Warning: Contains slash

Pairing: Ford/Arthur

Words: 924

Disclaimer: Bert the hyperspace whale, Melee Smiles Jent, and Melee's boss are mine. Everyone/everything else belongs to Douglas Adams.

Zen & the Art

Of Getting Information, & Tea, Without Too Much Effort

Ford was watching Melee feed the whale by emptying a couple of very large buckets of something purple, wet, and lumpy into a doorway-like opening on her side of the room (which was, evidently, not an exit) when Arthur suddenly clutched at his arm and nearly made him spill his drink.

"Ford, this is… I mean, well, it tastes just like… tea!"

"Does it?" he asked. His eyebrows firmly declined to shoot up to match Arthur's shocked expression, for dignity's sake. It wasn't all that surprising though, because Ford had already noticed that his glass (or jar, rather) of not-Janx Spirit tasted just like real Janx Spirit, even though none of the supposedly secret and quite lengthy distillery processes had been used, and just that by itself would have been too much of a coincidence to be believable.

"Yes," Arthur said, and eagerly rounded his attention on the gray-skinned alien who had prepared it. "How did you make this?"

Melee stacked the steaming buckets by the sink and shrugged, wiping her hands on the front of her voluminous apron. "It's just a matter of mixing the right flavors together. Simulate the right chemical reactions, interactions, and so on, and you can get just about any taste right. I just make 'em to fit the gustatory cells on your tongue."

"That's a pretty handy trick," commented Ford. In fact, it sounded like a low-tech approximation of a Nutri-matic without the automatic share and enjoy slapped onto the tag end of every use. That in itself was enough to render the process vastly preferable, if with very limited marketing potential due to an apparent necessity of skill. "Very useful at parties. You picked that up here?"

"More or less." She leaned on the countertop, balancing on it with a complete disregard for the ominous rattle of the glass stacks supporting it. "I was working on it before but I have a lot more access to all the right materials here, as well as all the time it took to get it right. When I first started, the boss said I was a terrible chef and a worse bartender. I sure showed him, eh?"

"I'll say," Arthur replied enthusiastically. "Is there any more of this? You've no idea how hard it is to find a good cup of tea in this galaxy… or any cup of tea, for that matter."

As she refilled Arthur's jar, Ford asked casually, "So, you started out here as an employee?"

"No… more like an indentured servant. I was so eager to get off my home planet," she explained, "that I, um, didn't read the fine print before sighing the contract. But, aside from the boss being a great zarking jerk and keeping me chained up most of the time, it's not so bad. I still prefer it to home."

"Ah," Ford said slowly. "So you've never exactly tried to escape, have you?

Melee frowned. "If I had wanted to escape, tried would not be the operative word. I just happen to like Bert too much to abandon him, that's all." She paused, and laughed. "Oh, I see. You want me to help you be un-kidnapped."

Arthur looked up from the tea he was so intently enjoying. Ford glanced over and couldn't decide which looked more appealing on him – the expression of complete rapture over the deceptively simple beverage, or the dawning comprehension of what he, Ford, had been steering the conversation towards in the past few minutes and the touch of admiration that came with it.

"That would be vastly preferable to the alternative, yes," Arthur said.

"Indeed," agreed Ford. "Think about it. We want to be rid of these mice; you're not particularly fond of this boss of yours. Perhaps we could work something out to our mutual benefit."

"We-ell…"

They waited hopefully as she pondered the suggestion.

"I don't know," she said finally.

Ford groaned. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

"Well I…" Melee paused, then frowned. She seemed to be listening intently to something, and gradually the frown deepened into a scowl. "Oh photons, he's coming," she hissed.

Arthur took a step back and glanced around in mild alarm, the suddenness of this announcement cutting through even the warm happiness of finding some tea at last. "Who's coming?" he asked. "Is that dangerous?"

"Give me those," she snapped, and grabbed the jars back from them.

"Hey," Ford protested, even though he had long emptied his. It was the principle of the matter – that and the pathetic whimper Arthur made as the last few sips of tea were taken away.

"Look," Melee told them, working quickly to clear the counter, "it'll be better for you if you don't draw attention to yourselves. Go back and lie down where you were, yeah? If you stay still, he might think you're still unconscious and leave sooner… Zarquon knows I don't want to deal with the bastard any more than I have to, and you wouldn't either if you'd met him properly."

"What about," Ford started to ask.

"Later! Go on, he's almost here…"

"Ford," Arthur said nervously. "I do think that maybe we should do what she says…"

"Oh all right."

He let Arthur tug him behind the table and chairs to the wall, right back where they'd started – with one small difference. This time they were lying close enough for their arms to touch, and Ford's fingers were draped lightly around Arthur's wrist, just brushing the pulse point.

Arthur wondered what his mother would've had to say about that.