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It all starts in a TJ Maxx dressing room at the tail end of August.
Yuuri slumps on the sad little bench in the corner of the room—presumably provided for the exact moment when a person’s strength has been fully depleted by the combined efforts of ill-fitting clothes, fluorescent lighting, and the faint smell of feet. He wipes at the sweat beading on his forehead and stares hard at his knees in an effort to avoid confronting the sight of his flushed, flustered face in the mirror.
He wishes Phichit was here for moral support, but he’d had an afternoon practice with Celestino and an evening dance class and so Yuuri had been cast out alone on the harrowing mission of obtaining clothes for a back-to-school house party the following weekend.
“Nothing you would wear to workout in,” Phichit had instructed the previous evening. “If you show up in sweatpants again I can’t guarantee there won’t be a riot.”
Yuuri doesn’t really understand Phichit’s need to try and bolster his ego. He sees the way the other students gawk at him and whisper just out of earshot. He fails to see how denim is going to act as a curative balm for his reputation as the campus’ token awkward foreign kid.
At least, that’s how Yuuri felt when he was still bright-faced and hopeful in the face of the first thirty minutes of his shopping venture. The Katsuki Yuuri of hour three has seen some shit, and he’s starting to think offering up his kidney to a black market witch in exchange for friendship elixir would be easier than finding even a single pair of moderately well-fitting jeans.
Yuuri exits the dressing room as disoriented and wobbly-kneed as a newborn fawn and wanders back over to the accursed denim section—more leaning on the clothing racks than asserting any effort to parse through them.
He’s long since given up on being choosy on the wash or cut—he’d settle for any pair that properly fits his waist while not getting stuck on his thighs or that could comfortably cover his butt while not trailing three inches past his toes. Yuuri travels back to the center aisle, mentally weighing the pros and cons of slipping into a clothing rack and just staying there until Phichit finds him—swathed in denim like a Canadian tuxedo-ed mummy—when his eyes settle on the women’s section. Or rather, on the sign just above it: “Denim Guide for EVERY Body Type!”
Yuuri isn’t totally sure what a body type is. He remembers girls at school talking about blood types and their ability to predict relationship compatibility. This is probably not related to that, but it seems more helpful than the posters festooning the men’s section of seemingly identical jeans labeled confusing things like “boot” and “easy.”
Yuuri looks at the provided infographic—deciding he’s most likely an hourglass based on the description—and makes his way to the display of jeans folded under the “hourglass” label. He picks up a pair—high rise skinny jeans in Imperial indigo, according to the tag—and holds them up to his body, considering.
Yuuri’s thought process on the matter is remarkably quick: he’s a professional figure skater, he’s been in ballet classes since he was three, he wears sequins and lycra on a semi regular basis, and he’s been learning the finer points of eyeliner application from Phichit ever since they moved in together last semester.
Compulsive masculinity is not really a blip on the Katsuki Yuuri radar, and at this exact moment, what he wants more than anything is to be done with this fool’s errand so he can hide out in his dorm with its janky ac unit and freezer full of ice pops. He takes the jeans from the rack and ferries them to the dressing room, tossing a blue and white striped crop top over his arm for good measure.
Miraculously, the jeans are a perfect fit. The waistline rests comfortably above his belly button, the cut is fitted just enough to emphasize the curve of his hips but not so tight that it pulls at the seams, and the legs taper off at the perfect length to highlight his slim ankles. Yuuri feels good. He turns around to check his butt out in the mirror and—seeing how the denim highlights his assets in a way that he knows will have Phichit singing “Bootylicious” at him for a week straight—instantly declares himself a complete and total high rise skinny jeans convert.
When he goes to check out the pants are on sale for twenty dollars down from sixty. He rides the bus home on a high that can’t be corrupted by things like 80% humidity or the bus driver rolling her eyes when he accidentally shows his pass backward.
Phichit is equally thrilled when Yuuri models his purchase for him. “My beautiful child,” Phichit coos, hoisting Yuuri in his arms and spinning him around for two full revolutions. “I’m so proud.”
Yuuri laughs, for once enjoying the warm spread of blush working its way up his neck. “I’m older than you.”
“A minor detail,” Phichit says, booping Yuuri on the nose. “We’re gonna have so much fun tonight.”
And they do, though Yuuri hardly remembers any of it (an indication of just how good the night was, Phichit will tell him later). What he does remember is getting drunk off of cheap beer and Jell-O shots, climbing on a table and singing Toxic in two part harmony with Phichit, grinding against a few attractive strangers, and generally feeling like a man possessed by the spirit of someone more sociable, charming, and confident than Yuuri ever imagined himself to be.
Yuuri loves those jeans. Even when his anxiety-fueled binging catches up with him and they grow too tight to wear, he doesn’t have the heart to get rid of them. They remain in his closet, the ghost of the person he could be— had been for one short, hot night in late August—buried under free college t-shirts and a pile of outgrown workout gear.
It makes a strange sort of sense that they would show up years later while Yuuri is sitting on the heated floor of his new apartment, sorting through his old clothes with his new fiancé.
“It’s a good thing you brought your...uh—” Viktor tilts his head, studying the sleeve-torn scrap of a Garfield tank top dangling off the end of his index finger.
“I told you I packed in a hurry,” Yuuri laughs, pulling the offending garment from Viktor’s hands and slinging it to the “trash” pile.
“I don’t know if I’d call this ‘packing,’” Viktor says. “I think you might have accidentally shipped a bag of the Inn’s trash.” He pokes his toe at a pile of crumpled clothes he’s fairly certain he saw moving out of the corner of his eye. “And maybe a raccoon or two.”
Yuuri tosses a balled up sock at Viktor’s head. “I seem to recall someone telling me—” Yuuri flips his hair and assumes a clumsy Russian accent—“‘throw everything in a box, we’ll sort it out when you get here.’”
Viktor hums and crawls on hands and knees to Yuuri’s side, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and nuzzling his nose into the nape of Yuuri’s neck. “That was a horrible impression.”
“I have time,” to perfect it, is what Yuuri intends to say, but the words are lost when Viktor pulls up his shirt and blows a cold, wet raspberry into his back.
Yuuri yelps and wriggles his way out of Viktor’s grasp, laughing as he rolls over to defend himself from Viktor’s roving hands. “The worst,” Viktor reiterates, leaning down to kiss him, “I have ever heard.” He finishes when they part.
Yuuri feels warm in a way he’s certain has nothing to do with Viktor’s mystical heated floor. He smiles up at his fiancé—thinking of how nice it is to call him that—and Viktor smiles down at him, trailing his fingers down the rounded slope of Yuuri’s cheek.
“Let’s trash it all,” Viktor says, not for the first time. “I’ll take you shopping.”
“It’s not all trash,” Yuuri huffs. Truthfully, he doesn’t mind the thought of going shopping, but he’s been enjoying wearing Viktor’s clothes for the week before his shipped packing arrived and then for the second week before they stopped being lazy and actually asserted the energy to unpack everything. Viktor’s clothes are comfortably oversized and smell like him and Yuuri’s not in any hurry to give that up. “There’s some good stuff in there,” he insists.
“Right, like—” Viktor reaches for something behind Yuuri’s head—“a pair of Mari’s jeans?”
“Hmm?” Yuuri sits up and takes the pants from Viktor, realization dawning. “N-no,” he shakes his head. Mari wouldn’t be caught dead in something so form-fitting and conventionally fashionable, but Yuuri doesn’t bother telling him that. “They’re mine.”
“Really?” Viktor perks up immediately, eyes shining. “Yours?”
“Yeah, from Detroit,” Yuuri confirms, holding the jeans up by the belt loops. “But I’m...I don’t know if they’d fit anymore.”
“Let’s see,” Viktor encourages, pulling at the waistband of Yuuri’s sweatpants. “Try them on.”
Yuuri runs his teeth along his bottom lip, further shredding the dry skin there. This probably isn’t a great idea. For one, he doesn’t want to deal with his emotions if they don’t fit—he recently beat a world record, silvered in Barcelona, and got engaged to his childhood idol, so he really doesn’t want to face himself if something as trivial as pant size is enough to knock him back to his dependence on unhealthy emotional crutches.
And then there’s the embarrassment of Viktor staring him down, watching as he tries to wriggle his way into a pair of pants that fit him once upon a time when he was under his new nutritionist’s strict watch and 7,000 miles from the temptations of katsudon or anxiety-fueled midnight kitchen raiding.
Somehow, despite his best judgment, he tugs at the knot on his sweatpants, anyway. It’s about more than Viktor, he realizes as he kicks the pants off his ankle and holds up the old skinny jeans with a deep, hopeful breath. Part of him just...really wants to recapture that feeling—that sensation of perfect confidence that at 21 seemed so fleeting, but now at 24, feels more readily attainable. At least, most of the time.
Yuuri swallows hard and sticks one leg in, then the next, wiggling his hips around till the jeans make it up to his waist. He zips them up and buttons them with a quiet, relieved exhale. The pants still fit, though maybe a little tighter around the waist than they did three years ago, but they’re there—encasing his flesh and crushing his heart with the overwhelming nostalgia of it all.
“Yura—” Viktor starts, his voice coming out in a high pitched squeak.
“Wait,” Yuuri holds up a hand, something that feels like anxiety is rippling down his spine and clenching hard in his chest. He doesn’t think that’s what it is, though. It doesn’t feel as deadly, but he still has to be sure.
He rushes to the second bedroom, bare feet slapping loudly across the concrete floor—desperate in his need to be alone for this, to preserve the magic of that poorly lit dressing room where he first decided that he looked good before anyone else could have a say in the matter.
The person staring back at him now in the white afternoon light of his shared apartment’s second bedroom is different from the boy from back then. His hair is longer—just grazing the tip of his nose when it isn’t combed off to the side, he has the very faint suggestion of laugh lines forming at the corners of his mouth, and his middle is softer, rolling over the waistband of his pants in a way that suggests late night ice cream runs and mornings spent cuddling in bed rather than running down the shoreline.
He’s not the same, but he knew that already. And while the jeans might not be the absolute perfect fit anymore, he still feels perfect in them.
“Okay,” Yuuri says when he’s returned to his and Viktor’s bedroom. He leans his head against the doorframe, folding his arms over his waist. “How do I look?”
Viktor stares unblinkingly for a solid two minutes before coughing, standing, and marching across the bedroom, past Yuuri, and out the front door. Yuuri gapes—his breath freezing in his lungs. He’s just about to run after Viktor when the door reopens and Viktor marches back in, not even waiting for the door to close again behind him before scooping Yuuri up in his arms and kissing his neck, his shoulder, his cheek, his collarbone, his forehead, and any other part of him his mouth can find.
“Yura, my Yura,” Viktor croons between kisses, “beautiful, lovely, handsome,” the words devolve into Russian and then appreciative grunts and groans which are somehow more communicative than his previous English and leave Yuuri flushing so hard he fears Viktor may burn himself on his skin.
The jeans don’t stay on long after that. Yuuri doesn’t want to get them dirty, and Viktor’s inclined to agree. Hell, he’s ready to erect a damn shrine.
“How did I get so lucky,” Viktor says softly. His legs are tangled with Yuuri’s on the bed while his fingers explore the soft lines of Yuuri’s body.
Yuuri smiles in silent agreement, watching as Viktor—his fiancé, he reminds himself for the twentieth time that day—reverently trails his fingertips down the silvery stretch marks on his hips. He makes a mental note to text Phichit later and tell him he was right: a good pair of jeans can go a long way.
And to think, he didn’t even have to give up a kidney.