December 9:th - Hangover and Dealing With Two Playful (Magical) Pieces of Cloth
Stephen woke to such a terrible headache that he for a moment wondered if the headache itself had woken him up; that was, until he heard the series of crashes.
By some coincidence, or simply as an effect of the rising level of noise, both Doctors stepped out into the large entry hall at the same time, and both stopped dead at the scene which greeted them.
In the middle of the hallway, surrounded by the mess they'd made, next to a peacefully blinking TARDIS, was Doctor Strange's Cloak, playing a game of fetch with a large, magic carpet. It was bizarre.
"Cloak!" Doctor Strange chastised, frowning. He rubbed his aching head. The Doctor, meanwhile, was glaring at the TARDIS; he just knew it was the culprit behind bringing the Carpet here in the first place.
With a painful exuberance, at least to its hangover human, the Cloak flew over to its doctor, weaving around him and seeking to share its excitement. "Yes, yes" Stephen relented somewhat "it is marvelous that you've found a friend, but do please be a bit more careful with the furniture". With a bit of an up-and-down motion, the cloak took off again, returning to its new friend. The Timelord grimaced and seemed to consider making a run for it, but he did not.
"Breakfast?" Doctor Strange offered the next moment, making them both wince. Mere minutes later, they were both back in their respective beds. They both needed a bit more sleep. Or a year of it.
It was already mid-day when Stephen entered the entrance hall again. To his surprise, it was entirely tidy, silent, and empty.
With a suspicious frown, he continued into the kitchen, only to stop as if paralyzed in the doorway. The kitchen was not that much of a mess, really, not compared to what it could have been, but it contained a cloak and a carpet, both seemingly preoccupied with trying to mix frosting. Whatever happened to him later in life, he would never get rid of that mental image, out of pure shock.
Shocking or not, he was the sorcerer who had sent Dormammu running from the earth, and it took a lot more than two magical pieces of fabric attempting to bake to shake him. That was why the Timelord entered just under an hour later, and found the Sorcerer making Christmas candy, assisted by a Cloak and a Carpet, both of which keeping busy handing him ingredients. The Doctor paused at the door, and then he asked the obvious question. "Can I help?"
"Wibbly, Wobbly, Timey, Wimey". The Doctor mumbled out loud as he carefully spritsed the words onto one of the Christmas cookies. On his suggestion, Doctor Strange was making a second cake, as well gingerbread, letting the cloak and carpet handle the cake cutters.
The Timelord, of course, was the natural choise for applying all of the frosting, being the only one with steady hands, so to speak. It had only taken a short experiment for them to decide that while capable with carrying bags of flour and even some light stirring, fabric grips were not capable of of applying frosting unless you wanted it to cover what you applied it to completely.
The TARDIS was watching them contentedly from the hallway as they baked. It knew the two pairs would make for the best of friends. It had watched, while the Doctors had slept, as the new friends had started to tidy up the mess in the hallway, the cloak very decided upon keeping the promise to its doctor.
As the Doctors had slept on, the Carpet and the Cloak had played on, moving upwards in the house, playing what the TARDIS could only conclude to be a cloth-version of "hide and seek".
It peeked in through the kitchen door, to where Doctor Strange assisted his cloak in stirring something in a pot, while the carpet rested against the Timelord's chair, watching him apply frosting with great concentration. It seemed he was going a little bit crazy with the frosting, perhaps looking forward to Christmas, or at least the cake cooling over at the workbench.
The scene was peaceful and full of holiday spirit, and the TARDIS felt full of hope for the holiday season. Now all it needed to do was talk to Mrs Hudson. It felt confident she would know how to proceed with the next part of their plan.
Late in the night, after it had dropped off the Doctor back with his companion in London, it swished over to Mrs Hudson, leaving the carpet with her. They talked for a few minutes, the carpet listening to them carefully - at least it seemed so, it was sometimes hard to know what carpets were thinking - and then the TARDIS left, secure in its knowledge that Mrs Hudson would know exactly what to do.
It was very late, both her boys asleep in their beds - unusual as that might be, but they had finished a case only hours ago - as Mrs Hudson carried the sleepy carpet up into their living room, smiling as she let it spread out in the warmth before the fire. Oh, yes, this Carpet and Sherlock would get along just fine. They were both very curious.
The TARDIS is matchmaking... on several levels. It is very thorough. Also the Cloak wanted to experiment with what it could or could not do in the kitchen, an idea which rose in the comments of one of my other stories, and the Carpet encouraged it, so it happened here! Thank you to Sudoku for helping me develop this idea!
I do not own anything you recognise - I don't even know where some of it is from!
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