Chapter Four
Hammer and Tony: Thinking Caps On!

God Himself must have descended from the heavens and thrust the idea forcefully into Matthews' skull through his nasal cavity.

"Day... off?" Hammer voiced incredulously, his knees knocking in anticipation. Tony bit his lip, crossing his fingers behind his back. Surely, it was too good to be true. Matthews tossed his cigarette butt at the mousy blonde Hammer, who flinched.

"What, you morons don't wanna take a day off to enjoy the weather?" Matthews drawled, staring each of them down.

"No!" Tony shouted. A pause. "I mean yes!" Hammer glared daggers at him over his glasses. Turning his eyes back to his captain, he raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Captain, you haven't given us a day off since Tony's grandmother's funeral," Hammer explained slowly, as if to a child.

"No," Tony reminisced, staring at the ceiling, "I was working that day."

"Christmas?" Hammer asked.

"No, I think we were working," Tony answered.

"St. Patrick's Day?"

"Working."

"Easter?"

"Working."

"Boxing Day?"

"All right!" Matthews shouted, his voice echoing around the bridge. His two underlings stopped as if caught in headlights. "I get it! I don't give you any freakin' days off! Well, you'd better haul your asses outta here in five seconds or I'll have you cleanin' the floor of the bar with your tongues, ya morons!"

"But I-"

Hammer was cut off as Tony grabbed him by the arm and shot out through the bridge doors. Matthews exhaled, deeply relieved.

"Finally," he muttered, walking to Hammer's station and bringing up a visual feed screen above Tony's usual seat. "Come to Papa," he said with a grin. In only an instant, the Seraphim Sisters were singing their hearts out, Matthews reclining in his elevated chair, smoking contentedly.

Just as the Sisters began their second song, the Captain's personal favorite, the doors of the bridge opened, revealing a frantic woman.

"Captain Matthews," she breathed, exhausted from a long run. "Am I your-"

"What the hell you doin' in here, ya moron!" he shouted, his face turning red with the embarrassment of being caught watching the Seraphim Sisters. He was the only man he knew who adored them as he did.

"Please, Captain, I just need a confession-" She held out her camera desperately. A stream of vulgarities followed her as Matthews ran her out of the bridge. The doors shut between them.

The incident forgotten, Matthews returned to his chair and listened to the siren sounds of the Seraphim Sisters.


"Day off," Tony reveled in the words, as if soaking them in. He closed his eyes and leaned back, his face turned toward the sun. "Ahhh... Day off..."

"Y'know," Hammer said thoughtfully from beside him, "the more you say it, the more of our day off you're wasting."

Tony shot up, staring at the watch on his wrist. "Great gobs of gopher meat!" he shouted, the crowd which had gathered around the two jumping as he did. They had been splayed in the middle of the sidewalk smack in the center of Second Miltia's capital. Tony turned frantically to Hammer. "It's already noon! What are we gonna do? So much time wasted! We'll never get a day off in one-thousand-million years! The oppression!"

"Tony!" Hammer shouted, grabbing his shoulders and shaking him. Tony blinked rapidly, his senses coming back to him. He stared down at the shorter Hammer.

"Hammer..."

"What?"

"If you ever stand this close to me again I'll carve your spleen out with a wooden cooking spoon."

Hammer stared, wide-eyed, at the pilot for a moment, then slowly stepped backwards. "Gotcha," he said with a squeak. The two stood, five feet apart, and the crowd around them moved once again. Just as they were about to join the stream of meandering people someone decided to shove a sign in their faces.

"AGH!" Tony shouted, jumping back a step. Hammer lost his balance and fell. Holding the sign stood a man, no more than 40, his black hair tinted with a sophisticated gray. His smile was so wide that Hammer thought it must have been terribly painful.

"CONGRATULATIONS!" the wide-grinning man said without parting his glimmering teeth more than a fraction. Hammer grimaced in fear. "You two are the 32nd and 33rd person to prostrate yourselves in the middle of this sidewalk!" Tony noticed what the sign said: "20 off sushi on Tuesdays."

"What the hell does that sign have to do with that?" Tony asked, shielding his face from the brightness of the teeth. The man looked at the sign, still grinning, and tossed it over his shoulder.

"Oh nothing. I just wanted to get your attention."

Hammer and Tony stared incredulously at the grinning man, who, if they focused hard enough, they could make look like a frog. Hammer cocked his head.

"So... what do we get?"

"Excuse me?" the grinning man asked.

"What do we get?" Hammer reiterated. "For lying prostrate in the street?"

"Oh, I nearly forgot in my elation!" the man said through his blindingly white teeth. Tony's eyes were tiny mirrors of fear. "You two have won a trip to appear on our special game show!"

The man reached into his pocket and sprinkled colorful confetti sparingly on the men's heads. The both stared at him nonplussed. The confetti stuck in their hair.

"Why, you both look like cute little cupcakes!" he exclaimed, clasping his hands. Hammer stared on, afraid that if he looked away the world would turn upside-down.

"What type of game show is it?" Tony asked.

Oh, he shouldn't have asked.


"Hello all you beautiful people out there!"

The audience screamed with excitement as the strange man walked on stage, carrying a portable microphone and waving amiably to the crowd. Hammer and Tony sat together on one large cushy futon. Tony though that it was a disgustingly sickening shade of pink. On either side of them was another pair of people, both pairs being a man and a woman. Hammer shielded his eyes from the frantically blinking red and white lights hung all over the studio.

"Can you guess what time it is?" the host shouted above the roar of the crowd.

As one, they answered, "JUSTIN TIME!"

"That's right," the smiling man countered with a flash of his huge white teeth, "I'm your host Justin Time, and this is. . .!"

"LOVE LOVE!" the audience shot back.

Hammer and Tony paled simultaneously.

The "quiet" sign appeared over the audience's collective heads, and they all stopped talking instantly. Justin Time began walking toward the couple to the right of Hammer and Tony.

"Here we have our first couple," he looked at his small U.M.N. device, whose screen held all their information, "Hilda and Roman Gervais!"

The crowd cheered, then stopped as if by a switch.

"How long have you two been married, Hilda?" Justin asked. The fat blonde woman clasped her skinny husband precariously in her death grip.

"Three wonderful years, Justin!"

The crowd, like a Hydra, moved as one to clap. Hammer held his hand out to feel for rain. Justin stepped quickly over to Hammer and Tony, who, by now, where whiter than the blinding studio lights.

"Let's give a big hand, ladies and gentlemen, to our first male-male couple on Love Love!"

Tony's mouth hung open in disbelief. Hammer began searching for something to slit his wrists with.

"It says here that," again he looked to the Screen of Infinite Information, "Hammer and Tony von Brabant met while on a tramp freighter working for the Kukai Foundation!"

"Wait, Elsa von Brabant in the name of the ship we work on!" Tony tried to protest, but it was drowned out by the roar of the crowd. As Justin moved on to the next couple, Hammer was knitting his brows in frustration.

"Tony..." he gave a deadly glare to the helmsman, "they think we're gay."

"Gay?" Tony gulped, looking from Hammer to the audience in fear.

"Gay," Hammer said with a fearful nod.

But they couldn't back out now. Harry and Mary Lucceri had already been introduced as a couple to be married in two weeks.

The game was about to begin.


AN (TSO): All right, you're probably like "wtf, why are they making all these guy-guy pairings?" but this is not a pairing. It's just so funny to think that someone thinks Hammer and Tony are a pairing. And it's so fun to write. I just HAD to have HAmmer and Tony. They alone are so fun to write. Ahh... That was great...