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It’s common practice in Faerghus.
There is always a shortage of able bodies: for hunting, for tilling the barren land, for herding. Most omegas do not have the privilege of being able to stay home and raise children, and so the duty falls to one or two in every village or city quarter while the rest work. It takes a village to raise a child in Faerghus--it takes a village to feed a child in Faerghus.
Therefore, omegas work freely with alphas and betas, even those who are not close family. They hunt with them, they farm with them. This is, allegedly, not the usual way of things in a civilized society, though it has been the way of Faerghus for generations. Omegas are not supposed to work with alphas that don’t claim them. They are supposed to run a household, care for children, and, for the noble class, only mingle with alphas at balls and lavish events. Socializing, instead of work.
However, there is a method to ensure everyone knows that an alpha has claimed an omega. A way to protect that omega from being considered unclaimed. A way to distinguish alphas from omegas, even when they all do the same work. And so: an alpha who claims an omega will relieve themselves on the omega. Will scent them with their urine.
This was once, as Dimitri understands, the common way of things across the continent, and it is more common still amongst the lower classes in Adrestia and Leicester than in the nobility. Alphas scented their omegas, and omegas were free to mingle freely with anyone of any designation. As far as he understands it, scenting has fallen out of fashion for most of the nobility outside of Faerghus, but omegas are also no longer cloistered in their homes and can move freely. There are other ways an alpha can claim an omega: bites are common amongst all classes and nations, and permanent jewelry is especially popular amongst Adrestian nobility. Those things are not unheard of in Faerghus, either. But one cannot go about their day in Faerghus without encountering someone, many someones, who have been scented.
Dimitri has only been scented once. He was unclaimed from his coming of age until after the war, and since then he has been the King. There have been omega kings before, but according to historical record, they were never claimed.
Dimitri knows better; it was explained to him when he presented. Some omega kings were claimed, he was told. But they were never scented. A king belonged to their country; a claimed omega belonged to their alpha. If an omega king’s relationship, became a scented fact, became obvious for anyone to smell, became documented in the archives, then they would cease to have the power they did. They would still be king, but people would know they had an alpha too, in a more permanent and obvious way than word or bite or collar.
“Why does it matter?” Dimitri asked when he was taught about the duties of an omega king. He had been uninterested, staring at the gloves hiding the burn scars on his hands, still pink and fresh. Like his sense of taste, his ability to smell pheremonal scents had faded, and his own presentation had been a thing others noticed before he did. Anyway, he could hear something that sounded like his father coming from the corridor, but he had seen his father murdered only moons before, and he was more interested in that sound, just out of reach, than the lesson. But not being able to be King and a claimed omega both had made him lift his head. “Even alpha kings marry. They have partners. How is a scented omega different from a--”
“Scenting is as intimate as sex,” Cornelia said, from where she sat in a corner of the room. A tutor was explaining it to him, but she was present for some reason. “For some people, even more so. It unnerves your people to see you claimed by someone. Perhaps they could influence you, or order you to do something that defies the good of the nation. Only the Archbishop, as the Goddess’ representative on earth, scents the King of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, regardless of their dynamic.”
Dimitri was barely fourteen, but he already knew Rufus did something that defied the good of the nation every day, and he wasn’t even an omega. He opened his mouth.
“Your Highness,” Cornelia said severely. “Please pay attention to the lesson,” and he closed his mouth and obeyed. He was a good prince, a good omega, and a good liar. He’d kept his eyes on the tutor, still half-listening, and focused on his father’s voice in the corridor instead.
He was scented by Byleth at his coronation, when he became Faerghus’ King, at Garreg Mach still during the war. It happened behind a screen, in a small, sacred room, but Dimitri emerged splattered with the scent of the Goddess’ representative, as a good King of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus did. The crowd could smell it, the piss fresh on his face and robes. Even he could smell Byleth’s wild, strange scent, as indescribable as the green and pink ribbons of light above Fhirdiad in the night. Cornelia was right: it had been intimate, though not sexual. Byleth was gentle with him, had always been gentle with him, and in this setting Dimitri hadn’t resented it. He was an omega king: he submitted to no alpha. Only the Goddess.
Scenting is not a point of contention for Dimitri and Felix. It was decided early on: they could not afford to rock the boat in this way, not when it would be rocked by so many other factors. After the war, Dimitri was the King of Fódlan, not just Faerghus, and that coronation was more secular. Still, scent tags last a long time. Years, sometimes decades. Dimitri can no longer smell Byleth on him, between his weak sense of smell and how he’s grown used to its presence, but others can. Byleth, like the Archbishops before them, was neither an alpha, a beta, nor an omega. Their scent is unusual and so distinct from Dimitri’s that even Dimitri could tell the difference until he got used to it. At first Byleth’s scent tag made Felix’s lips curl back into a snarl whenever he got too close to the glands behind Dimitri’s ears, at his collarbones and wrists, where scent tags linger, but he too adjusted to it.
Dimitri would always be in service to the people, and while scenting was the norm in Faerghus it was by no means required; it was uncommon in Leicester and unheard of in Adrestia. It was expected that he wouldn’t let Felix scent him, that officially Felix would be his right hand, his shield, even his lover, but not his alpha. No one in Adrestia or Leicester would find it odd that he wasn’t scented, and in Faerghus it was the expectation.
Dimitri wouldn’t have minded it, though. There was a part of him that craved—not normalcy, but unremarkability. In another world, he and Felix were, perhaps, an armorer and a guardsman, and no one would consider it a moment of continental opprobrium if Felix scented him. He would not have minded the action of it, of taking what Felix would deign to give him. He has always taken what Felix would deign to give him, even when it was nothing but cruel words spat onto the training yard ground between them. And Dimitri had hunted, and killed, and spent too much time wrist-deep or deeper in the guts of dead things to be bothered by urine. He would wear Felix’s scent. He would welcome it. He doesn’t crave it, doesn’t dream of it, but in a perfect world, he would ask for it.
He doesn’t know if Felix feels the same. They have never discussed it, once it was decided that Felix couldn’t scent Dimitri.
Still, instinct is instinct, and despite themselves Faerghan culture has been baked into them, and sometimes when Dimitri is on his knees and Felix is above him, Dimitri finds himself baring his throat, or Felix prepares his cock for something other than come. They always catch themselves. Dimitri has so many thoughts that he ignores--thoughts of throwing himself off parapets, thoughts of slaughtering rooms of nobles, thoughts of hacking off his own limbs--stopping himself from presenting to be scented is so benign that it’s laughable compared to his other intrusive thoughts.
But the thought lingers. Dimitri doesn’t think about it every day. Maybe Felix does, but Felix can still scent where Dimitri can’t. He’d be able to smell everyone’s scent tags; Dimitri only smells them when they’re fresh. But when he does smell a scent tag, some alpha’s fresh scent on an omega, or sometimes a beta, combined with the familiar smell of urine, he finds his mouth watering. If Felix is present, he never looks at him. They can’t do that. Dimitri is the King. He doesn’t get to be a normal Faerghan omega. He has other privileges, other benefits, and being scented is something he gave up in exchange.
It never comes up in bed with Felix. They’re happy. They have good sex, satisfying sex. They have physical intimacy that is both sexual and otherwise. Dimitri gets to have almost all of Felix in any way he wants, and aside from those intrusive thoughts of presenting for Felix, he doesn’t think about Felix scenting him when they’re fucking.
He’s sucking Felix off, kneeling on a pillow Felix laid out for him. Felix’s hands are fisted in his hair, and Dimitri is choking himself on his cock, mind blissfully blank.
“Wait,” Felix gasps, and Dimitri pulls back, eye fluttering open as he looks up at Felix. “Gonna come,” Felix says, and strips his cock ruthlessly. His knot isn’t swollen, so he might come again later, maybe in Dimitri--maybe he has eggs--but the thought passes as quickly as it comes. He’s thinking about Felix coming in his mouth. Thinking about the rawness in his throat, the way he’s so wet from sucking Felix off that he can feel slick on his inner thighs.
Dimitri opens his mouth for Felix’s spend, and Felix gives it to him, spunk landing in his mouth and across his lips and cheeks. He milks out the last of his come over Dimitri’s face and then, instead of pulling away, instead of pulling Dimitri up to kiss him, or any of the other things he might do, he lets his cock soften slightly in his hand, and presses it against Dimitri’s lips, smearing his come across Dimitri’s face, pushing some in his mouth. Dimitri keeps his mouth open for him, ready for Felix to--to--
To scent him.
Felix takes a breath, and steps back, visibly shaken. It’s as close as they’ve ever come to it. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I should not have done that.”
Neither of them are in heat or rut. There isn’t any reason for arousal to cloud his judgment. At this moment, Dimitri can’t see why Felix shouldn’t scent him. They live in a new era. Dimitri isn’t just the King of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, but all Fódlan, and various agreements between the former Empire and Alliance have established the new country as a secular one. Dimitri no longer legally needs to remain scented by only the Goddess.
“You could,” Dimitri says, surprised at his own realization. It would come with its own share of problems, but….He swallows, settling on his knees. “I. Felix. You could. I want you to.”
Felix looks startled. “Dimitri,” he says.
“I’ve always wanted it,” Dimitri says. “I don’t need it. I’m happy as we are. I just…want it.”
Felix’s face crumples.
“Felix?”
Felix crouches down in front of Dimitri. Presses their foreheads together. “When was the last time you told me you just wanted something?” he says. “How can I say no to that?”
“You can always say no,” Dimitri says.
“You’re hard to say no to,” Felix says. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to say no to you?”
Dimitri blinks at him.
“Of course I want to scent you,” Felix says. “I’ve always wanted you to be mine in every way possible.” He shakes his head. “It would cause so many problems for you.”
“Maybe they’d be worth it,” Dimitri says.
Felix’s face falls further. “You have no idea,” he says, and sucks in a breath. “How long I’ve hoped you would want something, just for yourself, regardless of consequences. That you would tell me you wanted something. That you’d be willing to complicate anything because of your personal desire.” He stands up again, scrubbing a hand over his face. “But this would be--”
Now that Dimitri’s suggested it, he wants it desperately. It’s as though he never let himself think about having it but now that he has, it’s all he can want. “Please,” he says, and Felix stares at him. “Please, Felix. I want you to scent me.”
Felix’s mouth parts. “Dimitri,” he says. “It’s not that I don’t want to.”
“Do you want me to beg? I will.”
“Don’t,” Felix says desperately. “I only--” He swallows. “You could order me,” he says.
“Felix,” Dimitri pleads.
Felix sets his jaw. “If it’s an order from my King, I won’t refuse.”
This is almost laughable; Felix pushes back against Dimitri regularly, both fairly and unfairly, and Dimitri even encourages it amongst his advisors. Furthermore, ordering Felix to scent him feels antithetical to the better world they’re trying to create, a world where leaders can’t wield their power for petty reasons.
If it’s an order from my King, I won’t refuse. Felix refuses Dimitri’s orders weekly, probably, demanding and suggesting alternatives as he does. This is deliberate. He doesn’t know why Felix won’t do it on his own, but if he won’t--
“Felix,” Dimitri says, and looks up at him through his lashes. “Scent me.”
“As His Majesty commands,” Felix breathes, and grips the base of his cock. “Lower your head,” he says, and Dimitri does, though he doesn’t want to. He wants everything Felix will give him. He stares at Felix’s bare feet, toes flexing against the stone floor, and the only warning he gets is Felix’s exhale before the stream of his urine hits the crown of his head.
It will be a scandal. There has never been a documented King of Faerghus who has been scented during their rule. To be scented at all is considered unusual to the Alliance and primitive to the Empire, and Dimitri will have to go to meetings with leaders from those regions with Felix’s scent on him for years. Everyone who has a sense of pheremonal smell--everyone except the few people like Dimitri--will know Dimitri has an alpha who has claimed him with their scent.
It will cause all kinds of problems. Dimitri will walk into meetings and everyone will know: not just that he had been scented, but that he, a king, had allowed someone to piss on him. That he had bowed his head and let someone urinate on him. It's not degrading for an omega to be pissed on, not when it’s part of scenting, but Dimitri is both omega and king. He bows to no one save the Goddess.
Then there are the religious ramifications: the fact that Dimitri let himself be scented by someone other than the Goddess’ representative on earth, that he, a king committed to the Church of Seiros, considered his alpha to be as important as the Goddess. And that’s tied into the politics yet again: an omega king doesn’t let their alpha scent them. Especially when their alpha is already considered their watchdog. People will think he’s either Fraldarius’ puppet or he will favor them, even more than they already do. That he values the people of Fraldarius over what the Goddess wants for Faerghus, for Fódlan.
Dimitri finds he doesn’t care. Felix’s piss is hot, hotter than Dimitri expected. The stream starts slowly, but Felix lets out a breath, toes flexing, and then it’s steady, drenching his hair and running in rivulets down his neck and forehead, splattering on his shoulders. He can feel it trickle over the scent glands behind his ears and there are runnels sliding down his spine, pooling in keloided scars. He makes a strange noise in the back of his throat, something keening and hungry.
“Fuck,” Felix grinds out, barely audible over the patter of his urine splattering on Dimitri. Dimitri can’t help it; he wants to see Felix’s face. He lifts his head, and Felix sucks in a breath but doesn’t stop as his piss hits Dimitri in the face.
Dimitri closes his eye and inhales through the stream: it smells like urine, acrid and pungent, but he can also smell Felix’s pheremonal scent in it: metallic, salty, earthen. It’s rare Dimitri smells anyone’s pheremonal scents anymore at all, but smelling Felix’s is especially staggering. He was so familiar with it as a child, with items and gifts Felix left in the Prince’s nursery; he took comfort in them when Felix, Glenn, Ingrid, and Sylvain were gone. After the Tragedy, the cacophony of scents in the spaces where they played was ashen and empty. Felix’s scent is a comfort, a memory--but now Dimitri will smell like that, too. Dimitri will smell like Felix--not just on the level of two people who share a bed, but pheremonally. Officially. Like a toy Felix slept with and drooled on for years, pressed against his scent glands every night until there was a natural transfer of pheremonal scent. It’s a claim, and not a temporary one. One that will last years.
Dimitri’s eyelashes are clumping against his cheek. He tips his head back, baring his throat and the scent gland between his collarbones, and Felix, cursing, aims the stream of piss there. It runs down Dimitri’s scarred chest, sinks into the pillow under Dimitri’s knees. There’s a hot rivulet sliding down the crease of his thigh, desperately close to his wet cunt. He opens his eye; Felix is watching him with all the intensity he’d give an enemy in battle, mouth parted, lips and cheeks pink. Their eyes catch for a moment before Felix’s gaze drops down his body.
“Hands,” Felix grunts, and Dimitri lifts his wrists into the flow, so those glands are as saturated as the others. Felix’s eyes are enormous, his lower lip held between his teeth. His hand on his cock is shaking. He moves the stream again, back to Dimitri’s face, and Dimitri moans aloud, and Felix’s piss hits his open mouth.
They’ve moved beyond scenting now. When Byleth scented him, Dimitri kept his eyes and mouth closed, and offered his scent glands to them one by one. It wasn’t arousing and it felt empty, bland. It was a tradition, and nothing more. Dimitri did not feel the Goddess any more in that moment than he ever had.
But this? This is just Dimitri wanting Felix everywhere, Dimitri bathing in the warmth of anything Felix deigns to give him. Felix blesses him and Dimitri, aroused and wanting, takes it. He can’t taste anything, but he can feel the heat of Felix’s piss in his mouth, can still smell it. Felix snarls “Fuck,” and Dimitri swallows but can’t keep up with the rush of it, piss spilling out of the corners of his open mouth and running down his chin, his throat, his chest. It’s everywhere. Dimitri feels holy, cleansed.
You have no idea how long I’ve hoped you would want something, just for yourself.
The stream dies off, and Felix steps closer, resting his cockhead on Dimitri’s lower lip to feed him the last of it. Dimitri sputters, mouth overfull, choking as he tries to swallow and keep up. Then it’s done, and Dimitri’s panting on the floor, dripping. He looks up at Felix through wet eyelashes.
Felix drops to his knees, pressing his nose to Dimitri’s wet cheekbone, gasping against his skin, breathing him in through mouth and nose. “Fuck,” he whispers. “Saints. Dimitri.” He kisses him, tongue deep in Dimitri’s mouth, licking the taste of his own piss out of him.
“Felix,” Dimitri says into his mouth. He can smell him, can smell Felix everywhere. It will fade, he’s sure, in a day or two as the scent weakens to solely pheremonal, but for now Dimitri can smell him under the urine, iron and sea salt, and he could become addicted to this. He could want it again and again, just to be able to smell Felix on his skin. He wrenches his mouth away. “Felix, Felix—” and yanks Felix down over him, falling back onto the ruined pillow and spreading his legs around Felix’s hips. “Please, Felix—”
“Dimitri,” Felix says again, like he’s forgotten how to say anything else, and shoves his cock into Dimitri. He leans over, pressing his nose into the gland at Dimitri’s collar and inhaling, hips still, like the scent of him on Dimitri is as addicting as Dimitri finds it.
Dimitri’s shoulder blades scrape against the hard stone under his back as Felix fucks him. He wraps his arms under Felix’s and grips his shoulders, hips coming up to pin Felix between them. “Felix--oh, yes, love--”
Felix growls and pushes his face into Dimitri’s neck, turning his head to breathe in Dimitri’s scent gland behind his ear. His hips snap into Dimitri hard and fast. “You liked that,” he breathes into Dimitri’s ear.
Dimitri lets out a breathless laugh, and then moans as Felix bottoms out in him. His knot is beginning to swell, still small enough to be inside Dimitri, rubbing against him. “So did you,” he gasps, and Felix nods against Dimitri’s shoulder.
“Yes,” he says, and doesn’t stop fucking Dimitri. “You smell so good.”
“Felix,” Dimitri says. “Felix, Felix, Felix--” Felix’s knot pops out of Dimitri, still growing, and his thrusts get shorter and harder, cock shoving into Dimitri at exactly the right angle. “Don’t stop, beloved, please don’t stop--”
Felix nuzzles Dimitri’s ear and pushes his thigh open and up to Dimitri’s chest. “Dimitri,” he gasps, knot pressing against Dimitri’s opening, threatening to spread him wider. “I’ve got--I’ve got eggs.”
“Yes,” Dimitri says, and Felix pushes his knot into Dimitri, slow and inexorable. The scent of Felix is everywhere, forest and sea and blade, and Dimitri stretches open for Felix’s knot.
Felix isn’t in rut, so he can’t have many eggs; probably two, three at the most. They’ll be small, and Dimitri’s body won’t be able to properly fertilize or house them, so Dimitri will have to push them out or let them dissolve in his cunt, where they’ll leak out of him. Neither prospect is unpleasant.
Dimitri’s slick and wet, his hole spreading as Felix works his knot into him. Felix is groaning over him, elbows braced on the floor at Dimitri’s shoulders, hips hitching into Dimitri, and Dimitri can’t do anything but let himself open up for Felix. It’s a sweet, delicious stretch, taking Felix’s knot. Even with just two eggs in it it’s thick. Felix doesn't have to deposit them outside of rut and sometimes he doesn’t give them to Dimitri, just forces Dimitri onto his knot while he comes into Dimitri’s cunt or ass, but when he offers, Dimitri always accepts.
“You smell--fuck,” Felix says, and his knot sinks ever-deeper into Dimitri’s cunt, the stretch almost a burn but not quite. “We should have done this a long time ago, we should have--”
“Felix,” Dimitri says, and tugs at his clit between two fingers while Felix works his knot into him. “I want you to scent me again,” he says. “Tomorrow. Next week. Every day, so I don’t lose it--”
“I will,” Felix swears, and leans down to kiss Dimitri. “Whenever you want it--” His knot pops into Dimitri, tying them together, and Dimitri moans and comes, clenching down around Felix’s knot, Felix’s scent all over him, everywhere.
Felix curses. His hips jerk into Dimitri’s, rabbit-like and abortive with them already tied. “I’m gonna--” he says, and Dimitri can feel the way his knot shifts, to give him the eggs.
“Please, Felix,” Dimitri says. “I want everything you’ll give me.”
Felix grinds his hips into Dimitri’s and grits his teeth and the eggs press out of him slowly. Dimitri can feel the first one moving up Felix’s cock, can feel it when it pops out of him, filling Dimitri even fuller. He sinks fingernails into Felix’s shoulders and whines. He’s stretched too full and it’s still not enough.
“Another,” Felix gasps, though now that he’s started depositing eggs in Dimitri, he can’t actually stop until he’s done, and Dimitri nods, beyond words. He pushes the second egg into Dimitri, and he pants into Dimitri’s throat, hips jerking. “Seiros,” he says, and “Fuck,” and then he comes, spilling into Dimitri’s cunt. His hand, trembling, reaches between them to thumb at Dimitri’s cock and pet where they’re joined, and Dimitri arches into him.
If Dimitri was overfull before, he’s practically bursting now. There’s not enough inside him to actually make him bulge, not unless Felix is in rut and has pumped Dimitri full of viable eggs and spunk, but Dimitri feels swollen. He presses a hand to his lower belly, and it’s almost as if he can feel the eggs, the come, Felix’s knot, and he moans. Felix rubs Dimitri’s cock harder with his thumb, flicking the head with his thumbnail, and when Dimitri clenches down in response he drops his head to Dimitri’s collarbone and lets out something dangerously close to a whimper. He presses his nose to the scent gland between Dimitri’s collarbones and inhales, and Dimitri imagines all the ways Felix could scent him, all ways Dimitri would let Felix scent him, and comes again, white starbursts behind his eyelid.
When he opens his eye, Felix is watching him. He smooths back some of Dimitri’s piss-wet hair from his face. They’re still tied together, and will be for a while yet, but the urgency has faded, leaving them filthy on the floor. The pillow Dimitri was kneeling on is under his hips and drenched with sweat and urine, and once they’re untied, it will be fully ruined by everything that leaks out of Dimitri. His toes ache from where they were curled at some point. He looks up at Felix, who looks back at him, making eye contact.
“Felix?” Dimitri says.
“We’ve just done something we can’t go back from,” Felix says.
Technically, they can, to an extent. It wouldn’t be perfect, but there are herbs that can be mixed with lye in the saponification process that would scrub most of the pheremonal scent away from Dimitri. People would still be able to smell him up close, but few people outside their close friends are ever close enough to the King for it to be an issue. The problem would be that it would erase Byleth’s scent tag as well, and that tag is prominent enough that most people can pick it up while in the same room as Dimitri. He’d have to explain why he no longer carries the tag of the Archbishop, and that has political ramifications of its own, ones that could be just as explosive as Dimitri being scented by an alpha in the first place.
And Dimitri is selfish: he doesn’t want to hide that Felix scented him. He wants to wear it the way any other omega might. If he has to pick between consequences for erasing Byleth’s scent tag and consequences for having Felix’s, he’d rather pick the latter.
“Do you regret it?” Dimitri says. “Because I don’t.”
Felix looks furious, but then he shakes his head. “I don’t regret it,” he says. “But I should.” He presses his nose to Dimitri’s throat and inhales deeply. “The Leicesterians will think you are weird,” he says. “The Adrestians will think you are a northern barbarian, like they wrote about in Lycaon III’s era. And the Faerghans will think you are sacrilegious.” He nuzzles into Dimitri, still smelling him. His hips hitch aimlessly into Dimitri, stirring him up. “Perhaps they should all get over themselves.”
“What do you think,” Dimitri says breathlessly. His hands go to Felix’s ponytail, pulling the tie out of the inky locks, sinking his fingers into Felix’s hair as it falls down around their faces.
Felix lifts his head. He looks like an animal bent over a kill. “I think you’re mine,” he says, and Dimitri drags him down into a kiss.