"About what happened yesterday," Gwen said. Yup, she was going to worry the problem to death. Jack sighed.

"There's nothing to talk about, Gwen. It's late. The rift has settled down. Go home," he said. Would that this be the end of it, but he knew she wouldn't let it go.

"Jack," she said softly. "I can't. You know that." She moved so that she was facing him. He continued to look forward. "Jack, please."

"What Gwen?" He asked. "What do you want me to say? I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings, but sometimes in the heat of the moment, things are going to get said that we don't mean, or they come out wrong."

"It's not me," Gwen said softly. "It's Ianto."

"Ianto?" Jack was surprised. "What about him?" This was not the direction he thought she was headed and it threw him off a bit.

"Jack, what happened last night… well, I know that things get crazy sometimes, and we do say things we don't often mean. But when we got back, I noticed something, and I think I need to say something to you." She stopped, trying to find the right words to say. He turned to look at her, his face serious. She felt like she was traipsing though a minefield, and knew that whatever she said, it wasn't going to be a good conversation. But it needed to be said. "Jack, do you care about Ianto?"

Jack blinked at her question. "Of course I do. I care about both of you, very much."

"Have you ever told him that?" Gwen asked, looking into his eyes.

"Not in so many words, no," Jack looked away, uncomfortable with where the conversation was heading. "But he knows."

"Does he?" She asked, staring at his profile. "Jack, I know it is none of my business, but I feel like I have to say something."

"You're right, it is none of your business," Jack said, his throat tight. He knew he had screwed up during that thing with the Plasmavore, but he was going to deal with it in his own way. Having Gwen bring it up was just damned awkward at the moment. "Leave it."

"I can't," Gwen said. She took a step closer and he flinched. She hesitated before she reached out a hand and touched his arm. "He's hurting. You're hurting, or you wouldn't be up here. Please remember that sometimes we just need to talk to one another. To say what we mean, and what we feel. I think you two need that, too."

"That's not the way we operate," Jack said, resolutely looking in the other direction. It wasn't the way they worked together. They didn't talk about feelings, or their hopes and plans. In this business, it was impossible to make any plans. As for hope – what hope could you have when you didn't know what the next week, the next day – heck, the next hour would bring? He could only concentrate on the here and now, and let the future take care of itself once it became known.

"Isn't that just bloody typical?" Gwen said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. She dropped her hand and turned away from him. He could feel her anger, and was a bit bewildered by it. What did she have to be so angry about? Was it on Ianto's behalf? If so, then her concern was misplaced. Together they would work things out in their own way.

He thought back to the events of the night before. They had been dealing with all sorts of things coming through the rift lately, and he had been concerned that they weren't going to catch something one of these days. When people and Weevils started dropping left and right several days ago they had kicked their hunting into high gear, trying to find out what was the cause of it. He had thought that the vamps had returned, though usually they were more discriminate about their victims, and Weevils didn't seem to be high on their list in the past. But this thing – it had been brutal, draining both of their blood and leaving the carcasses anywhere to be found. The team had to recruit PC Andy and his workmates to help them clean up the Weevil bodies. Janet had been practically catatonic in the vaults, and they had all felt an urgency to find and stop whatever it was that was doing this.

It was Ianto who had found the Plasmavore. Examinations of the bodies had not shown the typical marks of a vamp, so they had gone looking elsewhere. Ianto had taken photographs of all the bite marks or whatever they had been and done a search in the database. It had been when looking through the UNIT records that they had found the report by Martha Jones about her first encounter with the Doctor in London. Jack had been relieved when they had been able to put a name to the monster they were tracking. Though he had tried to phone Martha and get more details, he had been unable to reach her.

Going with just the report and the realization that they were dealing with a creature that had assistants to get victims for them, they had changed their search patterns. Gwen had done a profile of the human victims and looked for a pattern. Cross referencing that with the Weevil deaths and they had been able to narrow down the area the beast had been operating in.

Ianto had been following up a hunch and ended up being caught by the slabs that worked for the Plasmavore. Jack had been tracking him, so hadn't been too far behind. Together with Gwen, they had cornered the Plasmavore just as he had been about to sink his straw into Ianto and drain him. It had taken some work to take out the remaining slab that had been nearby, and to get Ianto out of that situation. The Plasmavore had realized that they were together as a group and had used the younger man as a hostage. Jack had pretended that losing Ianto hadn't mattered, and in the conversation with the Plasmavore as he waited for Gwen to maneuver into a position to shoot it, he had said a lot of stuff he didn't mean. Stuff he said just to keep the Plasmavore's attention away from what Gwen was doing.

In retrospect he could see that it probably wasn't the wisest thing he had done, and he had seen the flash of hurt in Ianto's eyes at his backhanded comments. Ianto had to know he didn't mean them, but was desperate to make sure that the true nature of their relationship wasn't known to the alien who held him hostage. Had the Plasmavore known exactly how much Ianto meant to him, and what he would do to ensure his safety, all bets would have been off.

Gwen had eventually eased herself into a position where she had had a clear shot of the creature and had shot it. In fact, she was so mad she had emptied her clip into the alien. He would have to talk to her about that at some point, though at the time he couldn't fault her and her aim had been extremely accurate. And she had saved Ianto, which was the important part.

She moved again and it brought him out of his reverie. "What's typical," he asked.

"Men," she muttered. She started pacing back and forth in front of him, the anger making her posture rigid. "Why is it that you can't talk about what you feel? Is it that hard that you can't say a simple phrase once in a while? Will you break?" Her accent was coming through much more heavily than normal as she continued. "And you know what the worst of it is?"

"What?" Jack asked, fascinated by her. She was glorious – eyes blazing, hair whipping around as the breeze picked up, and where she was presently standing in front of him, bathed in the red light from the setting sun. She looked like an angel come down from the heavens to berate him for his thoughtlessness. Which is exactly what she was doing.

"The worst of it, Jack Harkness, is that here I am, standing in front of a man from the 51st century. A man who should reflect the evolution of the human race. I thought in the future, people would be more enlightened. More able to work through the differences between one another. Yet I find that for all the years that have passed to create you, you still aren't in touch with who you are, and how you feel." She raised her hands in frustration. "It infuriates me that this essential thing doesn't change."