Cooper jumped down, tossing his Stetson and jacket to the ground. He stripped to the waist, tying the sleeves of his long johns around his belt buckle, and stood there bare chested with his arms out on either side, letting the heat from the rising steam curl up the length of his back. His palms tilted to let the warm vapours play across his fingers. He turned round and the darker hair beneath his armpits stirred.

“See, Pete,” he said, craning his head back so his Adam’s apple was strong, “the Earth ain’t no different from us. It lives and breathes with a big ol’ fire in its belly it can’t always control.”

Snowball huffed, making Peter smile. And they really should think about heading home. They had a five-day trek back to the lake at best if the snow didn’t get any worse and besides, newcomers they’d welcomed to the islands might start to feel unwanted if they didn’t spend more time with them. And yet Cooper was only fully alive out here. Like his whole self could breathe now it didn’t have to fit into such small places.

Peter hung the reins over the horn of the saddle, taking in the blond stubble growing across Cooper’s jaw after so long on the trail, the wet ribbons of blond hair lashing his face. In the last few weeks he’d learned there was so much more to explore. Just as they were taking in new lands, Peter had begun to chart a map of Cooper’s body in his mind as he discovered it. And somehow, those changes brought on by the Dead only served to make the man Cooper was becoming appear stronger. The flush of pallor to his skin seemed to make that surge of dark hair about the belt buckle sprawl thicker. The tint of night across the white of his eye only seemed to offer more gaze to fall into. Peter’s heart pounded. But it wasn’t watching Cooper that excited him, although it did so very deeply, so much as the fact that as his boyfriend, he let him. Cooper gave him permission to see his body act in this way. A boy. A man. An animal. Nobody else got to see him like this. And the moment of them both being out in the world together was so perfect that when another part of Peter decided to break it, he was as surprised as Cooper was.

“What are we doing out here?”

Cooper’s arms dropped by his sides. “You tired or summat?”

“No.”

“I mean we can rest up a while if you want.”

“No. It’s not that.”

“Need a kiss?”

“I’m being serious,” said Peter. “Because, apart from Betty, we haven’t come across a Returnee, or anyone else for that matter, for days now.”