Title: Chopsticks

Word Count: 513

Summary: It's a small thing, but she takes pleasure in it all the same.

She wonders why he always grabs the disposable chopsticks from the communal container with such distaste on his face, as if offended or perhaps annoyed that he has to use them. So, because Tokio is nosy and curious and inquisitive (her papa says the latter two are among her most endearing character traits, and gently adds that she ought to work on the former), she asks one day,

"What's with the death glare?"

The question makes him pause.

"What death glare?" he asks.

"The one you're aiming at the chopsticks."

The death glare returns, and he balefully eyes the connected sticks he's holding.

"I hate these things," he mutters. "They always break uneven and I have to eat my food with a little mutant chopstick."

She manages not to laugh at the mental image of his eating soba with a "little mutant chopstick" but no power on Earth can keep her from smiling.

"Here," she says, plucking the offending flatware from his hand and snapping it in half; both sticks are the same length, the break clean.

She hands them back to him, and he takes them with a surprised look on his face that has her smiling wider.

"How the hell did you do that?" he demands.

She shrugs.

"Just did it," she replies, and he grumbles that that isn't an answer and she's not telling him just to annoy him.

"Well, that'd be a first, wouldn't it?" she mildly says, and he shoots her a warning look.

"If you don't tell me, you'll have to break them for me from now on," he warns.

The idea appeals to her far more than she cares to admit. It's a small thing, perhaps, snapping a pair of wooden chopsticks in half for him, but Tokio has a feeling that Saitou rarely asks for (or maybe that should be demands?) assistance with anything.

Which may be why he's eaten his soba with one little mutant chopstick for so long.

"I'm willing to run that risk," she says flippantly, plucking her own pair from the container and snapping them in half, the break clean again.

The next day, he sends her an expectant look, and she obligingly reaches over, takes a pair of chopsticks out of the container and snaps them cleanly in half for him, and he once again grudgingly admires the break; she comes to realize, after a few more times, that this is his way of saying thank you without having to lower himself to actually saying the words, a realization which makes her laugh when it strikes her on her way back to the museum.

"He's such an idiot," she says, affection coloring her tone.

But she doesn't mind. She feels a little honored, even, which probably makes her as ridiculous as him.

Still, though. It's not every day a guy like Saitou asks for (demands) assistance, after all, even with something so insignificant as chopsticks. So Tokio is more than happy to break his chopsticks for him.

It's a small thing, but she takes pleasure in it all the same.