Will was thirteen-years-old and in class when he first experienced a heat. Statistically speaking, that was an excellent sign, as most male omegas didn't get a heat until they were at least fifteen. Heats tended to also be less frequent, but the later accompanying period were a lot more painful. None of that particularly helped Will get through it, though, as he found himself more distracted than usual. The days leading up to it had been hardly any better, but now his skin itched and he felt almost hyper-aware of everything going on around him.

To make the situation worse, he then had to go home and tell his father; probably looking like every awkward omega on TV when they came out to their parents. His father had taken it pretty well, though Will could tell that his father had been hoping Will would be beta like him or possibly an alpha like his own father had been. Will had flushed when his father had asked him if Will wanted him to pick up some supplies, and Will had immediately begged the negative. It hadn't stopped him from waiting until almost the last moment to buy them and then grabbing the first two packs that he came across that would work.

The first day of his period was a nightmare. He had cramps, nausea and to top it off, he had to insert and then remove small, bullet shaped pieces of cotton every four to six hours and then line his underwear before going to bed. The fact that Will was a restless sleeper was just a bonus, so he found the pad he had used had somehow become completely useless during the night. This resulted in Will being grateful, for first time he could ever remember, that he was tasked with doing the laundry, as he had to soak his underwear to get the blood out. This led to one cranky, miserable Will Graham, a fact which not even his father could miss and he had called the school to say that Will wouldn't be attending before Will even had to ask. The next day, Will had thought the worst was over, he didn't ache any more, the nausea seemed to have dissipated, and now the sticky, red liquid that his body continued to release seemed the least of his problems.

Then Will arrived at school.

Will had never been fond of school. He had never really been a social creature and the constant pressure wore at him until he wanted to scream some days. It would almost seemed contradictory, that he ached for a friend, but, for Will, it seemed as elusive as food and drink had been for Tantalus. It wasn't that he was the centre of attention or that he was ignored, but no one seemed to bond with him either. It made goodbyes fairly easy, at least, whenever he had to change schools, but until that point, Will had never been the reason they had relocated.

Since the 1920s, omega rights had grown rapidly, to the benefit of everyone and by 1989 there were many laws in place that combated discrimination, including the soon to be ratified rights for couples other than omega/alpha and beta/beta to marry. Unfortunately, there would always be the ones who were slow on the uptake, their parents being alpha/omega or beta/beta conservatives, who would continue to treat omegas as second, or even third class citizens. It didn't help that everywhere they looked there were examples of the hyper asculine alpha, fighting to save the world with their handy beta sidekick, while their hyper omminine, omega love interest would swoon and be generally useless while waiting to be rescued/ the alpha to return etc. and that movies targeted towards omegas were just variations on the alpha/omega romance trope.

The thing about bullying, though, is that you never expect it will happen to you, until it does. For Will, who never felt like he was anything more than background noise, when he became the target of bullying by a group of fourteen and fifteen-year-old alphas, he had no idea how to handle it. After a week he tried to tell a teacher about it, but they passed it off as 'alpha play'and told him to 'toughen up'. Will had heard of 'alpha play', most people had, but it had become a far less socially acceptable practice as omegas started to gain more rights, though it was rarely banned and enforced even less. In its most basic form, it was both a form of peacocking and a way of asserting dominance over the 'weaker'target.

As Will trudged home one day after school, after having to borrow a clean uniform as his own was soaked in red paint, he had never felt more isolated in his life. That evening, over dinner, his father told him he was thinking about looking into jobs elsewhere, since he had run out of jobs to do where they were; despite his talk the week before of a new project starting up. Will was never sure exactly how much his father had known about his bullying, he didn't want to know, but the next school was better and that was all that mattered.

Sometimes Will wonders if it was the conversation that he had with his father, when he came out, that made him decide to go into law enforcement. Historically, law enforcement was made up by alphas and betas, but with the increase in equality, the number of omega being accepted had doubled in ten years and tripled in the ten years after that. There were still those who said that the omegas place was at home, or at the very least in caring and nurturing roles, but Will's mind was different and he could make a difference. So he would go and spend hours looking through criminal histories, mapping similarities, adjusting theories for differences. He could empathise with anybody, that was true, but if he wanted to be the best, he would have to know what made each one different than any other, no matter that the statistics often said the violent offenders were usually the alpha's who have: something to prove; the need to dominate; or purely sadistic reasons. He just hoped that, when the time came, he wouldn't have to deal with the glass ceiling that omegas still had to deal with.

By the time Will got into homicide, he thought he was doing well. He was a better draw than most; he was fast and had a longer endurance; to speak nothing of his record in breaking cases. Then he was put on the Macey case and everything went to hell. Michelle Cooper was just like any other sixteen-year-old, omega girl, but then she had fallen in love with one of her omega classmates and they had begun a relationship. Michelle went to a private boarding school created by the church and one that had a very strict view on same gender relationships. Being expelled would probably have been better than what had resulted when her classmates found out, as they were both tormented constantly.

Three months later her boyfriend hung himself in the gymnasium.

When they finally caught up with Michelle, six of her classmates were dead and at least three were critically wounded. Michelle was standing in her dorm room with a knife in her hand and covered in blood. She wasn't a very large girl and she had curly blonde hair, large hazel eyes and freckles that dusted her nose and cheeks. Will remembers she was crying and his mind and heart went out to her. He tried to get her to put down the knife, attempting to keep his gun trained on her as he did so. Sometimes he wonders if he would have fired if he had more warning, but her eyes changed and she suddenly moved.

He froze.

Then that bloody knife was jammed into his shoulder and he screamed. It was wrenched out of him and he collapsed. Michelle barely made it twelve steps before his back-up arrived and then she was a corpse. The investigation into what occurred in the dorm room revealed that he wasn't capable of performing his duties as a homicide detective and it was suggested that he find a different career choice. He didn't need another hint and handed in his resignation the following day. It didn't stop the up-an-coming tabloid reporter Freddie Lounds from trying to ruin whatever remained of his reputation and he spent the next year fixing boat motors as he tried to work out where to go from there.

Since he was stabbed... no, since he met her, Will had been having nightmares regularly. That should have been enough to convince him that he just wasn't made out for that kind of work, that he was so clearly broken, but the radio, the newspaper, even the television, when he was bothered to turn it on, haunted him. Far too often he found himself half way to standing to get the phone and report a theory on whatever particular crime he was learning about. Giving up, he set his sights on a Forensic Science major at George Washington University graduate school.

For a while, things got better again. He had a goal and was working towards it. Most days he could even forget the ache in his shoulder, if not the dreams and he thought he had a good thing going. It was then, in his graduating year that he decided to over reach and applied for the training program in the FBI. At the start, everything was going smoothly and he wondered if he had found his calling after all. Those thoughts had ended as he saw the expression on the beta who gave his psych evaluation. He must have stared at his marked assessments for hours that night, trying to think of something he could do, or if it was once again, the end of the road.

An email from one of his professors changed everything.

Professor Tracey Wayne had been the one who had reviewed his monograph on Time of Death by Insect Activity and as such, was one of the few people Will spoke to on a regular basis. Professor Tracy was also the only one that Will had spoken to about his failed application to the FBI. That didn't prepare him when he received an application for a teaching position at Quantico, with a recommendation attached, from Professor Tracey and three other members of faculty; two of which, Will hadn't thought would have been able to pick him out of a line up. Despite this, it took Will a full week before he sent it in and by then he was worried he was too late.

When he walked out of building three interviews later, his legs shaking underneath him, he was still trying to process the seven relatively simple words that had come out of the man's mouth at the end of the interview.

'Congratulations Mister Graham, you've got the job.'