A/N: Time to see what kind of trouble Jack is in this time and how John and Rose react to seeing each other again. Thanks for reading!
The location Jack had given her was another office building, similar to the one where she'd met with John. Rose was again dressed in her best business casual attire; black slacks, light blue button down and black boots.
She was worried, Jack had sounded…weird…on the phone last night. Worried, definitely, but also weird so she was on high alert, trying to make sure she wasn't walking into a trap.
Room 112 was closed and locked which did not surprise her much. She was half an hour early after all and Jack was notorious for showing up right on time if not a minute or two late.
The lock was pathetically easy to pick and it popped open in less than five seconds.
She stepped into the dark room and reached for the light switch.
Just as the florescent lights illuminated the room she caught sight of a man in the far corner and stiffened. That was definitely not Jack, the posture was all wrong.
"This is the second day in a row you've made me wake up early, Jack. I don't appreciate it." His back was to her and he was backlit by the window in front of him so she couldn't see him very well but she knew that voice.
She knew it very well.
"You," she snarled. "What the hell are you doing here?"
John turned quickly, shock painted on his face "I could ask you the same thing!"
She stalked towards him, all the rage that had been brewing for the past year bubbling to the surface. As soon as she was in range she raised her arm to slap him.
John caught her wrist before she made contact. Rose tried her other hand but he caught that too.
"Tsk tsk, resorting to violence Miss Tyler? How very disappointing," he admonished.
Rose was struggling to free herself. Her eyes were locked with his and if looks could kill he would have died a fiery death the moment she heard his voice. "You bastard. You locked me in a box. A box! And then took your sweet fucking time getting the key to Jack. I trusted you."
She cursed internally; she hadn't planned on ever telling him that.
"Well that was your first mistake," John pointed out calmly.
Rose saw red. Between his casual dismissal of what he'd done and his calm demeanor she was furious and dammit he was going to pay somehow.
She redoubled her attempts to get free, forcing him to focus on keeping her arms contained while she positioned herself. When John was sufficiently distracted she used her foot to knock him off balance.
He went down as planned but he took her with him, pinning Rose beneath his considerable weight. "Second mistake was trying to take on someone a lot bigger than you in hand to hand combat. Shouldn't let your emotions control you."
John was desperately trying to ignore how it felt to have Rose underneath him, pressed against him and writhing to get free. It bore too much of a resemblance to dreams he'd had over the last year.
Granted, usually in those dreams she didn't look ready to rip his throat out with her teeth.
Rose's struggles paid off and she got one of her legs free. Immediately she brought her knee up to within an inch of John's crotch. "I don't need to take you down, I just need a little," she pressed her knee up to press lightly against him in warning, "gentle persuasion."
John froze instantly. "You don't want to do that."
"Oh I really think I do. You deserve it."
They stared at each other trying to guess the other person's next move until a voice broke their stalemate.
"Now as much as I'd like to know how this is going to play out and how you two ended up tangled on the floor in the first place, I really do need you both, preferably intact, to help me." Jack's voice sounded much too amused to the two former partners, but it was the urgency in his tone that had them cautiously letting each other go.
When Rose and John were back on their feet (and a safe distance from each other), they started shooting questions at him, talking over each other.
"What is he doing here, Jack?"
"You said you needed help."
"I thought I made it perfectly clear how I felt about seeing him again."
"Is that true or was it just a ruse to get the both of us here?"
Jack let out a shrill whistle, "Shut it. You're both here because I need both of you. If I was just trying to get you in the same room, I would have used this ploy months ago. I didn't tell either of you the other would be here because then neither of you would have shown.
"This isn't a set-up; it's a call to arms."
He flicked his eyes from one to the other, noting how Rose was shifting her weight, guilty look on her face. John was a bit harder to read, standing still as a statue. Satisfied that he had their attention, Jack continued.
"It was brought to my attention after I left Rose's flat yesterday that there's a possibility the Agency still has a copy of the plans you two stole back for me."
"Impossible. We wiped their systems and took all the copies they had," John protested.
"Well apparently we missed something," Rose shot back acerbically.
Jack rolled his eyes at their antics. "Someone apparently put a copy onto a USB drive and stuck it in a safety deposit box before you two pulled the heist."
"Well aren't they thorough…" Rose muttered, still angry at both men in the room.
"They thought there was a chance I might try and get it back. Pretty sure they weren't expecting you two to clean them out. Which by the way, they're still trying to figure out how you guys did that and who you are."
"Never gonna happen," John said confidently.
"The existence of the USB and safety deposit box has not been completely confirmed but there's enough merit to the claim that I need to act on it," Jack said, trying to ignore the side comments his friends were making. He knew they weren't happy about being reunited but they'd already proved that they could do what he needed them to do.
He just had to convince them that it was in their best interest to do it and do it together.
John paced over to the window again. "Is it still in London?"
"Yeah, I have the name of the bank, it's right in the middle of town."
"What do you want us to do, Jack? Rob the bank?" Rose asked.
"That's exactly what I want you to do."
She gave a derisive laugh, "We're not bank robbers. We're not even a team."
"You two worked together brilliantly last time," Jack pointed out.
"That was before I knew I couldn't trust him! He locked me in a box in case you've forgotten. He ki-" she cut herself off abruptly. "He distracted me and then locked me in a freaking box."
"I think we're all well aware of that, Rose," John chimed in. "You've mentioned it multiple times already."
"Fuck you," she sneered.
Looking back at Jack she continued making her point. "I can't work with someone I can't trust," she said definitively. "Besides, if the Agency is still trying to find out who we are, how do we know this isn't a trap?"
Jack rubbed at his temples, "We don't."
He had already thought of the possibility of it being a trap but he thought John would be the one to spot it, not Rose. He was generally the cynical one.
"Rose, I know this isn't something you want to do but this is the same situation I was in last time I came to you for help. If I go back to the States with even the remote possibility that someone else has those plans in the air they'll string me up by my balls and play with me before putting me out of my misery. And not in the fun way.
"If I thought someone else could do this job, I would go hire them. I wouldn't be putting this on you and making the two of you work together again when obviously neither of you wants to even be in the same room." Jack laid the pleading on thick, trying to impress onto Rose, onto both of them, how much he needed them to put aside their differences for one more job, "I wouldn't be asking if this was not a desperate situation."
"How long would it take your sources to confirm that the USB drive exists?" John questioned.
"Too long. I fly out of London in five days."
Rose was still watching Jack with narrowed eyes. She knew he was using his skill as a conman to convince them to do what he wanted but her awareness did not make her immune.
"Fine, I'm in," Rose said. "But only because you need help, I still don't trust himself over there." She jerked a thumb in John's direction.
"You've made that abundantly clear," he snarked, "but you need me to pull this off."
He locked eyes with Jack, "I'm in too. There's no way you could find someone else who could plan and execute a heist like this within your time frame and I'm not going to leave you hanging just 'cause I don't want to work with Blondie here."
"Oi!" Rose exclaimed, offended at the nickname.
The smile he sent back was brimming with sarcasm.
"Excellent, I'll get going then and let you two start working your magic," Jack said, his delivery dripping with the innuendo they expected from him.
He handed them each a piece of paper with the address of a specific Barclays branch on it and strolled out of the room, leaving the two criminals staring at each other once again.
"So, looks like we're going to be working together again," John said, crossing his arms over his chest. "You up to the challenge?"
"Oh I've been keeping in shape, the question is if you're," her eyes travelled the length of his body slowly, unable to resist the flirt when he'd set her up so nicely, "up for it."
She definitely enjoyed the view even if the man himself was as obnoxious as ever. He was clad in dark jeans, a green jumper and that leather jacket that he seemed to live in and damn if he wasn't still as dead sexy as she remembered.
"You're really going to go down that road again?" he asked, smirking. "Didn't go too well for you last time."
"Didn't go too well for you either, only lasted thirty seconds before you ran away. Someone might think you just couldn't handle me."
"Oh, I could handle you alright." John's voice was lower than she'd ever heard it, caressing the words with care that he did not normally show.
Before Rose could deal with the rush of heat that had shot through her, he continued, voice in its normal register and unnervingly cheerful. "I don't like to boast, but I've got the moves."
Rose scoffed, "I've seen your moves, remember? Adequate at best."
Lies. She was telling him bald-faced lies and just praying that he didn't see through her con.
He sputtered. "Adequate? Funny, I seem to remember you rather enjoying yourself."
Rose tossed her head before making a show of inspecting her nails, "I was in the middle of a dry spell. Anyone could have gotten me worked up at that point."
She pasted a self-satisfied smirk on her face and met his eyes, "That's no longer an issue though."
More lies. That dry spell was still ongoing but there was no way in hell she was going to let John know that those thirty seconds were some of the hottest she'd ever experienced, dry spell or no.
She needed to gain control and if undermining his skill as a potential lover was the way to get it then so be it.
More than anything John wanted to growl at her and back her up against one of the walls in here and prove beyond a doubt that she was lying. He knew she'd been as affected by their very brief liaison at the end of the Agency job as he'd been; if she hadn't she would not have protested as much about working with him again.
John knew better than to let her barbs get under his skin (she was a grifter after all) but she was hitting him right in the ego.
Adequate, he mocked in his head. He practically made her see stars that night and they both knew it. It's a wonder they hadn't set anything on fire with the heat between them. He'd get revenge for adequate.
"Good for you," he finally answered. "Let's get back on topic though. Obviously we're going to have to work together to finish this. It's still a walkaway, a continuation of last time. After we make sure that USB drive is back in Jack's hands I never want to see you again."
"One show only," she muttered. "Fine by me, you're an arse."
"And you're just so easy to get along with yourself," came the retort.
"Glad you noticed," she said sweetly.
Rose was fairly certain at this point that half the things that came out of the hacker's mouth were sarcastic. Or at least they were when dealing with her. She considered it an accomplishment to be honest, meant he was off balance.
John was fairly certain a few days in her company was going to drive him absolutely barmy. "Come on, we can go back to my place and get busy."
"Now who's the one starting us down that road again?" Rose said, eyebrows inching towards her hairline.
"Not what I meant," he said with an eye roll. "We need to start planning this job and I already have computers set up on a secure network at my flat. Using them would be a lot faster than trying to set everything up at a neutral location. We're wasting time standing here flapping our jaws as it is."
"Fine, lead the way. Sooner we get started the sooner I can see the last of you," she said gesturing towards the door.
As they exited the building and started walking towards John's flat they were both wondering not how to get away with robbing a bank but how the hell they were going to survive working together again.