Disclaimer: Douglas Adams invented these characters. I just make them do fun stuff.

A/N: Dedicated to murderofonerose

It was pitch dark. All Arthur had to go on was the smell of the place, which he was trying hard to analyse, only it was a bit difficult in the circumstances.

"I told you I'd make it up to you," Ford murmured. He sounded very close. But then, Arthur didn't need to be able to see to know how very close Ford was standing.

"Five years alone in a cave. That's a lot of making up you owe me. Have you got a torch or something?"

Ford muttered something about breaking the mood. He muttered it into Arthur's neck, though, while unfastening his dressing gown cord with one hand and rubbing at certain private and sensitive places with the other, so Arthur wasn't really listening.

There was just one small area of his brain which wasn't being pleasantly distracted by all the – well, pleasant distractions really. This tiny, alert segment was remembering things about his friend Ford. This collection of cells had been asleep for a few years, because whatever else his cave had been (lonely, cold, uncomfortable, smelly, lacking an interior design concept ...) it had been a pretty uneventful place.

The part of his brain which worried and niggled and stressed and generally remembered where his towel was had, therefore, been able to have a bit of a nap. It was stirring now; it had heard Ford's voice, and that had triggered the synaptic equivalent of a stretching of limbs and an inhaling of coffee fumes.

It was dark, he didn't know where he was, he was with Ford.

Explosions, psychopathic aliens, gun-toting robots, imploding planets.

Arthur pulled away from the expert betelguisian fondling and stepped backwards. No! No! Stepping backwards was frequently a bad idea! He stepped forwards again. Arg! Distracting digits again.

"Arthur!" Ford chastised.

"Ford!" he snapped back. "Where are we?"

"It's a surprise. Don't ruin my surprise."

"I can't see anything. I'm nervous!"

"Don't you trust me?" Ford purred.

"Of course not!"

"I'm hurt! And surprised!"

"Surprised?"

Ford paused for a moment. "No. Not really." He sighed. "You want me to turn on the lights?"

"There are lights?"

"What colour would you prefer?"

"What colour would I ...?" Arthur spluttered.

"Pink's flattering."

"Pink? What?"

"But I'm just about perfect anyway, and there's a limit to how much even pink lighting could flatter features as lived-in as yours --"

"Hey! If I'm so unattractive then why are you --?"

"Lilac and orange soft room lighting!" Ford declaimed.

Then Arthur was speechless. For many minutes. When he finally said something it was "Oh." He blinked. Then he said "Oh" again.

The carpet was so thick it did that shimmering thing which fields of wheat do in the wind. Arthur dropped to his knees and ran his fingers over it. As he did so, an opera of colours sparkled on its surface and it released a very quiet giggling sound, as though it were being tickled. The carpet was astounding; Arthur said, "Oh".

"Don't suppose you could run your fingers through my hair instead of the carpet?" Ford grumped.

"I've been living in a prehistoric cave for five years," Arthur reminded him. "The floor was uneven, gritty rock." Then he looked up and said, "Oh" again.

The walls were decorated in the most exquisite renderings of the most beautiful views in the galaxy. Arthur walked around and stared at the turquoise light of Estragon IX reflected off its ruby lakes encircled by perfectly symmetrical mountains; he gawped at the twisted bronze tree-trunks arching under a sky of balletic, swirling clouds in the forests of Melodianax; he gazed enraptured at the complex architecture and obscene statuary of Eroticon IV. "Oh," he said again.

"You could try looking lovingly into my eyes instead of at the artwork," Ford suggested tetchily.

"I've been living in --"

"Yeah. Yeah. I could have just left you there, you know."

Arthur's only response was, "Oh." He had spotted the bed. It was wide with a thick mattress and the sheets were piled a couple of dozen high and all made of slippery soft silk. He put his cheek against the sensational fabric and groaned deeply. He climbed onto the top of the bedding and rubbed against it, writhing, moaning, undulating ...

"Look, the idea was that you'd be frotting about under my – oh sod it!"

Ford rapidly stripped himself naked and leaped onto the bed on top of his squirming friend. For once Arthur didn't say "Oh". He managed a "Mmmphp!" instead. It wasn't articulate, but it was at least variety. Ford shuffled down the bed, pulling off Arthur's pyjamas as he went, and nibbled Arthur's buttock.

"No!" Arthur shouted out.

Ford decided he'd just mispronounced 'Oh' this time. Then Arthur repeated himself with an added sharp jab of his foot into Ford's knee and Ford couldn't pretend to be suffering under a perfectly reasonable misunderstanding any more.

"Arthur!" he whined. "I need you!"

"But I need a bath! And an explanation."

Ford sat up. "I was trying to be nice." He pouted. "We could have just done it in the cave, or on some ferns or something."

"What I don't understand is why we are 'doing it' – as you so seductively put it – at all. I mean, I'm sure you're as frustrated as I am. We've both been on our own without any female company ..." a wary look crossed his ape-descended features then. "Unless ... Look when you said you'd been 'doing things' to giraffes, you didn't mean ...?"

Ford was losing the direction of the conversation. He was distracted. After all, they were naked in bed together (and a very luxuriant and expensive bed it was too) so conversation wasn't what they ought to have been having at all. Things were meant to just sort of flow from here.

"I missed you," he tried.

"Five years," Arthur repeated.

"Why do you keep saying that? It's not like time is an objective definitive concept --"

"Then you turn up and start groping me. Well, not immediately, but after you got that read-out on your thumb thing --"

"I thought you liked it."

"Liked what?"

"The groping!" Ford added, exasperated.

Arthur blushed. "I don't know what makes you think ..."

Ford looked pointedly at his friend's erection.

"As I said, it's been a long time ..." Arthur muttered. "That's not the point. The point is – well, there are three points I think --"

"Only two that I'm interested in, mine and yours and getting them pointed at each other ..."

Arthur carried on, ignoring Ford, "Well four if you include the abandonment for five years in a cave issue, but I think I may have mentioned that already. Firstly, I don't know where we are. Secondly, I need an explanation for the groping type of issues thing, and thirdly, if we are going to extend that, erm, tactile, type of, erm ... well, if we are then I'd like a bath first. Or a shower."

"Don't you want to 'extend the erm', or whatever your euphemism was?"

"Erm ..."

Arthur tried to take his mind off the question by examining the artwork again. Strangely, though, now that Ford was naked, the walls were no longer the most compelling sight in the room.

"I don't think we've got time to get clean before we get dirty," Ford said after an awkward pause. "On account of the fact that we're stowing away in the most expensive room in the most exclusive hotel-spacecraft in the galaxy and that our arrival is bound to have set off some sort of alarm and security droids with blasters will even now be --"

"Ford!" Arthur yelled. He started pulling his clothing back on. "Why on earth --?"

"I thought you might like it!" Ford tried to tussle Arthur's clothing back off again. "And I thought that if you did like it, then may be we might --"

The door exploded like the death of a dozen stars and the expensive carpet squawked unheard as the big boots of the most expensive security droids in the galaxy marched across it.