Warning: Contains slash and silliness. Do not read if allergic to paint.
Pairing: Ford/Arthur
Words: 437
Disclaimer: Not Douglas Adams. The gene therapy plan continues to fall through with no regard for my personal feelings. Though I am working on obtaining a clone of Simon Jones, as well as a clone of the infamous Arthur Dent dressing gown.
Dedicated to TheRimmerConnection, who never fails to have a giggle at my complete inability to stop mixing up striped and stripped without hauling out the thesaurus. :hearts:
Striped
There were times when Arthur quite enjoyed waking up in the morning. On such days he would usually just be drifting out of a very pleasant dream, he wouldn't have work or any particular plans for the day, and nothing would crop up at the last moment to prevent having a nice leisurely cup of tea. In an ideal world, he would also wake up at the precise time at which he intended to do so despite having forgotten to set an alarm the night before.
There were times when Arthur was forced to recall that he was not living in an ideal world, but on an improbable spaceship in an unreasonable Universe.
Unfortunately, Arthur woke to find the hands of his digital watch pointing to the latter. This had a great deal to do with the amount of alcohol Ford had coaxed him into drinking the night before.
Observation the first: he was hung over.
Observation the second: he was hung over and naked.
Observation the third: he was hung over, naked, and inexplicably covered in red and blue racing stripes.
He stood in the shower, which was about as far as one could get without making the third observation even with the first two at play, and shrieked.
Absolutely covered.
Elsewhere on the ship, Ford heard the unmistakably familiar sound of an Arthur in distress and grinned.
His memory of the night before was a little hazy, but he remembered having, at some point, the very distinct idea that dragging Arthur to bed and stripping him would be a fantastic way to pass the time until the next wild and exciting adventure came along.
Sometime during the execution of this, however, his thought process must have encountered a typo, because a few hours later he'd woken up sharing a bed not only with Arthur but a few paintbrushes and cans of paint – the kind that set into skin after a few seconds with a slight tingle, and didn't wash off or even smear for days. Ford had left with fond, fuzzy memories of just how sensitive particular parts of Arthur's body had been to those brushes and the human's enthusiastic reaction to the paint drying.
But not without taking a few commemorative pictures first, just in case Arthur wasn't quite so appreciative of High Art while sober.
Across the bridge, Trillian looked up from the astrophysics magazine she was studying.
"What was that?" she asked, mildly alarmed.
Ford's grin widened. Trillian put her analyst on danger money.
"Oh nothing," he said innocently, "just a little mid-morning entertainment. Excuse me, I've got to find my friend."