Authoress's Note: Okay. My first HHGTTG fic. (Eek! Be kind!) Dont know why it took me two rereadings to decide that Ford and Arthur would be awful cute together. Heh...

Set sometime during the boys' cross-planet hike at the end of The Resturant At The well you get the picture...

Eventually, he just couldn't stand it anymore. He had to ask.

He began, eloquently, with, "Er…"

To which Ford replied, lazily poking the campfire with a stick, "Eh?"

A good many of their conversations in recent weeks had gone this way.

Arthur opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and asked, "That…trick of yours."

Ford yawned and lay back on his pallet of furs. "Trick?"

"The pheromone trick."

"Ah."

"How long does it take to…" He turned the question this way and that, looking for the least humiliating angle. It didn't have one. "…wear off?"

Ford opened one inhumanly-blue eye and peered across the fire at him with it. "Wear off?"

"I mean…do you…leave it running? Afterwards, I mean. When you don't need it…er…anymore?"

Both eyes were open now. The firelight reflected in them much the same way it might in a cat's eyes. Arthur suddenly felt the urge to back away slowly and cover his throat.

Ford grinned. Arthur actually did cover his throat.

"Hmm. Why? Having a bit of a…reaction…are we?"

"No!!" Arthur waved his hands about in a desperate attempt to look casual. Which is absolutely pointless when one has just been cowering and clutching one's jugular. "I was just wondering, is all. Thought I'd make some conversation, is all."

Ford slowly raised one eyebrow. It is a well-known fact to just about everyone (but Arthur) that the people inhabiting Betelgeuse had taken the eyebrow-lift and perfected it in ways hitherto-unheard of in the recorded history of body language. This eyebrow-lift was saying a great many things about Arthur Dent and his choice of conversation. It was also implying one or two things about his horrible track-record with the ladies, and all the ways that Ford could help him with this problem, with the assistance of some tricks he'd learned playing drinking games amongst the miners of Orion Beta.

Arthur, being a more simple life-form possessed of a more simple consciousness (to put it lightly) missed almost all of this, but did have enough cognition to blush an interesting shade of lobster red.

"Er…" he said. Eloquently.

"It's not me, I'm afraid," Ford said happily, settling down to sleep once again. "Not to say that you're having a...reaction...of any sort."

"Quite."

"Because you were just making conversation."

"Indeed," Arthur agreed, wretchedly.

"Goodnight, Arthur."

"Goodnight, Ford."

There was silence for awhile, broken by the sweet singing of crickets.

Oh, bugger, thought Arthur. It's just me.

owari

Authoress: That was the fastest I've ever written anything in my life.

Muse: Dude. I clocked you at 5 minutes.

Authoress: Okay!! Why can't you do that with everything ELSE I try to write!!!

Muse: So aliens inspire me?! So sue me!