A/N: Hello! We're about to say something a bit scary, but hear us out: this is the seventh story in the Blood and Time series and it's a slight crossover with Constant Comment Tea's Interaction series. Hold on, it's fine.

We've written this story so that if it's your first foray into the series (either of them, although this is more Blood and Time than it is Interaction), you won't be completely lost. Hopefully we've adequately balanced helpful exposition with decent pacing.

However, for a little extra context:
1. This is the Doctor's third encounter with Angel and Angel's seventh with the Doctor. Angel has met 9, 10, and 11.
2. There are several events/bits of knowledge that are referenced throughout this story. Pretty much all of them are from A Short Trip Outside the Universe, so if you want to know more, go read that. (And the bit about Martha's letter is from The Moon Thesis.)
3. Angel has been Mr. Reclusive-Vampire for the past 200 years for reasons that you find out in the Interaction series but don't need to know here (in detail). Essentially, he's tired of losing people he loves, so he stopped loving altogether. Or tried to.

For those of you who have read the Interaction series, this story takes place during the period of time in the first story when Judith Cole is trying to decide if she's going to let her young son befriend an ensouled vampire (Chapter Five, The Art of Human Interaction).

Grocery stores sure had changed since Angel's time.

Of course, they hadn't really had grocery stores in Angel's time, so maybe that was Angel's tendency to dramatize his age coming through. (Though he felt justified in it now more than ever—even Darla hadn't made it to 453.)

But still, Angel pondered as he stared at the entrance to Sullivan's, brightly lit and plastered with advertisements announcing a BOGO sale on toothpaste and 30% off ribeye steaks. Used to be, you had to go to several shops and stands to get all of your edible needs, and if Isaac Murphy was out of pig fat, then you were out of luck. Now, it was all available in one convenient superstore, with too many options and so much back stock they had to have sales like "BOGO"s (what the hell was a BOGO, anyway?) to get rid of it all.

The sheer brightness of the lights inside intimidated Angel. He could almost hear the buzzing from here (never mind that society had made the full switch from fluorescents to LEDs more than a century ago—Angel still swore he could hear buzzing). Angel took a step backward: he could get the milk some other time.

Or not at all. Not at all was good, too. Why had he even agreed to get fresh milk? Some fleeting desire not to burn bridges, when that's all he'd been doing the past 200 years?

"You're a damn idiot, Angel," he muttered out loud. The next time a few humans decided he was interesting enough to hang around and pester, the correct response would be, "Yes, actually, I'm super-dangerous and definitely want to eat your child, so go away."

Angel swallowed, backing up another step. Someone passed between him and the store, looking at something intently on their Palm—texting or something-interrupting his view and his moment like scissors cutting a taut cord.

That was a fair point: Angel had sworn with good reason not to meddle in the affairs of humans anymore. Good, painful, infuriating, war-sparking reason.

(It wasn't exactly a war. Angel was being overly dramatic again. But it felt like a war.)

A cool early-September breeze flapped Angel's leather coat around his thighs and he turned away from it, starting a brisk walk away. He had other errands to run that night.

The doors of the grocery store shwooped open and closed behind him. The sound of the automatic slide of metal and plastic automatically engaged to let someone more human exit and then the quick tap of shoes approached him on the sidewalk.

Instead of passing him, though, the person drew up next to Angel on his right and fell in step with him.

"So, do you think milking a cow is worse than grocery stores?" the man next to Angel asked, holding up a box of milk out for contemplation. "On one hand, I can't stand grocery stores. On the other hand, what would I do with a cow the rest of the time? They're not great at conversation. Believe me, I've tried."

Angel blinked. A hint of recognition registered in the back of his mind even as he turned to look at the person and stepped to the side to distance himself from the conversation that he unwillingly found himself a part of (why did people keep doing that to him?). He took in the leather jacket, the short hair, the hawkish nose.

"Doctor?"

"Still," the Doctor shrugged, pulling the milk back and slipping it into his pocket, "grocery shops." He shot a scathing look over his shoulder. "It's all so...domestic."

"Actually, yeah," Angel agreed. That was it. Not how he would have said it, but that was a very large part of the problem with grocery stores. Too domestic. And "domestic" was a little too close to "human." Angel didn't have a problem being in touch with some of his more human aspects, but he was a vampire, too. There hadn't been anyone else around to remind him not to be so vampiric for at least 150 years, and he'd found it liberating.

Of course, now he had another (doubly related) problem: the last time Angel had seen this man - about 200 years ago - he'd worn tweed and a bow tie and had been bleeding to death due to an Angel-inflicted neck wound.

Maybe Angel had been a little too in touch with his vampire side that time, but Angel had had a mostly-defendable, very compelling reason to do it: survival. The instinct had kicked in, crashing sideways into his morality and bouncing off again with the rationale that he would stop before drinking too much. He hadn't counted on that being more difficult to do with Time Lords than with humans.

The most vampiric part of that incident wasn't so much sucking the blood out of the Doctor's veins as it was how Angel very well might have killed the Doctor to save himself. The first act was a natural instinct of the beast; the second was a more conscious kind of beastly.

"But then, so are cows." The Doctor tipped his head. "Maybe."

"Definitely," Angel replied, bringing himself back to the conversation. Cows and domesticity, not blood and the possible, accidental past-for-him, future-for-the-victim murder of the man beside him.

Angel tried to think about cows. He tried to think about being domestic.

"What are you doing here?" Angel asked when that completely failed.

"Getting milk. What's it look like I'm doing?"

Angel veered right toward a staircase leading up to the pedestrian walkways above them. The Doctor veered with him as if he'd been intending to go that way, too. "Getting milk here?" Angel asked.

"Yeah, here." The Doctor tossed his arms out, but quickly pulled them back in as he entered the narrow, yet well-lit stairwell. "I picked a random spot, on a random day, in the middle of nowhere. And here I am. Welcome to the middle of nowhere, eternally lost vampire."

Angel glared back at the Doctor. "You call this," he thrust out one arm to gesture to the city skyscrapers visible through the glass walls around them as they ascended the stairs, "the middle of nowhere?"

"On a universal scale, this whole planet is the middle of nowhere. Not that that's a bad thing. I happen to like it here. Even if the population is a little..." he huffed out a breath and looked away out through the glass.

Angel huffed out a very similar breath and looked the other way out the glass. He tried not to notice how similar their coats were, too.

"Alright, fine," Angel finally agreed, pausing as they reached the top of the stairs. There was a bridge to cross the street in front of them, but they could also turn right or left into the buildings on either side of them. "You're getting milk. I guess after 200 years, random run-ins getting milk are practically to be expected."

The Doctor gave a curt nod, and then his mouth dropped into a frown. "Maybe that is a little upsetting," he said. A maniac grin flashed across his face. "So," he said, tipping his chin up with the word, "how are you enjoying the year 2206?"

Angel shrugged. "Not much different from 2205."

"Right." The Doctor let out another huff of air. "Good to see you." He jerked a nod at Angel and marched off forward toward the bridge.

Angel watched him go several steps. Their last encounter had been 200 years in Angel's past and an unknown amount of time (but at least two deaths and subsequent regenerations) in the Doctor's future, but Angel could taste it like it happened yesterday. He could practically see the flowy golden wisps he'd hallucinated while high on the Doctor's life-potent blood. He shuffled his feet and they nearly turned him autonomously to the right to continue through the office building and a shopping center, then across the next bridge and down more stairs that would take him to street level and on with his night.

It was not at all that he was unconsciously scoping out a fix - though Angel would later wonder, in the midst of a particularly guilty brooding session, if that hadn't subconsciously been part of it. Instead of turning to the right, Angel's feet took him jogging after the Doctor. A long time ago, the Doctor had said something about being friends. Angel didn't need or want human friends, but the Doctor wasn't exactly human.

Actually, Angel didn't need or want friends, but the Doctor wasn't exactly that, either. Not this version of him, anyway.

"So," Angel asked when he caught up, "who are you traveling with these days?" Angel suddenly remembered the lockbox he'd gotten to keep Martha Jones's letter in. He supposed it was about time to start carrying the letter around again, especially if tonight was a herald of encounters to come. What was it the Doctor had said last time? Give it a century or two? It was around two. Angel hoped he could find the key.

The Doctor turned his head to raise an eyebrow at Angel, an expression that marched lines all the way up his forehead. "Who said anything about traveling with someone? I don't travel with someones." He looked forward again and hunched his shoulders. "You know, I could. But I keep leaving out these little details. Did you know that my TARDIS travels in time?"

"Uh, yeah, I think we covered that the first time," Angel said.

"Exactly!" the Doctor exclaimed. "It's obvious. I should start with that. I mean, who wants to climb on any old spaceship? It could take ages to get anywhere. Would you want to climb onto a spaceship that takes five years just to get to the next galaxy?" Angel opened his mouth, but the Doctor cut him off. "Of course you wouldn't. It's barbaric."

Maybe Angel had chosen the wrong topic.

Maybe this was why he didn't have friends.

"So where are you heading next?" Angel tried.

"Maybe the stone age," the Doctor grumbled, "go spend time with the rest of the barbarians."

Strike two on the Conversation Attempts. Angel remembered the other versions of the Doctor being much chattier.

Maybe they were making up for this version.

The Doctor shook his head. "How about you?" he asked.

"Where am I going next?" Angel had to remember which of his errands he'd decided to do next. "I owe a Barbol demon some kittens, so...pet store." Toward that end, after they pushed open the door at the end of the bridge, he turned right, and the Doctor followed him through the door into an appliance store. Angel caught sight of the tall, thin cabinets that were steadfastly called refrigerators, a display of clothing boxes (Wash! Dry! Fold! Deliver!), and a collection of lime green egg-shaped machines as tall as him, which he honestly didn't know what they did. Bright flashing posters campaigned ostentatiously for the business of passersby like them.

The Doctor shot another look over at Angel, a wrinkle appearing at the bridge of his nose. "You're shopping for kittens?"

"Tabbies, if they have them," Angel nodded. He directed them straight through the field of appliances toward the far side of the building, "But long-haired works, too."

"You are the least threatening monster I have ever met, do you know that?"

"Hey," Angel raised a finger at the Doctor, "all the cool demons play kitten poker."

The Doctor shrugged a shoulder. "You really had me going there. You start in with 'All vampires are evil' and then everything after that is saving people, meditation, and kittens."

Angel opened his mouth to reply something along the lines of (again), Hey! plus some, but then he realized that there wasn't much to argue against. Not with this Doctor's experience, anyway. Was Angel morally obligated to tell him there's a good chance that Angel (accidentally) murdered him? Or was he chronologically obligated not to?

"If it helps," Angel finally said, ducking around a bin of clearance items at the store's far exit, "I don't save people anymore."

"Huh," the Doctor said. They turned left in the foyer outside the store, where they had the option of taking the stairs down to street level or continuing on toward another pedestrian bridge on the other side of the block. Normally, Angel liked the open air of being outside, but they had the kind of forward momentum that happens with two people walking together who don't know each other all that well that Angel didn't feel like breaking to take them downstairs, so they continued toward the bridge.

They walked on in silence long enough for Angel to wonder if he'd somehow struck out a third time and should consider himself expelled from the conversation game. They passed a bookstore (not a paper bookstore: more like a coffee shop with a kiosk where you could browse downloadable titles) and an entertainment store where the window display bombarded them with all new advertisements for the latest models of Palms, virtual reality games, and interactive movies.

Just as Angel decided that he had, in fact, lost the game, the Doctor said, "Then what do you do?" He reached out as they passed a mid-hall kiosk and idly spun some sort of frisbee-shaped device that whirled and blinked on its stand.

That question struck a little too close to home. Maybe he and the Doctor were friends in the future (past?), but explaining the complexities of his currently situation to this colder Doctor seemed...exhausting. Angel fumbled for something like the truth that wouldn't sound glib and kill the conversation again.

Much of his time was spent earning cash selling spells and knowledge. He still struggled to fit that cash into something that might be an investment portfolio. He'd had one developed for him during his time with Wolfram & Hart, but never really understood how it worked or how to replace the money when it eventually drained away over the years.

But he really didn't think that was a good topic to pursue. The Doctor had this nasty habit of being overly knowledgeable about everything and Angel didn't want to feel stupid.

Also much of his time was spent avoiding human interaction. He was succeeding with his excellent decision not to buy milk just now. Never mind that he had failed with his promise to have milk available in the first place.

Angel gave a nonchalant shrug.

"People come to me for info on spells and things." And stories. Stupid kids were all about the stories. "I play kitten poker. Keep my area of town quiet. The simple life, you know?"

"No," the Doctor said. "I don't." He stared at the sidewalk in front of him for several paces before asking. "Do you like it?"

Angel actually had to think about his answer. The question had never occurred to him. "I...wouldn't change it," he finally said.

"No?" the Doctor turned his head back to Angel, his stare almost a physical pressure. Angel had forgotten that about him, and honestly hadn't missed it. "People used to jump at the idea," the Doctor said, quietly, and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, tugging the jacket closer.

"I'm not people," Angel replied.

"Yeah, but neither am I." The Doctor flashed another grin at Angel. Maybe it was because Angel was more in tune with animal communication than most, but it looked more like a baring of teeth to him. "But maybe that's the point," the Doctor mused more to himself. He directed his next question at Angel. "So do you have friends here?"

Angel snorted, but said, "A few. If soulless vampires and demons from Hell can ever really be your friends."

"Exactly!" the Doctor nearly shouted. "Humans aren't the only game in town."

"Hell no!" Angel agreed emphatically. "Especially not little humans."

"Sure, they're useful some of the time. But the rest? Nothing but trouble."

"You're telling me," Angel grumbled, crossing his arms. "Now I'm having to think about having milk in the fridge." Ridiculous.

"I'd have to adjust the temperature on the TARDIS."

"And I should probably make sure my weapons are out of reach..."

"They get at them anyway," the Doctor said professionally.

Stupid kids.

Angel glanced sideways at the Doctor and they paused by the automatic doors which opened to the next over-street crosswalk. "So...who are you talking about?"

"Rose Tyler," the Doctor grumbled at his feet. "You?"

"William Cole. And company." Angel rolled his eyes. The kid and his "very best friend in the entire world," Calder Lauchley, had been coming to see Angel for months, wanting stories about monsters. That's what Angel got for actually saving the boy from one… And now the mother was involved, too. "I miss the days when kids were seen but not heard. Though it'd be great if they weren't seen, too…"

The Doctor laughed; a single, blunt, "Ha!" before he started walking again and led the way onto the crosswalk. "I miss..." he leaned his head back, looking up through the glass ceiling at the towering black buildings above them, lit here and there with the light of an office still in use after hours.

Eventually, the Doctor shook his head and dropped the sentence along with his gaze. "So you picked up some children while kitten shopping?"

Angel had to let out a laugh of irony. "This is kind of embarrassing, but...while saving one of them."

"How else are you supposed to meet people? I saved mine from shop dummies and then blew up her job."

"Well if that doesn't get her to follow you…"

"She has to take care of her boyfriend." The Doctor rolled his eyes.

Angel winced. "Ouch. Boyfriends are tough. Did you tell her about how your ship is bigger?"

"Listen," the Doctor said, pausing halfway across the bridge and leaning closer to Angel, who also stopped. The Doctor pointed a finger at Angel's chest. "If I have to lower myself to the point of competing with that pathetic excuse of a human, it's not worth it. The problem isn't the boyfriend, the problem is I left out the time travel bit."

"Well," Angel adjusted his leather jacket on his shoulders. "That's not a line I've ever used. But I guess if you have a type..."

"I don't think you're in a position to start a conversation about types," the Doctor said.

"What?" Angel muttered self-consciously. "I have types…"

"If it's children, I'm reporting you to someone."

"It's not children," Angel said sharply. "That's the whole point. I mean, shouldn't they be scared of me or something?"

"Well, it's not like you're scary," the Doctor pointed out.

Angel glared menacingly at the Doctor. "Kitten poker with a Barbol demon is dangerous," he growled. "Their cilia is poisonous, you know, and the tentacles reach."

The Doctor smiled back defiantly, grinning all the wider at Angel's glare. Eventually he looked away. "But I should go back, shouldn't I? Mention the time travel?"

Angel gave a half-shrug. "Personally, I'm trying to get rid of my humans. Maybe I should buy spoiled milk…"

"Right," the Doctor said. "You're right. It's not like..." but he never finished the sentence. He sucked in a breath and pulled himself out of whatever reverie he had drifted into. "Sometimes, it's better to just minimize the fallout."

"And fade back into the shadows," Angel agreed. Why had he been deliberating earlier? This was clearly the answer.

The Doctor grunted in agreement.

"So…" Angel said after a long moment of silence, in which Angel's mind abruptly switched from pet stores to pubs. "Whiskey?"

The Doctor's shoulders slumped towards Angel and he heaved out a long sigh of relief. "That would be fantastic."

Maybe he could do this conversation thing, Angel thought as they started forward again. So long as the other person was agreeable to his universal solution: namely, a wonderfully old bar in the section of town known as Old Galway where the buildings were shorter and still contained some old remnants of wood from a time when everything wasn't synthetic.

He might have even smiled, because the Doctor grinned back for a moment, before his eyes tracked past Angel through the glass that looked out across the city.

Angel turned, following his gaze east, looking out at tallest of the skyscrapers that made up the section of the city typically referred to as New Galway. Never mind that it hadn't been new for 150 years. The black structural glass of the grouping of the tallest buildings reflected the soft white light from the walkways in wavering lines like deep black pools. Below, cars drifted like fish in a lazy flow along the streets; not actually hovering as everyone expected of the future (except for the rare model that the wealthy and bored enjoyed purchasing). Rubber and wheels were much cheaper than hover technology, and probably always would be. That didn't mean that humanity hadn't figured out ways to make the rides feel like hover tech, though.

They were standing over one of the main arteries through New Galway that led to the Doire, that black circle of the tallest buildings in the skyline that made up the main business sector of Galway.

As Angel's eyes grazed back from the skyscrapers to his left to the glass corridor ahead, they caught a motion on the building next to them. Angel had about five seconds to take in the giant arachnid form before it leapt at them.

In that five seconds, Angel's first impression was scorpion; although the thing was green, it had several legs thick as young trees surrounding an oval middle, pincers like a giant crab, and a muscular tail with what looked like a long stinger at the end. His second impression was centaur for the creepily humanoid neck with an upside down triangle of a face and smooth, glassy eyes. The neck attached at shoulders to the pincers, which were growing bigger and bigger as it fell toward them, mouth hinged open wide like a snake about to devour oversized prey.

His third impressions was Run!

Angel grabbed the Doctor by the shoulders and yanked him backward just as the scorpion creature crashed through the glass ceiling in front of them. Thick glass pebbles showered them; a few of the sharper ones cutting skin as they fell back to the ground.

They both scrambled to their feet. The scorpion shook the glass the showered back down from its back and snapped a claw at them, which they narrowly dodged.

Angel crouched, waiting for the next attack, but the Doctor just rolled his shoulders back and lifted his chin like someone had just made a rude gesture at him and not tried to kill him.

"Hello," he said. "You're one of the Krik-Tar. What are you doing on this side of the universe?"

Its claw flashed out for the Doctor's neck. The Doctor dodged to the side, the claw missing his head by a hairsbreadth with a SNAP like a telephone pole breaking. Angel leapt forward, wrapping his arms around the claw as it closed. With any luck, the claw worked on the same principles as crocodile jaws with all the power being in snapping shut instead of opening. The claw was rough, and solid as any piece of metal. Angel punched at the joint where the claw met the arm and pain shot through his knuckles. The creature didn't seem to notice the attack.

It lifted the claw Angel held closed until Angel's feet left the ground. He turned his head and found himself face to face with the creature. It had large round eyes like black marbles set into a smooth green face. Its mandibles chittered at him.

"Angel! Let go!" the Doctor shouted.

If the Doctor wanted to reason with this thing, Angel was going to kill him. It had clicked over into the monster category right after it tried to snap someone's head off. Angel turned to tell the Doctor as much and saw the flash of forest green motion. Instinctively, he pulled his legs up, wrapping them around the arm attached to the claw just as the second claw snapped shut below him.

The other claw pulled back and Angel took the Doctor's advice this time. He dropped off of the claw and tumbled away through the broken glass. He came up in a crouch.

It loomed above him, filling the space with its massive body, both claws pressing against the ragged edges of the remaining tunnel glass. It struck, its tail arching out through the hole it had crashed through and crashing into the glass above Angel's head. A spiderweb of cracks spread out from the spot.

The Doctor shouted something: an odd series of chittering clicks that Angel was going to assume was the Doctor trying to reason with a giant scorpion. Angel scrambled backwards, trying to stay ahead of the snapping claws. The metal supports for the bridge groaned under the weight of the monster as it tried to chase after Angel and the Doctor. It barely fit into the tunnel and its tail caught on the remaining roof and it would spend a few precious seconds smashing more glass before it advanced on them again.

"We have to run," the Doctor said.

"You think?" Angel shot back. He didn't even have a sword on him. And this was a less-than-ideal place for a fight. Run to weapons, run to better ground, run to-

Angel narrowed his eyes at something near the monster's neck. Something small and round and blinking red. Angel's eyes scanned the green body and found what he was looking for: seams. This was armor.

Overall, armor was bad. Very bad. But armor had weaknesses, and it was generally the same, no matter the body shape.

"You're not running!" The Doctor grabbed the collar of Angel's leather jacket and hauled on it, trying to drag Angel back towards the electronics store.

"Doctor," Angel said, stumbling backward with the Doctor's pull. "What's your policy on blinking red buttons?"

"Press 'em," the Doctor said immediately. "And run. Did I mention the running? That's a Krik-Tar warrior in full battle armor and he's not willing to talk this out."

More glass shattered over their heads. Angel shoved the Doctor away. "You run. I'll follow."

Angel leapt up and over another snapping claw. He landed inside the swing of the claws, but in dangerous proximity to the front two legs and bulk of the creature's body, with which it seemed perfectly happy to try and crush him.

Angel scrambled to stay ahead of the creature, waiting for the right timing and then jumped for the red button. Inches away he heard a sickening snap. His leg went numb and he suddenly jerked in the opposite direction. Angel found himself dangling upside down, looking into the creature's empty black eyes. It snarled and its feet clattered against the metal bridge as it backed up. Wind hit Angel in the face as they exited into the open air.

The creature turned its head slightly to the east.

"No," Angel said, holding up his hands, "wait-"

It tossed him into the night.