#any how

He also did so due to the nature of his visit.

With a hat pulled low, he made his way over to the small little bar at the end of an alleyway. James had been taken here prior by his paramour and they agreed to keep doing so when he was in town. It was easier to sneak away to whatever room he would be renting for the week. His home kept out visitors, so he was unable to take him in there. Once James managed to find places of discretion, he usually search out.

The place had a crooner as singer tonight. The song was heartbreaking, but their voice was smooth as some bourbons he’s had down in the American South. This time, he tried a house bottle and waited for his companion to show up. It took an hour, in which the singer went through another heartbreak story, a story about a dog, and something about a crossroads, before someone unceremoniously dropped in the chair beside him. “I was beginning to think that tonight wasn’t a good one,” he whispered.

“It almost wasn’t,” Llewellyn Watts muttered, “It’s a nasty case at work. Murdoch has a few theories, but Brackenreid sent us all home.” He glanced at the man sitting next to him. “Well, close to it, at least.” A shared smile, before they turned back to the stage. A glass of wine instead of a harder liquor, and they caught up on their own adventures. One glass turned into a third one before he allowed himself to kiss the man on the cheek. “We should head to the next place before I am unable to keep my tact.”

Through his second glass, James smiled in amusement before paying their tab and helping the man up.

-

The morning was warm.

James was curled around his bedmate, holding them in a stranglehold as he received the same. While they were bare under the sheets, nothing physical was happening. That was all last night, as the crispness of his sheets attested. While his body was performing its routine checks to make sure that he was still in working order, it appeared that it would not simply be a check for the other man as Watts’s body reacted in kind.

Then, lips found his collar bone. “Llewellyn,” he murmured. A hand, coated, started giving him delightful pleasure. “Ahhh.” The man then moved on top of him, continuing his ‘assault’.

Knocking on the door interrupted them. The man above him growled, surprising James but he felt a thrill at the noise. “If this is the same as last time…”

“Last time?”

He nodded, but wasn’t able to explain. This time, the knocking came with someone talking. *“James, it’s Murdoch and Thomas,”* a familiar voice called on the other side.

The younger man dropped his head on James. His delightful ministrations also stopped. “Almost exactly the same,” he pouted.

“Oh really?”

The man nodded against his chest. “A previous fling, he started something while I was trying to get ready, then Murdoch showed up.” He raised his head. “There’s not going to stop until seeing you. I believe I will hide in the water closet until they leave.”

James understood that, allowing the man to take one of the blankets from the bed to wrap himself in before grabbing a robe to cover himself. Opening the door, the two men were not impressed at his tardiness in answering. Or the fact he had not even started for the day. “Pendrick,” Murdoch said, forcing his way in.

“Murdoch, what a lovely surprise.” He nodded at Thomas, who he stepped aside to let in. “What is it now? I do believe I haven’t even started any sort of revolutionary experiments that would allow me to be targeted.”

Thomas led the nicer conversation. “Ashmi was broken out of jail, and explicitly killed by the person that did it,” he informed, “Discovered yesterday, dead for at least twenty four hours prior. Last night, we found the same for Sam Trenwith.”

Oh, well. “Well, if it happened last night, I can assure you, I was quite preoccupied.”

“Really?”

Murdoch, who had been paying attention a small bit, saw that there was more clothing that would be normal even for Pendrick to have been there for a few days. In fact, there was something about the suit…

“Incredibly vigorous discussion on the properties of a new material I have been working on. Stayed up until the Devil’s hour, when I almost dropped my drink.”

Brackenreid noticed with amusement when Murdoch rubbed the bridge of his nose after picking up a jacket. “That’s not what was dropped,” he panned. Looking over to his superior, he walked over to the water closet. “Get out here.”

The amusement grew. “Had some company last night, James?” He looked around for a lady’s corset or some undergarments. “Did she leave before you awoke?”

“Watts, get out of the closet!”

The Inspector glanced over in confusion. “Watts?”

Murdoch pointed at three different areas. “That was the suit Watts was wearing yesterday. Long johns are in the corner, while Pendrick threw his over by his suit. Tie on the bed, I recognize the pattern.” He pounded on the door. “Llewellyn Watts, you open this door and face this!”

The comment about company last night and what they were actually doing ran through Brackenreid’s mind. “Bloody hell.” Then, he focused on James. “You had sex with my younger detective?”

“You were more amused when you thought it was a woman,” he mentioned, trying to not get into more trouble and not realizing that it would be the opposite.

Murdoch, quite annoyed, tried the door knob and found it locked. A quick flick and a pick was in his hand. It wasn’t much to unlock the cheap thing and push the door open. “Get over here,” he hissed, dragging out the younger man by the ear. He stopped by the Inspector. “James Pendrick?!”

Watts made sure the bedding was covering his lower half, but his shoulders were left bare and he didn’t want to keep shrugging it up. “I do not perceive the problem of my current paramour, Murdoch,” he defended, twisting around. Murdoch had not let go of his ear.

Brackenreid pointed at Watts. “Two weeks of paperwork!”

“What?!” he yelped, both from the punishment he was receiving and the ear twisting that was still happening.

“Two weeks of paperwork, I’m having Mitchell watch you. Don’t trust Crabtree or Higgins to not allow you out. No after work ‘meetings’ with James Pendrick ever again.”

“I do not understand the issue you have with James. He has been shown numerous times to be an innocent and patient individual when events in his life conspire to ruin it and you have to continuously investigate him.” He pointed at Murdoch from an awkward angle. “You, of all, should be delighted that it wasn’t the same person that you caught me with the last time!”

Oh, he hated the reminder of that. “James Pendrick has an unfortunate track of bringing trouble.”

“So do you, I, the Inspector and most of the people in and connected to Station House Four,” Watts argued.