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The first time, it’s an accident.
Harvey’s in Chicago closing new business when Mike takes his heat leave and doesn’t know better than to head straight to Mike’s from the airport, intent on taking him out for celebratory drinks. And it might have been okay if Mike hadn’t been so busy he’d missed the signs and started his suppressants too late, if he wasn’t already an entire day into it and just barely scraping by with double-dose suppressants and his own fingers, but that’s just the state he’s in on the other side of the door when Harvey knocks, eventually calls his name in an impatient, demanding way that makes some neglected area of Mike’s brain light up.
“Go home, Harvey,” he manages to call from his place on the couch when Harvey doesn’t leave, voice wavering. “I’ll see you on Tuesday.”
There’s a long beat of confused silence but no sound of footsteps away from the apartment, and Mike holds his breath, perfectly still as he listens.
Mike can tell the second Harvey catches his scent through the door, hears him mutter “shit” and pace a small length of floor near the door. He can smell the answering swell of Harvey’s own scent—like fall woods and expensive cologne. He chokes back a needy whine.
“Open the door, Mike,” Harvey finally says, and Mike does whine then, arousal and the urge to obey making him stand up and get all the way to the door before he even realizes what he’s doing.
“Harvey... please,” he murmurs, sweaty forehead against the cool door, not sure if he’s asking him to leave or begging him not to.
“Open the door,” Harvey repeats, voice just this side of a growl as he adds, “Now, Mike,” in a tone that brooks no argument.
Mike’s hand shakes as he unhooks the chain and twists the deadbolt, and he takes a nervous step back as Harvey swings the door open himself. He steps inside like he belongs there and pushes Mike back against the closed door before he even has a chance to feel self-conscious at the fact that he’s naked, hard, and slick between his legs, slicker still as Harvey presses in close and uses one hand to easily pin Mike’s wrists above his head, inhales deeply where Mike has instinctually bared his throat.
Harvey’s eyes are blown wide and dark as he pulls far enough away to offer Mike a heavy-lidded look, restraint evident in the tightness of his jaw and the way the fingers of his free hand clench into a fist to keep from reaching out to touch Mike’s skin.
“You smell like a pharmacy,” he mutters, looking into Mike’s eyes which are undoubtedly distant-looking, pupils dilated. There are two fields of thought on the use of suppressants, and Mike can guess fairly easily which side Harvey’s on. “How many have you taken today?”
“I’m not sure—three? Four, maybe?” Mike loses his train of thought as he tries to think back to that morning when it had really started amping up, how he’d taken two pills with a bottle of water, and two again when he would have had lunch if he wasn’t so consumed by the heat, and another just before—
“Damn it,” Harvey growls, gripping Mike’s chin and making him meet his eyes again when he looks away. “How long did you think you could keep this up? Those things will kill you in the long run.”
“I don’t care about the long run,” Mike snaps, glaring at Harvey as he struggles briefly against the unyielding hold on his wrists before he sags against the door again. “I just need to get through it. It’ll only really be bad another day, maybe two,” he pants, the feeling worsening just by thinking about it.
“Then you’ve got two options,” Harvey says, and Mike has to force himself to focus, thoughts getting a little scattered when Harvey increases the comforting pressure of his hold on Mike’s wrists. “Either you give me the number of someone I can call to come and knot you the way you so obviously need right now,” Mike starts to protest, gets as far as ‘I don’t need-’ before Harvey cuts him off with just the narrowing of his eyes. “Let me call someone for you, or I’m going to do it myself.”
If Mike weren’t half-crazed with heat and the pure, dizzying alpha of Harvey’s scent, he might have felt embarrassed of the desperate whimper that makes it halfway up his throat before he manages to smother it.
“I don’t—I don’t have anyone,” he admits, looks down and away from Harvey’s eyes, licks his lips as his mouth feels suddenly dry at the continued scrutiny.
“You don’t have anyone now, or you haven’t had anyone ever?”
Mike doesn’t respond, lets his silence speak volumes, and Harvey tilts his head back up again with a surprisingly gentle touch to his chin.
“You’ve never done it naturally, have you?” he asks, sounding a bit breathless, and he already knows the answer, but Mike shakes his head to confirm it. Harvey’s hand goes to his neck, presses there as he leans in closer, their mouths just breaths apart. Harvey’s voice is quiet, restrained as he says, “I can help you, Mike, I can give you what you need. But I won’t force anyone, so you’ve got to ask for it.”
Harvey looks so confident and sure, and Mike’s skin feels like it’s on fire everywhere that Harvey’s hands hold him. Something inside of Mike is clawing to get out, will no longer be ignored, and presents itself in the guttural need in his voice as he breathes the word, “Please.”
Harvey murmurs, “good choice,” before he presses his lips against Mike’s and takes him to bed, makes him come apart in ways he didn’t even know he could, and his knot finally settles the screaming need Mike’s never been able to appease. They spend 2 days all tangled up in each other until Mike starts to come down. And when Harvey leaves Monday evening, heads home with Mike’s scent on his clothes and scratches on his back, Mike feels empty in a way he never has before.
The second time, it’s really a matter of convenience. Really.
Harvey’s own cycle is usually a week or two behind Mike’s and easily handled with a willing beta in his bed for a couple of days. But the overwhelming pheromones of taking Mike through his first real heat forced Harvey’s own rut to come on early the month before, so he knows when he starts to feel his aggression rising and the anticipatory tightness building in his muscles that Mike is also feeling the fevers and cramping signaling his impending heat.
He’s tempted, briefly, to wash his hands of the whole thing; he could give Mike the number for a matching service and strict instructions to get himself some help for this one, then call one of his own beta ‘helpers’ and be done with it. But the thought of someone else gripping Mike’s hips, slotting their fingers into the spaces where Harvey’s had rested, pressing into the wet warmth of him, where only Harvey has been, sets his teeth on edge.
Mike looks confused when Harvey tells him he’s put in for their heat leave, scanning his face with narrowed eyes for any trace of an explanation.
“Harvey, what happened last month,” Mike says, looking around furtively to make sure they’re alone. “I don’t—that doesn’t have to happen again. I’m fine. It’s fine.”
Harvey rolls his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest in a way that makes Mike look obediently downwards before shaking his head and looking back up at Harvey defiantly.
“Who said this time’s for you?” Harvey asks casually, and Mike blinks slowly.
“You? But you’re not due for—”
“I wouldn’t be due for another 2 weeks, if I hadn’t triggered an early cycle by spending two full days last month knotting some needy, virgin omega senseless.”
And yeah, maybe Harvey only said it to make Mike flush that way and suck in a shaky breath, glaring at him and looking around again to make sure no one else had heard.
“That still doesn’t mean we have to—to be together,” he finishes, with a flustered expression and lingering blush on his cheeks. Harvey smirks, taking a step closer that forces Mike to take one back, pressing himself against the wall, where Harvey rests one hand as he leans in.
“Do you have some objection to spending the next three days in my bed, Mike?” he purrs, and he can feel that he’s positively oozing pheromones, predatory instincts thrumming happily at having trapped his prey so neatly. It’s in poor taste to scent this heavily in the workplace, and he’s sure he’ll hear it from Jessica later, but he really can’t bring himself to care. “Because I don’t recall hearing anything last month but begging and those sweet sounds you make when you’re caught tight and hot around my knot. Aren’t you curious to find out what it’s like without half a bottle of supps keeping you down?”
“Oh, god,” Mike breathes, eyes sliding closed, and Harvey can smell the familiar sweet rain and honey scent of him. He inhales deeply, then forces himself to take a step away. Mike’s fingers twitch at his side like he’s resisting the urge to pull Harvey back.
“Ray’ll be here at 6,” Harvey says, voice rough, and he clears his throat as he takes another step away. “We’ll get dinner and then go to my place. We can stop by that shoebox you call an apartment on the way if you need anything?”
Mike rolls his eyes, but nods in agreement. “All right. Six.”
“Now get back to work,” Harvey says, guiding Mike the short distance back towards the doorway to the associate’s bullpen with one hand firmly between his shoulders. He drags his palm a little as he pulls his hand away, a gesture not lost on Mike as he stumbles a little on his first step and looks back over his shoulder with a contemplative look. Harvey’s just marked him as his in a way that even the lowest alpha would be able to understand, and Harvey tries not to think too much about what that means as he turns to head back up to his own office to wait impatiently for the end of the day.
Mike is already beginning to border on feverish when they get down to the car, so they wind up just grabbing takeout on their way to Mike’s place. Harvey won’t admit to anyone that the ten minutes it takes Mike to run up and pack an overnight bag, Harvey spends with his hands clenched into fists at his side, fighting the gnawing urge to give up on going back to his place, send Ray home, and follow Mike’s scent upstairs to take him right there.
When they do finally get to the condo, Mike looks at him from under his lashes, says, “Harvey” in a vaguely desperate tone that gives away how much he needs it already. And Harvey knows the minute he soothes him with a kiss, presses him down into his couch and fucks him face to face just to see the look in his eyes when he comes without the suppressants that first time, that there’s no going back from this. And that doesn’t surprise him as much as it should.
The third time, it’s something completely different.
Mike is still a day or two away from even the early stages of his heat when Harvey texts him, “Come over?” on a Saturday night.
“It’s not time yet,” he sends back, because it’s not. He hasn’t even started feeling the hot flashes or cramps, so he’s definitely not producing slick, or even starting to loosen the way he’d need to be.
“Come anyway,” Is the eventual response, and Mike doesn’t think twice about it before he sends back, “Okay,” and heads downstairs to hail a taxi.
Harvey doesn’t seem any closer to his rut than Mike is to his heat when he gets to the condo, but he lets Harvey pull him into a kiss against the kitchen counter anyway. It’s comfortable in a way they can’t be when they’re at the peak of it, each needing the other. This is slow and intimate, almost sweet in the way Harvey’s hand is on his jaw and Mike’s fingers wind their way into the hair at the nape of Harvey’s neck.
“Not that I’m complaining,” he murmurs when Harvey ducks his head to press his lips to Mike’s collarbone, dragging with a hint of teeth over Mike’s skin. “But I really wasn’t kidding when I said I wasn’t there yet. I’m at least a few days away.”
“So it’ll take a little prep work this time,” Harvey says against his throat, nipping at his neck in a way that makes Mike shiver. “I’ll just have to open you up on my fingers first, make you wet and desperate the old fashioned way.”
Mike’s already half-hard when Harvey looks up with a smirk and a hint of that predatory alpha look in his eyes.
“And then you really won’t be complaining.”
Harvey makes good on his promise, working Mike until he’s loose-limbed and begging for it, letting Mike ride him until his legs start to give out before flipping them and finishing them both with few long, hard thrusts. And when they come, it isn’t like a heat—all gripping, overwhelming intensity—but it’s significant in its own way, pressed so close together they’re sharing the air they breathe, Harvey’s skin sticky with sweat where Mike’s fingers are pressing into his back, looking at each other with clarity, without the haze of pheromones between them.
Mike slips out of bed to clean up in the bathroom after and wishes for a moment he would have had the forethought to grab his bag as he left, filled with the toothpaste he prefers, and the specialty body wash he uses during his heat. Then he looks to the side of the sink and sees a new toothbrush in the holder beside Harvey’s. A new tube of the spearmint-flavored toothpaste Mike prefers is laid out next to the peppermint kind Harvey uses. And when Mike chances a look in the shower, a bottle of the exact brand of body wash he brought with him the last time is on the shelf next to Harvey’s own.
He washes his hands and brushes his teeth, trying not to read too much into it as he grins around the handle. He finds Harvey already half-asleep on what has become ‘his’ side of whatever bed they happen to be in. Mike crawls in the other side with a yawn, smiling when an arm wraps around his middle and Harvey grips his hip, dragging him closer.
“Stay,” Harvey murmurs into his neck, voice heavy with sleep, and Mike isn’t sure if he means the night, through this heat, or forever, but he nods anyway, because the answers would all be the same.