The -cover time of the two dimensional torus by Brownian motion is the time it takes for the process to come within distance from any point. Its leading order in the small -regime has been established by Dembo et al. (Ann Math 160:433-464, 2004). In this work, the second order correction is identified. The approach relies on a multi-scale refinement of the second moment method, and draws on ideas from the study of the extremes of branching Brownian motion.