Chapter Text
When Greg looks back on it later, he’ll wonder if there were any warning signs. He’ll try to figure out where the fork in the road was. At some point, he’ll think, he took the wrong turn or veered off of the beaten path, and that’s what made him end up where he is.
The conclusion he’ll come to, eventually, is that it all started at Logan’s birthday party. He’d been reintroduced to his cousins, to Shiv, and introduced for the first time to Shiv’s partner, her omega. Greg took one look at him and his wide smile and thought him typical, affable, nonthreatening, eager-to-please.
And then Tom asked Greg to kiss him at a softball game with that same wide smile and he’d thought that he was wrong. Tom wasn’t so typical after all, he wasn’t just Shiv’s omega. He wasn’t docile, content to fade into the background, he was a threat in his own right. If he was an omega, that wasn’t something that would affect Greg’s life, ever, and he couldn’t expect Tom to behave like the omega stereotype.
That’s where it started, he thinks. That’s when he first got caught up in who Tom was, and forgot what Tom was. That’s where it all went wrong.
All Greg knows at the moment is that Tom’s in his dinky little mail room of an office again.
Tom gives him the courtesy of a knock, but he doesn’t wait for a response before he opens the door. Today his greeting is a cheerful “Hey, Greg.” There’s a wide grin on his face as he steps in, practically bouncing on his feet.
Greg shoots back a “Hey, Tom,” without taking his eyes off of his monitor.
“I’ve got some good news, buddy.”
That prompts Greg to look up from the email he’s drafting, wary. At the time, he doesn’t register Tom’s giddiness as something particularly unusual—that’s typical Tom strangeness. It’s the ‘good news’ he doesn’t know what to make of. Things have been shaky as the merger’s taken shape over the past month. Definite news of any kind, especially good news, is hard to believe.
Still, he asks, “Good news?” Despite himself, Greg’s hopeful.
“Yup.” Tom pops the ‘p’ with aplomb. “Great news, even. Hey, you working on something?” He moves closer to the desk to peer at Greg’s screen. “Nothing important? Come with me.”
He’d be offended, but the email really isn’t important. So when Tom retreats and beckons Greg to follow, Greg does. Tom walks at a brisk pace, with an authoritative stride and a sense of determination that pre-emptively discourages Greg from trying to ask any clarifying questions.
They navigate through the maze of hallways and start to walk past the really nice offices. Nicer than the one Greg used to have, even. That little spark of hope in him is threatening to catch fire. Is the news…?
When Tom stops at the door of an empty office, opens it and ushers Greg in, he lets the spark ignite.
“Is this… mine?”
When Greg dares to meet Tom’s eyes, Tom is grinning again. “It’s yours!” He gives Greg a congratulatory clap on the shoulder. “Fancy new office, fancy new job title. You’ve been toughing it out the past month, but it’s time to reap the rewards.”
“Holy shit.” It was actually good news. Greg can’t stop himself from smiling back, taking a look around. Big windows, lots of space, a couch in the corner. He practically flings himself into the desk chair, and is delighted to find it much more comfortable than the rickety contraption he’s been using for the past month.
Tom perches himself on the side of the desk to look down at Greg, obviously amused by his reaction. “You don’t get an office this nice just to sit around and do nothing, Greg,” he warns, but the fact he’s still beaming lessens the impact. “You’ve got new responsibilities too. Don’t get too comfortable.”
“Right, sure.” Greg is actually pretty sure all the high-level people with offices this nice are sitting around doing nothing maybe three-quarters of the time. “It’s just—wow. This is really nice, man. That, like, mail room was kind of not great? For multiple reasons? But this is.”
He leans back in the chair, trying and failing to come up with an appropriate adjective. “Yeah.”
There’s no comment from Tom, no jumping on the opportunity to ridicule Greg for being stupid or easily impressed. Greg waits a beat, wondering if Tom’s just taking longer to come up with something. Nothing. Tom just keeps looking at him, smiling. His expression is almost… fond, Greg hesitates to call it, like he’s staring at a puppy or something.
It’s a little strange, but Tom seems like he’s in a pretty good mood, so maybe he’s just being nice for once. Greg is enjoying the absence of insults too much to question it.
He uses the silence to mull things over, come up with something else to say to fill space.
A thought occurs to him. He straightens up in the chair, which only makes a slight squeaking sound. “Hey, if I’m getting like, a promotion, does that mean I’m gonna get my own, um, Greg? Like, an assistant?”
“Hm?” Tom blinks, like the question took him by surprise, then he frowns and refocuses. Maybe he was thinking about something else, and that’s why he went quiet. “Already planning to offload your work onto some hapless intern, Greg?”
He quirks an eyebrow. Greg chuckles weakly; there’s the normal Tom banter. “Yeah, we can get you one,” Tom continues. “Greg two-point-oh. Your own Mini-Me.”
There’s something a little off about the way Tom’s speaking. Greg’s not sure what, exactly. His voice is a little slow, a little unfocused, not quite as pointed as usual. The sentence trails off more than it comes to a definite stop, and Tom’s eyes go kind of distant, his shoulders relaxing slightly.
Tom was in such a good mood earlier, it’s strange that something would be on his mind now, but Greg can’t think of any other explanation. He chews on the inside of his cheek and weighs the pros and cons of asking what’s up. Tom could freak out if Greg asks him directly, but Tom could also freak out if Greg just leaves it be. At least in the former case there’s a chance Greg could gain a little more information, which means he might be able to get a handle on the situation before any freakouts occur.
After about ten seconds of silence, Greg clears his throat. “Tom, are you… Is something up?”
Again, Tom seems startled by the sound of Greg’s voice. Again, he frowns and refocuses, squares his shoulders. “Is something up? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You just seem kind of, um, preoccupied? Like, is something bothering you?”
The moment the words are out of Greg’s mouth, he winces. Wrong thing to say. Tom will either dismiss the idea entirely, or he’ll ask, ‘What’s bothering me? Oh, I don’t know, Greg, the fact that I’m in the process of separating from my wife?’
They haven’t talked about it, much. Tom occasionally throws out scraps of information, or lets things slip by accident, or Greg overhears phone calls. It’s definitely bothering Tom, though, of course it is. The days when he’s in a good mood are just days he’s better at burying it than others, when something else has come up to distract him.
They haven’t really talked about the fact that Tom metaphorically killed his wife to metaphorically marry Greg, either. Greg thinks about it, though, and he can’t help but think if Tom did that—maybe not for Greg, exactly, but Greg is non-tangentially involved—then making Tom feel better is kind of the least he can do. So he tries to distract Tom when he can. That means not talking about it, because talking about it might make Tom freak out.
Tom doesn’t freak out. He just frowns, looking confused. “I’m fine, Greg,” he responds flatly. “I’m great, even.”
Then Tom shifts around so he’s not perched on the side anymore, so his legs are dangling over the side of the desk facing Greg. Distance-wise, it’s not a huge difference, but suddenly his presence is a lot more… present. He’s looking down at Greg directly, not craning his neck. He’s leaning in closer, even.
Really close. Greg wonders for a second if Tom is going to kiss him on the forehead again, or if he’s going for somewhere else—
“Are you trying out a new cologne?” Holy shit, Tom is sniffing him.
Tom is scenting him. “You smell fantastic,” he says, the same way he’d comment on the weather.
Tom does and says weird shit all the time, but this is beyond weird. This is actively, objectively inappropriate.
The thing is, though. The thing is that Tom leaning in to smell him means Greg is inadvertently, very much not of his own volition, smelling Tom as well.
And Tom smells kind of, really good? Like, a little sweet and a little spicy, kind of like cinnamon, and Greg’s gotten whiffs of Tom’s cologne before and this isn’t… that. It makes Greg want to bury his face in Tom’s neck, breathe in deeper, open his mouth and—
Oh, shit.
In the next second Greg’s scrabbling backwards, almost tipping over the chair in his hurry to create distance. He finds himself with his back against the wall before he even thinks about it. Tom just watches him, looking confused and kind of unfocused, his head tilted curiously to one side like a dog.
Oh, fuck.
“Tom,” Greg rasps out, trying not to breathe in too deeply, trying not to think about how good Tom smells, “are you—”
Fuck. This can’t be happening. “You take suppressants, right?” It’s a struggle to get the words out, to convince himself this insane situation is real.
Tom answers without hesitation, doesn’t even balk at the extremely personal question, which is pretty much an answer in itself. “Of course I did, but Shiv and I were… trying...”
Some part of that statement seems to get through to him. He furrows his brow. “I… Oh.”
“Oh,” Greg repeats. His heart is going a mile a minute. He can barely hear his own thoughts over the sound of it.
“I guess I… forgot,” Tom says, sounding distant. He’s looking somewhere in the middle distance as he gets up off the desk and takes a step towards Greg. Another. “I must’ve…”
“Tom.” It comes out harsher than Greg intended. Tom stops in his tracks, looks down at his feet, looks up at Greg. There’s confusion all over his face.
Fuck. Proximity to an alpha, scenting an alpha speeds up the onset of heat. Tom could’ve sent someone else to tell Greg about the promotion, could’ve sent him a fucking email, even, but of course he’d come by himself. Maybe it had already started by then, and instinct had given Tom a motivation boost. Told him to seek out an alpha he’s familiar with—but then why Greg, and not—
Greg feels—he bites down hard on the inside of his cheek, clenches his hands into fists. He’s panicking. He doesn’t know what to do. He needs to get away from Tom. He needs to make sure Tom’s safe. Tom’s obviously not thinking clearly, he smelled so fucking good—
While Greg’s been undergoing a crisis, Tom seems to have mustered up enough conscious willpower to take a seat on the couch. He sits there, fidgeting with his tie, eyes fixed on the ground. It’s unnerving to see him so quiet, looking so vulnerable.
Oh. He’s waiting for Greg to make a decision.
Greg knows this: they need—Tom needs to not be at the office. If Tom was conscious enough to take a step back and sit on the couch, does that mean it’s okay for him to head home by himself? No, not if he’s too confused to fucking decide that on his own. And the thought of sending Tom off alone makes Greg feel like he’s been punched in the chest—something could happen to him, someone could—he doesn’t want to—
But he can’t take Tom home, it’s not smart for them to be in close contact right now. Tom has a new assistant, a beta woman, Greg’s pretty sure. Tom’s been positive about her, joking she’s more competent than Greg ever was. Greg can’t even remember her name. Bailey? Billie?
“Hey, Tom.” Greg speaks as gently as he can, but Tom still snaps to attention at the sound of his name.
The sight of that almost makes Greg lose his train of thought entirely. He’s never been the subject of all of Tom’s focus like this before, not with this wide-eyed gaze, not with Tom staring at him so intently. Like he’s hanging onto his every word because he wants to, not because he’s going to pick apart any verbal stumble and ridicule Greg for it. It makes Greg feel kind of...
Shit. Back on track. “Could you, like, call your assistant over here?”
“Blair?”
“Right. Her.”
Tom doesn’t move.
Greg tries repeating the request a little more firmly. “Tom, could you call Blair and tell her to, um, come here? Could you do that for me?”
Easily, way too easily, Tom nods and pulls out his phone, swipes and taps to pull up his contact list. Then he pauses. “Why?”
“So she can take you home, man.”
Tom actually opens his mouth like he’s about to protest, which is fucking ridiculous, that that’s what he’s choosing to use his limited brainpower for at the moment. Greg hurries to talk first. “You can’t stay at the office, not like…” He makes a sweeping gesture towards Tom.
“I have important work to get done, Greg—” Tom starts to stand up from the couch, Jesus, really?
“Tom.” And Tom—fucking flinches, and sits back down, and goes quiet. Shit. Greg didn’t mean to raise his voice. He takes in a deep, shuddering breath, tries to get his heart rate and his volume level back under control. “Call her. Let me talk to her. You have to go home.”
Tom glances down towards the floor, visibly irritated. He looks upset with himself for flinching, for succumbing to instinct. In the next second, though, his expression shifts to one of resignation. It seems to be finally getting through to him that if Greg can make him flinch, he’s not in any condition to be at the office.
He calls Blair.
Greg takes the phone from him and gives her the run-down. She does sound, he’ll admit, more competent than him, definitely much more professional. While he waits for her to arrive, he tells Tom to stay put and plants himself outside the office, guarding the door, arms crossed tightly over his chest.
It’s a long few minutes, standing there alone.
He’s starting to come down from the adrenaline rush when a small woman with mousy brown hair comes hurrying down the hallway. She calls him Mr. Hirsch and asks if Mr. Wambsgans is in the room, and Greg almost forgets that those are their names. He stares at her dumbly for maybe five seconds before he nods and lets her in, watches from the doorway as she approaches Tom on the couch.
In the maybe five minutes that have passed, Tom’s apparently convinced himself again that he’s fine, actually, and he starts to tell Blair about how typical it is for Greg to kick up a fuss over nothing, I don’t need you to escort me home like I’m a Victorian maiden, I need you to ask Mattson’s assistant about that report—
Greg deliberately raises his voice this time to say, “Tom. Let her take you home.”
There’s some part of him buried deep inside that’s darkly pleased to see Tom immediately shut up and acquiesce. Blair fails to react to this so completely that it has to be intentional.
She offers no comment as she walks past Greg out into the hallway. Tom falls into step behind her in a way that’s so uncharacteristically docile, and it makes something in Greg’s chest clench tight.
As she passes, Greg clears his throat and stage whispers, “Can you, um, let me know when he’s home safe? You can ask him for my number.”
“Of course, Mr. Hirsch. Don’t worry.” Her face is carefully blank. Greg tries not to stare too much as she and Tom leave.
God, he feels like he’s just run a marathon. He trusts Blair, he does, but he can’t stop thinking. Imagine if Tom had gotten himself another alpha assistant to replace Greg—he knows, now, he’d always known it wasn’t exactly typical, had wondered sometimes if there was an appeal in it for Tom, to have an alpha at his personal beck and call—imagine if Tom had to attend a meeting, instead of dropping by Greg’s office. The executive floor is almost entirely male alphas, it would’ve been a huge scandal, Tom would be publicly humiliated.
Imagine if Tom, pliant and confused, operating on instinct, tried to go home by himself and ran into someone—if some other alpha put a hand on Greg’s—
Greg’s running half on instinct, too, he’s keyed up and on edge from fucking scenting an omega in heat and then just leaving. There’s no way he’ll actually get any more work done today, but he needs to do something else to clear his head. He’s thinking things—he’s not—
He heads back to his shitty little office, too wired to feel much joy at the idea of finally saying goodbye. He drafts the email he was working on earlier, starts preparing to move all his things, the desk toys and decorations that Tom makes fun of him for.
Blair texts him to say Tom’s home safe, attaches a picture of Tom looking nonplussed by the apartment door as proof. Looking at the notification makes Greg start to feel wired again, for some reason. It takes him way too long to type out a Thanks for your help. After the message is sent, he sits and stares at the wall for maybe two minutes before he’s able to do anything else.
But it’s fine. It’s fine. The problem’s been handled, or at least part one of the problem has been handled.
It’s not long until Greg’s about to leave for the day. Technically he’s leaving early, but without Tom at the office, nobody’s going to miss him.
Only then does he remember part two of the problem. The part where he and Tom live together.
Right up until he walks through the door, Greg can’t decide what he fears more: the possibility that Tom will be sitting there waiting for him, or the possibility that Tom will be gone.
He didn’t get any other messages from Blair, but she seems like a logical, no-nonsense kind of woman. Surely she’d understand that an apartment where Tom lives with an alpha he isn’t bonded to is no place for Tom to spend his heat. She would’ve booked a hotel room and not told Greg about it, because it wasn’t his business.
Why the fuck had they not considered this before? How it looks for them to be living together? Sure, it wouldn’t technically be an issue if Tom was on suppressants, which Greg had assumed he was, and Tom had forgotten he wasn’t. Sure, they’re still claiming it’s a temporary arrangement, that Greg's just crashing there after Kendall kicked him out, despite the fact that Greg keeps putting off looking for a new place. But it’s common sense, basic propriety, and Tom usually hates to be anything but proper. It’s just that Greg forgets Tom’s an omega, the way Tom pushes him around. He doesn’t think about it, doesn’t let himself think about it, because it’s not something that will ever—would ever have been relevant to him. And Tom doesn’t seem to think of him as an alpha, what with the castration comment that accompanied his not-exactly-a-proposal.
Well, it’s too late for that now, isn’t it. Greg holds his breath as he unlocks the door. He opens it slowly, unsure of what to expect, and carefully scans his surroundings.
Tom is curled up against the armrest of the couch, mug of something in hand, dressed down in a dark sweater and a pair of grey sweatpants. Greg’s seen Tom in casual clothes, before, but there’s something about the way he’s sitting and the context of this whole situation that makes it seem indecent. It’s too vulnerable.
He considers the possibility of closing the door, turning around and leaving and getting a hotel room for himself. Tom’s looking straight at him, though, and he says, “Welcome home, Greg,” the same way he would on any other normal day, and sips from his mug.
Greg steps in and closes the door behind him. He doesn’t come any closer. “Hi, Tom,” he says, and the greeting comes out way too soft, skipping past uncertainty into something almost intimate. “How, uh. How’s… you good?”
Tom laughs, but there’s a weird kind of desperate edge to the sound. “I’m a bit more lucid, now,” he says. “Blair force fed me some suppressants. Took Mondale with her, too. It’s too late now to, you know, stop the runaway train, but hopefully I’ll be able to string together coherent thoughts for most of today without a truckload of hormones hijacking my nervous system.”
“Oh. Okay. That’s um, that’s…” Greg looks at Tom again, more carefully this time, and frowns. “Is that my sweater?”
The question is rhetorical. They both know that it is. The sleeves are obviously too long, it’s tight around the shoulders.
Tom takes a long time to answer. “It smelled like you,” he admits, the words coming out in a rush that doesn’t make the implications any less overwhelming. “Greg, can you—stop standing all the way over there, I’m not going to keep yelling at you from across the room.”
“I’m, um. Not sure that’s a great idea?”
“I won’t pounce on you the second you come within ten feet of me. Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not that irresistible.”
Says the guy wearing Greg’s sweater because it smells like him, but Greg decides not to voice this thought. He approaches Tom cautiously, coming to a stop at the opposite end of the couch from where Tom’s sitting. He doesn’t sit down himself.
When Greg takes a deep, shuddering breath, he doesn’t catch any whiff of that cinnamon spice and sweetness, he doesn’t smell Tom’s scent, and that’s… a relief, he thinks. Right.
He’d thought Tom would say something, after Greg got closer, but Tom seems perfectly content to sit on the couch and stare at him. Greg clears his throat. “So. Do you have, like, a plan?”
Tom sets his mug down on the coffee table and leans back, crossing his arms over his chest. “I had Blair book me a hotel room. Nothing to do but coop up and wait it out. Fortunately it’s a Friday, and we’re at a relatively stable stage in the merger, so with any luck I may only have to call in sick for a day and nothing will fall apart.”
“Right. Right, that sounds like, um, a solid plan.” And it does, it’s the sensible course of action, except for the gaping hole in it that is Tom’s presence in his and Greg’s apartment right now. Greg doesn’t know how he’s supposed to point that out, though. “You’d, um, would you be okay? Alone?”
“I’m a grown man, Greg, I can take care of myself. People forget to take their suppressants, it happens, life goes on.”
“No, yeah, of course. But it’s just…” There’s not a great way to phrase this, but Greg is, frankly, very worried, and at the moment that’s taking priority over trying not to piss Tom off. “Going through heats alone is supposed to, like, really suck, like there’s—that condition, right, like the hormonal crash, depression or whatever.” Post-estrus depression, Greg had panic-read maybe five articles on it before he came home. A common psychological side effect exacerbated by the fact that a lot of solitary omegas won’t drink enough water, get enough sleep. “And especially since—you know, you’ll be alone—”
Greg makes a vague, helpless hand gesture because he doesn’t want to say without Shiv or without your mate, doesn’t know which would be worse. He doesn’t have to; Tom tenses up, eyes narrowing.
“I know that, Greg, do you think I’m fucking stupid?” Tom stands up from the couch to take a threatening step forward. “I didn’t want this to happen. I got into the stupid fucking habit of not taking suppressants because I was idiotic enough to think my wife might actually want to have children with me—”
He takes another step towards Greg. “And then I forgot to start taking them again after I stabbed her in the back because of all this merger shit—”
Then another step, prompting Greg to back away. “And now I’m going to have to suffer through my heat without my bondmate, and it’s probably going to make me want to die. And maybe I fucking deserve that for screwing her over the way I did. I know that, Greg. Do you have any other insights to share with the class?”
Tom’s breathing heavily, face red and contorted with rage, but he also kind of looks like he might cry, his last words coming out more choked than furious. Greg takes another couple of steps back and thinks he sees Tom’s eyes shining with tears, threatening to spill over. He doesn’t want to be a dick about it, but it’s kind of giving him whiplash, the shift from placid Tom to even more volatile than usual Tom, and he’s not sure how much of it is hormones.
“I’m sorry, dude,” Greg almost whispers. Tom turns his face away, takes in huge, shuddering breaths. “I’m just—I’m, like, really worried.”
“Well, thank you for your concern, aren’t you just a benevolent little fuck,” Tom spits out, directing his words to the floor. “What do you suggest I do about it, anyway, Gregory? Go crawling back to my wife asking for a pity fuck?”
His head snaps back up, pinning Greg with a glare. “Or are you volunteering to step up to the plate? Hoping to take advantage of my slip-up to get your dick wet? Want to know what it’s like to fuck an omega in heat?”
“What?” Out of anything Tom could’ve said, Greg wasn’t expecting that. He stares for what feels like a small eternity, mouth agape, hands held up defensively in front of him. “Dude, no, Tom—that’s not—why would you say that?”
Tom’s jaw is clenched tight. He still looks like he’s about to cry, a little bit. His glare is turning into something kind of… heartbroken. No, that’s too strong a word. Desperate, maybe, beseeching. Greg’s reminded, dimly, of the safe room incident, and ponders the odds of Tom throwing the mug at him. Non-zero, but pretty low, he thinks.
He thinks. Tom’s the one who brought up the idea. Tom’s here, in their apartment, instead of in the hotel room.
Greg swallows. Like, yes, Tom was absolutely scenting him earlier in the office, but that was just instinct, Greg was just an alpha and in the same room as him at the moment. It didn’t mean anything. Right? Tom doesn’t even think of him as an alpha. Greg barely thinks of himself as an alpha, he knows he doesn’t really fit the mold.
But Tom’s wearing his sweater because it smells like him, and he’s looking at Greg like he’s daring him to say something, begging him to say something.
Greg doesn’t think of Tom as an omega. He doesn’t let himself think of Tom as an omega. He hardly lets himself think about Tom at all, because going down that road just makes him feel feelings that he hasn’t been able to categorize yet, but that he suspects are somewhere in the neighborhood of affection. An entirely inappropriate amount of affection, if he cared to quantify it.
“Tom,” Greg begins, and just like before there’s this shift in Tom’s entire body language as he snaps to attention. And it’s weird, but it’s also kind of electrifying, to know that he’s the subject of all of Tom’s focus like this. “Are you—do you—”
Tom stays quiet, which is fairly damning evidence in and of itself, but it’s not an actual answer to a question Greg hasn’t even asked yet. Greg soldiers on.
“If you,” he speaks slowly, carefully, “wanted me to, like, help, if you were, um. Okay with that, then. I would, Tom. Of course I would.”
For a long moment Tom seems to be completely frozen. Greg’s not even sure he’s breathing. Then, suddenly, all the tension drains out of his body, and he steps back and collapses onto the couch. Tom lets his head fall back and stares up at the ceiling.
Another minute passes before Tom says anything. “I don’t want, or need, your help, Greg,” he mumbles.
“Okay. That’s, like, that’s fine. I was just putting it out there as, you know, an option.” Greg feels his face getting warm. God, this is—“But it is, I guess, kind of… you’re giving me some mixed signals, man.”
“Mixed signals,” Tom repeats flatly.
“Um, yeah. Again, it’s not—it’s up to you, entirely, but, like.” He gestures towards Tom. “You’re wearing my sweater?”
“It’s comfortable.”
“Yeah, but you literally said it was because it smelled like me.”
“That’s—” Tom cuts himself off, rolls his head to the side, facing away from Greg. “When I first got in, I was still, you know.” He makes a circular motion with his hand, pointing towards his head. “I started getting, um, stressed, I could—I thought—I was confused,” he eventually concludes, after that extended struggle. “Looking for… for you. I started rummaging through your shit, like a dog or something, and the sweater…”
“Smelled like me.”
Tom doesn’t acknowledge this. “It, um, calmed me down. Until Blair got some pills in me. And it’s comfortable.”
It’s not a great defense. There’s a weird sensation somewhere in Greg’s ribcage, listening to this, a lingering warmth at the thought of Tom looking for him, being calmed down by Greg’s scent. Instincts are weird, Greg thinks. It’s just instinct, to like the idea of being seen as a calming presence, a protective alpha. It’s not because it’s Tom thinking this, specifically.
That’s not a great defense either, Greg knows.
He decides to let Tom slide on this, anyway. “Okay. For sure. It is pretty comfy.”
Tom hums a confirmation, wraps his arms around himself as if to further reinforce the point.
“But, like, you know, apart from that,” Greg continues, losing confidence with every word, “if you have that hotel room, and if you’re okay with being alone, and you want to be alone, then… why are you here?”
There’s the elephant in the room. There’s Greg, pointing it out with his complete lack of grace and his penchant for putting his foot in his mouth. There’s Tom, still refusing to look at either Greg or the elephant, sitting in silence like they’ll both disappear if he waits long enough.
Greg’s not going anywhere, though, and Tom’s never been great at ignoring him.
“I wanted to see you,” Tom says.
Even though Greg knew that would be the answer, hearing it out loud is still enough to make his heart stop. He can’t even conceive of a response.
“Is that what you wanted to hear, Greg?” It’s probably meant to come out scornful, but to Greg, Tom just sounds resigned. “I had the hotel room booked, my faculties were mostly restored, but I couldn’t make myself go because I wanted to see you. Blair kept trying to push me out the door and I had to threaten to fire her to make her leave.”
The mental image of the much smaller woman trying to physically move Tom is an amusing one. Greg lets it distract him from the other implications until he feels like he can speak again.
“So you wanted to see me,” he says, “but you don’t want me to help.”
Finally, Tom turns to look at Greg, but it’s only for a moment before he covers his face with his hands and groans.
“Fuck off, Greg.” There’s no heat in it. “I don’t want... I don’t want it to be like this.”
Greg waits.
“I don’t want you to help me—I don’t want you to fuck me, Greg,” Tom practically spits out the words, “because you think you have to. Because you’re taking pity on me for making a stupid mistake.”
“Okay.” Greg nods, even though Tom can’t see him, because he’s got too much nervous energy not to move in some way. “Yeah, okay, I get that.”
And that could be that. He could tell Tom to head to his hotel room, coop up and wait it out, and then sit alone in the apartment and figure out how to move on with his life after this clusterfuck of a conversation. He could.
“But if I, like, wasn’t,” Greg makes himself start saying before he can chicken out. “Taking pity on you, I mean. Would you want me to?”
Tom spreads his fingers apart wide enough to peek at Greg, searching his face carefully for any sign of deception. Greg stares back at him, trying to radiate as much earnestness as he can.
After a few charged moments, Tom takes his hands away from his face. “What are you saying?”
“I, um, asked you first?” Greg’s voice has gone a little high-pitched with nerves, and it’s a stupid, immature response. He knows that.
One of them has to answer first, is the problem. One of them has to risk exposing their vulnerable underbelly and handing over a knife. That’s always been the problem. They’ve gotten so used to a world where everyone else would immediately take the opportunity to stab, it’s impossible to believe someone might choose to put the knife down.
“Greg,” says Tom, and he’s already exposed enough, like this, maybe it isn’t fair for Greg to ask him for more. Maybe he’s given up on trying to protect himself any longer. Maybe he wants Greg to take the knife and deal the final blow.
Tom hesitates, and Greg realizes he still isn’t sure whether Greg will hurt him or not.
By now, since Italy, since before that, even, Greg knows that Tom won’t. He steps closer to Tom, and the moment he’s taken one he can’t stop himself from taking more. Until he’s standing directly in front of Tom, who’s looking up at him with something like reverence.
“I want to,” he blurts out. “If you want—I want to, Tom, fuck, I want you.”
For a long time, Tom looks at him, and he looks like he’s about to cry. No, like he’s about to laugh. That’s not right either. Like he doesn’t think this is real.
“Oh,” he breathes. “You mean it.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Okay.” Tom breathes in to steady himself, and then he sits up and beckons Greg towards him. “Yes. I want—come here. You fucking—you unbelievable asshole, come—”
Whatever stupid shit he’s trying to say gets muffled as Greg practically launches himself into Tom, landing with his knees around Tom’s thighs, and pulls him into a bruising kiss. Tom laughs into it, a sound of pure relief as he blindly grabs for Greg’s face, and then he fucking keens when Greg licks into his mouth, obligingly gasps when Greg nips at his bottom lip, and God, Greg really wants to catalog all the sounds that Tom can make. He wants to hear him sob.
When they have to break apart for air, Greg immediately starts nosing under Tom’s ear and tries his hardest to wrap himself around Tom in his entirety, initiating a bit of an awkward shuffle of limbs. Tom’s hands end up trapped against his chest, his face buried in Greg’s neck, and Greg can feel him smiling against his skin, can finally, finally lean in and breathe.
Tom smells so good, fuck, Greg wants to hold him and breathe him in forever. He doesn’t care about anything else, he’ll stay like this for the rest of his life. Tom makes a sound into his shoulder, says, “Don’t say that, Greg,” and Greg realizes he said that out loud. It’s true, though. It’s not even—okay, so he’s distantly aware of Tom’s scent making him horny, but the horniness is not yet pressing. At the moment he’s far more concerned with how nice it is to have Tom’s warmth in his arms, Tom wearing his sweater, Tom wanting to be held by him. Tom wanting him.
He feels Tom’s lips against his neck, mouthing below the curve of his jaw, Tom trying to take off his tie, and now the horniness is a little more pressing. Shit. Wait. They should talk more before things get out of hand. Tom’s chemically-induced clear-headedness will not last much longer if he keeps doing this.
“Wait, wait.” Greg grabs Tom by the shoulders and pushes him back, putting a little distance between them, deliberately trying not to hear how Tom actually, audibly whines at the loss of contact. “We should, um, if we’re really doing this, we should talk. About, like. Boundaries.”
Tom’s pupils are dilated. He licks his lips and breathes heavily, nostrils flaring. “Right,” he says, and blinks a couple times, and doesn’t say anything more.
“So, like. Condoms. Obviously.”
Tom blinks again, but this time he seems to actually regain focus. “Yes. Obviously.” There’s an edge of impatience in his tone, but Greg needs this all to be set out clearly.
“Okay, and, uh—” Tom is staring intently at his lips, and it’s more than a little distracting.
Tom cuts him off. “But I might, um. Ask you to.”
Greg’s head goes completely blank. “What?”
“It’s—obviously this is hardly the ideal time or situation for me to get pregnant,” Tom laughs, sounding a little hysterical, “but, you know, it’s an instinctual thing, and it’s different for different omegas, but for me I have a very strong. Instinct. To, ha, breed.” He ducks his head, digs his fingers into Greg’s shirt. “So I might… ask you to. But it’s not…”
“Oh,” Greg says weakly, unable to form any coherent thoughts when confronted with the mental image of Tom underneath him, begging to be knocked up. “That’s… Okay. I, um, I won’t listen to you.”
“Good. Thanks. Good to make that clear,” Tom mumbles, still very determinedly looking downwards, and Greg can’t laugh at how embarrassed he sounds. He presses his lips together, hard, and tries to get his thought process back under control.
“So, um, biting?”
“That’s fine.”
“...Knotting?”
“I’ll probably threaten to kill you if you don’t,” Tom responds amiably. He recovers enough of his composure to look at Greg again and quirk an eyebrow.
And that’s another mental image, fuck. “So that’s a yes. And, um, no bond, of course.”
Tom stays quiet for a couple seconds too long. “No bond,” he agrees, and then chuckles. “You’ll have to take me to dinner first. God, imagine how that would look.”
Greg’s surprised Tom’s able to joke about it. He’s right. It would be fucking insane, for one, but it would also be a complete nightmare if Tom showed up to work on Monday carrying a new alpha’s scent around when his separation from Shiv isn’t public knowledge yet. The fact he hasn’t been carrying Shiv’s scent around is implicating enough already, but not necessarily incriminating. It’s not that atypical, for high-profile, high-powered couples.
If there’s a small, dark part of Greg that wants to do it, anyway, that wants people to know Tom’s his, it’s a very small part of him, and one that’s very easy to ignore.
“Okay. Um, is… I think that’s everything.” The finality of the statement floods Greg with anxiety. Shit, he’s nervous. Fuck. They’re actually going to do this.
“Yes, Greg, I think we’ve pretty much covered it.” Tom hums, and leans forward to nose into Greg’s neck at the same time as he presses a hand against the front of Greg’s slacks. Greg makes a choked noise and clutches onto Tom’s shoulders. “Now that we’ve established how I’d like for you to have sex with me, I would very much like it if we could go to bed so you can have sex with me. If that’s alright with you,” he tacks on sarcastically, running his fingers along the outline of Greg’s cock.
“Yeah,” Greg manages to gasp out somehow, “that’s, fuck, that’s fine.” And Tom laughs, indulgent, and tips his head up to kiss him.
Between the couch and Greg’s bedroom—because his is closer—Tom manages to divest Greg of his tie, jacket, and shirt, but Greg is reluctant to take his sweater off of Tom. He rucks it up so he can get his hands on him as a compromise, map out the planes of his chest and stomach, but when he’s got Tom underneath him on the bed, grinning and trying to get into his pants, it starts to seem a little silly. Tom wearing his sweater is inconsequential compared to the idea of Tom naked underneath him, wanting him. He bats away Tom’s hands for long enough to pull it over his head, mussing up his hair in the process, and then he has to lean down and kiss him again, tell Tom how fucking gorgeous he is, how good he looks, how good he’s going to feel.
Tom moans and grinds up into him, chokes out a desperate little “please” and renews his efforts to get a hand on Greg’s dick, managing to fumble open Greg’s slacks and get a hand into his boxers. When he wraps his fingers around Greg’s cock he’s the one who lets out the louder moan.
“Need you,” he gasps into Greg’s mouth, and there’s no way Greg can say no to that.
He demonstrates his agreement by getting Tom’s sweatpants off of him and can’t help but make a noise of surprise when he looks down. “Fuck, you’re wet.” Tom’s thighs are slick and shaking, his cock straining against his damp briefs.
Theoretically, Greg knew Tom would be like this, but it’s another thing entirely to see it. He’s not sure what well of confidence he draws from to say, “You want me that bad, huh?” but he doesn’t have the brainpower to be embarrassed; Tom immediately nods and babbles confirmation, I want you, please, lifts his hips up so Greg can slide his briefs down and free his leaking cock.
Red sequoia, he thinks dimly, sitting back on his heels to get a better view, and idly wonders what it’d be like to get his mouth around Tom’s dick. Wonders if Tom would be into fucking him, when he’s not in heat. He seems like he might be into the role reversal thing, Greg certainly is—but that opens up another set of implications entirely, and at the moment he’s surrounded by Tom’s heady scent, and Tom is begging, non-stop pleas of please and Greg and fuck me, which is a much more immediate concern.
He does palm Tom’s cock, mostly out of curiosity. He wants to know the feel of it in his hand, wants to know how Tom squirms when he uses his thumb to smear precum over the head. The groan Tom lets out is more frustrated than anything, though, and Greg knows, animal instinct, that it’s not what Tom wants. What he needs.
When he finally presses in a finger the slide is so easy. Tom’s scent is so strong it’s making his head swim. It’s difficult to think of anything except how it’s going to feel when he fucks him, the slick heat of his body. Tom shudders and starts chanting yes when Greg adds another finger, and then he pushes back and sobs when Greg crooks them, spreads Tom open for him. On impulse, Greg leans in to taste, to press his tongue against the rim, and Tom yelps.
“Greg,” Tom gasps, “Greg, you fucking, beautiful piece of shit—need you, need your cock—”
He sobs again when Greg removes his fingers, and Greg can’t resist the urge to kiss him, to swallow the sound, pushing Tom’s own slick into his mouth. They’re both dazed when he pulls back. Fuck, there are tears caught in Tom’s eyelashes; he looks beautiful like this, desperate and helpless.
Greg feels like he’s losing his mind as he shoves his pants off, retrieves a condom, fumbles with the wrapper and puts it on. The entirety of his world has narrowed down to Tom. He can barely process how hard he is himself, how his hands are shaking.
Tom is staring at him, mouth agape. When Greg tells him to turn over, he’s taken aback both by the growl in his own voice and the way Tom immediately obeys, face down, ass in the air. He grabs Tom’s hip with one hand, distantly aware that his grip is probably tight enough to bruise, but he can't bring himself to care as he lines himself up and finally pushes in.
It’s taking every ounce of his self control to go slow. “Fuck, Tom, you feel so...” Fucking perfect, hot and tight around him, and Greg’s fucked an omega before but not like this, never like this, the haze of heat and hormones giving everything an unreal quality. Tom begs for more, Greg, fuck me, half-muffled by the mattress, and pushes his hips back. He’s ready, he needs it, but Greg doesn’t want to hurt him, wants to be able to savor this feeling before he loses his mind completely.
When he bottoms out, Greg feels insane. He leans forward to rest his forehead against Tom’s shoulder for a moment, exhales a shuddering breath. Tom lets out an impatient sound beneath him.
“Fuck me,” Tom breathes more than says, “Knot me, Greg, cum in me—”
His words are cut off by a low moan as Greg thrusts into him, once, shallow, and the sound of it—the feeling of Tom clenching around him—God. He sinks his teeth into Tom’s shoulder before he can think about it. Tom doesn’t even flinch, he just sighs, a pleased exhale.
That's all the encouragement Greg needs to start fucking him properly, snapping his hips forward into hard, punishing thrusts, and Tom’s already past words. Choked little sounds get punched out of him with every thrust, halfway between moans and sobs. He’s distantly aware of Tom moving, getting a hand around his own cock, stroking himself desperately. It’s hard to process anything other than the sensation of being buried inside Tom, the all-consuming pleasure of fucking his omega into incoherence, biting him, marking Tom as his.
He’s not sure what possesses him, some ungodly mix of instinct and lust, but he grips Tom’s hips tighter and drops down just enough to whisper in his ear. “Look at you,” Greg mutters, “so fucking perfect for me, you were made for this—should’ve, fuck, bent you over my desk, fucked you right then and there.”
It’s insane to even imagine, he knows it, but Tom is just moaning louder, pressing back more insistently— “Should’ve filled you up and sent you back out with cum and slick dripping down your thighs—you’d like that, huh? Everyone knowing you’re a slut, that you’re mine—”
Tom cries out and shudders and cums, clenching around him and collapsing forward onto the bed, boneless. He breathes out, “Yours,” sounding like he’s barely even conscious of it, and, God, just that one word.
Greg fucks into him faster, deeper, chasing his own orgasm, barely able to register that Tom sounds like he’s properly sobbing, now, wrecked and overstimulated, a constant stream of words pouring out from him that he can’t seem to stop.
“Come on, come on—knot me, Greg, fuck, I can take it—you better, fuck a baby into me—get me pregnant, I want—”
Greg bites down on the back of Tom’s neck as he cums, pulsing inside him. Tom keens at the feeling of the knot swelling, pushing him to the limit, tying them together. If Greg imagines what it might be like to actually cum inside Tom, fill him up like he’s begging to be filled, knock him up and mark him so everyone knows he’s claimed, that’s between him and God.
When he comes back to awareness he’s panting, face buried in the nape of Tom’s neck, flattening him into the mattress. He probably should feel kind of gross and sweaty, but he just nuzzles into Tom and breathes in deep and feels overwhelmingly satisfied, almost giddy.
He presses a kiss against Tom’s neck, where he bit him earlier, and Tom mumbles something inaudible. “You okay?”
Tom turns his face to the side so his voice isn’t muffled by the mattress. “Greg,” he says, “I feel fucking fantastic.”
It occurs to him that he’s probably squashing Tom and making it hard for him to breathe, even if he hasn’t complained yet. He rolls them over onto their sides. Tom makes a strained noise and squirms a little as this means Greg’s knot shifts inside him, and Greg’s kind of irritated that the sound makes his dick twitch, because he is not ready for a second round. He just wants to wrap an arm around Tom’s waist, mouth the curve of Tom’s shoulder. It’s nice.
One of Tom’s hands comes to rest on the arm Greg slung over him, squeezing gently. “I should ride you next time,” he muses, voice slow and sleepy, and Greg fights the urge to tell him to shut up, don’t say that now. “Want to kiss you. See your face.”
Greg hums acknowledgment. “Good idea.” Next time, he thinks, stomach clenching. “Um, so how long do you think it’ll take for…”
“Greg, do you not know how long it takes for your own knot to go down?”
“No—your heat, I mean,” Greg splutters, flushing.
“Oh.” Tom chuckles, still sounding sleepy and indulgent. “It’s easiest with a bond. And if you cum inside me.” He says it so casually, clinically, it should not make Greg’s face get even warmer. “But right now I feel very satisfied, great job, so after tomorrow I think we’ll be in the clear. On Sunday I’ll probably just be a little hornier than usual.”
“Okay. Good to know.” Greg clears his throat. “I haven’t, um. Ever been with someone, you know, during their heat.”
Tom’s quiet for a bit, and then he says, “I’m your first. I thought so.” He sounds thoughtful. “I like that.” Maybe dreamy’s the better word, even though it sounds a bit exaggerated. Tom looks at him over his shoulder through half-lidded eyes, a content smile on his face, and Greg can’t really think of a way to describe it other than dreamy.
“I like it too,” he admits, a mumble into Tom’s shoulder, and if he thinks I want to do this again and I don’t want there to be another omega for me and I don’t want there to be any more alphas for you, that’s something best kept to himself.
Instead, Greg says, “Go to sleep, Tom, I’ll clean us up.” It’s soft, it’s not a command, but he still feels strangely pleased when Tom obeys.
Tom dozes for a while after the knot softens, makes little noises when Greg wipes him down with a warm towel but doesn’t stir. Greg sits beside him in the bed, alternating between using his phone to look at advice articles titled 10 Things to Remember During Your Omega’s Heat and watching Tom sleep. He feels a little embarrassed doing it, but he likes seeing Tom’s relaxed sleeping face, free of all his day-to-day worries, and it seems kind of stupid to be embarrassed about watching someone sleep after you just had sex with them.
When Tom does wake up, Greg makes sure he drinks some water (heat suppresses appetite, but it’s important to make sure your mate stays hydrated) before Tom straddles his lap and rides his cock. It is a good idea; it’s an entirely different experience to see Tom’s face as he comes undone, to be able to drink in every noise he makes, to hold him close and feel Tom’s nails scratch down his back as he thrusts up into him. Afterwards, he manages to coax Tom into the shower before the both of them pass out, exhausted.
The next morning—or, well, they actually wake up closer to noon—Tom insists on sucking his dick, “because if I don’t get your cum in my mouth, at least, Greg, I’m going to go fucking insane.” Greg returns the favor, because he is curious what it’d be like to suck Tom off, and fingerfucks Tom through an orgasm, and he didn’t realize how intoxicating it would be to watch Tom squirm and sob when Greg isn’t distracted by his own pleasure.
He wonders if all heats are like this, if all of Tom’s heats have been like this. It feels like they’re in their own world, where nothing else matters besides the two of them. He kind of doesn’t want it to end. Not so much the sex as the intimacy of it all, the way Tom looks at him like he’s almost divine, the way Greg’s allowed to look at him, too, allowed to say pretty much anything he fucking wants to Tom. Except for the things Greg keeps thinking more often now, the things that are a little too sincere, a little too intimate. He told Tom he wanted him, and Tom said he wanted him, too, but that’s—what does that mean, really, outside of all this?
By that evening Tom is mostly sensible. Instead of demanding Greg fuck him harder he’s demanding Greg cuddle him on the couch, and when Greg suggests eating something he rolls his eyes and only grumbles a little. Tom’s still sensitive to strong smells, but he manages to stomach a bowl of soup and some rice from the Chinese takeout Greg orders, and Greg feels an overpowering surge of affection.
Greg puts on some shitty romcom and they settle in together. Tom’s in another one of his sweaters, curled up towards Greg and idly playing with his hair. It feels less like Greg just agreed to help him with his heat and more like they’re… dating, or something.
When it’s become clear neither of them is really paying attention to the movie—Tom’s face is pretty much buried in his chest as he toys with the hair at the back of Greg’s neck—Greg decides to bite the bullet. He pauses it and clears his throat, prompting Tom to pull back and look up at him.
“So, um, I thought.” Greg clears his throat again, struggling to maintain his courage. “I thought we should talk about, you know, what happens after.”
“Well, we have jobs, Greg, I don’t know if you’ve forgotten.” The remark is snarky, typical Tom, but there’s an undercurrent of nervousness. “I’ll... Obviously, I’ll start taking my suppressants again, and.”
“And?”
“And us, we’ll.” Tom waves a hand between them, but fails to come up with anything to say. “We’ll, um.” He falters. Panic flickers across his face. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Greg.”
Greg takes the hand that Tom’s still holding between them in his own, intertwining his fingers with Tom’s. Tom looks down at their hands, helpless.
“Just, like, be honest with me? It’s—it’s up to you. Whatever you say, it’ll be fine.”
Actually, if Tom says, We’ll forget about this and move on with our lives, and you’ll need to get your own apartment because obviously this doesn’t work, and we’ll only ever be coworkers, not even friends, Greg’s pretty sure he won’t be fine. But he’s also pretty sure Tom isn’t going to say that.
“Greg,” Tom begins, and then he stops. Swallows.
Greg squeezes his hand. “Whatever you say, Tom,” he insists.
“I think I might—fuck me, Greg, but I think I might be in love with you.”
“Oh,” Greg says.
He can’t help it. He starts laughing, and Tom looks stricken, tries to pull away, but Greg holds onto his hand tightly. “No, no—Tom, I—Tom, I think I might be in love with you too.”
Tom makes a choked up noise that sounds kind of like a sob, and leans forward to hide his face in Greg’s shoulder. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Greg,” he groans, “why would you—you’re in love with me? Why?”
Greg doesn’t correct him on the ‘I think’ part, because honestly, he knows that it’s true. “I don’t know. It’s—you’re—I don’t know. It doesn’t really work like that? I just… I do. I am. In love with you, I mean.”
“I’m too old for you,” Tom informs him gravely. “I’m technically still married. To your cousin, Greg.”
“First cousin once removed, technically,” Greg corrects. “And it’s not—I know that, man.”
“If you—if we—nobody could know. For a long time. We couldn’t be bonded. We’d have to be careful, not to be seen.”
“I know that.” Greg ponders it all for a moment, trying to think of the right thing to say. “But I… I still want to. Um, date you? I guess? Do you want to?”
“Do I want to,” Tom repeats, and then he finally stops hiding his face, and Greg can see that his cheeks are damp. “Fuck, Greg, I really do.”
“Okay,” Greg says, and he squeezes his hand again, and leans in to kiss the corner of his mouth. “Then we’ll try. We’ll make it work.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Tom tells him, but he reaches up with his free hand to caress Greg’s cheek and kiss him properly. And it’s different now, with the weight of all the things they’ve said. It’s softer. Loving, Greg thinks.
He starts to push Tom to lie down on the couch, barely conscious of the fact he’s doing it, when Tom’s phone buzzes, startling them both. They freeze. He looks at Tom, whose face is conflicted.
He looks from the phone, to Greg, back to the phone again, and sighs heavily. “I should probably get that.”
Greg nods and pulls back, adjusting his clothes. They do have jobs. It might be important.
Tom unlocks his phone and immediately starts frowning, furrowing his brow. Greg makes a questioning sound.
“Ah.” Tom flushes, avoiding eye contact. “The hotel told Blair I never made it. She was, um, asking where I was. If I was okay. Sent a picture of Mondale.”
“Oh.” Greg had completely forgotten.
“Jesus, Greg, we’ve already fucked it. She knows we live together.”
“I mean, I feel like she seems like the kind of person who can keep a secret?”
“You better hope she can,” Tom mutters darkly.
He glares up at him, but his face is still red, and he’s clinging onto Greg’s shirt, and when Greg starts laughing it only takes a second before Tom starts laughing, too. What a fucking mess. It’s all in the wrong order. Living together before they’re together, spending a heat together with no bond, before they’ve even said ‘I love you.’
Greg wonders, not for the first time, How the fuck did I get here? What kind of decisions have I made in my life?
Tom looks up at him, smiling, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, and Greg knows that he doesn’t regret it. If he had the chance he’d make the same decisions all over again. Right now, he decides to grab Tom’s face and pull him in for another kiss.