Jake taps his fingers on the steering wheel. He is the picture of calm, slouched in the front seat of his GTO, one leather-jacketed arm resting on the windowsill. His eyes are all that give him away - lids at half-mast, but pupils sharply focused. If he were a dog, his ears would be pricked up high to catch every sound.

He hears Leslie's footsteps approach, then she swings open the rear door (leaned to but not latched) and executes a perfect barrel roll onto the backseat. Jake straightens up, shifts into gear, and pulls sedately away from the curb. Glancing at the rearview, he says, "You know that only makes us more conspicuous, right?"

She meets his eyes in the mirror, pushing her hair out of her face, grinning and flushed with adrenaline. "I'm just getting into the spirit of things, b'y. Don't act like you wouldn't do the same."

He smiles and shakes his head as he cruises out of the high-end neighbourhood, a couple ticks above the limit. He takes residential streets across to the other side of town, asking Leslie unconcernedly, "Ready for our next stop, madam?" She nods, eyes alert and mouth tilted up on one side, watching the houses that pass. When he looks in the rearview he can see her nodding her head, counting on her fingers, reviewing her plan of action.

Jake's not worried. They choose their targets carefully; take only what won't be missed for months, if not years. These neighbourhoods are quiet during the day, usually only a gardener around to notice a baby blue GTO sitting at the curb for ten, maybe fifteen minutes. If Leslie would stop dramatizing her getaway, he would feel a lot more secure, but no one suspects a tiny five-foot-two blonde of ianything/i nefarious, and when she dresses in college-casual jeans and tees and carries a backpack, well. It's easy to make the most natural assumption. And Jake gets to play the cool older boyfriend, which is never a bad thing. Which reminds him, he should put his sunglasses on.

The sun is setting as they drive back into the city, and Leslie clambers over the seats to the front, leaving her backpack of loot on the floor of the backseat. Her shirt hikes up and Jake catches a glimpse of her waist and stomach and just grins. "Looking good, partner."

She plops into the seat and blows her bangs out of her eyes, then rolls her eyes over in his direction. "Yeah yeah, tell me something I don't know." With his shades and his leather jacket and his Cheshire cat grin... She turns forward and clips on her seatbelt (safety first), finally relaxing back into the seat and letting out a giant sigh. She watches the sun set over St. John's with a tiny smile on her face.

"Good day at work, hey."

"Not bad at all."

ooo

Back at the loft, Leslie curls up on the couch and wraps a blanket around herself. Jake pours them each a tumbler of whiskey, which she sips (because she's a girl) and he tosses back (because he's Jake).

He dumps the backpack out on the coffee table and sifts through the sundry jewels and gold. He purses his lips and furrows his brow, making muttering noises, which they both know is a sham because he has no actual appraisal training. After a couple minutes he looks up at Leslie with a straight face and says, "This should pay the rent." They both sputter with laughter because as long as they've been working together, they've been squatting in this abandoned loft.

With a sigh, Jake stands and stretches and then walks over to the couch to sit next to Leslie. She shares her blanket and curls into his side, pressing her cheek to his chest. He feels her go limp and says, "Don't fall asleep, now."

"Not planning on it," she mumbles, and Jake just puts his head back and checks the time because he's obviously going to have to wake her up in twenty minutes or so. He resists kissing the top of her head (stupid, sentimental, inappropriate) and just strokes her hair a bit. Before long, he's dozing off too, having dreams of a beach in Hawaii and Leslie in a bikini.

"Just gimme the lotion, I'll do your back."

Jake's eyes pop open and he's not sure what he said, but definitely something, and he can feel Leslie tense up under his arm. "Um... we fell asleep." He pushes Leslie gently upright and sees that she's smirkgiggling into her hand. He can't help laughing back, but he says, "I have no idea what I said, and it's probably best if we leave it that way."

She pushes her hair back again, those blonde curls always seeming to encroach on her perfect face (her face, just her face, she has a normal face), and laughs with her mouth open. After a second she settles down and just smiles at him, staring straight at him, and he shifts uncomfortably.

"We should, ah, get ready." He checks the time again. "Hop to it, small one. Tonight is formal dress."

She smirks at him. "As if I don't know. Go get your tux on."

Jake pretends to do something on his phone so he can watch her walk away. Not that he's a creeper or anything, come on, he just appreciates natural beauty. And when it comes to natural beauty... Dang, girl. Then he chokes on his own ridiculousness and starts coughing and she looks back at him, eyes wide, like "What kind of bellhead are you?" He waves her off and she ducks into the bathroom, peeking at him first. He stays on the couch a second longer, rolls his eyes at himself, and heads to his bedroom.

He takes the jewels with him and tucks them into their special hiding place. He'll probably pack them up tonight to mail off to Christian in Toronto, wrapped in tissue paper among costume jewellery and pieces of pottery. It seems crazy sometimes, putting stuff this valuable in the Canada Post, but Leslie and Jake know better than to fence stolen goods close to home, especially when home is St. John's. Toronto is so much easier to hide in. Lucky Christian went that direction, in a way. Lucky he can trust Christian. Reaching for the doorjamb, Jake taps his knuckles on the wood, praying or wishing or hoping that he isn't wrong.

The tux hangs in his closet, isolated by a dry cleaner's bag and about a foot of space on either side. Jake carefully removes the individual components from their hangers, checking for wrinkles and imperfections before slipping them on. Genuine Armani, fine craftsmanship, the best materials - this is what you call an investment, and he doesn't plan on needing a replacement any time soon.

Checking the time, he cocks his head, listening for the shower, then goes into the bathroom where Leslie is at the sink, putting makeup on while wearing a towel. She gives him a disapproving look when he walks in, but he shrugs with a helpless smile. After running his comb under the sink and shaking it off carefully (no water droplets on him), he combs his hair neatly, then leans his hands on the counter and watches Leslie in the mirror. She catches his eye and smiles at him, and he waits for her hands to be free so she can fix his bowtie.

Leslie heads into her room to change and Jake goes to stand by the door, tugging on the cuffs of his jacket and trying to brace himself. He stares at the ground until her door opens and she walks out, and... even though he's seen it so many times before, his eyes start at the floor and run up over her scarlet Chanel gown, her waist, her shoulders, and her hair is pinned up and he loses his breath, just like every other time. She's glowing, she's always glowing, and she smiles softly at him, coming to join him at the door with her clutch in hand.

"Shall we?" She cocks her head and looks up at him and all he can do is turn and open the door for her.

ooo

'Date nights,' as they oh-so-euphemistically refer to these casing outings, are both heaven and hell for Jake. He gets to wear Leslie on his arm, look like a million bucks, and act as possessive and boyfriend-like as he wants... but he still isn't her boyfriend, and sometimes just knowing that those other guys checking her out might have a chance with her makes him want to punch them in the face. Instead he just draws her closer and shoots down every appreciative glance with a hard glare. It's both easier and harder when they've actually made it into whatever billionaires' ball they're attending that night; Leslie and Jake, according to the plan, immediately split up to mingle and act like the perfect wealthy couple (something they've learned through years of observation, since lord knows neither of them came up that way). Jake has to keep his eye on her from across the room, do his own casing ('mingling'), and pay more attention to potential scores than potential creeps hitting on his girl. Who is not his girl.

They clasp hands in passing, exchange empty glasses for full, occasionally pause and whisper in each other's ears - but they have a lot to get done in one evening and so much more can be accomplished separately. They have this act down pat, how confident they are in their marriage (has he mentioned the fake wedding bands?), how much money they have to toss around, how easily in love they are.

But Jake gets antsy pretty quick. His patience is short, and his attention span is shorter. He does his job, but there comes a point in every date night (he would say most, or some, but that would be a lie) where his conversation comes to a natural end and Leslie happens to be standing near (ish) to a nook or alcove or hallway or anything, really, and Jake will stride over with purpose, come up behind her and put a hand on her waist and smile his charming smile and say, "Can I steal my wife away for a second?"

Tonight is just like every other; Jake tugs Leslie around the corner, she following as innocently as if they have a matter as pressing as next Tuesday's dinner to discuss, and then he presses her up against the wall and kisses the breath out of her. She responds hungrily, ievery time/i, tugging his hips into hers and digging her fingers into his hair, kissing him like she's never tasted anything so good. But at what feels like same minute, every time, she pushes at his chest and gasps "iJake/i" against his mouth and turns her face away.

He cradles her back in his arms and closes his eyes, murmuring, "I know," into her temple.

Dropping his arms, he steps back, and her wounded eyes look up at him.

"I know. No complications."

And she swallows hard and looks away and races off to the washroom, and Jake leans his forehead against the wallpaper and tries to catch his breath.

By the end of the night, everything has returned to normal; they leave the party thick as (literal) thieves, making (false) promises to call or do lunch with whichever rich patsy one or the other of them won over that night. They walk home (claiming they like the fresh air), and Leslie clings to Jake's arm as she teeters on the stiletto heels she only pulls out for date nights. When they've left the bright lights behind, they put their heads together and gossip and giggle over the stories they heard and characters they met. Back at the loft it's straight to business; they stand at the kitchen table making notes and sticking pins in a map, planning their next series of scores. It seems to be getting easier and easier, not that Jake would ever let himself get sloppy - well, sloppier than he is on a daily basis, which works for him, so whatever. Sometimes Jake thinks he would have been really good on the other side of things, trying to prevent crimes rather than perpetuate them, but he can't dwell on that.

Once the most immediately relevant facts are documented, they change out of their fancy clothes and take a bottle of whiskey and a pot of tea to the couch. Jake makes his way through several drinks, topping up Leslie's mug whenever she asks for it, and they wind down by talking quietly about their plans, their fantasy futures, or just sitting in silence and breathing in and out.

When Leslie falls asleep on him, Jake carries her to her bed, tucks her in, and goes to his own.

ooo

He's not always sure that this is the life for him, but he's made his choices and he has to stand by them. They've gone way too far to ever turn back now.

The irony of this whole partnership is that they met at the Academy, forever ago. Leslie was running from a childhood of loneliness and poverty in a tiny fishing hamlet, and Jake was just running. All he's told Leslie about his life before is that his mother died when he was a kid. The rest doesn't bear repeating, in his opinion. They don't really talk about family, or childhood, or the ten years between when they were in different classes at the Academy and the night they found each other in a bar in downtown St. John's. Obviously something changed in each of them; they were top of their classes, poised to become top-ranked officers in the RNC, but on that fateful night Jake was looking for a fight and Leslie... he doesn't want to think about what she was looking for. He's just glad she found him.

They may or may not have had a drunken one night stand (they did) but in the morning Leslie was flipping through the notebook he left open next to the bed and asking what all those numbers and names meant. He tried to hedge around it, not wanting to reveal too much, but he also had a bulletin board pinned with pictures of diamonds, so. Her eyes lit up and she was silent for a moment, and then she said, "How would you feel about a partner?" He was already making plans to cut Christian in and he was wary of the idea of adding someone else to the mix, but they went out for breakfast and leaned across their plates, talking fast and low, and by the time they left the restaurant he was convinced and half in love.

They had ground rules, right from the start. Rule number one: No one gets hurt. Actually, that's pretty much the only rule, but what you might not immediately grasp, embedded in that one deceptively simple all-encompassing rule, is this: Business partners don't have sex. Partners in crime do inot/i develop romantic feelings for one another. Even if it didn't explode (which it probably would), it would distract them and put them both in danger. They needed to focus wholeheartedly on every single scheme.

That was the rationale, anyway. Here they are just more than a year later, and it must be working, since they haven't gotten caught or... whatever. The thing is, at this point, they pretty much only have each other. It's too hard to make new friends or, god forbid, idate/i, when you're living this secret life... especially when that secret life is inextricably intertwined with the life of someone of the opposite sex. They can only really trust one another. And there are a lot of ways in which Jake is ifine/i with that. He loves Leslie, and he loves spending all his time with her, he really does. But he also feels lonely sometimes, having only one person present in his life, and not even being completely honest with that one person.

Because what would Leslie do if she knew ihow/i he loves her? He doesn't hide it very well, but she's much better at ignoring it. Or something. He can't claim to understand why she kisses him like that and then pushes him away.

They're keeping a running tally of their nest egg, of course, and someday they will have to stop. But it's not all about the money. They get a rush from it, really ienjoy/i it, or they wouldn't be doing it at all. It would be a lot of life to leave behind. The question is which has more weight: the life they're living, or the one they aren't?

It's getting pretty close for Jake. But he doesn't know how he would get out of it even if he did want to.

Or, most of all, how he could ever leave Leslie behind.

ooo

The next night they go to The Duke. There are still places in this town where they can blend into the riffraff, and The Duke of Duckworth is one such perfect specimen. They aren't there to talk to people, of course; what could they ever say? Mostly they just want to get out of the loft, be around other people, feel normal for too few minutes. They sit at the corner of the bar so they can see each other and have one eye on each exit, between them. Maybe this makes it less clear that they are together, or maybe Leslie is just that gorgeous, but she has a steady stream of admirers asking for her number and Jake's hand tightens around his glass every time.

Each time, she looks up with her tightest smile and says, "No, thank you." Some of the men accept that answer (with an insult). Some are just a bit too aggressive. When reject number six lays a hand on her, Jake is up in an instant, shoving the other man back.

He holds up his hands and says, "The lady is not interested," but the guy pushes him again and Jake is just about to swing when he hears Leslie say, "iJake/i," and that's not a tone he's heard before. He turns to her and the jerk hits him in the face when he's not looking. Jake is ready to ithrow down/i, but Leslie is suddenly in the middle, glaring up at him, saying, "Jake, let's go." He's so tempted to reach past her and poke at the guy again, get Leslie out of the way and do what needs doing, but the look on her face scares him enough that he grits his teeth, puts his hands up again, and takes a step back.

Leslie turns to the arse who started it all and says, "You'd have better luck being less of a bellhead. Thanks for picking up our tab." With a pointed look at the bartender, she turns and storms her way through the crowd (which parts like the red sea before her) and Jake stumbles quickly after her.

Leslie marches up the street with a fury on her face, Jake trailing behind, checking his temple for blood and closing one eye, then the other, testing his eyesight.

Once he feels sufficiently non-concussed, he catches up with Leslie and says, "Hoo-ee, remind me never to get on your bad side," at which she turns the full weight of that glare on him and he shuts his mouth and stops walking. She has to spin and stalk back to him and that just seems make her madder.

"Jake, I can take care of myself. You're not some kind of older brother appointed to beat the other boys off with a stick."

This kind of stuns him. "No, I'm not your brother."

"You can't just turn into a caveman every time someone hits on me. I may be small, but for crying out loud, we were at the Academy together. You know I can take down a guy twice my size. What is there I can't handle about some drunken idiot at a bar?"

He looks down at the ground. "I just didn't want you to get hurt."

"I don't need protection. I took care of myself for years before I met you and I'll be"

Jake's breath halts in his chest and his gaze swings up to her face without will. She's covering her mouth with her hand and staring at the sidewalk. He sucks in a huge lungful of air and says, "You'll be what, Leslie?" She doesn't move or say a word and Jake turns back toward home and puts one foot in front of the other. He doesn't wait for her; she can find her way home.

He just walks.

When he gets to their building he walks a bit further, turns a few corners, gets a bit lost, then finds his way back again. He doesn't particularly want to go inside but he wants a drink, so he climbs the flights of stairs and walks straight in the door to the kitchen to pour himself a tumbler of whiskey. He can feel Leslie sitting on the couch (with her blanket and a pot of tea, he just knows) but he ignores her and knocks one back. He pours himself another to take to his room and starts to walk behind the couch to the bedrooms.

Leslie gets up on her knees and leans over the back of the couch, saying, "Jake, I'm sorry I yelled at you. Please don't be mad at me, Jake." He stopped walking at the sound of her voice and she reaches out to touch his arm, but he moves away, saying "I'm not mad at you" in passing, then shutting himself up in his bedroom.

Jake sits up against his pillows, nursing his drink, trying really hard to think about this rationally. He should probably go stay with Christian in Toronto for a while. He doesn't have any other options, anywhere else to go, and this is getting kind of intolerable. Only kind of, because he still doesn't want to leave Leslie behind - he would do anything to stay with her, even if she doesn't need his protection, or him, or whatever.

There's a soft knock at his door and Leslie slips into the room, crawling into his bed and insinuating herself under his arm before he can really do anything about it. And he's bad, so bad at pushing her away - actually, just incapable. So he sighs and slides down on the bed and pulls her as close as possible, and she snuggles into his side.

"Are you sure you're not mad at me, Jake?"

He swallows. "I'm not mad." There's a silence. He can feel her tense and watchful under his arm, despite her easy, loose conformity to his body.

"Then what is it?"

"Don't you ever think about what we're missing?"

Leslie pushes herself up on her elbows, half on top of him, to look in his eyes.

"I mean, a normal life... friends... family... freedom? Sometimes I feel like we're trapped in this life we made, like we have no way out."

She looks down, tracing shapes on his t-shirt, and says, "We..."

He can't think of anything else to say, how to explain this, so he just stares at her. She cocks her head and looks back up at him, flattening her hand on his chest. Jake brings his hand up to her hair, pushes it back from her face, then curls his hand around the back of her neck and pulls her closer so their lips can meet. He kisses her gently, worshipfully, putting everything he can't say in words into this kiss. She pushes on his chest, but only to move further up his body, to lean over him and kiss him back with every ounce of the same devotion. His thumb caresses her face and he kisses her until he sees stars.

When they pull apart, they are both flushed, their eyes unfocused, but within seconds Leslie has tears streaming down her face and she curls into a ball, hiding her face from him.

"Leslie, I'm so sorry. I don'tI'm sorry, please."

She sits up and laughs tearfully, smacking his chest lightly before kissing him again, messy with tears. He kisses back, confused, and follows her to sit upright on the bed.

He says, "What?" and she leans her face against his, curls her fingers under the neckline of his shirt, and says, "I just love you, Jake. I just love you."

ooo

They leave nothing behind. A full day is spent combing every inch of the loft, wiping down every surface, picking up every loose item and dropping them without order into boxes. They stack everything beside the front door, to get out in one trip and attract no attention.

When every cranny has been swept clean, Leslie and Jake stand inside the closed door and look over the loft - the tattered couch, the mismatched kitchen chairs, the worn floor they kept so clean. Leslie leans her head on Jake's shoulder and says, "I'll miss it."

"I know." He smiles down at her. "But it's time to make a home."

The boxes, few though they are (half a box of clothes, a handful of dishes, Leslie's favourite teapot), are loaded into a rented van, and Jake wipes down the doorknobs and latches the door for the last time. He peels off his gloves and walks to the van, laughing to himself when he sees Leslie in the driver's seat. He swings himself into the passenger side and says, "Hey."

She smirks at him and says, "Hi there," knowing perfectly well that's not what he meant, and pulls away from the curb.

They drive across town to one of the many brightly coloured wooden rowhouses of St. John's - the one with a baby blue GTO parked on the street in front. Leslie pulls into the driveway, turns off the van, and stares through the windshield at the house. Jake stares too.

"This is really happening?"

"Yes b'y," Jake says, reaching out his hand for hers to clasp in the air between the seats. "Oh, I almost forgot." He stretches behind his seat with his free hand, twisting awkwardly to pull out and brandish a bottle of champagne. "To toast the new digs."

They drink it out of whiskey tumblers, sitting on the floor in the foyer. In other words, pretty much the perfect homecoming.