Original prompt by phreakycat, who is awesome: (short version) Mike spontaneously develops the ability to start fires with his brain. He can't control it well, and causes a series of humorous incidents at work. Harvey figures out what's going on and goes to confront Mike. Mike accidentally sets his apt on fire and is trapped. Harvey saves the day and rescues the injured Mike, eventually helping him get his ability under control. Happy ending (gen or slash is fine). [Long version: .?thread=2804855#t2804855]

Chapter 1: The Toaster

Mike was exactly seven minutes late on the morning of what he would come to acknowledge as the Day from Hell.

Harvey stood silently fuming on the street, waiting for Mike so they could take a cab to the court house. Mike hastily shoved his bike on the rack and barely managed to properly lock it before sprinting to meet his boss.

"You're late," Harvey growled at him and hailed a cab.

As they were sliding onto the seat of the cab, Mike turned to give Harvey a breathless reply. "Sorry, I was—"

"Really don't care," Harvey said grouchily, staring pointedly at his watch, as if his foul mood wasn't an obvious enough reminder that Mike had offended him.

"I wasn't aware that my toaster spontaneously combusting was the new equivalent of 'the dog ate my homework'," Mike sniped, just a little upset that Harvey had ignored his entirely (for once) legitimate excuse.

Harvey turned to glance at Mike and focused on his tie with a glare. "Well that explains today's tie fiasco."

Mike followed Harvey's gaze to find that his tie was partially charred and was leaving black smudge marks on his shirt. He hastily removed the disastrous piece of fabric and rubbed at his stained shirt with his fingers in an attempt to return it to its former whiteness.

Harvey rolled his eyes and sighed heavily. "If you don't get that off, you're waiting outside."

"What! Harvey, that's not fair!"

"Well in the future, don't stick forks in your toaster to try to get the bread out."

Mike pouted. He wasn't an idiot. What did Harvey take him for? "I'm surprised you know how a toaster works," he said sarcastically.

"That makes one of us," Harvey replied smoothly.

Mike gave a glare of defeat and then returned to furiously rubbing at the slowly erasing smudge of ash on his shirt. It really hadn't been his fault! He'd simply put a slice of toast in, like so many mornings, and gone to get dressed, when suddenly the thing went up in a huge flame. It had taken him nearly three minutes to locate his fire extinguisher and another ten seconds of frantically trying to get it to work.

The fire had gone out fairly quickly, but apparently Mike's tie had been too close. He hadn't even noticed, but he must have put it out in his haste to stamp out any stray flames.

His toaster, which wasn't that old and was fairly nice, since Jenny had purchased it for him when he'd moved in, was now a melted and scorched puddle of metal. Now he'd have to go buy a new one, which he neither had time nor money for. And now because of his stupid toaster he wouldn't be able to go into court with Harvey and win the case he'd spent the last week searching through hundreds of dusty boxes for.

It was making him oddly angry just thinking about how unfair this all was. He felt strange, almost dizzy with his irritation and oddly uncomfortably warm, but just as he was starting to turn his anger on Harvey, the cab stopped in front of the court house and Harvey was ushering him out.

Harvey took one look at him, gave a silent chuckle, and said, "You coming?"

"Really? Even without my tie?" Mike asked, anger evaporating as it was replaced by excitement.

Harvey began marching into the building, his usual confident swagger making him seem invincible. He called back to Mike, who was following on his heels, "Because you're without your tie. It looked like you got it from a thrift store."

Mike defended, "They were on sale!"

"I changed my mind," Harvey said disgustedly, even as he held the door open for Mike to follow.

Mike inhaled the banter and adopted his own quiet confidence that they'd take a stunning victory in court. Not even a little fire would stop him today.

This will probably (hopefully) be a 5+1 story. I promise to try and contain this one, and yes, I am still working on the other stories. No really...