yuri_plisetsky | Milliways: Chopsticks Instructional Hour [1.09-1.10]

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Milliways: Chopsticks Instructional Hour [1.09-1.10]

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.

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It's ... almost like an invitation, if an invitation could come on the back of insult, hovering sharp as claws, not safely pulled in, but held out, gleaming in wait, weighing what was in front of it, wary, ready to strike at the least sign of provocation. Or at none at all. Which was just as likely. It was, probably, the closest to anything like an invitation Yurio might actually extend him.

Stuck here, and more than a little back in the small waterfall of memories of the last time, it wasn't like that earlier time was an invitation either. He didn't remember a lot of that numb walk. Or how long he'd stood there, stupidly, in the lobby. Only Yurio dragging him away, and it felt like seconds and eons before Yurio was shoving tea in front of him, in one of the booths. He never said thank you. He never asked why.

Not that much of that got clearer in the passing days either.
With all the same details. At the end of the Universe, and in the Moscow snow.

It just ... got tucked away somewhere that wasn't practicing, and wasn't whatever the words, and phrases, and titles for whatever he and Victor were doing now. That not so faint feeling he could only compare to magnets, like an insistent tug backward. Toward where he came from, and where he'd been going. Which seemed impossibly childish, and was too gargantuanly stupid to ever admit aloud. But it didn't stop the feeling. Even now.

(Especially with that unsettled thing between his shoulder blades, about staying, about still not looking at the door.)

Which maybe makes it even less sense -- in head as much as on his lips --
when what comes out isn't yes, or no, or even moving to sit. It's -- "You should get rice."

Yuri looks up again, his brow creasing in a faint frown. Confused, not annoyed, though considering his default expression it isn't easy to tell the difference. 'There's noodles under here,' he says, gesturing to the bowl with its pile of vegetables on top. 'Rice isn't on my meal plan tonight. And I figured noodles would be...I dunno, easier or something.'

Of course, now he's going to second-guess himself. Should he be eating rice instead? Noodles at least can be twirled around the chopsticks and slurped up; rice grains would be much harder to eat when he's just starting out. But maybe that's only when thinking of the kind of rice that he grew up with, the kind that his grandfather had cooked in broth to make plov or stewed in milk for pudding. The rice in Japan had been different, in a way, though at the time he'd been so focused on eating it that he couldn't name exactly what had been different about it.

While he's distracted by his own considerations, the top chopstick is threatening to slip out of his grasp. He fiddles with the pair to line them up again. 'If I could get to the noodles,' he mutters to himself, as he goes in for another attempt at the broccoli.

This time, he does manage to catch hold of one right below where the stem joins the florets, but his grip isn't quite firm enough to keep it from tilting and slipping out from between the tips.

(This is starting to go beyond actual hunger and into the point of a personal vendetta against this particular piece of vegetable.)

Edited 2017-10-01 04:59 (UTC)

It's questionable what actually manages to come first: Yurio's look at him with crazed incredulity for trespassing or his cheeks flaring a warm pink just at the action of the words blurting out of his mouth. Yurio might have said to sit, but he hadn't said or looked or implied anything like he might want advice or help. Especially when the last person Yurio might want advice or help from was another competitor. Even if this wasn't about skating.

Or maybe that helps it. The narrow look Yurio has making Yuri's feet feel like the ground is precarious, even as Yurio focus launches more into a defense and growl muttered at his bowl, and tries again against the same vegetable, to the same result. It makes Yuri faintly wince, but Yurio's anger is firmly fixed on the bowl, on that piece of broccoli he's managed to somehow not bounce onto the floor at least, and not on Yuri.

"It's--" Yuri's words stumble and stick between his teeth not really getting to more forgiving, as he realizes on the cusp of saying them that Yurio might hate those words. It makes his mouth press awkwardly, even as he finally steps closer to the bar and the stool, letting a hand rest on it. "--sometimes easier to start with."

Not that he's saying Yurio needs easy. Yurio, who threw himself into insane feats and displays already at a blink. Just. It's. "It sticks to itself, and to the chopsticks, and it doesn't always fall apart even if your grip is too light or too tight at the beginning. I--" There's that hesitation again, fingertips pressing a little hard on the stool top as he swallowed, before he made his eyes raise to level, looking forward, right at the younger boy, for pushing it out. "--could show you? If you want?"

Yuri's eyes narrow.

The immediate temptation, naturally, is to tell him to fuck off and die. But that's a knee-jerk reaction, not even fully considered, there and gone in the time that it takes for the response to form in his head. Because it's not like he's making that much headway on his own, is he? His very full bowl is proof of that. And a video demonstration, even several of them in a preselected queue, can't compare to being able to see the movement in real time and ask questions. Demand answers.

Get it right.

(It's not even about swallowing his pride to ask for help. After all, he's not really doing it for his own sake. He can't teach someone else how to do it if he doesn't understand it properly himself...and who else can he ask about it? He'd only be shooting himself in the proverbial foot if he were to turn it down.)

So the coldly appraising stare lasts for only a second, no more than two -- and then Yuri sets his own chopsticks down, and moves his hand to shove the wrapped packet of disposable chopsticks at his side in Katsudon's direction.

'Here,' he says stiffly. 'The bar gave me extra.'

He doesn't know what Yurio's thinking as his eyes narrow, but that hard, momentary calculation -- the look that is so patently Yurio's go-to and has been since Yuri first saw it in a bathroom (and then from the floor of The Ice Palace lobby) -- makes Yuri wonder, for not the first time, what put it there. Surrounded with boisterous rink mates, who for the most part seem to get along well enough, and Yurio's go-to is still this.

Yuri blinked with some surprise as there were suddenly chopsticks shoved at him instead of watching that consideration turned harder until it was the, mostly expected, answer of just where he could go and how much the implication of any weakness of any kind on Yurio's part was idiotic. But ... chopsticks, and so there's nothing really to do except sit down on the stool while picking them up, right?

It's still an odd expression, uncertain where to look or quite how to address (or even who still, not to mention how) as he looks at the lacquer maple wood below his hands. There's no face to know if the someone in there is waiting on him, or away helping someone else and he's interrupting. Still, he has no clue, either way, no way to be sure it's polite and respectful, so he swallows and asks, quietly, "Could we have two bowls of rice? Please?"

When the rice appears, Yuri studies the pair of bowls in silence, trying to recall several months back to what he'd seen when he watched Katsudon and his family eat at mealtimes. Most of what he remembers from that time is more internal than external: his own tiredness from their hours of exercise and the accompanying deep hunger -- fiercer than the hunger that's gnawing in the pit of his stomach now -- and how good the food had tasted even when he couldn't necessarily identify individual elements by sight. The actual details of eating the meals, unsurprisingly, are a lot fuzzier in his mind.

With no real memory to draw upon for assistance, he'll have to give Katsudon's demonstration his full attention.

He leaves his chopsticks where they are and moves the bowl of vegetables and noodles a little to one side; this isn't the time to try to get ahead of himself, to act like he knows more than he does and fake what he doesn't. For all that this is an incredibly low-stakes scenario, Yuri has switched his focus onto the rice bowls with the same absolute, single-minded attention that Yuuri might remember from their days in Hasetsu, learning their routines together before Onsen on Ice.

'I'll watch first,' he says. No room for anything but business now.

The hyper-focus from that side, even out of the corner of his eye, is impossible to miss. Yuri feels as though most of his breaths and choices are being watched by the world, and most days with a minimal effort, whether believed or not, he can convince himself he isn't for long enough to do what he needs (even if what he needs to do is be good enough when the whole world really is watching). Not always. It doesn't always work. But neither of those are this.

Yurio is right at his side staring at the bowls -- mounds of fluffy, white rice that looks just like the rice scooped out of industrial rice makers in the back of Yu-Topia all day -- and then him. Declaring the direction of all this and making Yuri have to focus. It's simple enough, isn't it? His fingers rip the paper, and he pushes the chopsticks out, while the paper crumples in his hand. There's a small crack as he separates them, and (even if he's mostly adjusted to that strange American habit, and its lack of understanding about insult) he doesn't rub them together.

Has he ever had to show anyone this? The youngest in his family. The same age and level of learning for all of those in his compulsory classes. Phichit knew when he arrived and was more than glad to show anyone at the school or rink who didn't know, and before Phichit really wasn't worth a comparison. It's almost strange how much awareness Yuri has setting one down on the edge of the bar, to hold just one first.

"This is your first one. It the bottom chopstick and it doesn't move much. Like this." Yuri placed it across the web between his thumb and finger and rested the slightly slimmer section on the side-top of his third finger. He turned his hand so Yuri could look at it with the one in.

"You make sure to press in tightly enough here--" There was a pause to point with his left hand where his thumb pressed in the middle of the chopstick between the webbing and where it rests on his fingertip, leaving it immobile. While his pointer finger was still up and unengaged. "--with your thumb, so that it stays still and straight in place."

Yuri watches the placement of chopstick, fingers, and wrist, tilting his head a little to confirm it from a slightly different angle. That matches the demonstrations he'd been watching. It's not just the chopstick position itself that's important; it's the fact that it has to stay where it is, without him gripping it so tightly that the wood digs into the groove of his hand or makes his wrist sore from the tension.

'Because the upper one does most of the work, right?' he asks. 'Like when you pinch something with your fingers.' He holds up his right hand as well, and keeps his thumb still as he taps the pad of his forefinger to his thumbtip several times in rapid succession. 'But it's with more than just the tips of the chopsticks.'

He'd figured that out through the trial and error of his first few attempts, when he'd been trying to pluck the broccoli out of the bowl rather than grab it firmly and hold on. He lets his hand drop again, waiting for Katsudon to keep going.

"Yes." Simple, straightforward. Yuri once, twice, a third time, while Yurio is parroting back his understanding of the parts Yurio didn't explain. Which does show how much he had either paid attention to the video or even possibly been looking into the facts of it, more than the application, before now. Though, it can't have been too long before now probably if it is the latter.

It's a combination of the yes, and sometimes just nodding, as Yuri tries to tilt and turn his hand in all the (humanly) possible ways one might look at a hand holding something after Yurio starts tilting and turning his own head first. It feels foolish a bit the whole time, even though he strives just to focus and point out the basics.

(It, also, from somewhere he can't quite point to -- maybe a recollection of the absolute focus -- reminds him of all those month ago. Back in the Ice Palace. Begging Yurio to help him. And that he had. Rough, and brusque, but still. Before he'd ever even been willing, no less, able to ask or demand any of it of Victor.)

"Yes, it becomes an extension of your thumb and finger, all of it around holding something between them, instead of stabbing things." There's a tiny breath pulled in. But. As Yuri picked up his second chopstick, he added in all one fast breath, like he'd only just decided he could and still wasn't certain it would make it out or was entirely right yet. "You don't ever stab anything with them. Or leave them upright in anything. But, especially, rice."

There's a part of Yuri that wants to roll his eyes at the admonition to not stab things with the chopsticks. Even with a fork and knife, that's bad manners no matter what the circumstances, but people still do it sometimes. (Especially if someone is trying to steal something off your plate, in which case it becomes a matter of defending what's yours, doesn't it?) But again, it's about learning how to do things properly, so if this is something that Katsudon thinks is worth mentioning then Yuri doesn't have any reason to challenge it.

It's the second part of that rushed explanation that makes him hesitate, though, as an uncomfortable wave of something that isn't hunger rolls through his stomach. 'One of the things I was looking at talked about that -- saying not to stick them upright in food.' He looks down at the bowl of rice in front of him, then back over at Katsudon and the chopsticks in his hand. 'Because it's a...a thing that happens at funerals? I didn't really get what it meant. But okay, I won't do that.'

Incense in front of a household altar. The darkness inside a shrine building. Nothing that he knows or understands, except that it's something to be respected. Lines that you don't cross.

(And oh, that surge of uncomfortable feeling reminds him of something else important, something he has to ask Katsudon about as soon as possible...but not now. Not yet. Not until they're done.)

That wasn't too bad, right? The pause and answer, with some recalculation because it wasn't directly required to learn how to hold chopsticks, but it was still part of the whole of their chopsticks being used everywhere. Of what foreigners still did sometimes both there and away in other countries, where only wisps existed of why or why not, or didn't at all.

"It's one of the offerings that are left next to the person who died during the--" Yuri pauses for a second, searching for an English word he hasn't had a true reason to learn in the last few years. But supplementing -- "つや?" -- There's a furrow to his brow. "When you spend all night gathered in prayer for them? It's preparing the way for where they're going. For sustaining them between leaving here and arriving on the other side."

The あの世 and the fact it's protracted by far against anything he saw for such functions of dying, even from a distance, or the tv's, in America, Yuri wasn't sure he wanted to get into. Yuri wasn't American, but he, also, hadn't asked for all of this either. It was just enough to be added on. The reasons for why not to do something and ... he seemed to be listening? Which was ... Yuri didn't quite know what to do, or even feel, about that.

But he switches back, with a small wave of the other chopstick just barely.

"For this one, you want it parallel to your first chopstick, but, also, to the finger above it." He pressed it lightly, trying to think of the most important things to point at once it was steady. "You're still pushing down with the side of your thumb on the first chopstick, but now you're doing it with the top one, too, here." Right where thumb-tip was pressed to the side of the new chopstick and just nearly, but not actually, brushed the straight pointer finger above the chopstick.

"Your pointer finger directs most of the movement," Yuri added while moving the top chopstick freely in his had as a display of it. "-while your thumb tip is still keeping it in place firm against your second chopstick, so that it won't fall down or out, too."

...right, okay, so definitely not putting them upright in food, then. Yuri can't help but look relieved when the discussion returns to the more practical aspects of chopstick use.

It looks like the most straightforward thing in the world when Katsudon does it. The hand position, the movement, all of it. There's no strain in his wrist or lower arm from holding the chopsticks in place, or in the set of his hand as he demonstrates the motion. To tamp down on the prickles of discontent that are starting to itch under his skin, Yuri has to remind himself of the difference between twenty minutes of hard practice and an entire lifetime of doing this at just about every meal. You can do it, too. It's worth it.

'And the rest of the fingers just stay...behind the bottom one there? Holding it in place from the other side?' Again, tilting his head a little to check the angle. Better than ending up with a hand cramp from a bad grip. 'And you move the top one more, and your thumb sort of...keeps them apart the whole time. So how do you pick up the rice?'

His mouth is beginning to water a bit, even from the smell of the plain, unseasoned rice.

They are such simple instructions and questions, and Yuri has to keep his mouth from the thoughts that flit across his head. The constant near baffled question-whispers of you just do?. Like parts skating and parts of ballet, it's so ingrained he's never thought to pick it apart. Couldn't tell you where and when the basics began. At the beginning. Like this. No one ever needed him to.

Yuri adjusted the chopsticks, more out of nervousness that necessity, making sure there was enough space between his fingers and the actual end of the chopsticks. Then, reached out for the bowl with his left hand and pulled it from the bar, instead of dragging it to himself. When he wasn't exhausted, and excused by his exhaustion, he could maintain the manners his parents trained in, and not drag things on the table itself.

It's all too easy to dip the chopsticks into the rice and move only the one, pulling off a smile pile of the fluffy white rice kernels. It seems too simplistic like he should be saying something important or more at all, and he wracks his brain for it. "With the sticky rice, it both works as grabbing it, and in beginning -- or even if it's a batch that isn't so sticky -- sometimes as just a base balancing the bit of rice under it. Especially if the bottom part falls off."

Yuri's eyes follow the motion, watching the action -- and like ballet, like skating, there's a point at which you have to make the attempt yourself. So he picks up his own chopsticks again, taking care to settle them into the position he'd been shown. 'Okay,' he says quietly, more to himself than to Katsudon. 'I'll try it now.'

One thing he'd noticed during the explanation is that he'd been holding the chopsticks too close to the tips before, out of an impression that it would be easier to maintain control of them if his hand were closer to the operational end. That's apparently not the case at all. So this time, he pushes the sticks forward in his hand a fraction of an inch, wiggling his thumb backwards to compensate for the new position. A tentative test, using his forefinger and the edge of his middle finger to move the upper stick against the hinge created by the pad of his thumb, and it still feels unusual but it doesn't seem like the whole thing's going to fall apart on him right this second. So he picks up the bowl to bring it closer to him, as Katsudon had, and goes in for the first strike.

The steaming rice does seem to helpfully stick to itself, and with some careful digging and prodding against the side of the bowl Yuri gets a chunk of it on his chopsticks. His hand's slightly too tense to be wholly comfortable, but the rice seems to be cooperating with his intent. Rather than hesitate any longer over it, he lifts the chopsticks, and at the same time brings his head down a little in an awkward attempt to meet the rice halfway.

It's shaky, but he gets it in his mouth. That's the important thing.

(The slight mmrph he lets out as he does so is equal parts surprise and relief.)

Yurio still looks more serious that he needs to, about chopsticks of all things, but it's a familiar, normal seriousness, entirely in character with how serious he always looks. Setting the chopsticks in his hand like he watched happen. Not near the deftness which Yuri does without thought (and thus made it harder to slow down, break it down, find words for what isn't thought of, spoken of), but he does it well enough.

There's question and overbearing determination, and Yuri's breath holds a little when Yuri manages to scoop a small pile of rice. Maybe it's awkward -- the hold of Yurio's hand, the whole riot of tense posture of his body, the frantic need to have his mouth meet his chopstick not far from his bowl -- maybe it is, but it doesn't matter.

"There. You did it!" Yuri said, congratulations creeping into his tone, but not very loud all things considered, especially in the boisterous bar. He broke off another pile of rice for himself, stomach rumbling at him about the meal he hadn't made it down to. A little rice couldn't hurt whatever he's supposed to eat with Victor and his parents. They wouldn't even know he was gone right now, or that he'd eaten.

Well. Victor would, but that would likely be after dinner and not during it. Only he knew about Milliways of them.

Yuri can't stifle an irritable grumble at Katsudon's praise, because it's nothing short of humiliating to be cheered for getting a bite of food into your mouth like you're three years old. But he keeps his head down, saving the full force of his glare for the bowl of rice, and goes in for a second bite. The rice is sticking to itself more as it cools, which helps him get the next chunk onto the chopsticks, and this time he doesn't have to duck his head quite so far to meet the rice on its way up.

He could keep going with the rice, but the next level of the challenge is right beside him. And it might be easier to combine them both, rather than trying to go straight for the noodles again. 'I should probably...' he mutters, thinking aloud, as he straightens up and sets the chopsticks down. It's the work of a moment to pick up the bowl of vegetables and noodles and shake it gently over the bowl of rice, just enough to let a few pieces of broccoli and carrot and soybean tumble off the top of one bowl to land in the other.

Before he can put the first bowl down, however, he thinks better of it -- and abruptly holds it out to Katsudon, tilted in open offering. 'You can have some, if you want,' he says, his serious expression at odds with the fact that his is face still somewhat pink with residual embarrassment. 'It's just vegetables.'

If Katsudon is putting off his dinner at home for this -- to help him here -- it's only fair to offer to share.

There's a second, uncertain, wavered, mouth opening just a little and closing, as he almost and then doesn't speak. To tell Yurio he doesn't have to rush himself. That he can take it slow with the basics he's getting. It's not a contest. (A competition.) But that reminds him of Yurio on the ice. The all-but-body-breaking attack that was his last Appassionato. Yuri doesn't do good at anything like slow even at the things he's already good at.

(Not that there's time for slow there, is there? Only so few days and weeks to Barcelona.)

He is, at least, relieved a step back when Yurio chooses to take some of the vegetables, tumbling them onto the rice bowl, instead of simply leaping from two bites into his rice back to the baston of his ire and contempt in the first bowl. The last thing Yuri is expecting, bowl of rice in one hand and chopsticks in the other, is to suddenly have Yurio thrust his first bowl at him.

He's still blinking in the wave of the first surprised-confusion when Yurio, stern-faced and flushing a color more like Yuri's only normal, (forces himself into?) begins offering Yuri some of the vegetables piled on the top of that bowl. When the first sounds is foolishly, owlishly, falling out of his mouth, with more surprise than thought, as well as unexpected memory. "Oh."

(You can have it.

It's almost your birthday, right?)

"Uh--" Is a sound trying to contain itself back to some semblance of control, torn between reminded, polite acceptance (for bland polite involvement? because he helped, the smallest bit?), the question of why (and why again), and, again, the reminder, still. His family was waiting. Dinner. (Victor.) Confusing or not, it still cobbles its coltish legs together to get back to. "--okay. Thanks."

Yuri had to shift slightly toward him to use his chopsticks and coax some of the broccoli and carrot pieces into his rice bowl from the other. "I can't take a lot. I'll still have to go back, and there's no knowing what they will have made."

Edited 2017-10-06 01:55 (UTC)

'Whatever you want,' Yuri replies, as he sets the bowl back down. It was offered, and accepted, and that's really all that matters. 'You don't have to stay, if you want to go back. I just want to get this right, that's all.' Even if time doesn't seem to pass here in this place, Katsudon has people waiting for him at home -- and this time, there shouldn't be anything keeping him away from it.

(Not like the spectacular fuck-up of last time, of course.)

Pushing those thoughts aside, he picks up the chopsticks again, flexing his right hand a few times to keep it from stiffening up. He's careful to adjust his grip from the start, moving his thumb until he feels comfortable with the positioning. And when he takes aim at the same offending piece of broccoli, he goes for the rice beneath it as well. Thanks to his earlier efforts, he has enough control over the chopsticks to manage to wedge one tip into a space between the branches of the florets and secure the other one on the outside edge, along with the rice. It's precarious, but now that he knows more about how it's supposed to feel in his hand, it's enough to let him quickly raise the chopsticks to his mouth and get his teeth into both rice and broccoli before the whole thing falls off.

A bit like touching a hand on a shaky jump landing; succeeding on technical grounds, with enough rotations, but the execution leaves much to be desired. Not exactly a resounding triumph. All the same, it's warm and crunchy and good, the first piece of something solid and not-rice that he's managed so far with the chopsticks, and any food is welcome when your stomach is noisily trying to digest itself.

Yuri's eyes close a little, and the breath huffed out through his nose as he chews is definitely relieved. Though as he swallows, his eyes flick briefly in Katsudon's direction -- possibly from some subconscious need for a final confirmation, or in search of any further instructions. Or perhaps neither of these, because he looks back down at his bowl just as quickly, as if to determine which vegetable looks most promising for a second try.

"It's okay," Yuri says, a little faster than even he expects of his mouth, of the implication he might not want to stay, of the flush of something that was not quite not-true of that mingled with shame for the feeling being pinpointed and still the residual, lingering, building wary quiet staring at all of this uncertainly. It makes his heart jump to his throat even as he's finishing, quickly, "I can stay a little while."

That part is honest, isn't it? No one on the other side will even know he was gone, if the people here are correct about time outside the door freezing when you are on this side. Even if time passes on both sides when you're on the other, which he's never really figured out if made sense or not. This place is confusing. Just existing, it's confusing. Impossible, except that it keeps just ... being. Real. Solid. Peopled. Appearing.

His parents would know to be missing him. Not Victor, or Mari, or Minako, if she stopped by tonight, or even Maccachin, who might even still be waiting around outside after following Yuri up to the third floor to collect clothes and back down to the second for his shower. No one. Just himself, Yurio, all the people in this place who had no clue at all who he was. The idea of changing that equation even a little spiking his heart a beat too anxiously.

It takes a few more seconds before Yuri realizes he's been sitting there silently looking between Yurio and the rest of the people closest to them -- at the bar, at the tables, at the booths. That it's Yurio's glance in his direction, so fast he blinks and questions if he imagined it (like he's a few times questioned whether he imagined the whole of Milliways, and the whole of what happened the last night in Moscow, out in the snow, and the whole of anything that involves Victor wanting to kiss him), still it prompts action of some kind.

Yuri cleared his throat, finishing a bite of rice with carrot and broccoli with a pushed swallow to start with, "Uh--" and shove past it, a little awkwardly but without letting himself pause. "Why did you decide to start learning how to use chopsticks now?"

Edited 2017-10-06 12:01 (UTC)

Yuri's hand stills in the middle of nudging a piece of carrot out of the way to get at an adjacent chunk of broccoli. But he doesn't hesitate for long before his hand starts moving again.

'I want to show my grandfather how to use them.' He's talking more to the rice than to Katsudon, but his voice is steady. 'When I was at home, he was asking me about the food I had at your house, and what it tasted like. So I was telling him about some of the things I ate there.'

A true statement, but not quite accurate. Nikolai Plisetsky might have asked a few quiet questions here and there, but his grandson hadn't needed much encouragement to describe everything he could about his short stay in Japan. About the katsudon, of course, so they could figure out how to make their experimental pirozhki best approximate the taste of the original dish. But also about having fish and rice and soup for breakfast, and smoky grilled squid on a stick, and greasy fried noodles slurped from a carton, and little rice dumplings made with sweet bean paste, and salty-sweet crunchy snacks from packages with writing that he couldn't read, and hot and cold tea that came in bottles from vending machines all over the place. And more than that, about Hasetsu itself, and how the fresh salt smell of the sea air was similar to and yet totally different from the air in St. Petersburg, somehow. About Yu-topia, with the outdoor bath that was sort of like the old neighbourhood banya, and how good the steaming hot water felt against his sore muscles after a long day of training. About Katsudon's parents and big sister, and Yuuko and her family. About the Ice Castle, and the waterfall, and the morning market and the spring festival and the shrine and the floats. (Even, a little awkwardly, about the red brocade good-luck charm tucked deep inside his skating bag, in a pocket where it wouldn't be damaged.) Everything, anything he could think of, while he pounded pork cutlets flat with a mallet and his grandfather kneaded a bowl full of dough, while the oil sizzled and the rice steamed.

Things he hadn't thought that he'd remembered. Things that probably weren't all that important. Even some things, like his performance at Onsen on Ice -- and leaving Japan alone, defeated, without Viktor -- that he didn't really like thinking about, let alone talking about. But he didn't want to leave anything out, when his grandfather was right there and listening.

'We never really had anything like this' -- a small circular gesture with the chopsticks, again indicating both them and the bowls of food -- 'near where I grew up. And he's never used chopsticks before. So I told him that I'd learn how to do it, and show it to him when I go home next time. Probably for a couple of days around New Year's and Christmas, if Yakov says I can.' It feels like he's said a lot, though he hasn't really said much of anything at all, but he finishes with a certain firmness that underscores his original purpose. 'So I decided to come here to work on it.'

He chooses to punctuate that final statement by digging into the rice and extricating the second piece of broccoli to jam into his mouth.

It's not that he's not surprised;

It's that he's not as surprised as he would have been a few weeks ago. A month ago. Before half-laying, half-sitting there in the snow as he looked confused at the paper bag that had landed on him -- standing there, laughing, at the surprise, shortly after. Before the unexpected picture of what must have been the next batch being made.

It's less that he is. He has a general grasp of what, lining up events, lining up responses, and almost none of why, but that is in a lot of places the story of his life. Of this last year, of Victor, of skating, even his determination to make everything of this very last chance, to put everything he left into taking Gold at his very last Grand Prix Finale.

Why not Yurio, too. Except that's another why, and it's not a why question or answer either. It's already just happening, like all the rest of them. Yurio, too. The mention of Christmas only strengthens the reminder of how close the end of the month is, and the GPF before it, all of them with things riding on before it, itself, and the precarious nature of anything planned after.

(Of anything at all after it.

At least Yuri wouldn't have to worry about that.
He'd have his grandfather afterward, even if he lost.)

Yuri shoved that down in the same dark, tiny place he always did. Not yet. Not yet. Still days to go, still weeks to go. Still practices, still early mornings, still blades and blisters to wear through, still grueling ballet hours with Minako, and miles of running with Maccachin half the time behind him, of Victor's stern frown and his bursts of inspiration and his absurdly perfect heart of a smile. (The feel of his fingers on Yuri's hand. Every kiss.) Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.

(Too soon. Too close. Too almost-now.
But. Not yet.)

Yuri nodded, without raising his chopsticks for a bite that time, not sure he could swallow about the well of questions sitting in the shape of the young boy in front of him or the one of emotion fighting to get outside the cage of his ribs again. "That's a pretty good amount of time. Especially if you take a set home with you, and you can come here a few times in between."

It's strange how something so simple as agreement with a statement can trickle into a warmth that makes the tips of Yuri's ears burn beneath the curtain of his hair. Even if it's not much...somehow, it's enough.

(And it was like that the last time, wasn't it? Over cups of cooling tea, with the bitter tension of worry and the threat of failure and loss hanging above their heads like row upon row of knives. You'll show them that tomorrow, too. Even with everything that had happened afterwards, that terrible night and the following chaotic day, it had been enough.)

'It'll have to be here,' Yuri says absently, chasing a carrot around the edge of the bowl. 'Even if I take these home, I've got to be in Zagreb soon for the Golden Spin.' It's the sole event of the ISU Challenger series that Yakov would let him compete in this year, on top of the Grand Prix events. 'That's part of why I only had one day at home, after Rostelecom. I had to get back.'

He pauses, letting the carrot escape its fate for the moment. 'The second batch came out okay, by the way,' he adds, with the same careful sidelong glance as before. 'Closer to what I remembered -- with more onion, and some soy sauce. If I'm able to go home at Christmas, we'll test out a third batch then.'

There might, if he can manage it, be an additional test-run of the second recipe...but the trip to Croatia comes first. Even now, he knows where his priorities have to lie.

He's not too surprised to hear Yurio is taking part in the Challenger Series, either. It's not on the same level as the GPF, but it was Yurio's first year at the Senior Level and it would give him both more practice with his routines, more experience, possibly more prestige and more confidence at the level he'd transitioned into. Especially when compared the age and experience of everyone else he was up against. No one else was as young, or as new.

He wouldn't have been surprised if there were other unaffiliated ones at the international level Yakov put him toward either.

Yuri had done a good bit of both in Seniors before he'd ever transition up toward the Grand Prix. Before that disastrous debut had cut off any and all dreams of even getting beyond the Prix to Four Continents or the World Championship. He'd managed to stand on the ice with his childhood idol and by it only fall apart completely. All of them, once upon a dreams of a younger version of him that seemed so much further away than a few years. Words on a paper folded and put far far away, or maybe even lost along the way.

A conflicted and confusing ache of the memory trickling from his heart at the thought,
bleeding straight into the tension of the panic he was trying to keep at bay already.

Still trying to think of something worthwhile of Yurio's time to respond with, or at least not deserving of all of this turning scathing and swearing at a moment's notice, he blinks in some confusion at the sudden entire shift of the topic. Of the picture Yurio had sent of that kitchen, that he hadn't known what to say back to. The same as the message he'd sent, that there hadn't been, exactly, an answer to either.

It makes him blurt out, "My mother is making a small package to help. It's probably almost done."

She'd been delighted when Yuri had finally remembered to ask, but she seemed easily delighted by all of the events of the last year, while whether she understood anymore than she ever had about skating remained mostly the same. She was delighted with Victor on a daily basis, whether in his company or out of it. She was delighted with having Maccachin around to spoil. She'd been delighted to have Yurio in their home originally.

She'd been delighted with this, too. Maybe even more so because it was something that directly related to her, and her infamous dish. Beyond Yuri's own love for it. Someone had love her cooking enough to try and replicate it in their own way. Wven though he hadn't anything to show her as an example by that time. Victor's had gone, and it would have been incredibly old and cold by then. But it hadn't matter, not that morning and not still, as she puttered at it.

Yuri's eyes widen a little, the food in front of him temporarily forgotten. He hadn't thought...so Katsudon really had told his mother about it? About the pirozh-katsu? It's not that he's surprised to hear it, but there's a part of him that had fully expected that the whole thing would have been lost in the shuffle of the return to Hasetsu, considering how (understandably) eager Katsudon had been to get home. But then again, he hadn't thought that there'd be a message waiting for him after the Rostelecom exhibition skate, either.

(Made it home in time to watch the Gala. Victor said to tell you that you looked good.)

And that thought sends something else swirling uneasily through Yuri's gut. Of course, if Katsudon had told his mother about it, then Viktor must know about it as well. And Yuri is...not sure how he feels about that. Because there's a thin, twisting line from that moment on a grimy Moscow street, leading back through the hours to the night before the free skate. To this place. To the split-second decision he'd made in the Star Hotel lobby. And if Viktor knows about all of that --

'I need your address, too,' Yuri says suddenly. Perhaps a little too loudly. 'The one where you get letters and stuff.' By this point, he could find the physical address for Yu-topia Katsuki on his phone, but the address that shows up on a map search isn't always the same as the one the post office uses. 'I have something to send to your parents.'

Focus. One problem at a time.

The utter unexpected words and loudness make Yuri startles just slightly, shoulders up and in, repeating, "My parents?"

Confused complete surprise, clashing against the mostly flash burned only-there-a-second-ago thought he needs Yuri's address still, too. Something better than 'Russia,' or even 'Moscow,' which happened to both take up a vast amount of space for a small box to get lost in.

He hadn't really been planning to ever ask for that in person, had he? Or even ever by his person. He's told his mother he'd ask Yuu-san, and if they didn't pan out, he'd planned to ask Yuu-san to ask, as he assumed they still talked, and if they didn't, that at least they'd been on friendly enough terms for the spring for her to be able to ask and know she'd hear something.

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