Word Count: 2,112
A/N: I'm sorry I've taken so long between updates this time. I started an internship a couple weeks ago so I actually have to go to work on weekdays which leaves me with less time to write. Plus this chapter was just giving me fits for some reason. Hope you enjoy though! Again, I know this says bank robbers AU and we will actually get to the bank robbing at some point, promise. Unbeta'd so all mistakes are mine.
At nine-thirty the next morning, Rose was seated at a café across the street from the building she was supposed to meet John at in half an hour. She was sipping on a coffee, watching the entrances that she could see. She didn't really expect John to use one of them, but if the meeting was compromised, someone else might be stupid enough to. The building was full of offices, mostly empty as it was scheduled to be demolished in a few months to make way for a newer office building.
Fifteen minutes before their scheduled time, Rose let herself in via a rarely used side door. Dressed in a pair of black slacks and a light pink button-down blouse, Rose was confident that she would blend in with the sparse population of workers should anyone see her. She'd also dug out the pair of black frame glasses she'd bought on a whim a few months ago. With those perched on her nose and her hair twisted into a bun she was the very image of a young professional.
She didn't see anyone on her way up to the fifth floor and with one last glance around to make sure no one was lurking in the hallway, she slipped into office 509.
Her mouth dropped open when she caught sight of the desk covered in computer screens and other tech. Rose had expected him to stalk into the room at ten o'clock in the dot, not to already be here and set up.
"Are you gonna continue lurkin' in the doorway or are you going to come in and get to work?" John's gruff voice made Rose jump. He hadn't turned around or given any indication that he heard her come in.
Quickly gathering herself, she strode further into the room and perched on the corner of John's desk. "How long've you been here?" She glanced at the screens but all the code was gibberish to her.
"Don't sleep much, me. Went back to my place after dinner, caught a coupla hours then came straight here to set up." John looked away from the code he was inputting and immediately regretted it. He'd thought she was gorgeous last night but he had written off any reaction as it just having been too long since he'd gone on anything even resembling a date and her having dressed to kill. But now she was sitting on the edge of his desk dressed in downright conservative (compared to last night) business attire and glasses and he thought she might be even more attractive than before.
Down boy, he warned himself. Maybe if he could get her to take off the glasses he wouldn't be as affected. There was just something about them…
Seemingly oblivious to his consternation, Rose continued the conversation. "Well I got a perfectly lovely eight hours of sleep and a dose or two of caffeine before coming here so 'm ready to get to work."
She jumped up from the desk and grabbed the long document tube sticking out of her bag. Rose laid it down on his desk and went to drag an unused table closer to the workspace John had already set up. As soon as it was arranged the way she wanted it, where she could see both John and the door, Rose grabbed the document tube off the desk and slid a set of blueprints out then anchored them at the corners with some paperweights she fished out of her bag. That finished, Rose sunk down in the extra office chair and immediately leaned over the document, tapping her pencil against the table as she thought. She'd already mapped out several possible entries into the Agency building and routes to the vault and executive office- the most likely places for Jack's plans to be stored. Now she had to figure out the exact logistics of each plan and what they would each require in terms of equipment and time so she could decide which was the most viable.
Curious, John stopped even pretending to type after a few minutes of silence from his mysterious partner and wandered over to her table. Peering over her shoulder, he squinted at the plans she was studying. When he realized what they were, his mouth dropped open.
He gaped like a goldfish for a moment, mouth opening and closing before he regained the use of his voice. "You have the blueprints for the Agency's building," he stated bluntly, still shocked by the document in Rose's possession.
"Yeah, got 'em a few months back," she answered absently, still trying to figure out if using the ventilation shafts was going to be a possibility.
"And you didn't think to share this information?" John asked, incredulous.
She looked up at him. "Thought you were working on something more...tech-y over there so I was just gonna leave ya to it and tell you about this," she waved her hand at the blueprints, "when you took a break or something."
Rose watched his face turning stony as she explained, but for the life of her, she couldn't figure out why. She was just doing her part of the work while he did his, nothing to get tetchy over.
"Just had to get stuck with a stupid ape, didn't I?" He snapped, crossing his arms across his chest. "Most important job of my life and some airheaded blonde thinks she knows what's best and is withholding vital information from me. Seems like you were just spoutin' nonsense when you were talking about needing trust last night after all. Can't even manage to appear trustworthy, can you?" John started pacing and gesticulating violently while he talked before turning back to pierce Rose with an icy glare.
Rose certainly wasn't without a temper of her own and advanced on the irate hacker, eyes flashing behind her glasses. "I wasn't withholding anything and you know it. You're just being a bastard. I've been here for five minutes and you're laying into me for not telling ya something. Bloody hypocrite you are!" She pushed a finger into John's chest. "Didn't see you jumping to tell me what you're working on either. Trust is a two way street."
John opened his mouth, probably to deliver another scathing comment, but Rose cut him off before he could begin. "Last night you seemed to decide that I was worthy of working with your exalted self, but maybe you were distracted by the 'airheaded' blonde's eyelash fluttering that ya claimed to be immune to. Did your higher reasoning shut down in the face of a little black dress?" She sneered at him. "And don't think I didn't know you were quizzing me while we discussed security systems. I passed your little test, didn't I? Otherwise you wouldn't have shown up today." Rose had paced away from him while she talked, but she turned back and invaded his personal space again. "So you need to get a grip and remember that we're working on this as equals. This is important to me too. Got it?"
Rose and John were both breathing hard, tension crackling between them in the silence. Their faces were only a couple inches apart and John's eyes flicked down to her mouth. It would be so easy to reroute all of this; all he had to do was lean down a bit and his lips would be on hers.
He pulled back. "Got it," he barked, walking back to his desk and cursing himself for even thinking about giving into the temptation his partner presented. "Just would've been nice to know you already had them so I wouldn't have spent the last hour making my way into that part of the Agency's system."
Rose drew in a shuddering breath before answering; it was more difficult than she would've liked to maintain a semblance of calm after their row. "What did you want me to do? Tell you in the restaurant that I had them? Real safe, that." She winced after the last word left her mouth. Sarcasm was not the best way to appear unaffected. The anger flying around the room had felt much too close to passion for her piece of mind. She did not have time to deal with any sort of attraction to John. She certainly didn't have time to figure out why he she found him dead sexy even when he was yelling at her. Must be the leather jacket, Rose decided, nothing at all to do with the man wearing it.
"Guess not. Just didn't even consider that you might have blueprints already." John leaned back in his chair. His face was open and honest, surprising after the shouting match they'd just had. "Could've saved me some time, but there might be other useful information in the sector I've hacked into."
Mood swings, Rose reminded herself. Really, all she had to do was get through this job without throttling this man or jumping his bones. She could do it, she had self-control. Well, she had at least a little bit of self-control. It could definitely last her through the end of this.
He had started talking again while she was composing herself. "How did you get them anyways? It's not like they're just handing them out to anyone who asks."
Rose let out a sigh and an exaggerated roll of her eyes as she plopped back down in her chair. "It's like you keep forgetting that I'm a thief and a conwoman."
"How could I possibly forget when you keep reminding me?" He snarked with an eye roll of his own. "So which set of skills did you use for this?"
"They're not mutually exclusive skill sets you know. Charmed my way into their archives, convinced the boy down there to get me a cup of coffee while I looked at something rather boring and not at all important. While he was gone I wrote him a note saying that something had come up and I'd had to leave. Went and hid in the back of the archives until the building closed. Found the blueprints and slipped out the next morning as people were coming in." Rose slipped off her glasses and rubbed her temples as she started inspecting the blueprints again.
"That actually worked?" John asked skeptically.
"The boy, Adam I think his name was, was rather easy to toy with. It wasn't even a challenge. Plus their archives aren't all that secure because they don't keep anything incredibly important there." She grinned at him over her shoulder, "Poked around a bit while I was down there. Mostly just a lot of paperwork to make them look like a real business in case the coppers catch wind of them."
John looked reluctantly impressed. "Makes sense. Where would they keep something like Jack's plans then?" He pulled his chair over to her table so he could see what they were up against.
"The executive office and the vault are the likely candidates." She tapped her pencil on the blueprints to indicate the rooms as she mentioned them. "Ideally I'd like to get into both of them. That way we can make sure that we get all of Jack's work back and possibly clean them out in the process. It might distract them from the fact that Jack's plans were the main target for a while," she mused.
Rose tapped a square room on the ground floor. "The vault is where they keep their cut of the big jobs pulled in the city until they can get the cash laundered. Not only will we embarrass 'em by stealing the plans back from right under their noses, but we can rub their faces in the fact that they're not untouchable." She leaned back and met John's eyes, a wicked grin playing across her face.
There was something wolfish about Rose's smile as she proposed that idea for John. For the first time, he could actually see her as a thief. He'd already discovered her temper and pride the hard way, seen her as a grifter and as a woman, but this was another layer. She wasn't cold and calculating like some of the other thieves he'd work with, wasn't worn down and jaded by her profession. No, there was fire burning behind her eyes, ready to devour any obstacles that dared stand between her and a successful heist. She'd been hiding it, keeping the flames banked as they tried to figure each other out he realized. This was someone he could work with.
A smirk appeared on John's face, danger dancing in his eyes. "Fantastic. What do you need from me?"