Title: Old Acquaintances
By: Sarah McDermott – catwoman@merseymail.com
Rating: PG for extremely mild sexual references and even milder cussing
Summary: In which Arthur Dent runs into Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged again. Extended drabble. Fits into canon like a square peg in a round hole. Implied slash (ie: homosexual) content. Nothing remotely graphic. Mostly harmless.
I recognised the ship as soon as I saw it. Well, actually it was a few minutes after I saw it. Well, it was just after he came out and re-introduced himself. Then I recognised it. I mean, it's not the sort of ship you forget, especially not if you see it when you're stranded on prehistoric Earth with nothing but trees for company. And those trees were particularly bad conversationalists.
Wowbagger, it transpired, was his name. I hadn't particularly wanted to know that but since he was volunteering information I thought it was worth remembering. It seemed, though, that he wasn't in the mood to chat.
He looked around and muttered some half-hearted attempts at conversation about how much he liked my décor, how odd it was to find me two million years after we originally met, how he hadn't really MEANT it when he called me an asshole and it was nothing personal and would I show him to the bedroom now because there were actually a lot of people he still had to see. He finally stopped for breath at this point, I suppose being an alien he had some sort of complex system that allowed him to speak more quickly than humans. Or maybe he was just that irritating sort of character who talks too much for their own good. Anyway, the point is that he stopped talking long enough me to, very politely, ask him what the hell he was talking about.
It turned out that he'd given up on his attempt to insult everyone in the universe. Now he intended to sleep with everyone in the universe. In alphabetical order. I had to admit, it seemed like a much more enjoyable way to waste eternal life.
I had my doubts, of course. Despite what you may hear, I'm not in the habit of sleeping with people who insult me before they get to know me. I'm not too fond of bug-eyed aliens either. Not to mention the fact that I prefer women. (A certain Betelgeusian of my acquaintance is the one and only exception to this rule. And that exception was most definitely a mistake.) I pointed this out to him and he glared at me.
"You're a jerk, Dent" he snapped, "a complete asshole." And in a decidedly sulky flash of light, he was gone. He disappeared into the distance in his distinctly memorable Starship and I never saw him again.
Some people, I have since learned, take things far too personally.
And now, of course, I almost wish I'd taken him up on it. Not because he was particularly attractive, you understand, but because life back here on Earth is surprisingly dull. Nice but dull. Now where have I heard that before?
Ford paid me an uncalled for and completely unexpected visit a few weeks ago. He turned up after a two month long visit to Betelgeuse demanding a bed and an aspirin. When he got over his hangover he insisted that I'd just missed out on the most amazing holiday and that he'd run into someone called Wowbagger The Infinitely Prolonged.
"He was good." Ford smirked when I casually asked how he'd found the experience, "Better than you, anyway. C'mon, let's go. I need a drink."
Life just isn't fair.