It's all AU.

Spike was feeling distinctly better. He’d found a first aid kit in the hotel kitchen and patched himself up, and the (internal) application of some alcohol from a bottle of vodka he’d found nearby had made the bullet wound in his side more or less ignorable. Now he just needed a drink.

Preferably O-Positive.

Spike eyed the sign pointing to the bar and sniffed thoughtfully. In a world where trapdoors disappeared into thin air and demon hunters from 2007 turned up at inconvenient moments, and where the kitchens were staffed by androids, it was quite conceivable that the bar would serve blood.

He swaggered into the bar, noted that it was almost empty – not unexpected for the middle of the afternoon – and leant on the bar, automatically giving the serving android the eye. “Don’t suppose you serve blood, mate?” he asked, in a low voice. No point in shouting out that he was a vampire, not when he wasn’t sure he could fight off anyone who took exception to the fact.

It appeared they did serve blood, and not just blood but human blood at that. Spike grinned. Maybe this place wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

The Doctor sauntered down a side-street lined with market stalls. He bent over one stall selling fudge and chocolate. He was rather partial to fudge. He picked out a big box, opened it and popped two pieces in his mouth.

Then he stepped back, intending to move on to the next stall, only to find there was someone right behind him. They met with a big bump. "Ooop! Sorry!" the Doctor mumbled, though his mouthful of fudge, turning to see who it was.

He was sitting at a table in the hotel lobby because the light was decent there, taking apart what might once have been a small clockwork elephant. If there was nothing here for him to build or fix, well, he'd settle for taking things apart, for the moment anyway.

He was rather hoping that someone would come along and distract him before he actually had to try to put the thing back together.

Ianto wandered out of the archives of Torchwood Three. It was still disorganized, still mildewy and old, papers unorganized and not put into the computer files yet. He had a file folder with the field report of a 1903 agent open in his hands, so he could read the scratchy scrawl on the yellowed paper as he walked, head bobbing with his ipod. It was a Saturday so he was in jeans and a polo shirt; he didn't expect anyone else to be in, so he was more casual than his usual wont.

He only made it four steps off the concrete floor of the archives and onto the tiled floor of the hotel lobby before he felt the difference on his feet. He looked up from the file folder and took his head phones out of his ears. "...Again?"