Milliways: Chopsticks Instructional Hour [1.09-1.10]

[yuri_plisetsky]

Seated at a booth, Yuri has a bowl of food in front of him and an expression of tight, absolute concentration more likely to be found on a surgeon in the middle of a major operation.

Today is the day that he finally gets it right.




The bar had listened to his somewhat vague request (plain noodles, some normal Japanese kind or something, and, uh, a bunch of steamed vegetables on top, cut a little small but not TOO small) and thankfully had provided about as close to what he'd wanted as he might have imagined. The noodles were plain yellow ones, though they were dressed with some sort of light sesame sauce that was keeping them from sticking together in clumps, and the bowl was piled high with chunks of steamed broccoli, carrots, and those little green beans that he'd had as a snack at Yu-topia a couple of times. (Edo-something? Whatever, he'd eat it.) The bar had also provided several napkins and, for some reason, not one but two pairs of chopsticks: the disposable kind in the wrapper, and a set of regular wooden ones.

(He can take the disposable ones home, at least.)

He's got his phone on the table next to the bowl, one headphone plugged into his ear and three videos queued up, and he's in the middle of the first video, using his left hand to try to reposition the chopsticks in his right hand until they look like they do on the demonstration. It's close enough to make a first attempt, so he keeps his eye on the video as he moves the chopsticks into position to grab a piece of broccoli.

He almost manages to make contact with it before his grip fails and the chopsticks cross.

An annoyed huff, and he taps the phone to restart the video, and goes back to repositioning his hand.

Comments

[theglassheart]

Dismissals are easy, in almost any flavor. Even when they hurt, Yuri knows them. They have a particular flavor and feeling, and he can just wander off, and, well, he'd been mostly certain that was where everything was going with Yurio saying thank you here at the door. Even if Yuri had closed the door intending to keep his word.

Dinner would keep, the same way his family would keep, and Victor would ...

Except put that way, it felt too weird.
For Victor. A complicated knot of longing.

(Not to be confused with the complicated knot
that reminded him 'keeping Victor' was
not something he got much longer.)

Stealing minutes from the end of time didn't change the timer. Not if Victor wasn't in them, too. It's a confused feeling. Whatever else goes with it in conjunction, it was confusing. An ache that pressed down on his ribs, making him realize as he was focusing, that Yurio had his hands up and was talking about -- it took a second, and scrunch of his forehead. Oh, noodles.

Yuri nodded, again. Seemingly unable not to. "Mostly."

It's an odd place to stand, but then so was no being certain if he was supposed to stay or leave now.

"You have to be--" What was the word though even when the thought was contradicting and the only thing he could think, which meant it just went falling out of his mouth instead of staying to be labeled with any more helpful terms. "It can be more complicated, because the noodles are slippery than the rice and won't stick to each other, so you have to hold the chopsticks tighter. But not too tight, because they can be thinner and softer and ended up breaking apart between the chopsticks with too much pressure, too."

[yuri_plisetsky]

Yuri would like to think that he's no more tired than usual this evening. Yakov and Lilia hadn't put him through anything worse than their normal practices -- a pulled muscle or a twisted ankle would be catastrophic, with the Golden Spin so close -- and he'd been able to get home at a reasonable hour, with enough free time to feed Potya and scoop out the cat box before double-checking his preparations and slinking off here for his own dinner. But unlike earlier, this time Katsudon's explanation just seems to go straight through his head without the words actually sticking in his brain. Even with whatever weird-ass translation magic this place seems to have, Katsudon might as well have described the noodle-eating process entirely in Japanese for all that Yuri can make sense of it.

'...could you just show it to me?' He wants his request to come out gruff and business-like, but instead there's an oddly distressed note to it that slips in at the last second. Almost plaintive, embarrassingly enough. Which makes him firm his jaw, trying to dig down for some additional fraction of strength to turn that confusion into resolve. 'So I can get it right?'

He could probably figure it out on his own, like he'd said. Even if the answer's no (or even sorry, I can't), it isn't as if he'd be totally stuck. But again, it would be stupid to pass up the chance to see how it should look.

[theglassheart]

Yuri's truly not entirely sure what to make of it when Yurio speaks, when it's a warbled question, not a decisive command or scathing insult or blistering dismissal, and it reminds him without warning of that day in the Ice Palace. The sudden desperate ringing clarity of his own voice. So loud. Too loud. Echoing in the changing room. His hands folded in front of his face, with a partial bow Yurio wouldn't even understand or recognize. Asking for help with his salchow.

It's just chopsticks. It's not like it's part of what could help Yurio where it matters, but Yuri stands there.

A little surprised. A little wary. A little thrown off course entirely. Not quite even to blinking. Like if he blinks it will be a dream. Except that nothing this confusing, this awkward, the unmatching ends up being a dream in his life. His life isn't made of moments where the weird, odd, confusing, painful, and unsettling ones are anything as simple as dreams. Those all happen when he's awake. All the moments of every day. All awake, all where he can mess them up.

There's a second he wants to look back to the door. It's not even quite out of his peripheral vision. Like Victor would be there now, like Victor might understand why, or have an answer, or understand the consideration that stumps him. Might give permission, or explanation. Both. All. Wrapped up in a pair of blue eyes and graceful, long-fingered hands, and a disastrously unnecessary amount of flare, neither of which Yuri could deny or control.

But he doesn't look. Even if that tension, that magnetism, whatever it is, inside his chest, tightens.
From the almost heading back to the opposite, when he says simply, with a small bobble: "Okay."

[yuri_plisetsky]

'Fine.' Yuri's got his voice under control now, at least. Which is more than can be said for his stomach, judging by the ominous rumbles that have started percolating again. (Obviously, it was hunger and frustration that had made him sound so strange a moment ago.) So without another word, he turns on his heel and heads back to the bar, trusting (trusting?) that Katsudon will follow him.

It's easier to walk away from the door than it had been to walk towards it.

Before anything else, he swipes his phone off the bar and stuffs it straight into his jacket pocket. But as he takes his seat again, he studies the now-cold spread of food in front of them, and frowns a little before pushing all of the half-eaten bowls and used chopsticks to one side and putting a hand on the bar top. 'Could I, uh, have two bowls of that same noodle thing I had before -- only with less vegetables on it?'

The requested dishes that appear are similar in size to the rice bowls from earlier, smaller than the massive bowl of noodles that Yuri had originally ordered. The scattering of steamed vegetables on top, carrots and broccoli and soybeans, look less like haphazard piles and more like manageable, sensible dinner portions. The whole thing is still a bowl of mostly carbohydrates, but nowhere near as heavy or greasy as something like yakisoba. The light sesame sauce that keeps the noodles from clumping together has a faint scent of ginger and citrus in it now, just enough to keep the dish from seeming too plain. And this time, they both have sets of proper wooden chopsticks next to the bowls, and even a matching pair of wooden chopstick rests.

(Like an actual meal. Like something intentional.)

Yuri doesn't move to pick up his chopsticks, though. As before, he's going to wait and watch.

[theglassheart]

It's barely a moment Yuri watches his walk away. Maybe not enough to be worth counting. Still it's enough to watch Yurio go back to decisive and decided on what is happening and where, to watch him walk more quickly away. Back to those seats. Back to snatching his phone off the bar top like someone might have almost come by and lifted it.

Yuri's not far behind -- and he doesn't look, even if he feels the distance between himself and the door, in the same strange but reflective distance growing behind but closing between himself and the seat (Yurio). He takes his seat back, quietly, even as the new bowls are appearing. They look more official and it almost makes it hard to swallow for a second. Like he's made some certain decision about where he's having dinner. Or the bar has.

Which isn't true, isn't it?

( ... but isn't entirely untrue, if he could have gone and chose to stay, too ... )
There's silence at their bar end. Nowhere else in this room seems truly built for silence. Silence, at their end, while Yuri looks at the nicer dishes, even still small, and the chopsticks, that are more professional and less generic now. Even simple, almost forgotten by every other location, chopstick rests, in their places. Yuri's not sure why that simple, complete image sinks something deeper in his stomach.

He reaches out for one of the sets and one of the bowls, thinking there's really no way to start but starting, is there? Yuri tried to unstick his throat, his lingering surprise still dragging from the door. The continually trying to fit that second into anything before it. He has to clear his throat awkwardly, maybe as a necessity to both make his throat work and to make his mind focus even just a little more.

"Unlike the rice, you go for moderation more with noodles. You aim for only a little." Yuri made an example with the chopsticks he'd claimed. Moving the vegetables to the side to get to the noodles first. Lifting only a few. "Smaller is the key. Even smaller than you think, because you have to be able to hold on while you--" Yuri shook his hand holding the chopsticks and noodles gently as he started to pull his arm back and up, gently untangling the noodles he'd claimed from the whole bundle of them.

The sentences hung there as the noodles continued to stretch and slide, but were steadily pulling free.

[yuri_plisetsky]

Watching Katsudon lift the noodles out of the bowl, Yuri is suddenly and weirdly reminded of all the times he's watched Potya put out a paw to snag a ribbon or an old skate lace being trailed across the floor in play. Not actually pouncing on it to snatch it free from Yuri's grip, but merely trying to hook a claw in the twitching, teasing strand, as if anything more ambitious than that would require too much effort to be worthwhile. It's a bizarre juxtaposition for his brain to make -- damn, I really must be more out of it than I thought -- but it does make him feel a bit less unsure about the process of trying it himself.

(It's almost enough to make him crack a smile.
Almost.)

He picks up his chopsticks then, still studying the motion of the lifted noodles as he starts to fit the utensils into his hand. 'So...okay, so you don't try to twirl them around the sticks or anything like that to make them stay,' he says, as much observation as question. 'And it's just a few at a time, like that.'

Once the sticks are in hand, and double-checked to make sure that they'll stay there, he peers down at the bowl, similarly nudging some of the carrots to one side to clear a space to operate. But Katsudon's actually holding the bowl in his other hand, so Yuri follows suit, lifting it from beneath to bring it up to about chest level. The warm aroma nearly makes him light-headed, and he has to blink quickly before aiming the chopsticks at a couple of noodles on top that don't seem too tangled together.

On his first go, he tries to grab the noodles almost with the tips of the chopsticks, and they slip right out of his grasp. But before he can get annoyed, his eyes flicker over to Katsudon's hand, and he sees that the point of contact is further up the sticks. So he aims a little deeper, getting a solid grip and digging under and up like he had with the rice -- and inadvertently succeeds in lifting a much larger clump of noodles than he'd expected. Nothing's slipping off, but his hand freezes in place, not sure of where to go from here. 'Shit, that's too much -- '

[theglassheart]

The first slip isn't surprising. Yuri is still in the middle of getting his first bite into his mouth, and so he can't quite get around it for a correction, but Yurio does well with fixing the most glaring of problems himself. The same as he probably would have done and figured out, with the help of his phone and a million videos, even if Yuri hadn't offered ( ... and then been asked ... ?) to help.

There's a swallow down of his first bite of noodles as Yurio digs in too deep and comes up, for a definition of the word which doesn't involve all that much upward movement, with too much on his chopsticks. Instantly with alarm in his voice, and that swearing that isn't directed at Yuri as much as the unasked question inside of it is. What do I do now? It reminds him of a child. All children made this mistakes. Over and over and over. Yuri still did sometimes if he was looking at his phone or someone else when picking something up.

Somehow Yuri couldn't explain if you asked him to go back to the second, he smiles and his shoulders come up with a small shake at the familiarity, the simple amusement of the panic of the innocuous. "You can just open them and it'll drop. Then, try again."

The same with the next second, when what comes out of his mouth, surprises even Yuri.
Light, and not-quite, but-almost, teasing: "Unless you want to swallow a third of your bowl already."

[yuri_plisetsky]

Fighting past the temporary paralysis of indecision, Yuri follows the instructions he hears, and when he opens the chopsticks the wedge of noodles lands back in the bowl without incident. Thankfully, none of the vegetables ends up toppling out, though some are buried beneath the noodles, to be excavated later.

At Katsudon's follow-up comment, though --

Perhaps there's something in the tone of it that tells him that it's meant to be amused at the situation, not mocking Yuri himself. Perhaps it's the awareness that he'd actually succeeded in getting hold of the noodles, but in a way that was more like over-rotating a jump: the momentum and the technique were mostly there, only the precision needed to be refined. Perhaps it's a sense that right now his personal dignity is not a hill he needs to die on, no matter how much he hates feeling like a two-year-old struggling to feed himself on his own. And perhaps there's also an vague memory of cramming three-quarters of a whole grilled squid into his mouth just to prove a point, and very nearly regretting the decision.

(Beneath all of it, though...he'd been the one to ask for help. He needs to get this right.)

Whatever the reason, it all amounts to the same thing. So instead of a much more extreme reaction -- dumping the contents of his bowl over Katsudon's head, or hooking a foot behind his chair to yank it out from under him -- Yuri just shoots Katsudon an unimpressed look, and says flatly, 'I'm not that damn hungry. Don't mess me up here.'

His third attempt is an effort to moderate the second one. Still reaching in, trying to find the right amount, and this time he comes up with what appears to be a large-ish yet reasonable mouthful. The noodles tangle and pull as he lifts them free, and one slips loose, so quick as he can he bends his head to meet the chopsticks. He gets the portion in his mouth as best he can, but some strands are still hanging down, and he lets out a quiet mmrph as he tries to chew them and guide the stragglers into his mouth without getting a mess all over his chin.

[theglassheart]

Maybe there's a foot out of line, quarter step of impropriety too far, of impending uncertainty. That twin to hesitation, but hanging and hung up both, on the opposite side of a statement, like bookends to question whether to speak and to worry too much about having spoken. A wrinkle of it, but not a mountain that has already begun fall from above and burying him underneath it.

Yurio shoots him a look and answers, but it isn't weapons-grade. There's frustration, but there isn't scalding rage about to explode at him in the degenerate swearing and the apoplectic violence that are Yurio's hallmarks. In fact, that look and few words are all Yuri gets before Yurio's focus is back on his bowl. Dropping it, trying again. The next amount could be just right or a little big. It depends on what Yurio will like best in the end, which will be figured out over time, not today.

It was an effort, and one he might have failed from staying at the edges of his mouth, not to smile when Yurio managed to get most of it in his mouth and had some of it hanging down his face. In an effort not to let it get the best of his mouth or turn into even a small laugh, Yuri looked down at his own bowl. "You always try to keep it over your bowl or plate to keep the sauce from dripping down anywhere on you."

A second, then, Yuri decides to add, as a side-relation: "If it was soup you take another step between freeing them and putting them in your mouth, and dip them back into the broth so they are coated with it, and then you really want to make sure it's all over your bowl so that the broth doesn't even up everywhere else."

[yuri_plisetsky]

As he gets the last inch of noodles securely in his mouth, Yuri somehow manages to avoid accidentally sticking the opposite ends of the chopsticks up his own nostrils as he wipes his chin with the back of his hand. (Should he ask the bar for napkins? Eh, it's not an emergency just yet.) The lightly dressed noodles taste good, a little tangy and nutty from the sauce, and he chews and swallows while he listens. Keeping everything over the bowl...fine, that's doable. Better not to have the sauce get everywhere. If he tips his head forward slightly next time, maybe that'll help.

The mention of soup, however, makes a flicker of concern cross his face, like he's just been informed of a whole new level of challenge. He looks back down at the bowl, then over at Katsudon. 'But you get a spoon with the soup, too, right? Like with that' -- a moment's pause, to dredge his memory -- 'that mi-so we had with breakfast. So wouldn't you use that, too?'

Soup for breakfast was probably one of the stranger things he remembered from Yu-topia, but they'd been in such small bowls that in his mind it barely counted as soup. It was more like a cup of hot, fishy-tasting tea, even with the bits of tofu and that weird green stuff in it (which he hadn't believed was seaweed until the Internet confirmed it). There hadn't been noodles in that. But there was ramen, of course -- both the instant packets and the fancy kind that Viktor had talked about eating elsewhere. So again, another level of challenge.

Just for a bit of variety, he goes after a piece of broccoli instead of another mouthful of noodles. It's a bit more difficult to grab the broccoli alone without the rice to support it, but now that he has a stronger sense of where his chopsticks have their most secure point of contact, he can pick it up on the stem right below the florets and bring it to his mouth. As always, small victories.

[theglassheart]

"You can. It's not not-done," Yuri says with something of nod, even though his head has canted just a little to one side, as thought he was thinking about it. In truth it didn't take much of a thought to get too, and it wasn't outlandish a jump. "Since you have them both in hand they can be used together. There are other places that do that more than Japan, but it's not impolite."

"As you saw, the soup spoons are deeper than the ones in Russia." Then, hastily added, to be even, "And America. It's mostly for broth, but it can be used to pick up everything else in the bowl, too. The meat, vegetables, herbs. Eating with both hands"

There's a moment Yuri considers it, and it's an oddly amusing flash of consideration, as it tugs at his mouth. Both because of past events at home, to the contrary in America, and because it's Yurio, who seemed to love flying in the face of decorum just because of he could. "Most foreigners and tourists don't do it, but you're actually supposed to slurp ramens and soups. It's not supposed to be quiet or slow. Especially when you're buying it on the street."

[yuri_plisetsky]

It's still not simple to use the chopsticks, yet it's getting a little easier the more Yuri picks and pokes through the contents of his bowl. Using them with noodles or whatever soup might be that extra level of difficulty, but it's still something he can try at a later time. Even if Yakov and the team nutritionist would never let him have instant ramen during the season -- too much salt, not enough of anything else -- there's no reason why he couldn't add plain noodles like these to something permitted, like chicken soup. Take a stab at it that way.

All of these considerations are turning over gently in his head as he prods at his bowl for another suitable clump of noodles -- and as a result he nearly misses Katsudon's last comment, until it registers properly in his head and sends his train of thought juddering to a halt. You're supposed to make noise? Food temporarily forgotten, he gives Katsudon a bewildered look. 'Wait, what? Why?'

(He can't even recall the number of times he was told to eat his soup more quietly as a kid. He usually needed only the one reminder about it, especially if it was from his grandfather...but honestly, what growing boy coming home famished from the rink or the dance studio is going to care about table manners when dinner is right there in front of them?)

[theglassheart]

It's not really a part of any plan, or any act: that smile that ends up on Yuri's lips. Amused, and just a little victorious, because he had chosen something right. You could watch the second the breaks slammed inside Yurio's brain and everything was momentarily forgotten, chopsticks and bowl still in hand, but no longer within focus.

There's a small shrug, winsome and loose. The way he'd never thought about until he was in America. "It's the way it is."

Which wasn't entirely the whole of it, but it wasn't like it was something he'd really had to think about longer termish. Especially when you were still more careful inside someone's house or restaurant than on the street at a cart or pop-up. "It helps with the heat, when the noodles have just been thrown in the still boiling hot broth, for a bowl that's handed to you seconds after."

Beat. "And there are a number of people who think it's all better in the first like nine or ten minutes. That the noodles are overcooked after that."

[yuri_plisetsky]

It's the way it is sounds like a completely bullshit explanation in Yuri's mind, and his initially skeptical expression says as much. When there's a little more elaboration...all right, so it's about the way the soup is served, then, from the street vendors like the ones at the spring festival. His skepticism gives way to a grudging sort of understanding.

'I'll see if other people are doing it before I do it. Until I get better at this, at least.' It's the safest choice he can make; he isn't putting this much effort into learning how to use chopsticks just to look like a stupid foreigner who doesn't know the right way to eat with them around other people. 'Though it's not like I'll be using them around other people, anyway, apart from Dedka.'

It's just for him and his grandfather. (And for now, with Katsudon, even if he tells himself that this doesn't really count.)

He starts sifting through his bowl again, trying to tease the noodles apart and find a likely candidate for his next mouthful. His narrow-eyed concentration gives him the look of a cat preparing to swipe a fish out of a pond, and when he goes in for the attempt it looks like he'll be successful...except that one of the noodles is rather longer than he'd expected, and seems to stretch out as it clings to its fellows in the bowl. Between scrabbling with the chopsticks and moving the bowl closer to his face, he almost has his nose among the carrots before he gets the errant noodle free and into his mouth.

[theglassheart]

Even as Yurio blows it off, with strangely careful words, Yuri is torn between two different images, uncertainty blowing both of them like tangling streamers together. One where Yurio does not give the smallest amount of care about what other people are doing or care about grading himself or a situation for appropriateness if he's given permission to act unruly as though it has a stamp of approval on it.

The other. The other is more like ... a question. A question that posits that Yurio just mentioned he does watch to see what other people are doing. That he wants the ability to cause a scene to be after it first -- which, does slightly sound more like him. The end part. The being perfect. The capability to hold that perfection out, abrasive and aggressive, at anyone who might look sideways at it.

(...could you just show it to me?,
his mind whispers,

So I can get it right?)

It's a question mark beside the safe, if often calmness-shattering, assumption, unsettling the weight of the certainty that had been there when he walked in. But that's not true either, really. It's a question mark of a moment, sitting next to the several question marks left from Moscow, from the tea here, and the shouting and birthday prest in the Moscow snow, and Yurio being o very different sides across a very thick line dividing them.

But Yurio is quietly attempting more pieces in his bowl and Yuri doesn't specifically have to say anything to his words. There isn't a question, it doesn't need him to give something out, and there's a ramping fear that if he even so much as opens his mouth a few centimeters, the wrong questions will all fall out. About this still. All. Why. Why, again. Even if he already said it. Why. Questions he can't ask. Doesn't.

It's easier to detour his attention back to his own bowl, back to his own chopsticks, to take another bite while his stomach is starting to rail like a starved lion at the bars of its cage, practice and cool down and a shower giving way to what should be evening; food in hand, and still not eating all of it, as though to replace everything he's burned out in another overwhelming day faster than breathing in air.

Because this isn't dinner, this isn't Yu-Topia, this isn't whatever his mother made while asking them how the day went and not really understanding the answers, before Yuri and Victor devolve into first conversation on what needs to be worked on tomorrow and then, whatever else has gathered Victor attention, and by that Yuri's focus, from there through the end of the night.

This isn't that. No matter how much his stomach yawns like a pit at his bowl. This is something ... else.

The thought stuck, being chewed between Yuri's teeth with a bite, as he looks back toward Yurio again. Yurio, pulling at one of the longest noodles and starting to look like he's headed for a shortstop in terror first because it won't end when he tugs or pulls, just keeps pulling out more and more of itself. His face is almost squashed to the bowl by the time it's free and he's trying to jam the whole length of it in his mouth, and Yuri tries not to laugh, even if his mouth can't stop quirking toward the edge of a raise.

[yuri_plisetsky]

Yuri's more a little red in the face by the time he recovers from that skirmish with the noodle. Thankfully, whatever Katsudon must be doing to keep from busting a gut laughing at him seems to be working, because even when Yuri exhales forcefully and goes after another bite, he doesn't hear a peep from the seat next to his own.

The silence, however, reminds him that he himself is not doing anything to fill it. It's not like having dinner with Yakov and Lilia, who are usually as worn out as he is by the end of the day and also have the whole used to be married thing where a raised eyebrow or a tilt of the head can be an entire half of a conversation all by itself, without a single word said. And it's not like being at home, either, where he and his grandfather don't even need to talk (except that Yuri does, because texts and emails and phone calls and even the occasional awkward video chat can't ever replace the real thing, but it's still not the same). Not like the cafeteria at the rink, not like the dining table at Yu-topia...especially not that. But at the same time, it's not like it was the last time they were here in this place, two cups of tea in front of them, when Yuri had had to talk because it was the only thing he could think of that would keep them both distracted from everything on the opposite side of the door. There's none of that sense of urgency, or the hellish prospect of a long night and an unknown tomorrow hanging over them. It's just Yuri having dinner, and Katsudon eating whatever he felt he could get away with before he has his dinner, and if he keeps quiet any longer without cramming the whole bowl of noodles down his throat in one fell swoop, it's going to start to feel weird. Weirder.

'Lilia choreographed my exhibition skate,' is what comes out of his mouth, once he's finished chewing his next carefully managed bite, complete with a bonus soybean that gets stuck to one of the noodles. Which, yes, duh, of course she would've, why the fuck had he started off like that? 'In case you were wondering, from earlier,' he adds, trying to power through it. 'It went okay, I guess -- I wasn't a hundred percent feeling it at the time.' His shoulders twitch a shrug. 'Could've been better.'

No layer of freshly frozen ice could be thinner, or more transparent. It wasn't the best I could do. Don't think for a second you've seen the best I can do.

[theglassheart]

Silence is rarely settled. Outside of it is the pressure to somehow find the right words to say, the right order to string them in, how to even properly express himself, without falling on his face. Inside of it, at least when there are other people around, it's a presence that grows and fills, nagging at him to say something, do something, and even when do doesn't, or doesn't have to, it gives his mind, like gears the chance to start spinning faster about everything unsaid, by himself and anyone near him.

There are peaceful silences. Most of them are fully exhausted. Half-asleep while talking after practice, or trying to melt into a puddle and merge into being one with the hot water of the onsen. In his room, alone, at the end of the night, and sometimes with Victor. Rare end of day, and end of trip, words worn thin moments. Seldom seconds when he doesn't need to worry -- or more doesn't need to worry quite yet, or his mind is too tired to rouse the energy to worry properly.

Which isn't here really. There's a tension in his shoulders, even as he eats. Not looking at other people. Not quite looking over or not looking over at Yurio, while putting together another bite between himself and his real hunger. Still on an edge, of the stool and whatever all is happening right now. Already at attention, triggered to the noise of a single word in that voice, when Yurio speaks again. That sharper defensiveness in his words again stringing on his own line of tension, even while it's almost relieving more expected.

About Lilia (all dark pinched hair, hard eyes in his memory, and crisp sharp Russian), and how she'd choreographed everything for Yurio this season. Yuri knew. But more, he knew because he'd known from Yuu-san months and months ago. Not from Yurio, and so he listens, without pointing that out. Not certain if it was known, or if it would maybe make Yurio mad, and then get him mad at Yuu-san, too. It was given to him now, though, by Yurio, and skipping the other he could just comment on that. Right?

"It was good," Yuri said, soft and maybe a little too fast, in the spiral of which words from which thoughts, and the way it brought everything back that weekend because everything kept doing it. Making the noddles in his stomach slither. Which is, perhaps, why he adds a second later: "Even better than in Canada."

[yuri_plisetsky]

There's no missing the moment when Yuri's eyes widen, the tips of his chopsticks hovering over his bowl as the compliment rolls over and sinks in.

Of course they all keep track of each other's performances. It's a key part of the training regimen, to study a competitor's style and technique, compare new programs to old ones, gauge strengths and identify weaknesses, acquire every scrap of knowledge you can get. Even a dinosaur like Yakov was, in Yuri's reluctant opinion, halfway decent at working with livestreams and internet uploads, the obvious successor of the bulky VHS tapes stored in boxes at the rink, crammed with fuzzy videos labelled by competition and year. But for all that he still can't entirely think of Skate Canada without a pang of disappointment over his second-place finish, that discontent is immediately engulfed in something that makes his chest tighten in an entirely different way, a slower and stronger squeeze than the brief constriction that he's been pushing to one side for most of his senior debut season.

He hadn't been able to ask Viktor about it, that time before Rostelecom. But now he knows -- he knows that Katsudon, at least had watched his performance there. And for some inexplicable reason, he doesn't know what to do with that knowledge. He has to swallow hard, first, and look down at his bowl, and mutter a barely intelligible yeah, sure to the food within it. The chopsticks stay where they are, for lack of any better reason to move them. But when he looks up again, the surprise has given way to his usual sharp intensity, though it's devoid of his usual hostility.

'When I told Dedka that I gave you the rest of the pirozh-katsu, he asked me -- ' No, that's not how to start it, because the end of that sentence -- he asked me what kind of person you were -- was something that Yuri hadn't been able to answer without a long-winded rant that doesn't belong here in this place. Not while they're sitting with chopsticks and noodles, like this is an actual thing that is happening right this second. 'He asked me about your skating. So I showed him a video of your free skate, from Shanghai...so he'd know what to look for when he watches the Final.'

Yuri had, of course, cut the video short as soon as the performance ended, before the cameras picked up the horrifying sight of Viktor flinging himself on Katsudon and nearly cracking both of their skulls open on the ice. His grandfather didn't need to see that ridiculous stunt.

(And Nikolai Plisetsky, who knows his grandson better than anyone else, had picked up on much more from Yuri's commentary and occasional silences during the video than he would ever think to let on.)

[theglassheart]

Yurio pauses, stock still entirely, posture and chopsticks both, at his words and Yuri's shoulders tighten. His chest tightens. His back. (Sore muscles complaining at the abuse of even stricken posture in a reaction that has no control and wouldn't let go if he ordered it.)

He braces for what is likely to be a tirade about not needing Yuri's approval or his pity, or his mealy-mouthed unthought out words, or, maybe, just his opinions from beginning to end, no matter what they happen to be. But the words don't come, and that. That is worse. Because he can only imagine that whatever it is that's coming needs time to ramp up hard and high enough.

The first response is not far off, is it? Quiet, dismissive, sounding about as unneeded as Yuri thought it.
Which makes Yurio looking up to say the words that follow a few seconds later unexpected a bit.

He's not surprised he's been mentioned -- because of the recipe, because of his mother -- but it still sets off a nervous net of bees in his stomach, just as dangerous with their vibrating too tight, too fast wings against the edges, as biting stingers about the idea of Yurio explaining his skating. Yurio who had to show him one of his jumps. Yurio who fumed at them cheering him on. Who yelled at him at the end of tea, and kicked him into the snow, even if he was laughing before he left, giving him instructions for the cab.

What did he tell his grandfather? Did he? Or was it really only an inquiry since Yuri must have been a competitor?
How terrible could it have been in Yurio's own opinions of Yuri's skating, from this year? And two years ago?
He's glad there isn't any food in his mouth. He's not sure he could swallow even air at this second.

"Oh," is quiet, is late, is absolutely worthless expelled sound in his own mouth. Worse than the last words, against those stingers in his guts. He doesn't want to imagine a millionth-and-one person watching the last two days of his very last year. Judging. Hoping, with everyone else, that he fails. (Because that was expected loyalty, too, wasn't it? He'd want his grandson to win, which meant hoping everyone else didn't.)

[yuri_plisetsky]

It's a strange sort of oh that Katsudon makes, after a pause that makes Yuri wonder if somehow the translation hadn't quite allowed the message to go through. Because what could be more straightforward than that? Even Katsudon would have to admit that his Rostelecom free skate hadn't been great, in spite of how anyone with a pair of eyes in their head could​ see that it should have been something more than it had been. You can't count on him to choke there like he did here, Yakov had said, and Yakov would be one to know, wouldn't he? So why wouldn't Yuri have shown his grandfather that free skate from Shanghai -- the one he'd watched in the cafe, a ferocious hunger gnawing at him from the inside out while his borscht sat untouched in front of him -- so he could know exactly what Yuri had to beat in Barcelona?

But that's not the end of it, not really. ​'​He said I should wish you ​​good luck​​ from him, if I saw you before then.' A slight huff through his nose, like a line drawn under that statement, and he picks at the noodles without trying to lift them fully out of the bowl. 'I know he didn't mean that I'd see you here, but...whatever, that's what he said to me. So now you know.'

It's not really even a begrudging sort of good luck, as Yuri sees it. You can wish someone luck, even hope that they're lucky, and still not want them to win. But his grandfather's not the sort who just says that sort of thing without meaning it. Because it's a reminder to Yuri as well, that fortune often smiles brightest on those who are willing to do what it takes to succeed.

Good luck and do your best: two sides of the same coin.

[theglassheart]

It's still hard to picture Yuri having a guardian figure. They all have them, but not everyone's parents or family come to competitions. The cost of flying, feeding, and putting into a hotel one skater, their coach, and all of their gear was a high enough cost already, before you added in extra flights, rooms, and food, but it was even harder to imagine with Yurip. Always set apart, even so young, and never seen with more than Yakov and Lilia.

Further back than even that, the first time Yurio had made a dent into this year, was defying Yakov entirely to go to Japan. It's hard to imagine someone who caused this kind of reluctant deference. The way it looked and felt entirely different than the trained way he referred to Lilia, or her training. It was hard to picture what kind of person Yurio went home with, and who managed to handle all of the loud, swearing, hungry, brilliant on the ice, sometimes violent bundle of him at home in Moscow.

What kind of person was his Grandfather? Was he just like Yurio?

Someone who was asking about him, had watched him ... and sent him a casual Good Luck (that couldn't much truly be meant, could it, for what they all wanted)? There's a small kind of nod, looking somewhere between his bowl, and the bar, and sort of to the side around, more than at, Yurio. "Yeah. That makes sense."

He got that. No one planned for the bar. This impossible place. That didn't stop existing even for logic. Most everyone knew nothing of it. He'd had to wit until after dinner to even tell Victor about, given his own family didn't know about it, and the last thing he needed was them thinking, even more, might be wrong with his head. "I guess ..." He was still searching for something that matched. It felt the way trying to figure out words for the press did.

Too much light. Too many eyes. No answers. " ... tell him I said thank you, whenever it seems best?"
He could do polite. Or at least attempt, before another question strings along. "Will he come to Barcelona?"

Even if what's really poised on the edge of the cliff face is that question twisted, Did he make it to the Gala in Moscow?

[yuri_plisetsky]

Yuri shakes his head. 'He doesn't have a passport,' he says. 'Not the kind we need to travel abroad, that is. And it costs a lot to travel, anyway, with the visas and the tickets and everything.' Especially when the state pension buys less and less every year, and the bills are always higher in the winter, when the skating season really hits its stride. And even if the skating federation had been willing to foot the bill, how could he leave his grandfather alone, with his bad back and his poor English, in a strange city for hours on end? 'Even for our Nationals, whether they're in Saransk or Sochi or wherever, I wouldn't expect him to try to come for them. That was why Rostelecom....'

The thought slows to a stop, landing with the equivalent of a soft thud between them. Katsudon knows this already. Some of it. Enough of it. There's no point in rehashing all the familiar reasons why the cheers that skaters tend to care about most have so often been silent ones. Besides, one of these days he'll have made enough of a name for himself that the money won't even be a factor anymore if he wants to pay for that extra hotel room in Saransk or Sochi. Buy the plane tickets. Cover the meals. Maybe even hire a car service so his grandfather can relax comfortably at the hotel for as long as he wants until the skating starts.

It'll happen, because he'll make it happen.

'Anyway, whatever, it's fine.' It isn't fine, of course, but it is what it is. 'I'll mention it to him.' He's got his next bite of noodles all geared up and ready to consume, but pauses before he can lift them from the bowl. 'Are your parents coming?'

(You know, if Katsudon had had someone else there in Moscow, his unhelpful brain cheerfully informs him, with uncharacteristic logic, he wouldn't have needed you to drag him to this place at all.)

[theglassheart]

"No, they don't really--" Except it cloys hard and fast, too thick in his mouth, before he can blurt out something shamefully along the lines of understand skating. Or maybe it would have been come to my competitions. Either way it feels wrong. Dishonorably low. Like a complaint against them, or some part of their actions.

It might be true. That they didn't know, that they didn't come -- hadn't come to the Regional Championships in Japan only two months back, even when Minako and Takeshi had -- but they had never balked at a single bill since before he could remember, however far back it went to ballet lessons starting and Minako directing him into skating, too.

"Mari and Minako are coming, but Yu-topia can't lose everyone either."
Which was true, even as an evasive sideways excuse band-aided roughly into what he'd been about to say only seconds earlier.

It might have been just short of two decades he'd been skating, and they did understand that Minako championed him as good, good enough to skate, to compete, to need to go to America, to another, more famous, more knowledgeable coach, and that it was worth celebrating when he moved to Seniors, when he was named Japan's Ace, when he went to the Grand Prix for his first time, and made it to the GPF in his first year in the Prix, and even when he made it, again, only a few days ago ...


But ...


... they didn't really understand skating itself, even after all of that nearly two decades. Just that is was his. Which had never stopped their support one bit, or the celebratory steps as they happened ... but it left a space there, too. One that felt disingenuous to put into words, after all of these years and all of their absolutely unwavering support in their own ways and especially all of the costs, but one that nonetheless never stopped feeling a little empty, a little distant, a little ... apart from them, as well.

[yuri_plisetsky]

'I mean, I figured that was how it was,' Yuri says quickly, once it's clear that that's all Katsudon has to say about his parents. 'It's a business, and there's customers -- they can't just close whenever they want to.'

All the same, it does make him wonder a little. He couldn't be sure, what with the language barrier and all, but in that short time he'd been in Hasetsu he hadn't quite been able to shake the feeling that Katsudon's parents really didn't...get what was going on the whole time. Who Viktor was. Why he was there. Why Yuri was there. Everything that was at stake. His grandfather might not know a toe loop from a salchow on sight, but he certainly would've understood the gravity of the situation at the time. And yet he'd never seen the Katsukis look anything other than cheerful about it, and it hadn't felt awkward or fake -- somehow they'd seemed more pleased than anything else to have so many people in their house all at once.

(Damn it. That thank-you note gets written tonight.)

'But if you've got people coming, your sister and your teacher...that's good, at least.' It's a lame way to finish the thought, and the only way to make it feel less like he'd run out of words to say himself is to lift the noodles and shove them into his mouth. Somehow it's easier to use them when he isn't thinking too much about what he's doing.

[theglassheart]

It's not really even just that. That is what comes up first; raises to close its fingers around his throat and those few words. The next part just fists tighter as Yurio mentions money, again, and maybe he missed it. He was there during the point when Victor had only been there a short time, and then the competition was happening.

Maybe he missed how much Hasetsu was not a busy place. Not nearly so busy as any of the cities they gone to for the Grand Prix. Maybe it wasn't even an obvious jump from that one, to the fact even if Victor did not have people swarming the city anymore, paying for Victor's coaching was likely going to kill so much more than any other coach Yuri'd had in his, and his parent's, life.

If he wanted to go on never breathing, again, he could pretend that number wasn't probably the sum of every one before it. As though his parents could even consider that number, and then traveling to Europe, on top of being the only Onsen not closed in a place where less and less people came every year. It only pulls tighter, thinking of the money he won in Shanghai, or Russia, where he collected maybe enough to cover plane tickets. Whether 1st in Barcelona would ever even help out in that total.

"Yeah." Yuri's throat stayed dry with the renewed knowledge he still didn't know what the bill for this year would look like. It's an absent impossible thing to try to even envision. What does a year in the life of Victor, as not Just-Victor, but a Five-Time Champion, Olympian even, rack up to looking like on a check? Would he go blind before he saw the end of the zeroes?

[ Or before money happened,
when the end came first. ]