( continues...) story is – stop me if I've got this mixed up – your story is: an alien from Huddersfield kidnapped you on the way to collect a Jumbo Hawaiian Special with Extra Anchovies from The Leaning Tower Of Pizza? And forced you to travel through time and space? For a day, which turned into a week?” His eyes narrow. “Is there going to be anal probing in this story? I bet you loved it, you dirty bitch!”

There is a little pause, whilst both Fran and Manny try to figure out whether that last part is directed explicitly at them, and then Manny shakes his head as if trying to dislodge something from one of his ears. “No, no anal probing,” he says, and laughs nervously. “He wasn't that sort of alien.” He doesn't notice the way that Fran starts to blush, while her gaze skitters away from meeting Bernard's eyes. “Actually, it was all rather thrilling – you see, there were these space creatures posing as Italians, and they had this plot to take over Britain using mind-control garlic bread, only The Doctor found out about it and he saved the day! And we helped him!”

“You helped an alien GP from Huddersfield to stop space creatures from taking over Britain using garlic bread,” repeats Bernard, slowly.

“Yes!” agrees Manny brightly. Fran nods. “It was great!”

“Once they switched off their image distortion fields, they looked like giant prawns,” says Fran, giving a little shudder. “Giant space prawns, sort of a blue-grey colour. But with hair.”

“Fair play to them - it was in great condition,” says Manny.

“It was great hair,” concedes Fran. “But still – giant space prawns. With Italian accents. Bent on world domination. I thought we were drunk.”

“Well, we were drunk,” points out Manny, in the interests of full disclosure.

“We were drunk, yes. But not hallucinate-giant-space-prawns-drunk. Just, you know, fancy-some-pizza and oops-we've-run-out-of-fags drunk.” She sighs. “I really fancied that Marco, too. Before he was, you know, a prawn. He had a really nice arse. For a prawn.”

Bernard stares at them both in silent disgust.

“Anyway, we were just waiting for the pizza, and Marco said: 'Have some of this free garlic bread, it's delicious.'” Manny looks to Fran for confirmation and she nods. Bernard picks up one of the cigarettes he's just stubbed out, straightens it a little, and lights it once more.

“Special recipe from the old country, he said,” Fran chimes in. “It smelled great, actually.”

“Yeah. And we were just going to have some, because, you know – free garlic bread! - only there was this voomyvoomyvoomy noise,” Manny waves his arms in the air vaguely, “And then this big blue box appeared out of thin air!”

“A box.”

“Yeah! Sort of like a phone box!”

“But blue,” says Fran.

“Yes, okay, blue!”

“And wooden,” says Fran.

“Well, yes, and wooden!”

“And with no windows,” says Fran.

“And with no windows,” Manny agrees.

“So not very much like a phone box at all, then, really,” says Bernard.

“Well...no. But it said Police Call Box on it.”

Bernard looks at them both, and lights another cigarette, and proceeds to listen to the rest of their tale with one fag in each hand, taking alternate drags. “Go on,” he says grimly. “Let me hear the full, foul, spurious web of lies you've spun whilst you've been off on your little mini-break without me. Space prawns. Magical phone boxes that aren't phone boxes. Well, go on! Go on! Mush!”

“So we're all standing there, thinking, you know, blimey, this is a turn up for the books all right, and then this bloke with sort of sticky-out ears comes bursting out through the door of the box! Like a sort of angry Jack-in-a-box! With a Northern accent!”

“That was the Doctor,” Fran says.

“Doctor What?”

“....he never said, actually,” says Manny. “And you know how it's a bit embarrassing after you've been chatting with someone for a while, and then you realise you didn't actually catch their name? I didn't like to ask. Felt a bit silly.”

“That's the bit that made you feel silly?” asks Bernard. Manny nods. “Right. Right. Of course. Carry (continued...)

( continues...) on.”

“Anyway, he said something like 'Oh no you don't, you Space Crustaceans!'” says Manny, striking a heroic pose and pointing an invisible gun at an imaginary foe.

“No, no that's not what he said,” Fran interrupts. “He said 'Ciao!'”

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. I thought it was sort of sexy, actually. He'd got this leather jacket that sort of hugged his shoulders and a really nice smile, all wicked and...” she peters off, and glances from Manny to Bernard. “Sorry. Carry on.”

“So anyway, the Doctor jumps out and says...Ciao, possibly, or something, and all the waiters go crazy. And suddenly there's spinach tortellini flying through the air, and broken crockery, and people are screaming, and Marco is suddenly seven foot tall and blue, with extra legs and a crunchy shell.” In spite of himself, Bernard is getting caught up in their story. “And we were both just so gobsmacked -”

“Pissed,” says Fran.

“Well, maybe that too, but anyway, we were a bit slow to react – and then Marco GRABBED for me, with these pincers,” Manny makes giant-space-prawn-lunging-towards-you-with-pincers-of-doom gesticulations toward Bernard, and Bernard bounces on the sofa and gives a small shriek of terror as the invisible pincers loom down upon him. “And then Captain Jack smashed him over the head with one of those big pepper grinder things,” continues Manny, brandishing an invisible pepper grinder in a macho fashion. “And then he looked at the big pepper grinder, and then at me, and sort of wiggled his eyebrows suggestively...” Manny trails off for a moment, his eyes going a little unfocused as he basks in the memory.

“Ooooh, Captain Jack,” says Fran, and she gives a gleeful little wriggle.

“Captain Jack,” agrees Manny, sighing.

“Who the fuck's this Captain Jack, when he's at home?” demands Bernard, outraged.

“Oh, he's just this unbelievably hot, heroic time traveller with the most amazing smile...”

“American,” Manny says wistfully. “With those really expensive-looking teeth.”

“And legs that are just really...and these shoulders that...and his arse, oh, my God, the arse on him,” moans Fran. “Much better than Marco's, even before he got all prawnified. The voice on him, and those big strong hands, and his eyes, and, and, and...” Fran reaches over and snatches one of Bernard's cigarettes and takes a long, lustful drag. “Oooh, Jack!” she says again. “He's better than chocolate. Better than cigarettes dipped in chocolate. God.”

“WHO THE BUGGERING HELL IS THIS CAPTAIN JACK?!?” yells Bernard, crimson with wrath. “I forbid you to make those noises! Stop dribbling, the pair of you! This is pathetic! Pull yourselves together!”

“Sorry,” says Manny, sheepishly. “Um. He's a sort of friend of the Doctor's, I think.”

“Friend!” says Fran, in a meaningful voice, rolling her eyes. Manny looks confused. “I mean, you know, FRIEND!” she says pointedly. Manny continues to look confused. “Frie-end,” she says, waving her cigarette around and shedding ash all over the Complete Proust, and then making exaggerated kissy kissy noises.

“Er. Yes. Anyway, he's friends with the Doctor, and with Rose, and they're travelling around in this TARDIS – which is what he calls the blue box – and they sort of, you know, save the day. A lot. Professionally, I think. It's their job. Apparently there's a lot of call for it.”

“What?” says Bernard. “Can you even hear yourselves? What are TALKING about? And who's this Rose person? You didn't mention her before!”

“She's the Doctor's girlfriend. Or friend. I wasn't too clear on that point, actually,” Manny admits. “She's very nice. And she's friends with Captain Jack too.”

“Friends!” says Fran meaningfully, with another eye-roll and some more kissy noises.

“Yes, all right, all right, we get the point!” Bernard snaps. “You seem to think that this Captain Jack is some sort of sex god, and that all three of these nonexistant people you've made up are busy shagging like bunnies, which is decidedly unhealthy of you, if you ask me. Two men can be friends without getting all, all (continued...)

( continues...) groiny with each other, thank you very much, isn't that right, Manny?”

“What? Oh, er, yes! Yes!”

“And a man and a woman,” Bernard continues, waving his hands around to sketch a figure built along the same sort of heroic lines as Jessica Rabbit in the air. “A man and a woman can just be friends without shagging. It happens all the time! I've read about it in books! If I had a friend who was a woman, then I could be her friend, and not secretly getting up to rumpy pumpy with her!”

Fran stares at him. “If?” she says. “If?”

“Well, if I had a friend who was a woman. I'm just saying.” She sticks her chest out, pugnaciously. Bernard looks blank. “What?”

“Bernard. I am a woman.”

“Oh, don't be silly. I'm talking about a real woman. Like this Rose of yours. Well, okay, no, bad example, what with her NOT ACTUALLY EXISTING OUTSIDE YOUR FEVERED IMAGINATIONS. And anyway, you've still not explained why it took you a week to get back from The Leaning Tower of Pizza. Just because there was a bit of drama when you got there, that's no reason for you to take a week to get back. Without any pizza.”

“It was mind-control pizza,” points out Manny. “We didn't really fancy it any more.”

“Yes, yes, blah blah blah space prawn nonsense. Whatever. You still haven't explained what took you so long.” He drums his fingers on the leather arm rest. “I'm waiting!”

“Well, see, after they'd sent the foul blue space invaders running back to the Horse Head Nebula, Fran came over all faint, and she had to have a bit of a lie down,” explains Manny. Fran carefully concentrates on her cigarette at this point. “Luckily Captain Jack happened to be standing right next to her when she fainted, and he caught her in his strong, manly arms and carried her inside. And you know the funny thing? She managed to keep hold of both the litre bottles of Chianti she'd picked up, even though she was in a dead faint!”

“Really?” says Bernard, giving Fran a very level look which she refuses to meet.

“So anyway, I followed them inside, and it turns out that the TARDIS is huge on the inside!”

“What? How does that work?”

“Er, I wasn't too clear on that. Something to do with maths, I think. Really hard maths. But it's huge – rooms and rooms and rooms! Although The Doctor seems to spend most of his time in the main bit, the sort of steering wheel bit. But Captain Jack carried Fran through to his room and let her have a nice lie down to recover. Only The Doctor didn't know we were there, and he was busy jetting off to Ancient Egypt to show Rose the building of the pyramids! It was amazing! Although poor Fran was still feeling a bit under the weather, so she stayed in the TARDIS, and Jack looked after her. But I tagged along with Rose and the Doctor, and it was great! Bit slow, though. But still – pyramids! Big and pointy! Mind you, I didn't think about sun cream.” He points at the shiny top of his head, which is, indeed, looking distinctly burnt. “Oh, it was great, though. And then we came back – but the Doctor isn't really all that good at getting the precise right date, as it turns out. Still – he was only a week away, which is still pretty close, when you're dealing with millini, melony, milleni...centuries.”

“So you got into a space ship with random alien time travellers from Yorkshire?”

“Well...yes.”

“And they didn't even have to offer to show you their puppies, or give you any sweets?”

“Well...no.”

“You're just lucky they WEREN'T the anal probe kind of aliens, then, aren't you?” Fran's face is becoming really quite red at this point, but happily for her neither Bernard nor Manny seems to notice. “Not that I believe a single solitary word of this crap, of course.” Bernard turns to stare at Petey the Pillow, and then turns Petey the Pillow to fix them both with a fluffy gimlet gaze of disapproval. “Petey doesn't believe it either. You are both dead to Petey. And to me. Clearly you went off to the Isle of White or somewhere for a week of jollity and debauchery without me. Because you are a pair of total bastards.” He ignores the (continued...)

( continues...) sound of another bastard customer opening the door and fighting their way into the shop through the piles of unshelved books. “Henceforth, I will cross your names out of the family bible. There will be no more Christmas cards, no more intimate phone calls, no more picnics in the park, holding hands, picking strawberries in the sunshine or skipping barefoot down the beach. You are both YES, WHAT? WHAT DO YOU WANT?” He finally turns to glare at the customer who has had the temerity to come right up to the three of them, and is knocked back by the brilliant white thousand-megawat smile he finds suddenly directed at him by a great, strapping, corn-fed looking man with the chiselled good looks of a Boys' Own Hero. Bernard's jaw drops, and his cigarette dangles precariously from his moist bottom lip, threatening to land in his lap and lead to much smouldering and shrieking.

“Sorry to interrupt, guys - just wanted to bring Fran her bottles of wine.” He winks at Fran, and Fran gives a high-pitched little giggle. “We never did get around to drinking them, did we?” Bernard stares. Then he stares some more. Then, after that, he decides to try a little staring. “Well, it's been fun, folks – Manny, you take care of yourself, okay? Keep on playing that piano!”

“I will, Jack!” says Manny, adoringly. “I mean, Captain!”

“Manny, Manny! It's Jack to my friends, you know that! And you must be Bernard? Manny's told us all about you!” Bernard feels his limp hand enclosed in a ridiculously firm, dry, manly grip. He continues to stare, and the cigarette trembles gently but does not fall. “Well, goodbye, Fran. Don't be a stranger!” The figment of their collective imaginations pulls Fran towards him like, like, like something out of a Fred Astaire movie, bends her back over a table of books and delivers the kind of kiss that would make mothers go weak at the knees and cover their children's eyes. Bernard whimpers. “I'll miss your cheeky little laugh, Frances! Gotta go, though – planets to save, evil overlords to foil, all that. Busy busy busy! Bye, gang”

There is a very long silence in the shop after the door closes behind Captain Jack Harkness. The kind of silence that might have been filled with words like 'I told you so' or 'Good heavens, you appear to have been right all along, how very exciting, giant space prawns you say?' But wasn't.

Bernard, in the end, is the first one to speak. “Corkscrew,” he says to Manny, waving towards the kitchen. “Come on, you stupid little chimpanzee, do I have to do everything around here? Corkscrew! Now! And glasses! Chop chop!”

I want an audio file of you reading this, Fay.

Consider it the Buffista equivalent of Xander's "They should film this and show it every Christmas."

Because I can hear it in your voice, and it's bloody brilliant.

Hee! Well, I'm sufficiently self-indulgent that I likely will make it into audiofic...it just takes me the best part of forever to upload audiofiles. (And, God forgive me, I probably will do a Truly Dreadful Irish Accent for Bernard. Because the Truly Dreadful Irish Accent I did for Seamus Finnegan in Fearless Diva's Tissue of Silver still makes me laugh out loud in embarrassed horror.)

OMG, Fay! You should be writing scripts for this show! I'm chortling along with every sentence. Great stuff, great stuff.

Fay! Yes - audio file would be excellent!

Lovely.

So happy you discovered Black Books.

Thank you!

....aaand here comes another one. Because apparently I've decided that Black Books is to be the Little Black Dress of UKcentric crossovers. Or something. Anyway, here's the start of a Black Books/HP crossover:

AS-YET NAMELESS FIC

The phone has been valiantly ringing on and off for at least half an hour when Manny finally gets back from Tesco and answers it. Bernard doesn't look up, but he is conscious of the wretched gnome dropping his shopping, scurrying towards the desk, leaping nimbly over the unshelved cookery books, vaulting across a small, sticky child and dodging around a pair of pensioners in his haste to answer the bloody thing. Bernard knows perfectly well who he's hoping to hear from, and finds the whole business perfectly disgusting. A moment later Manny pulls the fluffy pink earmuffs off Bernard's head, and Bernard is rudely wrenched from his tranquil appreciation of Brett Easton Ellis's tragic hero and returned to the sordid reality of his bookshop.

“Yes? What?” he snaps. “If you want time off to see that hussy, the answer's no.”

“Phone,” says Manny, offering him the handset.

Bernard scowls. “Desk,” he says, pointing at the desk. “Book.” He presses one grmy fingertip to the cover of his battered copy of American Psycho. “Parasites,” he finishes, gesturing vaguely at Manny and the customers before fixing Manny with another glare. “Are we playing at English for beginners?”

“I mean, there's someone on the phone for you,” says Manny, with the air of a man battling disappointment that the caller has turned out not to be a small brunette called Rowena.

Bernard allows himself a mean little grin, and accepts the grubby handset. “Black Books. Yes. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Right. Okay then.” He plonks the handset back into its cradle, picks up his book and settles the earmuffs back in place, magnificently ignoring the pensioner who is trying to hand him a five pound note in exchange for a small stack of Georgette Heyers.

Manny breathes a sigh, and starts serving the customer.

* * *

The trunk arrives at eleven o'clock in the morning, so it is Manny who signs for it. When Bernard finally surfaces two hours later, his hair looking like the kind of nest that might have been favoured by a particularly filthy crow and his clothes so thick with ingrained dirt that they could probably have stood up straight on their own, Manny is quite eaten up by curiosity.

“It's for you!” he says, pointing at the trunk. “Are we expecting something? You didn't tell me we were expecting a delivery. What is it?”

“Breakfast!” snarls Bernard, pointing imperiously at the kitchen. It is only after Manny has handed him a sausage-and-bean toastie and a large cup of builder's tea, and he has partaken liberally of both, that he deigns to look at the trunk. “ 'sfrom my Grandpa Marius,” he says, with a shrug.

Manny perks up. Bernard never talks about his family. “I didn't know you had a granddad,” he says.

“I don't,” says Bernard. “He died last week. The lawyer people phoned yesterday.”

“Oh!” Manny blushes under his beard. “I'm sorry!”

“Don't be,” says Bernard. “He was a million years old – about time he got on with shuffling off this mortal coil. Besides, he was nuttier than monkey shit – has been for years. Thought he was a squid.”

“A squid? That's...unusual,” says Manny. “So this is – what, this is something he left you in his will?”

“Apparently.” Bernard looks irritably at the trunk. “Probably full of old socks or cans of catfood – whatever it is old people like. Knitting. False teeth. Pictures of the Queen. Some shite like that.”

“It could be treasure!” says Manny.

Bernard rolls his eyes. “This is what comes of letting you watch 'Pirates of the Caribbean', isn't it?”

“I'm just saying – you don't see trunks like that these days. That's wonderful workmanship – not the kind of thing you could just pick up in British Homestores. Lovingly hand-crafted by genuine...genuine trunk-makers. It looks like an antique itself, is all I'm saying. And you never (continued...)

( continues...) know – he might have been secretly rich, your grandpa! He might have left you a box full of, of rubies and diamonds and things!”

“There are no rubies and diamonds and things, you stupid Yeti. Grandpa Black had no money. His hoity-toity rich bitch family cut him off without a penny because he was a squid. Thought he was a squid. Whatever.” Bernard waves his hand in bored dismissal of crazy old relatives everywhere. “Salient point: no money. It'll be full of old bus tickets, or half-eaten sandwiches or something crap. Dead pigeons, maybe.”

Manny seems reluctant to abandon the notion of ill-gotten Spanish gold without a fight. “He could have had a secret double-life,” he says. “He could have been a pirate. Bootstrap Black, the Pirate! Terror of the Spanish Main!” Manny's eyes narrow. “Some pirates look like squid,” he adds, thoughtfully.

“He was not a pirate!” yells Bernard. “Or a squid! He was a crazy old fella who talked to himself! Mad as a box of ferrets on acid! He used to ride the vacuum cleaner around the garden and say he was playing Squiddish! He used to stand in the fireplace shouting street names! He thought that Fairy washing up liquid was evidence that we had magical cleaning elves who would show up eventually, if we let things get mucky enough. He tried to feed postcards to pigeons! He was barking mad! Crazy! Loopy! Howl-at-the-moon, eat-your-own-underpants mad!”

“Oh,” says Manny sadly, unable to come up with a pirate-centric explanation for riding a hoover. “Oh. Well. Still – don't you want to know what he's left you?”

“Not particularly,” says Bernard.

“It could be wine,” Manny points out, and Bernard's eyes light up.

“It could be wine, couldn't it?”

“No harm in looking.”