Deeply and devastatingly anxious. Just proximity to a crowd or an unexpected interaction will send his heart rate straight through the roof. Working in the city is downright exhausting for him. Even in Clawhammer he’s still antsy, especially since the folks in town have been getting a little too friendly with him over the years. Though there they tend to be more respectful of his nature.

This anxiety is baked into his bones. He’s been battling it essentially since he was able to form thoughts, but it came to a head when his dick father thought it would be a good idea to send this borderline feral under-socialized little country boy off to school in a bustling city totally unfamiliar to him. He had to very quickly find a way to cope with the terrifying change and, in the absence of any intervention by responsible adults, violent fear-aggression was there to poorly fill the void.

It did do its job though. No one ever really got the chance to bully him at school because he forcibly removed the teeth of the first fellow student to try. He learned to tone it down a bit after the resulting disciplinary period, but they couldn’t really stop him from being a snappish mean little shit for his entire school career. Over the years, he picked up a few manners, but let go of the ‘hostility as a coping strategy’ thing he did not.

At some point, low-level intimidation became pure muscle memory. Subconsciously, everything he does under scrutiny is a little bit of a threat. From the timbre of his voice, to the way he dresses, even to the way he walks. For anyone close to him, the difference between public Vikor and private Vikor is night and day. Vikor himself has no fucking clue he does this.

When all else fails, he is not by any definition too high-and-mighty to just kind of bail. Bailing has ALWAYS been a tried and true problem-solver. Honestly, if the stressor is not an unfortunate but necessary part of his job, then just bailing is usually the way to go. Auto-checkout lane at the store closed? Just bail! Heard your ex might be in town today? Go, get the hell out of dodge! Surprise intervention concerning your ‘avoidance issues’? Say you have to use the bathroom, crank open that window, and? Just! Bail!

Soft-spoken and not terribly expressive in the best of circumstances, he's practically stone-faced with strangers. He doesn’t betray much of the nervousness outwardly (at least not if you don’t know exactly what your looking at) so he can usually fool people into thinking he’s functional for a while. The contrast of this brick-wall aloofness and his distinctive look and carriage tends to get people pretty curious if he sticks around long enough. When they get nothing from him, they talk amongst themselves. The end result is a lot of people having erroneous beliefs about the complexity of this mysterious killer, but the sad truth is that he has only been staring solemnly at some point beyond the horizon because he hasn't had one thought in 12 minutes.

Vikor has a strong grasp on a few essential skills that make him good at his job; it’s when trying to utilize things that fall outside of this skill set, i.e. basic social skills, reasoning, and common sense, that he starts to run into trouble. Put plainly, he’s a little bit slow. His standoffish nature tends to keep people from noticing this fact for far longer than might be expected.

Despite this, Vikor has a hell of a knack for learning systems. Machines, coding, math; anything with a defined set a rules and parameters. He’s the type who will sit down and read a dry technical manual front to back, and then take the thing apart and put it back together better for the hell of it. He has just the right propensity for intense focus and distressingly precise memory to be very good at fixing, so he leans into it. Not only because it’s a damn useful skill, but because it’s a comfort to have at least one thing he knows he understands.

Has a tendency to get overwhelmed by any freestyle problem-solving less cut and dry than ordering take-out. If he doesn’t have a procedure to work by, he tends to want to outsource the brain activity, calling up Charlie at all hours to beg her to tell him what to do.

Doesn't do well with subtlety at all. If you want Vikor to pick up what your putting down you better say it plainly; sarcasm, hints and gentle nudges don’t work here. This can make communication hard sometimes, especially when it comes to humor.

Has a very difficult time switching off enough to rest outside of his trips to Charlie's. Even then, if he’s in enough of a mood he’ll make a nuisance of himself trying to do her work for her. Luckily, considering he already makes Charlie’s blood pressure skyrocket enough, he can be tricked into doing something restful with a little effort, provided he's still technically supposed to be doing something.

If he can't find something, he WILL pace incessantly until everyone else around wants to tranquilize him. He really can’t help it. A certain state of mind takes over when he gets too much time to himself and it sets a fire under his feet. When he was younger and much of his job involved waiting around, this would drive Charlie and Santiago up the damn wall. Doesn’t happen all too often anymore though, with his busted-ass ship constantly needing some repair or another, arm adjustments to be made, paperwork to do, etc.

Despite his affinity for being told what to do, once he really has something on his mind, it can be damn near impossible to pull him away from it. Charlie and Santiago know this from experience. If one lets him get a just a little too emotional about anything, he becomes an irrational bull-headed mess. At least until the drama wears thin and he slinks back into his repression.

When he’s anxious sometimes he’ll unconsciously rev the motors in his arm. This is noisy and moderately worrisome to other people, but he’s usually too preoccupied to notice.

Not too good with eye contact, in fact completely hates the hell out of it and avoids it at all costs. That is, until he’s very pissed, when he will make a challenging amount of hard eye contact until the object of his ire either escapes or stops breathing.

When he’s a little embarrassed or miffed, he’ll tip his hat down to hide his eyes. Often he’ll also try to do this when he’s not actually wearing his hat, immediately become more embarrassed or miffed, and then just spiral downward from there.

Very much has that good ol’ southwestern drawl, even if it’s a little less apparent outside of his native range.

Grumbly and quiet. His voice is deep and carries well so folks can usually hear him anyway. May actually be incapable of raising it above a nice inside volume.

Sure, he’s deadly serious most of the time, certainly when he’s around folks he doesn’t know too well, but he does have a sense of humour in there somewhere. It's just that the high pain tolerance and keeping company with a bunch of drunk hicks means that, by most people’s standards, Vikor’s idea of a good time is often terrifyingly unsafe.

Dark heavy clothes, most places outside of Red Mud are a little on the cold side for him, and even there he still usually has long sleeves and jeans. He can stand the heat for the extra sun protection. And well, it doesn’t hurt that it makes him look a little bigger than he actually is.

Does still wear the hat and boots outside of Red Mud most of the time. No, it may not be for practical reasons anymore, but he just looks so gosh darn good.

Music, specifically the music culture of North Hesperis, though he has other affinities. He can play a few instruments, namely guitar and banjo, though he's absolutely loathe to do it in front of anyone other than Charlie and Lu.

Likes tinkering in his spare time. He does a lot of fixing for people around Clawhammer, especially the things Charlie doesn't have the patience for. Will also fuck up perfectly good machines for the sheer hell of it. Yeah, he could just fix the issue, but there’s no challenge there. Nobody should let him work on anything they like too much lest he make it ‘better’ for them.

He adores jerulo; he has a soft spot for most animals really, but jerulo are his favorite hands down. And his favorite 'rulo is Karma.

Jerulo are the quintessential beasts of burden in North Hesperon, cheaper and more reliable in the uniquely-challenging terrain than any machine transport available. Vikor had always been partial to them, but had never needed one of his own until he partnered up with Santiago. After an arduous search for a 'rulo that would tolerate Santiago's much more daring Daggara mount, he bought Karma. She's an impressively cantankerous and opinionated beast that hates her own kind with a burning passion, but she's manages to be Vikor's pride and joy anyway.

He's now off moon for work most of the time, so Lu takes care of her when he's away. While he is in Clawhammer, though, most of his time is spent with his trusty steed ambling along after him.

Deep water. Sadly the metal arm makes him sink like a rock. He sure as hell never learned to swim growing up in the desert either. Doesn’t like it much on principle anyway, he doesn’t know what’s going on down there. At least in the desert you can see exactly what’s coming to kill you. In the ocean you could just be minding your own damn business and the next second some great big toothy bastard bursts out of the spray to ruin your day. He wants nothing to do with it. Working on Calypso is his least favorite thing.

Hospitals. Had well over enough of them after his long and painful recovery from the burns. Which means it's near impossible to get him in one if he's still remotely conscious. Practices the 'walk it off' policy religiously.

Moderately resentful of him at first for unwittingly torturing him. None of his usual tactics worked here. The cold politeness was just met with overt familiarity, and it seemed like the more mean-spirited he was the closer Leroy leaned in. He didn’t know what to do about it and he mostly just ended up acting like an idiot. It didn’t help that he kept finding himself going along with whatever he wanted when it came down to it. Despite any convictions he might have behind closed doors, he just couldn’t be decisive when faced with those big dark doe-eyes.

After he’s reached the acceptance stage of grief, though, he begins to realize that he has been doing a little better now that he has something other than the crushing loneliness to focus on while away from home.

He finds that Leroy is a hell of a lot different than the type of person Vikor has grown used to in his nearly 20 years of bounty hunting. Other hunters are a rough crowd, and where he comes from nobody stays young for very long. Leroy's bright-eyed, over-familiar, naïveté might be nerve-wracking, but he can't help but admit it was deeply endearing too.

Was very unsure about how exactly he ended up with Hans. He was still reeling from the sudden involuntary introduction of Leroy when this loud pushy runaway blew in like a storm and wedged himself into his life. There’s no way he could have signed off on that, right? Somehow managed to make himself responsible for two useless townies? In the span of a week?? Vikor couldn’t be sure. Too busy becoming basically catatonic from stress the moment he realized what he was dealing with.

It becomes obvious pretty quickly that he was dealing with a very different type of person than Leroy here. While Leroy paid a frankly stressful amount of attention to him and the things he said, Hans didn’t seem to give much of a shit what Vikor was up to at all. He wasn’t cold to him. On the contrary, he was overtly friendly and physical with him (something that Vikor was skittish about, but would never admit he liked). It just seemed like was only humoring him, half-interested.

He did manage to notice that that wasn’t quite the case between him and Leroy though, at least not for very long. Hans was eternally a hundred times more engaged with him than he ever was with Vikor. Leroy was always meaner than hell to him too, though Hans never seemed phased by it. It was...good...that they were preoccupied with something other than him, but boy it made him feel some sort of way.

Likely he should’ve been more put off by Hans sometimes dismissive and patronizing manner with him. Unfortunately, combined with the all the touching and the sweet talk and the practiced confidence, it just reminded him that he was powerfully gay.