May we get more of Victor the Doting Husband?

lazulisong:

OH ANON I HAVE SO MUCH ABOUT VICTOR, THE DOTING HUSBAND

ALSO I AM SO SORRY I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT VICTOR RIGHT NOW SO YOU GET A BUNCH????

1. creepily steals Yuri’s pillow if he has to travel alone – Yuri would bitch more about his pillow disappearing but he’s the one hugging the dog and sleeping in his husband’s shirt so he has no room to complain.

Victor cannot sleep alone any more. He has slept with a dog for years then he got used to having a husband, and he bought a Yuri dakimakura pillow to tease Yuri but honestly now he needs it if Yuri is away. The case lives under Yuri’s pillow case until Yuri leaves on trips and then it goes on the body pillow and smells like Yuri. he still sleeps poorly though.

2. Victor is actually really – invested doesn’t sound like the right word, but it’s closest to what I mean – really invested in being part of a married couple. Like he used to be Victor The Famous Ice Skater and now he’s Victor, who is married to Yuri. and there’s a lot bound up in that for him. I keep thinking about this and having a Feeling, but Victor, at the start of the series, is very isolated.

We went through the series looking for this, and group chat is agreed: Victor actually never touches anybody affectionately except for Yuri and Makkachin – he touches Yakov once, but in his persona of Victor the Skater, and he touches Yurio in ep 10, which is uhhhh not affectionate at all.

Otherwise, he stands at a distance from people and he often uses Yuri as a barricade between himself and people he doesn’t know well. (If you watch ep six, at the hot pot restaurant and the backstage area, Yuri is between him and Phichit and the others, and he stands behind Yuri and away from the others.) He’s not a classic introvert, but he does show a constant pattern where he has a very clear Public Persona and a very different self when he’s alone or with Yuri, and I think he personally prefers the person he’s able to be with Yuri.

Also if you watch  10 you see in the end credits how he kind of circles around Yuri before joining in. This is not a person who is used to being spontaneous and unguarded, is what I am saying here.

So he’s still Victor the Skater and he still loves skating, but the part of his identity that he found with Yuri is the most important thing to him, and he’s very very invested in having symbols of it. Which leads to

3. He’s always fiddling with his wedding ring. He taught himself not to do it when he was nervous, because talk about a tell, but he often touches or puts it against his cheek or brushes it against his mouth when he’s happy. Sometimes he looks at it, and then at Yuri, and then he gets up and puts his head on Yuri’s shoulder like being near him will convince Victor that it’s really real.

4. He invented, independently, the Spare Kiss Storage System, which grosses Yurio out so badly he can’t even think about it, but which actually is very helpful for Yuri’s anxiety so Victor doesn’t give a shit. He used to give Yuri a couple extra kisses in the morning, but that just felt like he was kissing all over his husband even if he told him that they were for later if he needed them. So now he kisses Yuri’s wedding ring a couple times in the morning and if Yuri really needs a kiss to remember that Victor is always with him, he can press his ring to his mouth or cheek, and there’s a kiss there for him. Yuri does it for him too.

(side note about Yuri: I’m convinced he manages his anxiety behaviorally instead of with medication. If he does take meds, they’re low dose and he doesn’t take emergency anti-anxiety pills. Also, he’s pretty specifically anxious but not depressed. Victor I could write as depressed but not anxious, but I haven’t thought about it enough to come up with a way to write it.)

5. It took people to work out what they were doing, but when one of them performs, he skates out and touches his ring to his mouth or cheek, which would be bad enough, but some bright fangirl actually thought to look over at the other, and he’s kissing his ring at the same time. Even if they’re competing against each other. SO GROSS??????

6. Victor is a groomer, which sounds weird but he always wants to comb Yuri’s hair and do his tie and smooth his shirt out and put lip balm on him. Yuri enjoys it. I personally don’t think it’s actually a kinky thing to them, but ymmv. It’s definitely possessive on both ends though. Victor likes it when Yuri wears his ties or cufflinks too and as aforementioned, he Ascends when Yuri wears his shirt..

7. HE BUYS YURI SO MUCH STUPID SHIT WHEN HE TRAVELS if it’s there and it looks like something Yuri might like, he is by god going to fit that pooing Santa statue in his luggage somehow.

8. He has nightmares that he didn’t dance with Yuri that night after all.