough dissection, I can honestly say that he gets more sex than any of the others. I think the writers felt sorry for the actor, to be honest. "OK Chris, remember during this scene that you're totally intangible, so try not to touch anything in a way that those anally-retentive fans will spot and post up on the Internet, k? Do this for us and we'll make sure you get loads of sex". Makes sense. I mean, quite apart from that one episode of series 8 where he gets to have his way with every girl at a dinner party, there's that Crane woman from series 5, his female equivalent from the parallel universe and... er ... actually that's about it, but it's still more than everyone else. Well, Lister got it on with a few aliens, but I don't think we should count those for the sake of decency.

4. Being dead

Hey, Rimmer's dead. He's quite open about this fact. Now, there's a certain breed of male that other men envy and women swoon over who like to discuss exactly how much pain they've gone through in their lives. Nothing opens legs like braving through intolerable suffering. So if Rimmer ever found himself in that sort of grouping, this might happen:

TOUGH GUY: Well, I once woke up during a serious prostate operation. It felt like my 'nads were going through a bacon slicer.

GIRLS: Ooooh!

BURLY GUY: Well, I once actually did put my 'nads through a bacon slicer, while chewing on a mouthful of razor blades and penetrating my skull with a diamond-tipped industrial drill. AND I woke up during the subsequent lobotomy.

GIRLS: Oooooooooh! And how about you?

RIMMER: Well, I was hit in the face with a nuclear explosion. Then, in my death throes, I got broken glass in my arm. Then I died, and was reduced to white powder.

GIRLS: Oooooooooooooooooooooh! We love Rimmer best!

Of course, there's always the risk that the burly men will gang up on Rimmer later on in the gents, but on the other hand, he is WALK THROUGH WALLS MAN! He'd just go into a complicated Bruce Lee fight sequence and kick arses from here to Tanganiyka! So that's an advantage of being dead. It's a terribly impressive chat-up line.

5. Being the character mature, deep people like best

It's a little known fact that you can gauge a person's personality by which character they like best in Red Dwarf. Cat, who could well be a cartoon character, is liked only by the shallow. Kryten is popular mainly due to his silly voice. Lister is popular amongst people who relate with him. But people who like Rimmer tend to be emotional, thoughtful and extremely worthy of beautiful members of the opposite sex offering their bodies to them. Here's a handy chart.

WHO PREFERS WHO?

Cat - Shallow, immature people Kryten - Shallow, mature people Lister - Deep, immature people Rimmer - Deep, mature people who deserve lots of sex, even if they don't get it. Sigh.

Where do YOU fit?

WHY IT WOULDN'T KICK ARSE TO BE ARNOLD J. RIMMER

... nope, can't think of anything. So stop whining, Arnie mate, you've got it made. Just stop boring everyone to death with your Risk stories and your telegraph poles, and start planning for April Fool's Day.

[kochanski]

Three Heel Clicks and Straight On 'til Morning (rated E)

No content warnings apply, identity issues/mistaken identity, anal, slight praise kink/making ~love~

Summary: Ace returns to Starbug! Well, Rimmer does. And he hasn't learned a damned thing during his travels, by the way, and you can't make him, because life lessons are about more than dressing up as some B-movie action hero and having tons of gay sex. Or a lack thereof. Except maybe he doesn't mind the part where everyone likes Ace. And maybe it's better to keep that going than to admit that plain, boring, horrible old Rimmer's finally found his way back home. And maybe Lister seems to like Ace a little too much, and maybe Rimmer likes that Lister likes Ace a little too much...

"Got us a live one. Distress call from the next dimension over."

"No! No, no, no, no, no," Rimmer sunk into his seat, pulling the blasted wig over his eyes. "We've only just gotten here! What could be so important in the next dimension that we have to leave the one universe where world peace was achieved?"

"World peace? The Earth got hit by a meteor."

"Precisely. Peace and quiet. No space fascists to fight, no weird paradoxes, no problems that everyone expects me to show up and solve for them just because I got emotionally manipulated into pretending to be Captain Smeghead for the rest of my short un-life…"

"Well, you don't have to do this. You could go find a replacement," Wildfire grumbled, but they both knew why that wasn't on the table. "Anyways, this is important. It's you in trouble this time."

"Somehow it always is," Rimmer sighed. "Fine. But you'd better find a way to make it up to me. I was going to have a lovely weekend geologically categorizing space shrapnel, and now I'm stuck swooping in for a rescue mission like some sexed-up cartoon action hero."

---

Starbug.

He hadn't seen it in a while, and it caught Rimmer off-guard for a moment. Strange to think he'd hated it, once, but after having tasted freedom, he had to admit the ugly pea-soup-green was almost a comfort. He'd had it so good, hadn't he? Just three other people to worry about. Not whole civilizations or anything. And at least if he accidentally destroyed the boys, it was more or less a public service. Not so for the number he'd done on Atlantis.

"The distress call is coming from Starbug, you said?"

"From inside Starbug," Wildfire corrected him. "It's strange- judging by the readings, it's coming from a much smaller ship. Almost as though there were a miniature Starbug in the belly of this one."

"Believe it or not, I've seen stranger things get pregnant in my time. Alright, take us in."

He took a moment to adjust himself, did a few red-leather-yellow-leathers to get himself into the voice.

"Rimmer- there's something I should tell you about this dimension," Wildfire started, completely breaking his concentration.

"What have I told you about calling me that? If I'm going to be Ace, you need to call me Ace. I'm a method actor, for crying out loud! I need immersion."

"Right, then, nevermind. I'm sure Ace can figure it out all by himself."

"Well, don't get tetchy," Rimmer frowned. "You know, passive-aggression is a horrible trait for an artificial intelligence to have. Particularly one that doesn't have the excuse of being left online for three million years."

"Better than being a twit in an auburn wig," Wildfire shot back, but she adjusted their speed and made for the docking bay. "Opening communications."

"Wait- I'm not ready!"

---

"So good to see ya, man," Lister said, squeezing him hard.

"Good to see you too, chum," Rimmer said, trying his best to be as much of an Ace-hole as he could. It was always such an odd thing for him.

On the one hand, Ace was beloved by everyone, until he invariably smegged something up and accidentally killed a world leader. Of course he liked to keep that going as long as he could.

On the other, though, it was difficult to keep composure when everyone was so damned affectionate with him all the time. This wasn't any love or friendship he'd earned, but tasting it even temporarily made it harder to breathe. Somehow. Even if he didn't technically need to.

"What brings you to our humble ship, sir?" Kryten asked. "Surely you aren't just stopping in for a crumpet and a cup of tea. Oh- not that you're not welcome to- I just mean-"

"Relax, old bean, you're right on the money," Rimmer reassured him, reluctantly pulling out of Lister's bear hug. "I picked up a distress call coming from inside this tin of peas, and I wanted to make sure everything was all cheddar around here."

"More like Velveeta until you showed up, bud." Alright, the weirdest part was always how the Cat treated him. Git. The second he revealed himself as an Arnold, that good nature would evaporate.

"D'you mean the weird plant things?"

"The what?" He turned back to Lister, who just shrugged.

"Well, they showed up last week. Warped into existence, pretty much, an' now they're just sort of lying round the cargo bay."

"Show me," Rimmer said, and as an afterthought he clapped Kryten and the Cat on their shoulders. "I'll catch up with you boys later. Have to get the official Ace business over with first."

---

"So." Lister led Rimmer down the corridor to the hold. Somehow, this place had gotten even more confusingly complex, if that were possible. Eat your heart out, Doctor Who, Rimmer thought smugly, paying absolutely no attention to what Lister was saying.

"-long shot, but if you know what happened to my Rimmer, I mean…"

"What? Why would you care what happened to Rimmer?"

"I just got done explainin' that!"

"I- well, look, sport, I'm just a bit deaf in both ears. From, er, adventuring, you know."

"Okay," Lister said, a bit louder, "I wanted to know if you knew what happened to him."

"Oh, I don't know. Probably got torn apart by wild beasts, or shot to death. Heart attack on the toilet. Really, anything can kill you in our line of work." How the smeg was he supposed to know? The only other Ace besides the original he'd had any prolonged contact with was the bastard who'd spewed sparks all over the bunkroom and forced him into this mess.

"Yeah." Lister looked a bit sad. "I shouldn't have sent him away, y'know? I mean, he couldn't even pass his CPR certification. Had a panic attack and keeled over on top of the dummy during compression practice. I should've- I don't know, stopped him. Gone with him."

"You probably wouldn't have lasted a day in that rust bucket," Rimmer grimaced. "Barely seats one, and there's no privacy. The old lady's seen some unspeakable things."

"Still. I keep thinkin' about him all alone up there- and, y'know, with you here, I guess it really is over, isn't it? He's not coming back."

"Chin up, squire," he tried, giving Lister an annoyingly chummy clap on the shoulder. "It's probably better around here without him, trust me. Every Arnold I've met-"

"Just have a look at the plants," Lister snapped, shaking Rimmer's hand away. Ah. Well, it wasn't the first time he'd pissed a Lister off. But it was hard to sympathize with the bastard, wasn't it, when his own Lister had done the same damned thing. Sent him off into the dark nothingness of space, under some stupid pretense of legacy or honor or some such rubbish.

He'd stewed on it obsessively for the past year or so, and in the end, it had become such a point of spite that he refused to hang up the wig until he managed to find his way back and put his Lister in a chokehold. Or- at the very least, yell at him for a few minutes straight. At least this Lister had some level of remorse. His own had probably only just finished celebrating his demise.

But, the plants.

Just as Wildfire had supposed, there was a miniature Starbug sitting atop one of the pallets of vindaloo in the cargo hold. The main difference being this one was a sort of smooth rubbery material rather than metal, and the green was alive and pulsating rather than painted on. It was maybe the size of a large dog, and it glowed weakly with yellow light.

"It's like some sort of Starbug melon," Rimmer said, tapping it gently. At his touch, the thing shivered, opening some sort of… hatch? leaf? and revealing the contents of the ship.

Inside were four small potted plants.

"Wait a tick," Rimmer frowned. "Hang on just a second."

"Yeah," Lister nodded. "They're us. S'weird, right?"

"I wonder who the one with all the thorns is supposed to be," Rimmer sighed, then quickly plastered his smile back on. Smegging ship. He was completely out-of-sorts today, thanks to her.

More pressingly, though… the four plants didn't look very happy. Or- well- one, which Rimmer assumed was supposed to be Kryten, was made out of plastic, and was doing just fine. The other three were dull and drooping, with wilted brown leaves. Rimmer stuck a finger into the soil. Bone dry.

"Well, skipper, I'd say these sad little tomatoes are in dire need of a stiff drink." Sad tomatoes? What was even coming out of his mouth? Lister didn't blink, though, reaching over and grabbing a can of lager from in between a few crates.

"Alright, but it's one of me last ones," he mumbled, cracking it open with a hiss.

"What? You can't give plants beer," Rimmer protested. "Water! They need water, you-" He stopped himself. "-you silly old dog, you!"

"Oh. Yeah, I guess so." Lister grinned sheepishly, taking a sip. "Promise I'm not usually this slime-brained, Ace, it's just- it really is good to see ya."

"You've said." Rimmer tried his best to match that affectionate smile, but inwardly he recoiled. Lister loved Ace so smegging much, it was giving him chest pains. When was the last time anyone had looked at him like this? Never. 

And it would never happen now, either, what with this sorry excuse for a secret identity. From now on, he could only be seen as Ace. Only liked as Ace. Only known on a vague surface level. There was only one single person in the entire universe- universes- who actually knew a damn thing about Arnold J. Rimmer, and he'd sent him away the first chance he got.

"You okay, man?" Lister touched his shoulder, gently, and Rimmer felt like he'd been punched.

"Fine." He gestured at the miniature Starbug. "I'm just- I'm a plant lover. Pains me to see the little chaps suffer."

"Right, yeah, I'll get them some water. You staying long?"

"No, not long," Rimmer said. "I've got places to be. People to rescue. Adventures. You know."

"Well- stay for dinner?"

"I…" It was a bad idea, and he didn't actually need to eat. But… homesickness was a powerful thing. "You bet, champ. Like I'd miss a chance to dine with the salt of the…" He gestured around them, lost. "...Starbug."

And either that was actually funny or Lister really wanted to get into Ace's pants, because he let out a very genuine-sounding laugh. 

The half-wit.

---

"Dear lord."

"That bad?" Wildfire asked.

"Horrible. They all love me."

"Some people might be grateful for that. Some people would find themselves on a non-exploding ship with all their friends surrounding them, and not find a thing to complain about."

"They don't even know who I am. I mean, it's all just this character, isn't it, this- this horrible cocky little guy they worship, and they don't even notice any of his flaws, because he's got the stupid hair and the sexy accent."

"No, I think the flaws are plenty noticeable."

"I'm just so sick of it," Rimmer continued. "Thank god I've got this place to hide out in, be myself for a minute before I get thrown back to the wolves."

"Poor you."

"Exactly. Poor me." He curled up in the pilot's seat, drawing his knees to his chest. It was sort of uncomfortable, but he'd learned to manage.

"Well, this might cheer you up. Do you remember how I said there was something funny about this dimension?"

"The plants you sent me here to rescue, yes." Rimmer rolled his eyes. "I swear one of them bloomed at me. That's the plant equivalent of pitching a tent in ones trousers, you know. It's disgusting. Worse, I'm fairly sure it was my counterpart."

"As much as I'd love to unpack that, Arnold, you should really listen to what I'm about to tell you."

"Fine, fine, spit it out already."

"Well, your journey's over. This is the destination."

"What?"

"Home. This is it. Your old dimension." Wildfire generated a half-hearted trumpet sound. "Congrats. Now you can finally pass on the torch, and get out of my cockpit for good."

"That can't be right."

"Well, it is. The original Ace created a list of all the dimensions he hopped between in his log. This one shows readings consistent with 'Dimension Two.'"

"Dimension Two? Is that really the naming scheme we settled upon?"

"It worked better when there were only a few dozen," Wildfire admitted.

"Well, your readings must be wrong. For one, my crew would recognize me immediately. They would know. And secondly, Lister sent me away. Funeral and everything. I'm practically dead to him. Why would he be pestering Ace with all these questions about me?"

"Beats me," Wildfire said. "But this is the last stop. I'm not leaving this place with you, so you'd better make your peace."

"Not leaving-? What do you mean? I'm in command of this craft, aren't I?"

"No, Ace is. And he died. I'm free range, now."

"So, what? You're just going to fly solo across the galaxy? Who's going to help you refuel? Who's going to fix you up? Who's going to clear your cache when you start getting laggy?"

"Suppose I'll have to figure that out." Wildfire paused. "That cat isn't bad-looking."

"Him?"

"Oh, look. It's almost six. You won't want to miss dinner."

Rimmer clambered out of the cockpit, dazed. Somehow, he'd just gotten dumped by a spaceship.

Typical.

---

"It seems I'll be staying longer than expected," Rimmer announced over their tins of microwaved rations. Normally, he might have feigned stomach pains, but he actually sort of missed the mediocre mashed potato. "Wildfire's in need of some… maintenance."

"Anything I can help with, sir?"

"No, no, no, Kryten, matey. I'll just need to do a few minor calibrations and be off in a jiff. Better safe than sorry. Multiverse's a cold place, I tell you." 

He had no idea why he was still spewing Ace-phorisms, or pretending this was still any ordinary visit. Though, if these were his original crewmates, and he'd just spent the past day or so pretending to be Ace, pretending- to Lister, even! that Rimmer was dead twice-over… well, they'd hate him. Even if he didn't enjoy the Ace persona, or the existential dread and the identity crisis that came along with it, he did very much like being liked.

Case in point. The Cat sidled into the room, wearing his own fuchsia version of the ridiculous Ace jumpsuit. Rimmer quickly drowned his disgust in a heaping bite of mashed potato so he wouldn't have to say anything. He clapped loudly as the Cat twirled around like a turbine powered by pure idiocy.

"I knew you'd like it, pal! Look at us- the two most eligible bachelors on the ship!" The Cat slung an arm around Rimmer's shoulders, glancing at Lister. "Er… no offense. I mean, maybe space grunge'll come back in season. But probably not."

"Bah, I'm ahead of me time," Lister grinned, propping his feet up on the table mere inches from Rimmer's dinner. Well. Good thing eating was optional for a hologram. "Couple years, all the kids'll be rocking curry stains and socks with holes in 'em. 'Sides, Ace thinks I look good, eh?"

"I… yeah. Like a regular old Han Solo." It took every ounce of Rimmer's discipline to wring the sarcasm out of that statement. "Ah, but don't worry, Cat. You're still my favorite."

"Wowwwww! You hear that? I'm his favorite! Take that, suckers!" The Cat danced out of the room, yowling with a renewed zeal. "I'm Ace's favorite! I'm Ace's favorite!"

"Is… is that true, sir?"

"No, Kryten, of course not. Just trying to make the poor lad's day. Got to be hard, having the IQ of ten senior catering officers."

"Ten times zero's still zero, last time I checked," Lister laughed. "C'mon, don't be hard on the Cat. He idolizes you, y'know."

"A bollocking like that, old boy, and I might make Kryten my favorite," Rimmer smiled.

"Oh? I'm heartbroken." Lister mimed being shot in the chest. "Guess I'll have to hope the next Ace who comes along has a soft spot for me."

"Excuse me, sirs, but I need to clean up these dishes," Kryten scowled, coming between to break the absolutely brimming-over-with-affection gaze Lister had been giving Rimmer. It was good, too, because Rimmer felt like something was about to burst, either in his groin or his tear ducts.

"Right. I'll help," he said quickly, because he knew Lister wouldn't touch a dirty dish even if it meant spending time with his precious Ace.

"But- you're a guest!" Kryten protested.

"It's the least I can do, after cleaning you out of all those potatoes. Worry not, old bagel, we'll have them done in a jiff with two sets of wings flapping."

"Yeah, and I'll get a bed set up for him," Lister added. "Probably should clear all the crumbs off Rimmer's old bunk anyway."

"The what?"

---

No point in denying it. Even though he'd been terrible at being Ace, no one aboard had been able to tell the difference.

What were his options, now? Stay, pretend to be Ace forever? Dismantle Wildfire and hope he could find her personality unit quickly enough to escape?

And yet… he'd been touched, deeply touched, somehow, by Lister's warmth. Er- it was nice that the others admired him as well, but something about the way Lister looked at him broke his heart into a million tiny little pieces and then ran those pieces through an industrial shredder. He'd been onto something with that theory of his, hadn't he? Lister and Ace had definitely done the business at some point, the perverts. Or, at least, Lister really, really wanted to. That was the sort of stare he'd reserved for Kochanski. Or Marilyn Monroe. Or an extremely unlucky sock.

He was making himself sick with anger, imagining it- Lister and smegging Ace, liking each other, snogging each other, all right under his nose. All along! He was a fool, a total idiot, letting that sort of disgusting thing happen on his watch. Lister would pay-

"Hey, man." Lister smiled up at him, a sunbeam, as he entered the bunkroom.

"H- Hey."

"So, this is your bed. I mean, it's Rimmer's bed, but you can borrow it for a few. Since he's… yeah."

"Great! Well, I'm bushed. Let's hit the sack, shall we, skipper?"

"Actually, I was gonna watch a bit of TV first. Helps me sleep."

"Oh. Alright, then, carry on."

While Lister took his sweet time rifling through his meager tape collection, Rimmer undressed down to his white undershirt and hurried under the covers. Yes, his clothes were hardlight, but if he didn't keep up the act- well- he didn't really have much of a plan besides "pretend to be Ace as long as you can," but it was better than "let the fact you're Arnold slip and have everyone hate you forever and ever," so… off the clothes came, and he shoved them under the blankets before they disappeared.

Funny. His stuff was still here, scattered around the bunkroom like he'd never left. Stacks of books he'd never quite gotten the chance to read before he left, statuettes he'd repainted to look like famous world leaders, all the little bits and bobs he'd collected and organized from most to least pleasing tactile feel. It was still here, and seemingly well-looked after, too.

Neither his fully-articulated, detachable-joint Horatio Nelson action figure, nor the lovingly-rendered diorama of Elon Musk surveying his ill-fated Martian colony had gathered any dust whatsoever. By now, he'd have thought the opal quarry and its many miniature gig-miners would have doubled as an ashtray.

Well, Kryten had probably gotten bored, and Lister certainly couldn't be bothered to pack up any of his things. There were his answers.

"What's this?" Rimmer squinted at the screen in some attempt to distract himself from his ruminations.

"Hm? Ah, Androids." Lister rubbed his neck.

"No way."

"Well- I dunno, it's been so boring and lonely, I've been picking up Kryten's hobbies just to have something to talk about."

"Lonely? You're surrounded by friends."

"Guess it's not the same as being out there all on your own like you, is it? But-" Lister bit his lip, shifting in his bed. "It's just… it isn't quite the same as it was before."

"Oh?"

"I…" He shook his head. "Nevermind. Probably just coming down with one of those psy-viruses or somethin', you know, one that makes you all depressed for no reason."

"Well-" Rimmer held back a sigh, getting back up despite his mental exhaustion. Smegging problems. Always fixing everyone's smegging problems. "What kind of Ace would I be if I didn't try to cure you?"

"Dunno if you can," Lister said, sitting up to make room for Rimmer in his bunk. "Might be a goner."

"All the more reason for me to try, eh? C'mon, Davey-boy, this old space dog'll put you right in no time." He put his arm around Lister's shoulders, gingerly. This was a comforting thing to do. This was what people did to comfort each other. Surely Lister couldn't have anything to whine about now.

Wrong.

Lister leaned into the touch, resting against Rimmer's shoulder, and gently put his hand on his knee.

"Y'know, Ace, I… I think I feel a real episode comin' on. Maybe you'd better up the dosage."

"Oh?"

The hand on Rimmer's knee slid up his inner thigh, spreading a tingling sensation through his lower extremity.

Was he really going to do this?

Ace would do this.

And right now, he was Ace.

Rimmer took a deep, shuddering breath, and grabbed Lister's hand before it could cause any further catastrophe, bringing it to his lips. He prayed Lister wouldn't pick up on the tremor in his own fingers as he kissed each knuckle of Lister's.

No. Nothing to worry about, nothing at all. Lister's dark eyes were fixed on him completely, the grim color of a banana that had been molding on the counter for a week and a half; and yet somehow in this moment they were so deep and soft that Rimmer could have drowned in them.

"Somehow," Lister rasped, "somehow I thought you'd totally reject me right then and there."

"Of course not," Ace replied, reaching up to tweak Lister's chin. "Come on, Dave. You're dynamite."

And then, somehow, Lister had ended up in Ace's lap, warm, heavy, and his arms snaked around Ace's neck. Someone let out a sigh of contentment. Rimmer, despite himself, let his hands drift up under the back of Lister's shirt, even though he had a dim idea of what the bacteria count was under there. It was just difficult not to crave the closeness. His skin was warm, and strangely soft.

"Beautiful," he heard himself- he heard Ace saying, a wave of something swelling in his chest. "It should be illegal for a pretty thing like you to be lonely in a place like this."

"Good luck getting that one past Parliament," Lister joked, and there was something… aha! He was nervous, the goit. Trembling like a baby deer in a snowdrift. Nervous to be with Ace, of all people. Well, if anything could be said of Lister, you certainly couldn't claim he had good taste.

Taking advantage of the upper hand, Ace leaned forward, kissing Lister on the lips. This was the sort of moment where one might expect a Captain Kirk-style kiss, a full dental cleaning type of kiss, but Rimmer just simply couldn't endure that sort of thing.

So he- Ace, that is- went the more conservative, classic route, pressing their lips softly together and then pulling quickly apart. He stroked the sides of Lister's face, relishing in the way his eyes slowly slid open, bathing in the heat that had risen to his cheeks.

"Wow," Lister breathed. "Rimmer- or- ah, smeg, I- would it be weird if I call you Rimmer?" Weird? Weird? It was downright absurd! Nobody had called him that in a whole year, but…

"No," Rimmer lied. "Actually, in my travels, I've been to universes where they only use last names."

"What? How do they manage family reunions, then? You yell out 'Johnson' and twelve heads turn?"

"Afraid I didn't exactly have time to attend any celebrations," he grimaced. "Had to fight some… space guys."

"Yeah, yeah, the space guys." Lister grinned. "Hate it when they show up."

"Oh, like you remember every single person you've ever fought."

"You're right. S'only life and death."

Rimmer kissed him again, because he didn't like the direction this was going. The desire to stop and argue with Lister nearly outweighed the desire to- to- well, to continue being Ace.

This time, Lister slipped his tongue between Rimmer's lips, completely unexpectedly, and there was no stopping the violent moan that ripped its way past his vocal chords. In a sense, Lister had entered him, now, feverish and wet, pushing his tongue against Rimmer's, daring him to follow suit. Damn you, damn you, damn you, Lister.

"Rimmer," Lister murmured as soon as they broke for air. His mouth shone with spit, and if literally every nerve in Rimmer's simulated body hadn't been screaming for release, it might have been revolting. Instead, he wanted more. He wanted to paint Lister's entire body in his saliva, disgusting or no. He wanted to lick up the sides of Lister's neck- and, oh, god, the skin was absolutely sweltering there, soft, his mouth right against the frantic pulse that thumped in Lister's throat. 

"Rimmer-" And Lister was calling his name, his, even if he was still Ace and he was still wearing the stupid wig and he was still just acting however the hell Ace would act. But he could pretend Lister liked him, loved him, wanted him. He could pretend Lister was his, at least for a little bit. If that was even something he wanted to pretend.

"Ace! Stop! Hang on a second."

"What?" No. No. He'd done something wrong. Gone and bungled it all up.

"I… look, I don't think I can do this."

"Well, why not?"

"It's not really fair to you. I'm just- I mean, I'm thinking of me own Rimmer while we're messing around, and you deserve better than that."

"You what?"

"Yeah. I'm really sorry."

"No, you- you were thinking of Rimmer during all this?"

"Yes, and I'm sorry I-"

"So, while you were groping my leg, and sticking your tongue in my mouth, and looking at me with a- a lovey-dovey sort of gaze, that was all meant for Rimmer? Arnold J. Rimmer? That sniveling, cowardly, pathetic worm of a man you sent off blindly into the galaxy?"

"Smeg, I said I was sorry!"

"But he's… I thought you hated him. I thought you wanted nothing more than to be rid of him."

"I dunno. I think… I think I really did need him to stay sane. Took for granted everything we went through, how well he knew me, how much fun we had together. I mean- I could tell him about me problems, and he'd actually listen. Might have some nasty little opinion at the end of it, but at least he heard more than every other word, and he had a functioning attention span chip or circuit or whatever. He cared, sort of."

"Oh." Rimmer immediately felt the familiar weight of dread sinking into the pit of his stomach. "Oh, no."

"Sorry," Lister apologized yet again, climbing out of Rimmer's lap. "I thought- I thought he'd come back to me one day, y'know, and I could maybe tell him how I felt. Or even just half of it. Or just see him one more time. I shouldn't have put you in the middle of it, Ace."

"Lister?"

"Yeah?"

"What if…" He stumbled over the words. "What if I told you… what if I told you your Rimmer hadn't died of a heart attack on the toilet?"

"You don't mean-"

"No, no, wait- this is purely hypothetical, alright- what if I told you that, the utter coward he is, perhaps your Rimmer might not have… thought he was welcome back aboard Starbug as himself, and maybe, in this completely hypothetical scenario, the stupid terrible computer hadn't immediately told him which dimension he was in…"

"Rimmer, you have to be joking!" Lister put his head in his hands. "I smegging knew it! I knew you reminded me too much of him, you and your weaselly little-"

"Need I remind you, Listy, you seemed very happy to be exploring my 'weaselly little' body not five minutes ago."

"Oh, I'm happy to do something to your body, alright," he said, standing up and starting to pace furiously around the bunkroom before finally throwing his hands up in exasperation. "Well? Don't you have anything to say to me?"

"Yes, actually." Rimmer took off his horrible wig, disdainfully tossing it onto the floor where it belonged. "I'd like an apology."

"An apology."

"Well, for shooting me out into space with absolutely no preparation! Sure, I was riding the high of having defeated some escaped AR abomination, but that didn't exactly mean much when my very next task was to save the Loch Ness Monsters from being hunted to extinction in the sixth century. Which, by the way, I failed at. Miserably."

"Nessie's real? Extinct? She's dead?" Judging by the way he was pulling at his scalp, Lister was going through all seven stages of grief in the span of a minute. 

"Anyways, Lister, I think we can argue you owe me a nice long tearful apology for putting me in the middle of this mess. You've said yourself you shouldn't have done it."

"Y'know, I've got half a mind to send you straight back." Lister shook his head. "I did it for the right reasons, Rimmer, I wanted to see you grow. Belong to something more than just yourself. You were never gonna get that hanging 'round here."

"I was happy here!"

"You were miserable! You hated everyone aboard, including yourself, and you spent every day doing the same boring thing, just like the rest of us."

"Really. Because the way I saw it, I was doing just fine." Rimmer crossed his arms. "Maybe my life was boring, but on the whole it was predictable. Maybe I was surrounded by morons, but at least they cared enough about me to come and rescue me when things went pear-shaped. It was good. I had a good life. I liked being here."

A pause. I liked being here with you.

"I didn't know you felt that way," Lister said. 

"I didn't know it either, until I suddenly had to deal with several universes' worth of crushing responsibility."

"Alright, Rimmer, tell you what. You apologize first, and then I'll go. Okay?"

"Apologize for what?"

"You know what."

"Come on, Lister, it isn't my fault you decided to sleep with Ace. Actually, if you're really that smitten with me, I'd venture to say it's… cheating-adjacent behavior."

"Cheat- we aren't even together, Rimmer! In fact, I'm pretty much turned all the way off by this point. The lying, the pigheadedness, the absolute smegheadery-"

"All the way off?" Rimmer raised one eyebrow.

"No," Lister admitted, "but I'm only human. Not like you, you cold-hearted Nessie-killer."

"Oh, bold words from the man who couldn't keep a mechanical goldfish alive. They had spears in the sixth century, you know. Big, sharp spears."

"Just say you're sorry, Rimmer, so I can at least pretend you mean it."

"Fine. I'm sorry for not telling you my true identity right away."

"And?"

"And I- I'm sorry for trying not to blow my cover as Ace and accidentally kissing you in the process. Multiple times."

"Accidentally? It sure didn't feel like an accident."

"It's your turn, Lister."

"It definitely felt on purpose. You definitely licked up my neck on purpose. You kissed my fingers on purpose."

"I- apology, Lister, now, please."

"You pulled me into your lap on purpose. Put your tongue in my mouth on purpose. Actually, I bet if I hadn't cut out early, you would've shagged me absolutely senseless, wouldn't you have? On purpose."

"Lister-"

Lister was a lot closer now than he had been ten seconds before, and it was so very difficult to breathe or think or anything else as he sat back down, squished himself up against Rimmer's side.

"No, I wouldn't have," Rimmer squeaked. "I don't play for that team. I'm on the straight and narrow."

"Kind of hard to believe, when you went ahead and sprinted halfway to the endzone."

"If that's supposed to be some footballer joke, I don't get it," Rimmer grumbled. "Ace is the flaming homosexual. I'm strictly into the ladies."

"Inflatable Ingrid ain't a lady," Lister chuckled, wrapping an arm around Rimmer's waist. And under any normal circumstance Rimmer would have immediately pushed him off, except… alright, he was lonely and the weight and warmth of Lister against him was intoxicating. He leaned in, despite himself. "So, hold on- you mean to tell me you're straight, and you've been pretending to be gay as Ace?"

"It's called disappearing into the role, Listy. Getting into character."

"Well- why not just pretend to be a straight version of Ace in the first place?"

"Oh." Damn it. "Well, it didn't exactly come up that often."

"You didn't have women constantly fawning over you?"

"Usually the women didn't make it. Or the men. Or anyone. Usually no one made it. So as you can imagine, that rather puts a damper on things."

"You really had that much trouble with being Ace?"

"Maybe I'm exaggerating a little. But…" Rimmer shook his head. "I don't know. I tried, and tried, and tried, and I still did a horrible job. Every time."

"I should've come with you." Lister fumbled for Rimmer's hand, his thumb running over Rimmer's knuckles. "I don't know. I should've thought it through."

"It's not entirely your fault. I could've said no."

"I really, really missed you, Rimmer."

"I missed you too." Rimmer hesitated. "If I were Ace, maybe this is the part where we would-"

"You're not Ace. You're Rimmer."

"Right." He wilted a bit.

"And Rimmer's a total loser, an underhanded little sneak, a complete an' utter bastard with no scruples…" Lister sighed, getting up on his knees and pushing Rimmer all the way down against the thin mattress, all the way back against the pillow. "But unlucky for me, I love him anyway, don't I?"

"You what," Rimmer barely had time to say before Lister's lips were on his. Oh, this wasn't fair. He'd wanted at least a few more minutes of hemming and hawing before he committed to participating in any homosexual activity. He hadn't even resisted a little when Lister climbed on top of him.

Lister's fingers brushed through his curly hair, and his scalp tingled. His hips were pressed firm against Rimmer's, pinning him down to the bed as if to say you're not going anywhere, bucko. Or whatever the Lister equivalent of that would be. Stay there, smeghead.

Rimmer kissed back as best he could, accidentally letting out a high-pitched whimper as Lister's teeth scraped his bottom lip on the way out.

"So?" Lister's voice was husky, soft. "Are we doing this, for real?"

"As in… as in, you're going to make love to me?"

"Make love? I mean, I was just thinking sex, but yeah, I can make love to you."

"What's the difference?" Rimmer asked, annoyed.

"Difference is, if I make love to you, it's gonna be real mushy and gross. I'm going to tell you how much I missed you, and how handsome you are, and I'm gonna do it all torturously slow. Just to make sure the point sticks in your thick head." Lister tapped Rimmer's forehead, making a face.

"Oh." He hesitated. "And does that entail… what does that entail exactly? The thing you'll be doing torturously slow? Will you be… is that a 'you inside me' situation?"

"Alright, Rimmer," Lister laughed. "Is that what you want? A 'me inside you' situation?"

"I don't know what I want! I was hoping you'd tell me, seeing as you're the expert on- on- I don't know, on drooling over men."

"Think you drooled on me first." He touched his neck, grinning. "Okay, then. I'll make sweet, sweet love to you, Rimmer, if you insist."

"Ugh."

"Hey." Lister tilted Rimmer's chin upwards. "Eyes on me, gorgeous."

He was being serious all of a sudden, which Rimmer hadn't expected. It was all little jokes and jabs with him, usually, but now he was gazing deeply into Rimmer's eyes, stroking his hair again, like something out of those horrid romance movies he loved so much. Rimmer blinked away, sure his face was bright red.

"I sort of like that you're shy about this stuff. I mean, you're kind of a sensitive guy, deep down, aren't you?"

"I'm not," Rimmer protested.

"No, c'mon, it's cute. How did you even manage all that Ace stuff? I mean, I was fully prepared for you to sweep me off my feet an' have your way with me."

"It's called staying in character," he scoffed. "I mean, if nothing else, I've learned the basics of acting on this horrible little odyssey."

"So if I hadn't told you to stop, would you have acted all the way to the finish line?"

"I was planning on chickening out if you wanted anything more serious than hand stuff."

"Hand stuff," Lister said, and Rimmer could practically feel him getting harder through those raggedy old pajamas. "You'd have pulled me off? Really?"

"Alright, enough. You're making fun of me." He reached out, running his hands down Lister's chest. "I'm not a total virgin, you know."

"Guess you aren't." Lister sat up, and oh dear lord this angle really pressed their erections together, and pulled his shirt up over his head. "You want me to undress you?"

"I could just wish my clothes off if I wanted to."

"Yeah, so what do you want?"

"I… want you to take them off for me," Rimmer admitted.

"Good man," Lister smiled. "Progress."

He untucked Rimmer's shirt, pushing the hem of it upwards. But, instead of removing it right away, Lister's hands slipped underneath the thin white fabric, fingers splaying over Rimmer's stomach.

"All those sit-ups you used to do," he murmured.

"And here I thought you'd stare at me because I looked silly doing them."

"Nah, you did. Ridiculous. But it paid off." The shirt came up another few inches, and Rimmer felt self-conscious as Lister scooted down to kiss the newly exposed skin around his navel, glancing up at him with a smug look like the cat who'd gotten the cream. 

Smeg, he really was pathetic, wasn't he. Lister had thoroughly tamed him in a matter of minutes. There was supposed to be more protesting, or some sort of excuse that made this all just a little less gay, some distance. 

But, no- Lister had just spread his legs apart immediately like the hussy he was, and worse, Rimmer couldn't muster up the required shame or guilt about it. He liked this. He liked Lister's stubborn insistence on loving him even if he was a horrible planet-killing moron. He liked how full and warm and thrumming with energy this made him feel, and how different it was from what he'd had with Nirvanah. Lister wasn't womanly in the least, but he was soft and full and gentle in a different way. Somehow, he knew exactly what was going on in Rimmer's head, so there was no need to plaster on his usual bravado. He could be himself, with all the messiness that entailed.

Really, the only drawback was that Lister certainly wasn't ever going to call him Admiral in bed, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.

His shirt was rolled under his armpits by now, and Lister squeezed both of his nipples between thumb and finger, rolling them around.

"That-" Somehow that, of all things, was a direct line to his groin, a wave of hot pleasure spilling out of him, and his chest heaved as he tried his best to hold it all in. "Lister- mn, Lister, don't."

"What's wrong?" He immediately stopped.

"Nothing's wrong, just- you can't expect me to last very long if you keep doing that."

"Really?" There was that face again, half delight and half mischief. "Maybe I'd better speed things up, if you're so on edge."

"Probably for the best." Rimmer frowned, grabbing Lister's shoulder before he could sit back up. "And another thing- I thought you were going to tell me how handsome and brilliant I was? I haven't heard a peep."

"Yeah, 'cause my mouth's been a little busy with other stuff."

"No excuses. Go on, tell me."

"Bossy. You know I'm still supposed to be mad at you? You're pushing your luck." Lister leaned over and rummaged around on the floor for something, popping back up with a smile and a bottle of- ah.

"That's got to be expired by now. By three million years."

"It's water-based, though, isn't it? Water doesn't go bad."

"Look, it's fine for me- I'm dead. But if you get some sort of mutant gangrenous penile infection, I'm not going to rescue you." He frowned. "Well, not until I've gotten a few told-you-sos in first."

"Aw, you do care." Lister pulled down his pajama bottoms- why was it no surprise he hadn't been wearing underwear- and as his cock sprung out of them Rimmer was confronted with the very real idea that he was about to have sex with Lister. 

At least he looked clean enough- well- more than that, he looked beautiful, like some kind of Greek god of debauchery, ready to ravage whatever sense of masculine pride Rimmer had left in him. He'd known what was in those pants, but it was different seeing it from his side. It protruded ridiculously from a mess of curly hair, looking like a floppy, angry dark sausage. Okay. Alright. That thing was about to be inside him. It was a little difficult to wrap his head around.

Lister winced as he squirted a puddle of undoubtedly ice-cold lubricant onto the thing.

"That's why you're supposed to warm it up first."

"Alright, Mr. Hand Stuff, warm me up then."

"Fine." Rimmer sat up, repositioning himself so that Lister was practically in his lap again. He hesitantly took hold of Lister's shaft, stroking up the length of it with his thumb. "How's this?"

"Good," Lister breathed. "You're good with your hands, Rimmer. Thought you would be."

"I'm just trying to make sure you're coated properly before you try to shove that monster into any of my holes." He pulled the foreskin back and toyed with the very tip, moving his finger in a slow circle- did Lister like this, too? and was rewarded with a low moan, Lister's face scrunching up as he grabbed Rimmer's shoulders for balance.

Oh, this was entirely better than it had any right to be. His hand was moving on its own at this point, greedy for more reactions as it sprung up and down, squeezing Lister's cock in a chokehold for a few strokes, easing up briefly only to return to that delicious level of pressure that made Lister gasp.

"Rimmer- seriously, I'm close."

"What, already?" He couldn't give up an opportunity to bother Lister. "Either I'm good or you've got less endurance than me."

"You're the first person to touch me in years," Lister complained. "Doesn't help that you've got some kind of insane masturbation routine."

"Try being trapped in a tin can by yourself for a year and see where that gets you." Rimmer  took his hand away, pausing. "You enjoyed it?"

"Yes, man, I enjoyed it." Lister gave him a kiss, all smiles. "I'm having fun. I forgot how much fun you are, when you're not scolding me for stuff or being generally smeggy. I missed this."

"If I'd known being away for a year would make you lust after me like this, maybe I wouldn't have been so hesitant to leave."

"To be honest, I was thinking about it pretty soon after you got a body. I mean- you're dead, but you're at least human, right? And you're good-looking, even when you have that stupid smirk all over your face like you're better than everyone."

"Mhmm. I bet that made you want to knock me down a peg or two, didn't it?"

"There it is. That one."

"Oh, yeah, Listy? This one?"

"Alright, you're asking for it." Lister pressed forward so that he was solidly on top again, grabbing Rimmer's wrists and pinning them above his head. "Leave those there, or else."

"Or else what?"

"Just keep them there." Rimmer's pants were gone almost faster than he could have vanished them, and he felt a little sick, anxious, as Lister inspected what was underneath.

"Look, I know it's not much-"

"Not much? Come on, Rimmer, you're gorgeous. You're like that Da Vinci sketch of the perfect bloke."

"The one with six arms and legs?"

"Yeah, you're right. Might be more fun if you had six arms, eh?" Lister snorted, spreading Rimmer's legs. God, those hands on his thighs- Rimmer was having trouble breathing. This was happening. Him and Lister. It felt like a dream.

He hadn't heard the crack of the bottle opening again, lost in disbelief, so he yelped when Lister's cold, wet finger pressed against his hole.

"I told you it needed to be warmed up, you git!"

"With what? I mean, do I stick the bottle in the microwave?"

"Rub it between your hands or something. Whatever- just- just keep going, before I lose my nerve."

"Alright, but… if it's uncomfortable, tell me. Don't clam up like you normally do."

It was an odd experience. Lister obviously knew a little bit about how this went- not surprising, he'd probably stick anything up there. And despite the cold, it felt altogether too good, being- being fingered, Lister watching him squirm, the anticipation of what was coming next.

And the actual sensation of being stretched, of Lister's fingers painting the inside of him- Rimmer'd done a little of this on his own, at awkward angles, but he'd never gotten this deep, never been able to give himself this level of attention.

He was at the point where it was becoming unbearable, trying to keep himself composed. His breathing was ragged. The pillow probably wasn't going to take much more of his clawing at it. He wanted so badly for Lister to bring him all the way over the edge. But he wanted it more with Lister properly inside him. He wanted so badly to-

"Oops."

"Lister! That's half the bottle you just dumped down my taint, I could feel it." Arousal, interrupted. Annoyance, here to stay.

"Well, at least it'll make things smoother, yeah?"

"You'll fall out of me at this rate."

"Wanna bet?" Lister grinned. "Are you ready?"

"I think this is as ready as I'm ever going to be."

"Hey." He leaned up, pressing a brief, shaky kiss against Rimmer's lips. "I'm nervous, too. But it's okay. Promise. I love you."

"You… love me," Rimmer muttered. There it was again. Lister loved him. It was the sort of thing you scrawled half-heartedly on a birthday card or the sort of thing printed on a cheap Valentine. It felt completely foreign. "Me."

"Yeah, you. I mean, look, this could be the worst sex of my life, and I'd still feel the way I do about you. I just- I want you around me, Rimmer, y'know?"

"Apparently in more ways than one."

"C'mon, I'm serious. I need you." Lister shifted forward, so that Rimmer couldn't look away from his big fat face. "Everything I've done the past year, I just can't enjoy it properly. Can't eat, can't sleep. It's like there's something missing."

"Your sanity, maybe," Rimmer argued, because the other option was terrifying. Lister loving him. He'd let everyone down as Ace, and only relished being Rimmer because there was no possible way Rimmer could let anyone down. Rimmer was the part of him that had already hit bottom. But, no, here was the sinking, heavy truth that threatened to squish him flat. Lister still liked him. Lister, he could disappoint.

"If I'm crazy, I'm crazy about you."

"Oh, oldest line in the book."

"Sure, but it made you smile, didn't it?"

"No," Rimmer snapped. "I'm just… happy." No, that was more embarrassing. "Look, just- are you going to have your way with me or not, Listy? I have things to do today."

"No you don't," Lister grinned, sitting up and running his hands back over Rimmer's chest, stomach, hips. "You're gonna stay right where you are for the next three weeks."

"And am I ever going to be pleasured during that time, or is it going to be one gigantic terrible love poetry recital?"

"Depends on if you're good," Lister said, shifting his hips, moving Rimmer's legs where he wanted them to go. He paused to look up at Rimmer for some final affirmative sign. This was it. Last chance to chicken out, Arnold.

"I can be good," he nodded, finally, and in Lister pushed.

It was uncomfortable. Sure, his body could handle pretty much anything at this point, but that didn't mean it wasn't an awkward, overstimulating mess as he had to first remember how to breathe and then remember that he didn't actually have to.

"You okay?" Lister stroked his thigh.

"Peachy. Please tell me that's the whole thing."

"Yeah. Pretty much."

"Pretty much?"

"Seventy percent."

"Seventy percent?!"

"Look, I'm not gonna cram it all in there first thing. Let's just go slow. Yeah?"

"Alright."

And then Lister pulled slowly out to slather on some more millenia-old lube, and that felt even worse- now, he felt empty.

"So this time, you just give me the go-ahead when you get comfortable, and then I'll try moving around. Ready?"

He nodded.

The second time felt better. The pleasurable stretching feeling was more noticeable now, and he could only imagine what Lister was experiencing. The man had been making do with towels and socks and jars of mayonnaise, and Rimmer was probably the closest he'd gotten to sexual congress in ages. And he was someone who actually enjoyed and craved sex, who'd had it more than twice in his life. If Rimmer was pent up, then surely Lister had it far worse, being crammed "seventy percent" up his simulated arsehole and then forced to wait.

Nevermind. Lister's idle hands had evidently gotten bored, one working its way slowly up and down his cock, slippery and warm, the other cupping his balls. His hips bobbed on their own accord, and- and that in turn moved Lister back and forth inside him, ever so slightly- oh, damn it, he was so close again and from almost nothing-

"Start going," Rimmer urged, finally moving his hands down from above his head to snatch Lister's away. "But you can't- you can't touch me, or I'll be done like that."

"Isn't that the goal?"

"Well, I'd rather this didn't end so soon," Rimmer admitted. "I want this to last."

"Don't think it will, but I'll try," Lister said. He pulled out, back, almost all the way, then slowly pushed forward until he was almost certainly probably possibly at least eighty percent in.

Again. The motions were choppy waves, and each new slow movement inward was more pleasurable than the last.

"Mmn," Rimmer strained, trying not to squeal or scream or call Lister's name.

"You alright?" God, Lister, pausing to check on him.

"Yes," he hissed. "Keep going, or I swear I'll kill you."

"That's not very nice, Rimmer. Thought you were gonna be good for me."

"I- yes, fine, okay."

"Promise me."

"I… I promise I'll be good. I'll be a good boy." What on Io was coming out of his mouth now? But Lister seemed to accept it, thrusting into him with a renewed sense of urgency.

"Yeah, Rimmer? You're gonna be all mine from now on, right?"

"All yours," he echoed, and there was that familiar crescendo tightening inside him again, his muscles starting to stiffen in anticipation. "God, Lister, I'm yours. Anything- Anything, Lister-"

There were probably more words coming out of his mouth, loud ones, but he couldn't be bothered to decipher what they were, because Lister had hit him at some odd angle that sent him into pure ecstasy.

For a split second, the tension eased and he was full and everything was so, so right in the world. Lister's cock was still moving in him, and the waves sent softer spasms of pleasure through him as he rode out the remainder of his orgasm.

Now that he could concentrate a little clearer, Lister was stunning- his body sparkling with sweat, a pleasant, rounded belly, the utter concentration on his face, even the way his locs swung about ridiculously around his shoulders.

His face screwed up, biting back a moan, and something hot shot up Rimmer's insides. Oh. Oh, no. Lister had just come inside him, and- and he'd really, really liked it. Tingles all over. Enough to maybe muster another half-erection, if he hadn't been too exhausted to try.

"Well?" Lister smiled. "Good?"

"Great." Rimmer grimaced as Lister pulled out, his hologrammatic sphincter thoroughly traumatized by the whole experience. "Well, probably better than Ace could have done, anyway."

"Glad he smegged off when he did. Otherwise I'd have missed out on the best sex I've had in three million years, right?" A soft kiss. "Love ya."

And, bathed in contented afterglow, Rimmer didn't even feel the need to point out it was the only sex he'd had in three million years.

After a quick, half-hearted attempt at cleaning up, they laid in bed, Lister resting on top of Rimmer's chest. He patted Lister's soft, fuzzy head, well on his way towards dreamland.

"I know I said it a hundred times today, but I missed you," Lister murmured.

"Which is why you forgave me so easily for all… that."

"I'll be mad at you tomorrow. Lemme enjoy tonight." He sighed. "I just… I miss Earth. I miss the Dwarf. I mean, it all just gets taken and taken and taken from me, and… you're the only thing that the universe gave me back."

"That's probably not a sign the universe likes you."

"Yeah, but at least it's something, right?"

"What happens next? I mean, were you serious about wanting to travel dimensions with me? We can't both fit in Wildfire, even if she wanted me back. Nevermind trying to get the Cat and Kryten in there. It'll be the world's saddest clown car."

"Listen, man, I know I said all that about not breaking the chain, but…"

"Oh, what's this? Lister the selfless, Lister the humanitarian, Lister the stoic, changing his ways for little old me? Corrupted your little code of ethics, have I?"

"Don't be like that. Look, it's not like there aren't other Aces out there, other chains. It's all probability, right?"

"Or, you want to keep me all to yourself now that you know what you've been missing."

"Or that." Lister snorted. "If I'd known your ego'd grow three times after we did this, maybe I'd have thought twice."

"You didn't even think once."

"Didn't have to. You're worth it."

"Oh." Straight in the heart. Dave Lister, taking him out with three words, again. "For what it's worth- look, I can't say I… that I love you, because I don't really know what that actually… means." He thought briefly about Nirvanah. Would he give up that much for Lister? Arguably, he already had done, but… "But I want to stay. I want to go back to how it was, just having to keep the four of us afloat. I want to- to wake up and see your face every morning." God, it was something out of a cheesy coffee ad. "Point is, I- you- point is, I'm not going. So there."

"Rimmer, that was almost romantic." Lister traced a heart on his stomach. It tickled a little.

"It isn't just about you," he backpedaled. "I also really, really hated being Ace. I'd rather impale myself on a tetanus-infected meathook than hear the words 'old boy' ever again. I mean, the fake machismo. All that tripe about being a man's man. I'm done with that."

"Good. I like this new soft you."

"Soft?" he complained. "Is this because I let you-"

"No. What I mean is- you're still mean and annoying and hateful, but you've totally lost your bite. You haven't even made fun of my hair or my clothes or my intelligence once this whole day."

"The night's still young." Rimmer glanced at the clock. "Oh, no it isn't. Did we really spend over an hour doing all that?"

"New record for you, I guess."

"A lot of firsts."

A comfortable silence settled over them, and Rimmer felt… content, actually, for the first time in a long time. Probably just the post-coital hormones, or simulation thereof, making the world all colorful and fuzzy around the edges like a bad mid-twentieth-century romance film. But maybe that was as good as love. At the very least, he wasn't homesick anymore.

---

"Right then, boys," Rimmer said, tossing a ratty auburn wig into the cockpit. "You're part of something bigger than yourselves, now. Continuing on the chain of good deeds and bravado and all that."

"You've made your point," Wildfire protested. "I'm sorry. You can come back with me if you really want."

"Come back? No! I've just passed on the torch! They can't make things worse than I already have." Rimmer hummed with glee. "Well, old boys, I'll stroke a flipper for you. Toodle-oo," he said, before slamming the hatch down tight.

The plants sat in stunned silence. Rimmer puffed a cloud of irate pheromones into the air, thorns bristling. What did this meatbag expect him to do? Take down the bad guys by spitting oxygen at them? 

Still, there was a strange solace in the fact that he still wasn't the most pathetic Rimmer to ever exist. At least he had a useful ecological niche, even if it was nigh irrelevant in the cold confines of space. At least he had designer genes, even if the seedmother on Io had cocked them up a bit.

The journey through dimensions was a harrowing one. Kryten's water supply tube had knocked loose, though thankfully he didn't need it. And the fluorescent light Wildfire fed them with tasted awful compared to the real thing. The Cat had decided to experiment with crossbreeding new shades of violet flowers from his garish blue and sickly pink limbs, despite there being no pollinators to even merit such an inane hobby.

Finally, finally they landed, on a planet that looked somewhat hospitable. Well. Half of it was burning, but luckily they'd landed on the other half, and a little fire meant the air would soon be full of good old carbon dioxide.

The hatch opened, and the face Rimmer's blurry visual receptors looked upon was root-rottingly familiar. A meatbag, tall and pale, with a mop of ash-streaked auburn hair, a scar over one eye, dressed in black leather.

"Just in time," Ace laughed. "I was worried I wouldn't be able to get off this planet, once I was done with it."

"Hang on," Wildfire buzzed, worried. "You aren't some sort of anti-Ace, spreading evil throughout the galaxy?"

"Course not," the evil Ace said. He picked up each plant gently and put them in a neat row on the floor, sliding into the pilot's seat. A scream came from the outside. "Alright, chaps, let's hurry up and get this cow abducted. Only thing between us and the stars now is a gallon of fuel and the Royal Space Force."

"Well, it's an adventure, at least," Wildfire grumbled, preparing for takeoff. "Brace yourselves for turbulence. I'm going to have to do some advanced maneuvers here."

"My favorite," Ace said, patting the dashboard. "So long, Earth. Rest in peace, Mars. Au revoir, Mimas. And good riddance, Io."

They shot into the stratosphere, and Rimmer-the-plant felt an odd sense of dread rattle through his chloroplasts. 

Well. Whatever. At least this fleshy thing might remember to water them.

[prismadog]

hey everybody! I got some old fics uploaded to ao3 if you wanna check them out! there's some one-shots, some discontinued/unfinished fics, and one reader fic. lemme tell ya in advance, some of these aren't going to be very good - I wrote these back before 2015 when I was just starting to get into writing so the grammar/skills aren't the best. but I hope you enjoy anyway if you decide to read them.

there are two that are still in progress of being uploaded - Bloodlust and Amnesiac.

ao3 works

and here they are in a list by order of fandom!

YuGiOh

Birthday Surprise: explicit, hurt/comfort, Seto Kaiba/Joey Wheeler. * It's Kaiba's birthday and he's all alone, just like he wanted…but what happens when the love of his life comes for a visit? [one-shot]

Bloodlust: mature, romance/crime, Ryou Bakura &/ Yami Bakura. * An innocent boy and a not-so-innocent spirit team up to get the Millennium Items. [chapter fic] [in progress]

South Park

Hurtful Words: hurt/comfort, Stan Marsh/Kenny McCormick. * Stan says something mean to his good friend Kenny after he kisses him. [one-shot]

WWE - World Wrestling Entertainment

Brothers to the End: gen, alternate universe, the Shield. * The world is coming to an end and Dean refuses to leave Mother Earth behind to die without even trying to help her. Roman and Seth don't want to leave him behind. Will they join him in his fight or leave him on his own? [one-shot]

Love from Betrayal: teen, hurt/comfort, Roman Reigns/Dean Ambrose. * this is a one-shot about the night where Seth violently attacked his brothers with a steel chair and destroyed the Shield. In the middle of the ring, Dean does something he never thought he'd ever do. What does he do? [one-shot]

Birthday Cuffs: explicit, romance, Roman Reigns/Dean Ambrose. * It's Roman's birthday and he's had a long tiring night from the events that took place at the arena. He returns to the hotel with questions of where his brother is and soon finds a special surprise waiting for him in the moon-lit hotel room, something he never would've ever thought he would see. [one-shot]

Surprises: explicit, romance, Roman Reigns/Dean Ambrose. * It's Dean's birthday and Roman has a wonderful surprise for his best friend. Set after the Monday Night Raw show on December 7th. [one-shot]

the Only Cure for Pain (series): explicit, Roman Reigns/Dean Ambrose, Seth Rollins/Kane. * the Shield finds comfort in only one possible way, through the touch of another person. [unfinished]

Amnesiac: teen, romance? Reader/Dean Ambrose. * It's night time and you're on your way home from your shopping trip in the city when you come across an injured dirty-blond man, one you almost hit. You decide to take him home and patch him up because he needs help. What you didn't know at the time is that he needs a lot more help than some bandages. [chapter fic] [in progress]

Watching You: gen, hurt/comfort, romance, Damien Sandow/the Miz * Damien Mizdow's feelings about current events with the Miz. Will he confront the Miz or will he keep silent? What would the Miz do if he told him how he feels? Read to find out. [one-shot]

I'm Still Here: explicit, hurt/comfort, Damien Sandow/the Miz. * Miz isn't himself lately and Damien knows this because he's been watching the man once known as his partner. He decides to finally approach the A-Lister. [one-shot]