As it turned out, knowing Erik was in heat somewhere else in the building, catching a whiff of him in hallways and the cafeteria where he'd been half an hour before had nothing on having Erik walk into Charles' office, shutting the door behind him and closing the window blinds before peeling off his wristbands and letting his scent fill the room.
It wasn't like Charles had never been around an omega in heat before—but he'd certainly never been in this kind of proximity before, and he'd never fucked anyone who wasn't on suppressants. He didn't intend to now, either, at least not right this second, but it was hard to remember why with the pheromones flooding the air.
"Something about being at work," Charles said out loud, which jogged his memory. "Erik, we can't do this here. We're going to have to wait."
"It can't wait," Erik said, unbuttoning his shirt. "Six months from now, I want to be six months pregnant, not waiting on my heat so we can try again."
Charles had meant they should wait until tomorrow, or later tonight after they'd clocked out and gone someplace that wasn't their workplace, such as his apartment. Erik's heat would last for at least four or five more days. There wasn't any rush. They didn't have to do this right this minute.
But, even with everything now running smoothly downstairs, their boss wasn't likely to allow them to leave for a few hours yet, just in case there was yet another breakdown to deal with. Charles had been resigned to spending the next few hours twiddling his thumbs, refreshing his work email, playing games on his phone, and trying not to think too much about the sex he'd hopefully be having later tonight. Now, even if he talked Erik out of taking off his pants—and God, there went his belt, and even through the haze of arousal from the rest, there was still something about that that went straight to Charles' hind-brain—well, he was just going to end up masturbating anyway, wasn't he?
Off came Erik's pants, shoes, socks, and underwear. Charles had never seen anyone undress so quickly and efficiently. Or maybe it was just that he'd never felt quite this dazed watching someone else get naked. Erik certainly was hung, for an omega. Erik was certainly giving him an impatient look, as well.
"All right, I guess we can. Give me one second," Charles said, fumbling with his own belt buckle. It took longer than it should have to undo his own fly and shove his trousers and underwear down his thighs, the sheer intensity of his arousal making his fingers nearly as clumsy as his faculties. "Come here, then."
If he'd had room to feel silly, he would have, sitting on his pants with his shirt still on while Erik was completely naked—but he didn't have room for much other than noticing that he had a full erection already. That was unusual; he only hoped it was a good sign he'd be able to grow and maintain a decent knot, too. (He'd often had trouble in that area, but his doctor hadn't wanted to prescribe him anything new since he didn't have any experience trying to knot an omega who was in season. She had seemed to think it would probably work itself out, and that if it didn't, well, that's when they could try one of the medications that came with warnings like "if you become stuck inside your partner or any object for more than five hours, go to the emergency room immediately.")
"How are we doing this?" Erik asked.
It was a good question. Luckily, Charles had fucked and even knotted people in his chair before, so he had some idea of what was and was not possible/comfortable. After a moment, he could even remember how that went, enough to even explain it coherently. "You're going to have to face the other way—your back to my chest. Otherwise you'd kill your lower back, having to stay in position for that long."
Charles usually liked a decent amount of foreplay before the main event, but he probably would have screamed if Erik had done anything but sit in his lap at that moment. It took a little maneuvering to line everything up, but once they did, Erik finished sitting, taking Charles in to the hilt, a distant sense of heat and wetness around him which seemed many times more exciting than it usually did.
Erik's movements were awkward and jerky at first, his efforts to ride Charles curtailed by the angle until he grabbed the arms of Charles' wheelchair and used them to brace himself as he moved up and down. For his part, Charles set his hands on either side of Erik's waist and held on, transfixed by what he saw when he looked down, his wet cock moving in and out of Erik's body. He was so fascinated by the sight that it took him a while to process the sounds Erik was making, grunting every time he came back down again, sheathing Charles inside his body.
"You're lovely," Charles managed after a while. "You're incredible—my God."
"Shut up," Erik said, in the same old familiar 'ugh, alphas' tone he used every single time they disagreed about anything or Charles said anything Erik felt wasn't appropriately dispassionate.
Normally, Charles would have protested. In any other situation, he'd have pointed out that it wasn't like Erik could go anywhere now, so Charles could say whatever he liked. But suddenly, he felt so paranoid that Erik might leave—that he might get fed up and go away, before they'd even tied, and find some other, quieter alpha to sit on—that he didn't say anything.
Charles didn't always ejaculate. He didn't always receive any warning when he was going to. But this time, it would have been easier to remain unaware of an oncoming train from the middle of the tracks. "I'm going to—" he said, just before it hit him, and pulled Erik down, as close and as far inside as he could get.
"Please, please," he murmured, his face pressed into Erik's back, praying his cock would do what it was supposed to do now. Please don't soften. Please don't swell up halfway and then stop, big enough to be annoying but not big enough to hold them together. Please don't—but then he felt it, a steadily building pressure, faint but there—and he didn't know which parts of it were his knot growing and which parts Erik squeezing around him, but whichever was which, it was more than had happened any of the other times. It went on and on, for a good three or four minutes, Erik fidgeting and muttering on top of him. Right as the pressure was nearly to the point of discomfort, it stopped where it was at. It was clear from the soft tug Erik tried a moment later that got him nowhere that they were well and truly tied.
"Well," Charles said, starting already to feet more clear-headed now that'd he'd come—though he was surprisingly no less aroused. It had to be something about Erik's heat, specifically; knotting itself had never seemed that sexy in the past, and Charles had often been relieved when he couldn't. "This is something."
He could hear Erik rolling his eyes. "It's what we agreed on, that's all. No need to get sentimental about it."
"Who's sentimental?" Charles asked, although, really, now that he thought about it—he'd never considered knotting all that interesting before, but chances were incredibly good that another small person was going to come out of what they were doing right now. The longer they stayed like this, the better the chances, which were already pretty damned high. This wasn't just sex; this was breeding. This was he and Erik, probably making a baby together—almost certainly making a baby together—just as Erik had proposed months ago. This was them making a baby for which the joint custody agreement had been finalized over three weeks ago ago. It hadn't felt quite real to Charles until now, that was all. "I'm not sentimental. Maybe it's you." He ignored Erik's scoff as he wrapped one arm around Erik's middle, pulling him to lean against Charles' chest. Then he reached for Erik's enormous cock, still erect against his stomach. "Yes, I think it's you. God. Are you sure you're not actually an alpha?"
"Pretty sure," Erik said dryly. "I've never heard that one before, either."
But he didn't protest the hand job, and when he came (dry, which came as a surprise to Charles even though he'd known, intellectually, that Erik wouldn't ejaculate while in heat) a few minutes later, he clenched even more tightly around Charles' knot.
"Mm," Charles said, trying not to sound too sentimental, or blissed out on hormones, which was difficult since he was still more blissed out on hormones than he could recall ever having been before. "You smell so good."
"Ugh." Erik was clearly resisting the urge to tell Charles to get away from him with his alpha feelings and alpha hormones and alpha everything, stopped only by the knowledge that that wasn't going to happen for at least the next fifteen minutes. Well, that was fine. Charles didn't care if Erik thought being tied was annoying. It had been his idea in the first place, after all.
"So good," Charles said again, feeling oddly stuck on that, possibly because his nose was still pressed in between Erik's shoulder blades. "We should do this again sometime. Like tomorrow, say. Or every day. Every day sounds good. You'll be in heat every day, right?"
"I'll think about it—but only if you shut up right now."
"Okay." Charles took another deep whiff of Erik and sighed. There was really no point in trying to make the sigh less contented, not at this moment, and he leaned into Erik and closed his eyes to wait out the rest.
****
The next day, Charles thought he was prepared to see Erik again. A little embarrassed at the way he'd acted the entire time they'd been tied, sure—he'd never thought of himself as a slave to his hormones, had always thought of himself as being above all that, but, well. He'd never been in that situation before either. He hadn't been prepared. He would be prepared the next time, though, when they went to his place after work tonight, which he was relatively certain Erik had agreed to in between the fourth and fifth times he'd told Charles to shut the hell up.
But he didn't see Erik nor pick up his scent all morning, and when Erik slipped into his office again around lunch time, he didn't add anything new to the mix. Charles had had a window open all day trying to air his office out, Erik's heat and Charles' musk all wound up together, all still much too strong for Charles to concentrate on actually working. He'd been half-hard all morning as a result, which had the potential to be very awkward if he happened to get a full erection during a meeting.
Charles had thought it was just the hormones that had caused his reactions to Erik the night before. Just hormones, a not-abnormal reaction to a situation he hadn't ever been in before. But now Erik didn't smell like anything much, yet Charles' chest still ached a little to look at him, to know they'd been bound together in this very room not even twenty-four hours ago.
"You're out of heat already?" he asked. "Does that mean you're—"
"Yes," Erik cut in. "I won't know for sure until after my doctor's appointment, but it's a good sign."
The way Charles was feeling right now wasn't hormones, couldn't be. Maybe it was instinct. That had to be it. He'd never impregnated anyone before; he was bound to feel protective going forward. But he wasn't going to drag Erik back to his apartment and bolt him inside until he went into labor. Going full-on cave-alpha would be taking it a bit far.
"Well, then," Charles said, with not a little wonder, and choking up a bit. "That's wonderful."
Erik rolled his eyes. "That's all I wanted to say. I'm going back to work now. I'll let you know if anything else happens that you need to know about."
"Wait!" Charles dug out his wallet, pulled out a couple bills. "I know you usually eat out of the sandwich machine here, but—go for something else today, would you? It's on me. Sean got food poisoning out of that thing last week."
He waved the bills at Erik, who gave him a flat look and made no move to take them.
"Food poisoning can't be good for pregnant people," Charles pointed out. "Just take it. I swear this is not irrational."
Erik took it. And as he left, Charles heard him muttering, "Fucking crazy alphas, not even my mate, can't believe this shit, what the fuck."
Well, Charles thought, the next nine months were certainly going to be an adventure.