Once again, sorry for the long gap between updates. BUT this chapter is much longer than normal (like almost 2000 words longer) so hopefully that helps make up for it! Thanks for sticking with me! Also, you may notice that this story has a spiffy, new cover image. Randomcat1832 made it and I'd just like to say a big thank you!

In other news, this fic now has over 100 followers and I just want to say thank you so so much to every single one of you who are reading this fic. It means more to me than I could ever say. (And I'll stop talking now and let you get onto the new chapter!)

John and Rose worked for a few hours with only a handful of brief exchanges when one of them had a question. It reminded John of when they were prepping for agency job. Now that the argument was behind them things were going just as smoothly as their previous job, if not more so since he knew approximately how his partner worked.

He was trying to figure out how to get past one of the bank's firewalls when Rose's voice interrupted his train of thought. He didn't quite catch what she said so he swiveled around in his chair and levelled a questioning look at her.

"One track mind. I remember," she teased with a wink. "I asked if you were hungry. I'm starving."

"No," he said shortly, trying to ignore the fact that the tips of his ears had probably turned pink thanks to that little wink.

"Oh come on, you have to eat sometime. Might as well be when I'm eating!"

John rolled his eyes but since he did not want to start another argument over something as trivial as food he grunted out an agreement.[[MORE]]

"Not chips though," he warned. Watching Rose eat chips once in a day was all he could handle.

There was a brief pout from his partner. "Fine, think I saw a Chinese place down on the corner on the way here."

He looked at her blankly and she laughed again. "Don't tell me you didn't know there was a Chinese place literally down the block from you!"

"Don't eat much takeout, me."

"I live on the stuff. Judging from your kitchen I'm guessing you can cook?"

John nodded, "Guessing you don't? Cook, that is."

"God no. I almost burned down my flat making toast and Jack will claim that I almost murdered him with my chicken experiment." She paused and grinned unapologetically, "Probably would have given him food poisoning at the very least."

"Better go for takeout then," he said, suppressing a smile at the mental image of Rose setting her kitchen on fire while making toast.

"Come on then." Rose grabbed her purse and started walking towards the door.

John ran a hand over his face, wondering how the hell she managed to get him to do whatever she wanted. He snagged his jacket from the back of the chair and shrugged it on as he followed her.

Rose ended up paying for the food since John left his wallet in his flat. She teased him about doing it on purpose the entire walk back to his place. They settled down on the sofa and spread out the boxes of takeout on the coffee table.

John immediately dove into his food, practically shoveling it into his mouth.

"Thought you said you weren't hungry," Rose commented before biting into an eggroll.

He looked up sheepishly, swallowing before opening his mouth to answer. "Might've been hungrier than I realized. Don't typically eat much when I'm working."

"Is that something you've always done or just an acquired skill?"

John glanced up, mouth full of food again. He couldn't tell if she was just asking an idle question or digging for information on his past again. "Acquired skill," he bit out.

There was no way in hell he was going to tell her how and why he acquired it. He'd left behind that part of his life and erased every connection to it that he could find for very good reasons.

Rose picked up on the sudden tension. "Sorry, wasn't actually meaning to pry that time. Figured food and eating were safe topics but I kind of wandered off there."

She glanced away as she poked a piece of chicken around her carton. "I'm more likely to have regular meals all the time, working or not. There were too many years of not enough to eat." She shrugged, still not meeting his eyes, "Still feels like a luxury I should take advantage of, regular meals."

John just stared at her. He had not been expecting a little glimpse into Rose's past. So far, she'd kept as quiet about her past as he did about his and he had no idea what to do with the new knowledge that his partner had apparently gone years without regular meals. What the hell did she want him to do with that information?

There was a little voice in the back of his mind that was telling him that she could have just made it up as a play for sympathy. It was the same voice that told him that everyone was going to betray him, told him not to trust anyone or anything. For a moment though, he wanted to ignore it though and just accept Rose's words at face value. He couldn't though. That little voice had been proven right too many times for him to just disregard it. He had excellent reasons for his lack of trust even if his partner was unwilling, or unable, to completely understand that.

While John was silently digesting her information, Rose was panicking. She hadn't really meant to share that much. John did not need to hear her whole sad story, especially when it was likely she would never see him again after this job. She couldn't help but want to talk to him though. There was just something about him that drew her to him, some sort of magnetism that she couldn't for the life of her explain.

"Sorry, getting personal again. How is worming your way into the bank's system going for you?" Rose asked, desperate to reroute the conversation.

He looked at her suspiciously. "On the way to get food you said no talking about the job while we were eating. I distinctly remember you threatening the continued existence of my bits if I brought up the job. Said you needed a break."

"I did, I took one and now I'm lifting the moratorium on shop talk. Plus, I can't think of anything else to talk about that won't end up with us at each other's throats."

If she wanted to change the topic, he could definitely help with that. She'd set him up perfectly.

John deliberately let his eyes drop to her neck and licked his lips before dragging his eyes up to meet hers again, noting how her pupils had dilated. "That could be fun," he said, voice low.

"Not-" Rose swallowed, trying to get her voice under control, "not what I meant."

"No?" He raised his eyebrows. "My mistake," he continued in a jovial tone, all hint of seduction gone. "I'm gettin' close to completely infiltrating the bank's system. A few more hours and I'll have the completely up to date security specs, blueprints and the list of who owns which safety deposit box."

Rose blinked quickly as she tried to regain her equilibrium after John's rapid mood shifts. "Okay, I've got an hour or two more work that I can do with the info you already got me."

She started gathering up the empty cartons of takeout. John watched her move around the kitchen as she put the remaining food in the refrigerator and dumped the empties in the kitchen trash. He couldn't help thinking that she probably looked at home anywhere but it was strange to see her move around his kitchen, completely at ease. This was his space and she just slotted in so effortlessly and it baffled him. It was so…domestic.

There was a tiny, traitorous part of him that didn't mind, that urged him to make seeing Rose look at home in his flat a frequent occurrence. Most of him rebelled against letting someone in that close though and that's the part that won out. Without a word to the woman puttering around in his kitchen, making herself a cup of tea, he headed back into his workroom.

Rose heard the door close, a little more forcefully than necessary, in her opinion. She sighed, it was constantly one step forward and one step back with this man. She could never quite get a read on him and it frustrated her. Reading people was part of her livelihood and for the life of her, she could never figure out what was going to set him off or when he'd decide to flirt instead of run.

Speaking of running, why the hell had he run off this time, anyways? He could've just been impatient to get back to work after she dragged him away for food but the slammed door suggested otherwise. She was fairly sure it wasn't something she'd said this time. All she'd done was take care of the leftovers and trash and then put the kettle on, nothing to earn censure as far as she could tell. The man was just an enigma, she concluded.

Rose poured the boiling water into the two mugs and set about making tea for the both of them. At least she would go back to work with a peace offering for whatever he'd found fault with this time.

John murmured a thank you without looking up when Rose set a cup of tea made the way he liked on his desk as she passed by. She'd poured it into a travel mug before walking in, remembering what he'd said about no open containers in the workroom.

At least he'd acknowledged it, she thought as she settled down at her table. While John was trying to get into their target's system, Rose was building profiles on the surrounding businesses and buildings. They needed to know when people might potentially be going in and out of the buildings and what went on them. It helped minimize their risk of being seen and gave potential entry and exit strategies for the connected buildings.

It was a giant puzzle, figuring out the schedules of each individual business, many of which were small and private, and who might be working there. Rose was fitting all the pieces together to find the best time and way to hit the bank where a backup of Jack's plans might be hidden.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

It was a few hours after Rose had brought him tea when John next looked up to see how she was faring. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth when he saw her. Her head was down on the table and she appeared to be fast asleep, tendrils of blonde hair all over her face and the papers she'd been working with.

John quietly pushed back from his desk and walked over to his partner. He hesitated before laying a hand on her shoulder.

Rose jerked awake at the touch. "Sorry, didn't mean to fall asleep." She yawned through her next words. "Didn't get much sleep last night, was worried about Jack after he called me."

"If you're done with all this, there's no reason not to take a kip. It's takin' me a bit longer than I anticipated to get into their systems. There are more comfortable spots than right here, though."

He offered her his hand. She barely hesitated before taking it, palm pressing against his as she curled her fingers around. John pulled her to her feet and led her out of the workroom and towards the one room in the flat she hadn't been yet.

When they reached the doorway to his bedroom, he lightly pushed her inside, pointedly ignoring her questioning look. "Sheets are clean. I'll wake you up when I have something new for you to work on."

He started to turn, planning on walking away before his brain started conjuring more images of Rose asleep in his bed than it already had, but Rose's hand on his arm stopped him.

"John, can I borrow a t-shirt or something?" She tugged at the hem of her button-down shirt. "Buttons aren't the comfiest thing to sleep on."

He moved into the room and fished out one of his white undershirts and a pair of athletic shorts from a drawer and thrust them at her without a word. She took them with a quiet thank you.

This time when he went to make his retreat, Rose didn't stop him. She quickly changed into the clothes he'd given her, guiltily enjoying the smell of the detergent he used, the smell of John, that engulfed her. She crawled into his bed, a place she'd imagined more often than she'd like to admit, and snuggled up with one of her pillows. Surrounded by his scent and in his inner sanctum, Rose quickly dropped back off into sleep, trying not to think about the fact that she was completely infatuated with the man.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

John was standing in the kitchen, staring at the coffee he'd made and trying desperately not to think about the woman currently in his bedroom. Why had he thought this was a good idea? It was the height of domestic, letting her sleep in his bed, wearing his clothes.

And yet, he wanted to see her drowning in his t-shirt and moving around his kitchen making tea.

He wanted to slip into his room and curl up next to her more than he wanted to break through the bank's security.

This want was so different from what he normally felt and it terrified the hacker. He was fine with wanting Rose physically, she was gorgeous after all and he had eyes. But this went beyond that and he had no idea what to do with these errant thoughts and desires.

Running his hand down his face, he downed his cup of coffee, shot one more glance at the hallway that led to his bedroom and then walked back to the workroom.

The bank's computer security was much more sophisticated than John had been expecting. He was starting to suspect that the Agency had already hacked in and reinforced the security after storing the plans there. It was the only thing that seemed to make sense.

He was getting close though. There were chinks in their defenses that he knew to look for after years of familiarity with Agency programmers and their designs.

If he could just find this one subroutine that was always included he could exploit it and be in. Whoever was in charge of this project had done a better job of hiding it than most did and it was giving him fits.

It was probably for the best that he had a complicated problem at hand to distract him from thinking too much about the blonde in his bed that he had no idea what to do with. He was trying to keep her at a distance like he did everyone else but there was just something that kept drawing him in. Something that made offers to work at his flat and sleep in his bed slip out of his mouth before he finished thinking it through. It was thoroughly, thoroughly, domestic and the exact opposite of what he normally did. Yet the urge to just stay and have her stay was as strong as his usual urge to run and he didn't know what that meant.

And the constant flirting and fighting! They were always doing one or the other and it was driving John barmy. There was all this passion flying about and he never quite knew what to expect, from himself or from her.

(It seemed that when Rose Tyler was around there was a lot he didn't know.)

Maybe, just maybe, after this job they could finally do something about all this tension and attraction before they parted ways.

His thoughts blissfully focused on the different ways they could go about dispelling the tension before he realized that he was doing exactly what he was trying not to and forcibly dragged himself back on track. He needed to figure out the bank's security before he could attempt to figure out Rose.

John worked for another hour before he finally found the subroutine he was looking for. A ruthless smile spread over his face as he started keying in the commands that would allow him to slip past the security. The Agency never changed.

It was finicky work, getting in through this particular subroutine so it was an additional hour before he was in. Once there, he began printing all the documents Rose would need to put together her plan, saving them all to his server so he could look at them as well. He stacked them on the table she had appropriated as her own, glancing at all the profiles of the surrounding buildings and businesses that she had put together earlier as he did so.

His partner did extremely thorough work, he had to admit. Thorough enough that he could probably not tell her about the confirmation that this was very likely a trap and she would still be able to get them in and out without a hitch. Telling her was bound to lead to all sorts of questions that he absolutely did not want to answer so he determined that this was a bit of information he could keep to himself until he decided that it was necessary to share it.

Slowly, John left the workroom and walked back toward his bedroom. He needed to wake Rose up but he had not determined the best way to do it. If he were any sort of gentleman he would probably just knock and call to her through the door to let her know that naptime was over.

John had never been a gentleman though.

He opened the door quietly and slipped into his room. He sucked in a breath at the sight before him. This had been the danger of this approach of waking his partner. He was never going to be able to forget the way she looked in his clothes and in his bed.

Rose was curled around one of his pillows, clutching it to her chest. His t-shirt had ridden up, revealing a few inches of skin that his fingers were itching to explore and find out it was as soft as it looked. They had a bad case of wanderlust, his fingers did. They wanted to run through the tangled strands of gold that were fanned underneath her head. They wanted to trail up her long legs until they reached the hem of the shorts he had lent her and pull them down so they could continue their exploration.

Swallowing hard and trying to dispel those thoughts, John reached out and shook her shoulder. "Time to wake up, Rose. Can't have you sleeping the day away when there's work to do."

Her eyes fluttered open and John almost groaned when they locked in on his. Instead of the fiery gazes and icy glares from earlier, there was a soft look in her whiskey colored eyes. There were no walls erected in them and he suddenly understood why people said eyes were the windows to the soul.

A small smile flitted over her face and then he saw her remember exactly where she was and what was going on. The walls and shields slammed up in her eyes, making her look more like the cagey thief he had been working with instead of the soft woman wearing his shirt in his bed. It was a subtle difference, one made only by the variation in expression, but a distinction he needed to make and remember. The version of Rose that had haunted his dreams for the last year was not the one in front of him. This one was the one he needed to work with, not pin to his mattress and show off the stamina she'd questioned so long ago.

"'Kay, I'm awake. Can you put the kettle on while I get dressed?" Her voice was rough from sleep and jarred him from his thoughts.

John nodded tersely before turning on his heel and leaving the room.

Rose sighed as she watched him go. It had been lovely waking up to him right in front of her. She'd thought it was a dream for a few seconds before she remembered why John would be waking her up. From the way he had just practically fled the room, Rose assumed that in the time she was asleep, John had remembered that he didn't let people anywhere near him. Walls that had slowly been coming down a little bit at a time as they spent time together were back at their full height.

She wouldn't be getting an invitation to sleep in his bed in his clothes again anytime soon.

Sighing again, she stripped off his clothes and folded them before slipping into her own again and heading towards the kitchen.

As soon as she stepped foot in the kitchen, John thrust a mug into Rose's hand. Glancing down, Rose realized that he had made it the way she had told him she liked earlier. A soft smile spread across her face as she brought the mug to her lips.

"So, you finish getting into the bank's system?"

John leaned back against the counter, crossing his arms across his chest. "Yep, printed everything I thought you might need and left it on the table in there." He jerked his head towards the workroom door.

"Brilliant. Do you know why their online security was tighter than you expected?" Rose caught the startled look he gave her at this question. "Don't give me that. It took you a lot longer than what you anticipated to get in and that means something was off."

"Think the Agency might have reinforced their security when they chose to hide the USB drive there," he said gruffly, shifting his eyes away from hers.

"Makes it more likely that we're walking into a trap then, if they're expecting someone to make a try for the drive."

"Yeah, thought of that already."

"And you were planning on telling me this, yeah?" Rose asked, narrowing her eyes at him. He was acting shifty.

John hesitated a second too long.

"You weren't were you?" She slammed her mug of tea down on the counter, uncaring that it sloshed over the sides. "This is exactly why it's so hard to work with you, John! Every time I think I can trust you enough to get this job done and over with, you pull shit like this!" Rose's voice got louder as she went on.

"I would've told you eventually if it seemed like it really was a trap," John said, voice staying level.

"I should be a part of that decision! It affects me as well."

"Hasn't anyone ever told you it's not all about you?" John could feel his temper getting the better of him again and made no move to rein it in. "You talk and talk and talk about trust and honesty but I don't see you making any effort to be trustworthy like you expect me to do." He moved closer the blonde, crowding her against the opposite counter from where he'd been leaning. "I don't have to tell you everything. Just because we're working together doesn't entitle you to know everything that I do."

"It's not all about you either! And I have a right to know things that involve this job and its safety." She glared up at him, chin thrusting out stubbornly. "There are reasons dishonesty is stupid."

John scoffed, rolling his eyes. "You should print that on a card. Would save you from saying it every two minutes."

"You're a bastard."

"So you've said." John backed off and started towards the workroom. This argument was going nowhere and wasn't going to accomplish anything in his opinion. So far it was just serving to stir up grievances that they'd already fought over and weren't going to agree on.

"No, you don't get to just walk away from this." Rose said, following after him, frustration and anger simmering just below the surface. "How do you know it was the Agency that upped the bank's security?"

"Recognized it," John bit out. He wanted to refuse to answer her questions because she would just keep asking them and prying information out that he did not want to share, but she was right in what she said earlier. If it involved the job, it involved her.

He just wasn't going to admit it to her.

Rose cocked an eyebrow at that but didn't pursue the implication that he'd gone against Agency security like this in the past. "Fine, as long as you're sure it's them."

"I am."

Rose closed her eyes and took a deep breath, trying to let go of the anger. "Okay, thanks for telling me. I need to have all the information if I'm going to be able to make an effective plan to get in and out of the bank."

She walked up to him and rested a hand on his arm. "I'm really not trying to pry or invade your privacy or anythin'. I just need to know that you'll tell me things that are related to this heist. If I don't have all the information, we might not get out clean. So from now on you'll tell me if you find something?"

Brown eyes met blue for a long moment as she watched for any sign of dishonesty, letting him see that she was serious.

"I'll try," he said finally.

Rose smiled at his answer. The shift from her neutral expression almost dazzled John. He glanced down briefly at her lips, thinking of how their last argument had ended and remembering how the taste of her had lingered on his lips. That wasn't the road they were going down this time though, they had work to do. Thoughts of an encore, of a longer performance that might end in her wearing his shirt again, would have to wait until later.

He opened the door to the workroom and gestured for her to go in. It was time to plan their first bank robbery.