Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who or Torchwood or any characters therein. I'm just playing for a while.
Summary: After the debacle with Mary in "Greeks Bearing Gifts", Toshiko decides she needs to form healthy relationships outside of work. In her first attempt, she strikes a friendship with Rhys, Gwen's serious boyfriend. Eventual Tosh/Owen romance, Tosh/Rhys friendship.
Toshiko looked at the remnants of the shattered pendant, her smile turning wry as Jack walked away. That man was always walking away, keeping himself separate. A part of her wished she'd kept the pendant intact. Maybe if she'd tried long enough, she could break through whatever barrier was inside her boss's head.
She shook her head and stood, gazing across the Plass. Ianto was finally leaving, having tended to everything inside. He managed to catch her gaze and nodded slightly before leaving entirely. She felt a surge of guilt now that she knew his nods and smiles were fake. Was there anything about him that was real? Did he give anything of himself?
She entertained the idea of slipping back into the Hub and curling into a ball on their ragged couch. That idea was tossed aside in disgust after a brief moment of thought. Once she thought the Hub to be the safest place in the world, somewhere she could run to escape the reality of everything that didn't originate with the Rift. Now, everything inside was just dirty and wrong.
Tosh finally let her thoughts go to Owen and Gwen. Gwen and Owen. She wasn't completely blind – she could see the signs from when he had been with Suzie. However, Suzie had been much more professional than Gwen, something that Tosh missed. Still, having confirmation in that kind of detail had been jarring.
After another long moment of staring into the distance, she decided to go to a nearby pub to mourn another bad day, another instance when her judgment was wrong. This pub was quiet enough that she felt comfortable, not unlike where she had met Mary. With its dark wood and the telly tuned to a match, it was obviously geared toward a masculine crowd. At least it wasn't a techno club, like the ones Owen would go to find a quick shag. Those places irked her in ways she couldn't quite explain.
She curled herself protectively around a pint and sipped at it delicately. An hour passed as she replayed everything that had happened over the past few days. Mary had used her, sure, but Tosh's feelings had been genuine. Owen had railed against her intrusion but she realized that he would poke and jibe and terrorize until others gave up pieces of themselves. She took comfort in this knowledge and slowly began to feel better.
The door opened and there was a burst of raucous laughter. It was a group of three men, probably in the midst of a private pub crawl. At the bar, they split, one to order drinks and the other two to find a booth. The one ordering drinks looked familiar, as if she'd seen him on grainy footage of CCTV, slightly overweight and joyous.
He stood next to her while he waited for their drinks. It took him a moment but he did notice her. "Hi there. I'm not in your way, am I?"
Tosh smiled demurely, the fringe of her hair falling over her face in the movement. "Not at all. Just nursing a pint."
The man looked at his friends and his face contorted strangely. Tosh figured he was having a silent conversation with them. It always amazed her how men could ask what would normally be a complex question with a half-smile and an arched eyebrow. After a moment, a grin blossomed across his face.
"Care to join us?"
Her smile broadened. "Only if I'm not a bother." Even though this recent debacle with Mary had hurt and would have otherwise caused her to be withdrawn, the relationship between Gwen and Owen had slid home how she really needed to have friends outside of work.
"Not at all." The bartender had finally returned with his drinks, so the man grabbed hers as well. "I'm Rhys, by the way. Rhys Williams."
Toshiko bit back a gasp and felt her smile crack. "Toshiko Sato. You can call me Tosh."
He nodded. "These are the guys, Thomas and Colin." He pointed to them respectively, a blond man on the left and a redheaded man next to him.
Colin chuckled a little loudly. "We're not all. Andy's coming."
In response, both Thomas and Rhys groaned. "Why'd you invite him? He hates me."
Tosh sat down in the booth next to Rhys. She could flow with the conversation, maybe. "Why's that?"
She heard the door open again and Colin pointed. "There he is."
She turned to look and saw a man at the door, scanning the room for them. He was thinner than the others and held himself like a constable. Rhys whispered in her ear when she turned back. "He fancies himself in love with my girlfriend."
Tosh brightened considerably. After the pendant, she found herself hating lies. Maybe she could lead into this without seeming like she'd been intentionally lying. "Oh? Your girlfriend?"
"Yeah. Gwen Cooper." He had a dreamy look on his face, though she felt it was probably tempered a bit by the fact that he wasn't with Gwen.
She sighed. That was what real love looked like, not the infatuation she'd been floating on. "Gwen? Really? I work with her."
Rhys eyed what was probably Andy's progress to their booth behind her. "Oh, you work with Gwen? Why aren't you at work?"
Tosh's eyes glazed over in confusion. "What do you mean?"
He was beginning to frown and she knew they were entering dangerous territory. "Gwen rang me earlier, said she had to work late."
"She's with Owen," she blurted suddenly. She could feel herself blushing. "He's our doctor. Being as she's new, she gets all the crap jobs and he's behind on his inventory."
Rhys relaxed visibly, though there was still vague suspicion in his eyes. She suddenly understood Owen's derision when she talked about long-term relationships outside of Torchwood. This was what happened, the relentless lying on one side and the growing suspicion on the other. It was horrible.
Andy chose that moment to sit next to Thomas, completing the semicircle seating. He scowled deeply and she felt like it was a semi-permanent look for him. Rhys gestured at him. "This is Andy. He was Gwen's partner before she started working with you." At that comment, the skinny constable looked at her curiously and Tosh felt unsettled.
How had this happened? She was suddenly and inextricably a part of Gwen's life without the woman even knowing about it. In a way, it made her feel powerful, knowing how clueless the self-important woman really was. In other ways, it made her sick to her stomach, knowing that a complete stranger could insinuate themselves into Gwen's life while she was off shagging away her worry.
It was then that a memory hit her like a punch to the gut. Gwen had said with a good amount of certainty that she wouldn't stop. She'd tried to pad that blow with a compliment about how she'd glowed for the past few days. It was a lie, Tosh knew, something to make certain pains hurt less.
So she pushed down her urge to beat a quick retreat and drank with the guys until Rhys decided it was time to go home. It was well past midnight by that time but Tosh hadn't drank quite as much as the rest of them. She found a cab for Rhys and herself, instructing the driver to Rhys's flat before her own. She wouldn't have a problem with the fare.
Rhys laid his head on Tosh's shoulder and chuckled. "You're a good friend, you are."
She petted his soft hair idly. "I'm sure Gwen's better." The words felt wrong even as they spilled from her mouth.
His chuckling got louder and distinctively rude. "Gwen only thinks of 'erself. It's a bleeding pain sometimes. But I love 'er. So much." The more he drank, the more his Welsh accent seemed to come out.
Tosh felt her heart go out to the man. The cab stopped suddenly. "His stop," the driver declared roughly.
"You can make it up?"
Rhys fluttered a hand at her dismissively. "I'm fine."
On impulse, something occurred to Tosh, something utterly insane that would certainly get her in a large amount of awkwardness if she were found out. She took Rhys's phone from him and put her number in his contact list. "Here's my number. We can go drinking again sometime."
He frowned at her, his eyes narrowed uncertainly. "I don't know if that's a good idea."
She knew what he was getting at: Gwen. She merely winked at him in what she hoped was a conspiratorial manner. "She doesn't have to know. Just… I'm here. The job keeps us busy more often than not but I always have time for a friend."
His face melted into infinite softness. "Sure." With that, he made his way into the flat.
Tosh turned back to the driver and nodded, rattling off her own address. Now that she wasn't looking after Rhys, the buzz was beginning to feel unpleasant on her brain.
When she walked the Hub the next morning, Tosh was bloodshot and groggy from too little sleep and too much booze. She nodded half-heartedly at Ianto and made her way to her station, staring dumbly at her computer.
Laughter sounded from the autopsy bay and a wry smile appeared on Tosh's face at the sound. Her recent stint into Gwen's life and relationships seemed far away as the familiar depression settled over her. To stem its deadly tide, she started on one of her many projects, fueling her emotions in calculations and information.
As if on cue, her phone buzzed with a text message. She eyed the foreign number warily and opened the message, fingers poised strategically to battle an incoming virus. She visibly relaxed when she read the message before proceeding to save the number to her contacts.
"Lunch? Oriental Garden. - Rhys"
She sent a reply to the affirmative, grinning goofily. While she had felt like everyone that worked for Torchwood was her friend, the pendant had proved the opposite. The novelty of having a real friend that had nothing to do with aliens or the Rift was enough to stay her depression for a while.
Someone cleared their throat beside her and she jumped visibly. Turning, she found Jack smiling down at her. "You look like you had fun last night."
Toshiko arched an eyebrow and flipped the power to her monitor off to examine her reflection. "Correction, I look like someone ran me over and left me for dead."
He chuckled. "That text, was it from the lucky guy?"
She let it slide that he didn't press how bad she looked or vice versa. "No, just a friend wanting to have lunch."
Jack waggled his eyebrows. "Oh, really. Guy friend?"
She blushed slightly and made a dismissive gesture. "I need to get to work."
He smiled fondly at her and leaned down to kiss her temple. "Have fun at lunch, Tosh."
Lunchtime arrived more quickly than Tosh anticipated. After Jack left, she lost herself in reestablishing her translation program, tweaking some of the parameters so that it could finish at a faster pace. She didn't want what happened the other day with Gwen and Owen and their destructive effects on her computer to happen again.
She slipped out of the Hub, though not without catching a flash of a grin from Jack. The Oriental Garden was a brisk walk away, so she managed to find her way after a few minutes. She smiled at the interior softly, reminded idly of her mother.
"Can I help you?" a waiter asked almost as soon as she entered the establishment.
Toshiko focused on the Chinese-Japanese man that stood just above her own height, considering that she had settled for wearing flats today. She idly admitted to herself that he was cute and shook her head at his question. She scanned the booths to find Rhys drumming his fingers on a table not too far away. "I'm with him."
The waiter inclined his head and made a wide gesture, allowing her to precede him.
Once at the table, the waiter took her order of hot tea and left them to talk. Toshiko gazed at the Welsh man curiously. She really hadn't expected him to contact her at all. Last night had been pure impulse, some of which she already regretted. She was well aware that Rhys and Gwen had a good relationship, or at least a damned good façade of one.
Moments passed in which she just stared at the large man. He smiled pleasantly in return. "Did I do anything foolish last night?" he blurted suddenly in askance.
She chuckled softly, a weight lifting off her chest. With Gwen and Owen going at it like rabbits, she had started to think that something may have gone sour in her relationship with Rhys. As much as being used hurt her, being someone's rebound fling had the potential to hurt so much more. "Not really." She paused. "Thomas cut you off after you started ranting at Andy."
His smile broadened. "If that's all, then we're golden. I've ordered." He blushed slightly as the waiter appeared. "I hope you like sushi."
Toshiko deftly handled her chopsticks when the waiter placed the sashimi in front of her, eyeing Rhys carefully. They continued to talk around the food, mostly about trivial things like the weather and how the football teams were doing. She waited patiently, responding the best she could, until the real questions began.
"So…" Rhys began around a bit of his lo mein. "Torchwood?"
It didn't surprise her to find out that Gwen had told him the name of their group, though even that small piece of information could call for Retcon. What did surprise her was the hurt at the implications of such a question. Was that all she was to everyone? A shell of information?
The hurt must have shown on her face – she was rubbish at hiding her emotions – because he backpedaled very quickly. "No, I didn't… I mean to say that…" He stopped and sighed roughly, the frustration obvious on his face. "I don't want you to think I'm lying when I say you're my friend. Because I'm not."
Toshiko nodded. "Okay." Her face had relaxed, though there was a part of her that remained tense.
"I just want to know that she's safe. I don't care that she lies but it's getting out of hand."
Toshiko nodded. It made sense. Gwen and Rhys were a question away from being married and the rest of them were alone. "First of all, Torchwood is the highest level of classified you can get. I can't tell you anything sensitive." He nodded, his eyes wide as he took in her words. "We answer to Her Royal Highness and address all unidentified threats to the Crown." She knew she was quoting from the mission statement, hoping he wasn't too dense to understand.
"Unidentified…" He paused, an incredulous look passing over his face. "Are we talking aliens?"
She smiled, her eyes glittering. "I cannot confirm or deny that."
Rhys opened his mouth, obviously ready to argue a point, when his face changed. "You said 'threats'?"
The smile faded. "I'll tell you the truth. This job is very dangerous." She paused, looking him in the eye. "But she's safer with us than anywhere else."
He ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what to think."
There was a muffled beep from within Toshiko's purse, revealed to be an alert on her Rift translation program. Another negative spike. She grimaced visibly.
"What?"
She jerked slightly at the sharp worry in his voice and wondered that she shouldn't have told him so much. Attempting an apologetic expression, she stood. "It's work. I have to leave."
He nodded but it was as if she were already gone. His eyes were glazed and his hands clenched as his tension obviously knotted further.
Why could nothing ever be simple?