Chapter Text
The car is already too overstimulating for Will’s liking.
This isn’t exactly a surprise. Lots of things are overstimulating for Will when he’s carrying a pup three months in. The pregnancy has changed his sensitivity to smells and thrown his hormones for a loop. Some days he cries at the most minor inconveniences, and he can’t stand the mingling scents of other alphas and omegas around him at work. He comes home with a raging migraine and an even more irritable attitude that puts Mike to work as he tries to soothe his omega. Will always feels bad the next day, because Mike’s been handling his pregnancy with the patience of a saint, but sometimes his alpha wakes up with particularly deep bags under his eyes and extra lines of worry on his forehead from the hours he spends fretting over Will.
“I’m fine,” he insisted when Will brought it up to him once. “It’s nothing a good night’s sleep can’t fix. I just want you to be happy,” he said, kissing Will with a tenderness that wrapped around his worries and soothed them like a salve. “And comfortable,” Mike added, hands wandering to Will’s belly.
“I am,” Will said softly. “I always am, with you.”
Other days, the pendulum of overwhelming emotions swings in the opposite direction. Today might be one of those days, he thinks, because being in the car with Mike is a different type of overstimulation.
Riding in a stuffy car on a hot July morning with Mike, who was currently on the phone with his boss — and getting pretty pissed about it too, judging from the snippy remarks he’s delivering into the receiver — meant being stuck in a vehicle where Mike’s scent was infused into every particle of air Will breathed in. Even if Will were robbed of all his other senses, he’d be able to detect his alpha’s irritation, because the citrus in his scent always took an astringent turn. To any other omega, the bitterness would ensure a ten foot radius away from Mike, but there must be something seriously wrong with Will, because he’s always loved it. The romantic part of his brain likes to think it’s because they were fated to be mates; you simply can’t hate something destined for you. The other (arguably hornier) part of his brain is just happy 90% of their arguments always end in make-up sex after Will gets a whiff of Mike angry as all hell.
His pregnancy hormones must love it too, because lately, it’s all he can do not to spread his legs and beg for Mike’s knot when he smells him.
And right now, there’s something so heady about Mike’s anger. The citrus is sharp, and the cedar is so resinous, it’s practically an aphrodisiac to his nose. He’s already thinking of the countless times he’s snapped at Mike just to piss him off, to smell the bitterness wafting off of him that hints at a promise of getting railed into the mattress until he forgets his own name.
It would certainly explain why he’s leaking slick into his underwear. The seatbelt rubbing up against his nipples, that have gotten so sensitive lately, doesn’t help things.
It just doesn’t make sense, he thinks as he rolls down the window to diffuse the scent of arousal that’s most likely leaking out of his pores. They had sex this morning. What more did his body want?
And it becomes a common occurrence the further along he gets in his second trimester — that is, Will slicking up over Mike doing something as stupidly simple as breathing. The other day, he walked in on Mike clacking away on his PC, eyebrows knitted together in deep concentration. An innocuous expression, Will knows this perfectly well. But apparently being pregnant reroutes the synapses in his brain to send signals directly to his slick glands, because the only thing he could think of in that moment was seeing that exact same face hovering over him the other night as Mike entered him, desperately trying not to blow his load too early.
A heat had swirled in his gut so searing hot he’d thought it was a phantom contraction. Nope. Just those good old pregnancy hormones.
In a book that’s sitting on their coffee table, aptly titled What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Will tabbed a chapter called “2nd Trimester: The Honeymoon Phase”. According to Heidi Murkoff, he can say goodbye to morning sickness (thank God) and say hello to, well, increased everything in the second trimester: increased appetite, increased energy, increased libido. And indeed like clockwork, he found out why the second trimester was called “the honeymoon period”.
Telling Max about his crisis over the phone required a level of mental strength he hadn’t exercised in ages.
She’d sighed at him after his rant. “Okay, spare me the details, but I have to ask – is Mike annoyed by how much you want to jump his bones?”
Will flushed from head to toe. “Well, no. He’s actually very-” she cut him off with a wince, and he rolled his eyes. “No, he’s not annoyed.”
A beat passed. “So then what’s the issue?” Will didn’t need to be standing in front of her to be able to picture the deadpan face she was making.
“It’s not an issue,” Will protested weakly, voice going up a few octaves. “I’m just saying, it gets a little overwhelming sometimes. Like, it hits me so hard- don’t laugh at me! It hits me so hard, I feel like I’m going crazy,” he said, twirling the landline cord around his finger in an effort to distract himself from the embarrassingly vulnerable statements he was making.
“Ah,” Max mused, turning thoughtful. “I see.”
“And sure, Mike might not mind it right now, but what about a few weeks from now? What if it gets to be too much?” What if I’m too much? is what gets stuck in his throat, but Max had always been skilled at reading between the lines, and judging from the soft cluck of objection over the phone, she’d successfully decoded his words.
“Will. Listen to me carefully.” A shuffling sound crackled through the receiver as she presumably adjusted the phone tucked between her ear and her shoulder. “Nothing about you could ever be too much for Mike. Alright? Like seriously, I don’t think a crowbar could pry him off of you, he’s so,” she sighed in exasperation, like allowing Mike to take up too much real estate in her mind brought her incredible anguish, “disgustingly in love with you. A case of the randies isn't gonna send him running for the hills.”
The conversation wasn’t completely futile, if its job was to quell his worries, but it did nothing to douse the flames that licked up his spine.
“Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow,” Mike’s voice cuts through Will’s thoughts. They’re approaching the exit to the grocery store, and Will has half a mind to lecture Mike about the dangers of talking on the phone while driving, but he’s too horny to care. Besides, by the looks of it, he’s itching to hang up on his boss. “Right, okay. Yeah. Bye.” Mike huffs and presses the end-call button on his battered Nokia before tossing it in the general direction of the center console.
“Jesus Christ,” he groans and throws his head back on the car seat headrest. “My day off, and he wants to talk to me about-” He pauses. Squints like the cogs in his brain are suddenly working into overdrive, and tilts his head toward Will.
The omega has the displeasure of watching Mike’s face go from confused to surprised before landing on positively smug.
A brief silence swallows all the air in the car. “Had fun while I was on the phone?” Mike finally says, aiming for a light tone that only earns him a smack on the arm from Will.
“I see nothing funny about this.”
“What was it this time?” Mike muses, sounding somewhere between genuinely curious and ready to take the piss out of Will. “Was it my dulcet tones? Does my self-assured demeanor as I face authority get you going?”
“I’m not talking to you anymore.” There’s a petulance in Will’s voice that has Mike covering his mouth with his hand to stifle a laugh.
Luckily, Mike pulls into the parking lot within a few minutes.
When Will swings his legs out of the car, he can tell, heart dropping to his stomach, that his… predicament is a lot worse than he thought. His underwear is embarrassingly wet; he can feel the slick gathering between his folds and soaking into the fabric. Fuck. Should he drive back home and change? He had to do that last time when they went to the movies and they ended up missing the showtime.
Distantly, he can feel Mike’s eyes burning into the back of his head, and he wonders what he’s thinking. He’s taken this particular mishap and mood swing in stride, with not a hint of resentment, but these moments where Will’s instincts take over and his insecurities rise to the surface increasingly feel like an anvil on his back, weighing him down. They make him nervous. Make him worry that he’s more of a burden than Mike lets on.
He’s planning what to say to Mike, how to convince him to hand over the keys and drive back home with his tail tucked between his legs, when-
“Here.” Mike’s satchel appears in his line of sight. Will stares at it like it’s about to grow legs and start walking. Mike only nudges the bag into his arms when he sees he isn’t going to take it.
“I figured after this happened last time we were away from home, I should be a little more prepared,” he begins to explain as Will rifles through the bag.
And when he sees what Mike packed for him, he thinks he could cry.
A fresh pair of underwear. A travel-size bottle of scent-neutralizing spray. Wet wipes.
No scratch that, he actually is going to cry.
His alpha is just so thoughtful, he thinks, perhaps a little hysterically as tears start to form, and he takes care of me all the time. When his body feels foreign to him and has reactions beyond his control, Mike is always there to dismiss his insecurities with ease and give him what he needs with not just a dutifulness, but a pleasure that makes Will believe it’s naturally ingrained in Mike’s bones.
“Woah, hey,” Mike kneels to meet Will at eye level. “Is this okay? Did I pack the wrong stuff?”
Mike’s question goes in one ear and out the other. Will sniffles, desperately trying to keep his composure in public because the scent of a distressed omega is enough to send anyone into a panic, and drawing attention to himself in this state is kind of the last thing he needs right now.
He vaguely registers a hand combing through his hair. Mike’s scent suddenly changes — the last lingering breath of bitterness, well on its way to fading, disappears and replaces itself with a cooling fresh breeze of citrus, grounding Will. Mike’s calming pheromones that he’s released, just enough to bring him back down to earth.
“It’s okay, baby,” Mike reassures, kissing Will’s forehead. Will leans into the touch.
“I’m sorry I got mad at you,” he whispers wetly.
Mike’s mouth twitches like he’s fighting back a smile. “Which moment are you referring to?”
“Don’t push it.” But Will’s lips pull upwards. “Thank you,” he adds, much softer, and leans forward to touch his forehead to Mike’s. “For taking care of me. All the time.”
“It’s as easy as breathing,” Mike simply responds. It makes Will’s heart jump a little.
He sighs— he could stay here wrapped up in Mike forever, but they really need to get their shopping over with. When he pulls back, Mike squeezes his thighs before pulling him up to his feet.
“Go clean up, I’ll start in produce.” Mike’s already locking the car and striding toward the entrance.
“Do you have the list?”
Mike reaches into his pocket and pulls out a slip of paper where Will wrote their shopping list in neat handwriting. “Go, I got it. Don’t worry.”
And if his alpha’s so-called “self-assured demeanor” caused a little more slick to leak in that moment, that was strictly his own business. He could laugh at the irony of it all: slicking up at the thought of Mike doing what he can to prevent Will from jumping him in public.
Will stands on his tiptoes and presses a quick kiss to Mike’s lips, one last silent “thank you, I love you”, before making a beeline to the restroom, satchel in hand.