dinner and a show
You hear your door open at about six, swiftly followed by my jovial call, “Hel-lo!” as is my habit. Ceramics are set down while I take off my shoes or something.
When you don’t come downstairs I find you. There’s a gentle knock on the door. When you grunt, “mmmn,” I open it to find you at your desk in darkness with your head in your hands.
“Are you okay, Rey?”
“Mmn. Lot on my mind. Don’t wanna talk about it.”
A beat while I configure myself not to ask follow-up questions, and then: “You look like you’ve been at it for hours. Wanna break for the day?” Yes. Yes, you do, but you’re arguably in the middle of something so important. Then I tip the scales with, “I cooked.”
“What are we having?” comes your immediate reply.
I smile and slip into the room. You sigh deep and lean against me as I loop my arms around your neck and nuzzle beneath your ear. In my sexiest voice I husk: “Italian.”
It gets a smile.
You wrap up and I turn on your oven. More heavy ceramic clunks, and then you’re coming down the stairs when I step into the living room.
For a second I hesitate, seeing your gaze abstract and distant. You must still have your mind on what’s been occupying you all day. I point at the couch. “Flop, please. You need a footrub.”
“Jeez, if you insist,” you say, and flounce to the couch.
My face grows mock-stern, playing along. “And you will stay there, Missy, until you have been pampered for fifteen minutes.”
You put a woe-is-me hand to your forehead, then wiggle your toes.
I set to. I’m good at foot rubs. My thumbs follow the natural contours of your soles, easing tension in the insteps; and circle around your heel and the balls of your feet, which, being big fleshy areas tasked with bearing a great deal of divine weight, get very grumpy sometimes. The toes get a little wiggle and brief massage, and your ankles appreciate a little easing either side of your Achilles, but for the most part I focus on your soles.
You’re quiet at first, but after a few moments you start talking. We chat gym stuff, VR, a little bit of streaming logistics for later in the week. Then turn to music.
“It’s been ages since I played the piano,” I say.
You turn your eyes to the instrument sitting in the corner of the room. “Do you know any duets?”
“No. You’ll have to teach me.”
You snort. “I don’t know any either. We’ll have to make something up.”
An alarm goes off on my phone. I give your feet a goodbye squeeze and then kiss them, which makes you squeal indignantly. Then it’s to the kitchen.
I return bearing a steaming lasagne, laden with cheese and crisping nicely where it meets the glassware. You sit up and I get to die a little from the cuteness of your lips in their little o of enthusiasm.
“Let me cut you a slice.”
“A slice?”
“You seem sceptical, my dear.” I pop the lasagne down on heat-proof mats on the coffee table and get to carving. Seems I don’t plan on leaving the living room. “You get the whole thing, you know.”
“Good.” You relax and kick your feet idly. “… Is there—”
“I will get the next one out in a moment. And let me just bring the chips in.” I carry on talking as I leave and re-enter from the kitchen. “I almost got garlic bread, but then I remembered it would kill you.”
“You’re not funny, you know.” You stand and glance at the plate I proffer but walk by, expecting me to follow. I do and we end up at the piano. “You can feed me while I play. It’s been a while for me, too.”
You start with something you know off-by-heart, filling the room with the warmth that only music can provide. Maybe there are a couple of mistakes but I watch you as you play, absorbed in your expertise and growing enjoyment. When you pause and glance up at me you see that soft smile on my face. “It’s going to get cold.”
“Whoops, sorry!”
I cut and pick up a generous corner of this slice and bear it to your open mouth with a fork. Flavoursome, formidably meaty, its juices all captured in plump and tender pasta sheets, it’s a triumph of pasta engineering. When your lips close around it you get the savoury hit of molten cheese, and when your teeth close on it you feel the crack of scorched topping, followed by smooth and yielding white ragu, and then each other layer giving away to you in turn.
You take a little time to chew and savour your mouthful before you swallow. I know in some ways eating can mean less to you than being full, so I’m quite thrilled with your focusing so much on what I’ve made.
Then you open your mouth again. The next piece comes with chips.
Music recommences. The song you started, you finish. Then we hit a rhythm of practising scales. Each ascent and descent is followed by an expectant open mouth which I eagerly fill. We haven’t even hit the minor scales before the first slice is comfortably tucked away inside your belly. Rather than fuss with slices and plates I grab a tray and bring over the whole of the first lasagne, chips piled in the void left by the piece that’s currently waking up your stomach.
“Got a request?” you ask through a full mouth once you’re limber.
“Um, The Heart Asks Pleasure First, by Michael Nyman?”
“I don’t know that one.” You swallow.
“I’ll play it for you later. My real request is to keep feeding you.”
You giggle and roll out a welcome-mat tongue. I scrabble to serve it. You chew while you bang out something with a swing-y, folk-y feel to it.
I lose count of the number of songs you play. For me it’s a pleasant haze of admiration, both of your skill and how elegantly you convert the tray of food into a minor bulge beneath your jumper. Underneath there somewhere I know you’re beginning to feel full, not least because of the surprise wet belch you made (to the beat) during your last tune.
“Mmmph, think you’ve earned this,” you say as I set aside the glass cookware. My hand is taken and guided up beneath your jumper. It’s novel not to see the belly I’m kneading; in fact, to be trapped against it. Together, your stomach and I do our best to further mince down and destroy the meal I spent hours preparing. I picture your gut drooling acids and enzymes on it and realise I’m thinking of you doing the same thing to a living, screaming person in the dark.
I don’t know if you intuit why I give you the kiss.
You sigh at length, pressing out your belly against my patient, firm hand and encouraging it to explore in wider and wider circles. Your whole abdomen and flanks are subject to adoration. Beneath your jumper your skin is warm and so very soft. I exalt in the feel of your thick, silky fat compressing beneath and enveloping my hand.
“Mmm… Nice as that is, I think you owe me another lasagne.”
I withdraw begrudgingly from the fragrant darkness but consoling myself is easy. Despite how full you must be feeling, you glomph over the first bite of the second lasagne with as much gusto and the first. Another song strikes up and we are away.
Mouthful after mouthful disappears like some beat that encompasses each piece of music. Occasionally a delay causes the rhythm to alter: you cover your mouth to burp, or ask for only chips, or at once point otch the piano stool backwards to make room for your growing gut.
Your growing full is a rallentando in that meta-beat. You take longer to chew, you open your mouth a little later. There’s nothing stopping you, though, even as you grow packed. The accompanying pieces you play become slower, too, more ponderous, your fingers coming down a little heavier. It’s like I’m listening to your grow fat and heavy through your music.
A stirring end to your final song fails quite to coincide with the end of the lasagne. I get your full attention for three mouthfuls. You stare at me with a great intensity and I watch just as closely. See the slight tightening at your eyes as the last mouthful squeezes into your stomach. See the exhale just after the swallow. See how your pupils are a little larger than normal as endorphins sweep through your system.
Your dinner despatched, you drag me by the hand to the ground and slip both hands up beneath your jumper.. It rides up to expose the sweet, flabby curve of your lower belly but it’s the thought that counts. It feels like I’m diving into a secret cavern as I slip deeper to massage the growling bulk beneath the surface and ease your dinner deeper through your system..
“You didn’t get to play,” you say, sleep stealing through your voice.
“I played plenty. This was wonderful.”
Your lips—the ones I’ve watched for most of the evening, gloriously—quirk up. “Was nice.”
“Rest now, love. You’ve had a long day.”