( 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.”

Squiddish! Ha!!! Oh, very well done, Fay.

Hee! Thanks, love! More:

It isn't wine, or rubies, or false teeth. It is, as far as they can gather, some very elderly cleaning products, some kind of trick mirror, a battered old brass lamp that looks like something from an amateur production of 'Aladdin', and a book entitled “So Now You're A Muggle: A Squib's Guide To Life In Exile.”

“See?” grumbles Bernard. “Tat. Stupid Old-Person-Tat.” He leafs through the book, wondering how to price it, and snorts. “My God, just LOOK at this. What's it supposed to be, even? Have you seen the chapter headings? 'Dress For Success: How To Put On A Pair Of Trousers.' 'Flying Without Brooms.' 'Life Without Your Owl'.” He glares. “Poetry? Fantasy? Comedy? New Age bollocks?”

“Misc,” says Manny helpfully.

Bernard nods, scribbles a random price inside the cover, and flings the book over towards the sprawling 'Misc' section. Then he picks up the mirror in its tarnished silver frame, and squints at it. “What the hell?” He holds it at one angle, then at another, then shakes it hard. “Is it a holo-thingy? Like you get with Rice Crispies? One of those shifty-changey-wibble-wobble-picture things?”

“Er,” says Manny. He picks it up from the desk, where Bernard has set it, and tries tilting it around. “Maybe?”

“Well, it's crap. It's ALL crap. Crap crap crap crap crappity crap. Get rid of it all. Put it in the back garden, or in the bin or somewhere.”

“Can I keep this?” asks Manny, poking the little lamp thing. “It might make a nice oil-burner.”

“No,” says Bernard at once.

“Oh, go on. Please, Bernard?”

“No! What am I, made of money? You think I can afford to just give away my hard-earned things?”

“But you don't want it!”

“That's not the point.”

“Aw, go on. I'll buy it off you?” says Manny, not at all sure why he's so intrigued by the lamp.

Bernard's eyes light up. “How much?”

Manny fumbles around in his pocket. “Er – three quid? And a packet of Clorets?”

“Done,” says Bernard, snatching the money and the mints. “Now get rid of all this tat, will you?”

Manny considers protesting for the briefest fraction of a second, and then starts to drag the trunk into the kitchen and on towards the garden.

• * *

Rowena doesn't call that morning, and she doesn't call again that afternoon. Manny, who had been floating around in a cloud of shag-having, girlfriend-acquiring happiness, sinks into a stygian gloom. When they close the shop and Fran turns up to drag them off down the pub, Manny elects to stay at home and do some chores.

“He's sulking,” Bernard tells Fran with some satisfaction. “Because that tart hasn't called. He was such a rubbish shag that she's changed her phone number, fled the country and joined the French Foreign Legion.”

“Sod off,” says Manny miserably, and Fran smacks Bernard over the head with a copy of Hard Times.

“People whose ex-fiances have to pretend to be DEAD to get out of seeing them don't get to make cracks about other people's love lives, Bernard.” She casts a sympathetic look at Manny, while Bernard massages his scalp and mutters imprecations under his breath. “I'm sure she'll call, Manny. She's probably just playing hard to get, to make sure that you don't take her for granted. But I'm sure she's WANTING to call. Anyone could see that she thought you were the best thing since sliced bread. Come and have a drink?”

He smiles a watery smile. “No, it's okay. You go on without me. I'm going to wash my hair. It'll be nice to have a little peace and quiet.”

“Was that directed at me?” demands Bernard, as Fran drags him out of the shop. “That was directed at me, wasn't it?”

• * *

After he's finished cleaning the kitchen, Manny considers tackling the bathroom, but the thought of the mysterious stains makes him quail. Instead he goes upstairs and vacuums his bedroom, then washes the windows and dusts everything that can possibly be dusted.

“Why doesn't she call?” he asks himself, polishing the photograph of Moo-Ma and Moo-Pa. “I wish she would just call!” He (continued...)