Braeburns.

There's many a thing you can do with a knife and enough time to practice.

For Katai, the first skill he recalls is learning to peel an apple. There's a knack to doing it in such a way that the skin peels in one long string like a ribbon. The groundskeeper at the orphanage had been the one to show him one autumn morning, when the Braeburns had begun to fall heavy from the tree in the yard and the air sat bitter against their faces with summer's parting. When Katai had wordlessly stopped in his tracks on his way to ravage leaf piles with his boots to instead watch the elder pluck up the first fruit of the season from the floor, the groundskeeper had noted the curiosity in his eyes and beckoned him closer with a wizened, cheeky smile. 

Vega, old fella that he was, always carried around a switchblade in the breast pocket of his coat, the sharp side of it just as silvery as the mustache that sat above his lip. Unlike the rest of his tools worn from use, it was nigh pristine: a treasured gift, perhaps, though in hindsight Katai had never bothered to ask, too distracted by the misplaced priorities of youth to bother with the line of questioning. At the time, Vega had held up the blade and the apple like a prize for the viewing, and Katai had been struck by the silly display of triumph over something so mundane.

Gots to take your time with it, Vega would warn in his drawl, polishing the apple against his shirt before affixing the knife cleanly by the stem. Katai remembers being enraptured by the crisp sound as the blade broke flesh. You start fixin' for it to be over with, an' it's gonna tear right off real fast like.

It was a fact he'd learn quickly himself, too impatient at twelve to work with the deftness of an old man's hands. The first time he had been allowed to try on his own, the blade had slipped too far and sent the fruit tumbling to the floor. The second, third, fourth attempts yielded snapped strings; the fifth, a bloody finger and a colorful band-aid. Katai has always been competitive, though attempting to best a learned man at his craft had been altogether pointless and a truer display of his young arrogance.

Still, he had persisted, and Vega had watched with intrigue as the preteen took to dutifully peeling what fruit he could get his hands on. He starts assisting the girls in the orphanage when they take to baking pies. He starts eating more of his fruits and vegetables just for an excuse to prepare them. He offers, more often, to help clear the apple tree in the yard of fallen produce. Katai butchers Braeburns in August, whittles Galas in October, pares Pink Ladies in November. It becomes a display of determination as much as one of persistence; of obsession.

Hold it steady but not firmly. Position the knife towards the top. Puncture the skin; rotate it slowly, clockwise, with minimal pressure. The ends are the hardest, often, but you get them well enough, if you're cautious. It's a lesson in patience as much as one of deftness. Katai learns come December that he wields a knife with ease despite his initial fumbling, a realization that punctuates getting a perfect corkscrew of green while absently sitting at the living room window seat as he watches black ice recede from the driveway.

It's about the same time that Katai refines the art of peeling apples that Katai gets adopted, and about the last time he would show anyone what he could do with a knife in kinder ways.

There's many a thing you can do with a knife and enough time to practice. Piercing flesh is piercing flesh, he finds, though not all yield the same. Different sounds, different smells, different sights—a gruesome given. He works carefully nonetheless.

These thoughts occur idly to Katai as he sits upon the mahogany desk, rotating the apple with the same practiced ease he's used to. It's a McIntosh; it spins slow in hues of red and green and back again. The way that Bran watches him work makes Katai think that there's a lmfao sat at the tip of Bran's tongue that longs to free itself, though just as likely is a crude remark about Katai being good with his hands. The murmur of the party downstairs fills the silence between the gentle scrape of a parer and the wine that Bran's set out remains untouched.

This could be you, is the humorous suggestion that passingly crosses his mind as he whittles away, but he addresses instead the elephant in the room with a nonchalance: "You left the window unlocked."

And the way that Bran grins with palpable glee in his peripheral is amusing to him, like Katai has just pointed out something that he's been waiting to hear all night. 

"What can I say! I was expecting a visitor."

"One of your regulars?"

"The guest of honor."

It makes him chuckle, a low and breathy sort of sound. Katai shakes his head. 

"One of these days you're going to get yourself killed," he says, peering over at him through his lashes. The coiled peel falls loose into the trashcan by his feet and Katai swivels to face the brunette fully. "If it isn't by my hand because of your carelessness, I'll be disappointed."

"You say that, but I still don't see you making any moves..."

This garners thought from Katai, along with the brief temptation to sink the blade somewhere new as Bran bats his eyelashes with a unique level of abbhorence. It would take roost well, the knife, though he refrains, gliding the edge instead through the apple to cut a neat slice. He's thought often about how he'll fulfill his contract with the Llawes heir, though considered reasons to defer it far more. In the end, he hums and petulance rouses dismissal. "You're impatient." It comes bluntly enough, offered up with the wedge of fruit for the taking. Bran narrows his eyes at it like a feline, before simply opening his mouth, wordless in his request.

Katai isn't sure what's more insufferable: that he has the gall, or that he obliges in popping it into his mouth like something trained despite it.

"Where'd you learn to do that, anyhow?" Bran asks through a mouthful. 

And though Katai is used to lying, none come as smoothly as when he says, "I don't remember."