"Hey. Come back to bed."

Ennis shakes his head, a solid black figure resting his head on the logs, looking up, up into the endless sky. What he sees in it, Jack doesn't know, but he's entranced like drunk or half-asleep.

Jack slips out of the threadbare sheets and shuffles up.

"C'mere," Ennis finally says, spreading his arms. Jack gladly lies up against him, feels Ennis put his chin on his shoulder, breathe down his neck. Jack takes both his hands and circles them over his own abdomen, threading their fingers together under the folds of his fleece-lined jacket. "You're some kind a radiator, dontcha know?"

Ennis chuckles, in a way that makes his chest rumble underneath Jack. "Glad ta warm you up, little darlin."

The stars wink softly down at them, like a vast warm blanket enveloping them from high above; the night is still but alive, alive with buzzing crickets and ballroom fireflies. Jack reaches out to steal one from the air. Opens his fist, sees it lying dazed in the grooves of his palm, casting warm shadows around the valleys of his fingers; he blows on it gently and it almost seems to come awake, wings blinking open and fluttering away. He feels Ennis's eyes tracing his cheekbone, jawline, hair, lashes, and turns easily to meet them, those soulful mud-deep eyes that are doomed to only show their depths to him. Ennis doesn't shy from his face no more.

It's quiet and intimate, despite having the whole a Brokeback Mountain to themselves, being on top a the world, and he just wants to close and seal the space between him and Ennis forever.

"Ya know, friend, this is my favourite place in the whole world," he tells him, tenderly, like to preserve the stability of the fishing-line strung between them; Ennis the fish and Jack the fisher.

"Well, you ain't seen the world yet, little darlin. You don't know nothin."

Jack leans back, pillowing his head against Ennis's chest. His jeans have ridden up a bit and the grass tickles his ankles like little laughing fairies. "Nah, I know 'cause you're in it. We could be down in deep-freeze Antarctica and that'd be my favourite place, if you was there." He slides his gaze to Ennis, fearing he'd just locked another chamber of his heart. But Ennis only smiles, flushing a little 'roud the neck and ears, but Jack can't be sure in the darkness. "I don't got no place like home," Ennis says. "No favourite place."

Jack turns so that he's fully facing him, thoughts bubbling up in the surface of his mind. Dangerous, beautiful thoughts. "Tell you what," he whispers boldly, "What if you and me had a little ranch somewhere… a little cow'n calf operation. Your horses. Cigar Butt. We could get some kind a mutt, a pup, to help us herd… we'd grow old, and him with us…" he barrels on, 'cause if he stops now he won't never get it out again, "say I get out a rodeo, keep my bones unwrecked, don't need no motorhorse or whiskey springs… now, that'd be a sweet life."

A heartbeat, thudding against him. "Mm… what would the ranch have?" Ennis murmurs.

"The house, it'll be small. Modest, don't want no big cleanups every damn weekend. We keep to ourselves…"

Ennis rumbles his agreement. "We'll live near a hill like this, so on them free weekends we'll take a skinny-dip in the streams, nap in loose-weave hammocks…"

"We'll build our own patio, out back, get no yappin' from nosy neighbours… better yet, no neighbours in five miles a us…"

"We'll have a little veggie patch, grow some a them blueberries an' beans, jus' for ourselves…"

Jack closes his eyes, listening to the murk of Ennis's rasp, huffing a breathless laugh. "No way, I ain't gaggin on no more beans, cowboy. We can pick flowers in the summertime, them daisies you got me… make our little house happier some…"

"What 'bout wintertime?"

"We cuddle up. Huddle by the fireplace in blankets. Boil hot cocoa." He turns to see that Ennis is wearing a full smile, his toothy one embedded with dimples and all, sprawling across his face like gardens and lazy cats and warm rainy days. "Sounds like a real sweet life, Jack. Real sweet."

Rodeoing has never been his dream, not really. His dream has been to get rich, get famous maybe. Know what it feels like to have people love him. But really, he can find that with Ennis, just them two against the force of nature and God, if he exists. Some days he feels like they're in one a them dreams that they can control, and they could conquer the world. On realer days when the clouds gather thick and he feels the chill catching in his jacket and the buzz in the air when the lightning's about to come, he admits to himself in the recesses of his mind that it's just that – a dream.

But looking at the night sky, glorious and hypnotic with its swathe of gemstones like breathing, sweeping ocean waves that seem ta move the longer you stare at em, and with Ennis with him joined by their hands, Jack believes anything is possible. The world is big. There must be some place out there for them…

This dream a theirs, it could happen, he swears; all they need a do is grab his folks' ranch, whip it back into shape. Tell em a half-truth half-lie, that Ennis was an old buddy a his who wanted to help, who didn't have no place a his own. They won't have the neighbour-free miles or the large patio or the berries an' beans patch just yet, but anything is better than snatching moments from time, 'cause time's only willing to let the stealing slide for so long.

This dream a theirs, it just takes a little more time… a little more secrecy… and then one day, maybe they don't need to be secret no more.

"Ennis, I see our ranch," he says.

"Wha? Where?"

"It's up there. In the stars."