Chapter Text
Nobody had said London would be so different from Aziraphale's homeland: no warmth in the sun that appears fitfully, no lemon-tart scent splashing into his face as he now roams about a city so fully damp with humidity the air sticks to the skin like wax.
The tacky sensation drives the heat swirling in Aziraphale's veins to boiling, ratcheting up the punch of the rut until his brain is woozy from want. Heart a beat-burst of aching anticipation.
Because if the omega he's hired isn't what he expects, what he needs–
He should be here any minute now.
Aziraphale has lost his frock coat somewhere between the door of the townhouse and where he is among the hedges, in some part of the labyrinth that safeguards his home. There's no chill in the air but he can't repress a tremble when arousal fizzes in an arc following his spine and the sturdiness of his limbs. Setting on his pelvis.
Of course his rut had to set in a week after moving to London when he's barely met anyone. Aziraphale still resents it. Being sent so far away. Just to learn more about the world outside so his people can navigate their entrance into it without fumbling too badly.
Aziraphale understands the need.
Several species still hold old grudges and prejudices against minotaurs. The last five centuries have seen Aziraphale's people secluded in Táuroyosneh, their island far south. It took time to rebuild their own society after near decimation by heroes who thought them a threat. Padding up their numbers, while scaffolding morality on the shoulders of duty, restraint and family.
Of shame, too.
People who don't know their kind still think about them as their ancestors did, and whisper it for anyone to listen: how brutal, dimwitted creatures minotaurs are, brutes good for nothing but carnage, beasts that hold bloodlust in their veins.
They will eat your children and rape your virgins.
Nothing but slander fit for tales to scare the populace.
As Crown Prince, Aziraphale had intended to change that by coming to London.
Which makes this rut so terribly untimely.
Between his legs, his cock is a long, thick weight that rasps against the broadcloth of his trousers. Aziraphale can feel the softening quiver of his thighs where he's standing the more he tries to not let himself fly fully off the handle with arousal. His cravat is almost undone, hanging limp from his neck, leaving his wide throat and scent gland exposed to a lick of wind. It's a marginal relief, even if he looks the less put together he's been in years.
One full intake of air charged with woodsy teak and rough leather, with the spike of wet loam, settles the zing bouncing in his ribcage. His own scent curling back into him. The only thing that's managing to quash that pulse that nudges him to spread his claim all through the garden. An explosion of intention to let everyone else know there's an alpha on the brink of succumbing. Beware. Wanting to make the hedges an extension of the den he's set in his own room deep inside the townhouse. Pave a path of musk for the right omega to follow and find him. So Aziraphale can slip huge hands across easily-bruised thighs to part them and find that hot, warm place he won't ever want to leave for the next two weeks of his rut.
There. Buried tight in squeezing heat.
A breath swirls out in a shudder out of his lungs, followed by a strained moan Aziraphale can't swallow back. It ripples in the air, in his ears, over his chest and his back– unfettered.
He's losing restraint by the seconds, canines sharpening ready to sink into the smooth swathe of a neck and never come out. He needs an omega so badly his whole body feels tight and burdensome.
Aziraphale has never coupled with other species, frowned upon as it is in his homeland. But there's no chance he can find an omega minotaur in the streets of London at the ready. He must be the first to leave the island in centuries, with only a small staff made of senior betas.
Fortunately, Gabriel Archer, the Duke of Kensington and his only friend until now, has recommended him an omega said to be the best in his trade. An elf highly sought out by noble alphas of other species for his charm and his looks. They say the omega is quite selective. So flush with requests, he has the luxury to choose his clients.
Aziraphale still has doubts even if he's marginally grateful the elf had accepted, probably coaxed by the small fortune he's been paid.
It's torture to wait, feeling each thud and throb in his trousers, erection trapped impatient. The hot, incessant ache of it, slightly damp by precome, desperate to sink into a tight, warm cunt or a soft, wet slit.
His teeth catch on his lip, while he tries not to shred all his clothing to pieces.
He knows very little about elves, aside from what the stories say of their fairness. In the spot he's in, Aziraphale couldn't care less about beauty. Their standards are worlds apart.
Rather, he's greatly worried.
Minotaurs are among the largest species, if one can discount trolls. Everything about them is equally large, bulky and heavy, cumbersome. Elves seem so small in comparison, dangerously fragile, despite their renowned wisdom and long spans of life. Aziraphale could potentially hurt him, as there's no evidence this omega has ever taken a minotaur to bed.
And sex–
He's the first to admit his people have many rules for it. They have tied their existence with the rituals around their mating, all to shift themselves leagues away from the animals others say they are: mindless bulls and cows. Omega minotaurs are always expected to be demure. To never flaunt their soft places, chest and hips and bellies. In turn, alphas are never to let themselves unleash their full strength or desire.
It's all easier said than done.
Aziraphale’s kind has strived to set boundaries to their impulses, but ruts and heats strip everyone from the glaze of civility. One can't easily fight off millenia of a paved thoroughfare built for their survival.
Aziraphale has never been a beast while in rut, but he can't deny the unrendered weight of possessiveness sitting like a block of cinder in his gut when it hits. Omegas of his own species understand. It's not him, it's not them, it's not the alphas. It's the steering of instincts carved in the muscles, and beneath, directly in the marrow. Of similar and sometimes greater height and weight, service omega minotaurs have never felt threatened when Aziraphale grasped their thick waists and pushed them against marble walls, his mouth so hardly set on the skin over their throats that he could feel the air rushing through their windpipes like a tremor. No, they had always given as much as they’d taken.
But an elf…
What if the poor thing can't take him? If Aziraphale proves to be too big to fit inside him? What if only disgust and fear are what can be found on his face when he finally sees him? Aziraphale could harm him. Could chafe his soft sex with want and the stretch of his cock.
Aziraphale paces forward, tossing his head to allow a bit of air to swish the length of his tightly braided hair.
Would the omega even want him back? Waiting for him soaked wet as all the omegas he's taken to bed, thighs flushed and warm around his hips? Of course, as an elf, his chest will be flat, but Aziraphale assures himself it will be best not to face the added temptation of round, heavy breasts pulling at the fabric of his clothes in curves that rise indecently–
No. It's inappropriate to think like that. At the edge of unraveling, there remains law and religion he cannot ignore. Even more so as one representing the royal family.
Still, Aziraphale heaves a painful breath, imagining it. Feels the run of sweat from hairline to temple, twirling down the side, unbroken. The dampening of his curls that will leave his braids in disarray and fur squashed flat.
All around, the evening blows fully open when the last wedge of grey-rose dusk disappears in indigo. So late and almost time. Almost.
His gums are starting to ache, just in that soft place where it joins with the teeth. A common symptom in an alpha that readies the fit of the mouth to clamp around a willing neck. The honeysuckle smell permeating the garden is starting to drive him out of his mind because alpha that he is, he's resenting it for making it harder to pick out what he knows would be the smell of an available omega.
Rich. Sweet. Lush with layered headiness. That scent that an alpha can't help chasing just to lick the shimmering tickle of it beneath the tongue. Maddening even if smothered by suppressants as all the omegas Aziraphale has ever taken in ruts.
Untrammeled, a braying huff breaks like raw clay between Aziraphale's teeth. So close to a bellow. More bull, less minotaur by the minute. His body’s fury roars for blood-hot skin, for the sensual brush of hair or fur, for a willing body to be pinned down by his massive hands, for that nearness that's full of sweat and heat, of the vibration of a heart racing against his sternum.
The wind swishes against his face.
Aziraphale's ears tip forward, heart overworked.
There– Just underneath the petrichor and peat, scratching beneath the fog.
An omega’s scent, delicious in its exquisite sweetness, but so faint Aziraphale has to sniff out until he catches the threads of it in the breeze.
Aziraphale is no longer trying to be proper. The boot of civility has lifted off his neck and he's nothing but desire streaked red like a thousand dusks of his homeland.
He's on the cusp. Standing in the summit of instincts too old and pervasive to avoid. Restraint and moral and religious codes can't find him here, with his pulse rising but his isochronal breath marking a steady tempo.
Inhale.
Find. Catch. Take.
And exhale.
This is what he was born to do.
He runs, zigzags along dimly lit pathways, sightline full of shades of green he discards without effort. A garden pot catches under his hoof and shatters but Aziraphale doesn't pause, the bit of clay inconsequential in his chase.
The scent flows stronger, overpowering him, turning him into a feral thing with hunger pulsing between his temples, in the hollow of his palate. Easy, the scent says, willing. Sparkles in Aziraphale's mouth telling him there's someone slick and warm between the legs waiting for him. The omega smells of a sex already made soft by arousal…
… But the underline–
Aziraphale's heart almost gives out.
Oh, gods above.
His nose is an alpha’s one, and he has never picked out the shade of availability this omega carries. It's primal, how his body clenches in gratifying arousal, the fog of possessiveness obliterating his ability to remember his own name.
Maybe he's imagining it. Because the omega is a bouquet for the senses, unsuppressed fertility that cuts into his nose like a blade. The strong, boisterous noise of expectation, of being a good alpha to fulfill his duty, of breeding a partner, swells in his head until it collapses against his skull.
It's brutish and instinctual, wholeheartedly basic, but he's so hard, his entire body aches.
It must be his omega, it must. Could it be someone else?
No one should reach the omega before Aziraphale does. It's the mad, wild rut in him, driving him forward. Determined to set his snout against the curved hollow of the omega’s neck just to breathe it in. He's stumbling around corners of the hedgerows, cursing how the weaving labyrinth prevents him from following his nose directly.
Who in Heavens thought it was a good idea to set his home in a labyrinth? Only to appeal to old customs. He remembers the ancient myths and understands how King Minos’ castoff son might have felt desperately trapped in a dizzying array of arching hallways curled round an inescapable centre. Searching, running, seeking and never finding, smothered in void.
Hurling himself like a cannonball, he spins around the next bend in the pathway and reels to a stop before he crashes into a small figure. Aziraphale flings out both hands to avoid a collision while his nose flares and his mouth waters.
It's–
His palms fold round sharp shoulders covered in red velvet. Aziraphale blinks thrice and feels his throat work around a mouthful of spit that tastes like fucking glory . He can't not look. Can't rein his eyes from slipping down the face tipped up to him.
Amber, clear and gold-like. Eyes that blow up huge, staring up at him in shocked puzzlement, that quickly sweeps into surprise. Further, into a little crunch of lips Aziraphale thinks is a smirk. Aziraphale can see it, the emotion that shapes itself on that lush mouth and between dark brows. A soft, faint crinkle.
His own hands twitch, smoldering where they're curling on the elf’s shoulders. Aziraphale has to let go instead of doing something ruinous like manhandling him to the ground the next second to find his legs beneath the skirts and tip them back to his chest to open him fully.
He towers over the elf, and feels a nascent, strange sort of heat that has nothing to do with the rut when he realises exactly how much bigger he is. How easy it’d be to mount the omega if he was willing. How full he’d feel with Aziraphale buried inside– how impossibly tight he'd be.
They're different from each other. No horns or fur or bullish mass to speak of in the whole of him. The omega is everything his kind isn't. But knowing it isn't making Aziraphale want to pull back anymore. Doesn't fill him with fear but with a wild anticipation.
Nine feet tall and six hundred pounds of weight make him a hazard for most other species. And the thought should make him wary, should make him fearful, but his cock jerks and his throat clenches to wrestle back a groan.
Fuck, he's a beast, a brute. He's all the things people say he is.
A glossy spill of long hair drapes over the omega’s shoulders, in a hue that Aziraphale's never seen. Red everywhere. Like the terracotta in the northern region of his homeland. But his skin is smooth where he can see it exposed. Arms and neck painted with a swathe of colour that runs across collarbones to the edge of the deep cleavage. A flush Aziraphale is sure he's mirroring when he thinks on how the omega’s chest would feel in his hands, a soft cupping squeeze where the flesh is full and the cloth lifts and stretches. He’d never thought elves could be so dastardly striking.
Damn his luck. It must be only the rut– only the rut and its biological trappings.
The elf holds the potential of the word beautiful embedded in his body so effortlessly, it leaves Aziraphale breathless. He's small, but his limbs are long and elegant slashes, his neck entirely unmarked. Perfect for a teeth mark that’d probably take half of the width of it. Perfect for the whorl of his thumb to find the well at the base and feel his swallowed whimpers while he's penetrated.
Bare, so bare.
Scandalous.
Aziraphale knows he can look, and he does, strikes himself silent when he flicks eyes over the omega: mouth so kissable, eyes so gleaming, chest heavy and full that pulls at the fabric of the corset to a straining point.
His own balls are hanging tight and full, cock stiff and sore with the spasm of his knot making the base of the shaft extremely sensitive.
The whole of London and its distant rattle dies down in the streaks of smoke and the tang of sweetness that Aziraphale can't pin down exactly. Caramel, sugar. No. Honey. And there, the bloom of a garden that has nothing to envy the maze with its rows of irises and lilacs.
Roses in buds, unfurled, fragrant and flowing directly into his nose, leaving his body seizing with the suggestion of mating, of taking an omega he knows will receive his come to take. Unsuppressed. It's only pheromones– species so far apart are not viable, everyone knows it – but they tackle down the meager walls Aziraphale still had left standing. Telling him to breed him, to do what his body is built for.
" You -" Aziraphale gasps, and somehow it sounds like an accusation, voice grinding low. Incensed by a fireball stuck in his throat that burns all the way down. He gulps and tries lto contain himself, knowing he's giving himself away fully with his lashing tail and rising teak. "Tell me you're the omega sent for me. Please.”
He's catching his want by the skin of his teeth, wobbling where he's next to the hedge. He's going to trap him against the ground in the next two minutes, gods help him.
And then that face shifts.
No fear. No disgust. Only open hunger that rivals Aziraphale's own. Echoes back the greed in his mouth, and the lust in his eyes. Looking at him with a sort of predatory gleam that makes Aziraphale feel like prey when he's three feet taller.
The omega’s smirk solidifies into slyness. There's not an ounce of demureness to be found in him, different from any other omega Aziraphale's ever taken to bed.
“‘Bout time you showed up, you can call me Crowley,” he says, breasts rising and falling with controlled breaths. He draws a hand – fine-boned and lean, commanding, “C’mon, I'm yours for the taking, alpha, however you want. Enough waiting.”
Head swimming, Aziraphale moves.