Title: Viva Las Vegas
Author: Squally_BunBun
Pairing: Dr. Clayton Forrester/Dr. Laurence Erhardt
Genre: Failed humor
Rating: G, for a quick, sloppy peck on the lips.
Notes: Slight Lar/Clay. KTMA-verse. Dr. Forrester comes back from Vegas with more money than he could count, two very, very expensive cars, and memories of a date that he would rather forget. And Erhardt wants the whole story. How he goes about getting the story, however, pretty much guarantees he won't be hearing the whole story for a while.
(Please excuse the writing style of this one. I was in a snarky mood.)

***

Things couldn't get any better for the Mad Scientists at the satellite loading bay. They were rolling in the money, they had sweet new rides (also loaded down with more money than they could ever possibly deserve), they had a new film to send to Joel, and everything was just plain peachy.

Well, almost everything. After all, if everything was peachy, then it would make for a rather poor story, wouldn't it?

"Come on, Clay!" insisted Erhardt. "Tell me how that date went with the lead from La Cage Aux Folles!"

"There's nothing to tell, Lar," said Forrester, waving his hand in that way that seems to metaphorically wave off any conversation and can unconsciously drive somebody to change the subject. Unfortunately, he never used that hand motion, so it only served to intrigue Erhardt further.

"Oh, yeah, right! Come on, start talking!"

"What makes you think there's something to talk about?" asked Forrester, straightening up and folding his arms across his chest. His voice had also gotten slightly, yet noticeably, deeper. He was adopting his "higher and mightier than you" persona.

In Erhardt's eyes, that was his biggest mistake. Forrester only acted higher and mightier than the person he was addressing in two instances, and only in one of those instances did he actually merit such a label. That instance was when he was addressing Joel Hodgson, up in the Satellite of Love. Literally speaking, Joel had the advantage in altitude and in physical power, but this was, of course, a very figurative translation of the old saying. Forrester was the reason Joel was in the Satellite watching all of those horrid movies. (That, and Joel's annoyingly charming personality that made him such a desirable target for this experiment.) It was only through him that Joel would be able to leave. In a perfect world, Forrester would be a veritable god to Joel. Unfortunately, it was not a perfect world and Joel probably didn't look for such a connection, nor did he care about it, but no matter. Forrester was higher and mightier than Joel, regardless of whether the guy saw him as a god or not.

The other instance when Forrester acted higher and mightier than somebody was when he was in an uncomfortable situation. Maybe he used that persona to try to trick whoever he was addressing into confusing him for a high and mighty person. Then maybe they would get the impression that they should back off. Somebody who knew Forrester well, however, would foolishly blaze onward in the conversation. After all, that person would be very, very familiar with the tactic. And Laurence Erhardt would just happen to bethat man. After all, he was not just the man's colleague. He was his friend. And he wasn't just his friend, either. He was his doctor. That would mean he knew more about Forrester than maybe even Forrester knew. But enough about that.

"You're getting high and mighty with me, that's how I know something happened," analyzed Erhardt, effectively summarizing the previous two paragraphs and making them rather useless for the narration. "So start talking."

"If there were something to tell," started Forrester, "which there ISN'T... then what would you want to know?" He was starting to yell at Erhardt. Understandably so, he was getting rather fed up with him. If Erhardt hadn't dealt with a fed up Forrester before, he might have been intimidated and would have wisely backed off. However, he had, so he kept on.

"I want to know how far you got with the guy before you decided that the date thing was a bad idea," said Erhardt.

"We didn't get anywhere," replied Forrester, unfolding his arms and holding them at his sides, his hands curled into fists. He was daring Erhardt to make a move. Not just daring, either. He was double daring. Two fists, twice the severity of the dare. The next step would be the double dog dare, where Forrester would glare intensely at his subject. The final step was the mother of all dares, the triple dog dare, where he stepped up to his opponent, looking him up and down and telling him to make a move, and for his oponent's sake, it had to be the right move.

Erhardt took the dare. "Naw, I'll bet you went somewhere," said Erhardt with a grin.

Foregoing the double dog dare and skipping right to the triple dog dare, Forrester stepped up. "Then you tell me. How far did we get?"

Erhardt took the triple dog dare. He grabbed Forrester and pulled him into a very sloppy kiss. It did not take Forrester long to push himself away from Erhardt, wiping his mouth on his sleeve and glaring at Erhardt. Erhardt was, of course, grinning like an idiot, chuckling to himself and enjoying every minute of Forrester's indignance. Forrester started shaking his finger at Erhardt, his mouth opening and closing as he tried to think of a proper comeback to what had just happened. When his tongue was unable to express the anger that the mind was feeling, and the "Forrester on mute" defense was only making Erhardt chuckle harder, Forrester growled instead.

Suddenly, a comeback came to mind. "To the moon, Erhardt!" he yelled. He then turned tail and stormed out of the room.

When Erhardt stopped chuckling, his licked his lips, deciding that he should find a reason to snog Forrester more often. Sure, he never figured out what happened on Forrester's date, which was his goal in the first place and therefore made his little endeavor rather destructive to his aim rather than constructive, but he considered what happened to be a fair trade-off. And maybe next time, Forrester would remember what happened when Erhardt didn't get the information he was looking for and would be a little bit more open his his comrade.

And if not? Hey, free snog session. Everybody wins.

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