#get used to

[doonarose]

Esurient Designs

Rating: Explicit, nsfw, no minors

Summary: It’s been over forty-eight hours since Aziraphale pointed out that Crowley never initiates kisses between them. And since then, Aziraphale has been waiting for Crowley to come to him. Forty-eight hours and it’s the longest they’ve gone without kissing since they started. Crowley’s ready to do it, he’s going to do it, he’s about to do it, when Aziraphale decides what they should actually do, is lunch.

A long, meandering lunch, with champagne and delicacies that immediately have Crowley thinking about a whole lot more than kissing. But then that’s usually when happens when Aziraphale eats in front of him.

Chapter 1/8, Part 7/9 of Osculations. All of which can be found on AO3

Notes: Special thanks to anything_thats_rock_and_roll for their beta-ing and especially for noting down that my early attempt trying to squeeze all this into a few sentences, and then paragraphs, really wasn’t working. Getting a multi-chapter smut/food adventure onto the page is not straightforward and I have appreciated their cheerleading! Also, thanks to thewaythroughthewoods for brit-picking the geography to ensure it all seemed plausible. It’s worth noting, that the restaurant and locale are very much based on real places!

Read on AO3 or under the cut.

Next time you want to kiss me, just kiss me.

That’s what Aziraphale had said to him, a permission that fell out of the sky like rain in a desert without clouds. Then: 

Please just kiss me the way you want to kiss me.

And Crowley had, and it had been a glorious and freeing surrender. And then he’d fallen asleep for ten long hours, which he still thinks was rather awkward of him, moreso because Aziraphale had just sat there and let him. 

He still didn’t quite comprehend it but the wanting that had been prickling his skin for millennia had now pooled low in his belly, welcome and allowed. Aziraphale wanted to kiss him, and more than that, Aziraphale had said: much more.  And although Crowley doesn’t know how much more and, in fact, he’s very aware that there will be limits on Aziraphale’s allowances, he still knows that next time he kisses Aziraphale, it should probably be – will probably be – spectacular. 

Except now it’s been two days since that hot, hungry kiss, and the long, blissful nap, and Crowley thinks, perhaps, Aziraphale is growing frustrated with him. At this point it is certainly the longest they’ve gone without kissing since they started, several weeks ago, and that is entirely Crowley’s fault, he knows that. Aziraphale is waiting for him and the two times Crowley worked up the nerve to start to move towards him, it just hadn’t happened. 

Today though. Aziraphale is sitting, reading in the winged armchair, it’s pulled right back from the desk and he looks content and comfortable. Crowley can cross the room and cradle his face and kiss him. There’ll be no escape, no chance he’ll turn away at the last moment, the bookshop door is locked, Crowley’s made sure of it, the room is comfortably warm and softly lit, and he’s getting much better at stopping his mouth from suddenly going dry when he starts to countdown the move to go to Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale who said he wants this. 

“Care to accompany me to lunch?” Crowley starts from where he’s been leaning against a column and staring at Aziraphale like he is lunch.  

Aziraphale snaps his hardcover book shut and leaves it on the chair, already half way into his overcoat before Crowley can push properly away from the pillar and consider his options. 

“Not very hungry,” he lies. 

“I’d like the company,” Aziraphale counters, and who is Crowley to say no to that. 

***

Crowley drives and Aziraphale navigates. Once it had been established that they weren’t headed to the Ritz and that Aziraphale didn’t remember the name or the address of this new, talk-of-the-town haute cuisine establishment – just, inexplicably, how to get there – Crowley was very much left to drive where he was told. 

It’s across town, and speeding and miracling can only do so much in central London at half past noon on a Thursday. It takes almost twenty minutes to get there and Crowley is all too happy to invent a parking space immediately in front of the large Edwardian building when they finally pull up. 

The restaurant is on a stretch of the High Street in Bethnal Green that hosts the typical assortment of shops, notwithstanding the restaurant itself, which, Crowley has to admit, seems to exist in an out-of-place somewhat-imposing three-story white sandstone façade. The building is replete with columns and arches, statues of lions and cherubs, and above the entryway a sculpture of one of the Roman goddesses. ‘Yokaze’ is emblazoned across the front door in golden metallic letters, and beneath them, etched Japanese characters say the same. Directly across the road, there’s an off license, a chinese, and a pizza place, all with heavy security roller doors currently open, a fair smack of graffiti, and loitering teenagers.  

Aziraphale beckons him in, holding the door open, “After you.” He sounds excited and Crowley immediately softens, begrudgingly aware he would drive a lot further to make Aziraphale happy. 

Inside they’re greeted by an understated, modern dining room, carpets of deep emerald green, cream walls, and crisp white table clothes. There are lush Monstera growing in the corners and over the fireplace, and an impressive collection of paintings of birds that Crowley suspects are quite pricey originals from the 19th century. It’s busy, for a Thursday, but mostly with couples and clandestine corporate types. Quiet but for the murmurs of soft conversations and the clinking of glasses and cutlery. The host has them on the list – either because Aziraphale actually booked or because he meant to – and soon they’re seated opposite each other at a small rectangular table situated off to the side near a painting of a Heron. 

A waiter appears, standing up too straight and rattling through their options with a lilting Scottish accent, but Crowley’s not really paying attention. Happily, Aziraphale orders for both of them and it’s only after the waiter is gone that Crowley’s ears catch up with him. 

Tasting menu and a bottle of champagne. A long lunch, then.

“Celebrating, angel?” Crowley teases. Champagne with lunch isn’t uncommon, but going straight to a bottle betrays the usual dance of ordering just a glass.  

“What’s not to celebrate?” Aziraphale beams. “You’ll join me, won’t you?”

Crowley nods and watches Aziraphale from behind the sunglasses he’s afforded because they’re out in public. Aziraphale, who can barely sit still, and is looking left and right, drinking in the ambience and the décor like a schoolboy at a petting zoo. 

The champagne is popped and poured, and thick, embossed cards explaining the tasting menu plates are set down beside each of them. They lean forward to clink their glasses together. 

“What are we toasting?” Crowley asks, always eager to be given a hint of what’s going through Aziraphale’s head. 

“Us, of course.” 

“To us.” Both of them try and fail to keep themselves from smiling as they touch glasses again and gulp down the tickling, brightly tart alcohol. 

Aziraphale really is quite something; all gorgeous light and exuberance, and Crowley feels his heart swell in the increasingly familiar way that he thinks means he just fell a little bit more in love. 

Aziraphale seems oblivious, pouring over the tasting notes, making little sounds of excitement and surprise, little catches of mumbles under his breath that Crowley would ordinarily roll his eyes at. 

Crowley can’t wait to get him home and kiss him senseless. 

The first course arrives. 

Amuse-bouche: Fresh oysters, shucked at the table and served with tabasco, lemon foam, and Australian finger lime pearls.

Awaken the palate with the ocean’s aphrodisiac. A mouthful of salty-sweet tender flesh, richly layered with flavors of minerals, zest, and spice. 

As it’s prepared in front of them, Crowley bothers to actually cast his eyes over the first few lines of his tasting notes, and then back over the stylistic black-inked words again. Suddenly, he recognizes the goddess sculpted above the restaurant doorway and accepts the irony with a soft scowl that goes unnoticed by Aziraphale. 

The shells are cracked open at the table by a new waiter – perhaps this makes him a chef – wearing a chainmail oyster glove, a starched white shirt and jacket, and no other discernible features, because Crowley is staring hard at Aziraphale. 

Aziraphale is playing up his delight at the spectacle, Crowley likes to imagine. 

They are each plated three oysters, the opened shells placed carefully on a bed of coarse salt crystals in the center of a small white plate, which is settled on the bigger white plates already in front of them. The original waiter returns momentarily to deliver a platter of little white porcelain jugs filled with their choice of dressings between them. “Bon appetit,” he says, then disappears.  

Aziraphale hums, pleased, and says joyously, “Oh, I do love fresh oysters!” and leans forward to take a long sniff through his nose of the briny aroma. 

He picks a shell up delicately, cradling it with his little finger stuck out, as he selects the tiniest, outermost fork of his place setting – oh god, there are so many forks lined up – and dislodges the meaty delicacy. He doesn’t bother with any of the dressings, just raises the shell to his lips, opens his mouth, tilts, and slurps it down. 

It’s fucking pornographic . Crowley has seen some of the very best, and some of the very worst, porn ever made – quite a few of them involving food – and nothing holds a candle to what’s playing out before his very eyes. Crowley crosses his legs beneath the table without even thinking, his body responding involuntarily as he immediately starts to grow hard. He watches the hollowing of Aziraphale’s cheeks and he can imagine Aziraphale’s tongue working within his mouth, pressing the oyster up against his hard palate, before his teeth catch at it, chewing down once, twice, and then he swallows. Crowley sees the bob of Aziraphale’s Adam’s apple, tracking the morsel as it descends into his belly. A little moan escapes Aziraphale as his lips smack, he licks them, and his eyes, previously closed in rapture, snap open and hone right in on Crowley. 

“They’re sublime,” he all but squeals, and grabs his second, a couple of salt crystals falling with a clink onto the base plate. For the second oyster, Aziraphale scoops a spoon of the finger lime pearls over, like caviar but full of citrus and acidity, and then into his mouth and down his throat again. 

He must be doing this on purpose. 

Crowley entertains that thought for a moment. That this isn’t innocent, sweet Aziraphale reveling in the simple human pleasure of freshly shucked oysters. That instead this is seductive, that it’s sexy, that it’s actually exactly what Crowley is experiencing and it’s on purpose . 

It’s a ludicrous thought that opens a floodgate that Crowley ordinarily keeps extremely locked when in the same room as Aziraphale. 

It’s Aziraphale on his knees, disheveled, half undressed, already kissed raw and wanton, sucking red marks with his lips and teeth up the inside of Crowley’s naked thigh before Aziraphale grabs Crowley’s cock at the base and feeds it between his lips. Licking and sucking and moaning around it as his eyelids flutter beautifully closed and then open, torn between reveling in the weight and taste against his tongue, and keeping his gaze locked on Crowley’s in a ravenous, devoted stare, his lips stretched and his breath hitching. The wet, hot, slick heat of his mouth and the caress of his tongue on the underside, the suction of it all around, as he shuffles forward on his knees, hands gripping Crowley’s arse, so he can take all of Crowley’s cock right to the back of his throat, choking, still moaning, and still wanting more. 

Aziraphale sounds playful, enamored, happy, “Not hungry?”

Crowley squeezes his eyes shut, just for a second, and clenches his thighs. 

Returning the favor, Aziraphale spread-eagled and whining on soft, black satin sheets, hands and heels pressed down into the bed, grasping for purchase. Crowley between his legs, sucking on his balls and stroking him slowly to stiffness before he closes his mouth around him, working his tongue and sucking, bobbing, begging, until Aziraphale bucks off the bed, screams his name, and pulses hot, salty, sticky into his throat and across his tongue and lips. Crowley would swallow him down, working him all the way through it, and sucking for the last little taste until Aziraphale pushed him away with a gasp. 

Aziraphale has an eyebrow arched and his third oyster poised halfway to his lips. 

“Still never had the desire to eat an oyster,” Crowley drawls and he recognizes his voice at an octave above what it should be, his words clipped and short. 

Aziraphale’s face falls, just for a moment showing his disappointment, and then he seems to shrug it off and slurp down the last of his oysters, lemon foam caught about his lips, dribbling down his chin before he licks it off and then dabs at his lips with his napkin. He hums his enjoyment again.

Crowley would coat every inch of himself in lemon foam if it meant Aziraphale sucking him down and humming his pleasure like that.  

“Delicious,” Aziraphale confides, casting a sorrowful glance at Crowley’s untouched plate. “What’s next?”

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

no i don't want to use your ai assistant. no i don't want your ai search results. no i don't want your ai summary of reviews. no i don't want your ai feature in my social media search bar (???). no i don't want ai to do my work for me in adobe. no i don't want ai to write my paper. no i don't want ai to make my art. no i don't want ai to edit my pictures. no i don't want ai to learn my shopping habits. no i don't want ai to analyze my data. i don't want it i don't want it i don't want it i don't fucking want it i am going to go feral and eat my own teeth stop itttt

[bizarrebazaar13]

what if your doppelgänger wasn’t evil it was just a person. what if your doppelgänger wasn’t trying to replace you it was just trying to learn to be a person and you were the best model it had. what if your doppelgänger looked at you with your eyes and said with your voice that it just wanted to be loved. what then.

[koobiie]

i feel strongly about this

[never-quite-buried]

Nope now it’s at the point that i’m shocked that people off tt don’t know what’s going down. I have no reach but i’ll sum it up anyway.

SCOTUS is hearing on the constitutionality of the ban as tiktok and creators are arguing that it is a violation of our first amendment rights to free speech, freedom of the press and freedom to assemble.

SCOTUS: tiktok bad, big security concern because china bad!

Tiktok lawyers: if china is such a concern why are you singling us out? Why not SHEIN or temu which collect far more information and are less transparent with their users?

SCOTUS (out loud): well you see we don’t like how users are communicating with each other, it’s making them more anti-american and china could disseminate pro china propaganda (get it? They literally said they do not like how we Speak or how we Assemble. Independent journalists reach their audience on tt meaning they have Press they want to suppress)

Tiktok users: this is fucking bullshit i don’t want to lose this community what should we do? We don’t want to go to meta or x because they both lobbied congress to ban tiktok (free market capitalism amirite? Paying off your local congressmen to suppress the competition is totally what the free market is about) but nothing else is like TikTok

A few users: what about xiaohongshu? It’s the Chinese version of tiktok (not quite, douyin is the chinese tiktok but it’s primarily for younger users so xiaohongshu was chosen)

16 hours later:

Tiktok as a community has chosen to collectively migrate TO a chinese owned app that is purely in Chinese out of utter spite and contempt for meta/x and the gov that is backing them.

My fyp is a mix of “i would rather mail memes to my friends than ever return to instagram reels” and “i will xerox my data to xi jinping myself i do not care i share my ss# with 5 other people anyway” and “im just getting ready for my day with my chinese made coffee maker and my Chinese made blowdryer and my chinese made clothing and listening to a podcast on my chinese made phone and get in my car running on chinese manufactured microchips but logging into a chinese social media? Too much for our gov!” etc.

So the government was scared that tiktok was creating a sense of class consciousness and tried to kill it but by doing so they sent us all to xiaohongshu. And now? Oh it’s adorable seeing this gov-manufactured divide be crossed in such a way.

This is adorable and so not what they were expecting. Im sure they were expecting a reluctant return to reels and shorts to fill the void but tiktokers said fuck that, we will forge connections across the world. Who you tell me is my enemy i will make my friend. That’s pretty damn cool.

[rafeandonlyrafe]

well 🧍‍♀️ as a reminder this blog is NOT a safe space for trump supporters but it IS a safe place for women, queers, trans ppl, people of color, undocumented people, and any marginalized group.

[humming-fly]

was thinking about that one blind professor post earlier today and how well it applied to the aptly named Team Dark

(really 'Team Dark' just sounds a lot cooler than 'Team Saves-On-Electricity')

[puppppppppy]

filipina miku!! my mom helped me with her outfit ^_^

[mysillycomics]

[codecicle-archive]

Guys I'm so glad everyone loves hit JRWI campaign: The Suckening so much. 12 thousand notes on just a thumbnail that's so cool. Anyone think about emizel pussy-out post revival

[bl00dline]

the whole tiktok situation is EXACTLY why media literacy and education on propaganda is so important. the notifications about tiktok going down and then coming back use VERY propagandistic language, and with a literal fascist coming into power in the us tomorrow we need to be even more critical of the information we’re consuming and stay on the lookout for political stunts like this

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[velinxi]

Staying alive was never Jason's strong suit

[irate-iguana]

For those who don’t know, Elon Musk has recently been directing his assholery towards Wikipedia — calling them ‘Wokepedia’ due to the amount they spend on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and calling for people to stop giving them money “until they restore balance to their editing authority” —, now is a great time to consider donating to Wikipedia!

[theboxfort]

Peace and love