Yuri Plisetsky (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
yuri_plisetsky) wrote2017-04-13 11:20 pm
yuri_plisetsky) wrote2017-04-13 11:20 pm
Entry tags:
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.
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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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."
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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.
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"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."
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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?)
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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."
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'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.
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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.
his mind whispers,
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.
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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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Silence is rarely settled. Outside of it is the pressure to somehow find the right words to say, the right order to string them in, how to even properly express himself, without falling on his face. Inside of it, at least when there are other people around, it's a presence that grows and fills, nagging at him to say something, do something, and even when do doesn't, or doesn't have to, it gives his mind, like gears the chance to start spinning faster about everything unsaid, by himself and anyone near him.
There are peaceful silences. Most of them are fully exhausted. Half-asleep while talking after practice, or trying to melt into a puddle and merge into being one with the hot water of the onsen. In his room, alone, at the end of the night, and sometimes with Victor. Rare end of day, and end of trip, words worn thin moments. Seldom seconds when he doesn't need to worry -- or more doesn't need to worry quite yet, or his mind is too tired to rouse the energy to worry properly.
Which isn't here really. There's a tension in his shoulders, even as he eats. Not looking at other people. Not quite looking over or not looking over at Yurio, while putting together another bite between himself and his real hunger. Still on an edge, of the stool and whatever all is happening right now. Already at attention, triggered to the noise of a single word in that voice, when Yurio speaks again. That sharper defensiveness in his words again stringing on his own line of tension, even while it's almost relieving more expected.
About Lilia (all dark pinched hair, hard eyes in his memory, and crisp sharp Russian), and how she'd choreographed everything for Yurio this season. Yuri knew. But more, he knew because he'd known from Yuu-san months and months ago. Not from Yurio, and so he listens, without pointing that out. Not certain if it was known, or if it would maybe make Yurio mad, and then get him mad at Yuu-san, too. It was given to him now, though, by Yurio, and skipping the other he could just comment on that. Right?
"It was good," Yuri said, soft and maybe a little too fast, in the spiral of which words from which thoughts, and the way it brought everything back that weekend because everything kept doing it. Making the noddles in his stomach slither. Which is, perhaps, why he adds a second later: "Even better than in Canada."
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Of course they all keep track of each other's performances. It's a key part of the training regimen, to study a competitor's style and technique, compare new programs to old ones, gauge strengths and identify weaknesses, acquire every scrap of knowledge you can get. Even a dinosaur like Yakov was, in Yuri's reluctant opinion, halfway decent at working with livestreams and internet uploads, the obvious successor of the bulky VHS tapes stored in boxes at the rink, crammed with fuzzy videos labelled by competition and year. But for all that he still can't entirely think of Skate Canada without a pang of disappointment over his second-place finish, that discontent is immediately engulfed in something that makes his chest tighten in an entirely different way, a slower and stronger squeeze than the brief constriction that he's been pushing to one side for most of his senior debut season.
He hadn't been able to ask Viktor about it, that time before Rostelecom. But now he knows -- he knows that Katsudon, at least had watched his performance there. And for some inexplicable reason, he doesn't know what to do with that knowledge. He has to swallow hard, first, and look down at his bowl, and mutter a barely intelligible yeah, sure to the food within it. The chopsticks stay where they are, for lack of any better reason to move them. But when he looks up again, the surprise has given way to his usual sharp intensity, though it's devoid of his usual hostility.
'When I told Dedka that I gave you the rest of the pirozh-katsu, he asked me -- ' No, that's not how to start it, because the end of that sentence -- he asked me what kind of person you were -- was something that Yuri hadn't been able to answer without a long-winded rant that doesn't belong here in this place. Not while they're sitting with chopsticks and noodles, like this is an actual thing that is happening right this second. 'He asked me about your skating. So I showed him a video of your free skate, from Shanghai...so he'd know what to look for when he watches the Final.'
Yuri had, of course, cut the video short as soon as the performance ended, before the cameras picked up the horrifying sight of Viktor flinging himself on Katsudon and nearly cracking both of their skulls open on the ice. His grandfather didn't need to see that ridiculous stunt.
(And Nikolai Plisetsky, who knows his grandson better than anyone else, had picked up on much more from Yuri's commentary and occasional silences during the video than he would ever think to let on.)
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Yurio pauses, stock still entirely, posture and chopsticks both, at his words and Yuri's shoulders tighten. His chest tightens. His back. (Sore muscles complaining at the abuse of even stricken posture in a reaction that has no control and wouldn't let go if he ordered it.)
He braces for what is likely to be a tirade about not needing Yuri's approval or his pity, or his mealy-mouthed unthought out words, or, maybe, just his opinions from beginning to end, no matter what they happen to be. But the words don't come, and that. That is worse. Because he can only imagine that whatever it is that's coming needs time to ramp up hard and high enough.
The first response is not far off, is it? Quiet, dismissive, sounding about as unneeded as Yuri thought it.
Which makes Yurio looking up to say the words that follow a few seconds later unexpected a bit.
He's not surprised he's been mentioned -- because of the recipe, because of his mother -- but it still sets off a nervous net of bees in his stomach, just as dangerous with their vibrating too tight, too fast wings against the edges, as biting stingers about the idea of Yurio explaining his skating. Yurio who had to show him one of his jumps. Yurio who fumed at them cheering him on. Who yelled at him at the end of tea, and kicked him into the snow, even if he was laughing before he left, giving him instructions for the cab.
What did he tell his grandfather? Did he? Or was it really only an inquiry since Yuri must have been a competitor?
How terrible could it have been in Yurio's own opinions of Yuri's skating, from this year? And two years ago?
He's glad there isn't any food in his mouth. He's not sure he could swallow even air at this second.
"Oh," is quiet, is late, is absolutely worthless expelled sound in his own mouth. Worse than the last words, against those stingers in his guts. He doesn't want to imagine a millionth-and-one person watching the last two days of his very last year. Judging. Hoping, with everyone else, that he fails. (Because that was expected loyalty, too, wasn't it? He'd want his grandson to win, which meant hoping everyone else didn't.)
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But that's not the end of it, not really. ​'​He said I should wish you ​​good luck​​ from him, if I saw you before then.' A slight huff through his nose, like a line drawn under that statement, and he picks at the noodles without trying to lift them fully out of the bowl. 'I know he didn't mean that I'd see you here, but...whatever, that's what he said to me. So now you know.'
It's not really even a begrudging sort of good luck, as Yuri sees it. You can wish someone luck, even hope that they're lucky, and still not want them to win. But his grandfather's not the sort who just says that sort of thing without meaning it. Because it's a reminder to Yuri as well, that fortune often smiles brightest on those who are willing to do what it takes to succeed.
Good luck and do your best: two sides of the same coin.
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It's still hard to picture Yuri having a guardian figure. They all have them, but not everyone's parents or family come to competitions. The cost of flying, feeding, and putting into a hotel one skater, their coach, and all of their gear was a high enough cost already, before you added in extra flights, rooms, and food, but it was even harder to imagine with Yurip. Always set apart, even so young, and never seen with more than Yakov and Lilia.
Further back than even that, the first time Yurio had made a dent into this year, was defying Yakov entirely to go to Japan. It's hard to imagine someone who caused this kind of reluctant deference. The way it looked and felt entirely different than the trained way he referred to Lilia, or her training. It was hard to picture what kind of person Yurio went home with, and who managed to handle all of the loud, swearing, hungry, brilliant on the ice, sometimes violent bundle of him at home in Moscow.
What kind of person was his Grandfather? Was he just like Yurio?
Someone who was asking about him, had watched him ... and sent him a casual Good Luck (that couldn't much truly be meant, could it, for what they all wanted)? There's a small kind of nod, looking somewhere between his bowl, and the bar, and sort of to the side around, more than at, Yurio. "Yeah. That makes sense."
He got that. No one planned for the bar. This impossible place. That didn't stop existing even for logic. Most everyone knew nothing of it. He'd had to wit until after dinner to even tell Victor about, given his own family didn't know about it, and the last thing he needed was them thinking, even more, might be wrong with his head. "I guess ..." He was still searching for something that matched. It felt the way trying to figure out words for the press did.
Too much light. Too many eyes. No answers. " ... tell him I said thank you, whenever it seems best?"
He could do polite. Or at least attempt, before another question strings along. "Will he come to Barcelona?"
Even if what's really poised on the edge of the cliff face is that question twisted, Did he make it to the Gala in Moscow?
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The thought slows to a stop, landing with the equivalent of a soft thud between them. Katsudon knows this already. Some of it. Enough of it. There's no point in rehashing all the familiar reasons why the cheers that skaters tend to care about most have so often been silent ones. Besides, one of these days he'll have made enough of a name for himself that the money won't even be a factor anymore if he wants to pay for that extra hotel room in Saransk or Sochi. Buy the plane tickets. Cover the meals. Maybe even hire a car service so his grandfather can relax comfortably at the hotel for as long as he wants until the skating starts.
It'll happen, because he'll make it happen.
'Anyway, whatever, it's fine.' It isn't fine, of course, but it is what it is. 'I'll mention it to him.' He's got his next bite of noodles all geared up and ready to consume, but pauses before he can lift them from the bowl. 'Are your parents coming?'
(You know, if Katsudon had had someone else there in Moscow, his unhelpful brain cheerfully informs him, with uncharacteristic logic, he wouldn't have needed you to drag him to this place at all.)
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"No, they don't really--" Except it cloys hard and fast, too thick in his mouth, before he can blurt out something shamefully along the lines of understand skating. Or maybe it would have been come to my competitions. Either way it feels wrong. Dishonorably low. Like a complaint against them, or some part of their actions.
It might be true. That they didn't know, that they didn't come -- hadn't come to the Regional Championships in Japan only two months back, even when Minako and Takeshi had -- but they had never balked at a single bill since before he could remember, however far back it went to ballet lessons starting and Minako directing him into skating, too.
"Mari and Minako are coming, but Yu-topia can't lose everyone either."
Which was true, even as an evasive sideways excuse band-aided roughly into what he'd been about to say only seconds earlier.
It might have been just short of two decades he'd been skating, and they did understand that Minako championed him as good, good enough to skate, to compete, to need to go to America, to another, more famous, more knowledgeable coach, and that it was worth celebrating when he moved to Seniors, when he was named Japan's Ace, when he went to the Grand Prix for his first time, and made it to the GPF in his first year in the Prix, and even when he made it, again, only a few days ago ...
But ...
... they didn't really understand skating itself, even after all of that nearly two decades. Just that is was his. Which had never stopped their support one bit, or the celebratory steps as they happened ... but it left a space there, too. One that felt disingenuous to put into words, after all of these years and all of their absolutely unwavering support in their own ways and especially all of the costs, but one that nonetheless never stopped feeling a little empty, a little distant, a little ... apart from them, as well.
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All the same, it does make him wonder a little. He couldn't be sure, what with the language barrier and all, but in that short time he'd been in Hasetsu he hadn't quite been able to shake the feeling that Katsudon's parents really didn't...get what was going on the whole time. Who Viktor was. Why he was there. Why Yuri was there. Everything that was at stake. His grandfather might not know a toe loop from a salchow on sight, but he certainly would've understood the gravity of the situation at the time. And yet he'd never seen the Katsukis look anything other than cheerful about it, and it hadn't felt awkward or fake -- somehow they'd seemed more pleased than anything else to have so many people in their house all at once.
(Damn it. That thank-you note gets written tonight.)
'But if you've got people coming, your sister and your teacher...that's good, at least.' It's a lame way to finish the thought, and the only way to make it feel less like he'd run out of words to say himself is to lift the noodles and shove them into his mouth. Somehow it's easier to use them when he isn't thinking too much about what he's doing.
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It's not really even just that. That is what comes up first; raises to close its fingers around his throat and those few words. The next part just fists tighter as Yurio mentions money, again, and maybe he missed it. He was there during the point when Victor had only been there a short time, and then the competition was happening.
Maybe he missed how much Hasetsu was not a busy place. Not nearly so busy as any of the cities they gone to for the Grand Prix. Maybe it wasn't even an obvious jump from that one, to the fact even if Victor did not have people swarming the city anymore, paying for Victor's coaching was likely going to kill so much more than any other coach Yuri'd had in his, and his parent's, life.
If he wanted to go on never breathing, again, he could pretend that number wasn't probably the sum of every one before it. As though his parents could even consider that number, and then traveling to Europe, on top of being the only Onsen not closed in a place where less and less people came every year. It only pulls tighter, thinking of the money he won in Shanghai, or Russia, where he collected maybe enough to cover plane tickets. Whether 1st in Barcelona would ever even help out in that total.
"Yeah." Yuri's throat stayed dry with the renewed knowledge he still didn't know what the bill for this year would look like. It's an absent impossible thing to try to even envision. What does a year in the life of Victor, as not Just-Victor, but a Five-Time Champion, Olympian even, rack up to looking like on a check? Would he go blind before he saw the end of the zeroes?
when the end came first. ]
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Yuri's hand is starting to shake a little from the tension of holding the sticks, so he sets them down on the chopstick rest (which is super-convenient; he'll have to see if these things exist outside the bar, too) and flexes the ache away, splaying the upper part of his fingers against the edge of the tabletop and pressing down and into the empty space above his knees to bend his hand back, stretching out the little cluster of tendons and ligaments right below the bony part of his wrist. It's hard to build a space to think when there's too much on your mind, and stretching has always been his go-to response when his body is left at loose ends.
Of course they're both still dancing around the real subject. The thing that binds them most specifically, here and elsewhere. And if he doesn't want to lose this particular dance-off, he's going to have to act rather than react.
'So, uh,' he begins, which is not nearly as coherent as he wants to be, but fuck it, this isn't easy. 'So is everything...okay with Viktor's dog now?'
It seems best to start with a question for which he already knows (or can guess) the correct answer. Katsudon probably would have said something sooner, otherwise.
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Yuri blinks and looks over, startled from the phantom army of drowning dollar signs to one of the most recent memory of Maccachin, bouncing and playing with them as they got in the doors of the house, returning from the Ice Palace and trying to help divest them of snowy coats and boots, less than an hour ago. Looking for all the world like them being home was the best gift ever given to anyone in the world. It was so much simpler, being a dog, wasn't it?
"Good. Maccachin is good. Everything turned out okay in the end."
Maccachin might still be outside the bathroom door, or have gone down, when nosing at the door did not produce Yuri from the shower, to find where Victor had ended up, or one of Yuri's family members. Minako, if she'd turned up after some time at her bar, the way she did often lately, too. Another reminder of how much closer it was all getting.
"There's more care placed on making sure food stay out of reach, but back to normal." Yuri can say with a blissfully easier, endless relief and gladness. "Still getting into everything, and chasing everyone everywhere. Shaking snow on anything that could be covered in snow."
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It doesn't change the thought that's seeded too deeply inside of him to root out: It still wasn't right.
Or the one entwined with it, like a parasitic plant: He left you there alone, and I couldn't --
'Mm,' is what he says, the bare minimum of agreement. He's stopped stretching out his hand, and lets it rest on the tabletop for the moment, flat and unmoving. He's not going to back down from this now, not with Barcelona looming over them...but he's not sure whether it'll be worse if the next answer is yes or no.
Then, quietly, without looking over:
'Did you tell him? About that night?'
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Yurio's noise is not quite to his common begrudged but it's closer to noncommittal after the first question. He'd answered it in the snow that night, after talking to Victor, but there was a difference in more than hearing he was fine. It's not that he didn't believe Victor's words, but it wasn't the same as the feeling that released, even more, bands from his chest as Maccachin went snuffling and shuffling in the backseat of the car, or following him around the house.
The reality of it being okay against the phantom unseen fear, that took Victor back home,
which made it real, even if not something he had memory proof, too, it had mattered, too:
the seeing of it, the seeing of that fact Maccachin was okay.
That every day since getting home had seemed normal.
Again, his through process had wandered of entirely from the next unjointed question to come out of Yurio's mouth, and Yuri couldn't entire tell if he was stricken into an awkward stillness or if he was moving through that syrupy sticky awkward uncertainty. He's almost startled entire from the one to the other that nani? nearly falls out first, but it doesn't. Sticks, stuck in his throat.
"Some." It wasn't as though Victor lacked for a world of questions about anything and everything he could ask Yuri when Yuri was in his presence and never out of it for days that turned into weeks that turned into months without end, and yet the questions never really did either. It hadn't seem like suddenly having to leave had either.
If it had waited past that first night, and exhausted relief, and his convincing Yuri to stay with him. (A few times.)
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Yes means there's nothing to hide. No means that he can keep his own mouth shut. Some...but really, should he have expected more than that? Of course Katsudon would want to forget all about that night, to not talk about it unless there was no way to avoid it. It's not as if Yuri had told his grandfather about it, not even by cutting out all references to being anywhere other than Moscow. But Viktor's the only other one who knows about this place, has been here before -- and might have understood, at least a little bit, why Yuri had done what he did.
(And why it hadn't worked, in the end.)
'Some,' Yuri repeats, on an exhale of breath. He flexes his right hand one last time, tightens it into a fist -- feeling and hearing several of his knuckles crack from the effort -- and then reaches for the chopsticks again. 'Fine, whatever,' he says, in the same quiet voice. 'He's your coach -- you can tell him whatever the hell you want. Just so long as I know that I don't have to play dumb about it.'
He takes his time fitting the chopsticks back into his hand. He's managed to eat a little less than half of the bowl of noodles so far, and he still has a ways to go.
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Yuri's not certain before he said the word if or what the right answer is, but as soon as Yurio repeats it, fisting his chopsticks into an awkward angle with a loud series of bone-rubbing-bone cracks, and himself back into his bowl, Yuri's certain, by uncertain, whatever the right answer was, it wasn't what he'd chosen to say, or do. Again.
He couldn't exactly tell Victor nothing, if that was what Yurio had wanted. That would have been impossible. Not when he was with the Russian's the whole of the hours he was gone, and after what he brought home from Yurio. Which brings a whole other point to bear, when Yurio is already glowering and devouring his food like Yuri misstepped entirely.
Not certain why Yurio would feel the need to play dumb with Victor to begin with.
They were, antagonism included and excluded, still rink mates.
It was still back to Russia and them Victor would go at the end.
But.
If the whole point is not needing to pretend. If Yuri was standing, he might have shuffled his feet, as it is he tries not to shift awkwardly and hopes the reaction to saying this part isn't even worse. "I saved the last Pirozh-katsu for him, too."
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His hand does tighten, almost into a fist, but with his left hand to cover it the chopsticks don't move very far.
'Why would -- ' he begins, then stops. No, wrong question. After all, he'd said that the pirozh-katsu were a gift. A fucking birthday present, for whatever that had meant at the time. Katsudon could do whatever he wanted with them. And if for whatever bizarre reason he'd ended up saving one of them to haul it over a dozen time zones to give it to his asshat of a coach, it's not Yuri's place to say anything about it. It would be nekulturny, to give a gift and then make demands of the recipient. Except....
'Did he eat it?' is what he finally manages to ask, tight and clipped and tense. Still, he can be calm. He can be reasonable. He's not going to trap Katsudon into telling an outright lie by asking a more loaded, specific question -- did he like it? -- because even Viktor Nikiforov would probably find it a challenge to slap on a plastic smile while eating a single cold, stale pirozhok out of a greasy paper bag. Given by Yuri Plisetsky, no less. Why would he want to choke that down, even to please Katsudon?
(But if it had gone to waste --)
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He can't imagine Victor doing much else with food, with his nye on constant obsession with it, and watching Victor's dubious confusion turned surprise had given Yuri a window in what his own reaction in the snow that night must have been like. That complete misunderstanding, laden with slightly suspicious questions, that seemed not quite reachable again once on the other side of the realization.
It might have gotten a little forgotten among things after that, both involving the Gala watching itself and things that were decidedly not the Gala watching. But, it's easy to stay on track, even if he feels a little warm around his collar, and just roll onward. "He was surprised, and it wasn't hot anymore by that the time, but he liked it."
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