Only Viktor Nikiforov can make a pep talk sound like a press conference. Is this really what he thinks a coach should sound like? It's fucking delusional, is what it is. Yuri would laugh in his face -- oh, wait, are you still just kidding, or should I actually be listening to you now? -- if he didn't think that the laughter would stick in his gullet first and make him retch instead.

(If something's important to you, you have to fight for it. This isn't any different.)

'I'll drink it when I want to,' he says instead, the warning about the soup taken and disregarded with a casual flick, as if he's tossing his head to get a stray strand of hair out of his eyes. 'And right now, I don't want to. I can wait until it cools.'

He turns his gaze to the depths of the bonfire then, to its blackening heart where the dry twigs and driftwood and grasses are being consumed, and takes one more smaller bite of the croquette. There's barely enough left of his first half that he could eat the rest of it easily -- but right now, of course, he doesn't want to.

It's not nearly as good as a pirozhok, anyway.