Brent spent the next month in Alphan purgatory. 

He was pretty sure he had felt every feeling that existed in the past few weeks, and he may have invented several new ones. He’d also done all the stages-- the five stages of grief, the five stages of love (by himself, which was taxing), the five stages of anger, the five stages of mitosis… you name it. In the end, the one feeling he became really intimate with was fear. Somewhere in the world was his mate. His mate who didn’t think of himself as Brent’s mate. His mate who had one of the most famously dangerous jobs anyone could have. His mate who seemed to be off on some kind of special assignment that was almost certainly even more dangerous than his usual day-to-day work.

He’d dreamed about that afternoon with Will so many times that he felt like he was losing the distinction between what was a memory of things that actually happened and what was a memory of a dream. He’d also had several nightmares about Will that had jerked him awake, sweating and miserable: a shooting, a stabbing, a drowning, a helicopter crash (wtf??), and several where he tried to explain to Will that they were mates, and Will just turned and disappeared into thin air. Those last ones were probably prophetic. 

He didn’t feel like eating, so he’d lost weight. He’d given heavy drinking a trial run, but in addition to the hangovers, it had seemed to bring on the nightmares, so he’d abandoned it. Thanks to the magic of imprinting, distracting himself with sex with other people was right out– he’d gone out a couple of times with friends, but had about as much interest in fucking anyone other than Will as he had in stapling his tongue to chin– maybe less. If he’d stapled his tongue to his chin, he’d have at least gotten some endorphins out of it and maybe won some money off of said friends. 

In the end, he’d found three escapes from his sizeable surplus of angst: work, coaching, and the gym. The Phoenixes were winning consistently as a result of all the extra drills, but Emily S. and Sophia L. had made it clear at their second “bonus” practice of the week that they were getting reeeeeal sick of his hardcore coach shit. He made a mental note to upgrade the Quirls from granola bars to cupcakes, one of which would be gluten- and nightshade-free, for the next game and to cancel the seven am free-throw clinic on Saturday. As for the gym, well, he’d inadvertently trained for a half-marathon while trying to log enough miles to clear his head and get him tired enough to sleep at night. Too bad he didn’t give a shit about a 13.1 sticker for his rear window– he just wanted Will to come back.

If someone walked into the office right now and magically offered him the opportunity to change his trait, to be a Beta, like Will, who could just fall in love with whoever took his fancy or NO ONE AT ALL, who could be happy and carefree… Oh my God, what if Will had fallen in love with someone wherever he was? Is that why he hadn’t come back yet?… then, like an idiot, Brent probably wouldn’t have accepted the offer, because that’s how much he fucking wanted Will Adams and only Will Adams and he couldn’t even manage to not want to want Will Adams. It wasn’t getting better or easier. It just wasn’t. He didn’t know how much more he could take before he hulksmashed something. There was only one thing left to do. He walked down the hall.

“Gabriel, can we talk?”

“Sure, Brent. What’s up?”

Brent sat and put his head in his hands. “Can you get Linda and Jem in here, too? Maybe get Alex on speaker phone?” he requested wearily. 

“Oh my god… is this… happening? Is this real? Are the Baltimore Diamond Dogs finally being called upon? Be right back!” Gabriel ran out of the office and returned with his paralegal and his assistant in tow, and then called up his mate and put his phone on speaker.  They all looked extremely excited to have someone completely broken and pathetic to emotionally make over.

“Okay, everyone, let’s calm down, let’s give Brent a chance to gather his thoughts. Brent, nothing you say leaves this room, or you know, whatever room Alex is sitting in.”

Alex chimed in, “my office. Lailah is in here too, but she won’t talk. Because she can’t. Everyone watch your language, by the way.”

Brent sat there staring at his feet for a good minute or two. Then he started talking. Twenty minutes later, he finished his tale of woe and looked around the room. Jem and Linda were looking shellshocked, Gabriel was looking thoughtful and a bit nonplussed, and the only thing he could hear coming from Alex was typing. 

Brent raised his voice so Alex could hear him. “Anderson, are you typing this up as an endocrinologically interesting case?”

The typing stopped abruptly.

Alex’s voice emerged from the phone, sounding just a touch guilty. “NOooo. Probably not, I mean. Just jotting a few things down–no names, of course. Just… “the patient”. Hypercompatability is always interesting, but it’s so rare for a Beta to be involved. Or is it? What if this goes on more than we’ve documented? But I mean, obviously what I’m primarily concerned with is your suffering, Brent.”

“Alex!” Gabriel reprimanded his phone. “Not now! Hypercompatibility is science-nerd speak for fated mates, by the way,” he explained to the room with a sigh. “Scientists are squidgy about terms like ‘fate’.”

Brent looked around. “Okay, so, anybody have any helpful ideas on how to handle this? Any relevant anecdotes regarding other Alphas who have one-way pair bonds with Betas who want nothing to do with them but it all worked out and everyone was happy?” 

Crickets. 

“I thought not.” 

Truth be told, though, he felt significantly better just having laid it all out there. He also felt better that four other smart people had no better ideas about what to do about the situation than he did.

“Well, first of all, reading between the discreet lines with which you vaguely outlined your one romantic encounter, ‘wanting nothing to do with you’ does not seem to be an accurate description of how Will was feeling the day you hooked up. I’m not sure anyone can really go from “that was amazing” to “zero interest” overnight. As for the rest of it, well. Fuck.” said Gabriel with a slow head shake.

“Language!” came Alex’s indignant voice.

“Alex, Lailah’s like six months old. She’s half a year away from her first word.”

“She has an outstanding memory.”

Gabriel made a sound that indicated extreme skepticism about Lailah’s current ability to retain four-letter words. He turned to Brent. “Permission to call my mother-in-law for further information about Will,” requested Gabriel. “If nothing else, she can probably find out when he’s coming back. I’ll be discreet. And she always is.”

“Permission granted,” Brett sighed.

The Baltimore Chapter of the Diamond Dogs dismounted with significantly less energy and gusto than they had come in with. Brent saw that he had infected them with his misery and undermined their enthusiastic confidence that all problems had fun, quirky, touching solutions. This cheered him up more than anything.