When the team first started pulling money in from playing hockey, we decided to buy ourselves a little stretch of private shore south of Laguna Beach; and sometimes, in the early morning hours when we aren’t chasing Dragaunus and I need to be alone, I take the Migrator out there and sit on the sand and throw stones at the ocean.
It’s silly, I know, but it helps me cope. I’ve never felt comfortable as team captain. Regardless of what the rest of the guys tell me, I just don’t think I’m really what they need. I do the job…but I wonder, if my teammates knew the truth about me, if they’d want me doing it any longer.
Sometimes I’m tempted to tell them.
Most nights when I’m out here, I find myself thinking about Canard, and about how things would be if he was still around. He’s the one who should be team captain—hell, he’s the one who brought us all together in the first place. We could never have driven the Saurians from Puckworld without him.
I can’t tell you how hard it was when we lost him. Watching him get sucked away to God knows where by Dragaunus’ electromagnetic worm, and being powerless to help him…part of me still can’t believe that he’s gone, that he sacrificed himself so that the rest of us could be here, carrying on the fight.
The team lost a lot that day. A good friend. A born leader. Our best shot at ever beating Dragaunus once and for all.
But I lost even more.
Because I lost the love of my life.
I’m gay.
I don’t have any trouble admitting it anymore—at least to myself. The rest of the team, of course, that’s a different matter.
If we were still on Puckworld, I wouldn’t think twice about it. Being gay isn’t the social stigma there that it is here on Earth. Sure, it’s frowned upon somewhat, and seen as deviant, but that’s only because that sort of love—our sort of love, as Canard liked to remind me, doesn’t produce children; and God knows, after two invasions by the Saurians, Puckworld needs children. But the religious factor, so popular here, is non-existent back home. There’s no sin in it, no threat of hell or damnation.
But we’ve been here in Anaheim for a few years now, and we’ve started to adopt the Earth mentality. If I’d told them before we came here, it might have been different, but I didn’t; and I don’t dare tell them now, even though I sometimes wonder how they’d react.
Tanya would be hurt. I know that. When we first came here, and were trying to get settled in, she and I had something of a fling. She had made it plain that she found me attractive; and I thought, with Canard gone and myself a stranger on this planet, maybe I should try to be…normal.
It worked for a while. We got rather close; we even had sex a few times, because I felt that she expected it, and she showed me that a woman’s body isn’t without its own curious pleasures. But having sex with Tanya, pleasant enough as it was, could never match the—the completeness I’d felt making love with Canard. With Tanya it was good, but with Canard it was…indescribable, it was…earth-shattering.
She and I were good friends—we’re still good friends—but the rightness just wasn’t there, and that wasn’t her fault. Anyway, it didn’t work; we were really too busy trying to find Dragaunus and get home, so it was hard making time for each other—regardless of who your partner is, Drake One’s alarms don’t do much for an intimate moment. I still feel bad about it, though Tanya tells me I shouldn’t. She says we’re both married to our cause too much to have a successful relationship, with each other or anyone else, and I guess she’s right.
Yeah, Tanya would be hurt if I told her, but she’d take it better than Mallory. Mal’s a good woman, and she’s probably got a lot to offer a guy, but her time in the military left her with a rather narrow view of what leaders should be like. I’m team captain, so she takes it for granted that I’m "okay." In her view I’m upright, I’m moral, I’m…straight. And anyway, Mallory never liked Canard; to this day she goes on about how arrogant and demanding he was, when nothing could be further from the truth. I guess, since she’s a woman and a soldier, that she feels this constant need to prove herself, to show that she’s more competent than a man is.
But I can’t help thinking her outlook be different if she’d been the one that Canard kissed and touched and held, if she’d been the one to hear his last whispered words before the worm dragged him away—words that haunt me still.
Wing, I love you….
I don’t even bother to think of what Grin would tell me. I already know I’d get some platitude about my karma or the quality of my inner peace—Grin’s more concerned with my aura than with my sexual preference. But he’d probably be okay, and tell me, in his roundabout way, that as long as I’m happy, the details don’t matter.
But I’m not happy. I don’t know if I’ll ever be happy again, not truly, not without Canard….
Initially, I would have hesitated about telling Duke, and I’d most likely keep hesitating. Of course, he’d probably be the safest one to tell—he’s got plenty of secrets of his own, so he’d know how to keep quiet. But he’s pegged himself as such a ladies’ man that I don’t know if he’d understand what it’s like to be in love with another man….
When we started working together on Puckworld, I began to wonder if Duke hadn’t figured Canard and me out anyway. It seemed that anytime we were together, he would watch us—and God only knows what he was thinking, or what he really saw; Duke’s good at arriving unannounced and unnoticed. And sometimes I’d see him watching us and get a glimpse of his expression—partly amused, partly repulsed, but mostly just…puzzled. I like to think that we weren’t on his mind at all, but I know better. Duke’s been around longer than the rest of us, and he knows better than we do the meanings that can be read into a glance or a gesture or a casual touch. At least, if he does know, he’s decided not to say anything, and for that I’m grateful, because I’m not ready to tell any of them.
Especially Dive.
God, I hate the thought of having to tell him I’m gay. I tell myself that it wouldn’t change things between us. But there’s five years between us, and we weren’t close growing up. Now, working together, living here, we’ve cultivated some of that closeness, and I don’t want to lose it now. He’s my brother, and I love him, and he trusts me, and right now I want to keep it that way.
Nosedive’s a lot like Mallory. He’s adapted quickly to living on Earth, and he’s taken on a lot of human ways. He’s also highly critical of Canard. He’s always thought that Canard didn’t want him in the Resistance because of his age. There’s a little truth to that—Canard did think Dive was a little too young to be following us around—but it’s not the whole story, not by any means. Canard never doubted Dive’s sincerity, or his competence, or his skill as a fighter; he knew as well as I did that my baby brother would be well able to hold his own against the Saurians.
But what Dive thinks is what I’ve let him think, because he’d be more hurt than anyone if he knew the truth: Canard didn’t want him hanging around because he didn’t want Dive to find out that he and I were lovers. Let him grow up some, Canard always told me. We’ll tell him when he’s older, he’ll understand better. Right now he’d just be hurt….
Of course, we didn’t see then that our fight against Dragaunus would take us to another dimension and another planet. Dive’s older now—we’re all older—but he’d still be hurt, and I don’t think he’d understand any better.
I don’t think any of them would understand any better.
Right now, they respect me. More importantly, they like me, and I value their friendship too much to jeopardize it…even though they’ll never know how much I hurt, how empty I feel without Canard.
I dream about him almost every night. Some nights I dream about the day I lost him, and I wake up screaming and crying. Other nights there are better dreams, happier dreams, and I wake up and reach across the bed, expecting him to be there…and he’s not, and I don’t know which kind of dream I hate the most. I just know that I hate them both, because they remind me that Canard’s gone.
And I can’t do anything about it. I can’t do anything to bring him back.
And I think it’s time I went down to the beach again.