This is a Hitchhiker's Guide/Hornblower crossover, written by two slashers. The authors are Les Lapins Mauvais and Demus.

Thanks to our reviewers: Captain Oz, Spirals and Ladybush. And also thanks to the 100-odd other people who are reading as well.

This chapter contains mention of sex, not graphic, but it's still there. Those with delicate constitutions may wish to cover their eyes before they read.

When they reached the wardroom, Archie pulled open the door of one of the adjoining cabins with a dramatic flourish, revealing a tiny cabin with just enough room for two hanging cots, and space in between to stow a sea chest. Ford looked at it sceptically. Perhaps it had been hoping for too much to expect a double bed, but still... he wondered how much weight the ropes supporting the cots could take. Arthur was still just glad that they weren't being 'keel-hauled', whatever that meant. He was aware of the pretty acting-lieutenant hovering by his side, but he didn't understand why Ford was gritting his teeth and growling. Maybe he wasn't happy with their room.

Ford, meanwhile, had decided that the two officers would probably be able to answer his question about the ropes. "So," he said cheerfully, "Do you two share a cabin as well?"

Both men looked surprised and slightly discomforted by this question.

"Er, yes," Archie replied.

'Hah, made you uncomfortable, did I?' Ford thought maliciously, 'That'll teach you to stay away from my property.' Aloud, he continued, "Do you ever share a hammock?"

That got a reaction, most notably from the tall dark-haired one (What was his name, Hornblower? Ford snorted inwardly), who blushed crimson.

"What is the meaning of your question, sir?" he demanded with asperity. Archie looked ready to leap to his defence, while Arthur just looked confused. Ford rolled his eyes. These earthlings were even more insufferable than the ones he'd encountered before. Only ones he'd really liked had been the cavemen, who had promptly died out.

"Look," he said, "it's perfectly obvious that you two are sriataers, so I figured you would know if the hammocks could hold the weight of two?"

"We're what?" Horatio asked.

"Sriataers."

"Ford, they don't speak Betelgeusian." Arthur put in. So that what this was all about, then. Now that Ford mentioned it, it did seem rather obvious.

"Don't speak what?" Archie asked. He had thought the strangers seemed all right, if a little odd, but their behaviour was now becoming more and more insulting.

"You two are boyfriends," Ford tried to clarify, "soul mates. Lovers."

At the last word, Horatio and Archie started guiltily, and instinctively looked behind them in case anyone was listening.

"Lower your voice," Archie hissed.

"Why?" Ford hadn't had a drink lately, and was feeling belligerent. Anyway, the guy had tried to steal his Arthur.

"Because it's illegal, you fool." Archie was also losing his patience.

"WHAT?" Ford was genuinely shocked. Arthur resisted the urge to mutter, "Told you so."

"Article twenty-nine of the Articles of War," Horatio explained. "Punishable by death."

Ford suddenly remembered something. "Well, I notice you didn't deny it."

"Um..."

"Ford!" Arthur snapped, irritated by his partner's rude, but shrewd, accusations. "Stop aggravating the people who have the power to inflict painful tortures on us!" He was still thinking about what 'keel-hauling' could possibly involve.

His lover seemed to have discerned his thinking. Not surprising considering the amount of times they'd been captured by torture-obsessed, ingenious but psychotic enemies. The Betelgeusian attempted a reassuring grin that, what with his facial structure and genetic ancestry, caused Arthur to cower instinctively. "Don't worry, it probably isn't worse than the Vogon poetry. Though there was that time, do you remember, when we got ourselves accidentally locked in one poetry appreciation cage together and..."

"Yes, thank you!" Arthur interrupted, a little too loudly.

Archie and Horatio glanced at each other, their anger dissipating. Archie grinned- wherever the word 'sriataer' had come from, it was certainly accurate for these two, they argued like a married couple. He noticed that Ford was now wearing a grin like a lewd piece of clothing. It was slightly too wide and gave Archie the almost irresistible urge to cover his neck and flinch back. Being a strong, upright officer of His Majesty's Navy he repressed the urge, and also tried to convince himself that leaping into Horatio's arms was a bad idea.

The ginger-haired man, ignoring the two officers, stalked (that really was the only way to describe it) towards his companion and wrapped his arms around the taller figure from behind. "I don't recall you complaining at the time…" he purred.

Arthur blushed and gestured frantically towards Archie and Horatio, the latter of whom was puffing himself up in indignation, the former merely looking interested.

"Oh, they don't mind," Ford continued. "They'll be sassing each other's brains out by the time its dark- we could be like a warm-up."

Horatio gaped like a fish out of water- he had no idea what sassing was but the lascivious way Ford had said it gave him some disturbing images. And besides, they were…touching, in front of people! It was positively indecent! Archie just sniffed the air, his eyebrows furrowing as he caught an unfamiliar smell. He had no idea what it was, but it was making him feel very peculiar.

"Foo-rrrrd," Arthur gasped, trying to push off the hands that were determinedly working into his dressing gown. "Stop…projecting…Oh God…pheromones…at me, you-"

Ford pulled back with a disappointed sigh. "You're no fun when we're in company that'll kill us for having sex," he complained plaintively. He caught the shocked looks of both Horatio and Archie. "What? Its not like you've never done it before! Just last night if I'm any judge."

Archie wondered if it was possible for Horatio to actually explode from inexpressible emotion. He laid a hand on the taller man's arm and said, very steadily, "It is not something we discuss in public, Mr Prefect. Unlike you, we enjoy having our necks at the correct length attached to our bodies. Sodomy is against the law. Do you understand? We could lose our lives just for talking about it!"

The Betelgeusian shrugged. "I've never let anything like that stop me."

Arthur snorted his agreement as he tried to reign in his heightened breath and gather himself back together.

"Anyway, back to my original question- will these hammocks hold two?"

Archie considered trying to explain the laws of Britain to the crazy man again, but decided giving in would be a lot less painful all round. "Yes," he said, wearily, "but you have to be careful about not falling out."

"Oh good!" Ford grabbed Arthur's arm and started to pull him into their assigned cabin. "By the way," he stopped to ask, "Do you have any spare lube? I think I left ours on the spaceship."

"I beg your pardon?" Horatio finally found his voice to ask, in his most haughty manner.

"It's fine, really," Arthur said, completely mortified by Ford's tactlessness. He dragged the Betelgeusian through the doorway, taking note of Archie's parting advice,

"Don't be too noisy!"

Immediately after the door closed, there was a thump as of someone being shoved against it. Horatio silently boiled with fury, while Archie merely rolled his eyes and chuckled.

"Come, Horatio," he said gently, leading the dumbfounded man into their own cabin. Once inside, he tried to embrace him, only to have the dark-haired man fidget away nervously, as much as he was able to in the confined space. Archie huffed in irritation.

"You're just jealous, aren't you?" He accused.

"What? I didn't say anything about the way you were carrying on with Mr. Dent!"

Archie smirked. "Well, I was actually referring to your envy of their open intimacy, but…"

Horatio turned away and fidgeted with the blanket on his cot. He hated being teased more than anything else in the entire world. Archie took pity on him and rested a hand on his back, in a completely Platonic way that Horatio would hopefully be able to tolerate. Horatio relaxed slightly into the touch, eventually allowing Archie to wrap his arms around him from behind, inadvertently echoing Ford and Arthur's earlier position.

"I don't know where they came from, Horatio, but wherever it was, there would certainly seem to be different rules."

"To put it mildly. They are so completely alien—Mr. Prefect, especially—and what sort of name is that, anyway? I don't know what to make of them at all."

"So that's what annoys you then, the fact that there's something out there that you don't know about?"

"Archie," Horatio sighed, exasperated. Archie mentally slapped himself for not being able to stop making fun of Horatio, and dropped a kiss on the back of his neck as an apology.

"Archie." Warningly, this time. Archie wondered how many different ways he could get Horatio to say his name. He'd heard a few interesting intonations in the past, when the man wasn't being so damned skittish.

"It's all right now, Horatio. No one's going to see us."

"But they know."

Ah, so that was the problem.

"I sincerely doubt they're going to tell anyone. They're in the same situation themselves, and make no effort to hide it."

"Still, it's—it's obscene."

"Of course it isn't, don't be stupid." Archie wondered vaguely if he should be more considerate of Horatio's feelings.

"Oh, well in that case it's all right then," came the scathingly sarcastic reply. Apparently the voice of my conscience was right, Archie thought. Still, he held Horatio close and rubbed his chest soothingly. He decided to try another tactic.

"Look, I apologise for shamelessly flirting with Mr. Dent. It was unkind of me and I only did it to make you jealous and please will you turn around and kiss me now?"

Ah, so that was really the problem. Horatio twisted around and wrapped his arms around Archie, murmuring contritely,

"I apologise too, Archie. It was petty of me to be so—" He was cut off by Archie's mouth pressing against his, and he gave up trying to speak and returned the kiss. It quickly deepened, and he was tugging at Archie's jacket, trying to get at the lovely body that had been tormenting him all day, when the door opened unexpectedly and Ford Prefect popped his head in.

"Scuse me fellers, you wouldn't happen to have any jam would you?" Ford seemed unperturbed by the lip-locking that was going on. Horatio hastily shoved Archie off him and tried to straighten his clothes, turning to glare at Ford, his kiss-bruised lips parting in order to start a tirade against the intruder.

The Betelgeusian sniffed in sharply and grinned. "Oh, sorry guys, I didn't think you'd be at each other so fast." He gave them a thumb's up. "Have fun!" With that, he scampered off.

Horatio stared at the doorway, his raging bellow dying in his throat. A feeling of intense shame and embarrassment washed over him and he slumped where he stood, hanging his head. From his sprawled position on the floor, Archie groaned. He liked the frisson of danger that accompanied such close encounters, but he knew it was going to take ages to get Horatio back in the mood now.

Ford's manic grin was still in place when he entered his and Arthur's cabin. "You'll never guess what I've just seen!" he exclaimed, bouncily.

Arthur raised an eyebrow.

"That pretty little charmer who had his baby-blues on you was assaulting the stiff!"

The eyebrow raised even further and Arthur tilted his head in question.

Ford sighed exasperatedly. "I mean the taller bloke with the curly hair! And unless you humans developed some other form of communication involving tongues in 1799, I'd be very surprised to discover that they weren't going at it!"

The human shrugged non-committally.

"Well of course it's none of my business, why do you think I'm so interested? This could be a lot of fun you know…"

There was a snort from Arthur.

"Of course it will! We'll be subtle. I can do subtle. Oh, they don't have any jam by the way, I did check. Maybe we should ask tomorrow when they aren't so…busy."

Arthur rolled his eyes at Ford. The Betelgeusian's grin widened and he leaned down to his lover, patting the ropes that bound Arthur's hands securely to the hammock. "I'd kiss you," he murmured, his hot breath brushing the human's ear and causing him to shudder, "but it might be difficult with the gag and everything."

The human whined in the back of his throat, cleverly twisting so he could hook his legs around Ford's waist. Ford took this as a command and started to plant kisses along Arthur's jawline. "It's your own fault you know," he muttered as Arthur writhed under the slow, sensuous caresses. "If you can't keep quiet during sex, I have to take extreme measures. That Archie frood said we couldn't be noisy."

Arthur's movements stilled. As Ford looked up to see what was wrong, he saw the expression on his lover's face clearly saying 'Oh, so he's a frood now is he?'

"Don't be daft, sriataer! You can't be jealous about that!"

Widened eyes from the human explained that if Ford could be jealous about insignificant touches, then Arthur could be jealous about unnecessary branding of people as froods. Arthur then closed his eyes tightly, signalling that he was going to sulk.

Ford smiled indulgently and went back to what he had been doing, regardless of his partner's feelings on the matter. "You can't sulk forever," he purred, his experienced hands working open Arthur's dressing gown and pyjamas and travelling very familiar paths across his lover's body. "Especially not when I do this…"

Arthur's eyes snapped open and his tension vanished, leaving him a sexually frustrated puddle in Ford's capable and extremely obliging hands. The Betelgeusian clambered awkwardly onto the hammock. He liked it when they discussed their issues as a couple.