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 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.

Yuri nods once, short and firm. At the same time, there's a slight shift of his shoulders, squaring his posture -- as if he's responding to some outside criticism, unheard by anyone but him.

'I never sent your parents a thank-you note for letting me stay at your place,' he says, and his expression has turned serious again. A little less intensely focused than the one he'd had while watching the chopsticks demonstration, but not by much. 'So I need your address.'

It's amazing how much disapproval Nikolai Plisetsky's furrowed brow and silent pause had been able to convey, when Yuri had hesitated before admitting that he had left Hasetsu without thanking the Katsukis for their hospitality. It had been enough to immediately impress upon Yuri exactly how nekulturny he had been -- and how badly it reflected on his upbringing at the same time. So he had promised, naturally, to rectify matters as soon as possible...and as luck would have it, rather than his planned roundabout approach of asking Yuuko for the address, getting it now directly from the source will save the trouble of having it arrive without warning, or explanation.

(No matter what Katsudon might say in response, he knows that there's only one right thing to do.)

"Oh--" seems to fall out of his mouth with as little thought as the earlier question. Yuri trying to process what it is that could have truly made it seem necessary now. All these months later. When, not to be rude, and not to be ever said out loud, because it was, wasn't it -- it wasn't the kind of thing Yuri associated with the young boy. Ever.

Not that he was a saint in that regard, having gone the better part of the time after his first GPF avoiding Celestino and anything like a polite, respectful ending, until Victor's call in the spring ... but it wasn't something he connected in the slightest with Yurio, and Yurio's short stay. (Even Victor's stay was probably a pitance of what it would cost in the end for eight months of Victor's time and training.)

"--that's probably fine." Even if he was a little pink at the thought he couldn't quite imagine Yurio saying thank you for anything, to anyone, as far as things went and had gone and how he was, Yuri doubted his parents had held on to whether he had or hadn't said goodbye, or thank you, more than half a year ago.

'I want to send it before I leave for Zagreb.' Yuri isn't ceding ground in the slightest in the face of this predictable wave of uncertainty he's getting from the seat next to his own. Don't make this difficult, Katsudon. 'I didn't send anything sooner, but I want to send it now. Especially if -- '

He breaks off, though it's not completely the result of a reluctance to dig deeper into his own shortcomings. For the past few minutes, his grip on the chopsticks has been tightening incrementally to the point where his hand is starting to cramp. It's finally reached the point where he can't ignore it any longer, and so he has to set the chopsticks down next to his bowl and flex his fingers again.

It's not easy. None of this is easy. But he doesn't know how else to make things right.

(Viktor Nikiforov could show up on the doorstep of Yu-topia without warning, with most of his worldly possessions and an elderly poodle in tow, because he had come with something to offer. The chance of a lifetime. The promise of victory. Everything to gain, and nothing to lose. And Yuri had followed him there with nothing but himself and his white-hot rage and a maxed-out credit card, and yet he'd received the same warm bowl of katsudon and a fork to eat it with. Until he'd explained it to his grandfather, he hadn't really seen it for what it was. Even if he hadn't known it then, he knows it now.)

' -- especially if your mother has something for me,' he finishes, as he reaches for the chopsticks again. 'If you want my address, I need yours.'

Yurio continues like this is something important to him when Yuri's not certain he's ever seen anything matter to Yurio that wasn't a) skating, b) his grandfather, or c) things he could take edgey-strange pictures of for his Instagram. The concept that it is important and of being important right now, eludes really taking root. From the furthest field, making it feel like he's somehow sitting with someone who looks like Yurio, mostly sounds like Yurio, and somehow isn't.

Yurio pauses only to stretch his hand, something he'll probably get used to and overly aggravated at, knowing Yurio, as he continues to learn. Especially if it's few and far between for his practice times. In the long run it wouldn't be anything compared to what they managed, but it Yuri wondered if he was glad he wouldn't be there for it.

(Probably.

After all, somehow he was here, again.)

The last words synch in, too, don't they? He needs the address and that means giving up his own. The same as anyone else would have with the reason given, even if it does seem strange now. (His mother would probably still be pleased, even all these months later. Even if he didn't have to, and she wasn't expecting anything. From then, or the box of supplies, likely.)

There's a press of his mouth and he sets his bowl down, looking at the wooden piece of furniture, again, thinking he'll never get used to this. "Could we have some paper and pens, please?"

There are certain moments he realizes what he says here and what he hears are almost two different things. He can feel the respectful formality of the words he chooses, the phrasing, which means they are not English -- because he's not certain he wants to know what happens if you anger the whatever it was in the wood that could make anything appear -- and thus it's strange, because he's certain other people do understand what he's saying, too.

When the requested writing materials appear, Yuri sets down his chopsticks again (not entirely reluctantly). Without a word, he takes the nearest pen and a piece of paper, and starts to write -- in Cyrillic, automatically. He doesn't get beyond the first few letters before he stops and frowns, and then quickly resumes writing. But no sooner has he finished writing the Moscow-area postal code than he moves his hand down the page and starts writing again, this time more slowly, in block English capital lettering.

'Here,' he says at last, and pushes the paper over to Katsudon. 'I don't know which'll work better. I've never sent anything home from outside the country. But they're the same thing.'

In an absolute worst-case scenario, Katsudon could probably get Viktor to double-check it. But it's not a very complicated address. Just a small place in an old block of flats, one amongst thousands in the great sprawl of the Moscow metropolis.

This part Yuri did know well enough, even when Yurio was excusing his uncertainty in an explanation. Yuri had all those years abroad, with enough time that certain things were shipped both directions, to and from. Then, again, at the end, early this year, sending it all back home, along with himself.

It was surprising what you could accumulate, even in a small, efficiency for two, across five years.
Yuri wrote his address in both English and Japanese, with all the appended pieces necessary.

"If you take this with you when you send it, they can use whichever one is easiest from where you are. In the US, it was the English, but--" There's was a not-quite-awkward and not-quite-not-either shrug as if to say that made perfect sense. It was English being used in a predominantly English speaking country.

But he hadn't ever so much as sent a letter to Moscow.

Officially he wasn't even now. But they were both bound to learn.

(Though if he were being perfectly honest, and it was another thing that wouldn't be offered, or admitted, it would not -- by any stretch of imagination or reality -- be the first thing to arrive at Yu-topia, through the non-business, personal address, from Russia. There had, perhaps, been a five-year, almost six now, gap in said happenstance, but who was really keeping track.)

Yuri takes and studies the paper, brow drawn in concentration as his eyes move across the written lines. Japanese addresses make no sense to him, but the important parts of this one -- Katsuki, Hasetsu, Japan -- should be enough to get it to its destination. He nods, and folds the paper in half to slip it into his pocket.

'I'll let Dedka know to look for a package. He doesn't speak much English, but whatever's in there, I can try to explain it to him.' For the first time all evening, something relaxes around his eyes, and his mouth quirks in a manner approaching a smile. 'I'm sure he'll want send your mother a thank-you note, too.'

Even if Yuri ends up writing that one as well...perhaps it'll make up for lost time.

All the same, his stomach is starting to make its displeasure known again, so it's back to the chopsticks. The muscle memory isn't solid quite yet; he has to fiddle with them some more to find a semi-comfortable grip.

Yuri takes his own paper, in the all too familiar Cyrillic that had surrounded him so recently. Familiar and foreign in one. There isn't much he can make out of it besides one, maybe two, words. Learning a few phrases to be able to say them in passing was not nearly anything like learning a third alphabet entirely so you could piece the words together, or like he knew what the system for it was.

There's a nod, more than an answer this time, as it starts feeling like air doesn't quite know what to do with itself, or maybe that's just Yuri. Not that it is anything like new. He's done both things that could possibly need doing or be done now, and Yurio is back to setting his chopsticks in his hand and attempting to eat, and Yuri's own gaze moves back to his bowl, but it makes him wonder more about home than need to pick it up.

Maybe there is, almost warily, a glance off his shoulder to finally (finally) see if the door is still there.

(It is, of course. Solid.
Shaped. Shining handle.)

[ But then, it looked like it
was last time, too. ]

Edited 2017-10-10 01:51 (UTC)

That piece of carrot is not going to eat itself, but its smoother sides are going to make it a little trickier to pick up than the irregular shape of the broccoli. And so while Yuri is doing his level best to fit the chopsticks into his hand for the greatest chance of success, out of the corner of his eye he sees Katsudon turn to glance over his shoulder. It's only in his peripheral vision, so he doesn't notice the facial expression, but it does distract him from the immediate task.

'Look,' he says, head still bent over the chopsticks, 'if you want to go back, I told you it's fine.' His hair is starting to fall into his eyes, so he reaches up to push it back over one ear. 'I'm going to be here for a -- '

It's then that he turns his head enough to catch sight of the look on Katsudon's face, and the last word stops in his mouth.

Of course he looks back as well.

Of course the door is there.

(It can't be his fault this time.)

He's too exhausted from the day, and half-distracted by everything that has his sitting here, for anything like outright panic.

Especially still being this far away. But that doesn't keep the rest of his head from worrying. From the consideration. From the concern. From the question. From an overdone, all too viscerally imprinted reminder of the dreams, the flash sudden overwhelming panic, fear, desperation, despair that sometimes woke him up. To rooms that reminded him only seconds later he wasn't there.

Which doesn't keep his guts from twisting up at the memory of the real, and not-real, times it's happened, cementing the feeling deeper and deeper. Doesn't entirely help to think it's not real here, like he could in bed. When it could be. Has been. Has proven it can.

A door in the way. A wall. A world, a universe, millions.

(He knows why he's dreaming it.
He doesn't need to be told.

Knows exactly how many days.
Even if he tries not to. He knows.)

He blinks back to Yurio talking and staring at him, and then the door, and Yuri flushes, like the sun decided it should sit right against the sides of his neck. Hastily stumbling right into, "Sorry." He doesn't know entirely what to do with his hands. The papers is in his pockets, and the sudden cold, coiled hissing in his stomach doesn't really want to swallow food. "I --uh--" am a mess, works really well here, and Yuri's fingers clench into his pants not to come up and touch, or cover, his face. "--probably should in a few minutes."

Edited 2017-10-10 11:22 (UTC)

Yuri's expression ices over at that, a sudden frost almost visibly crackling in his eyes. It's a very good cover for the turbulent rush of frustration -- at Katsudon, at himself, at this whole mess -- that's searching for any excuse to sweep his less-than-perfect self-control out from under him and smash it to pieces on the nearest jagged edge.

'You opened the door to get here, right? It's not like when I....' He has to force out a breath before he can complete that thought, shift the weight of it slightly to one side so it doesn't press on the rawest, sorest point inside of him. 'It's not like what happened last time. So it won't be like what happened last time.'

He doesn't give Katsudon a chance to respond to that statement, which already sounds nonsensical in his own ears. Instead, he slides out of his seat, food and chopsticks left behind on the tabletop.

'Get up,' he says, and jerks his head in the direction of the door. 'We're trying it now. You can stay, or go, but we're trying it now.'

(You're coming with me. Right now.)

But this time, he's not going to push and shove. Only Yuuri Katsuki can open that door and make it go where he wants it to go. Because where he wants to go...well, Yuri is pretty fucking sure that it isn't here.

Looking over his shoulder had not needed an audience. It was a simple enough movement. A simple enough point. But that flash of heat in his cheeks, his neck, and the tension squeezing his chest makes it anything but simple now that it's garnered its own attention. Enough that that his thought race too fast between thinkings like it shouldn't matter and of course, Yurio would notice, because he couldn't not-notice last time and he's here and that's all Yurio needs, another reason to laugh at him or yell at him.

The first words being said next to him half-going past the roar of heat and embarrassment,
and half-drowned under it.

Until Yurio's eating stops entirely for ordering Yuri to the door beyond them.

That makes his heart jump so hard at the first understand that it feels like it ricochets into the bottom of his chin, maybe doesn't' stop until it slams the top of his skull. An inversion, and invasion, too fast, too firm, too absolutely what he doesn't have, it doesn't need, shooting fear before anything like rationality can balance or back it up. "W-we really don't have to."

If he was stuck again, he was stuck, and if he wasn't, then he'd go home. That was it. Maybe it was on where you opened the door, and who did. But none of those four struck and stuck to that single cord of feat that easily laced itself at the first touch of direct pressure.

'I don't care if we don't have to. Do you think I'm just going to sit here and watch you looking over your shoulder every five fucking seconds? Oh, no, we're doing this now.'

Oh, yes, he's angry. But for some reason, though, it's hard for Yuri to keep a nice tight grip on his anger. It's slipping out of his grasp like grains of sand...or like the chopsticks he's been wrestling with all evening. And in its place is a strange sort of weariness that makes him scrub at his face with one hand, fighting the urge to sigh out loud.

'Look, Katsudon, I don't know how this place works any more than you do.' The words come out muted and tired, slightly muffled by his hand. 'Maybe I fucked up last time by bringing you here. I had to get us out of that damned hotel, and this was the only place I could think of.'

Away from the pressure of the countless pairs of eyes that followed them on and off the ice. Away from the people who'd called him a usurper, somehow unworthy of the only thing that gave his life meaning. Away from the wintry blasts of air from the opening and closing doors of the Star Hotel lobby. Away from loss, and grief, and despair, and the long emptiness of a solitary hotel room, and the uncertain promises of the morning to come.

He'd tried, and it hadn't been enough.

He lets his hand drop, and this time there's more resignation than rage in his face and voice. 'So just try the stupid door so I know whether I need to buy you a plane ticket back from St. Petersburg or not.'

"I looked at it once!" These are the words that decide to shoot themselves out his mouth first, very likely because his mouth and his head hate him. It's likely the last thing he needed to point out. Like a point of order or defense, and it's all effort to stop up his mouth and not point out he knows that because he's been not-looking-at-it this whole time and that one time was just finally not being able to not do it.

Not entirely because of this reason, but because of it, too. Especially now. When he hadn't thought of it first, but now Yurio was pointing it out. Like it would be one slip and he'd never stop. The flare of heat, that's embarrassment and defense, heating the inside of his chest as much as the outside of his skin, leaving him trapped within and between both as Yurio rubs at his face and keeps talking.

About the number of things Yuri still hardly has any idea how to put into words. The things that happened, why they happened. The resignation settling into Yurio's face and posture make him almost look tired in the way Yuri's own muscles feel, even after the long time spent in the hot water. Even if it's been ... a while. Not long enough. Not long enough by far, though, either. Only long enough to not be today, or yesterday, or a few days ago.

There wasn't even a month to be had between when they had been to where they were going.

It's a strange feeling -- between watch Yurio, as he's talking about that, barely having a clue still what to really say to it, about it, about living it, about having a hundred of his own questions, that only sometimes even formed into actual words that could be said out loud and that of the door, existing right off their corner, the point of the whole thing, tingling at his shoulder, as though he has to look and go there now.

Because he does, doesn't he? For Yurio now, too? Yuri can at least find the decency to stand up, right? He can. He does. He's still not sure he wants to know. It's bad enough to fear something in his own head (he fears things in his own head all the time, hundreds, thousands, millions, real and not real, stupid and sensible), but to have someone else holding it ...

Yuri didn't know if that made it better or worse.

Real. It made it more real.

(And real meant he couldn't just tell himself he was being an idiot, which he usually was, or that his head had run away with itself, and any sense of reality, which it usually had, and that it would be fine if he could just breathe and stop his head from spinning and spinning, which it -- well -- results were always a mixed bag, but so was thinking he could control it, wasn't it?)

But he does get up, and his dry barefeet do shuffle in that direction. Toward the Door that seems larger, and his chest smaller, with each of those shuffling steps. He doesn't want to know. He's not sure he really likes this place at all already. He stops not far from. Maybe a foot. Wondering again, in a loop (he's always in loops), if he's blocking the door from someone again. If it works inside and out of some radius.

He's never seen people run into each other. He's never thought watched anyone else using it.

"You wouldn't have to buy me a ticket." Certain, if a touch dry and pressed out his mouth. Just. Just ... in case.

Before Yuri places his hand on the door handle. (He's stuck in the loop of that second, too. The reminder. The desperation. That torn feeling between where his heart wanted and needed to be: on the ice, with Victor. The cold feeling drilling into his lungs now that he might not have ever left it. He left the bar. He left Moscow. He was home. He had Victor. Why did he still feel that tearing just as keenly, then? Why wasn't it new, again, just this second?)

It opens easy as a whisper this time under his fingers. The bathroom on the other side. The air from the bathroom still a roll of warmth as though hot water was still running somewhere, and the cling of condensation beading on the edge of a mirror as the fog that had been all over it was slowly finding a way to finally dissipate. Yuri's heart giving a thunderously relieved beat.

It's not that Yuri had been holding his breath while he watched Katsudon reach for the door. It's not like what happened last time, he'd said, and meant it. It wouldn't be like it was last time. But even though there's a definite sense of relief when Katsudon's hand makes contact with the door handle -- his hand doesn't slip through it, like he'd fallen for an illusion, a mirage -- his chest still feels tight even as he watches the door (thankfully) open, senses the faint rush of warm and humid air that the moving door ushers into the bar, even catches a hint of a scent that smells like the soap he'd remembered borrowing once or twice in the Katsuki family's bathroom.

...how can you miss something you barely remember?

'Fine,' he says quietly. 'All right. It works.'

He really should go back and finish eating. But if Katsudon's leaving now, he wants to watch that door close behind him, just to be absolutely sure that everything's all right this time. And if he's not leaving....

Fuck, what does it matter, anyway? It's enough to make him scrub at his face again, mostly to run a hand back through his hair and shove it out of his eyes.

The relief, though it lowers his shoulder and the press of his mouth, isn't warm or loose. There's a strange prickle of cold sticking inside his heart beats, inside the first breath he pulls in. A splinter of chill at the center of waves that should have been just relief, just gladness. Uncomfortably confusing, and almost disorienting ... and more familiar than he wants to even squint his eyes in the direction of.

It makes him want to push back into the bathroom, and to stand still.

It's easier to just swallow down some of the hot air, sticking on its way down his nose and throat.
Swallow. Blink. Breathe in, again. Steel whichever part of him it requires steeling to turn his hand and close it.

(Pretend he doesn't hear the voice whispering

now that he thinks it works is the perfect setup
for the next when it won't work at all.)

Yuri knows the door doesn't really make any more sound closing than it did opening it, but it feels more finite amid the complicated layering of thoughts and feelings blowing across his head and chest, and he blinks looking over at Yurio's words. Finding the brief moor of them, before adding to them. "Maybe it is whoever opens it from wherever they came, then."

'Maybe, yeah.' It's simple enough for Yuri to agree with the thought, staring at the door handle without really seeing it. 'It's usually just the other side of my bedroom door, for me. I didn't even know whether I'd be able to make it open last time -- until it did. But if it works now....'

(I shouldn't have brought us here)

That thin unpleasant thread is starting to tangle through him again, and in an effort to break free from it he takes a step back from the door. His right hand and arm have started to stiffen up during this pause from the unusual exercise he'd been giving them, so he rolls his shoulders back and clasps his right hand with his left, using the pad of his left thumb to knead across his right palm.

'I need to finish dinner. And get another set of chopsticks to take back with me.' The webbing between his right thumb and index finger is still a little sore, so he shifts his grip to focus on that area for the time being. 'I'll keep working at it. And I'll...I'll tell Dedka you helped me with it, when I show him how to use them. He'd want to know.'

Perhaps it's the lingering bruise in his memory of his grandfather's disapproving silence, as much as anything else, that pushes an unexpected conclusion to that sentence out of his mouth. '...so thanks.'

At least he manages to not look away when he says it, though he does press his lips together tightly immediately afterwards. As if he's somehow concerned that that wasn't the right thing to say.

It's a common ground of knowledge neither of them has, instead of the playing field, the competing field, where they've both been learning, living, and riding the raw-edged of their entire lives. The few words make Yuri look from the door to the people around them. At the bar, at the table, not paying any much more attention to them than they'd paid the people earlier, but it feels more obvious, more central. To be up, and still possibly in the way of both those leaving and those coming.

It sits between Yuri's shoulderblade, burrowing a little deeper in with each drop of uncertainty.

Constant even as he tries to remember if it's been normal for him. The bathroom had happened twice.
The only standing pattern. At least this time it had let him get dressed first, before bringing him to this place.

He'd closed the door, meaning to keep the word he'd given a few minuted ago, but Yurio's words have an announced kind of finality to them. What he needs to do now, what he'll keep doing going forward ... and it ends with a thank you, that Yurio doesn't seem any more certainly comfortable in giving than Yuri quite knows what to do when it does fall into his hands. Not pushed, or dropped, just sort of pressed into the air between them. Uncertain.

But.

Trying?

Even if a corner of Yuri is dubiously uncertain himself -- and some part of him always is, some part of him is always ready to jump for the ceiling, to want to run back to his room, always had been, even a world away from it, the kind of reaction Yurio has long since made manifest -- what happens doesn't come from there at all. It's not entirely a curve. It's more sidelong than that, but it's still curved at the edges of his mouth, too. Not certain those words are needed, but still able to see that Yurio is trying to be gracious.

For some reason. Even if it's ungainly. In his mouth. On his shoulders.

(He really is so young, isn't he? Even with the anger and all the biting, hissing, clawing edges.)

It always feel not-quite-right in English, but Yuri says, "Your welcome," as the better part of discretion of it never sounding right when he tried to point out of it wasn't necessary either. There were at least two different responses in Japanese that handled both of those at once. It hurt nothing to just nod and say it in the only language they did share, before awkwardly shifting back his gaze back to the door.

"I guess I should go down to dinner, then." Even if he'd only just before getting up said he could stay a few minutes. A mixed thing. Like he should before a trap could, world, spring. But, also, aware of the very different, very much more ... subdued way Yurio had been this whole time since he'd shown up. At least after the first shock of his existing.

'If you want.' Yuri glances back at the bar, where the series of bowls (and his phone, too -- shit, why hadn't he put it away earlier?) are still where they'd left them, thankfully undisturbed. Two bowls of rice, and the third...which reminds him of his original order, different from the one that Katsudon had requested for the demonstration. It had been easier to eat the rice, but rice wasn't the only thing you ate with chopsticks. 'I was going to try the noodles next, but I guess I can figure it out. You sort of...get underneath them the same way, right?' He already has his hands mostly in position, so he fits words and gesture together, using right thumb and forefinger to scoop and pinch and draw the imaginary noodles up from an invisible bowl held in his cupped left hand. 'Like you're pinching them, so you can lift them up and they won't slip out?'

It's probably a little ridiculous to be having this conversation right next to the door, miming his own efforts to put food into his mouth. But he might as well cram this last question in, because even if time doesn't really seem to pass here compared with the outside, on the other side of the door Katsudon has his own dinner and several people waiting for him.

One person in particular.

And that's another lingering bruise, faded but still sensitive to the touch. (Strange enough to think about Katsudon, half a world away, sitting up to watch a live stream of the Rostelecom exhibition skate...but Viktor had as well?)

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 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.

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