A great glob of something cold and blue and not entirely unlike the contents of a slushie landed on Arthur's face when he stepped outside.
"Ford," he spluttered indignantly, frowning at the guilty party. He reached in the pocket of his bathrobe for his towel. "What was that—?"
"It's snow," the Betelgeusian announced with one of his maddeningly wide smiles, looking extremely proud of himself.
The Earthman wiped his face off and looked around—the ground on this planet was indeed covered in a blanket of the blue stuff, which did indeed look like snow. (To Arthur, it tasted like a blueberry slushie, however, which may or may not have been his imagination.) "All right," Arthur said in a level tone. "It's snow. Why did you throw it at me?"
Ford's smile got a little wider. Arthur sighed as he ignored his automatic instinct to cover his jugular. "You've been depressed," Ford said. "I could tell. And if Earth hadn't been destroyed—"
"More than once," Arthur muttered.
"And we were on Earth, it would be winter. Time for all you humans to rush about in the snow and throw it at each other and go to party after party and get drunk and give each other cardboard tubes wrapped in decorated paper that make a bang noise when one opens them and that contain little worthless slips of paper or a balloon or some such."
"Crackers," Arthur said. "They're called Christmas crackers."
"Right," Ford replied. "I didn't have any cardboard tubes—crackers," he corrected on seeing Arthur's face. "So I convinced Zaphod we needed to come here, where there was snow."
"Ah." Arthur took a minute to digest this information. Ford had been trying to make him feel better? The same Ford who had basically said, 'I understand why you're upset but buck up old chap, there's a good human' when he expressed distress over the destruction of the Earth? "You were trying to cheer me up?" he asked tentatively.
"If you like." He shrugged. "Honestly, I was tired of you moping around, Arthur, and thought some familiarity might do you some good."
"I see."
Ford continued. "Besides, Zaphod was looking for a place to drink and this planet has some five-star bars." He paused. "Do you want to throw cold snow at each other some more or can we move ahead to the drinking and partying part?"
That sounded more like the usual hitchhiker than a considerate gesture had, but Arthur, who honestly wasn't a dullard despite appearances, noticed that the Betelgeusian was looking at him in a stranger-than-usual way. He looked almost as if…as if he was waiting to see whether or not Arthur was pleased. Coming from Ford, whose idea of a Christmas gift in the old days on Earth had been to take Arthur out for a night on the town and make him pay for everything, the notion was strange. Strange, but endearing.
Ford really was the only close friend Arthur had left, after all, and he did care—he must or he wouldn't have saved him so many times or bothered to throw a snowball at him in an attempt, however misguided, to cheer him up. "We can move on to the drinking and partying part, Ford," Arthur replied. "And…thank you."
The Betelgeusian grinned and slung his arm around the human as he dragged him onward through the blueberry-flavored slush to a really hoopy bar.