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"There's a lot you don't know about me," Rhys blurted suddenly.
Gwen's tinkling laugh grated on him even more than the cocked eyebrow. "Oh? Like what?"
"I… I had a goldfish named Sally as a kid," he started. He meant to start lightly and then go deeper into things, rather like he imagined Jack would.
This did not go as planned. Her laughter echoed through the house, and he never regains the conversation.
There were so many things she didn't know about him. Why is it that when she asked, all he thought of was Sally?
It started as he watched her brushing her teeth on the morning after he found out about Torchwood. She glanced at him out of the corner of his eye and smiled. Then, she returned her focus to the task at hand.
"Fry-up for dinner?" she called over her shoulder as she grabbed her bag and headed for the door.
"Yeah, sure," he responded, accepting the peck on the cheek she gives her predictable, dependable spouse.
Finishing off his coffee, he considered the way Gwen thought of him. She barely glanced at him, because she was certain that nothing has changed, even though he had now seen what the universe offered. She would never consider him an enigma. He saw the way she looks at Jack—looking to uncover layers—and knew that she would never look at him this way.
He thought when she lost her memory that time that he could show her more. But then she went to work and when she came home, she didn't even know that she'd fallen in love with him again.
Later that day, Ruth asked him where he was the day before. "Had some things to do. Got involved in Gwen's spec-ops work."
Gwen doesn't know about the wide-eyed looks Ruth gives him. Or that an idiot would know she cheated, but this idiot still loves her.
That night over dinner, he watches her shovel taken-for-granted food into her mouth and he… spews out the thing about Sally the goldfish.
He's a mystery to himself.