A/N: Despite not really being on speaking terms during season 1, Ianto and Gwen are rather close in season 2. And, no one really talks about them without Jack being involved, and I wanted to. (Obviously he can't be completely uninvolved, or it's just not Torchwood, haha)

The secret was that, in the time when Jack had gone, Ianto and Gwen had spent a night together.

Rhys had gone to visit his mam in the country, Ianto had no one.

It wasn't like with Gwen and Owen. Nothing had happened. Ianto had made cocoa, Gwen had found out that his talent in knowing just how to make something taste wonderful went past coffee, they had put their feet up and watched a movie.

They stayed up long into the night, sitting side by side on the couch, just talking. Talking about Torchwood, about Owen and Tosh, about her crush and his obliviousness, about Jack. Mostly about Jack.

She loved him, he knew that. He knew that Jack loved her back, he hoped that Jack loved him back, too. They knew that they'd both been abandoned, just the same. They wondered if he would come back, if it would be for them.

They looked at each other and they smiled, and he kissed her on the forehead and she snuggled against his side.

They moved to Ianto's bed, and her eyebrows went up at a pair of stray suspenders slung over his dresser. He lent her a too-large shirt and some jogging pants he never wore. They slept together like children, curled and warm and not alone, not right now.

"Did anyone ever tell you how perfect you are?" Gwen asked him the next morning when he sat beside her on the bed, impeccably dressed at eight in the morning with a mug of steaming coffee and a plate of toast with gooseberry jam. Her eyes lit up when she bit into it and realized what it was, laughing even while she tried not to drop crumbs anywhere. "My favorite! How did you know?"

"Intuition," he answered with that soft smile she saw so rarely. "Also, you tend to leave your grocery lists about." His smile broadened when she started laughing again, patting her knee before standing. "I'll leave you to get changed then." And he did, shutting the door behind him.

And it was never the same since, but change didn't always have to be bad.

And if Gwen was sometimes snuck hot chocolate instead of coffee at the end of a long night, and the recipient of some mischievous and including looks every so often, she really wasn't about to complain.

(Besides, who could ever mind a new best friend like Ianto? When it came to shopping for flattering clothes, you could do no better.)