This chapter came to me surprisingly quickly, so you all get a super speedy update! The last few paragraphs gave me some trouble, so they're the result of teamwork between myself and a friend, who is always up to read my work and give me opinions and edits.

Jack Harkness walked up the stairs to his flat slowly, feeling his feet drag and his legs protesting every step of the way. He felt like he hadn't sat down – save for driving his car – in three days. Since a certain sly weasel named Adam Mitchell had vamoosed from Torchwood, many of the higher ups and computer techs hadn't left in days, everyone working at the top of their game to try and recover the top secret files that had been stolen from Torchwood.

In fact, he was relatively certain that one of his favourite staff members and his former training officer, Rose, hadn't left in the office in a week. He'd needed to encourage her to take time away from her desk, dragging her on runs on the facility's track and forcing her to come eat lunch with him. It was the best he could do, knowing there was no way to convince her to leave the building, just like there was no way to convince her that it wasn't her fault.

He tried, several times, to remind her that she wasn't responsible for the idiot's actions. Each time she'd ignored his gaze and pressed her lips together, and he could see the self-loathing in her gaze. Eventually he'd given up, knowing the best he could do for her was to force her to leave her office every few hours, to eat at least twice a day, and make sure she slept at least a few hours a night.

He'd spent the past three days and two nights over at Torchwood, and he'd debated spending the night again, but there was little he could do for the techs, who were doing their best to track down the missing information. After a final glare from one of the technicians, he'd been forced to admit there was little more he could do at Torchwood, and he'd packed up and come home, eager to spend the night in his own bed (he usually wasn't so enthusiastic about sleeping in his own bed, but there was a first time for everything).

He wiggled his key into the lock and let himself into the flat he shared with one James McCrimmon, a friend he'd met when he'd only just moved to London and had been needing a place to live. He'd drowned his sorrows in sweet, caffeinated drinks, telling his woes to the kind barista (who ended up already having a boyfriend and not being interested in a threesome), who'd then informed him that one of her staff members was looking for a flatmate.

Jack had met the man a few hours later, when he'd come in to the shop from his shift, and they'd hit it off, regardless of their opposite personalities. During their long friendship, Jack hadn't known James to spent much time with anyone but Donna, Martha, and Martha's boyfriend Mickey. He'd spent a few months dating a kind woman named Sarah Jane, but the two hadn't lasted and had spilt on relatively amicable terms.

Which was why it was a shock for Jack to walk into his flat and see his flatmate locking lips with a blonde woman whose face he couldn't see.

A knowing grin formed on Jack's lips. The two gave no indication of having heard the door open and close, completely absorbed in each other.

"Well," he drawled, "this is interesting."

The two sprang apart, faces flushed a guilty red. James looked up at him in surprise, as though it had never occurred to him that his flatmate might come home while he was snogging someone on the couch. His usually carefully mused hair was in quite the state of disarray, his eyes were slightly glazed over, and his lips were swollen. Jack smirked, knowing the signs of being thoroughly snogged and not just kissed in passing.

"Most people notice the door opening and closing," Jack remarked, a wide, shameless grin on his face. James's ears went red and Jack fought back the laughter that was building in his throat as he turned his attention to the woman in the room. He blinked in shock when he saw who was looking back at him, hazel eyes wide and dark circles around the eyes, showing her obvious exhaustion. He'd joked about kissing those slightly-too-wide lips several times. "Rose?" He realized, his own eyes widening in surprise.

"Jack?" Rose gasped in surprise, looking between the two of them for a moment before settling her gaze on James. "Your flatmate is Jack?"

"You know Jack?" James demanded, equally stunned, his cheeks flaming with embarrassment.

Jack watched the exchange, a smile returning to his face. He shrugged off his jacket and hung it in the small closet, his grin widening when he saw Rose's jacket was already there.

"Hey, don't mind me." Jack moved into the kitchen, grabbing an apple from the fridge and wiping it on his shirt, still grinning at the uncomfortable pair on the couch. "I'm not here. Unless you're into that." He waggled his eyebrows. James shot him a glare while Rose rolled her eyes, familiar with his antics and willing the blush to leave her cheeks.

Obviously giving up, Rose heaved a sigh and settled back against James, who placed his arm around her waist, back into the position they'd been in before. They both turned their attentions back to the screen to watch Harry Potter get sorted into Gryffindor.

"Do you want to watch the movie, Jack?" Rose offered diplomatically. James looked at her in surprise, and she shrugged. "Are you really going to want to go back to what we were doing before if he's in the apartment?" She teased, her tongue poking out from her grin.

James's eyes unabashedly zeroed in on the tantalizing bit of pink. "Guess not," he sighed dramatically, his arm tightening around her waist as Jack sat on the other end of the couch. He shot the American a glare, and Jack read the message loud and clear.

Hands off the blonde.

"So, boss," Jack began, ignoring James's glare, "how do you know James?"

Rose wrinkled her nose, and Jack saw the brief adoring look it got her from James. "Is there such thing as the opposite of a wingman?" She asked Jack, the pink mostly gone from her cheeks. He shrugged, and she smiled, looking at James and then back to Jack. "James was having trouble with a very…persistent…woman at the shop. My friend Martha called in a favour."

"A favour?" Jack repeated, getting the gist of the story but knowing that the more Rose talked about it, the more uncomfortable James got and enjoying his flatemate's discomfort. Rose grinned up at James, who sighed.

"Rose pretended to be my girlfriend so that the other woman would back off." He explained drily, still glaring at Jack, who was still happily ignoring the looks.

Jack settled more comfortably into the couch. "Really taking your role to heart, aren't you, boss?"

Both of their faces flushed red again, and Jack's grin widened. This was too easy.

Suddenly James frowned, looking between Jack and Rose in confusion. "Why do you keep calling her 'boss'?" He asked Jack, who realized his slip. Jack and Rose exchanged a wide-eyed look. Rose swallowed thickly and looked down. "You work together?" James realized, frowning. Both Rose and Jack were strangely secretive about their jobs, so he supposed it made sense, but it was one hell of a coincidence.

Neither Rose nor Jack spoke for a few seconds, exchanging unsure looks. Rose remembered James telling her he didn't know what his flatmate did, so she wasn't sure how trusted James could be with the finer details of their work at Torchwood.

But…

She'd willingly gone to James about her current troubles at work. True, she might not have given him any real details other than important information had been stolen and she felt responsible, but she'd still gone to him. It was him she wanted to turn to after a long day, regardless of the fact that realistically, she barely knew him. Still, she could probably tell him some of the truth, if not all of it. "I…was Jack's training officer when he first started at Torchwood." She said slowly, looking at Jack rather than James, both of whom were watching her carefully.

James lifted his gaze to Jack, confusion written across his features. "You work for Torchwood?" He asked his flatmate, wondering why he hadn't known. Jack nodded tensely, watching Rose carefully. He wasn't sure how much Rose had revealed to James about Torchwood, but he knew it was probably very little – Rose took the secrecy of the institute very seriously, which was one of the reasons she felt so directly responsible with the current information leak.

James looked down at Rose, whose shoulders had tensed significantly. Her face became blank, as though she were afraid of what she would give away. She swallowed and looked up at him hopefully. "No work, remember?" She told him quietly, trying to somehow convey the message that she would tell him, just not now.

His nostrils flared as he looked at her, wanting to know the truth. Then he sighed. The whole point of bringing her here was so that she could get away from work for a few hours, to get away from the stress. He could see that the current conversation was causing her to feel the very stress he was supposed to be easing. "No work," he promised, seeing relief and gratefulness in her expression. She shot a look at Jack, who was watching with an unreadable expression. With a sigh, she shifted against James, resettling her head in the crook of his neck and resting her arm across his stomach, closing her eyes.

The fatigue that had disappeared during their…previous activities...was back in full force, and she let out a heavy breath, feeling James's arms tighten around her. She could feel Jack's eyes burning into her back, but decided to ignore him in favour of cuddling up to James. She felt James's cheek rest against the top of her head and his nose in her hair, and she smiled to herself. She allowed her mind to wander, feeling the blank blissfulness of sleep beginning to ease her mind, and she let it. She could feel the vibrations of James's chest, presumably because he was talking to Jack, and let the calming sensation lull her to sleep.

"Is she alright?" Jack asked James, seeing the protective way the other man held her to his chest as her breathing evened out in her sleep.

"She's fine," James replied quietly, not wanting to wake her. "Just tired." He slowly (and soothingly, he hoped) ran his thumb over the small patch of skin between her t-shirt and the waist of the borrowed trousers.

Jack watched with an unreadable expression. "She was there for seven days straight." He said needlessly, turning his attention back to the movie.

"I know."

"I couldn't make her leave."

James frowned at his flatmate, who was now decidedly not looking at him. "You tried?" He asked, unsure of the relationship between the two of them.

Jack was quiet for a few moments because he spoke again. "She told you what happened?" He asked, and James frowned at the lack of an answer.

"Yeah, she did."

Jack looked at her, still not looking at James. There was a fondness in his friend's gaze that worried him. "Then you know how she feels. She thinks it's her fault."

"It wasn't." James snapped quietly.

Jack finally lifted his eyes to James's face, his expression serious. "I know that," he told James. "I didn't say that I thought it was her fault, I said she thought it was her fault. She's stubborn. I tried to convince her to leave, but so long as she was adamant that it was her fault, she wouldn't. I did what I could," he continued earnestly, turning his gaze back to the telly, "I made sure she remembered to eat, and got some exercise." He sighed. "A lot of us have been practically living there, trying to sort everything out."

"Is that where you've been?" James asked boldly, wondering what sort of information he could get on Jack's job.

"Yeah," Jack replied simply, not offering up any information. He looked back at Rose, then up to James. "How did you convince her to leave?"

James shook his head. "I didn't. She came to the shop." Jack's eyebrows rose, but he said nothing. It seemed very unlike his favourite brigadier to leave willingly. He wondered at the depth of their relationship. Neither had actually mentioned how long the "fake" relationship had been going on (though he was certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was not longer just a fake relationship). "She looked…" James trailed off, finding himself at a loss for adjectives to describe how she'd looked when she'd finally come into the shop, and shook his head.

"Beaten," Jack said quietly, and James lifted his gaze to him. Jack continued, "she puts on a good show, but those of us who know her, we can see it. Which makes me wonder," he could almost feel James tensing up as he finished his sentence, "how long you've known her. Because Rose is one of the strongest people I know. Probably the strongest. So who are you to her that she let you see her like this?"

James had half a mind to tell Jack to piss off, but as he met the man's steady gaze, he saw that the intruding question was not out of anger or even nosiness, but rather out of care for Rose. They may have been friends and flatmates for years, but there was no doubt in James' mind that if it came down it, Jack would be in Rose's corner.

That led him back to a thought he'd had the previous week, when he'd been talking to Martha about his relationship with Rose. She'd said that if he and Rose actually developed a relationship, he'd face Mickey's brotherly speech as well, and he'd wondered what it was about Rose that inspired such loyalty in people. Now he was asking the same thing. What was it about Rose that made Jack – and Martha and Mickey – so dedicated to keeping her safe and protected? Not to mention that he'd only met her a week ago, seen her thrice, and now she was sitting half on his lap and he was holding her as though keeping her in his arms could protect her from the ills of the world. Whatever spell she cast on people, it was affecting him, too.

"I don't know who I am to her," he found himself saying. "I know who I want to be, I think, but I don't…" he struggled for the words again, "I don't know who she wants me to be. I think that I could be anything she wanted. If all she wants is a friend, I could do that. It's like…" he trailed off again, knowing Jack must be laughing internally as he struggled to express how he felt.

Jack's small smile was crooked. "You'll take whatever she's willing to give," he finished for James, who nodded. He couldn't have phrased it better. Jack's smile widened. "Yeah, she brings that out in people. I don't know what it is, exactly, but people want to know her. Most of the time, anyway."

James said nothing, unsure of whether or not the conversation was over.

It wasn't. "You never said how long you've known her." Jack pressed.

James blinked. "Does it matter?"

"Yes," Jack said sharply.

James let out a breath, looking at the screen rather than at Jack. "A week." He answered reluctantly.

He missed how Jack's eyebrows shot up to his hairline. "A week?" Jack repeated, and James nodded.

Jack had known Rose since he'd started at Torchwood four years ago, and he knew that while Rose made friends easily – her bubbly personality and easy smile drew people in – but she didn't have many close friends. So for Rose to trust James this much after only knowing him for a week was very unlike her, and Jack found himself concerned for his former boss, as well as determined to keep a close eye on the two, regardless of how good a match they were.

"Did you guys plan anything for dinner?" Jack asked from the kitchen, looking into the near empty fridge and wincing.

"No," James replied from his position on the couch, Rose still draped over him.

Jack had to hand it to James. The man hadn't moved from the couch since Rose had fallen asleep two hours ago. He didn't even seem bothered, instead looking completely comfortable with the woman strew across his lap. Rose, in her sleep, also seemed completely comfortable using James as a pillow. Jack grinned to himself. He recognized the looks James had been giving Rose – he'd seen them on the faces of Martha and Mickey when they looked at each other, and on the faces of his old friends Amy and Rory, and on Gwen and Rhys…he'd never seen that look on James's face, and the very idea that James had found someone that made his face look like that made Jack smile.

"You want to get some take away?" Jack suggested cheerfully.

"Sounds good to me," James nodded. He bent his head so that his lips were near Rose's ear. "Rose. Wake up," he whispered. She stirred against him and groaned, tightening her grip on his waist. "Rose," he whispered again.

"Wha'?" she grumbled into his shirt.

"What do you want for dinner?" He asked her quietly.

"Don't care," she mumbled.

"Pick something." He encouraged, a teasing not in his voice.

"No," she whispered, and he could see the corners of her lips turn upwards.

"Rose," he said again, a little louder, "pick something to eat," he told her, squeezing her sides gently and making her jump and giggle slightly.

"Stop," she laughed.

"Pick something to eat," he bargained, "and I will." He squeezed her sides again, and she wiggled.

"James!" She laughed, fully awake now.

Jack felt a strange need to avert his eyes. Though the two weren't being overly physical, and Jack wasn't the shy sort, but he felt as though he were looking on something strangely intimate.

"Jack."

Jack looked up to see James and Rose smiling at him from over the back of the couch, Rose's face slightly flushed. "Yeah?" He replied, raising his eyebrows and smirking.

"We decided on Chinese," James said, wincing suddenly and shooting a surprised look at Rose, who smiled innocently. He winced again. "Stop poking me!"

"You poked me," Rose replied indignantly. "I have to take advantages where I can get them." She looked at Jack and shrugged.

"This is as adorable as a basket of kittens," Jack drawled as he pulled a menu from their drawer, holding it up for James and Rose to see. "Let's pick some food."

Pretty pretty please remember to review! I love to hear what you think, if you have ideas for me, what you think should happen or will happen, or if you think it was a terrible chapter. Constructive criticism is good!