†002 - Definitely not allergic to garlic.

[bucuresti]

[Mihail decided that he needed to get around to cooking something. Back at home, this time of year yields some of the best food his country has to offer. Lucky for him, he's got the blessing of being a pretty decent cook. However, this only really applies to food from his region (Romanian food is more like Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, and German food combined) so things like hot dogs, macaroni and cheese, and pizza aren't exactly within his...skills.

So he's going at making any number of things, specifically mamaliga (Romanian "peasant" cornbread that goes great with sour cream), frigarui (really spiced up kebabs), and of all things, baklava. There seems to be a cloud of garlic powder and any number of spices floating around him, and there's a gratuitous amount of pork, among other meat. Romanians like their meat, y'know.

This is more like stress relief for him, other than just traditional winter cooking time. He hasn't had the best month and he's just gotten over being sick for the umpteenth time, so cooking seems like an awesome stress reliever.

He's more than willing to share (his inner Romanian grandma will probably say you look too skinny and then shove some mamaliga in your mouth), but there is a degree of acquired taste to this stuff, except maybe the baklava.]

Comments

[gulags.livejournal.com]

I am fine. [ resisting like no one's business. ]

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[] No you are not. Sit down.

one of two.

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ oh for the love of - ]

I said -- !

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ throbbing in his head, ow. toning things down. ah, he's - he hasn't really snapped at someone like this in a while, has he? ]

I'm fine.

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[]

I'm very sorry... []

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ at first, he stands there, gripping at the edge of the counter, too stunned to speak. there's an itch on the inside of his throat --

clothes

**** *** your clothes. a bundle of clothes, wet, discarded on the snow and toes peeking

-- static. bzzzzzzt. ]

Mihail. [ pathetically, at first. ] Mihail...

I did not mean to.

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[ I know it's not perfect but my hands are blistered and it's hard to breathe out here but--] It's fine. [--isn't it?]

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ the smell of ********, bony hands groping out for meager ******, the unbearable ****. ]

No, I -

[ the ******* and their *******, pinpricks in exchange for more ****, the **********, *****; hand-prints on the wall, shuffling, crying, white noise in his head. knocked backwards, flinching and disgusted, the remainders of the ********.

the hand on the counter slips, rises, touches the side of his face the way he does when tracing the outlines of buildings in old, black & white pictures.

пачкаюсь я, подымаясь*. ]

*in reference to a poem called the last ravine (http://web.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/texts/ravine.html). the line i used is "i am stained as i climb".

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[]

i love sentence fragments, apparently

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ cliché knots in his throat. yuri's fingers touch the side of mihail's head, the tips barely reaching the back -

to drown out the static in his head, the noise of the ********. to shut away the indelible. an act of indemnity.

- and he's inexplicably terrified. holding something that might break at any given moment, and there are too many things yuri has broken. how do you keep things from breaking? ]

i love your sentence fragments ;;

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[]

i hate them. it's like being thirteen again. :[

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ it's vaguely reassuring - vaguely. nerve-wracking in its own way, an implication that what happened some time ago did and what he said then was true; that he -

he stays perfectly still. ]

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[]

It's not your fault.

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ not that it makes him feel any better ] It is. [ it never does. and he's tempted to move the hand away. instead, his fingers thread themselves on mihail's hair, holding onto - holding onto

something. ]

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[]

How was it your fault? It wasn't.

[gulags.livejournal.com]

How can you say it isn't? I -

[ never having talked about this to anyone, never openly admitting what happened, save the things that got out, it's hard to even begin to explain. oftentimes, they look like faded pictures; but there are those times, like now, where everything is so damn...vivid and fresh and it's like an open wound that won't close. choke. ]

- they suffered.

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

They did, but-- []

Yuri... [] Were the guards any better off than the prisoners?

[gulags.livejournal.com]

That - !

[ the hand on mihail's hair forms a fist, tightened grip and all but slowly unfurls. this... is.... ]

It is an unfair comparison. [ so. wrong. ]

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[]

Answer me.

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ he...really doesn't want to talk about this. really. he's not about to lash out at mihail physically (even though, in subtle ways, he already has), but he certainly isn't about to give in. ]

What do you want me to say, Mihail?

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[]

Tell me if it was any worse for you being there.

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ biting his lip pretty hard. he shuts his eyes so that he doesn't have to see into mihail's. even if he chose to drop his hand now, he's not going to let go so easily, will he? ]

Does it matter? [ defensive. ] It was bad, but...

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

[]

How bad, Yuri? Did you ever wish someone would come along and empty a clip into your head? Did the stench ever get to you? Did you ever wish it was your blood on your hands instead of someone else's? []

[gulags.livejournal.com]

[ where is this coming from? his hand pushes to get at his hair, if only to grab and yank just a bit -- ]

Why can't you leave things alone?!

1/2

[cenusa-lumina.livejournal.com]

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