There was one final preparation David could not make on his own. "I really need a haircut," he told Kim, the night before launch. His hair had not been this long in years, maybe ever. "I hate to walk into a barbershop to get so drastic a change; it would be conspicuous."

Kim's mouth straightened into a line as she pressed her lips together. His hair was long; curling around his ears. "I can cut it," she said, reluctantly. "I've been cutting my dad's hair since I was thirteen. I know what you military types like."

"Why didn't you say something sooner?" he wanted to know. "I'm looking like a hippie here."

"I don't want to be cutting everyone's hair in the entire orphanage," she said. "I'll only do it if you tell everyone you cut it yourself." This was so foolish a thought that he laughed, despite his pre-mission tension. Then agreed.

She went to her room, checked on the sleeping Indali, and then returned to his, armed with her headlamp, a pair of surgical scissors and a comb. While Drächen slept, she worked away, slowly and carefully. It had been a few years since she had done this, after all.

Finally, she stepped back from him half a step, and said, "That's as high and tight as you're going to get from me with these scissors." She put the scissors down to wipe sweat from her hand. It was hot and sticky even at night, now.

There was no mirror. He felt it over a bit, said, "It feels right."

"I got it a little too close over here," she said apologetically, feeling with her fingertips, and then taking his hand and putting it on the spot.

"It's fine," he said. "Thanks." Her hand was on his, fingertips still brushing the soft, short hair. Kim knew she was acting recklessly, and she didn't care. He was leaving, and she realized how much she was going to miss him. How much she didn't want to be friends any more. How ready she was to love him: the man trying to find his way, the father trying to do right by his child. He glanced up at her, his hand still in hers, shifted on the stool.

"Any time," Kim said, her voice all honey and gravel, her hand on his head creating a tingle. He nodded, smiled fleetingly, looking at her face. Her return gaze was unbending. She released his hand, ran hers down the back of his neck. Ran it back up again, riffling the short, soft hair against the grain.

His nerve endings jumped to life under her touch. He could smell iodine on her, and hand sanitizer, and a trace of roses. Scared, wanting this, he felt his arms encircle her, his cheek against the smooth, cool linen covering her midriff. He pulled her to sit on his knees, her legs around his, her mouth opening as he pushed his hands up through her hair to hold her head. Feeling her commitment to this moment, bending to her conviction and his own desire, he pulled off her kurta and camisole, threw his own t-shirt on the floor on top of them.

David's hands roamed up Kim's sinewy back and over her shoulders as they kissed. He traced the fine bones emanating from her sternum with his fingertips, then pressed his hands flat against the softness of her compact breasts. Sighing into his mouth, she stroked his face, his ears, his neck, lightly touched the scar on his side, those on his back. Inched forward in his lap until they were bonded from hip to shoulder, arms wrapped around each other tightly, groaning as skin met skin. Uncertainty fading, David stood and carried Kim to his cot, her arms and legs locked around his shoulders and waist. He set her down gently on the cot. Consigning himself.

"This thing's pretty narrow," she said, looking down at her perch.

"We'll make it work," he said, leaning over her. "We can't be the first two Marines to have had this idea…"

She started giggling, and couldn't stop. It was interfering with his kisses, so he stopped, eyeing her self-consciously. "What?"

"Surely you don't mean, 'Don't ask, don't tell?' " She exploded in a fit of guffaws. Neither of them saw Indali in the hallway, peeking through the cracked door, or noticed as she turned and ran silently back to the room she shared with Kim.

"Here's what I mean," he said, all seriousness, kissing the laughter away from her as he removed the rest of her clothes. She surrendered to his ministrations: exploratory, rapt, and responsive to her sighs and gasps, as she trailed one hand down his tightly muscled torso to the button on his pants. He undid them and left them on the floor with his undershorts, lowering himself carefully over her on the protesting cot. She reached for him, caressing, shifting to meet him.

David had the sensation that he was falling, hurtling headlong into the unknown. At the very end of his trajectory was Kim, hair spread out around her head like a halo, lips parted slightly and curling up at the corners, looking up at him from under heavy-lidded eyes.

It was a soft landing.

Sleep was another matter entirely… Scrunching together on the skinny cot in the torpid heat was not comfortable, but Kim had no complaints. David's hands moved slowly through her hair, stroking her head and neck soothingly. She was almost out when he whispered to her.

"Would you take Drächen, if I… Will you take her—keep her, I mean?" I know you love her.

Kim touched his face, kissed his neck, tasting dried sweat. "Yes, I'll take her. There's just one condition."

"What condition?" He craned his neck back to look at her, mouth slightly open, brow wrinkled.

"I don't need to sleep," she whispered, her voice thick and sweet as caramel. She threw one leg over his body, pushing herself upright with her hands on his shoulders. "Do you?" She gave a short laugh as she discovered evidence that one part of him, anyway, did not. He laughed a little bit himself—at the effect she had on him: enlivening; resurrective—and pulled her to his chest to kiss her lucent face.