#hbi fics

[halfbakedideas]

BatRules

The full list of rules the Bat Family has, for both their civilian lives and their night lives.

It gets a little out of hand. Just a little.

Key

A.P.: Alfred

B.W.: Bruce

D.G.: Dick

C.: Cass

J.T.: Jason

T.D.W/T.D.: Tim

S.B.: Steph

D.T.: Duke

D.W.: Damian

-~-~-

No tampering with any of the coffee machines. —A.P.

Master Tim is to be limited to a maximum of two shots of caffeine every 24 hours. —A.P.

‘Dealing with Damian’ is not a valid excuse to ignore the above limit. —B.W.

Only regular-strength coffee is to be kept in the Manor at any time. —B.W.

Not even after off-planet missions? —T.D.W.

‘At any time’ includes after off-planet missions, Tim. —B.W.

No speedsters and/or Kryptonians are to bring in any as an ‘emergency supply’ —B.W.

Master Bruce is banned from having any coffee at or after 12 a.m. —A.P.

Not even decaf? —B.W.

Why would you even bother drinking coffee then? —T.D.W.

Mayonnaise is not to be put on hamsters. —T.D.

Lucius has threatened to quit if it happened again and he sees it. —T.D.

Rule 11 applies to non-Family members too. —B.W.

Master Jason is not to bring any guns into the Manor. —A.P.

Not even the rubber bullets one? —J.T.

Especially not that one. —A.P.

Hugs are mandatory. —D.G.

Proposed revision: Hugs are recommended. —D.W.

Proposed revision: rejected :D — D.G.

Glitter is to be kept and used only in designated areas. —A.P.

The ballroom is not a designated area. —A.P.

Neither is the kitchen. —A.P.

Vigilante uniforms are not to be worn nor taken into the Manor. —A.P.

I am not allergic to emotions. —B.W.

Proposed revision: Bruce is allergic to emotions. —J.T.

Proposed revision: rejected. —B.W.

Nor am I emotionally constipated. —B.W.

Green hair dye is banned from the Manor. —D.G.

In all shades but especially neon. —D.G.

Excluding Bruce, attendance at galas isn’t mandatory. —C.

Except for the annual Wayne Foundation one, attendance at that one is mandatory for everyone. —B.W.

For every missed gala, you must make one (1) public appearance in that same month. —B.W.

A ‘public appearance’ does not include a trip to Walmart. —B.W.

No more murder attempts, Damian —T.D.W.

Proposed revision: Murder attempts are allowed on Drake. —D.W.

Proposed revision: rejected. —T.D.W.

No poison is to be put in hot chocolate. —A.P.

Why does that even have to be a rule?? —D.T.

Dick is to be kept away from any and all redheads. —J.T.

Including the one that he is currently dating. —D.W.

Whenever I ask any of you to bring me one of the spare Batsuits, I never mean the rainbow one. —B.W,

It’s Vigilante Bingo not Trauma Bingo. Stop being so concerning. —D.T.

If you’re up before 8 a.m. and you wake someone else up, you have to take their worst patrol shift. —T.D.W.

Only Alfred and Jason are allowed to actually make anything in the kitchen. —B.W.

Shower as soon as you get back from patrol. —A.P.

Just because you got cuddle pollen’d, doesn’t mean the whole family needs to be. —S.B.

Richard is not allowed to pick the movie for Movie Night. —D.W.

Unless Movie Night falls on the 29th night of February. —D.W.

Everyone has to clean their own rooms, do not make Alfred do it. He already has enough to do —B.W.

No going into each other's rooms without permission or a valid reason. —B.W.

‘For a prank war’ is not a valid reason. —B.W.

Rule 50 especially applies when the person is sleeping, Damian. —T.D.W.

A minimum of three people have to go with Alfred to do the grocery shopping. —B.W.

The BatComputer is multi-million dollar equipment and is not to be used to watch movies. —B.W.

No tie-dying your siblings, or their clothing, three hours before a gala. —B.W.

No using books as balance beams. —J.T.

Looking at you, Dick. —J.T.

No going to Jason for help with math; you must come to me. —D.G.

Ladies do not start prank wars, but they can finish them. —S.B.

So beware :) —C.

Stop doing monumental things in the hallway because I don't need to see that. —D.T.

Remember: I have POWERS. —D.T.

No stealing Damian's art supplies. —D.W.

If you do, I will disembowel you. —D.W.

Master Damian, no disembowelling your siblings. —A.P.

Cookies are to be eaten before dinner ^-^ —C.

Cookies are not to be eaten before dinner, unless one is recovering from a life-threatening injury. —A.P.

Does that mean I can eat cookies before dinner since I lost my spleen? —T.D.

YOU LOST YOUR SPLEEN????????? D: D: D: D: D: D: D: D: —D.G.

Seconding. —S.B.

Thirding ^-^ —C.

Tt, of course, you have lost a major organ and failed to tell anyone. —D.W.

I will disembowel more of you if you touch my art supplies. —D.W.

Damian, you can't take more of Tim’s organs. He can't regrow them. —B.W.

He can if it's his liver —J.T.

Damian, you should take out part of Tim's liver so he can regrow it and then sell it on the black market and get rich. —S.B.

He's already rich, though. *raised eyebrow* —D.G.

Then he’ll get richer. —S.B.

Are we all just ignoring how Tim doesn't have a spleen now? —D.T.

That's how things work here. —J.T.

Bedtime for anyone under 16 is 10 p.m. on non-patrol nights; and 2 a.m. on patrol nights. —B.W.

12? —D.W.

10. —B.W.

11? —D.W.

10.30. That’s final. Or you have to take Condiment King next time he makes trouble. —B.W.

Tt. Fine. I will accept 10.30 p.m. —D.W.

Toasters are not to be taken out of the kitchen. —A.P.

‘For science’ is not a good nor valid reason, Master Tim. —A.P.

No dye is to be put into the pool. —B.W.

Just because we have the money to replace the tiles afterwards, doesn’t mean you should do it. —B.W.

No climbing on the Tyrannosaurus rex statue in the Cave. —D.W.

Pizza-store pizza is only to be brought into the Cave under specific circumstances. —A.P.

If pizza-store pizza has to be brought into the Cave, please use a napkin. —A.P.

My Ko-Fi

[takochan-writes]

I've been thingkin about Javier Pena being your "911 call" for some hot and steamy fuck late at night....

As the clock struck midnight, you found yourself alone in your dimly lit apartment, the only sound being the faint hum of the air conditioning unit. You had been tossing and turning in bed for hours, unable to shake the feeling of restlessness that had consumed you. After a tough few weeks at work, you're feeling overwhelmed with pent-up emotions that need to be let out.

You hesitated for a moment, your fingers hovering over your phone, before finally giving in to the temptation. With a quick exhale, you dialed his number, your heart pounding in your chest as the phone rang.

"Hello?" Javier's voice came through the line, a hint of sleepiness evident in his tone.

"Javier, it's (y/n)..." you whispered, feeling a rush of adrenaline at the realization of what you were about to ask.

There was a brief pause before Javier responded, his voice low and filled with desire. "What do you need, sweetheart? Have a bad dream again? Hm?"

Without hesitation, you uttered the words that had been lingering in your mind since this morning. "I need you to come over. Now."

There was a moment of silence before Javier's response came, his voice filled with anticipation. "I'll be there in fifteen minutes."

True to his word, Javier arrived at your apartment in record time, his presence filling the space with a charged energy that was palpable. Without a word, he closed the distance between you and him, his hands finding yours as he pulled you into a searing kiss.

The heat between you and him was undeniable, your body moving in sync with him as you explored one another with a fervor that left you both breathless. In that moment, there were no barriers or inhibitions, just the raw, unbridled passion that consumed you both.

Javi opened his eyes and smiled slightly. "What's the issue now? A broken bedframe? Leaky kitchen sink?" he teased.

In a moment charged with desire, she boldly whispered, "Shut the fuck up and fuck me already, Javi," igniting a passionate response as he lifted her effortlessly and guided you both to your bedroom, consumed by shared lust for each other.

As the night turned into morning, you found yourself tangled in Javier's arms. And in that moment, you knew that Javier Pena would always be your "911 call" for hot and steamy nights that left you craving more.

[saclarclay]

Kea kea kea gelo berasa drakor bat pdhal w aj g nonton drakor

Diem gw mo gibahin fic canachcommander w

w bikin si canach nyakitin commander cuma krn dy g bisa trang2an ngomong mo putus ato kea dy dh bilang, kode gitu pen putus tpi commander kea bilang dy bakal coba jdi lebi baik lgi n alhasil canach jdi mkin g enak kn. Kea awalnya tuh ggr dy ngerasa g pantes jdi ma commander yg image hero, kea ngerasa dy tuh cuma bakal bikin jelek image commander

Ih sumpah drama bat geli w tpi nafsu//slap

Si commander tu kea sbenernya dh ngerti si canach pen putus tpi kek msi kekeuh gitu kn krn canach tu kea satu2nya pegangan dy to stay sane n basically g mo kehilangan dy ykn

Trus pokoknya tr canach nyakitin commander yg akhirnya bikin dy sadar klo mkin di pertahanin si canach bkl mkin g suka ma dy

Kea bayangin lo pulang2 capek hbis berantem ngelawan monster yg make trauma u as a weapon trs bknnya disambut hangat ma s/o lu, lo mlh disakitin ma s/o lu sndiri, seseorang yg lo harepin bkl bisa give u comfort

eh sumpah drama bat gila maap gw butuh gibah

Trs gw pen ujung2nya commander pegi jauh2 ma aurene buat healing away from everyone aplagi perkara baru kelarin eod trs dimakan trauma bertubi2

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

zebra theft (x2)

by half_baked_ideas Damian enlists Jon’s help in stealing (read: liberating) a pair of zebras from Gotham City Zoo. [Written for 100 prompts challenge number 95: zebra.] Words: 1474, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English Series: Part 13 of Fics of Summer ‘23-‘24, Part 2 of HBI’s 100 Prompts Challenge Fandoms: Batman - All Media Types, DCU Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: Gen Characters: Jonathan Kent, Damian Wayne, Bruce Wayne Relationships: Jonathan Samuel Kent & Damian Wayne Additional Tags: Not Beta Read, Zoo, Zebras, animal theft, Theft, Jonathan Samuel Kent & Damian Wayne are the Same Age, Jonathan Samuel Kent & Damian Wayne are Best Friends, Mentioned Dick Grayson, Damian Wayne is Robin, Jonathan Samuel Kent is Superboy, Prompt Fill, Newspapers, bruce is only here for a moment via https://ift.tt/chLeBPi

[theyneverblindmedarling]

Thank you to the haylor fic reccs!! And yes we need a Reddit group called HBI like we all get unified by Haylors

no problem!! (thanks again @cherryslips 💕) lol yes lets unite

[halfbakedideas]

ikea furniture

The Doctor attempts assembling IKEA furniture without their sonic screwdriver after making a bet with Donna. Is it really cheating if he's using it to locate screws?

--x--x--x--

inspired by this post by @whatsfourteenupto.

i had this finished over a week ago but then just, forgot to type it up. it's been nearly a decade since i've put together IKEA shelves so if this is entirely the wrong way to do it, don't blame me.

--x--x--x--

The Doctor was in the living room with an IKEA shelving unit on the carpet in front of them, or what will be a shelving unit once the pieces have been put together. He still had a desk to assemble too. Both the desk and the shelves, along with a couple of other bits of furniture, were the product of an IKEA trip that had also resulted in them bringing home far too many meatballs (Donna’s words) or not enough meatballs (Rose and the Doctor’s words), it entirely depended on who you asked.

They had started off with just using the sonic to assemble it instead of the Allen key that came with the set. The keyword here was ‘started’, as Donna had come downstairs just as they were finishing with the first layer and promptly stolen it off of them.

“Oi! I’m using that!” he protested.

“Not anymore you’re not,” she said. “I bet that you can’t assemble this entire shelf the normal, human way without cheating and using the sonic,” Donna challenged.

“I bet that I can,” The Doctor retorted. “And I’ll have it built in twenty minutes,”

“We’ll see,” Donna went to head to the laundry before she turned back around to face them. “I thought that the sonic doesn’t do wood, so how come it works on IKEA shelves?”

“It doesn’t, but it does do particle board,”

To the Doctor’s dismay, the redhead kept the sonic hostage in the laundry with her. So they set about hunting down the Allen key that seemed to have mysteriously vanished into thin air between opening the box and now. Once they had found it, he returned to assembling the shelves.

They had claimed that he could have the entire shelving unit built within twenty minutes and while that was an accurate measurement, it was only accurate if he was using the sonic. But without it and using a normal screwdriver instead (the Allen key had disappeared for a second time and had yet to reappear), it took far longer than twenty minutes. It took about five attempts at five different screws for the Doctor to get the hang of using a regular screwdriver; they couldn’t remember the last time he had used a non-sonic screwdriver for anything.

And it seemed that no matter how much they screwed this level it just didn’t want to be held together like it should, making the entire unit lean dangerously to the right and it remained leaning to that side even when he pushed it the other way.

Donna was pulling a fitted sheet out of the washing machine when she heard the sound of the sonic whirring from the living room.

Their sonic was still in her pocket? So there was no way that they could be using it.

She patted her pockets down to double-check and yep, there was the sonic.

Well he’s lost the bet anyway, it’s been longer than twenty minutes.

Donna abandoned her laundry for the moment and headed back into the living room, to find the Doctor using another sonic screwdriver for what looked like searching underneath the sofa? Why?

This sonic was mostly silver and had a yellow light-crystal-thing on its end.

The mostly-assembled shelving unit was lying on its side on the carpet.

“I’m not cheating!” he told her, when he finally noticed her standing in the doorway, looking up from where he was peeking underneath the sofa.

“You sure about that?” Donna asked. “And it doesn’t matter, you’ve lost the bet anyway. It’s been longer than twenty minutes,”

“Definitely not cheating. I’m using it to track down a screw that vanished under the sofa, not to put that together—” he stopped. “

She watched as a screw rolled out from underneath the sofa and towards the sonic.

“I’d say using it like that is still cheating, you’re still using it to help you,” she disagreed. “

In the end, forty-seven minutes after they had made that bet with Donna, the Doctor finished with the shelving unit. They had well and truly lost the bet but at least most of the furniture for the library was finally up?

Hang on.

“Doctor?” Donna called out. The Doctor stuck his head out into the hallway.

“Yeah?”

“Why — how — are the shelves green?”

[halfbakedideas]

a ‘toaster’

The Doctor gets bored. The microwave suffers for it.

—x—x—x—

Inspired by this post by @whatsfourteenupto .

when i said angst is coming soon, i didn’t mean next.

i really do not have as much free time as these frequency of these ficlets makes it seem i do.

—x—x—x—

Donna got home to find the Doctor sitting in the kitchen with the husk of what looked to have been the husk of their microwave strewn across the table in front of them. He seemed to be reworking it into…something.

“What are you doing?” she asked, because all of the potential options that she could think of didn’t make sense with using just the microwave.

“Wanted to see if I could convert the microwave into a toaster,” they told her, looking up.

Now that he mentioned it, the thing in front of them did look like a toaster. Sort of. It looked like a toaster if you turned one upside down and inverted it a bit.

“We already have a toaster—“ Donna nodded towards the one sitting in the corner.

“I know. I’m not doing this because we need a new one; I’m doing this because I wanted to see if I could,” he explained. “And because I got bored,” the Doctor added, after a moment.

Donna approached them and the thing on the bench, to get a better look at it.

“You got bored and decided to convert the microwave into a toaster, by memory, just to see if you could?” she summarised, resting her hands on her hips.

“Well, when you put it like that—“ At her Look, he reconsidered. “…Yes,”

Donna wasn’t sure if she should laugh or sigh right now. But that was a common problem you faced when being around the Doctor, she’d long since learnt.

“Are you going to be able to un-convert that back into just a microwave?”

“Maybe?”

“How did you even manage to make that from the microwave? It has to have more bits to it than were in the microwave,”

“I may or may not have also used the coffee machine…”

“You did not!”

If Rose got home from school an hour later to see her mum chasing her uncle through the house with the power cord of a kitchen appliance, well it wasn’t the oddest thing that she had come home to in the last couple of months.

(Both the toaster and the coffee machine were eventually put back to rights. Except for the latter now having a tendency to sprout little mechanical legs and run off if you tried to make less than two shots.)

[halfbakedideas]

physics homework

Rose leaves her homework unattended. And The Doctor gets yelled at by both Donna and Rose for doing said homework.

--x--x--x--

inspired by this post by @whatsfourteenupto.

this is probably my least favourite one of these i've written yet, but i think that's because it's 95% dialogue. angst is coming soon y'all :D

--x--x--x--

Rose’s first mistake was leaving her homework out in plain view on the dining room table when she got home from school that day.

Her second mistake was leaving her physics homework unattended to go have a shower.

When she returned back downstairs after that shower, she found the Doctor sitting at the dining table, with what looked to be her physics homework in front of him. Had they been doing her homework again? They were in the middle of being yelled at by her mum.

“Doctor, you can’t do Rose’s homework!”

“I was trying to save her time! And anyways, this—” He held up one of the pages. “—is really easy!”

“It’s easy for you, someone who has hundreds of years of alien physics knowledge but Rose doesn’t and—”

“—I’m supposed to be taking a test on this in two weeks, so I have to know it,” she spoke up. “And you’re going to get me in trouble,” Rose added, taking the page from them.

“What, why?”

“Because if you do my homework but then I fail the test, my teacher will notice and I’ll be accused of cheating,” Rose explained. “And your handwriting is terrible,”

“It’s not that bad, I don’t write in English very often anymore,” he protested.

“It is that bad,” Donna argued.

“Wait, what do you mean you ‘don’t write in English very often’? It’s all English on there,” Rose asked as she nodded towards the paper.

“TARDIS’ translation matrix,” the Doctor explained simply.

“So if the TARDIS is translating what you wrote but if my homework got far enough away from it then it wouldn’t be translated anymore?” Rose asked. “What language do you write in, if it’s not English?”

“You two can continue this once Rose’s finished her homework, otherwise the two of you will end up going down a rabbit hole of alien languages for the next three hours,” Donna interrupted.

The Doctor protested. “It would be at least four!”

“That’s not any better,” 

“Oh, right,”

“Does the sonic have a mass erase setting? I really don’t want to have to print out another copy of this,” Rose asked.

The Doctor picked up their sonic from where he had left it on the table and waved it over all of the papers. The pen on it disappeared in waves.

“It does,”

“Next time I leave my homework out, Doctor, please don’t do it for me!” she told them, grabbing a pen out of the flowerpot before she sat down at the table. “And that’s for any subject, not just physics. I’m perfectly able to do it myself and I need to otherwise I won’t pass Year Ten,”

[halfbakedideas]

DC & BATFAM MASTERLIST

Note: not all the DC/Batfam fics I've written, most only exist on my Ao3. Not currently being added to.

Tim's Pet Fish(/es) ~ Because everyone knows that fish are the easiest pets to keep. Or; Tim's experiences with pet fish over the years.

BatRules ~ The full list of rules that the Bat Family has, for both their civilian lives and their night lives. It gets a little out of hand. Just a little. [list!fic]

Tell Me Why The World Never Fights Fair ~ Welcome to the worst nightmare of all: reality! - Clive Barker.

Or, Three vigilantes (Bruce, Jason and Tim) don’t have that great of a time. It gets better. It just takes a bit.

If It’s Too Much Trouble… ~

TIM DRAKE (outgoing to JANET DRAKE): if it's too much trouble, I'll walk home.

He will actually do it, he will walk home, even if his legs are jelly and he feels like he's seconds away from ruining his dry clean-only school blazer.

THEY/THEM JASON SERIES🌟

Don't Talk To Me Like I Don't Know What You Are Feeling ~ Tim’s eyes are stormy. “I never replaced you, Jason. I was the Robin that got replaced, not you.”

To Be On the Receiving End of a Hug ~

Jason *being hugged by Dick*: This is terrible I hate you.

Dick: I can leave—

Jason, with a gun: You stay right the fuck here.

EVENT FICS🌟

The Concept of Christmas ~ Freshly-arrived-from-the-future Bart Allen did not understand the concept of Christmas. Plain and simple; he hadn’t grown up with it. Over the next seven years, he learns what the holiday involved through a range of holiday traditions. Not-so-freshly-arrived Bart Allen-Drake thought that he had a handle on the whole Christmas thing. [2023 Christmas!fic]

Of Shish kebab-ing and Brothers ~ Tim pays for Damian's defiance. [written for Whumptober 2022 prompts 'defiance' and "better me than you"]

Hot Potato, Hot Potato ~ Have you ever wanted to play hot potato with your littlest brother who has been magically turned into an iguana? The Batkids did. [written for Whumptober 2022 prompts 'manhandled']

[halfbakedideas]

idiot pancake: narrowly avoided

The Doctor nearly gets run over while crossing the road.

--x--x--x--

inspired by this post by @whatsfourteenupto.

crossing the road while being distracted by a phone like that is such me behaviour i died.

fourteen felt really off so this one took ages to finish. the other ones should be quicker.

--x--x--x--

The first mistake was The Doctor getting a phone. Okay, correction: a smartphone; because he did already have a phone, a flip phone. But now they had a smartphone too after a confusingly complicated series of events involving him, Rose, a bowl of pasta, and a TARDIS trip to 18th-century Italy that totally didn’t happen. It was a mistake because it made for moments like this one.

The Doctor had accompanied Shaun on his taxi routes today and the two of them had stopped for lunch. They had just finished and were heading back, having to cross the road to get back to Shaun’s taxi.

“Hey!” he reached out and snagged The Doctor’s arm, dragging them back to the curb, narrowly out of the way of another taxi that went screaming past them. “Watch out!”

His phone nearly went tumbling to the ground with how abruptly they were yanked backwards but he grabbed it just before it could.

“Oh. Thanks, Shaun,” they thanked, looking up and down the road.

“No problem. But don’t just cross whenever you want like that, otherwise I’ll have to scrape a skinny alien pancake off of the road to bring back to Donna and I really don’t want to have to face her wrath,” he told him.

They both laughed at that — Donna’s wrath was not something you wanted to be on the receiving end of.

“What are you even doing on that?” Shaun asked as The Doctor pocketed his phone. “And please don’t say negotiations with soup aliens or buying something from space Amazon,”

A delivery truck trundled past.

“Nah, Kerblam got shut down years ago. And Soupimals have already had their negotiations for this century, which are done on flip phones, not iPhones — how do you know about those?”

Shaun frowned, choosing not to comment on whatever ‘Kerblam’ was. “I don’t? Wait — are you being serious, soup alien negotiations are a real thing?”

The traffic finally let up enough for the two of them to cross the road. They got back in the taxi.

“Yes, they are. I mediated one once — I didn’t miss having short hair more than when I was picking out dried soup,”

For the second time in less than ten minutes, Shaun pointedly didn’t think about something. This one being the very obviously implied soup food fight with aliens that, unless he was wrong, were made of soup…

“What were you doing on your phone earlier?” he asked again, instead.

“Oh, I was texting myself — older self? Bigeneration? The one who’s just dealt with a spaceship full of babies,”

Of all of the things Shaun expected, their actual answer was really tame. But also: what.

“So, he’s got a phone too?”

“Fairly sure it’s the same one as this,” They pulled out their phone and held it up.

“…That shouldn’t be possible,”

The Doctor shrugged. “If the sonic can make phones connect across time and space, then it can make it so that the same one can communicate with itself in the past,”

He had a point, there.

“Next time,” Shaun started as he pulled the taxi out from the parking spot. “Don’t text and cross the road, if you get pancaked, Donna will slap me,”

“She’d do a lot worse than slap you,” The two of them chuckled at the very clear, and very likely, mental image.

[halfbakedideas]

london's burning

The cottage had a fire pit, set right out in the open when they had first moved in.

Crowley makes the mistake of lighting a fire in it one morning, only they don’t realise just how much of a mistake that had been until it’s too late.

Notes:

Title from Bad Decisions by Bastille. It’s winter here and that means my family’s dusting off our fire pit again. And as much as I love the concept of sitting around a fire, Crowley wouldn't. Changed my formatting for fics again. CW/TW: potentially graphic descriptions of a corpse (imagined/hallucination!Aziraphale's; he does not die).

Read on Ao3

-x-x-x-

Winter had well and truly arrived. The weather had been getting colder. Cold enough that Crowley’s knees and ankles declared winter’s arrival with a vengeance. It was getting to the temperatures where it made sense to sit around a fire; where you could do that comfortably without sweating through all of your clothes.

Fire weather, some humans would call this particular shade of grey and cold.

The cottage had a small, moveable outdoor fire pit. When they had moved in, it had sat accompanied by two chairs and a bench seat just outside the back of the cottage where it looked onto the garden. Since then, the concrete and cast iron fire pit had been moved to where it was now, propped up against the wall of the cottage.

Aziraphale had gone out that morning, heading into London to check up on his bookshop. Crowley would have gone with him, but the rapidly dropping temperatures that made them awfully sleepy in the mornings had also made it hard to really focus enough to insist upon that.

“I’ll only be gone four hours at most,” Aziraphale had told them before he had left.

At some point around eleven Crowley had finally gotten up, wrapped themself in far too many layers to still be considered fashionable but still was and made themself a cup of coffee.

They were standing in the kitchen nursing the mug when they spotted the old fire pit through the window. They should set that up, Aziraphale would probably enjoy sitting by a fire.

A fire…they ought to be able to at least see one without seizing up in panic. It had been six years since the bookshop fire, they should be over that fear by now.

Crowley’s now-empty mug was left beside the sink before they headed outside.

They rolled the fire pit back out to where it had originally been in front of those chairs. A miracle took care of not having any wood. A box of matches appeared alongside the pile. Good, now all they needed was something for it to catch on.

There was an apple tree in the corner of the garden that had dropped a decent amount of sticks recently. Crowley scooped up the ones that hadn’t already gotten damp from the grass.

Setting up the fire pit was easy, lighting a fire in it was less so. Crowley pulled a match out of the box and struck it against the side. Orange bloomed from the tip.

Their eyes were stuck on it, unable to look away or even blink. But then they blinked, shook their head slightly to dislodge the memories that were rearing their heads, and tossed the match into the fire pit before it could snuff itself out.

The sticks and dry leaves he had gathered up from the base of the apple tree caught quickly, it grew from a flicker to a small fire within moments.

If the lit match had been bad, this was far worse. The flame was mesmerising, in the worst way. Their entire body threatened to freeze up at the sight of it — and not just from the cold. But at the same time, something within them screamed for them to get up, to run and find Aziraphale.

Then the memories hit them.

Brittle, centuries-old paper being swallowed up as fire races about. It surrounds them and the heat presses in on them from every side, closer and closer and closer. Aziraphale’s diary, still sitting on his desk surrenders to the torrent. The metal of the staircase leading up to the flat above creaks and groans as it gives way. Ash settles heavily against their tongue, clogging up their throat and making it hard to breathe, let alone speak. Yet they persist, pushing one name out through their ash-dry throat. Each time more frantic than the last. Shouting is made ever harder by the fact that they’ve stopped breathing, not that they’ve realised that.

“Aziraphale!”

Crowley whirls around, fully serpentine eyes raking over the burning shell of the bookshop.

Where is he? He’s always here; Aziraphale would remain in his bookshop even as bombs fell and destruction reigned loose on Soho. So why can they not find him?

“Aziraphale!”

There is silence, save for the roar of fire. But then their eyes fall on something — a corpse — and Crowley’s heart stops. The blood in their corporation’s veins freezes solid.

No. No. No. No. No. Please, no. Not him.

Their foot catches on something as they race towards the corpse of their best friend and they go crashing to the ground. They yelp rather undemonically as red-hot pain blooms across their palms when they hit the floor. Was the floor really that hot?

Someone is talking. Shouting their name? The firefighters? Why would firefighters know their name?

Crowley blinks, their eyes are stinging from the smoke. Someone else is screaming. Aziraphale’s corpse is lying mere centimetres from where they went crashing to the ground. They pull themself towards him — it.

The angel’s name falls from their lips frantic and distraught as the smell of burnt flesh hits them.

His vest and overcoat are blackened and unsalvageable. Near the cuffs, his pants are burnt away in parts to reveal charred flesh underneath. The flesh melted away to reveal bone beneath. The worst of all? Aziraphale’s face. An angry red line had been seared across the pale flesh like he had been struck by a fervent piece of wood. Stretching across his left eyelid and down across the bridge of his nose to end by the right side of his mouth. The rest of his face seems to have been pot-marked by embers, as small red dots litter it.

They touch burned-and-blistered fingers to Aziraphale’s neck in the futile hope that he’s still somehow alive.

Something rolls down their cheek and they swipe it away with their other hand, the back of their hand comes away wet. Their face is wet. Why is their face wet?

The voice is back (did it ever leave?). Is it the same as before? They’re not sure. It sounds like it’s coming from underwater.

Someone is grabbing at their arms, pulling them back, twisting around as they try to get free and get back to Aziraphale. But then a wave of something washes over them. It is so intense it would have knocked them clean off their feet if they hadn’t already been kneeling.

Crowley blinked, long and hard. The burning remains of the bookshop, and their angel’s corpse along with it, disappeared like someone took a cloth to the dry-erase board of reality. They blinked again and the sand-coloured pavers and the rest of the cottage’s back garden came into focus. The next thing they noticed was that Aziraphale, unburned and whole and alive, was holding them. The two of them were sitting on the pavers.

Oh.

“‘Ziraphale?” they croaked, then coughed. Crowley’s throat was raw, not from ash but from overuse.

“Crowley,”

“You’re—” They cleared their throat and then winced at how painful it was to do that. “You’re home early,”

The demon felt, rather than saw, Aziraphale nod.

“Yes, the shop that I was planning on going to after checking up on the bookshop was shut today,”

Crowley sat up properly, pulling themself out of their angel’s arms. They twisted around to check on the fire pit… which had a small pile of ash at the very bottom of it.

“It’s a good thing that I arrived back when I did because I found you’d started a fire,” Aziraphale said. “You’re terrified of fire. We both know that. So what were you thinking?”

They ducked their head, embarrassment colouring their cheeks.

“Thought you’d like sitting by a fire, it being ‘fire weather’ and all,” they said. “‘nd I should be over that bloody fear by now, it’s been six years since the— since that happened,”

How pathetic of a demon were they that they couldn’t even say the word ‘fire’?

“Thank you for that consideration, love. But you shouldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t have enjoyed it if you weren’t,” he told them. “And there is no deadline for you ‘getting over your fear’; There is nothing wrong if you never get over it,”

Crowley wished they could disappear into the ground (actually, what they really wanted to do was bury their face against their angel’s chest again but they’d never admit that out loud).

“Now, may I see your hands?”

It was only when Aziraphale asked about their hands that they realised they were still stinging, and rather badly at that. That hadn’t been part of the flashback…hallucination? Illusion?

Their palms were red and puffy, and badly blistered in some places. It looked like they had touched a hot stove.

Crowley hissed when Aziraphale poked slowly and gently at the worst spot right by their thumb and black spots appeared in their vision.

“What happened?” they asked as he finished looking at their hands and released them. They had no memory of doing anything that could have caused this.

“You tried to brace yourself on the fire pit when you tripped,” he said. “And I wasn’t quick enough to stop you from touching the metal rim,”

The angel said that as if it was some great failing. As if it was his fault that Crowley had been enough of an idiot to trip over their own feet and touch a fire pit with fire in it.

“Isn’t your fault,” they said. “‘s mine, shouldn’t have tripped,”

Then they waved their right hand over the left. The skin healed, mostly, with the miracle they weaved over it. But blisters were left behind, although less angry than before. They tried to miracle that away but nothing happened. So they repeated it with their other hand and got the same result.

“Hmh,” Crowley huffed, displeased.

“If miracles aren’t working, would you allow me to treat your injuries, the human way?” Aziraphale asked.

They shrugged.

“Sure, might as well try,”

The two of them got to their feet. Crowley stumbled a bit. Their ankles were stiff despite the boots.

Wow, okay, maybe they were colder than they’d thought.

The pair relocated inside. Aziraphale headed to the heater to turn it up before joining his demon in the bathroom.

When the angel made it to the bathroom, Crowley was standing with their back to the door, staring at nothing.

“Crowley,” he called, making sure that he wasn’t standing directly behind them when he did and that they could see him.

They blinked once. And then a second time. The dull look in their golden eyes receded as awareness filtered back in slowly. They looked up at him.

“Hold your hands over the sink, palms up, please. I’m going to wash them out and then bandage them,” As he spoke, a miracle made a roll of bandages and a cloth appear on the counter beside the sink.

Crowley did as he requested. Aziraphale turned on the faucet and dampened the cloth with it. A tremor ran through them when the cloth made contact with their palms but they didn’t say anything so he continued.

Their gaze drifted off again as he worked. Aziraphale finished with the cleaning part and picked up the bandage roll, planning to bandage their hands. The moment that it made contact with Crowley’s hand, they yelped and flinched backwards. So far back that their back bumped into the doorframe.

“No no no. Somebody, no. You— can’t be —you’re not,” They sucked in a breath that caught in their chest. “You’re not dead. You’re not!” Crowley was pleading, and Aziraphale’s stomach had dropped into his shoes. They hadn’t even said a name but the angel had a hunch he knew exactly who they were rambling about: him.

“Aziraphale!”

He stepped towards them, hands raised but not touching, yet. He didn’t want to make it worse.

“I’m here! I’m fine; I’m alive!” he said. The words fell on unhearing ears.

Unblinking, fully golden eyes, much like they had been out in the garden flickered about the bathroom, not settling on anything. And not a flicker of recognition anywhere.

Damn ‘making it worse’, Crowley didn’t appear to have heard him and he wasn’t going to stand around and watch his demon get tortured by whatever they were imagining any longer.

Aziraphale reached out again, but not with his hand this time. The miracle slipped cautiously into Crowley’s mind to rid it of whatever horrific thing they were seeing, and to bring them back to the present.

Gold started to shrink, white returned to the sclera. Their eyes settled on him, saw him.

“Alive?” The doubt and the careful hope in the single word made the angel’s heart ache. 

Are you alive? was what Crowley was asking.

He nodded. “Yes, I’m alive and I haven’t been discorporated,”

“We’re not in the bookshop?”

“No, we aren’t. We moved out here to our cottage last year, don’t you remember?”

“Right…” Crowley trailed off. “You were gonna bandage my hands?” They nodded towards the bandages that had been abandoned by the sink.

“I was, but I can do it later—“

“You can do it. Best to get it done now or it’ll never get done,” They stepped forwards, towards the sink.

Aziraphale nodded and picked up the roll again. This attempt went far smoother than the first and soon enough the demon’s hands were bandaged up.

If Crowley didn’t take their eyes off of their angel for the rest of the day and refused to be more than three meters away from him for the next week, well that was for only them to know. And when their closest neighbour woke up the next morning to find a fire pit had appeared in his living room, he believed it to be a Christmas miracle.

[halfbakedideas]

this is a bookshop, not a parking space!

A TARDIS being accidentally parked indoors leads to a Demon and a Time Lord having somewhat of a reunion, and a very confused Angel.

notes:

Yet another fic I never cross-posted to here, and this was the first time I ever wrote crowley or aziraphale.

As for the timeline…just post Forest of The Dead (DW s04e09) but pre-Midnight, and just pre-Good Omens s2.

Read on Ao3

—x—x—x—

The TARDIS had no windows. Not that windows would do you any good when moving through time as well as space. As such the Doctor had developed something of a habit of parking the TARDIS in rather odd and/or unconventional places. They only parked the TARDIS inside when they intended to do so. Most of the time.

But there were times that the TARDIS had materialised indoors and the Doctor (and their current companion) didn’t know until they stepped out. Office buildings, alien spaceships, and on one notable occasion, an Angel’s bookshop. Windows would have helped immensely in all of those cases.

—x—x—x—

It was a pleasant Thursday afternoon. A. Z. Fell and Co. was still open for business but was not going to be for much longer, at this rate.

Aziraphale sat on the sofa tucked away behind the bookcases halfway through a reread of Agatha Christie’s Death in the Clouds when he heard a peculiar sound. It sounded like a cross between an out of tune violin and a car horn

The Angel abandoned his book on the sofa to go investigate what had made the sound, although not before he had marked his spot with a bookmark. Emerging from within the shelves, Aziraphale discovered a blue Police call box standing in the middle of the open space between the door and the bookcases. Which certainly hadn’t been there earlier.

What was that doing here? Police call boxes hadn’t existed since the 1950s and certainly not inside shops. Let alone his shop.

The box’s door creaked open and two people emerged from within. A red-haired human lady in a gray dress and purple cardigan, and…a very familiar-looking person in a long brown coat whose aura was definitely not human despite their appearance. Aziraphale caught sight of some kind of machine that was glowing green behind them.

“The 2020s! fantastic decade—“

“Why do you have my husband’s face?” the Angel demanded before he had the time to think of anything else to say.

“What?” they questioned. Both of the newcomers looked very confused.

What were they? A Demon with the power to steal other’s faces? Another Angel with that power? Or something else entirely? They must have the ability to change face.

And Aziraphale hadn’t seen Crowley all day, it was nearing three p.m., the last time that he had looked at a clock. Usually the Demon would have shown up around lunchtime at the very latest, like clockwork.

“Your face, it isn’t yours. Why did you take it?” he pressed. “What did you do to Crowley?”

“Crowley?” they asked, the confusion disappearing from their face.

“No no! I haven’t done anything to them!” they insisted. “Well not in the last twenty years, at least,” And then, softer: “He’s still hanging around here? After all this time?”

So this mysterious unknown not-human did know Crowley after all. It wasn’t just the face that was the same (well, except for the hair), it was the voice too.

“Yes?” he said, unsure of what else to say. Now it was his turn to be confused.

“And if he’s your husband…you must be Aziraphale!” they exclaimed, eyes lighting up.

“I am,” he confirmed with a nod.

“Doctor, who is this man?” the lady asked, interrupting their conversation.

“Someone very dear to a friend of mine,” they told her. “Speaking of, where is Crowley?” They looked around the shop, as if trying to find the Demon, even peering around the police box.

“Sorry, who are you?” Aziraphale asked, instead of answering their question.

“I’m the Doctor,” they introduced themself.

That was a very vague name, or was it a title in the way that the word was intended to be used?

“And this is Donna,” They turned to the red-haired lady.

“Hi,”

“What exactly are you a doctor of?” he asked.

“Oh, many things,” they said with a gesture to nothing.

Before any of them could say anything more, the door opened and someone entered the shop.

“Angel? You here—?“ Crowley’s voice called out.

The Demon came to a sudden stop not too far from Aziraphale. He looked both shocked and confused, although certainly more shocked than confused.

“Doctor? What’re you doing here?” he asked. “What’s with the face? And that suit? Where’d the scarf go?”

“Sorry about the face — I knew it looked familiar,” they said, the second part sounded like it was more directed towards themself than Crowley.

“You two do know each other!” Aziraphale interjected. “Crowley, how do you know this Doctor?” He turned to his husband.

“Oh, they’re an old friend,”

Well that was infromative.

“Would someone please tell me who you two are?” Donna asked. “Or am I gonna have to keep standing here all confused?” she added.

Aziraphale echoed the sentiment.

“Right, yes…Donna, this is Crowley, I met them in the 1860s, although not with this face,” The Doctor introduced him. “And this is Aziraphale, he owns this bookshop,”

“Hello,” the Angel greeted pleasantly. “Now, this is very interesting and all, but could you please park that…police box—“

“—TARDIS,” the Doctor corrected him.

“—TARDIS outside? This bookshop is still open and I doubt that you want any customers who come in here to ask questions about it,” Aziraphale said.

“No, no I do not. Won’t be a moment,”

“Thank you.”

The Doctor and Donna returned back inside the police box, shutting the door behind them. The same out of tune violin-car horn cross sound filled the shop and the TARDIS faded out of sight.

It reappeared in the alleyway behind the bookshop, not that either Aziraphale or Crowley would know that.

The Doctor and Donna came back inside after having moved the TARDIS.

Despite Aziraphale’s confusion and mistrust of them, Crowley seemed to not only have befriended the Doctor but trusted them too. And he did not trust people easily, so the Angel decided that he would trust them as well. For the time being.

The rest of the afternoon saw a pot of tea (which had originally been lemon-ginger but had since been miracled into the green it had remained as for the next three hours) being shared and even more questions from both sides.

—x—x—x—

“Those two…they weren’t human, were they?” Donna asked when she and the Doctor were back in the TARDIS standing around the console later.

“No, they aren’t,” they agreed as they fiddled with something.

“Then what are they? Aliens? They looked pretty human,” she commented.

“They’re not technically alien either, not in the same way I am,”

Okay, now that’s just confusing.

“What do you mean ‘not technically alien’? You aren’t having me on, are you?” Donna said.

“Nope. Supernatural beings — well Angel and Demon, but that still counts as supernatural,” the Doctor explained.

Of all the wild things that she had been expecting them to say, supernatural beings hadn’t even made the list.

“What? An actual angel, like in the Bible? Not like those murderous statues?” she questioned.

Although, now that she thought of it, those two being a Demon and an Angel made rather a lot of sense.

Who was which? Aziraphale definitely seemed more angelic than demonic, but the way he had come storming out of the backroom and accused the Doctor of stealing his husband’s face. Crowley appeared the opposite. Honestly it seemed equally possible that both of them were either.

“Those ‘murderous statues’ are Weeping Angels, Aziraphale’s just an Angel,” the Doctor explained, having finally finished with whatever he had been doing to the console. “Now, what do you think about a visit to Alpha Centauri?” they asked.

Well, now she had the answer to her most recent question.

“That sounds lovely,” Donna said. “As long as we’re going there because you want to and not because we’re responding to a signal,” she told them, sternly. “I don’t want another Library situation just yet,” she added.

“There’s no signal this time, I promise,” they reassured her.

“Alright.”

The sound of the TARDIS dematerialising filled the alleyway. It caught the attention of a man wearing far, far less clothing than was considered socially appropriate, not just in this century but in any century, carrying a cardboard box who happened to be walking past.

[halfbakedideas]

that distant echo

What the Fourteenth Doctor had been up to during the events of The Devil's Chord: a lot of waiting.

Inspired by this post by @whatsfourteenupto.

Notes:

Stars, that is a bad summary.

I played a bit fast-and-loose with a side-effect of the bigeneration. And if you notice any contradictions to things in the 60th specials, no you didn’t.

Read on Ao3

-x-x-x-

It has been a very long time since the Doctor last finished a game of Uno, or played one at all, for that matter. Thousands and thousands of years.

As he watches Rose shuffle the deck, they try to remember the last time he played Uno.

With Amy and Rory, during the year of the year of the slow invasion. He had barely been able to sit still long enough for them to play one round then — the memory brings a small, sad smile to his face — and he had finished that game with nearly half the deck in their hand.

Rose finishes shuffling the cards and deals them out. It is just the two of them playing, sitting opposite each other at the table in the garden.

The game starts.

The Doctor plays a blue nine. Rose plays a skip and a blue two. Then they play a blue four. As he watches Rose decide on her next card, the distinct feeling of wrongness hits him.

It is the same feeling that they had gotten while helping their niece with her physics homework on mavity. They had gotten the distinct impression that something was wrong with the name as if it was supposed to be called something else and the correct term was right on the tip of his tongue but they just couldn’t grasp it.

The Doctor ignores the feeling. Nothing seems to be specifically wrong, so it is probably nothing. Just them worrying over nothing and everything again, it wouldn’t be the first time since he started living with the Temple-Noble-Motts five months ago.

He blinks. And in the time between having their eyes open, shutting them, and opening again, the world has shifted.

The hunk of rubble — once a chair, maybe? — is hard underneath him, the twisted metal pressing into the backs of their thighs.

Ash settles against their tongue. The world around them stretches out, grey and empty. Exactly as it had been for decades.

No, that’s not right. None of this is right.

A jolt of panic rips its way through him as they jump up to their feet. The Doctor whirls around, his eyes rake over their surroundings as they do. Looking for one certain blue police box. The TARDIS is still standing where he had parked her before.

Before, when there isn’t ash and grey for as far as they can see. Before, when they weren’t the only person left on Earth (they should double-check that one). Before, when they had been playing Uno with Rose.

This is all wrong. It isn’t meant to be a wasteland, it is supposed to be a lush garden.

Something has changed, or someone has done something.

Panic slithers its way into the space around his ribs. Squeezing tighter with every second that passes as they race towards the TARDIS and pull open her door to continue on inside. Her far-too-white interior is a stark change from the disparity outside.

The Doctor’s hands fly over the controls as he sets her to take off, to fly over London.

He has to check, has to see whether whatever has happened is nationwide or just limited to his immediate vicinity. They fly over the city and when the same grey is reflected on the viewscreen the entire time, he directs the TARDIS to fly over the rest of Britain. And then the rest of the world.

Everywhere is the same. Destroyed and desolate and abandoned. No humans anywhere.

All of this and there is nothing that the Doctor can do. They have no idea where — or when — to even start. The TARDIS jumps back through time, first two years; then five; a decade ago; the 1980s; and even as far back as 1963.

The grim state of the world is not ubiquitous to all times. It only seems to happen in the 2000s. But there is still something distinctly wrong with humans in the years before 2005.

Everyone is colder than he has ever encountered before. And it’s all so quiet. No one is whistling; no one is singing; and no music is playing, anywhere.

The Doctor and his TARDIS return to 2024, to what is supposed to be the Temple-Noble-Motts’ back garden. What now will never be their garden.

The hopelessness that comes with the realisation that there’s nothing that they can do hits them as they sit down in the doorway of the TARDIS. His long legs dangling over the edge.

He has to acknowledge that fact. And that ever since the bigeneration and what is effectively their retirement five months ago, saving the world is no longer their job. That mantle has been passed onto their future self, where and whenever he is right now.

They have to trust that he will fix this. They have to have faith in a version of themself that they know next to nothing about, except for that he comes after them.

The Doctor may be sitting still now but that hasn’t done a thing to calm the panic that still threatens to drown him. Their mind screams at him. What are you doing, sitting still? Get up and go do something to fix the world.

But there is nothing for him to do. In having entrusted the world saving to their future self, he’s helpless, completely and utterly helpless.

All they can do is sit here and wait for their future self to hurry up and fucking fix this. And try not to think too hard about what it means if the other Doctor doesn’t.

The helpless feeling settles heavy and uncomfortable in their chest, blotting out some of the panic.

Something is on fire — a lot of somethings, actually.

For a second time that day, the world shifts again. It’s not the world itself that changes this time but rather the Doctor’s memories.

Dozens of years of adventures and memories, dozens of peoples’ faces slip out of his memory like grains of sand. Going but not quite entirely gone. Leaving behind an echo, the mental outline of their existence.

That was one quirk of Time Lords’ brains, that they held onto memories and their own timelines with a vengeance. Their brains never let them truly let go of all those memories, or forget their timeline. The only problem is that, if enough changes, the brain doesn’t remember what it is that they are supposed to be remembering.

It had happened with mavity all those months ago. He knew that something had changed with it after he and Donna had crashed the TARDIS into that apple tree and met Isaac Newton.

But unlike that time, now he does remember what the world is supposed to be like.

A sudden tremendous wave of fear washes over them. It is so unexpected and abrupt that they nearly go tumbling out of the TARDIS (again). But it’s not their terror, even though they are experiencing it.

This particular emotion belongs to their future self. Whatever he’s doing, he is doing it terrified. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing — they have done plenty of world-saving like that. Fear is good, it keeps you focused. And focused is what his future self needs to be right now, wherever he is.

The Doctor blinks.

The ash, smoke, and deadness of London spread out below them is there one moment and gone the next. Replaced with a very much intact London, one that is colourful, bustling, and populated.

And with the restoration of London comes the restoration of the Doctor’s memories. Names fit back to faces that fill in the blurry, vague outlines of people haunting their memories.

The noise hits them with all the force of a truck going at full speed. He doesn't realise just how quiet the world had been until it isn’t any longer. Even when they had gone back through time trying to verify if something was wrong.

Whatever their future self has done has worked. Has fixed whatever had gone wrong with the world.

Uno! They had been in the middle of playing a game with Rose, a game that they were going to beat her and get her back for all those Friday game nights.

“Doctor!” They look down past their feet to see Rose and Donna standing on the grass below. Oh no. “What’re you doing up there?”

From Rose’s perspective, he had gotten up suddenly and dashed into the TARDIS and took off into the sky, when he was on firm orders not to go anywhere.

How would they explain what he has just witnessed if he doesn’t know what it was themself?

The game of Uno still spread across the table beckons to him.

[halfbakedideas]

nail polish

Aziraphale paints Crowley’s nails.

notes:

This was originally posted on ao3, I only just realised I never crossposred on here.

read on ao3

Goldnova apparently flung me back into this fandom?? Not complaining though.

—x—x—x—

The patter of hailstones against the roof provided a nice white noise in the background of the ‘Best of Queen’ album that was playing softly from the record player.

Aziraphale was pottering around his bookshop, organising for the most part but occasionally dusting when he found a spot that hadn’t seen the feather duster in a long time. Crowley, on the other hand, was alternating between watching him from their spot on the sofa and harassing humans through their phone. At some point, the demon had pulled out a bottle of nail polish from somewhere.

They were trying to paint their nails with little to show for it. In the last fifteen minutes they had only successfully done their thumb.

Aziraphale was watching as he works, when he can see Crowley’s hands through the gaps in the bookshelves.

They tried to paint the rest of their nails but kept messing up. Either from getting too much polish on the surrounding skin from the way that their hand shook at the worst time, or the brush refusing to behave as it should. The cycle repeated over and over: botch the attempt, miracle the mess away, and start again, only to botch it once more. This had been going on for the last fifteen minutes.

A plume of smoke curled from Crowley’s mouth as they miracled away the polish once again. If they kept going like this then they would use up all of the nail polish in the bottle before they managed to get all of their nails painted.

Aziraphale set down his feather duster on a shelf and approached his demon.

“Can I help?” he asked. Crowley looked up.

“Dunno how you’d ‘help’ me with painting my nails,” they commented before shuffling over slightly so that he could sit down.

“I could do them for you?” Aziraphale offered. “Then you wouldn’t waste as much polish?”

They looked down at the brush-top that they were still holding in their hand, at their fingernails, then back up at Aziraphale again.

“Sure,” Crowley agreed and put the brush-top back in the bottle before handing it over to him.

They held out their hand, the one with the painted thumbnail, Aziraphale took it and placed it on his leg. The two of them readjusted so that they were angled more towards each other.

Aziraphale pulled out the brush-top again and was pleased to find that there was the perfect amount of polish on it, just as he expected there to be. The bottle floated lazily by his side at exactly the spot he needed it to be.

The angel continued to hold their hand so that he could angle it as he needed while he painted careful coats of polish over the nail of Crowley’s index finger.

Unlike the demon’s attempts earlier, the polish stayed on the nails and didn’t glob up anywhere. And it went on in even coats.

“You didn’t need to do it for me; I would’ve managed in the end,” they said after a few minutes of silence passed. “Or just have waited for another day when my hands aren’t as shakey,”

Aziraphale was just about finished painting the nail of the ring finger of that hand.

“No, I didn’t,” he agreed. “But doing it for you saves you from wasting any of this perfectly good polish,” the angel said.

The currently human-shaped serpent made a sound of agreement. He was right.

By the time Aziraphale had started on their other hand, the hail had eased off so much that it was just raining now.

“Angel?” Crowley called out later, looking up from examining their nails. The angel was standing over by the bookcases again and had been reaching for a book.

“Yes, my dear?”

“There are sparkles on my nails,”

“Yes, I suppose there is,”

“That polish doesn’t have any glitter in it,” they said. “I’m sure of it. This is your doing?”

“Look at them under the lamp light,” Aziraphale suggested instead of directly answering them.

Crowley was too busy doing as he suggested to see the smile that graced their angel’s face.

Under the more direct lamp light, they were able to see the blue, red, and gold glitter that was over the top of the black polish better. Before that, they could only see the gold ones, which reminded them of the polish on Aziraphale’s own nails.

—x—x—x—

endnotes:

I own both of those colours of nail polish :D they’re both very nice (don’t wear the gold very much though).

This was nice (and very short) but pain will be coming soon.

[halfbakedideas]

i can hold my breath, i've been doing it since he left

After Aziraphale leaves, Crowley does a lot of waiting. And drinking.

Notes:

EDIT: changed the title from 'curse the wind, fan the flames, yell 'till your lungs are drained' (Quiet Company by Jack Harris).

CW for alcohol and a character being drunk. Do I still need to warn for 02x06 spoilers or has it been long enough now? This is essentially just word vomit on one speculation I had for Crowley post-season 2 & written during one of my writing classes. Figured I might as well post this otherwise it’ll just rot in my drive forever.

Read on Ao3

—x—x—x—

Crowley sits slumped over at a bar. Beer cans, whiskey glasses, and even a couple of empty wine glasses forming a barrier around him.

The barkeep had started shooting him worried looks when he finishes a second handle’s worth of whiskey after about three beers and two glasses of wine, and was still (mostly) upright.

It takes a lot of alcohol to get someone of angel stock properly sloshed. But when Crowley has spent more of the last eleven months with some form of alcohol in him than sober, that doesn’t really mean anything.

A glass of red wine rests in his hand, still filled a quarter of the way. He didn’t care enough to know which one when he’d gotten the barkeeper to pour him another glass.

Crowley raises the glass to his lips and takes a swig. A drop of wine traces its way down his chin. He wipes it away with a hand. He nearly knocks an abandoned whiskey glass clean off the table when he sets it down.

“Alright, I think that’s enough for you,” the barkeep speaks up, stepping towards the demon. Her hand is outstretched as if she plans to take the wine glass out of his hands.

“Nuh — not yet, not even drunk yet,” he slurs. He waves a hand in her direction to make her forget about what she had just been about to do and the events of the last two hours too. Whoops.

He drinks some more wine and manages not to spill any of it this time.

By the time the bar closes half an hour later — or is it fifteen minutes? He hats that particular stretch of time: fifteen minutes — Crowley is still upright and on his feet, by the sheer force of a demonic miracle.

‘On his feet’ does not automatically mean ‘able to walk in a straight line’.

The demon makes his way down the street, the path in front of him swimming.

He believes that he is going to make it back to his flat without becoming a serpent-shaped pancake on the pavement, so he would. More or less.

Logically, the smart thing would have been to miracle all of the alcohol out of his bloodstream before he left the bar. But the thought had occurred to him when he first started doing this, and it had been quickly dismissed. He isn’t going to change his mind now, eight months later.

Existence is so much easier to deal with like this; being too drunk to be able to think straight means that he doesn’t have to think. Thinking is overrated anyway.

Surprisingly, this much alcohol in him keeps him from doing something stupid like yelling in the vague direction of the sky. Would he be yelling at Aziraphale or God, he isn’t sure. Or go charging into the elevator to do something phenomenally stupider.

Alcohol certainly makes passing the time easier. Makes it pass quicker. Makes waiting less boring.

That’s what he has been doing for the last eleven months, waiting. Because, after the initial shock and heartbreak wore off, Crowley choose to believe that Aziraphale hasn’t truly abandoned him for Heaven. That he took the Supreme Archangel position because he has a plan, whatever it could be.

He isn’t quite sure what he would do if the opposite turned out to be true.

Die, probably.

So Crowley holds onto that flicker of hope (You’re a demon, demons don’t get to hope. Stop that.) and resigns himself to waiting.

But it is in times like this, the very very early hours of the morning when he is staggering off back to his flat or over to his bed, that hope starts to wane. When the ‘what ifs’ begin to creep in.

What if Aziraphale doesn’t have a plan or isn’t going to come back to Earth (and Crowley) again? What if he stays up there forever? What if the angel has forgotten about him?

He will either find out or spend eternity waiting. Some days he isn’t sure which is worse.

Crowley has just climbed into the Bentley when a flicker of light catches his eye. And there is a see-through version of Aziraphale sitting in the passenger’s seat beside him. Turned towards him slightly with his mouth open as if he’s about to say something.

Not this again.

“Know you’re not really here, so fuck off,” he tells the hallucination.

“Crowley…“ Whatever the hallucination is about to say next gets cut off.

“No. Don’t care. You aren’t real, anyway,”

The Bentley pulls out of the parking space and onto the road. It takes off in the direction of Crowley’s flat faster than an eighty-year-old car should have been able to. Crowley doesn’t see the sad expression that ghosted over the hallucination’s face before it vanishes from the passenger’s seat.

This is something that has started happening whenever the demon thinks too hard about what ifs and Aziraphale, a hallucination of the angel would appear.

When it had first appeared, it scared the wits out of Crowley (not that he would ever admit that to anyone) who had been in the middle of a Golden Girls marathon. He yelled at the hallucination for nearly fifteen whole minutes before he realised he wasn’t yelling at the real Aziraphale. That had made him yell some more, just in the direction of Heaven instead.

The next day plays out much like every day before it had. Crowley wakes to find himself very much, disappointingly sober but with a ridiculous headache. The cure, which he decided upon months ago, was to get up and go drink some more.

It wasn’t like he has much else to do. Hell stopped giving him any assignments after Armageddon’t and stopped communicating with him at all as of eleven months ago.

So all he has left is an indeterminate amount of waiting.

—x—x—x—

End notes:

Is Crowley really hallucinating Aziraphale, or is it something else entirely?

[halfbakedideas]

Days That Pass

@flashfictionfridayofficial prompt: ‘count the days’.

—x—x—x—

The Doctor with the new-old face moved in with the Temple-Nobles. That in itself wasn’t hard. What was hard was actually living with them.

He had never been one to stay still for long. They’d been bad at it when he’d last worn this face; but nowhere near as bad as their fish-fingers-and-custard self. That one had been downright awful at stillness.

They managed a grand total of four hours of ‘still’ on the first day before he’s up and moving again, heading back into the TARDIS. Not to leave — he wasn’t going to leave, he’d promised their future self and Donna that he would stay in 2024.

Even though they knew that, Donna didn’t; she followed him to the TARDIS.

“You better not be trying to leave already, Spaceman,” Donna’s voice sounded out from behind him, echoing slightly.

They spun on his heel.

“What? Oh. no, no…I’m not. Came in here to do some repairs after how the TARDIS crashed yesterday,” The words tumbled out of their mouth.

She ended up sitting with him while they fiddled about beneath the console doing repairs that weren’t that urgent (the TARDIS could fix herself for the most part) but certainly helped quieten the nagging urge to run.

The days passed. The Doctor found himself counting the days. It’s not a conscious thing, at first. They wanted to make sure he would remember absolutely everything that happened during this period.

It was weird, counting up the days they spent with the Temple-Nobles instead of counting down to something ending.

…Okay that was a lie. He was also counting down. Counting down the days he had left with Donna before he lost her for a second, far more permanent time.

The last time he had worn this face all those years ago, they had made the mistake of going and finding out all the details surrounding Donna’s death.

It had been comforting (mostly) back then, to know she would be surrounded by family at her passing. The details had been comforting then, but not so much anymore. Because now he had their best friend back again and every day that passed meant one day closer to when they would lose her again.

So the Doctor did what he did when faced with any particularly negative thing: run away. Only this time no actual running was done.

They started another counter. Counting up.

Twenty-four days after the bigeneration, he bought a house. It was the solution to the looming problem of all the damage done to the Temple-Nobles’ house. Damage that he had responsible for. Blue tarps had been a temporary fix but a more permanent solution was needed.

The house-buying had nothing to do with the stepping-on-toes feeling that plagued him the entire month, not at all.

The Doctor defined this counter, the increasing one, with moments. Sitting outside to watch the sunrise with Donna; Helping Rose with her homework; Somehow managing to improve his interactions with Sylvia so they don’t run the risk of being slapped (again); Even sneaking out in the TARDIS with Rose to take her to see purple sunsets or try alien ice cream. Amongst dozens of other memories.

Despite how much they filled their days with, the Doctor’s still acutely aware of the counter counting down. No matter how much they tried to lose track of it he couldn’t, his brain wouldn’t let them.

It was Thursday, game night. Everyone was gathered in the living room to play The Game of Life. The Doctor was sitting on the sofa, with Rose to his right and the armrest to their left.

Later he would realise this wasn’t the best choice of game. They’d only chosen it because it was space-themed. But right now he was too busy being zoned out.

“Oi, Martian, your turn,” Donna called, leaning forward from Rose’s other side to look at them properly.

It was their turn yet they were blankly staring at the table like he had for the last twelve minutes. Donna would bet good money he wasn’t actually seeing the board.

He saw an older Donna being told she only had four months left to live, and then their best friend on her deathbed. The memories of a future yet to happen (and might not even happen anymore) had frozen them in place.

“Doctor?” Rose tried. A moment passed and still nothing.

When this happened before, he’d be back to normal again within minutes. Not this time.

“Take your turn, Mum,” Donna told Sylvia before she stood up and crossed around the table towards the Doctor. “Spaceman?”

They’d zoned out like this before, touch had brought him back out then so maybe it would now.

Donna reached out and touched the back of his hand. As soon as her fingertips touched, the Doctor jerked backwards, back thumping against couch cushions.

Some images slipped through from the contact, of an older version of herself. She only saw it for a few seconds but that was enough time to realise what it was : Their memories of her last moments.

He knew how she was going to die. It felt wrong for her to have seen it.

“Is it my turn?” they asked.

“You know how I die,”

He froze where they’d been reaching towards the spinner. “Yeah, I do…You weren’t supposed to see that,”

“So what, you were gonna keep it secret forever?”

“No! Not forever. And it might not even happen like that anymore,”

“How long have you known?” It’s hard to keep the horror-concern out of her voice. The last time he had zoned out was because he had been remembering her death.

The Doctor looked away.

“Not long I took you home,” That was very specifically vague.

That wasn’t the last time the Doctor got lost in those memories. The two of them eventually talk about it at-length, and Donna finds out about their counting down counter.

They’d always know exactly how long they had left with Donna, that would always loom over his head, but adjusting to the slower life in 2024 helped. Distracting themself with both mundane and adventurous things helped. Spending more time with Donna helped.