Her tongue was in his mouth. They were standing on the curb of a bright, buzzing street, cars on one side, crowds on the other, and her tongue was in his mouth.

Well, he, ah. That is to say, it was mutual. Reciprocal? He wasn't certain, couldn't quite –she had started it. Pulling his lower lip into her mouth, soothing the light indentations left by her bite with a swipe of her tongue; it was playful. Sweet with worn-off lipstick and certainty. Every bit an invitation.

So he responded. Of course he'd responded. As if there were ever any question that he wouldn't. It was Julia. Their tongues brushed, the angle changed, and it was so good. Noses grazed cheeks, lips parted a fraction and came back together, one of her hands slipped into the back of his shirt, skin on skin, the other pulled at his shoulder, close, closer. His palm on the small of her back agreed: he liked close. No corset, no waistcoat, lips and tongues and teeth –yes. Yes, he liked this.

William's fingers curled, catching against belt loops. How strange for Julia to have belt loops. Convenient, too: the perfect place to hang a holster made for an even better spot to hook his thumb. Skirts were stupid, useless things. Heavy, cumbersome fire hazards. Women couldn't swim in them, couldn't cycle, couldn't run, couldn't push a leg between his while they kissed and kissed on a busy street, buzzing –buzzing. Julia's jacket was vibrating.

"Fuck."

Yes. No. No, couldn't. Not married. Also on a street. Inappropriate.

"I need to get that," she murmured, "Probably work." One last hot, open-mouthed kiss, then she was pulling back, fishing her phone out of her pocket. They were still close, so much so that when William inhaled in an attempt to clear his head, he wound up taking in more perfume than oxygen.

"It's Crabtree."

Of course it was. Time and space proved no obstacle to George. William watched Julia's fingers slide across the screen. A minute ago her nails had pressed crescents into his neck. He wanted to reach back, check to see if she'd left marks. He hadn't, not really. Her lips might've been a bit swollen. A flush lit her cheekbones, and when she canted her head to bring the phone to her ear, he saw that her throat had gone pink, too. He wanted to lean forward, press his teeth against her pulse point, leave a splotch of his own amongst the freckles there.

"Hey, what's –a 45? They're calling us in for another body?"

"Wh-" Julia cut him off with a sharp gesture.

"No, yeah, you go over, I'll get him. I don't know why he didn't req a cell yet either." Ah, right. He'd meant to do that. Julia caught his guilty look and rolled her eyes. She tugged his lapel. "I'll remind him. See you in twenty."

Once he was certain the phone was off, William took a great gulp of air and readied himself for the dive into an apology. Too much too soon. Highly inappropriate. All his fault. Hadn't been thinking. Didn't blame her for keeping it a secret from George. Better if they never mentioned it again. Could they start over? Again?

He hadn't made it past "Julia," before her thumb was rubbing against his mouth.

"Lipstick," she explained, "Not the best look for a crime scene." Their eyes met. She shook her head, stifled a giggle. "God, I can hear you thinking. Will, I didn't tell Crabtree because it's Crabtree, okay? It's got nothing to do with you or us. Because I like you. I like us. But I also like working homicides. And even though this new and fun and so not what I had on my radar, we've still got a victim…victims to look after. You get that, right?"

"I do." his ribs were starting to ache, a peculiar constriction that bore an uncomfortable similarity to a feeling he'd last had in Buffalo. "It's just," he paused, straightened, propriety bracing vertebrae against the weight of wanting. She was so beautiful. And there were so many things he wanted to tell her. He was lost, adrift in her eyes, unable to get enough air into the vacuum around his vocal chords. "Never mind. We should be off."

"Hmm." Julia forced his chin up. How peculiar; he was being studied. She'd never been quite so direct about it before. Sidelong glances he was used to. And, back when they'd first begun working together, he'd come to anticipate the occasional challenge. But this –this was unsettling. Eventually she sighed, a frustrated exhalation that was followed by a pat on his cheek. "You were doing so well, too."

"Beg pardon?"

"You're going all stiff. And not in the good way."

"Julia!"

"Better!" she grinned, "Keep going."

"Where?"

"Did you have fun tonight?"

The tension between his shoulders eased. "Of course I did." A bubble of frustration burst, racing through him. "But you said –" he gestured, vague and helpless, "-a professional relationship. We can't -"

"At work, Will. I want a professional relationship at work."

"We should be on our way to a crime scene."

"But we aren't at one now."

There was the challenge again. Blazing, daring him to walk away. She'd follow him if he did, he was certain of it. How had he gone all this time without ever looking at her that way? It was staggering. It had been one day. One day and she was more willing to fight for their relationship than he'd been after four years.

He cleared his throat, wishing that he had more to offer than: "Dinner, tomorrow?" Still, it was enough to make her smile, and that was all he wanted. Well, almost.

"Deal." She tossed her hair back. "Anything else?"

"Yes." He kissed her. Again. Because he wanted to. Because he could. Because it was the twenty-first century and the world was a star. A hundred stars –a thousand! –raining down on them from the windows that soared up and up into the sky. They glittered in Julia's hair and on her eyelids when she pulled back, grinning at him through her lashes.

"C'mon," she tugged at his hand, leading them into the street while pulling something else out of her pocket, "Crime scene."

"Right. Ah. How are we going to get there?"

"We're cops, Murdoch." Julia made a show of waving her badge at him. "They teach us to be resourceful. How to adapt to new situations –in and out of work," she squeezed his fingers one last time, a sort of punctuation that made it impossible for him not to smile.

Twenty-six minutes later, his good mood was long gone. Admittedly, it had been rather exhilarating to race into traffic, brandishing their badges and shouting about official police business, but once they clambered into a taxi carsickness settled in, followed by a general sense of unease that soared each time they drove past an emergency vehicle with its lights and sirens cutting through the night.

"Here is fine. Keep the change."

William followed Julia out onto the street. It was worse than the scene that morning. Fewer cars, but the darkness made the lights brighter, and the smallest sounds echoed in the stump of an alley. Constables and members of Dr. Padilla's team were everywhere, taking photographs, muttering into the little black boxes they wore on their shoulders, pointing, gesturing, having the types of conversations William once led in 1899.

He couldn't understand a thing.

"Jules, Murdoch," George waved them over from the other side of the tape, "C'mon, Padilla wants to get the body back to the morgue ASAP."

Same type of concrete. Similar buildings, though it was possible that these were older. They seemed dirtier, covered in a fine layer of city grit. More dumpsters, another fire escape. Hardly any room to move thanks to the foot-wide perimeter Dr. Padilla had set up around the body. Somewhere along the way Julia had pulled her hair back into a messy bun at the nape of her neck. They'd both been given pairs of latex gloves. He fumbled, she snapped them on cleanly.

"You're not gonna believe this." George knelt beside the doctor, beckoned them closer. William crouched across from him, ever mindful of the order to keep his distance for fear of contaminating evidence.

"It's not pleasant," Padilla warned. Before he had the chance to ask why, she drew the tarp back. William's breath caught in his throat, mixing with bile. He crossed himself. Strength. Lord save him.

"Oh my god," Julia breathed.

The corpse didn't have a face. No, no it didn't have skin. The underlying musculature was still there. At least, in some places. It was difficult to say. There were black husks clinging to what would've been the nose, chin, and forehead. Could it have been burns? Stripes of pinkish-white skull showed in gaps along the hairline. If there'd been a fire, the bone would've been blackened too.

What else? Male. Blond again. No eyes. No teeth, either. That wouldn't help with identification. At least they would have fingermarks. It was impossible to guess an age. Why weren't they looking at the rest of the body? The face was gruesome, yes, but it didn't tell them anything. No means of determining the cause of death, nor the time. And yet Dr. Padilla and George were both fixated on it, even though they'd undoubtedly studied it long before he and Julia had arrived.

And then William saw it: blue thread binding the black flaps to the remaining bits of flesh. He squinted. Beneath the sheen of blood, he could see a faint pattern, worn and creased but unmistakable. Scales. Like a crocodile's.

"It looks as if we've found your first victim's purse."