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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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.

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."

'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.

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.

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 -- '

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."

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.

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."

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.

"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."

Edited 2017-10-23 12:08 (UTC)

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?)

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."

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.

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.

Edited 2017-10-25 12:06 (UTC)

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.

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