Milliways: Chopsticks Instructional Hour [1.09-1.10]

[yuri_plisetsky]

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.

Comments

[theglassheart]

Yuri hadn't expected when his hand landed on the doorknob and turned, to do anything more than walk out of the bathroom, heading to join Victor and his family downstairs. There were vague thoughts, even as his damp hair kept the last of clinging drops of water from a late afternoon shower, about whether he'd be soaking in the Onsen tonight or running much longer on the beach, and what his parents had made for dinner --

But there were not any thoughts, or considerations, or even wonderings,
about what met him when the door opened;


not that strange bar filled with people, bright lights, and noise.

(He hadn't been back since Russia.)

His eyes scanned the bar finding -- before he could even get the queasy confusion to a thought or question from the nebulous surprise pussyfooting with unprepared anxiety -- his eyes find a small blond head, over tight, scrunched shoulders, absolutely focused forward. Making him blink. Yurio, sitting at the bar. (Yurio, who brought him here that time.) Yurio, who his mother was still building a cooking supplies care package to send to the household of.

It's a long few seconds in the door (he even has to wonder, while worrying, while uncertain, does blocking the door, having not made his decision, keep other people from coming in from other world's just then, too?, and is he in their way), before he steps away from it. Inside. The only direction really is forward. Which brings him to the oddest, next unexpected, sight. Watching Yurio eating with chopsticks.

Or more aptly, watching Yurio try to eat with chopsticks. Only to drop his broccoli each time.

He waffled even more. Yurio didn't need anyone else's help advice in the best of circumstances and looking at the frustrated hunch every time it fell, this probably wasn't near that. (But at least it's a bowl or food and not a worldwide competition, over which they might break their minds and bodies over just as small of a precise movement of their joints and limbs?) Yelling was not even a question. Nor insults. Those were given.

But still. A piece of broccoli dropped, again, before making it, and Yuri almost winced. Sympathetically.
He can't see Yurio from the front, but he can imagine the glare and he can make out his phone has a video.



"It might be easier if you weren't looking at something else while you tried." Yuri isn't near a Yurio, exactly. He's about four or five feet away, the kind of space you might give a stranger, and his expression is nervously wary even in the earnestness of the comment he tried to offer light and flat. Tried to hope didn't sound like he was insulting the fact Yurio was even trying. Though, thinking to even think to ask why only caught up with him, now, after he'd already spoken.

[yuri_plisetsky]

At the sound of the familiar voice, even at a slight distance, Yuri startles badly, and the chopsticks slip from his hand. One lands right on top of the bowl and gets stuck amidst the broccoli, but the other bounces off the rim, and Yuri lets out a stifled curse as he scrabbles to keep it from rolling off the table. It takes him a moment to figure out what happened to the first chopstick, but as he retrieves it from the broccoli and secures both of them in his hand, he turns his head to glare with flustered embarrassment at the intruder.

'Fucking hell, Katsudon,' he grumbles, though it comes out without much in the way of anger, sounding more like a sigh. He yanks the headphone from his ear, and remembers just in time to shut off his phone so the video isn't visible any longer. 'Why don't you just give me a heart attack already.'

(Nice to see you too, Yuuri.)

It isn't until he manages to set the chopsticks down on the table that his brain catches up with his mouth, and his train of thought makes a sudden leap from of course Katsudon's here to wait, why is Katsudon here? and from there to shit, what do I do now that he's here?

​He could try to go along with the assumption, to pretend that he's just messing around on his phone. But the real thing is a simple enough explanation, and he's not going to lie like he's ashamed of himself, just because he'd timed this whole secret plan out perfectly for this evening only to have Katsudon come crashing in like some knuckle-dragging hockey player slamming into the boards. All the same, there's still that faintly belligerent tone in Yuri's voice (go ahead and laugh at me, I don't care) when he says, chin lifting in firm resolve, 'It's a demonstration video. So I can figure this out.'

A slight wave of his hand indicates that this means the bowl and the chopsticks.

[theglassheart]

Even with a certain level of preparedness, Yuri's shoulders still go tight and he sways a little back from the jump, recognition, and the words that come. It doesn't quite get far enough that his weight shifts in his legs or his feet to step back further -- not that the option isn't in there at the first string of words. The anger he expects, but it's the rest maybe he wasn't. The look of surprise, and more something of ... embarrassment?

Which isn't helped by the scramble for the chopsticks that went flying and had to be rescued from the food Yurio was trying (and, so far) failing to manage to eat. Without Yurio hunched forward, Yuri could make out that there weren't any other utensils either. That Yurio hadn't asked for a backup fork even. He didn't really have more time than to realize it and blink back as Yurio was defending his video.

A little sharp. Or maybe it's not sharp. There's an oddness to it.

Something embarrassed and pushing it down, something angry to cover it, something....brittle in both?

He's not certain why Yurio would ever need to know how to use chopsticks, or why he's decided to learn it now. When it never seemed to be important or even of interest when he'd been in Japan. It was more than half a year since Yurio's short stay at Yutopia and it obviously hadn't been something he'd been learning since leaving, given his current level of success with -- or the specifically the lack of -- getting the food into his mouth.

Several thoughts consider putting a foot out of line, but nothing moved definitively forward, leave him at confused (wary) doubt about the whole surprise of the setting and it all being more surreal than real. "Is it helping?"

[yuri_plisetsky]

Intellectually, it's nothing short of aggravating. More than a billion people in the world, Katsudon included, eat with chopsticks every damned day. It's hardly impossible to learn. But the food in Yuri's bowl is still staying stubbornly uneaten, and it won't remain warm forever.

'What does it -- ' Yuri starts to say, still with that belligerent edge, only to stop when his traitorous stomach growls loudly enough that it might as well shake the table. (Even with the low hum of the bar, he swears that he can hear it echoing off the walls.) Annoyed, he shoves a hand back through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. 'This is only the first one I've tried,' he declares, sounding a little less openly hostile. 'I've got some others. If one doesn't work, I'll try another. It's not like I expected to get it right the first time.'

(All the same, he's beginning to regret the line of reasoning that suggested to him that hunger would be a good motivator for practice.)

In an effort to push the tension out from between his shoulderblades, he straightens up slightly. 'Did you just get here or something? From your home?'

[theglassheart]

Matter. That would have been the word.
No genius needed. What would it matter?

It's a good question. Sticky around all the edges, making it get stuck, folded and tucked, awkwardly between Yuri's brain and his eyes focused forward. It's a good question. Normal. Everyday. American's say it with flippant ease. His sister might, and Victor definitely would. Except it's sticky where it is. Uncomfortable. Lodged somewhere between Yurio's annoyance at him, at Yuri for appearing, possibly the bar for bringing him here and -- and does this? Does it? Should he just turn around, leave Yurio alone, and walk back out?

The thought of which smacks Yuri like his skate fell on his bare foot. Or his head.

If walking out isn't possible, because he hasn't even looked back at the door to see if it's still there, if he'd even believe it was if he looked back and see it (which sets a whole new frisson of tension in the muscles down his spine, the clarity of the image and the feelings which haven't entirely left his worst dreams, of the door simply vanishing under his fingers, denying him -- any peace; his home. Victor.)

Maybe it helps, the blinking through it, knowing Yurio probably doesn't expect much, if anything, from him as he explains. With every iced reluctance. Before he throws out a question which demands some recourse, another response, from Yuri. There's a nod. Easy enough. Then, with something of an awkward wave of a hand at his still wet hair. "We just got back from practice. I was about to head down for dinner and--"

There's a small shrug, not big enough to even come near slouchy, and he let his hand fall back to his side.

And was obvious, too.

[yuri_plisetsky]

So it wasn't intentional. It wasn't even expected.

Which makes sense. If he'd been the one in Katsudon's position, last time, nothing in the world or out of it would have induced him to ever come back to this place of his own free will again. Not after --

(I shouldn't have brought us here)

A narrow thread of something unpleasant twists through his chest, pulling and tugging and tightening in increments. If he lets it tighten enough to snap, it'll end with him snapping out something that he won't be able to take back. So he huffs out a short breath, hoping that it'll loosen the tension inside him, and says:

'Well, I still need to eat, so if you're going to stay then sit down.' He picks up the chopsticks again -- grabbing them both with his right hand before he uses his left hand to settle one in the groove between thumb and forefinger, and hold the second one in place so he can find the right position like the demonstration had showed. 'It's weird with you hovering like that.'

It would be a promising start if it wasn't so obvious that his grip is far too tight to make much in the way of progress, at the outset.

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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


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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

[yuri_plisetsky]

Yuri's eyes narrow.

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

Get it right.

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

(You can have it.

It's almost your birthday, right?)

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

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

[yuri_plisetsky]

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

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

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

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

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

[theglassheart]

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

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

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

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

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