Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Apart from the whole incurable, terminal illness thing, Alan really is the perfect omega. He’s sweet and charming, too kind for his own good. He’s a quiet man, meek and submissive, always shying away from confrontation and more often than not acting as peacemaker around the office. He’s small and soft, a little too skinny on account of his thorns, but the alphas around him seem to relish in trying to fatten him up. Eric claimed him first, of course, and Alan wears the older reaper’s bite with pride, but that doesn’t stop the others from trying to sneak their leftovers onto the omega’s plate.

Grell could hate him for it, if Alan weren’t one of her dearest friends.

It’s not that Grell has a problem with being submissive, exactly. It’s just that she wants to be beaten into submission first. Why bend over for an alpha that can’t even best you in a fight?

The only flaw in her logic is that there are few reapers stronger than Grell.

William beat her once, yes, and if he was an alpha he might actually return her demented affections. But as a beta, Grell’s status as an omega (and, therefore, her need for time off work during heats) is just another annoyance on his long list of grievances with her. If it were up to Will, only betas and the most sexless of reapers would be assigned to Dispatch. Regardless, he spends most of his time behind a desk these days, and Grell would probably annihilate him in a fight if she ever had the inclination.

She’s managed to lure a few alphas in with her sweet scent and good looks over the decades, but word quickly spread around the office about her tendency to get violent in bed. They don’t seem to like that much. The last alpha she coaxed into helping her through her heat left several days later with a black eye and a broken jaw.

Consequently, Grell spends most of her heats alone.

She’s been overdue for a while now. She had woken up that morning with the familiar sense of wrongness and irritability that usually signals a heat approaching, but it isn’t until she steps into Will’s office and sees his nose scrunch up in distaste at the scent of her that she knows for sure it will be soon.

He hands over her assignments for the day with a dubious look.

“Five deaths in the east end today. There’s a murder-suicide in Whitechapel that will doubtlessly bring you an inappropriate amount of joy,” William says tonelessly. She takes the to-die list and leafs through it briefly (one man and two women in a lover’s quarrel - that does sound promising), but Will doesn’t dismiss her quite yet.

He looks her up and down with a frown, coughing awkwardly into his fist. “Will you require Knox to escort you home?”

Grell glances up at him with raised eyebrows. “That soon, huh?” she sighs. As one of her oldest friends, William knows her scent patterns perhaps better than herself. If he’s offering to put Ronald on babysitting duty, sweet, harmless beta that the kid is, she’ll probably be in heat before the shift is even over.

She snaps her pocketbook shut. “If the reports can wait a few days, I might just ride it out in the mortal realm,” Grell tells him, feigning indifference. “Wouldn’t want to cause a stink in the office,” she adds with a smirk.

“Yes, I would appreciate it if you didn’t,” Will grimaces, taking her words too literally as usual. “You know how irritable the alphas get when they smell you like…that. Very well, Sutcliff. Dismissed.”

The murder-suicide cheers her up a little bit. She watches with rapt interest as a husband catches his wife in bed with another woman. The husband kills the lover; the wife, hysterical with grief, kills the husband and then herself. It’s all very dramatic and conveniently staggered in timing, making for an easy collection. The other two deaths are much less entertaining, and take far too goddamn long. A builder falls from his scaffolding and cracks his head open, and though there’s a fun amount of blood on the scene it takes a good while for him to actually bleed out and officially count as dead. An old man in his nineties spends what feels like a full hour wheezing his last, and at his advanced age the cinematic record goes on forever.

By the time she’s done with her collections, she’s starting to feel uncomfortable and cranky, her good mood from the murder-suicide long gone.

Grell sighs, making her way across the rooftops to her usual hiding place. Another heat alone. Briefly, she considers taking a detour to the Phantomhive estate and begging Sebastian for his help. Well…he’d definitely beat her up, at least, but she rather doubts he’d follow through with the rest of it. Nor is she in the mood to do any begging – she’d much rather bite and kick and scratch and squirm.

She lands quietly on the roof of Angelina’s old London flat. It belongs to Ciel now, with nobody else to leave it to, but it seems the boy hasn’t had the heart to do anything with the place since her death – whenever Grell passes by, it’s exactly as the two of them left it. It’s a beautiful apartment, spanning the top three floors of a house near Harley Street where the Madam used to work. There’s a window on the roof that Grell still keeps the key to, which she uses now to slip quietly into the attic.

Sometimes Grell comes to the flat just to sit and think. More often she comes here for comfort, pulling out dresses from the wardrobe to try on, or burying her face in the familiar smell of the cushions. Grell has her own bedroom here, much too lavish for any servant, but Madam Red had doted on and spoiled her terribly.

She’s making her way down the narrow stairs from the attic to her room when she hears a clatter from downstairs.

Grell stills. Has the little Phantomhive finally decided to do something with the place? She tiptoes towards An’s bedroom, peeking inside and…no, everything is right where she left it. A burglar then? The reaper growls to herself – she’s in no bloody mood for this. William will throttle her if she murders another human not scheduled to die, but God help whoever’s down there, she might just do it anyway.

Carefully prowling down the stairs to the lower floors, the noise seems to be coming from the old office. She uses her powers to keep from sight or sound. With any luck she might give the burglar a heart attack –

“I can smell you, my dear,” a horribly familiar voice calls cheerfully.

…No luck at all. Grell stomps down the remaining stairs, no longer bothering to hide herself, and rips the door to Angelina’s study open.

From the floor where he has, apparently, been flinging open drawers and cabinets with abandon, Undertaker of all people gives her a spidery little wave. There are papers all over the place, case files from the Madam’s work as a doctor spread out on the carpet, and the crazy old deserter seems to be attempting to pick the lock on the desk drawer.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?!” Grell yells.

“Your house?” Undertaker repeats with a chuckle. “I thought your scent here was a little too recent, but I’m fairly certain you weren’t mentioned in Mrs. Burnett’s will.” He starts to take a more brute force approach to the lock, pulling out a hammer from his coat. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re just as much of an intruder as I am right now.”

“I have my own bedroom here, you old- what exactly are you doing, stop that!” Grell snaps, pulling the whole damn desk away from him before he can damage the mahogany. It’s an antique. Honestly.

“Well I was rather hoping to pilfer some of Madam Red’s operating tools, actually,” Undertaker tells her shamelessly. “Now that you’re here, you wouldn’t happen to know where she kept them, would you?”

“At the surgery!” Grell informs him through gritted teeth. Perhaps it’s the oncoming heat affecting her, but the mess he’s made of the office somehow offends her more in this moment than the presence of an enemy of the reaper realm. She angrily starts to pick up and stack the papers on the floor. “Normal people don’t keep scalpels in their home with them.”

“Normal people don’t go about killing prostitutes,” Undertaker drawls. He sweeps his hair away from his eyes to make sure she doesn’t miss the pointedly unimpressed look he gives her.

“Either way the tools aren’t here, so kindly leave,” Grell snaps. She finds herself blushing for some reason. She’s not certain whether it’s because of his disapproving expression or if it’s just the sight of his handsome, scarred face. “If they were, I'd bloody stab you with all of them,” she adds under her breath in a mutter.

The silver-haired reaper just watches while she continues to gather up papers, compelled by some kind of nesting instinct demanding order. He eyes her with an uncomfortable sort of scrutiny.

“Your heat is coming,” he observes.

“Very astute,” she agrees sarcastically.

And then she freezes, because it suddenly occurs to her that she can smell him. Surely, at some point, it must have registered with her that the dusty old reaper is an alpha, but between the creepy mortician act and the rather more genuinely terrifying prospect of him bringing the dead back to life, it hadn’t seemed important before. Now, on the cusp of her heat and the way he seems to be measuring her up, it suddenly seems very, very relevant.

She turns to glare at him, trying her best to make it abundantly clear with just her eyes and her agitated scent that she’s not going to roll over and submit for the nearest alpha – especially not to a deserter of all people. The ancient reaper only lifts his hands placatingly, making no move to come any closer. Still, it doesn’t put a stop to the odd way he’s looking at her, as if she’s a puzzle that he can’t quite figure out.

Undertaker frowns, sniffing the air carefully. “You smell like you want a fight,” he says slowly, head tilting to one side curiously.

“Of course I do, you won’t get out of my nest!” Grell exclaims disbelievingly.

“No, that’s not it,” the alpha hums to himself, tapping his teeth with one long nail while he thinks. “It’s more liiike…like you want someone to pin you down while you struggle.”

Any hope Grell had of getting him to drop this line of questioning disappears with the embarrassed flush that spreads over her cheeks. Undertaker’s face lights up like a Christmas tree, suddenly standing to crowd into her personal space with an obnoxious grin.

“I see! You’d enjoy that, would you? So that’s the kind of omega you are, Miss Grell!” he laughs delightedly. She tries to swat him away with the papers in her hands, but he only dances behind her, looming too close to her scent gland for comfort. She thinks she feels the skin of his nose press up against her neck, and that’s really quite enough of that.

Out of pure instinct, Grell decks him.

Her fist makes a satisfying crack when it connects with his mouth, the older reaper’s head snapping to the side with the motion. He freezes in place, blinking with such genuine shock and surprise that Grell would laugh if she wasn’t so irritated, as if nobody has had the gall to touch him in centuries. It’s quite possible that nobody has, legend that he is. Blood starts to drip from between his teeth, and the younger reaper is suddenly acutely aware that he could quite easily hit her back twice as hard.

But he doesn’t. Instead, the lunatic howls with laughter, getting blood all over his chin as he doubles over, clutching his stomach instead of his injured jaw.

“Oooh, oo-hoo-hoo, they don’t make them like you anymore,” Undertaker chuckles, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand and inspecting the blood that smears itself there. Instead of the anger she’s come to expect from alphas when she pushes back, he looks up at her, grinning mouth stained red, with a hopelessly besotted expression. “Alphas these days, they don’t want a challenge. Want their omegas all soft and weak and waiting, mewling like a little kitten. Where’s the fun in that, hmm?” He spits a loose tooth out carelessly. It’ll grow back. Probably. “Give me a bitch with claws any day.”

Grell is, despite herself, intrigued.

He can probably smell her interest, if the happy little ‘oooo’ he croons and the way he sways towards her is any indicator. Still, if this is going the way she thinks it is, it wouldn’t do to pretend to submit now.

“You think you can hold me down?” she challenges with a smirk full of sharp teeth, lifting her chin defiantly.

The noise Undertaker makes is positively gleeful. “Think I can pin you long enough to knot you,” he retorts crassly. “Think it wouldn’t even be hard, the way you’re smelling right now.”

Grell scoffs, but even she can smell the harsh spike of excitement in her own scent. Damn him.

“Back when I was still in the Academy, they were all like you, you know?” Undertaker reminisces dreamily. “Wasn’t a heat without a few bruises.”

“I’m hardly surprised,” Grell says dryly. “Back in your day, the humans were still raping and pillaging.”

The alpha waves a hand in the air, unconcerned. “Ohhh, they’re always doing that somewhere, even now,” he says. “Not many left from my generation though, hmm? Who takes care of you now, little omega?”

She looks away. The answer is obvious, isn’t it? Alone in her nest on the edge of her heat. Pathetic. Undertaker clicks his tongue, making a noise of sympathy. He reaches out to brush his knuckles against the soft skin of her cheek, and she…lets him.

“They don’t know how to treat omegas like you anymore, do they? Don’t know what it is you need,” he murmurs, sweet poison. “Or maybe they’re just not strong enough…is that it? Poor baby…can’t find someone to hold you down and fuck you like you really want.”

“Don’t tease,” Grell says quietly, pouting.

“All right,” Undertaker grins, clapping his hands together decisively, “how about this, then? If I can pinch the scruff of your neck, then I win, and I get to take you home and have my way with you.”

Grell snorts, hands on her hips. “And what do I get if I win?”

“You won’t,” Undertaker says dismissively, and then he’s charging at her with his scythe before she can get a word in edgeways. The younger reaper yelps, but she has enough sense not to turn her back on him when she dodges – his hand snatches out as he passes her, hoping to catch her neck while she’s off guard.

“Why are we doing this with scythes!?” Grell yells, summoning her own just in time to parry his great bloody sickle with her chainsaw. She slashes at him just close enough to get him to back off for a minute, slicing a hole through his overcoat.

“I figured you’d summon yours soon enough,” Undertaker muses, as if the answer should be obvious, prowling around the edges of the room as Grell carefully keeps her distance from him, “so why not get the drop on you first!” He launches himself at her again, sweeping low for her legs with the blunt side of his scythe. Grell almost kicks him in the face jumping over him, rolling to the other side of the room.

She’d really rather not do this in Angelina’s flat, but Undertaker is relentless in his pursuit, chasing her out of the office into the larger space of the living room and cackling maniacally all the while. With one great arc of his scythe, the crystal chandelier crashes to the floor in a chorus of shattered glass.

“My chandelier!! Oh, you absolute- if I win, I get to kill you!” Grell bellows back at him, charging him in earnest. He jumps out of the way with annoyingly little effort, and instead of his guts, her scythe rips open the chaise longue, engulfing the room in a cloud of tiny white feathers. She squawks with outrage, twirling around to meet his scythe with an aggrieved rev of her chainsaw.

The worst part, Grell thinks, is that this is exactly the kind of foreplay she’s been dreaming of for years. Ordinarily they would be fairly equally matched, wearing each other down at the same pace, but the harder Undertaker fights to get to her neck, the more turned on she’s getting. The more aroused she is, the faster her heat is setting in, putting her at a distinct disadvantage, distracted and dizzy at the scent of a very interested alpha. She can feel her breathing becoming labored from more than just physical exertion, warm slick starting to pool between her legs, and from the darkening of the mad old reaper’s eyes, he can smell it.

And then there’s the treacherous part of her that wants to let him win. She hasn’t had a fight like this since…well, since she last fought him on The Campania, now that she thinks about it. Her body recognizes a mate worth submitting to, even if her pride prevents her from giving in to the instinct.

It’s inevitable that she slips up eventually. He lets himself get close enough that the scent of him makes her falter, dodging to the left when she should have gone right – the blunt edge of his scythe collides with the back of her knees, shoving her to the floor with his whole body as she falls and pinning her down.

His fingers pinch the back of her neck before she can even begin to struggle and it’s…bliss. Grell’s mind quiets to nothing but contentment, body going limp, the pressure of his grip a biological off-switch. She’s grudgingly bent her head to let alphas get her by the scruff before, but it’s never been quite the same as this, never given her the same sort of delirious happiness she feels now at having control taken from her rather than given.

“Do you yield?” the older reaper asks. Grell makes an odd noise underneath him, somewhere between a strangled whimper and a purr. Ah. He lets go of the back of her neck and asks again.

“Mmm, take me home and ravage me, you awful beast,” Grell slurs with a dreamy smile on her face. For once in her afterlife, she feels perfectly content to lie under an alpha, pliant and obedient. She doesn’t even try to kick him when he lifts her up and drapes her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

By the time Undertaker has carried her across the rooftops of London to his funeral home, Grell is an awful lot less happy to be still. Her heat has set in fully, and everything feels too warm and itchy, uncomfortable and irritating, squirming in his hold.

“Alright, alright,” Undertaker soothes, setting her down on what she supposes must be his bed, “I’ll take care of you, just hold on a moment.” She claws at her clothes, tugging clumsily at buttons and ribbons while he opens up a window to let some of the cool evening air in.

“Should you really open that?” Grell asks through panted breaths, throwing her glasses into the pillows carelessly. “The humans might smell us. They’ll definitely hear us.”

“So what?” Undertaker says easily. He picks up her discarded ribbon and sits behind her on the bed, using it to tie her hair away from her overheated skin. “Let them know old Undertaker’s getting some action for once.”

“’For once’?” Grell repeats with a cheeky grin. “You don’t regularly drag omegas into your bed by force?”

“Don’t like ‘em,” Undertaker retorts, pulling her hair a bit too roughly in response as he secures it in a messy bun. It makes Grell shiver, more so when he presses his mouth to her bare neck over her scent gland, murmuring against it. “Not unless they’re like you.”

It’s raw instinct to try and get him away from her throat, to stop him from biting down and claiming her without a fight, but this time he’s expecting it when she goes for his face. Undertaker grabs her wrists, holding them tight while she spits and hisses warningly, struggling against his grip.

“Exactly,” he smiles fondly, laughter bubbling in his chest. He leans forward to steal a kiss – he still tastes like blood from when she punched him earlier, though the wound has surely already healed. Grell snarls into his mouth, snapping her teeth hard enough to break skin.

Without missing a beat, Undertaker simply bites back.

Grell squeaks with shock at the sudden sting of it. His canines are deceptively sharp - she can feel blood welling up from the corner of her lower lip. She’s bitten many alphas, both intentionally and by accident, but not one of them has ever returned the favor, and certainly not so casually. Confused into stillness, Grell allows Undertaker to soothe her punctured skin with his tongue, wrists limp in his hold.

“The last time I bit an alpha, they tried to hit me,” Grell says disbelievingly.

“And did they succeed?” Undertaker asks, his conversational tone a stark contrast to the way he laps at her bloodied lip.

“Of course not,” Grell scoffs. She’s too hot again - she pulls her wrists free to fan at herself, and this time he lets her go, sitting back to start removing his own many layers.

“Mmm…but did you want them to?” Undertaker grins, mouth stained red for the second time that day. “Or should that be need, rather than want?”

“One should neither want nor need to hit a lady,” Grell tries to tell him primly, but it comes out faint and distracted. The feel of her wool trousers on her overheated skin is beginning to become unbearable. She wriggles about unattractively, trying to get them off before she’s even seen to her shoes.

“Here, allow me,” Undertaker offers, sliding to the floor to pull at the laces of her red boots. He makes short work of them, well practiced in undressing his ‘clients’. He tosses the shoes somewhere over his shoulder, along with her socks, and then drags Grell’s itchy trousers down her long legs.

“You don’t need to be hit at all, do you, Miss Grell?” Undertaker purrs. It only occurs to her then how close his face is to her naked thighs. She tries to kick him away, but this, too, he seems well prepared for - he catches her by the knees, grinning up at her with his jack-o’-lantern smile. His hair has fallen out of place, enough that she can see the way his eyes drop hungrily to the damned cock tenting her soaked underwear. “You just need to be fucked.”

Something in Grell’s scrambled brain misfires.

If he wants between her legs so badly, fine - she’s happy to oblige. It seems only logical to close her thighs around his throat and strangle him.

All the air leaves the alpha in a startled yelp. He digs his claw-like nails into her skin, scrabbling to pry open the legs squeezing his neck in a chokehold. Spurred on by his thrashing, Grell only clenches down harder. But the deserter is old enough to have learned a few nasty tricks of his own - the only creature Grell has known to fight dirtier than him is Sebastian. Planting the balls of his feet firmly to the floor, Undertaker pushes up instead of away, sending Grell tumbling backwards.

She lands in the sheets with a squawk of surprise, legs forced to release his neck from their iron grip as they fall open. Undertaker lunges after the omega, pinning Grell to the bed with his hands on her upper arms and his knees and calves bracketing her thighs, the buckles of his odd boots digging uncomfortably into bare flesh.

For a long moment they simply stare at each other, wild-eyed and out of breath.

“It seems,” Undertaker pants, gulping for air, “that I have not adequately demonstrated my physical prowess to you.”

Grell waits for him to get angry. Alphas always do, at this point. But it doesn’t come - instead, he pouts at her almost playfully, head tilting like a kicked puppy.

“Was beating you twice not enough?” he asks once he’s got his breath back.

“I don’t- I don’t know why I just did that,” Grell admits meekly. She looks away, ashamed and unable to meet his gaze. “It’s always like this. I can’t seem to turn it off.”

Undertaker croons sympathetically. “Poor baby. Perhaps you require me to demonstrate my adequacy as a lover, instead?” he suggests. “Better hurry things along, hmm?”

He digs both hands into the fabric of her shirt and undresses her by simply ripping the garment in half. Grell is too stunned by the unnecessary show of strength to stop him from going after her panties next; under the merciless assault of his sharp nails, the black lace shreds like tissue paper. She would be a lot more annoyed about it if the madman didn’t then tear at his own shirts too, buttons popping every which way in his hurry to get them off. At least she’s finally naked.

“What am I meant to wear on my way home?” Grell complains, staring up at him in disbelief.

“We’re not so different in size,” Undertaker tells her dismissively. “Just take one of mine. I’d be pleased to see you wearing my things.” He flashes the younger reaper a leer - that his clothes would wrap her in the scent of him is left implied. “Now stay still a moment, won’t you? Despite the straps and leather, these boots just really weren’t designed for sex.”

Then he presses one wrist firmly to her nose, free hand tangling in her hair to keep her head still. The action is sudden - and obscene - enough that Grell breathes in a startled lungful of scent-rich skin before she can protest. All at once her head begins to swim, dizzy with the alpha’s pheromones. It’s- it’s indecent, forcing a partner’s nose to one’s wrist, it’s unfair, but she gasps in another scandalized breath anyway. He smells- he smells so- oh, he smells so fucking good.

…Well. ‘Good’ is perhaps the wrong word; Undertaker smells of coffin-wood shavings and the medicinal alcohol surgeons use to clean wounds. He smells of death - all reapers do. But underneath that, there’s something sweet and spicy, like the bone-shaped gingerbread he used to keep in his funeral parlor when Grell was still pretending to be a butler. He smells like warmest nostalgia.

The thunk of one of his boots hitting the floor rouses Grell enough to realize that she’s been lying in a pheromone-induced stupor for the last few minutes. Blinking the world back into focus, she’s met with the sight of his pale, scarred back; in the haze of her heat, the flex of his wiry muscles as he works off the buckles of his other boot is nothing short of hypnotic. He’s not as thin as she thought he might be, but the sharp lines of his shoulder blades and the severe ridges of his spine make him seem bonier than he actually is.

Once his other boot is off, Undertaker stands, stepping out of his trousers and underwear without fanfare. He turns back to find her watching him - his lips quirk to one side in a gentler smile than she’s used to from the mortician. He crawls back up the bed to loom over her on hands and knees.

“Good girl,” Undertaker murmurs, pupils dark.

Grell shudders, closing her eyes tightly. Nobody has ever - in life or in death - called her that before. Not once. She feels one of his spidery hands smooth over her scalp, long nails brushing her bangs away from her damp forehead.

“I’m not good,” Grell protests quietly. “I punched you, for god’s sake.”

“And well you should have,” Undertaker laughs. “No one can blame a lady for protecting her throat from a strange alpha.” He noses at the side of her neck once again, in the very same spot that she hit him for earlier. He takes a deep breath of the concentrated scent there, his exhale gusting against her sensitive skin with a shivery, rattling sigh. The instinct to force him away is suspiciously quiet now. The instinct to pull him closer, to refuse to let go until he bites down, is entirely new.

Cracking her eyes open, Grell is met with the sight of him naked above her. She follows the trail of criss-crossing scars down his torso, leading down, down to the full, stiff cock hanging between his legs, framed by unruly silver hair. Reaching out as if spellbound, Grell takes his shaft in one hand, humming appreciatively at the weight of it in her palm. She strokes downwards, feeling the spongy flesh of the knot near the base - impossible to tell how big it will be once it swells, but as she strokes back up, tugging his foreskin over the purple-pink crown, she already knows the rest of his cock will more than satisfy.

Still hovering over her, Undertaker begins to purr. It’s an odd purr, the sound a low, gravelly rumble in his ribs, as if he’s terribly out of practice in making the noise.

“To your liking, I hope?” he asks breathlessly. He can’t seem to stop the way he rocks into her fist in small, restless thrusts.

Grell tuts. “Fishing for compliments,” she accuses, without heat. The steady ooze of precum from his slit is a promising indicator for later on - it seems she can hope for a nice big load from him, still virile despite his many centuries. She presses a finger to the tiny opening, smearing precum over his cockhead with a feather-light touch. “You know it is.”

“Ah- mm, as lovely as that feels, your attentions are quite unnecessary,” he says with a little shudder, bucking into her hand helplessly. “Short of turning to stone, I don’t think I can get much harder.”

Undertaker drops down, pressing Grell into the mattress with his full weight. He rolls to the right, half her body pinned beneath him, and tangles both of his legs around one of hers. She tries to squirm away only half-heartedly, more a test of his hold than a true attempt to escape, and finds her right side quite thoroughly trapped.

Paying no heed to her wriggling, the ancient reaper presses wet, sucking kisses to her jaw, to her throat, then her collarbone and chest, pausing to bite lurid red marks into her skin every so often - presumptuous, but nothing that won’t heal before she’s back at work. Sliding down, Undertaker reaches her nipples. Here he takes his sweet time, laving at the nearest pink bud with the flat of his tongue. It pulls a moan from her that only gets louder when he latches on to it, closing his mouth around the skin and sucking hard. His free hand skates down her abdomen, fingers trailing ticklishly over her fair skin; he bypasses her weeping cock entirely, cupping his hand behind her balls in search of the puckered hole between her legs.

Grell tenses, afraid that he might try to breach her with those talons of his. But he only rubs the pads of his fingers over her entrance, spreading the copious slick he finds ready for him there.

“My, my,” Undertaker murmurs against the nipple he’s been abusing, one phosphorus-green eye peeking up at her from between his bangs. “How very wet you are, my lady. Should I be flattered?”

Grell’s cheeks prickle with a flush of embarrassment. It’s only natural for her to be wet when in heat, but she can’t deny that he’s got her soaked to excess, inner thighs slippery with it. Any attempt to come up with a retort is quickly derailed by his fist around her cock, stroking the shaft in tight, firm pulls made smooth by her own slick coating his fingers. Her breath hitches in a gasp; her hips try to fuck up into his hand of their own volition, but with the way he’s wrapped himself around her, she can barely move. All Grell can do is writhe helplessly.

Still sucking at her chest as he strokes her, Undertaker presses his own cock to Grell’s trapped thigh - he grinds against it in a slow, insistent roll, precum sticking to her skin in tacky strands.

“Don’t tell me all the fight has gone from you already,” Undertaker taunts, breath gusting over spit-wet areola in a way that makes her shiver. “Is my hand on your pretty little cock all it takes to keep you quiet?”

“O- on the contrary,” Grell manages, gasping for enough air to warn him, “I’m going to get exceedingly violent if I’m not fucked soon.” She only realizes how true this statement is at the same time that she says it, her writhing a precursor to thrashing. His rough palm twisting over the sensitive head of her cock is nice, but it isn’t what she needs. Her entrance clenches down on nothing, empty and aching for something, his fingers, anything, but she hasn’t the patience to demand he find some nail clippers for those claws of his. Only his knot will do.

With a frustrated grunt, she turns her face to glare at the alpha.

“I’m not going to beg,” Grell tells him through her teeth.

“Nor should you have to,” Undertaker says agreeably. “A lady like you should be given anything and everything she wants.” He presses his nose to her cheek; she can feel the bastard smiling. “Ahh…I could quite easily find myself spoiling you. Perhaps I’ll buy you some ruby earrings to match your lovely hair, hmm? I’ll leave them at the Madam’s flat.”

“You stay out of my nest,” Grell growls. She digs her heels into the mattress, beginning to struggle in earnest - her body jerks of its own accord like a broken marionette in its quest to break free.

“Oho!! How cruel! After I invited you into mine!” Undertaker cackles. “No matter…I’ll just have to keep you here, instead.”

Undertaker flips Grell onto her front - he quickly follows after the omega before she can thrash, pressing down on her shoulders with his full weight. She tries to kick him, successfully catching one of his ankles in the process, but it only gets her the smallest grunt of irritation and his uncomfortably bony shins pinning her legs to the mattress again.

It’s no use. He really is stronger than her.

The thought is a heady one. Grell shudders, dizzy with desire and still so, so hot; she can feel sweat pooling at the small of her back, fresh slick escaping her entrance to drip down her perineum. Despite her earlier insistence, her body seems determined to betray her, spine arched and hips tilted up to present her wet hole to the alpha in invitation.

“My good girl,” Undertaker praises. Grell bites down on her tongue to strangle the mewl in her throat, mouth filling with blood - she won’t beg, she won’t. The ancient reaper releases one shoulder to lightly drag a single nail down her spine, from the nape of her neck all the way down to her tailbone. “Arching for me so prettily…there isn’t much that makes me miss my reaping glasses, but how I’d love to see you right now with crystal clarity.”

He reaches past Grell for a pillow to stuff underneath her, keeping her back arched and her hips canted up. The friction of the pillowcase rubbing along her sensitive cock makes Grell’s whole body twitch.

Behind her, she feels him line up the heavy length of his shaft between her cheeks. Undertaker rocks against her lazily, coating himself in her slick. Grell squirms this way and that, but between his limbs trapping her to the mattress and how slippery her hole is, she can’t get his cock inside her. Please, she thinks, digging her teeth into her lip to muffle her sob of frustration, please don’t make me beg; you said, you said I shouldn’t have to.

“Be still, my dear,” Undertaker murmurs, more gently than she deserves, “and let me give you what you want.”

For perhaps the first time while in bed with an alpha, Grell does as she’s told.

It’s a kindness when Undertaker grips his shaft, nudging the tip of his cock against her entrance. It’s a relief like nothing else when his thick length sinks inside her, inch by endless inch - not so big as to hurt, but just large enough for her body to resist the intrusion. Grell cries out loudly, heedless of the open windows - this, this is what she needs, full at last with no escape. Slowly, Undertaker sheathes himself entirely, until she can feel the soft squish of his balls pressed to her perineum, hip bones digging into the cushion of her arse.

“Nnhh…your cunt is so tight,” Undertaker groans. Grell shivers with pleasure at the term - the alpha might be crass, but at least he treats her like a lady.

The relief of being filled is short-lived. It quickly becomes clear that Undertaker is in no hurry to move - the older reaper only rolls his hips languidly, in barely-there thrusts that serve no purpose but to keep her full. Grell attempts to rock forward, the better to fuck herself back into his maddeningly shallow motions, but his hands and shins are a dead weight on her limbs, trapping her in place. She digs her knees and toes into the mattress, squirming for leverage.

It earns Grell her first real, honest-to-god growl of warning from the alpha.

“I thought- uhf. I thought you said you’d pin me down and knot me,” she growls back impatiently. “Faster, already. Fuck me like you promised.”

Unable to see him behind her, the clawed hand in her hair takes Grell by surprise, shoving her face-first into the pillows with a startled yelp. Undertaker’s fingers tangle near her roots, too tight for comfort, keeping her head down while he hisses in her ear.

“You will take what I give you,” Undertaker tells her sternly. He pulls her back up by the hair; she gasps, arching up into his grip to ease the pressure on her scalp. The pain has Grell’s insides twitching with excitement, a little too tellingly for her liking. More gently, Undertaker adds, “I have been more than patient, my dear. Now you must have a little patience for me; I couldn’t deny you if I tried, but I’ve no intention of tearing you.”

He releases his grip, stroking a hand over the crown of her head soothingly. By this point, the already messy bun he’d tied her hair into must be an absolute bird’s nest - she can feel loose strands brushing over her neck ticklishly, but they could just as easily be the mortician’s own long tresses.

“Now,” Undertaker says again, withdrawing his cock, “be still.”

He punctuates this with a snap of his hips, the motion punching a strangled noise from Grell. His next thrusts are gentler, building up to a slow, smooth rhythm, but at least he’s finally moving. Grell moans softly, long and continuous, the drag of the alpha’s shaft over her neglected prostate on every push in and out making her toes curl with syrupy, molten pleasure.

“There you are,” Undertaker coos into the shell of her ear. “What animals did you lie with before me, hmm? Who didn’t take the time to warm you up first?”

“You talk as if - ah! - as if you aren’t the worst kind of beast yourself,” Grell huffs, amused.

The retort earns her a bark of laughter. “Perhaps, but I’ll certainly treat you better than the whelps in Dispatch.” He nibbles at her ear; the careful scrape of his teeth makes her clench around him. “Mnhh…you’re something to be savored.”

He fucks into her, pace lazy but firm. Every thrust forces Grell’s smaller prick into the pillow underneath her hips - between the slick leaking out around the alpha’s cock and the precum weeping from her slit, she’s making quite the damp spot, a lovely counterpoint to the stretch in her arsehole. She wants to rut forward. She wants to push backward. She wants him faster, harder, deeper, but the only thing she seems able to achieve is aimless, frustrated wriggling.

At least Undertaker seems equally overcome; his breathing is heavy in her ear, hot and damp against her skin and getting quicker every minute, as is the speed he fucks her with. Undertaker is gratifyingly vocal as a lover, groaning raggedly above her with every thrust. It makes something instinctual inside of her melt, to know that she pleases him so.

Needing more of her, Undertaker rearranges himself until he lays on top of Grell almost fully, skin to skin. His arms snake under her armpits, elbows planted to the bed to keep him up. The new position puts his scarred wrists near her face, and her mouth waters in response; the heavy scent of him so close to her nose does nothing to help the way her head is swimming with heat.

Instead of holding her down, his knees dig into the mattress either side of hers, giving him the leverage to fuck into her harder. He finally abandons all pretense of being gentle, driving into her with enough force to rock the bed frame. Grell realizes her legs are free with a little start, too distracted by his wrists to have noticed - she can finally press the balls of her feet to the bed, arching back to meet each rough thrust.

“Ah, ahn- fuck, oh, fuck,” Grell gasps in a steady stream of nonsense. Between the friction of the pillow at her front, the stretch of his shaft and the relentless pressure of his cockhead on her prostate, she quickly feels her climax building low in her gut. It’s so much; she’s dizzy, she’s hot, she’s so hard it hurts, she needs- she’s going to-

She tries to warn him, but she’s already spilling into the damp fabric of the pillowcase before the first pulse of orgasm has even shuddered down her spine. Grell shouts, hoarse and wordless, yowling like the bitch in heat that she is right now; she’d be embarrassed by the sound, if only she were aware of making it.

The alpha rumbles with pleasure at the way her trembling body squeezes and ripples around him, but Undertaker doesn’t stop, fucking into the omega with the single-minded purpose of knotting her. Every sharp thrust wrings another weak spurt of cum from Grell, useless omega seed dribbling from her slit to join the puddle below her. The mess is almost a relief - at least now her cock glides smoothly over the fabric instead of rubbing quite so roughly, but his prick slamming into her oversensitive prostate is still overwhelming enough to make her howl.

Outside, someone wolf-whistles at the noise, laughing.

Undertaker snarls loudly in their direction, wrapping a hand over Grell’s mouth to muffle her. The possessive tang in his scent makes it clear that her moans should be for him, and only him. She can’t turn around enough to give him the flat look she’d like to (and even if she could, she’s too shivery and boneless with orgasm to bother), but he seems to sense her sass anyway.

“Yes, fine, the open window was a mistake, you were right,” Undertaker growls impatiently. He bites at her shoulder - not hard enough to draw blood, but enough to make her squeak into his palm. The scrape of teeth makes her tighten; withdrawing his hand, Undertaker groans into the crook of her neck and bites again. And again, and again.

It’s getting so hard to think. It occurs to Grell, distantly, that she should be worried. Everything about this is hopelessly reckless, from her choice in partner to his teeth at her neck. She should have worn a collar. She should have muzzled him like the rabid dog he is. He’s getting far too close to her scent gland, but she’s too feverish with heat to care. Oh, what would her coworkers think if they saw her like this, drooling into the pillows and moaning shamelessly as the ancient reaper stuffs her full of his cock?

…Her coworkers? There was a reason she wasn’t meant to let this particular alpha fuck her…wasn’t there? What was it? She can’t seem to remember at all. And why wouldn’t she want him to? He’s so strong. Handsome. A little too clever for his own good. And he fucks spectacularly, rough and hard and just how she likes it.

She can tell he’s getting close by the knot beginning to swell and catch against her rim. She presses back into his harsh thrusts, trying to get his knot deeper. The alpha pants raggedly into her ear, moaning near pitifully with pleasure.

His rhythm begins to falter in favor of sheathing himself to the hilt with every rut of his hips, until - with a deep, overwhelmed groan - Undertaker thrusts inside her one last time, knot swelling rapidly to its full size. Somewhere between the inescapable pressure against her walls and the warm, sticky feeling of being filled with cum as he empties inside of her, Grell comes again, dragged over the edge with him.

The world quiets to nothing but the wrecked little noises Undertaker makes by her ear. Tied together, her mind goes deliriously, perfectly blank, awareness limited only to the rich, musky scent of her alpha, the pulse of his cock, and the fluttering of her inner walls as she milks his knot for all it’s worth. It’s bliss.

She’s only vaguely aware of Undertaker pressing his nose to her scent gland, huffing deep lungfuls there as if she were oxygen, but the alpha is a gentleman when it counts - he doesn’t bite down. He restrains himself to rubbing his face over her neck, marking Grell with his scent alone and getting covered in hers in return. She’s going to smell positively frightening when she gets home; the scent of him on her skin promises bloody murder to any rival alpha that dares look her way. How thrilling.

Grell loves a knot as much as the next omega - being tied to the alpha on the other end of it, less so; this is usually the part where she starts to bite and kick to get them off faster. Strange, how she doesn’t feel the urge to squirm at all right now. She seems to float on the high of orgasm for an awful lot longer than usual: she’s warm and comfortable, she has Undertaker’s strong, scarred arms around her, and she can feel the gentle throb of her alpha’s knot as he continues to fill her with seed. Everything is perfect.

Even when his knot begins to deflate, some ten minutes later, she does nothing to get him off of her. Undertaker seems in no hurry to move either, wrapped around her body like some sort of bony barnacle. Of all the assumptions Grell has ever held about the other reaper, that he would be a cuddler was never one of them, but here he is, trying to get as much of his skin pressed up against hers as he can.

Eventually, though, Undertaker’s cock becomes too soft to hold back the flow of cum threatening to ooze out around it. He gets to his knees with a sigh, gently pulling out. His load immediately follows after, bubbling out of Grell with an obscene squelch to run down her inner thighs, thick and still warm.

The loss of him isn’t the relief it should be. Without the alpha over her back, the feeling of cool air from the window makes Grell’s damp skin prickle unpleasantly with goosebumps. She grasps out blindly, but he isn’t there; a feeling of dread forming low in her gut, Grell rolls onto her side to look for him.

The sight of Undertaker’s back to her as he leaves the bed is unexpectedly devastating.

Grell makes such a hurt noise that Undertaker immediately snaps to attention, tripping over his own alpha instincts in his hurry to inspect his mate for injury. She uses his distraction to snatch a hand out for his scarred wrist.

“Stay,” she orders, wide-eyed. Undertaker blinks at her with surprise.

He huffs softly, easing her off his wrist in favor of tangling their fingers together. “You’ll be bitching about the mess in twenty minutes if I don’t clean you up,” Undertaker explains wryly. He lifts their joined hands to press a kiss to her knuckles. “I’ll only be a moment. Promise.”

Swallowing, Grell nods and lets go. She flops into the sheets, watching as he disappears into an adjoining room.

What was that? Why should she want him to stay, when she’s already too hot, and she won’t need his knot again for another hour yet? He didn’t even need to hold her down when they were tied together - she stayed under him quite happily on her own. Nosing at the pillows, Grell manages to soothe her sudden anxiety with the scent of the alpha steeped into his nest. She feels-

…She feels safe with him, she realizes. Which is bizarre, considering she’s in the bed of a lunatic hellbent on defying the laws of life and death - a man with no compunctions about chasing her into his bed with a scythe. But it’s these very same dangers that make her feel so secure; Grell’s upside-down hindbrain only sees a mate stronger than her. She can finally relax after a knot, knowing that, for once in her lovelife, her partner is capable of defending the nest better than she is.

The door creaks, and Undertaker steps back in with a washcloth and a steaming bowl of hot water. Grell hides half her face in the pillows to disguise how keenly she watches his return, one emerald eye fixed to him as he perches on the edge of the bed.

She lets him wipe away the mix of slick and seed between her legs, too spent to be embarrassed about it. Besides, most of the mess leaking out of her is his own now. God, there’s a lot of it; she hadn’t been wrong in her earlier assessment of his virility.

“You better not get me pregnant,” Grell mumbles tiredly. She doesn’t mean it. He can probably smell the lie on her, but he’s kind enough not to point it out – entire centuries go by without any reapers conceiving successfully, after all. The fertility rate between their kind is astoundingly low.

“As much as I would love to stuff you full of pups, my dear, I doubt the divine would ever smile so kindly on us sinners,” Undertaker snorts. Finished with her, he turns the cloth to his spent cock. She likes the way it looks in his lap right now; still half-hard from the scent of her in heat, flushed with color and ready to stand to attention whenever she needs it next.

Grell purrs with satisfaction when he settles back down beside her, washcloth thrown into the bowl by the bed carelessly. She rolls closer to bury her face against his chest, and Undertaker makes a quietly pleased noise, welcoming her clinging. He wraps her up safely in his arms, nosing at her hair and breathing in the scent of her contentment.

“A cunt full of cum is what it takes to get you sweet, is it?” Undertaker teases. Grell just grins up at him, smile all teeth and mischief. The alpha chuckles. “Come here, my little monster.”

He tips Grell’s chin up with one nail to finally kiss her properly. She hums into his mouth, happy to let him do as he will with her…for now. Undertaker kisses with a little too much tongue, but it doesn’t feel like inexperience - more like a claiming, licking into her mouth with a possessiveness that should alarm her. Twisted thing that she is, all Grell feels is excitement.

Out of nowhere, Undertaker sighs. “Ahh…what a terrible mistake you are.”

Grell flinches, wrenching back to look him in the eye. He can’t mean…?

“I suppose you’ll tattle on me once your heat is done,” Undertaker continues. What? She blinks, confused. “I’ll have to find somewhere new to hide…can’t have Dispatch snooping around.”

His tone is casual enough, but there’s an air of melancholy to him, expression guarded. Surely, surely he’d considered the risk of Grell snitching on him before they began - he’s a clever bastard, she’ll give him that much, and he can’t have been so drunk on the scent of her oncoming heat to have forgotten their opposing allegiances.

This is a test, Grell realizes, but why now, and what for, she doesn’t understand.

“Why on earth would I turn you in?” she responds at last, puzzled. “I can’t rat you out without implicating myself. You’ve already made certain I stink of you, and my heat has barely started. I dread to think how my coworkers will react once I get home.”

A slow smirk spreads across Undertaker’s lips, a deeply pleased growl rumbling low in his chest to accompany it. Whatever this odd little test was, she seems to have passed. He looks not at all sorry for smothering her in his scent - she’d go so far as to say that he looks downright smug.

“Perhaps,” Grell dares to continue, “we ought to make this a regular thing.”

The mortician’s pale eyebrows raise with surprise.

“You helping me with my heats, I mean,” Grell clarifies. She clears her throat awkwardly. “And in exchange, I’ll- I won’t tell Dispatch where you are.”

Undertaker snorts loudly, and Grell immediately regrets saying anything; it’s a ridiculous suggestion, hardly an exchange at all when she’s already admitted to her own liability, and Dispatch have failed to even come close to tracking the ancient reaper down.

“My dear,” Undertaker drawls, taking pity on her, “I think you’ll find that having a pretty, young omega to fuck is enough of a reward in itself.” He reaches out, tracing the tips of his long nails in nonsensical patterns along her ribs. “Surely you’d rather find an alpha closer to your own age than put up with an old corpse like me, though.”

Grell shivers under the attention. “I don’t know,” she purrs, “there’s something to be said for a man with experience.” Confidence wavering, she swallows self-consciously. “Wouldn’t you find me a chore? Surely the novelty of an omega like me wears thin fast.”

Something flashes in the alpha’s uranium-green eyes; Undertaker pushes himself up on hands and knees until he’s looming above her once again, silver hair a curtain around them.

“Miss Grell, you may fight me as much as you like,” he tells her seriously, unblinking. “You may scratch, bite, and squirm to your heart’s content, and I shall enjoy every moment of it. But I promise now, that by the end of your heat, I will wear you out. And when you finally submit yourself to me entirely, I will fuck you the way a lady as rare and precious as you deserves to be fucked - gently. Softly. Slowly, and the victory of it will be that much sweeter for all your struggling beforehand.”

Grell realizes that she’s stopped breathing. She finds her breath again with a hitched intake of air, staring up at the ancient reaper with wonder glittering in her peridot eyes. A smile wobbles over her lips - not the manic, bloodthirsty snarl she favors in the mirror, but her sweetest, most sincere grin. The one that makes her look young and gawky, too many teeth and too much gum.

“I’m looking forward to it,” she says softly, beaming.

(In an hour, she will lock her ankles together at the small of his back, holding him to her by literal tooth and nail, gouging deep scratches into his already-scarred back until he knots her again.)

(Tomorrow, under the full delirium of heat, she will be at her worst, their lovemaking devolving into a wrestling match that leaves the curtains torn, a mirror shattered and a vase in ten different pieces. He’ll finally pin her by the fireplace in a nelson-hold, and neither will be spared the carpet burn.)

(And at the very end, she’ll lie on her back for him and spread her legs without protest, sweet and docile as can be, and the way he looks at her like long lost treasure will finally make submission worth it.)

Chapter Text

Four days after she left for the mortal realm, Grell returns to Dispatch in a dreamy haze.

She can’t remember ever feeling quite so satisfied - or quite so exhausted, either; Undertaker had been deadly serious when he promised to wear her out. Standing in the lobby by the elevators that will take her up to the London branch, Grell covers her mouth with a gloved hand, yawning widely yet again. She can’t seem to stop this morning.

She hadn’t even had the energy to go through her full make-up routine, wearing only the bare essentials of mascara and lipgloss. Blush had been quite unnecessary, given the pink flush on her cheeks that won’t seem to leave with Undertaker’s scent still coating her possessively. Her hips are bruised and sore (in the best way, of course), so heels are out of the question today. William will be ever so pleased to see the comfortable slip-on loafers she’s opted for instead.

Maybe, she thinks, if she asks very nicely, Ronnie will fetch her one of those caramel macchiatos from the cafeteria with an extra shot of espresso.

Dreaming of caffeine and yawning so wide that her jaw cracks, she almost doesn’t notice when Alan calls out to her from the revolving doors of the lobby entrance.

“Grell!” The other omega greets her with a smile, jogging over to the elevators. Eric slinks into the building after him, giving her a jaunty wave. “You’re back! How was your hHOLY shit!!”

Alan’s briefcase crashes to the floor in his hurry to cover his nose with both hands. Grell startles, shocked out of her post-heat stupor by the noise.

“Alan!” Eric sprints to catch up with his frail mate. “Wha’s the ma- fucking hell, Grell!” No sooner does he get close to them than he hastens to pinch his own nostrils shut, backing away from the redhead with an alarmed expression.

Well, really. She knows she smells a bit scary today, but this seems like an overreaction.

“What did you do?” Alan asks, an utterly appalled look on his face.

“More like who d’yeh do,” Eric snickers from behind his hand.

The shorter omega suddenly goes very pale. “Styx, tell me you didn’t finally hook up with a demon, Grell,” Alan demands frantically. “You’d better get Ronnie to collect your assignments, Spears will have you sent to the psych ward if he smells you like this."

Grell blinks. A demon? It’s not a bad cover story, actually.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, dear,” Grell says innocently.

She steps into the elevator with a smile on her face, looking forward to the chaos she’s about to cause.