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Rhys is frustrated.
No, frustrated doesn’t even cover it. He is fairly sure that there are no words for what he is feeling.
Captain Jack Flash, with his charming quips and brilliant smiles, is slowly stealing his girlfriend away from him. It’s obvious, even if he pretends that he doesn’t see her reactions to a smile thrown her way, or a pat on the shoulder. A flush creeps up her neck, her eyes shine just a little bit more- it makes him angry.
Maybe he shouldn’t blame her. It appears that Harkness was fairly irresistible, to men, women, and aliens, judging by the stories he hears. But he knows how stubborn Gwen can be. If anyone could resist the infinite charms and good looks, it would be her. Lord knows she could be stubborn with him, even if it was over his insistence that lasagna ought to have meat in it. He didn’t know where she was getting this silly vegetarian lasagna idea from, it was utterly ridiculous. Lasagna was meant to be eaten with meat in it, and that was that. Same with manicotti. If you took out the meatballs, it was just ravioli, and then there was no point.
Gwen was different, when he had first met her. She had been bubbly and full of life and ideas. She was out to make the world a better place, one pub row at a time. He had admired her for her tenacity, her ability to stand up to men quite a bit larger than herself. Now, though, she comes home and has nightmares. She wakes him up screaming bloody murder, scaring him half to death. She tells him about cannibals, and people in movies, and about how sometimes the worst enemy is your fellow man. She tells him stories about metal robots that have no emotions, and a prehistoric bird. He doesn’t even mind the sleep loss when she wakes him up, in a cold sweat, terrified out of her wits.
It’s when she mutters ‘Owen’ under her breath that makes him mad.
Gwen is a good person. He knows this, has known it since he met her. He knows that she is quick on her feet, can kick a rugby ball to rival the best on his team, and she cares. She genuinely cares, which is something that Rhys finds absolutely brilliant.
The problem is, Jack Harkness finds her just as brilliant, if not more so.
So forgive him, if he dreams of taking them both away from Cardiff, away from her exciting and his humdrum job. He dreams of a house by the seaside, no aliens to interrupt a dinner, and especially no Captain Jack to distract her. They could marry, her in a white dress, feuding in-laws that can’t stand each other and all. He’d put up with that harpy of her mother (and how someone that awful managed to have such a person as Gwen, he wasn’t sure). Perhaps in a few years, they could have children.
That was, if Torchwood didn’t kill her first.
He dreams of stealing Gwen away, to have for himself. He loves her, he can’t get enough of her, and when she bats her eyes at one of her team members, he wants her even more. It doesn’t make any sense to him, and he knows that anyone else would have left her by now. His mother has been telling him to give up (it has been years since he has listened to her, and there is no chance he will start now). But for all her flaws, Gwen wouldn’t want to intentionally hurt him. He knows that too.
He wants Gwen. He wants her, scarred by Torchwood, or just from a hit to the head by a drunk man in a pub. He wants to marry her, he wants to show her how much he loves her, and someday he wants to sit side by side on a porch in the countryside, old and happy, surrounded by grandchildren. He wants a normal life, the one that his mates would have, if they could get a life and ask a girl out for once. They don’t know how lucky they are.
Torchwood is slowly stealing her away from him, and that just makes him want her more.