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half-moon played bluff between wisps of clouds. As Jacob watched he raised his cupped hands to his lips and took a draw on a cigarette, the glow hidden by his palm. Jacob made his way over and sat down carefully, his own bedding on his lap.
    "Hey, Trip." Daniel's voice was soft and a little hoarse, as if he'd been coughing.
    "Hey, yourself."
    "Rough day."
    "Oh, yeah."
    Daniel leaned a little closer, until his shoulder brushed Jacob's. "You okay?"
    Jacob shrugged, feeling the brush of his arm against Daniel's. "I'll live. It was..." He trailed off. He didn't have words for what it had been.
    "At least this one is over." Daniel took one more drag, and then flicked the butt over the rail, his eyes still on the sky. "That moon up there, she doesn't care, you know. Things happen down here, people die, ships sink, and she sails on all white and pretty. I think that's good, you know. That we don't matter too much, in the grand scheme of things."
    Jacob wasn't so sure. People should matter, surely? Daniel's fey mood was strange, against the backdrop of steel, and guns, and sleeping men. "Are you... Did someone die?" Where Jacob watched from the sidelines, Daniel always seemed to be in a group. He knew a lot of the men.
    "No one special." Daniel coughed and then slowly lowered his eyes to Jacob's face, his voice barely a whisper. "Well, I'm sure they were special to somebody. I was too busy being glad they weren't you."
    "Me too. You, I mean. When a new casualty came in, I always looked."
    Daniel sighed. "We are sad sacks, aren't we?"
    Jacob wouldn't have said that. Confused, exhausted, with the echo of terrified hours still vibrating in his bones, but oddly closer to elated than sad. He glanced around at the empty deck space Daniel had found, and lowered his voice still more, feeling his way in this conversation. "Did you know you were... that way... before you joined up?"
    "Oh yes. Since I was pretty young." Daniel's voice had dropped to a breath too. "You didn't?"
    "Not till Basic. All those naked fellows. I'd figured I was just a late bloomer, and that was why I wasn't interested in girls. But then, damn, fit young men with no clothes on in the showers and in the barracks. When I wasn't exhausted and puking from all the running, or scared out of my wits from the chiefs yelling at us, I was thinking about ice-cubes and dead worms and anything I could to not spring wood every other minute. Even I couldn't deny it after that."
    "I knew. From the time I was twelve. I had a... thing for this Mexican kid who came to pick the avocados. And half a dozen other boys after him."
    "Did you ever do anything with them?"
    "With guys you mean?" Daniel glanced around again and slid a little closer, his mouth near Jacob's ear, his tone muted and private. "Not really. Jerking off with some of the boys from school a couple of times. I think most of them were normal, though. They just liked to jerk off in company."
    "No one special?"
    "There was this one guy. Stuart. Lived down the road from us. We fooled around some. Necking. Hands. Not even as much as..." Daniel barked a soft short laugh that had nothing to do with amusement, and then quieted quickly. "His dad caught us, the third time we went at it in his barn. A few weeks later he was in the Army, and I was in the Navy. The military was going to make men out of us."
    "Do you..." Do you miss him? "Do you hear from him at all?"
    "No. He wasn't that kind of friend. Anyway by the time his dad was done with us, I think Stu went running back to the normal side. He'll do his service, go home, get married and have a bunch of kids. Compared to his dad, mine was almost reasonable."
    "So your family knows."
    "In a don't-think-about-it way. My dad got mad, then he got cold, then he told me I had to get myself straight and serve my country if I wanted to be welcome back home. Of course that was before Pearl, or my mom might have had more to say about sending another son to war. My next-older brother had already