I am not Douglas Adams. He wrote all the Hitchhiker's Guide books not me.
This story is set between the end of The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe and the start of Life, The Universe and Everything, when Ford abandoned Arthur. For four years!
For Mrs James Norrington. Because she asked.
Arthur Dent Gets Some Sleep
Arthur Dent was asleep. He was asleep in a damp, cold, smelly cave in pre-historic Islington. Before gentrification. There was a swamp. And a forest. And caves.
One of the caves had a pile of straw in it. On top of the straw lay animal skins. Over the animal skins lay Arthur. Over Arthur were more animal skins. Sleet and cold wind blew into the cave.
Arthur Dent was dreaming; he dreamt of a tea shop he'd once visited in Devon which wasn't there yet. The scones had been stale, the jam mostly raspberry pips and the tea somewhat short of piping hot. Compared to the meals he'd had recently it was worth dreaming about.
In the dream he had turned the teacup round to a avoid the chip and had been faced with a lipstick smudge on the rim facing him. He could have complained, but he was on holiday and didn't want to cause a scene. So, he wiped it with his paper napkin and poured in milk from the little jug and tea from the stainless steel pot, which dribbled the way stainless steel teapots always dribble.
He leaned back in his chair and saw Ford Prefect of all people sitting opposite him. In the dream he didn't remember that Ford had abandoned him three and a half years previously. In the dream it seemed like Ford always managed to turn up and spoil things just when he managed to get a moment's peace.
Ford was stealing Arthur's jam: sticking his finger in the pippy pot-full and licking it off. In a perfectly respectable tea room populated by lilac-coated old ladies. Sighing, Arthur offered him half his scone. Resentfully. But Ford ignored it.
Arthur closed his eyes and lifted the tea-cup to his lips, inhaling that uniquely delicious steam of tea, which had yet to be cultivated anywhere on the planet. Even not-as-hot-as-it-could-be tea was the best drink in the universe.
In the dream, Arthur opened his eyes again. Ford was holding the little glass bowl of clotted cream. He held it in both hands and lifted it up to his face. Some of the lavender-scented old ladies turned round to disapprove of them. Ford's long, pink, alien tongue dipped down into the cream. It swirled a bit. Slowly he lowered the pot, leaving a thick yellowish-white coating on the long, not-quite-human tongue. The tongue began a slow return to the wet, dark mouth where it lived.
Several mauve-haired old ladies tutted loudly. Arthur closed his eyes in mortification. And maybe just a bit of something else as well.
When he opened them, Ford had gone.
'Good,' he thought and felt very lonely.
Then he felt something hairy under the table. It was hair. He leaned back to look at it through the gap between the table and his lap. The hair was red, curly and familiar, but he chose not to name it.
Arthur smiled apologetically at a table full of old ladies in lavender coats. Not the colour, the flower. Coats made out of flowers. Unusual for Devon.
Something that felt like a hand - but how could it have been?- stroked his thigh, or rather the trousers covering his thigh. No, just his thigh. So what had happened to his trousers?
'Oh, I see,' he thought, 'that's OK, then. It's just one of those being naked in public dreams!' That was a relief. It wasn't one of those other sorts of dreams then. Ah! This was one of those dreams where you know you're dreaming then, and can discuss what sort of a dream it is you're having. Which was obviously not one of those other sorts of dreams. Not about curly, red hair.
Except that that hand was where it shouldn't have been. And it was moving up his thigh. And the tea room had disappeared. There was just the chair he was sitting on. Naked. And the person with the familiar hands which surely should have been smaller and with longer, coloured nails, if they were touching him where those hands were touching him. Which pretty much decided which sort of dream it was, then.
'I'm in my mid-thirties,' Arthur thought, 'I should have grown out of this.'
The next morning Arthur woke with his usual horrified yell when he remembered where he was, sticky animal furs and an undefined confusion. He couldn't remember his dream.
Ford Prefect was asleep. He was asleep in a hot, dry, smelly cave in prehistoric Dar-Es-Salaam. The cave had a pile of straw in it. It was on fire in the hope that the smoke would keep the mosquitoes away. Ford lay on his towel.
He had assumed that being mad was going to suit him, but it had proved to be strangely unsatisfying. However, sanity was clearly an inappropriate response to his situation. When he was awake he tried to decide on a third approach, but he wasn't awake now.
Ford Prefect was dreaming. He dreamed of a hoopy night club on Gyratory Six that he'd once passed out in. The music was too loud for conversation, the Gee Nant Onyx too strong for thought. Perfect.
He was perched on a stool in a corner near the bar, glass in hand, staring at the dance floor. It was impossible to see anything that was dancing there because of the coloured lights in the ceiling and the darkness at ground level, but it was considered conventional to stare in that direction.
When he twisted round to order a Whee Ski Ensoh Dah, he spotted Arthur Dent sitting next to him. In the dream he didn't remember that he'd abandoned Arthur three and a half years previously when Arthur had started spending all his time with that woman; in the dream it seemed like Arthur was always turning up being mundane just when Ford was managing to look like a frood. Ford never could quite explain what it was he didn't like about Arthur's woman. He didn't know that she was dead now.
Arthur stole the ice out of Ford's drink. It was too cold for fingers that were only used to the fairly average coldness of Earth ice and Arthur gave a high-pitched yelp and dropped it on his lap, which made him yelp like a girl again.
The purple-skinned females sitting along the bar looked away in disgust. Ford closed his eyes and chewed the straw in his empty drink.
When he opened his eyes again, Arthur was sipping a drink of his own. It was stuffed with umbrellas, glittery stirring-sticks, and cherries. It was bright pink. As pink as the girls' aisle of Toys R Us. Really. That pink. It was not a good look. Not with a dressing gown.
Arthur speared a cherry with a glittery pink stick. He stuck out his short, reddish, ape-like tongue and licked the cherry. He ran his tongue over it, then lapped at it. Then, he stroked his lips up the glittery stick, before moving his mouth over the top of the cherry to put the whole thing in.
Ford looked away. Obviously that was not meant to look like what it looked like it was meant to look like. Arthur Dent?
When he looked back the stool was empty. Good. It's just that sometimes relief does feel like disappointment. Ford went back to staring at the dance floor where he couldn't see anything - it being too dark and the overhead lights being too bright - but was aware that within its darkness there were beings and creatures who held each other tightly and did things, with the various appendages their species were born with, to the other being or creature. Because it felt nice.
A figure (tall, humanoid) stood between him and the dance floor. Only its outline was visible. It moved backwards into the dark. Ford jumped off the stool and followed it. His quarry appeared to be strolling but, as is sometimes the way in dreams, no matter how fast Ford ran, he could never catch up with it.
Seeing nothing, he pushed past invisible bodies, avoiding appendages, trying to reach … whoever.
He panicked. Unbelievable! Ford Prefect did the least hoopy thing anyone could do. He panicked. He stood still, sweating, shaking, ready to scream: alone, dark, music, appendages.
He felt a hand on each shoulder and he fell forward onto something solid wrapped in … a dressing gown? He grabbed its waist. He lifted up his face and something leaned down to him, pushing its mouthparts onto his.
Ford woke up. The sun was rising over the plain outside his cave. He felt strange. He was experiencing a new emotion.
He seemed to remember dreaming about Arthur Dent. That seemed to be what had caused this feeling. Odd. Boring old Arthur? Miserable and moaning and male? Who was probably bringing up babies by now? Arthur? Who he hadn't seen in over three years? Ford wondered if he was still where he'd left him.
Guilt! That was an emotion he'd never had before. That must be what this was. Something other than mad or sane, anyway. Which was exactly what he'd been looking for.
Ford picked up his towel and his satchel. All of a sudden he felt like going for a walk. A very long walk. Mostly North. With a bit of West.