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How To Manage Your Alpha Male

1. School for Soulmates

Doctor Daniel Jackson looked around at the men who were currently seated in his armchairs or on his couch. Despite – or perhaps because of – the very high IQ of those assembled, none of them looked exactly comfortable.

“So, who would like to start today’s session...?” he suggested brightly.

There was the usual awkward silence. None of the men who had been signed up for these sessions by concerned friends had originally thought that they needed them – that was apparently quite normal – but he hoped that from observing other people with the same problem as their own that they were starting to get at least a glimmering of recognition of the fact that they really did need help.

He scanned the assembled men and Doctor Wilson was quick to drop his gaze; Agent DiNozzo took the opportunity to reach for a pretzel, meaning that it was the man sitting so awkwardly in Daniel’s overstuffed armchair, sipping tea from a bone china cup and saucer, upon whom his eye fell. He smiled encouragingly. “Wesley...? How did things go this week?”

“Pretty well, I think, all things considered.” The tall thin Englishman put down his tea and nervously brushed imaginary dust from his sleeve. Or possibly not so imaginary dust. In the last session there had been something on his tie that glowed mauveishly under the lamplight and had turned out to be demon blood.

DiNozzo’s voice contained the hint of a sneer: “You managed to go an entire week without telling any strangers that Angel was noble and good or mentioning his mythic destiny?”

“Well…” Wesley Wyndam-Pryce adjusted his collar. “I may have said a couple of things about the unique burden he has to bear – but it was only in a telephone call…”

DiNozzo groaned. “Can you stop back-sliding, Pryce? It’s making us all look like doormats.”

Daniel mentally thought that they pretty much all were doormats, hence the need for these sessions, but thought it would hardly be tactful or kind to mention that now. Jack had even suggested calling the meetings ‘Doormats Anonymous’ but had been swiftly overruled on that by Daniel. One day, if he was successful with these therapy sessions, the oppressed beta males currently enjoying his Darjeeling or Kenyan freshly roasted would also be able to overrule annoying and tactless interjections from their lesser halves.

“Giles was being very unsympathetic. I didn’t think it was unreasonable to remind him of the importance that Angel has in the greater scheme of things or the crushing weight of guilt he carries…”

“Well, maybe if he hadn’t been a serial killer for a century and a half.”

“That wasn’t him. That was Angelus.”

“Well, you say tomato, Pryce. Hey, you actually do say ‘tomato’, don’t you?”

“You know, I’m thinking there’s probably a reason why your alpha male smacks you around the back of the head.”

“Come on, guys, let’s keep the mood positive and supportive. We’re all here for the same reason.” That was Sam Seaborn, whose background in politics meant that even the nastiest bitch-fight amongst the assembled rarely came as a shock to him. Daniel, having been an archaeologist, was used to some fairly spectacular name-calling and hair-pulling too.

“You’re not,” Wilson pointed out. “You’re here to learn how to chair beta male self-actualization seminars.”

“Oh yes, and could I go on record as really hating that phrase,” Wesley put in.

“Everyone hates that phrase,” Daniel sighed. “But would you really want the men you work with to know you were attending therapy sessions on How To Manage Your Alpha Male?”

Wesley grimaced and DiNozzo actually paled. Wilson looked thoughtful. “No,” he admitted. “I really wouldn’t.”

Their alpha males knew they were attending weekly sessions for something, of course, but the attendees had all made up their own versions of what the sessions were for. Wesley, for instance, had told his companions that he was enjoying an evening of convivial company to discuss Herodotus in the original Greek. That would probably have disarmed all suspicion if DiNozzo had not blown Wesley’s cover by attempting to chat up the attractive brunette who had accompanied the man one week – she had apparently insisted that he brought her with him on his motorcycle so she could visit a nearby shoe store. The briefest observation of Wesley’s interaction with the attractive brunette had quickly established that it was not only alpha males who could browbeat him into submission.

“What progress have you made this week, Doctor Wilson?” Daniel asked. Wilson had either told House that he was attending an oncology meeting or something to do with golf. He had been flustered at the time by House uncharacteristically offering to give him a lift and couldn’t remember which.

Wilson looked uncomfortable. “Well… I… um…”

Wesley looked up. “Did you spend some quality time with your wife?”

“Not exactly.”

“Did you tell Doctor How To Win Friends And Influence People that you weren’t at his beck and call every time he had a problem as you had patients of your own to treat? Not to mention that you couldn’t give up your evening every time he was lonely or had a date and needed his hand held?”

“I… The thing is I really do enjoy his company. He’s…fun to be around.”

Daniel, who had met House, had to take a moment to digest that. He would have said that House was fun to be around in the way that, say…flesh-eating bacteria was fun to be around, but Wilson seemed quite sincere. Of course, there were people in the world who didn’t find Jack O'Neill particularly warm and cuddly, inexplicably enough, so perhaps only the closest friend of an alpha male ever really saw his best side.

DiNozzo nodded emphatically. “See, that’s what I keep wanting to say. If you can learn from him, if he’s a mentor figure, and if he really does know his stuff like no one else, aren’t you just doing what’s best for everyone if you listen to what he says and learn from him?”

“Enabler,” Wesley said dismissively.

“Oh, and like you’re any better?”

“It’s different in my case. We save the world. I can’t decide I’m not going to research prophecies today because Angel forgot to say ‘please’ when passing on the fact that Cordelia has just had a vision of LA dissolving into a pit of slime.”

“We save people’s lives too,” DiNozzo retorted.

Wilson held up his hand. “So do we actually. Every day. No one here is doing trivial work.”

“I thought people were gone beyond saving by the time you find out about them? Aren’t they usually in a number of very small pieces in an oil can?” Wesley observed to DiNozzo who reached across to defiantly claim the last chocolate digestive in retaliation.

Seaborn glanced across at Daniel who cleared his throat and essayed another encouraging smile. “Did anyone make any progress with their romantic lives? Doctor Wilson – how are things with your wife?”

“The same,” the doctor admitted gloomily.

“But you had a romantic dinner planned...?”

“I was paged during the starter.”

Daniel groaned inwardly. “By Doctor House?”

“Yes, he said he needed to consult with me on a patient.”

“How did your wife take this interruption?”

“She wasn’t very happy. To be honest, she hasn’t been very happy for a while. She’s still angry that I spent Christmas with him, despite the fact that neither of recognize ‘Christmas’ and I spent Hanukkah with her. As I explained to her, as the festival was of significance for him, and not for us, it seemed only friendly to spend that time with him. And then there was that dinner party…”

DiNozzo stopped with a pretzel halfway to his mouth. “You spent Christmas with your friend instead of your wife and you’re surprised she’s pissed?”

“I’m Jewish,” Wilson explained, not for the first time. “Christmas is not a festival I recognize. I was just trying to be a good friend.”

“Did Doctor House know that you and your wife had a romantic dinner planned?”

“I may have mentioned it.”

Wesley nodded. “He clearly sabotaged it.”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Wilson insisted. “He needed a consult, that’s all. The patient could have had leukaemia.”

“But didn’t...?”

Wilson sighed. “No. Strangely enough, for the first time ever in our hospital, a patient really did have vasculitis.”

Daniel turned to Wesley. “How about your date with Petra Zcherov? The client whose house was possessed and who was so happy with your work in her basement. You were looking forward to that the last time we met.”

Now it was Wesley’s turn to grimace. “Angel thought that as she admitted to being a lawyer she might be working for Wolfram & Hart. He did some background checking, which, unfortunately, she became aware of...”

“What was he doing?” DiNozzo asked.

“Well...going through her garbage. She wasn’t best pleased. She didn’t really appreciate Gunn throwing holy water in her face either. He insisted that he hadn’t seen a reflection as she passed the mirror in the lobby. Angel pointed out that that was no more than you’d expect of a lawyer. Some unpleasantness ensued.”

DiNozzo looked at Daniel. “Are you going to tell him or am I?”

“Agent DiNozzo, we don’t judge here, we just listen and try to help.”

“He is never going to get laid while those two are around! How many dates have they sabotaged so far?”

“Oh please, it was in no way ‘sabotage’,” Wesley insisted. “They had legitimate concerns and unfortunately they didn’t go about disproving them in ways that were as subtle or clandestine as I would have liked.”

“They chainsawed a woman’s front door down when you were in flagrante delicto, Pryce!”

“And I expressed my displeasure. They apologized. I have their assurance that it won’t happen again.”

“It will happen again,” Wilson insisted. “I have to agree with Agent DiNozzo on this. It’s happened three times since we began having these meetings.”

“On each occasion, Angel and Gunn had genuine reasons for presuming that the lady in question was a Kenthian Demon who trafficked in human organs, a Sdenska demon who was looking to lay her eggs in the first available host, or an evil lawyer working undercover for Wolfram & Hart. It was an unfortunate confluence of events that led to…”

“You not getting any sex. Again,” DiNozzo finished.

“And when was the last time your boss let you go on a date?” Wesley demanded. “Isn’t it a little strange that every time you’re sent to do interviews, McGee gets the gorgeous young women and you get the truck drivers? Or that every time you get a girl’s telephone number, you are suddenly required to work overtime until any possibility of her not thinking you have blown her off is gone beyond recall?”

“There are plenty more fish in the sea,” the NCIS agent returned with an assumed air of insouciance that wasn’t entirely convincing.

“Just try netting one, then see how your boss takes it.”

Daniel had a brief memory of Jack sneering ‘Oh, so it’s ‘Shyla’ now, is it?’, of Teal'c trying to come into the bedroom with him to protect his virtue from a ninety pound girl, and Jack brandishing a handgun at a suicidal woman while yelling ‘Move!’. He coughed. “I don’t think we should attribute motives to people that are open to…misinterpretation. Sometimes even a chainsaw through the door is just another way of saying ‘I care’. It’s important to appreciate the sentiment without permitting the over-protective behavior to spiral out of control.”

“And sometimes your boss withholds praise when you deserve it and loads you up with unnecessary overtime because he doesn’t want you having any life that doesn’t revolve around him. And DiNozzo falls for it every time.”

After a look at Daniel to check that he would also advise intervention at this point, Sam Seaborn leant forward. “Wesley, I think you’re indulging in some anger transference.”

“Yeah,” DiNozzo defiantly reached for a cookie. “I’m not the one who keeps sabotaging your sex-life.”

“For the last time, Angel and Gunn are in no way attempting to sabotage my sex-life! They both freely admitted that it was very good for business when I was dating Virginia.”

“We need to talk about equality and respect,” Daniel put in quickly. “Those are the key issues. Everyone in this room knows that alpha males make for challenging friends, but there is a difference between being a supportive friend who recognizes his strengths as he recognizes yours and being…”

“A doormat,” DiNozzo put in, looking pointedly at Wesley.

“I was going to say ‘supine’. I work with a man with very strong opinions and a number of unique skills who nevertheless sometimes needs to be guided towards looking at matters from a slightly different point of view. This takes tact, this takes perseverance, and it takes a strong foundation of friendship. That foundation is the key to everything.” Daniel thought it probably wasn’t the right time to add that it also sometimes involved, yelling, waving his arms, jumping up and down on the spot, or calling Jack an ‘ass’.

“It’s also the problem,” Wilson pointed out with a sigh. “How do you say ‘no’ to someone who has problems of his own, has endured a terrible experience, may not be very good at making friends, and who, you know, in his heart, would probably do anything for you? Well – not making a speech that compromised his principals – but anything else.”

Wesley looked wistful. “Yes, exactly. If a man has saved your life, more than once, if he’s literally run through fire for you and if he is, when you come right down to it, a man of extraordinary nobility and goodness who has struggled to overcome an appalling hand dealt to him by the powers of…”

“Can we have a Swoon Box?” DiNozzo demanded. “So, that every time Pryce starts talking about An-gel and his mythic destiny at least the rest of us know that at the end of the session there’ll be some money in the kitty to buy beer.”

Wesley looked at him narrowly. “This from the man who only last week sat on that very couch and told us all, without shame, that Leroy Jethro Gibbs has no faults.”

“Well, he doesn’t,” DiNozzo insisted doggedly.

“The man has been married three times!”

“Women can be very unreasonable.”

“That’s true,” Wilson put in. “I’ve been married a few times myself. Sometimes it’s difficult to avoid relationships ending in divorce.”

Wesley gave Wilson a withering look. “Well, if you constantly cheat on your wives and fail to communicate with them because you’d rather hang out exchanging snappy one-liners with your high maintenance best friend than be home for dinner, then I’d say, yes, it probably is. I maintain that when a man has been divorced as often as you and Gibbs there’s bound to be a good reason for it.”

DiNozzo rolled his eyes. “And like there isn’t a good reason for a guy to be unmarried at your age?”

“I’m sorry, how old are you again?” Wesley retorted.

The briefest of calculations had no doubt reminded DiNozzo that he and Wesley were around the same age and equally unmarried. “It’s different with me,” DiNozzo insisted. “I play the field.”

“Oh really? When was your last actual date with actual sex again?”

DiNozzo did some more calculations and then made a face at Wesley. “I’m just saying you’ve got Gibbs and me all wrong. We have a very healthy working relationship based on mutual respect.”

“He smacks you around the back of the head.”

“It’s a sign of affection.”

Wesley gazed at him in wonder. “You’d be jealous if he started smacking McGee, wouldn’t you?”

DiNozzo paled just at the thought and then shrugged. “He would never do that.”

Wilson looked between Seaborn and Daniel. “Tell us how you manage your alpha males?”

“Mine isn’t very alpha,” Seaborn admitted. “Some people seem to think he can be smug, arrogant, and pompous, but I’ve never seen it. I think he’s very sweet. Clearly, he isn’t sweet all the time as many of the women he knows seem to end up shouting at him very loudly; oddly enough, even Joey Lucas, who usually communicates through an interpreter. He can be a little quick to react at times, but that’s because his mind moves very quickly. And he’s not always the greatest negotiator but he is a brilliant strategist. I think the key to the success of our friendship is that we’ve always respected the other’s strengths and we acknowledge the other’s weaknesses without being upset by them. They’re just part of who the other one is. He recognizes that I can be impetuous and naïve and I recognize that he can be…” Seaborn seemed to have trouble thinking of a fault he could attribute to his friend and settled on a rather weak: “The things I just said.”

“‘Physician heal thyself’,” Wilson murmured, by no means inaudibly.

“Let’s talk about equality,” Daniel put in. “Jack and I have had our differences over the years, but we’ve always been equals.”

“Well, you’re both human,” Wesley interrupted. “Angel and I have very different skills. I translate, I research, and I sometimes fight demons, but it would be absurd for me to pretend that I am as capable as he is of doing battle with horned scaly creatures spewed from the deepest pit of hell.”

“Complementary skills also equal equality,” Daniel insisted. “I’m not a soldier although I can function, with what I like to believe is a reasonable level of competence, in a military outfit, but my purpose in being on the team is not to do Jack’s job but my own. It’s the same with you and Angel, you’re effectively his Watcher. And you and Gunn are equals, even if he’s…”

“Taller, stronger, younger, and a hundred percent less pansy-assed?” DiNozzo put in.

Wesley glared at him. “Have you been talking to Cordelia again?”

DiNozzo shrugged. “She’s a babe. Unlike you, I have eyes.”

“I forbid you to contact her again. She has quite enough burdens to bear without the complication of a vacuous playboy standing her up because the boss upon whom he has an adolescent crush won’t give him the night off.”

“Oh, and like your relationships with Angel and Gunn is a hundred percent platonic, is it?”

“Certainly,” Wesley insisted, and then frowned. “Well, except for that time when he was dreaming about Darla and continued to have an… while… or that time when Gunn and I had too much to drink and…” Becoming aware of his audience he moistened his lips. “Yes, a hundred percent platonic. And, anyway, Gunn is going out with Fred.”

DiNozzo sprawled on the couch. “Would that be the tall, skinny brunette, with the glasses, who is really, really clever but ever so slightly nuts?”

“I don’t think I like your tone. Please talk about Miss Burkle with respect. Or, better yet, don’t talk about her at all.”

“I think you need to get your head out of one of your demon tea party etiquette guides for long enough to look up the word ‘transference’.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Wesley told him loftily.

“Well, maybe you should ask Cordelia why she thinks Gunn really picked a girl to date who happens to look just like the guy he likes who used to like him until the other guy came back. And no wonder Cordy thinks you’re all gayer than Mardi Gras and mint juleps.”

Wilson grimaced. “Isn’t this getting a little…confrontational?”

“Given that you, Agent DiNozzo, have so little self-respect that you roll over like a puppy waving its paws in the air to get some praise from the man you work for, I think you’re hardly in a position to give out advice.”

“Yes, let’s talk about praise and respect,” Daniel said hastily. “We all know how important it is that we feel valued for what we contribute. Does everyone here feel that his work is valued?”

“Yes,” Wilson put in. “I definitely feel that I have all of my friend’s respect for my abilities as a doctor. He consults with me regularly.”

“Wesley?” Daniel encouraged.

“I think I do occasionally get taken for granted but I think we’re all equally guilty of doing that to one another. We expect Cordelia to carry the burden of the visions, we expect Angel to be willing to take on any danger however terrifying, and they expect me to be able to translate everything and know the answer to all possible questions.”

Daniel winced in recognition. “Ah yes, I know that one.”

“They can’t always grasp that some demon languages take years of study to fully comprehend and that without the resources of the Watchers’ Council I am occasionally left flying blind, knowing that if I don’t solve it no one will because none of the rest of them have even the rudiments of…” Wesley broke off in embarrassment. “Sorry, didn’t mean to whine. It’s just my worst fear – not being up to it. Not doing what I need to do so that we can all do our jobs and hopefully live to fight another day.”

Wilson said abruptly: “I have to tell people that they’re dying. That there is nothing left that we can do. That their children are going to lose a mother or a father, their parents a daughter or a son. I do that more times in a year than most people should have to in a lifetime. And I honestly think the only person on the planet who understands how much that hurts is House. And perhaps that’s why I let him ruin my relationships and take me for granted, because on some deeper level, I know that he doesn’t. Take me for granted. I think I am valuable to him, perhaps more valuable than anyone else in his life, or who has ever been in his life. And that matters to me.”

“I left the Baltimore PD because I didn’t feel that I was making a difference. I felt as if I was trying to empty the Atlantic with a spoon. In NCIS, we get the bad guys. We get them because Gibbs won’t give up until we do, because he makes you want to be the best that you can be, and maybe his methods aren’t always pretty or kind or nice, but they work, and at the end of the day I go home and I know, for the first time in my life, that I’ve done everything I can do to make the world a better place. And that’s because of Gibbs.”

Wesley nodded his head. “Angel is my cause. His destiny, his redemption, that’s what I believe in. I was bred and trained to be a Watcher, to be someone who aids a being gifted – or cursed – with supernatural abilities, whose abilities give them a moral obligation to defend the innocent and the helpless from all the nameless dread out there that most people don’t even glimpse. Without Angel, I don’t have a cause. I’m just someone who knows too much about vampires to ever enjoy a good night’s sleep.”

Seaborn leaned across to whisper to Daniel: “Are we supposed to be affirming them in their dependency?”

Daniel hastily cleared his throat. “Well, I think that’s all we have time for this week. Let’s think about respect in the intervening days, not letting people take us for granted, or failing to recognize our contribution.”

Seaborn waited until the door had closed behind Wilson and the others before murmuring: “Or letting us go to Atlantis?”

Daniel grimaced. “Jack has his reasons.”

“Are they good reasons?”

“Well, they’re…uniquely his own.”

“Did you try holding your breath again?”

“He’s onto that one. He asked in the infirmary and they told him that as soon as you pass out from the oxygen deprivation you start breathing again. Now, he’s feeling pretty smug.” He handed Seaborn another cup of tea. “How about California? Wasn’t there some talk of you coming here to stand for Congress or something?”

“Josh felt that the President might suffer with Toby having to write all the speeches. He felt it was putting an unnecessary strain on the rest of them to break up the White House senior staff in an election year.”

“He talked you out of it?”

“His reasons for objecting seemed sound.”

“You’re not just giving in because he gave you the puppy dog eyes?”

“No…” Seaborn’s certainty faltered a little. “Well, they may have been a factor, but Josh does have good judgment. Sometimes. Not about women, usually, or talking to the press, but…other things.”

Daniel sighed. “Do you think those three are hopeless recidivists?”

Seaborn considered the point. “I think we’re making…some…progress. Small amounts of progress, certainly.”

“Wilson is going to be divorced – again – by the end of the year. Angel is only ever going to need to give Wesley the angsty eyes to get away with murder – literally in his case. And I think DiNozzo actually likes the way Gibbs treats him. I think he’s so screwed up it’s like a security blanket for him.”

“Well, at least you’ve tried,” Seaborn pointed out kindly. “You’ve tried to show them that there is another way to co-exist with an alpha male that doesn’t involve him always getting his own way. And that beta males can do the ‘how could you?’ eyes, too.”

“Wesley is very good at passive aggression,” Daniel said, cheering up a little. “And having someone believe in you that much can be a weapon in itself, as Jack has occasionally pointed out to me in times of high tension. Wesley’s refusal to believe that Angel is anything other than a force for good does in its way exert a powerful influence upon Angel. And, DiNozzo does seem…happy, bizarrely enough, and in his own power-game-playing way I think that Gibbs does appreciate and value him and have a genuine affection for him. Wilson’s a worry. But I just can’t see him agreeing to be transferred to another hospital and I don’t see another escape route for him. If House wasn’t so damaged, there might be more of a chance for him, but when a man’s in constant pain, has no other friends but you, appears to detest all humanity and yet still spends every day trying to save the lives of his fellow man, it’s difficult for a sensitive beta male to resist becoming…emotionally entangled.”

“How are Colonel O'Neill’s knees these days?”

“Not so good. Or his back. He really needs to take some time off.” Daniel wondered if perhaps it was time he arranged another fishing vacation. “He works much too hard.”

A knock on the door made them both look up. Daniel opened it cautiously, hoping it wasn’t House looking for Wilson, Angel, the vampire with a soul, looking for Wesley, or – especially – Gibbs looking for DiNozzo. House was a cantankerous misanthrope with a barbed wire tongue, and Angel had eaten more people than Daniel had had hot dinners, but even Angel waited around the block if there was any sign of Gibbs collecting his agent personally. Some things were scarier than demons and Gibbs definitely qualified. Daniel had, of course, ensured that there was no possibility of Gibbs and Jack meeting up. He thought that something very bad might happen to the laws of astrophysics if they did, and a quick consultation with Sam had not been reassuring. She estimated that the reality might actually start to bend in an effort to get away from itself.

It was with some relief that Daniel saw that the young man standing outside was no one’s alpha male. He had a band-aid half-covering a bruise on his face and looked not unlike a priest who had lost his faith.

“Are you Doctor Jackson?” he asked.

Daniel nodded. “Yes. And this is Sam Seaborn.”

“You run the How to Manage Your Alpha Male meetings?”

“We tend not to call it that, especially in public.” Daniel opened the door wider. “Won’t you come in?”

The young man did so, sitting down when invited to do so, and accepting a cup of tea. He looked decidedly glum and in the light of the living room seemed to have a number of injuries that were still healing in addition to the most recent one. Daniel hoped they weren’t dealing with a case of abuse, as he would then be forced to suggest that hitting the alpha male over the head with a blunt instrument was really the only way to go. Physical abuse from an alpha male to a beta male should simply never be tolerated, unless he was under the influence of an alien virus, obviously, or – he reluctantly conceded – had temporarily misplaced his soul, then it was only fair to say no more about it.

The young man put down his tea. “My name’s Paul Callan. I think I may I have an alpha male problem.”

“How does this problem manifest itself?”

“Well, he keeps things from me. He can be very high-handed about making decisions that he thinks are in my best interests, and he sometimes treats me like a…gifted child he’s responsible for.”

“Surely not,” said Seaborn kindly.

“One time I was in hospital he bought me a teddy bear.”

They digested that in silence, Daniel mentally cataloguing the gifts Jack had brought him when he was in the infirmary, and realizing in some relief that there had been nothing fluffy or stuffed that he could recall. “Well, perhaps you may have a slight problem.”

“And he’s very over-protective.”

Daniel could understand how all of those things could be annoying. “Are you…somewhat accident prone, Mister Callan…?”

“Some people might look at it that way. I’ve had a few hospital admissions recently, the odd concussion.”

“How many hospital admissions?” Seaborn asked gently.

“Well…there was the car crash, the bus exploding, the civil war bullet wound… Most of the concussions weren’t that serious. And the last time when I technically died was a controlled experiment. But Alva’s now acting as if I’m not safe to be let out without a keeper.”

“That can be very annoying,” Daniel said warmly.

“Doesn’t it sound a little as if you’re not safe to be let out without a keeper?” Seaborn suggested.

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Daniel put in quickly. “One can technically die a few times and it not be your fault in any way.”

“You can?”

“Yes, it’s like...losing your footing while sailing. It can happen to anyone.”

“Death is a slippery deck in a high wind?”

“Well, it’s sometimes a staff weapon blast or an alien technology-induced coma or a massive dose of radiation, occasionally a chemically induced hallucination that only gives the appearance that you’ve died. Or, your appendix can burst – something that can happen to anyone – or your perfectly innocent curiosity about an interesting artifact can lead to you becoming temporarily out of phase and invisible to everyone who knows you.”

“I’ve only nearly died twice,” Callan said in some relief.

“Well then, I think your alpha male is being very unreasonable and over-protective if he’s making a big deal out of it,” Daniel assured him. “Would you like to start coming to our Wednesday sessions?”

Callan had brightened up considerably. “I would. I thought Alva was being a…”

“Worry-wart?” Daniel put in.

“Yes. It’s a relief that it’s him and not me. I’ll have to think up a cover story for these sessions or he’ll want to come as well – he’s very curious. I may need him to bring me a few times, too – my car was crushed by an express train.”

Seaborn grimaced. “Were you…inside it at the time?”

“Yes,” Callan looked sad. “I was saved by the intervention of a child with magical healing powers.”

Seaborn blinked. “We don’t get those in the White House very often. But then we don’t get vampires or demons either, even in the House of Representatives. Unless I’ve just not been noticing them all this time, which, now I come to think about it, is a very real possibility…”

“Alva’s very clever,” Callan said, as if regretting some of his earlier words. Daniel recognized the exasperation-guilt-trip reflex only too well from personal experience. “He has his own demons.”

“Are they friends of his?” Seaborn asked in some confusion, perhaps thinking of Lorne, the demon karaoke bar host that Wesley had mentioned, who was apparently half-mascot, half-spiritual advisor to Angel Investigations. Lorne sometimes sent a shopping list with Wesley which usually consisted of lists of arcane magical ingredients, Aretha Franklin CDs, and an extra large order of vodka, grapefruit, and cranberry juice.

“Inner demons.”

“Jack has those,” Daniel sighed. “It’s part of what makes him so complicated.”

“Josh has too,” Seaborn pointed out.

Daniel knew that Seaborn sometimes felt that Josh’s complexity was not being given enough credit in recent sessions. What with House’s constant leg pain and dramatic limping, Angel’s past life as a soulless killer and eternity of guilt, Gunn’s forced sibling-cide, and Gibbs’ cranky obsessive nature, not to mention Teal’c’s years as the servant of a false deity who had forced him to commit murder in his name, and Jack’s time on Black Ops and his continuing guilt and grief over his dead son, he just knew that Seaborn didn’t think it was remembered often enough that Josh had lost his sister and been shot. Perhaps he didn’t have the long black coat, the truck tripped out with stakes and swords, the combats fought on the surfaces of alien worlds, or the patients who would be dead without his intervention, but he had the burden of trying to keep a good man with a bad disease in the White House and that was certainly no picnic. Daniel understood how, to the loyal beta male, his alpha male was always the most troubled, the most complex, the most deserving of devotion and support.

“He speaks dozens of different languages and he can understand demonic text,” Callan added a little weakly. “He’s a good man.”

“Sounds like the perfect date for Wesley,” Seaborn observed.

Callan bristled at once. “I don’t think Alva has any interest in seeing anyone right now. He’s very busy.”

“It might help him if you studied some self-actualization techniques,” Daniel said gently. “You could learn to understand the roots of his anxiety better and be more able to deal with it in a non-confrontational way.”

Callan nodded. “That sounds like a good idea.”

“Can you get home without concussing yourself?” Seaborn asked.

Callan strode towards the door and then hesitated. “I should probably call him. Have him come and pick me up – just in case.”

There was a surprisingly short wait before a handsome eccentric in a battered car arrived to take their latest member away. He waved at them cheerfully before doing up Callan’s seat belt for him in a way that should have been completely exasperating and yet which Daniel had to admit he did find somewhat touching. Not that he would ever have admitted as much to Jack. They drove away with Callan scolding and Alva offering him a bag of what seemed to be mint humbugs.

“Scottish too,” Daniel observed. “He probably would get along with Wesley. He even has a black coat and a vague aura of dangerous unpredictability about him.”

“Angel won’t like that,” Seaborn pointed out.

“Well, he would have to put up with it,” Daniel said robustly. “It might be just the thing Wesley needs to help him stand up to him.”

“Do you think you’re ever going to get to Atlantis?” Seaborn asked.

Daniel considered the point for a moment. “Do you think you’re ever going to get to California?”

Seaborn sighed and sat back down again, picking at a jaffa cake provided by Wesley. “I think the point is that we know our alpha males have faults. We don’t pretend that they’re perfect, like DiNozzo does.”

“No.” Daniel sat down next to him. “We’re well aware of the fact that they’re… although, when you come right down to it, they are what they are, and would they be themselves without those faults, and would we want them to be any less themselves…?”

Seaborn sipped his tea pensively. “Perhaps that’s not a thought we should share in future sessions?”

“No.” Daniel reached for his coffee and a chocolate walnut cookie from the bag Jack had given him as an apology for breaking one of his artifacts. “Perhaps there are some things we should just let them find out for themselves...”


***