Don't Ever Love an Alpha

Making sure I was heard only by him, I offered to go to his place and give him some fun, not specifying. I hoped I wouldn't have to confirm Sandra's guess about anal. Joe, however, said, "Nobody should take without giving." His principled stand withstood my insistence that I enjoyed playtime with his nude self (which was true). The evening ended with me alone.

Finally, there arrived a certain Wednesday. At home after another disastrous improv session, I checked messages. Sandra had broadcast this:

<<Where was Fran tonight? On Wednesdays she always plays the team speed tournament at 9th Street.>>

In the storm of terror that consumed me, there was also a glimmer of calm. Now, at last, I knew for certain that there was no ground under me.

***

He had just finished cumming. I had savored what he had done for me, and now I was sore. It was time.

I said, "Why am I here?"

He looked up, confused. He had cum really hard. My final accomplishment.

I then said, "Isn't one woman enough for you?"

I barely got that out, wavering on the last two words.

His head jolted back. "What are you saying?"

I so wanted to put on boots and kick his nards. "If, if that's what you need, I'm out," I said, now full-on crying. But I pushed through. "That's not my kind of love." The acidity with which I said that kept me going.

"Ginny, no, I'd never—"

"Exactly," I rasped, glaring at this ideal vision of a human male. "You'll never, with me. I can barely consider having one person in my life. And if there's another, I know what I'd become. Junior partner, at best."

"Everything I've said about you—"

"—Reeks of novelty, and, and you slumming, showing how high-minded a lover you are!" I jerked my hips to remove him.

"You fascinate me," rolled from his voice, perhaps sincerely. "Every moment, starting from when we talked—"

"Stupidest thing I ever did," I blubbered. "I asserted myself. I caught you completely off guard. You couldn't ignore me any more. You weren't nasty or arrogant, but you had to have me. It's what an Alpha does."

He looked to the side, eyes rolling. "Can't I just be me? This whole Alpha shit, it's psychobabble." Even now, seeking to match me, he couldn't get genuinely upset.

"Obviously, Fran is lower-maintenance than I am," I said, flailing to find my glasses, knocking them off the nightstand. "She'll be less stressful for you. And I'm sure she'll find you a nice friend."

His voice reached a majestic peak. "My love for you is real, Ginny."

"And because your love doesn't affect you at all," I wailed, "it's worthless!" Then sobbing ruled out words.

The crying jag continued in the bathroom while I cleaned up and dressed. The shock and agony of what happened and what I did were still growing...but the rational mind held on to what I had blurted out. I suspected that I was on to something. Maybe this was the basic truth about Joe. And about Alphas.

***

So what did I do next? I retreated into a shell. I became nerdy and insensate and unaware of everything around me that involved human emotions. I plunged my heart and soul into my heartless, soulless job. I barely maintained enough hygiene to be allowed out in public. I stopped going to the parties. I ditched the improv class. I kept the gym membership, but did exactly the same things in every trip there.

I can't say that this helped me, but it provided a total package of routine, daily and longer, that didn't place demands on me.

I resumed reading French literature, in French, which I had let slide after college. This wasn't actually a new thing, so it slotted acceptably into the routine.

The morning after the split, I sent Benjy one detailed, pre-emptive message, saying that he should stay out of touch until I invite it, and that I would set up a bot to copy him on my log-in ping at work, so he'd know I was functional. My friend agreed to leave me alone.

At first, I thought about Joe constantly, moping and yearning. At times I almost fantasized being in the threesome he never actually said he wanted, but my weak imagination spared me.

Then I spent more time beating myself up for getting involved with Joe at all. I shredded the logic of my past overthinking.

Then I spent less time on both. I gauged this based on the amount of time I spent per week reading in French. As that time increased, I inferred that I didn't feel as awful.

Then, almost four months after the breakup, I got the first real indication that Life was somehow Going On: I got impatient with myself.

I still felt terrible. I didn't want to do anything that would put me anywhere near Joe. But I sent Benjy a message, saying that if he could give me a week to get myself back to presentability, I'd like to meet him for coffee.

I also made an appointment with my allergist, during which I asked in detail about some things I'd researched. He agreed to switch my meds.

When I met Benjy I was three days into the new meds and feeling...good. I actually enjoyed being in, and using, my body! This was so odd that I was able to get my emotional state a little ways down from top-of-mind. I got my hair back to nice, and put on a decent outfit.

He looked pretty good, too. Allowing for an eggshell-walking tendency when he first saw me.

Seeing him again, and jeez it had been a long time, got me to a light mood and a for-real smile and a playfully low-pitched "Hel-l-l-o, Benjamin."

He was still braced for the worst, giving me an intense look and saying, "How are you, Ginny?"

"Rotten," I said, "but better than I was. The world is just going to have to deal with me again."

He relaxed, mostly. This probably wouldn't last halfway through his coffee.

I told him about the new meds, and asked what he was up to.

"Nothing much," he said. The intensity returned.

"You're seeing somebody," I said, realizing and saying it before I knew what I felt about it.

"Only twice. We haven't even—"

"Stop," I said, too loud. What did I feel about it? I thought this meetup was just a small, risk-free move towards regaining functional humanity. Had I really thought Benjy would be on call for me, whenever? Dear God, was I Alphaing on him?

I was actually angrier at myself than feeling anything negative about him. Benjy was a friend, maybe my best and safest friend, and he deserved to be happy. And not to be a Beta, enabling one of Joe's discards.

The smile I gave him was less than bubbly, but it was genuine. "Yeah, I'm damaged goods, and yeah, you were right to worry if this would send me back off the cliff. But that didn't happen. You haven't abandoned me. You met me for coffee. And I hope you don't have to hide this from her."

What a large-print book he was. At a glance I read that he hoped to do just that.

But then he did that look-away of his. He was thinking things through.

He looked at me again, with a different expression. This page of the book was in a language I couldn't quite follow.

Then, with a light smile, he asked. "So, what's next for you?"

That caught me up short. "I have no idea." I chuckled. "I'm just barely back to knowing how to buy a cup of coffee." I snickered, looking at the cup, holding it up. "I forgot to flavor it! It tastes like battery acid!"

"That's the new special here," he returned at once. "You can choose domestic or imported acid."

"Hmm," I said, sniffing the cup, "Definitely a topnote of sulfuric."

"It's responsibly sourced," he said, "from auto graveyards."

I was thrilled by the firmness of my deadpan. "The barista didn't draw a battery in the foam."

That cracked him up, which did the same to me. Fun! It was like a blood transfusion.

When he had eased down to chuckling, he asked, "Can I make a suggestion for what to do next?"

"Sure, why not?"

"Come back to improv class."

For an instant it was as though I was in the class, from before Joe Time, on a wave of wisecracking excitement. For the next instant, the thought of Joe Time seemed to open a trapdoor under me. Yet a grain of creativity held me up. "Great idea!" I declared. "Nothing better for a tissue-thin psyche than a dose of abject failure!"

I was still smiling. In the last four months, had I conversed with anyone for more than two minutes?

"The class is awful now," said Benjy, leaning back. "The worst you could do is fit right in."

"Any cute guys?"

He lifted an eyebrow and gave me a low voice of his own. "How many do you need?"

Which was dangerously close to what I'd asked Joe. That sobered me up. But, like my earlier revelation about Benjy, it didn't tear me apart.

I made myself stop and take a breath. Benjy slid out of banter mode and watched me carefully.

Then I said, "Thanks for the suggestion. I'll think about it."

We then managed a few minutes of conversation about impersonal topics. When we parted, I think we both thought I'd decide against resuming the class.

On the second Wednesday after, I showed up.

I wasn't great, but I no longer stank. In the first scene I mostly hung back and supported. Creativity was bubbling up, but I was timid. Later, after watching other scenes and thinking about what I'd have done in them, I got a little more assertive. I created adequate situations and characters. No big laughs, but I could tell my timing was sharpening.

Classmates who knew me from before were friendly and supportive. Benjy and I didn't spend much time together, in or out of scenes. He seemed to be giving me space.

During the next few days, in free moments I found myself setting up scenes and character interactions. This kept my mind occupied, and helped prevent it from backsliding to Joe Time.

As I was arriving for the next class, my brain abruptly cut to the chase. Was I being enabled by a Beta? Or was I being helped by a friend?

I got into more scenes and was active, but didn't take over. I went with what the situations called for. There emerged some good in-context laughs, and I knew I had done well.

If it weren't for the last scene, I might have gone home satisfied, and planned for next week. But there I was, onstage with Benjy and three other people. We were given the assignment of developing movies for a certain greeting-card-franchise cable TV network, with the theme of Valentine's Day.

Benjy quickly gave us an organizing principle: We were a team, and we had to have a script ready to pitch the next day.

At once I created, "There are two fish houses on a frozen lake. In one there's a handsome but melancholy man. In the other is a beautiful but depressed woman. It's mid-February, the days are getting warmer. The ice could melt any second. Can they save each other, and still bring home a good catch?"

Benjy fired back: "They're former sweethearts. But a terrible conflict drove them apart. Now they must overcome their differences to save their lives, rekindle their love, and produce a good shore lunch."

By this time everyone not on stage was bellylaughing. One of the other three on stage, Marie, grabbed the scene's main chance. "You two, act it out!" she said, pointing at Benjy and me. She knelt downstage so as not to block the audience view of us. Benjy and I grabbed folding chairs and set ourselves about ten feet apart, facing the audience. The other two performers, both men, stood upstage and waited for opportunities that might never come.

This was great fun, but you had to be there. To collapse it down, our conflict was that I fished for northern pike and Benjy fished for walleye. We'd step out of the mimed fish houses and jeer at each other about that. We worked in the other performers by calling for deliveries by UberBeer and UberDeviledEggs and so forth. The deliverers all did things that made the ice melt faster, like the miming of a motorcycle with flaming exhaust pipes. As Benjy and I were on the brink of plunging to our deaths, I groaned regret that I won't be able to bring home my best catch, a muskie. Benjy exulted that he caught a muskie too. Our eyes met, and we declared, "Oh, Darling, I love you!" Then we took all the other fish we caught and used them as stepping stones to safety, carrying our mimed muskies.

Yes. Without any advance planning, and nothing more than timing based on eye contact, Benjy and I said the exact same thing.

Standing ovation, several bows by all five of us. Then Marie insisted that Benjy and I take a bow.

At some point during all that, I got a flicker.

It was about Benjy.

I cornered him when the class ended. I was more worried than thrilled, so this probably came off dark: "We have to talk."

The narrow hallway leading to the restrooms wasn't the ideal choice for privacy, but it was the best I could find. About three inches from his chin my mouth said, "Are you still seeing someone?"

"Uhh—no. That was only twice, like I said—"

"Fuck the details!" I hissed. "Why did you nudge me back into class?"

"I thought you'd like it, that it would help you—"

"And?" I demanded.

He wasn't cowering, just off guard. Next, though, he proved that he wasn't a Beta, let alone an Epsilon. His face cleared of tension, and he fixed me with a calm, steady gaze. "It was for me, too," he said. "I want to spend my life with you, Ginny. I don't care how unrealistic or hopeless that desire is, it's what I want. And if I can't have that, I want at least to help you back to being undamaged goods."

I shuddered, suddenly exhausted. My hands braced on the wall, on either side of him. Relief came on so strong that I almost couldn't enjoy it.

"You okay?" he said, gripping my shoulders.

"Yes. Now." I took a breath. I searched for anxiety, and couldn't find it. "Finally."

I looked at the man with whom I had forged some sort of deep connection by sharing improv exercises. The conventional emotions may not have clicked into place, but at that moment I knew that what I felt when I saw him on the coffee date was more than pleasant nostalgia.

"I don't know what to do with the L-word," I said to him. "I think Joe poisoned it for me, so please don't use it." I met his gaze. "But I think what you want is realistic and hopeful. So far I like the idea. But is it okay if I leave it at that, for now?"

"Of course," he said, smiling, and trembling a little.

I found a smile of my own. "I think I'm all right with the K-activity," I said, leaning closer.

Which, of course, is when someone left a restroom and had to edge past us.

Fun snuck into my brain. I smirked at Benjy. "If we're going to increase our involvement, I'll need to check out your apartment."

What a Lothario. He has a queen-size bed. Tough luck, Person-he-saw-twice-and-hadn't-even. We played a whole lot with each other, making up for the lack of ice cream.

On impulse, I got his putz into my mouth. He started to say no, but quickly could no longer say anything. In our previous encounter I hadn't studied his merchandise too closely. Now, shaft and balls and perineum made the acquaintance of fingers and lips and tongue and, just a little, a tooth or two.

He made a sort of gargly wail when he went off, and didn't seem to care when I let the gunk dribble out.

He took an inspection tour of his own. I let him lingus my cunni, telling him a lot of yes-that-but-not-that. After a few awkward moments, we got to where I really liked it.

Suddenly I recalled that I had only masturbated twice since the end of Joe Time.

That much awareness of Joe Time might have made me shrivel and sob.

It didn't. Much of my mind had gone all whatever on that subject, and my body insisted that I move on.

This session was a little like our previous sex, in that our brains seemed to be relaxed, yet stimulated. This was when I fully enjoyed the relief from earlier. I didn't get a little warm feeling with Benjy, which was part of the relief. Benjy was being himself, and I had every reason to believe that he meant what he'd said, and wasn't executing a strategy from the Seduction Command Post.

I could have cum very nicely from his mouth, and maybe that would have minimized my consequences. But I was now impatient with what should be my Garden of Pleasure. It was time for me to woman up. Okay, average woman up.

Our bodies were arced so that my fingers could assess his recovery, and encourage it. I enjoyed his moan along my clit.

"Do you have lube?" I murmured.

"Uh huh," or something like it, vibrated my labia.

"Let's try it," I said, now holding back from cumming.

And that's what clinched us becoming fuck buddies. He had the kind of lube usually marketed to men, to 'desensitize' their naughty bits. I could have read volumes into this aspect of Benjy as a large-print book, that he had a basic worry about not lasting long enough. This would never occur to an Alpha. Well, this lube also reduced my sensation, which meant that nothing felt bad and, gradually, the fucking felt good, and then better.

After a brief mutual dither over how and where, I got on top. With the condom and the lube, I felt accompanied but not crowded. From the look on Benjy's face, to him I felt welcoming.

The room wasn't dark. From the position of average-woman-superior, even without my glasses I got a clear look at myself in the closet-door mirror. Yeah, not bad, really, I thought. I watched my gradual motions, sometimes vertical and sometimes torsional. They expressed themselves in swaying hair and jiggling breast-ettes. Even my caring friend couldbe genuinely hornywith this on his crotch. And because this erection wasn't as rigid, I was able to swivel around on it without getting twinges. Instead, I got rushes. Big ones.

You're getting more about this than you might have expected. You're thinking, 'You already told me about sex with Benjy, why so much now? Since you two aren't exactly hot.' Well, true, but I'm making a point here. This wasn't a mind-blowing, knock-the-Earth-off-its-axis experience, like my plunge into Joe Time. But every part of this felt exactly right, for us, then.

Amid goo and around his pliable dick, I came nicely, heat flowing through my torso, enveloping it. I kept grinding, and the cumming got more intense, with wild jolts in the trunk and thumping heartbeats.

Now, I didn't just accept sex, I wanted it. I wanted body fun, for both of us.

I wanted our comedy to repel drama.

And I wanted to do this again soon, so I knew I had to stop.

"Can ya cum?" I yelped.

"Ohyeah!"

"Please, now!"

I kept bucking until his spasms ended, then bid a fond farewell to his stout yeoman, and flopped my tiny boobs onto his bony chest.

"Is it okay," I said in his ear while nuzzling it, "if I never try to get you to a third erection?"

He laughed, tickling my nips with his ribs. "I don't think that could even exist until tomorrow."

I was still sore after, but that's just a part of Being Me. So are yeast infections. I began framing the conversation I'd have with Benjy, that I'd deal with this and he shouldn't blame himself.

I was distracted from that because we got silly, as he drove me to my place and I got clothes and overnight stuff and we went back to his place. Yay, comedy! Tonight! And...every night?

It was nice, sleeping together. A really important data point for what we're now considering.

There was almost a disaster in the morning, as we each tried to use the bathroom enough to get ready for work. But even that was a little bit fun. And it gave us another data point, on living space for life-spending.

So, this is what Benjy and I are working on now. If we could have figured ourselves out right after our Switch, maybe I could have skipped Joe and avoided those Months of Misery. And they aren't completely done. I still hurt, over Joe.