yuri_plisetsky: (not yet begun to fight)
Yuri Plisetsky ([personal profile] yuri_plisetsky) wrote2017-04-13 11:20 pm

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.
theglassheart: [ Fanart ] : { Google Images } (Default)

[personal profile] theglassheart 2017-11-12 03:57 pm (UTC)(link)




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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[personal profile] theglassheart 2017-11-23 03:45 am (UTC)(link)
"Of course!" Yuri's immediate words are neatly amused with sharable triumph.

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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[personal profile] theglassheart 2017-11-27 04:06 am (UTC)(link)




This whole interlude is made of Yuri being only ever half certain of what Yurio's reaction might be, and only ever maybe close to half right in those guesses. Never quite expecting when he'll snap, or tense, or look like he's about to kick Yuri off the stool. Never in a million years would he have guessed the quiet request to stay, or the intense focus on being taught how to hold chopsticks. Or this, either.

The quiet way Yurio seems to hold still. Like he's not so much reacting to what Yuri was telling him about Victor enjoying his birthday surprise, as he was taking it in and trying to process it. Maybe like it's another language or something he wasn't sure he wanted to know. Or maybe something Yuri shouldn't have shared. Given the first bark of surprise only seconds before his own last words.

Instead, it's just that small single word first. Dug from somewhere deeper in than it sounds like should be able to be held in two syllables. Small and ... uncertain? Is that it? Is it that Yurio seems uncertain if that's the right word. Or reaction. Or how to. Yuri looked at the boy, quietly, as he took another bit of his food and Yurio seemed to still be reaching for just what to say or how. Which gave Yuri the oddest inspiration, words coming out before fully thought.

"I can tell him you said hello." There's the smallest uncertainty wavered there.
Not that Yurio had offered, or had said. But. "If you want."

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[personal profile] theglassheart 2017-11-30 12:12 am (UTC)(link)
The mumbled, more than not possibly disinterested, first response is about what Yuri was thinking it might be, but what comes next is back to all the fire and brimstone intensity that most of Yurio's declarations come. Not just a hello, he wants Yuri to take back what amounts to a challenge and promise to beat him in Barcelona. The way he already beat Yuri in Russia.

Except it was different in Russia. A little ways out from that he could see that. Running forward, practicing until he nearly collapsed after the tasks of each new day, only reaching forward and trying not to spend what little time he had before sleep fretting backwards. Which was never going to be not at all, but the exhaustion and Victor's certainly helped to buoy a lot of it.

"Alright." Yuri nods some. Not oblivious to the fact that was to him as much as Victor and in some ways more. Victor wouldn't be on the ice, itself, when he left the boards for his last two times. Maybe after. Maybe next year. But not in so few days away from now. He'd be at the boards. He'd be there. At Yuri's side, from beginning to end of this one, like every other competition before Russia. But out there. Beyond it. It was between them, and the other four contenders coming. All or nothing. It was all brought out and left on the ice.

The same as it had been almost a year ago now. Something reminds him, and;


He can try to do it right. This one last time, on his very last skates of his very last year.
It's something new, something uncertain, squirming and yet driven that decides him though.

Yuri puts his bowl down and stood up from his stool, offering a hand to shake,
and somehow, what comes to mind are words he's heard and met before, too.
"We won't take it easy on you." We. "It won't be like last time."