i love noodles

"Is that so?" Caldarus' eyes brightened at your praise, though he looked out of the corners of them sheepishly. "Truthfully, the recipe that I found for the salted pork was difficult for me to decipher. The measurements weren't quite what I was familiar with, so I used my best judgment. I did not have a frame of reference for the tart, so I am delighted to know that it came out how it should have.

"As for the wine, that has quite an interesting story behind it. When I awoke here a while back, I did not recognize a single thing. My first couple of days awake were spent completely absorbed in memorizing every shelf and corner. Eventually, I found a cellar under the floorboards near the fireplace. Inside were tins of tea and bottles of wine. Perhaps, before, I was partial to both, but I find much more comfort in tea these days."

In the time that it had taken him to regale you with his story, he had risen from his cushion to bring over the bottle of wine. He poured a little into your glass. At the time, you couldn’t enjoy his recollection or the wine because of the way your mouth felt.

You needed him distracted for a while.

"Well, I really love this wine, but do you know what I would love even more?"

Caldarus looked at you earnestly. "Tell me."

You thought about teasing him, putting on a flirtatious act to grab a reaction out of him, but it would have been a useless pursuit considering he still did not understand human courtship behaviors all that well. You imagined yourself the equivalent of a flamboyant bird with vivid plumage on display, dancing for an incompatible creature that could not fathom what was happening. The only difference between you and a bird was that a bird would die trying; you'd just die of embarrassment when he stared at you blankly.

So, you spared yourself that disappointment. "I would love it if you'd play the lute for me again. Whenever you do, it just… it's so soothing to me. I'd like to learn how to play it for myself, someday."

"It is still early enough in the evening; it would bring me no greater joy than to teach you," said Caldarus, so sincere and serious in his response. You really couldn't stand his amber eyes and their depths focused so intently on you. The salt was still making you salivate. "We could start simple, perhaps a nursery rhyme? I think you would be able to learn most of the chords tonight—"

"Maybe later, Caldarus," you said, tempering your impatience by turning the stem of the wine glass with your fingers, disturbing the red liquid inside with the rough motion, but it never sloshed over the rim. "I'd like to just listen for now, if you don't mind.

Despite your oddness, he smiled at you fondly and said nothing before going away to collect his lute. You made quick work of the wine, hearing the liquid hiss against your teeth as you forced it around your mouth. Caldarus had left the bottle nearby, allowing you to discreetly refill the glass before he could notice what you were doing.

You didn't want to sit engorged in silence, so you called out to him across the temple, "What are you going to be playing? Is it anything that I know?"

Caldarus returned with the lute, such a strange instrument with its oval-shaped body and too many strings. Even if you had agreed to his offer to learn to play tonight, you suspected you would spend most of the time fumbling with remembering the placement of each string over anything else. A lute, simply on the premise of its appearance, did not seem like the sort of instrument a beginner could dabble in without a heinous amount of effort.

"You'll recognize a few because I've played them for you before, but…" Caldarus' voice whittled to nothing as he turned the tuning keys at the head of the lute, plucking strings as he did so. The sounds they emitted subtly changed. "They have no names. I learned them a long, long time ago. I'm grateful that of the few things I was able to remember, it was playing music. I'm not sure I could ever feel whole, otherwise."

And, as the crisp, melodious notes filled the place and Caldarus' eyes drifted shut as he played, you thought that it must've meant everything to him to have one connection to his past fully intact. Perhaps that's why his eyes were closed: So he could fully immerse himself in remembering.

By the time he had rotated through a few pieces, the salt had finally gone from your mouth, leaving your cheeks and gums raw, though the graininess of the tart shell remained when you ground your teeth. You had become mesmerized by the music and the atmosphere: the warmth of the fireplace, the way candlelight turned your wine into a liquidized, glistening ruby, and your contentedness of being exactly where you wanted to be.

When there was a delay in Caldarus' playing, you spoke, "Can…you teach me a little bit? I'm having a change of heart. I won't be any good at it, but if you help me, maybe we can put something together."

"Nothing would make me happier," said Caldarus, with a lovely smile.

He came to you with the lute and placed it on your lap, arranging your arms in the correct way of handling it: one raised to compress the strings at the top and adjust the tuning keys, the other on its almond-shaped body where you would create the melody. It was terrifying to be handed something so precious to him, something so unknown to you, knowing that you could potentially ruin the instrument without ever intending malice.

Not knowing what to do paralyzed you. Perhaps Caldarus had expected such a response as he was soon sitting behind you, threading his arms through yours, overlapping your fingers with his longer, lithe ones. You hadn't expected the heat of his body, his relaxed touch as if he were familiar with doing this exact thing with you countless times before.

"You need to loosen your fingers; they're quite stiff. There are no expectations for you to play well. I would like to think of it that we're simply enjoying each other's company." He was close to your left ear as he said this, gently squeezing your hand as he separated your fingers and placed them where they needed to be on the neck and resonator. He instructed you to pluck specific strings, to feel where they were, and how they sounded in comparison to one another.

After practicing for a time, none of it made much sense to you. There were simply too many strings, too many notes to recognize and discern, and, sometimes, the more you knew your way around a particular subject, the less you were able to explain it to someone else.

"It's alright. Learning any sort of instrument takes a great deal of practice; you've done well, all things considered," said Caldarus, though you were almost certain he was trying to benignly pull wool over your eyes. It was no different from what you always did with regard to his cooking and the pretty, false praise.

Perhaps those little white lies were just something you did to some degree when you loved someone.

You braced against his chest, reaching up with a hand to bring his face closer so you could plant a kiss on his cheek and jaw. "Or, maybe playing music is for you, just like being your Dragonsworn and adventuring is for me. There's nothing wrong with that. But, thank you for helping me practice."

"You need only ask if you'd like to play again." Caldarus stroked the side of your face lightly with his thin fingers, reveling in the touch of your skin and warmth still flush against him. "I know that I have told you such things before, but I feel I need to say it again: Having you here with me… spending time together like this, it brings me joy that I have never experienced. It's strange, because dragons are solitary creatures, yet, as the days go on, I feel disquieted by the loneliness more and more. When I see you, it makes me glad; it warms my soul unlike anything else."

"Companionship is a hell of a drug, isn't it?" you grinned.

"Indeed, it is."

The way he looked at you changed. His gentle gaze sharpened into something fierce, his eyes aglow as if backlit by flames. Anticipation began to prickle under your skin, while heat coursed your veins and climbed up the length of your neck to your face and ears. Your stomach fluttered and twisted as though inverting in on itself, and you knew he could hear your heartbeat stammer. This wasn't the gaze of someone looking right at you, not through you.

"There's something else I'd like to practice…"

Then Caldarus stooped his neck and kissed you. His hand held the back of your head, fingers tangling in your hair as they kneaded at your scalp. This kiss was different from the ones you had shared with him in the past, all sweet and chaste, always reluctant to do more from the fear that you would think him a repugnant beast.

It crossed his mind that you thought that of him now as his lips met yours again and again fervently; urgently, even. He kissed you like a man (or dragon) who had gone too long without his lover and desperately wanted to reexplore them, to know them deeply. But, as intensely as he kissed you, as much as he wanted you, he did not allow his hands to wander your body until you placed them there yourself.

You unfastened the belt around your waist and guided his hand under your tunic, willing him to touch your chest and stomach and clothed hips and thighs. His skin was cool against yours, though his claws left hot traces wherever he touched you.

Caldarus let his lips linger over yours, moist breaths intermingling, and he asked, "Will you stay with me tonight?"

There wasn't any question that you would because you wanted to experience him fully, love him in a way that you hadn't yet.