Warning: Contains slash like whoa.
Pairing: Ford/Arthur
Words: 2418
Disclaimer: Still not Douglas Adams.

Sometime Around Midnight

Ford had, of course, been cool about it. Waking up the next morning with an impressive hangover, curled up quite contentedly in Arthur's arms, was just a recipe for unpleasantness – because he'd known at the time that chances were Arthur would wake up and panic about finding himself naked with a man in a rumpled bed that smelled like sex, and that was the sort of panic that Ford most preferred to avoid. So he'd taken the easy way out; slid out of bed, rounded up his clothes, and resolved to pretend he didn't remember a thing. That happened to humans often enough, he knew, so maybe Arthur would wake up genuinely clueless and make use of his species' impressive capacity for denial – for someone who'd "never done that sort of thing before" he'd been suspiciously phenomenal at finding the Betelgeusian equivalent of a prostate – to ignore the telling odor of the bed sheets.

Arthur had, as chance would have it, woken up remembering everything and missing Ford terribly. Well, remembered most everything, anyway – bits and pieces, but those were steamy enough and his body missed the heat. But later, when he found Ford in the galley, his raging headache also reminded him that they'd both had a lot to drink the night before.

He looked Ford straight in the eye, lost his nerve, and tentatively asked what had happened last night, with the somewhat vague intent of just wanting to be clear.

And Ford, with a mental shrug and the little trickle of disappointment that came with it, looked right back and said, "Nothing, just a bit of drinking. I'm starving, do you want some breakfast?"

"Oh," Arthur said, feeling ill from disappointment and the previous night's alcohol rolling around in his stomach, and went off to vomit in the nearest available receptacle, which happened to be the galley sink.

The next time Ford picked someone up in a bar he couldn't help glancing across the crowded room at Arthur, who was sitting at a nicely secluded table with Trillian and probably having a nice chat. Well, that'll put him in a good mood anyway, thought Ford as he turned and left with the winner of that night's drinking game. A guy deserves that much after living through his planet getting blown up.

Only – and this was something Ford hadn't looked quite long enough to notice – Arthur happened at that moment to be watching him as well.

"Are you all right?" asked Trillian. "You look like you've just seen a ghost."

And he could remember, could remember Ford on top, rocking slightly, easing down around him, staring down with the widest, bluest eyes Arthur had ever seen and everything, god, everything was perfect—

Arthur shook himself and looked away. Ford had left already anyhow.

"Uh, no," he said, "no, I, I'm fine."

The trouble was, it wasn't particularly awkward. Nothing really changed between them. Except, sometimes when Arthur wasn't paying attention Ford would just stare at him, eyes slowly glazing over. And every once in a while when Ford wasn't paying attention Arthur would suddenly give a start and double-check that his dressing gown was tied securely closed.

So, for several weeks, nothing changed.

Ford dropped into his own bed, comfortably drunk and more or less pleased with how the Universe was treating him at the moment. The only minor hiccough was, of course, Arthur Dent – Ford would've loved to have another tumble with him, but the human had yet to get inebriated enough to do that again.

Yet. But Ford had a good imagination, so he could afford to be patient.

He pulled his sweater over his head and kicked off his shoes, hands running unhurriedly down his front undoing buttons. Arthur had taken his time with them too, probably out of awareness that he hadn't possessed the coordination to undo them quickly at the time. Such a practical thing to do, which was almost funny considering the circumstances, but at the time Ford had been too distracted by the mouth on his neck to consider anything much beyond a vague surprise at the fact that Arthur had made the first move, was in fact doing all the work.

Expect the unexpected, the Guide said, and that contradiction in terms was one Ford enjoyed living by. Life was short (though he generally preferred his own to not be, thank you very much), so why not have hot drunken sex with the only fellow hitchhiker who'd stuck around long enough to qualify as a best friend? Why not fantasize often about it afterwards, sometimes twice a day?

Ford's eyes drifted closed as he traced lazy patterns on his stomach, drifting closer and closer to the top of his undone trousers with every swirl of his fingertips. This part had actually gone much faster; the Earthman's hands had been in his pants before, he suspected, even Arthur had expected them to arrive there. It just wasn't possible to reenact that kind of surprise.

But, the triumphant proud flash in Arthur's eyes at the way he'd gasped and jerked almost desperately, into that hand…

Ford moaned just remembering it, slipping one hand in around himself and groping blindly around for his satchel with the other. Imagining Arthur's mouth on his chest again, tongue and teeth teasing first at one nipple then the other again, and it was easy to pretend that this was almost as good as the real thing.

He found the bag near the edge of the bed and, after a moment, his fingers closed around the right-shaped little bottle.

"D'you have, uh, something, for… you know?" Arthur had asked, and that had been the only moment of uncertainty all night. And Ford had let out a breathless laugh that sounded almost (but not quite) like a whimper, found the lubricant, and squeezed a ludicrous amount of it onto Arthur's hand.

Ford wiggled out of the rest of his clothes and used a significantly smaller portion to slick his own fingers.

It never would have occurred to him, before, that Arthur would ever think of putting his fingers where he had – first one, slowly, and then another. Ford groaned, imagining that Arthur's fingers were in him, in him, again, and that look…

There were things they had done that night that even Ford couldn't recreate on his own. But that was okay.

He had a good imagination.

Arthur was taking a walk. He had discovered them to be rather useful over the past few weeks, and so whenever he needed to distract himself from thoughts of Ford he ended up pacing the corridors.

It wasn't that those thoughts were indecent – aside from the fact that they were. Imagining someone naked, and doing… naked things… without their knowledge or permission was, in Arthur's opinion, indecent. He had come to accept that certain parts of his brain were beyond his control, and also that as long as he kept those parts to himself then he would never have to come to grief over them. Occasional indecent thoughts weren't the problem.

The fact that Ford was a man… Well, it had happened. That was another thing Arthur had had to accept. It had happened, once, and he'd enjoyed it, and it appeared that it wouldn't be happening again. And things were still all right. So that wasn't the problem either.

It was the once part of it that made Arthur determined to not let the indecent thoughts get to him. Indecent thoughts needed to be proportional to their inspiration.

The problem was that, despite his best efforts, they were still getting to him.

So he was taking a walk.

After a while he decided he was tired enough to go to sleep, and headed back in that direction. But the direction he was coming from meant he passed Ford's room first, and as he was passing he heard a fairly loud cry and a muffled thump.

Arthur paused. He hadn't been keeping a terribly close eye on how much Ford had been drinking earlier, so it was entirely possible that he was blind drunk, had just fallen out of bed, and needed help getting up from the floor. Never having been one to ignore a friend in need, he took a step closer. This was enough to trip the door's sensors and send it swinging open with a smug sigh.

Instantly, Arthur was no longer tired. And the indecent thoughts were back, though considering what he had a full profile view of they weren't really necessary.

Ford's head lolled to the side, and heavy-lidded blue eyes fixed distractedly on the Earthman.

"Arthur…?"

"Uh," replied Arthur, who wasn't even sure if that had been a question or a declarative statement or an involuntary moan with proper noun-like qualities. "Sorry, I, um, didn't mean to… intrude…"

He couldn't stop staring as Ford bucked his hips up into one hand and then back down onto the other. The room was dimly lit, but there was enough light coming in from the corridor to clearly make out the sweat beading on his smooth skin…

Ford continued to stare, not blinking, lips barely parted. "Well?" he breathed after a moment. "In or out?"

Suddenly Arthur realized that the door was open for anyone on the Heart of Gold to wander by and see. A blush crept rapidly to his cheeks on Ford's behalf and his feet automatically carried him inside before he knew what he was doing, and he jumped as the door shut behind him, a soft "Share and enjoy" lingering suggestively in the air.

"Um," he said again, swallowing hard.

He remembered sliding his hands and mouth over that skin. Muscles shifting, jumping, trembling under his fingertips. And Ford had hissed for him to put his fingers one very specific place, and he'd done it, for the first time, and the way Ford had gasped and arched and writhed against him after a few seconds of testing the waters (so to speak) had been enough to stamp into his inebriated brain that nothing like this could possibly be bad.

Out of habit, Arthur glanced guiltily down himself.

His dressing gown was tied securely closed.

He looked back at Ford, bit his lip, and attacked the knot in the dressing gown cord.

"Holy Zarquon's singing fish," Ford said with a breathy laugh, and did his best to scoot over a bit to give the Earthman some room on the closest side of the bed. "Hurry up, Arthur, I'm not going to last all night…"

Arthur stumbled toward him, shedding his dressing gown, pajamas, and undergarments as he went. He was almost to the bed when he tripped over Ford's satchel – which had fallen to the floor and was, incidentally, heavy enough to make a fairly loud thumping noise when doing so – and tumbled forward, nearly landing on top of the Betelgeusian but catching himself just in time.

Their chests touched. Certain other parts of them brushed up against each other as well. It was shockingly familiar for something that had only happened once before.

Instantly Ford had an arm around Arthur's neck and another around his waist, tugging him down.

"Your landing hasn't improved," Ford informed him impatiently, and then their mouths fell together like they'd never breathe again.

It was touch and go for a while. Only without the going.

The first time, Arthur had silently acknowledged both Ford's steady stream of fuck me fuck me fuck me and wealth of experience in that department. He'd rolled over onto his back, pulled Ford over him, and let the more experienced man do the rest, until the point where knowing became synonymous with simply moving, thrusting, fucking.

The second time, he had a pretty good idea, with a bit of help from Ford, what to do.

Ford drew a sharp breath as Arthur found the right angle and pressed into it – only this time he was pressing down, sinking in, pressing kisses against Ford's damp cheek until he turned his head.

"Nn. Not using teeth as much," he panted against Arthur's lips.

"Wh…?"

"Teeth," Ford groaned, arching helpfully to encourage a quicker rhythm. "You did, before…"

Arthur kissed him, and felt Ford's own teeth nip at his bottom lip. "I did?"

Ford groaned and pushed himself up, until his back was pressed tightly against Arthur's chest. "Yeah…"

They moved together, and Arthur's brain tried valiantly to sort through the bits and pieces of memory until his face bumped against Ford's neck, mid-thrust. His lips pressed against the skin automatically, parting just enough.

"Yes, that. Zarquon…"

A thick sort of drowsiness settled over Arthur as he lay there, running his fingers lazily through Ford's ginger curls. Ford, not sleepy so much as content not to move very much for a while, shifted a little to press his head up into the hand.

"You remembered, that whole time," murmured Arthur.

The corners of Ford's mouth turned up into a grin and he opened his eyes to give Arthur an amused look. "My species has evolved past blacking out." He made a disapproving noise in his throat as Arthur's hand stopped rubbing against his scalp, and looked pointedly up at the hand (to the best of his ability) until it resumed. "You remembered."

"Mostly," Arthur admitted. "But I thought that, since we were both drunk…"

"You should have asked," Ford interrupted dismissively. He gave Arthur's bottom a brief pat and closed his eyes again. "If I'd known you'd be so cool about it we could've done this a long time ago, y'know?"

Arthur did know. Specifically, he knew Ford well enough to understand that this was as close as the hitchhiker would get to expressing just how much he'd enjoyed it without starting to sound vulgar. And that was all right. Somewhat familiar, anyway.

He smiled, closed his eyes as well, and drifted off to sleep.

In the morning (or what passed for morning on a ship in space), aside from the fact that Ford had a leg slung over Arthur's hip and was grinding against him while still partly-asleep, and the fact that neither of them cared enough to complain about respective morning breath when Arthur kissed him, nothing had really changed. It wasn't awkward to wake up together, then shower together, then gradually come to the conclusion together that if the goal of the shower was supposed to be bathing they should shower separately.

The next night they did it all again.