Summary:

Brandon throws his head back as he laughs, loud and hearty. "You guys are hilarious! Man, the rest of the gang is gonna be so stoked to see you, Oikawa. I mean, Hajime never shuts up about you!"

Tooru blinks, the smile frozen on his face. Did . . . did he just hear that right?

or: Oikawa gets jealous when other people call Iwaizumi by his first name.

Notes:

my first posted iwaoi fic!! i needed a break from writing just about the angstiest thing i've ever written, so. this happened. this was originally a thread i wrote on twitter when i was deliriously tired, but i woke up the next day and i still liked it so i decided to expand it a little as a breather for... my other iwaoi fic 🙃 enjoy!! :D

The question seems to come from nowhere.

After many hours of flying, Tooru greeted Iwaizumi at the airport in a tearful reunion that neither of them had even bothered trying to hide, sniffling into each other's shoulders and grasping onto one another with trembling hands.

(Iwaizumi then took him to In-N-Out as a makeshift lunch where, as they were waiting in line, Tooru said, We should make it a ritual. Every time I fly in, we get In-N-Out.

Iwaizumi frowned at him, saying, Or we could just. Make dinner at my dorm.

Tooru huffed, So unromantic, Iwa-chan, and earned himself a pinch in the side.)

Once they arrived at Iwaizumi's dorm and Tooru showered off the remnants of travel, their quiet afternoon lounging in Iwaizumi's bed had only been broken by the videos playing on Tooru's phone as he scrolled through TikTok, occasionally showing Iwaizumi the ones he deemed worthy of an audience.

This is why, when Iwaizumi turns to him and asks, "By the way. Do you wanna meet my friends?", Tooru wonders what prompted him to think of that.

He blinks wide eyes. Then immediately lights up. "Iwa-chan! Are you asking if you can show off your invincible, talented, incredibly handsome boyfri—AGH!" Iwaizumi jabs two fingers into Tooru's side, causing him to break off into a shriek and flounder on the bed.

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Shittykawa, I'm not gonna do anything of the sort," Iwaizumi says, flat as a board. "I just got a text from Brandon asking if I wanted to hang out with the group this weekend, and since you're here . . ." He trails off, suddenly becoming very interested in the wall behind Tooru's head, and soda bubbles fizzle in Tooru's chest at the way his boyfriend's cheeks turn pink. "I figured we could all hang out together."

Unable to hold himself back, Tooru wraps his arms around Iwaizumi's head and squeezes his face into Tooru's chest with a flurry of movement, rocking them back and forth as Iwaizumi lets out a startled sound of protest. "Aw, Iwa-chan, you're so cute! I'd love to meet your friends!"

"Hey, cut it out!" he yells, voice muffled in Tooru's shirt. He quickly resorts to using his Ultimate Tickling Technique (TM) to get out of Tooru's hold, leading to more shrieks and cackles that Tooru tries (and fails) to stifle with one hand.

Iwaizumi, sensing Tooru's grip weakening, uses that to his advantage. He pulls back, grabs hold of Tooru's wrists with both hands, and pins them to the mattress, pushing Tooru onto his back and hovering over him. Tooru stares up at Iwaizumi, the bright yellow-white of the ceiling lamp creating a halo behind his head and illuminating his dark brown hair around the edges. Iwaizumi is a bit flushed above him from the brief exertion of energy, and even though they've been dating for a year at this point, Tooru is still unused to the way his heart trips over itself in his chest, the way his stomach folds itself into knots, the feeling novel, but not unpleasant.

A smug grin curves Iwaizumi's mouth. "What was that about you being invincible?"

Tooru's face heats all the way down his neck, and the only thing he can do in response is pull Iwaizumi down on top of him to press their lips together.

Technically, the way they got together was an accident. Tooru knows it, Iwaizumi knows it, their friends know it; Tooru is a romantic, however, so he likes to insist it was capital 'f' Fate that brought them together instead of a poorly timed text.

Picture the scene: senior year of high school, 3rd trimester. They were about two weeks out from their final exams, somewhere in the first few days of February, and Tooru was hunched over the low-leveled table in the middle of Iwaizumi's room, his arms stretched out in front of him like a cat while he balanced his mechanical pencil on his top lip. Winter still had its hold on Miyagi; white flakes drifted past Iwaizumi's window in slow-moving sheets, sapping the colors from the room and making Tooru want to take a nap.

"Don't go to sleep, Oikawa," Iwaizumi warned, giving Tooru a look. Ever the dutiful student, Iwaizumi's textbooks and notes were open on the table in front of him. Tooru's were as well, but he wasn't doing much of anything except trying not to pass out.

"I won't, I won't." His vision crossed as he focused his attention on the pencil just underneath his nose. The rest of the world blurred. His eyelids drooped. There was a sharp clack! as the pencil hit the table, and Tooru snapped up in his seat with a startled sound.

Iwaizumi let out a long sigh and slowly got to his feet. "I'll go get us some tea or something."

"Thank you," Tooru said, a yawn muddling his words. He sat up straight and reached his arms over his head in a long stretch as Iwaizumi's footsteps disappeared down the hall, and just as Tooru was rubbing his eyes in an effort to wake up a bit, a buzz sounded next to him.

He glanced over at where Iwaizumi's phone was facing screen-up on the table. Tooru couldn't read it from this angle, but he supposed that was for the best; it wasn't his business.

But then it buzzed again. And a third time.

Tooru frowned. What if it was something important?

He reached for Iwaizumi's phone, picked it up, scrolled through the messages on the lock screen, and felt his soul promptly exit his body.

Group Message: iwaizumi bitchless era over??

 

3:02pm

#1 hiro: DUDE u should take this chance to confess to him!!

eugene levy's twin brother: yeah especially since he's moving to argentina so u never know when u'll get another chance

#1 hiro: oikawa's totally in love with u too, imo. issei and i see the way he looks at u

eugene levy's twin brother: that boy cannot keep it in his pants lmao

What. The fuck.

Setting aside the outrageously offensive comment from Matsukawa about Tooru keeping it in his pants (Tooru would have to remember to get back at him for that later), he read, reread, and re-reread the characters on the screen until his eyes glazed over and his soul entered his body again. Except that only alerted him to the way his heart was pinging around in his chest so intensely, he thought he was going to break at least a couple of ribs, because if Tooru was reading this right—if he was correct in his assumption . . .

Tooru had been in the unenviable position of being in love with his best friend for the past . . . Well, Tooru couldn't actually tell when it had started, but he'd been in love with Iwaizumi since as far back as he could remember. How could he not have been, when Iwaizumi knew him inside and out? When Iwaizumi could anticipate Tooru's needs before even he himself could, when Iwaizumi had been there time and time again, comforting and supporting him and yanking him back in line when needed? Iwaizumi was a part of him that he'd never be able to remove; falling in love with him had been inevitable, a fact of life as far as Tooru was concerned.

"Hey." Tooru's head snapped up at the sound of Iwaizumi's voice as he came to a stop in the doorway, leaning against the frame. "There wasn't any water in the boiler so I had to refill it. It'll be a few more minutes." Iwaizumi frowned at him. "Why do you look like you just saw a ghost?"

Tooru could feel his eyes bulging out of their sockets. "I-Iwa-chan."

"Yeah?"

Tooru swallowed. He had to address this now or else he'd be plagued by it for the rest of his life. "You—you're in love with me?"

Iwaizumi froze. At that moment, Tooru could've sworn Iwaizumi had turned into a statue, and a distant part of his brain wondered if he could be convicted of murdering his best friend for this. He could see the headlines now:  Local teen accidentally kills best friend by asking if he's in love with him.

Tooru raised Iwaizumi's phone with a shaky hand, the words spilling out of him as he said, "Y-your phone was buzzing a lot so I just picked it up to see if it was serious and, uh, I saw some texts from Makki and Mattsun and—Iwa-chan?!"

Without warning, tears slid down Iwaizumi's frozen-solid face, prompting Tooru to drop the phone as he jumped to his feet, wrapped his arms around Iwaizumi's shoulders, and crushed him in a hug. "Iwa-chan, please don't cry! I'm in love with you too, I've loved you our whole lives! You don't need to cry, okay? Only tears of happiness, okay?!"

Trembling hands slowly raised to rest against Tooru's back, pausing for a second before they clenched into fists, grasping at the cloth like Iwaizumi was afraid Tooru would disappear if he let go, and he let out a small, "You . . . you are?"

"I am, I am," Tooru insisted. He pulled back a bit to take Iwaizumi's face in his hands and pepper little kisses all over his nose, his forehead, his cheeks. The wet, startled laugh that Iwaizumi choked out had Tooru giggling in turn, and soon the sound of laughter mixed with the occasional sniffle to completely fill the room with joy.

The few weeks they spent as a couple in person, while undoubtedly too short, were some of the happiest weeks of Tooru's life, and when it came time for him to move to Argentina, he and Iwaizumi both agreed that after all this time, there was no way they were letting each other go.

Remembering their clumsy, accidental stumble into a relationship always makes Tooru giggle, and a grin stretches his lips, making it difficult for Iwaizumi to kiss him on the dorm bed. Iwaizumi pulls back, an eyebrow raised in question. "What're you grinning like that for?"

"Oh, nothing," Tooru replies, running his fingers along Iwaizumi's scalp and delighting in the way he closes his eyes to lean into the touch. "Just thinking about how you confessed to me."

Iwaizumi opens his eyes to scowl down at him. "Don't bring that up again. I don't wanna relive the only near-death experience I've ever had."

Tooru snorts. He wraps his arms around Iwaizumi's neck again. "Please, Iwa-chan, that near-death experience is the best thing that ever happened to you."

Tooru doesn't miss the way Iwaizumi's cheeks redden as his scowl morphs into a pout. "Shut up."

"Make me." Tooru smirks.

With a searing gaze, Iwaizumi leans down to meet Tooru's lips again, shutting him up for a long while after.

Tooru first came to visit Iwaizumi the week before Iwaizumi's fall quarter started. He'd already moved in by that point, a single room in a suite of six in the Middle Earth Residence Halls (Tooru still has the screenshots from when Iwaizumi gushed about how excited he was to live next to Gandalf's Courtyard and the Pippin Community Center). The two of them spent almost that entire week isolated from the rest of the world, locked away in Iwaizumi's room while they caught up on everything they missed about each other.

This time, Tooru is excited to see a bit more of Iwaizumi's college town. Saturday afternoon, after lying together in Iwaizumi's bed all morning (not that Tooru is complaining, mind you), the two of them shower and get ready to leave, waiting for an Uber on the nearest main road to Iwaizumi's dorm.

Tooru isn't used to how far apart everything in California is. Iwaizumi complained about it when he first arrived in the States, texting Tooru about how he couldn't believe the buses only ran every forty minutes (or longer), and how even just going to the nearest Home Depot would take him at least an hour by public transit when it would only be ten minutes by car.

Now, as the Uber pulls them onto the highway to meet up with Iwaizumi's friends at the arcade, Tooru finds himself agreeing. Where are all the train lines? What about the subway? Is the rest of the US like this? Tooru shudders at the thought of having to learn how to drive.

When they arrive, Tooru spots Brandon leaning against a giant bowling pin at the entrance to the arcade. He's exactly what Tooru pictures upon hearing the words "California surfer dude": a lightly tanned guy with wavy blonde hair wearing a muscle tank and a snapback.

When Iwaizumi and Tooru exit the Uber, Brandon jogs over to them with a blindingly white smile. He's a bit shorter than both of them. "Hey, guys! Glad you could make it!" He turns to Tooru and extends his hand. "You must be the famous Oikawa, huh? Great to finally meet you!"

Tooru shakes his hand with a responding smile. "You too! Thank you for taking care of Iwa-chan for me, he has such a hard time making friends, the poor kid."

Iwaizumi elbows him in the ribs. "I do not. Stop making up stupid shit."

Brandon throws his head back as he laughs, loud and hearty. "You guys are hilarious! Man, the rest of the gang is gonna be so stoked to see you. I mean, Hajime never shuts up about you!"

Tooru blinks, the smile frozen on his face. Did . . . did he just hear that right? He couldn't have, right? 'Cause if Tooru didn't know any better, he could've sworn he just heard Brandon refer to Iwaizumi as—

"Don't tell him that!" Iwaizumi protests, a blush searing his cheeks. "He's already obsessed with himself, he doesn't need any more ammo."

Brandon just laughs again, patting Iwaizumi on the shoulder as he says something about heading inside once everyone else gets there, and Tooru shakes his head. He must have been imagining things.

As the rest of Iwaizumi's friends arrive in a group a few minutes later, Tooru recalls names and faces from the pictures Iwaizumi has shown him. There's Rahul, a tall guy with a full beard, glasses, and an easy smile. Tooru remembers Iwaizumi talking about how they became friends in an introductory psychology course when the professor paired them together for a project and Iwaizumi saw the Fullmetal Alchemist pin on Rahul's bag.

Next to Rahul is Fatima, a tiny girl with short, bright red hair and a nose piercing who barely reaches Tooru's shoulders, and Fatima's slightly taller partner Mickey, a fond smile on their face as they watch Fatima bounce over to Iwaizumi in excitement.

"Hajime!" Fatima calls, throwing herself into Iwaizumi's arms with a high-pitched laugh, and Tooru has to rewind the tape in his head yet again because—huh?

He looks from Iwaizumi to Fatima, Fatima to Iwaizumi, then Iwaizumi to the rest of his friends when they all continue to address him as "Hajime," and as soon as Tooru feels the sharp pinch of jealousy in his stomach, he tries to tamp it down. It isn't fair of him to get jealous over something as small as a name, especially since he knows that lots of other cultures call people by their given names and it isn't a big deal; hell, his own Club Athletico teammates call him "Tooru."

It just never occurred to him that the same thing would happen with Iwaizumi.

"Oikawa, right?" Mickey's airy voice pulls Tooru out of his thoughts, and he looks over to see them giving him a friendly grin. Their long black hair, twisted into locs, has been carefully tied into a bun at the top of their head. "Hajime's told us all about you."

Another pinch; but Tooru just blinks at them and puts on a smug, exaggerative grin, dismissing his jealousy. He's being ridiculous. "I bet he has," he drawls, aiming it at Iwaizumi and getting his attention. "Why wouldn't he want to talk about me?"

Mickey laughs when Iwaizumi scowls and flips Tooru off with a loud because you're annoying as all hell, and then Brandon begins to herd the group into the building, not wanting to spend any more time just standing around the entrance.

The arcade assaults Tooru with a wall of sound. Loud, frantic noise plays from the speakers, some kind of electronic dance music that makes Tooru feel like his heart is trying to win a footrace against itself in his chest. The darkened lighting of the area is only interrupted by the bright lights coming from the various machines, glowing neons of almost every color. The smell of something fried and greasy floats through the air, and Tooru takes an appreciative sniff. Maybe he'll pester Iwaizumi to find some karaage tomorrow.

The six of them line up at the front to reload their Round 1 cards with credits (or to buy a new one, in Tooru's case) and Brandon turns to the group. "Alright, guys! Which game first?"

"Ooh!" Fatima raises her hand as she jumps enthusiastically. Tooru grins; she reminds him a bit of Shoyo. "Can we do that basketball tossing game? I've gotten better, I swear!"

"I can attest to that," Mickey says flatly. "She dragged me here almost every weekend for a month straight so she could practice."

Brandon laughs. "Yeah, I'm down! Plus . . ." He shoots Tooru a challenging smirk. "I wanna see what Oikawa's made of."

Tooru rests his hands on his hips, drawing to his full height and looking down his nose at the opposition. Before he can open his mouth to say something exceptionally witty (like all of his comebacks are), Iwaizumi cuts in to say, "Oh, you don't wanna do that."

"Wh—Iwa-chan?!" Tooru whirls on him as the rest of his friends chuckle. "Why not?"

Iwaizumi gives him a Look. "You play setter for a living. It's an unfair advantage."

"Maybe Hajime's right," Rahul says with a light laugh, and—oh. Tooru's jaw clenches. "I'd rather go up against Fatima."

As Tooru steps up to the cashier to buy his Round 1 card, he lets out a carefully measured exhale. It's not a big deal. It's just a name. Don't get jealous.

He gets jealous.

Every time Tooru hears one of Iwaizumi's friends call him "Hajime," it twists his gut and puts a sour taste in his mouth, and at first, he uses the arcade games to let off steam. When they move to play skee ball and Fatima says, You're not gonna beat me this time, Hajime, Tooru steps up to the game with a cold focus and cleanly deposits each shot into either the 5000-point or 10,000-point holes. He beats out everyone else's scores.

"Damn, Oikawa!" Brandon says, punching him lightly on the arm. "That was seriously impressive! Hajime didn't tell us you were so good at arcade games."

Tooru's eye twitches. His mouth melts into a sugary sweet smile that feels too tight on his face. "Please, I'm not that amazing. I just got lucky, that's all."

Iwaizumi catches his gaze, giving him a strange look, but Tooru just turns to Mickey and asks them if they want to go play DDR.

Tooru tries to keep a lid on his simmering jealousy throughout the rest of the night, he swears he does. But as the evening continues and Tooru sees how casually Iwaizumi's friends interact with and address him, and how normal Iwaizumi seems to be about the whole thing, frustration mixes with his jealousy to create a festering, boiling cauldron of irritation. At one point, Brandon hooks his arm over Iwaizumi's shoulders to show him a meme on his phone, and Tooru can't help but latch onto how close their faces are, how hard Iwaizumi laughs, how other people get to see him be so cute when Tooru barely gets to see it due to the circumstances of their relationship.

He and Iwaizumi used each other's given names occasionally when they were very little, and a little bit when they were older in the form of taunts and teasing nicknames (Tooru will never give up Godzilla-Hajime), but it was never something they said with frequency. Even now that they're in a relationship, the only times they ever call each other by their first names seriously is during moments of intimacy, physical or otherwise. Tooru naively assumed it was something just for the two of them.

A pang of hurt squeezes Tooru's heart. How come other people are allowed to use Iwaizumi's name so casually?

He's a little quieter during dinner. He'd been able to vent out a lot of his frustration through playing the arcade games, particularly the more physical ones (Mickey ended up beating him in DDR, a feat that gave them his endless respect), but now that everyone's sitting down in the round booth and the adrenaline is leaving his system, Tooru just feels sad. Sad, and tired. God, he needs a nap.

He takes a sip of his soda through the straw, letting his gaze defocus where it rests on the table in front of him.

"You okay, Oikawa?" Fatima asks from where she's sitting on Mickey's other side.

Tooru glances at her and gives her a small smile. "Yeah, just a bit tired, I think. I'm having fun, I promise."

She readily returns the grin. "Good. We don't want you to feel like you're being left out or anything."

"Oh, no, don't worry about that," he says, lazily waving her off. "You have all been more than welcoming."

The waitress shows up with their food, grabbing everyone's attention as she sets down plates of chicken wings, French fries, and personal pizzas, and they all eagerly reach for their dishes. Tooru feels a knock against his knee and he turns to Iwaizumi.

"You good?" he asks quietly in Japanese.

The smile Tooru gives him itches; from the way Iwaizumi's brows pinch together, it's clear he doesn't buy it. "Yep. Let's eat."

Brandon offers to drive them both back to the dorms at the end of the night, which the two of them gladly accept. He and Iwaizumi carry most of the conversation on the way back while Tooru leans his head against the window and berates himself in his mind.

He's being childish. He's being childish and petty, and sulking while he's at it, and the fact that he knows all of that only adds to his mounting irritation. He knows Iwaizumi's friends are important to him—ruining a good night is the last thing he wants to do—and yet it's not like Tooru can help what he feels. If he could wave a hand and make the sluggish feeling tugging at his limbs go away, he would.

Brandon drops them off at the dorms with a see ya, Oikawa! See ya, Hajime! and the walk back to Iwaizumi's building is frustratingly quiet, filled with a tension that slowly creeps around Tooru's throat.

When Iwaizumi finally leads them into his room and closes the bedroom door behind them, he sighs and faces Tooru with his arms crossed. "Alright. What's wrong."

Tooru takes a seat on the edge of Iwaizumi's bed and fiddles with a stray thread from the comforter. "What do you mean?"

"You were acting weird all night," Iwaizumi says, coming over to sit next to him.

Tooru's lips pull into a pout as he frowns down at the thread in between his fingers. "I'm fine, Iwa-chan, it's nothing."

A snort. "You wanna try that again but without being a brat?"

Tooru glares at him. Iwaizumi just lifts a brow from his otherwise deadpan expression, and after a staring contest that lasts all of two seconds, Tooru groans and flops back on the bed, scrubbing his hands over his face. "Ugh, fine!"

His hands still over his eyes, Tooru mumbles an answer.

"What was that?" Iwaizumi asks.

Tooru slowly peeks through his fingers at Iwaizumi. "They called you 'Hajime.'"

"Oh. Well, yeah, 'cause Americans use given names instead. What about it?"

Another groan as Tooru removes his hands completely and lets them fall onto the mattress. "Ugh, it's just." His pout returns, his lower lip a little wobbly. "You looked so . . . unaffected by them calling you by your given name. I don't even call you that. Not all the time, anyway."

Iwaizumi blinks, his stare locked with Tooru's. There's a beat of silence before he says, "Oh."

Tooru sits up immediately. "What do you mean, 'oh'?"

"Well, I mean . . ." Iwaizumi trails off and casts his gaze to a spot on the floor, a blush creeping over his face. "I don't care that they do 'cause they're just my friends from school, but . . ."

Tooru leans forward. "But?"

Iwaizumi's cheeks redden further. "But when you call me that, it actually means something, so I can't have you calling me by my given name all the time. It'd be bad for my health."

Tooru's eyes widen. Then his cheeks begin to hurt with how fiercely he grins. "Oh?"

Iwaizumi glares at him, the red dusting his skin belying his annoyance. "Oh, shut up! It's not like I could go around calling you . . . y'know!"

Tooru scoots closer to him, pressing in on his space and delighting in how flustered Iwaizumi is getting, in how he seems to be looking at everything except Tooru. "Calling me what, Hajime?"

The blush expands to paint Iwaizumi's entire face red. "S-shut up! I'm not saying it!"

"Oh-ho?" Tooru leans even closer so their thighs are flush together in a line. "It's just a name, Hajime, what's the big deal?"

Iwaizumi scowls, grits his teeth, and seems to brace himself before he looks Tooru dead in the eye and says in a low, rough voice, "You really wanna find out, Tooru?"

The heat that swallows Tooru's face is so intense, he's certain there must be steam coming out of his ears, and the want that yanks at his gut has him yanking at Iwaizumi in turn, crushing their lips together and pulling them down on the bed.

Later, once Tooru is lying boneless on top of Iwaizumi and their breathing has returned to normal, Iwaizumi places a gentle kiss on Tooru's bare shoulder. "I'm sorry, by the way. I didn't mean to make you feel like my friends were intruding on our relationship or anything."

Tooru slowly lifts his head to sleepily meet Iwaizumi's lips with his own. "I'm sorry too. I got upset over nothing. I hope I didn't ruin the night."

A soft snort. "Nah, don't worry. They all loved you, I could tell."

"Yeah?" A teasing smirk spreads on Tooru's face.  "Just as much as you?"

Iwaizumi glares at him, pulling Tooru down a bit to kiss again with a little more force. "Not possible. I have the high score when it comes to loving you."

Tooru can't help it—he breaks into a fit of giggles. The red that had begun to fade from Iwaizumi's cheeks comes back in full force, and he frowns even more. "What?!"

"Such a cheesy line, Iwa-chan," Tooru chuckles. "It's very endearing."

"Shut up. I'm kicking you out of my room."

Tooru laughs and kisses him again, lazy and slow, just enjoying the sensation of their lips softly meeting again and again. It doesn’t matter what Iwaizumi’s friends call him. Tooru is the only one who gets to see him like this, the only one who can affect Iwaizumi by using his given name.

"I love you, Iwa-chan."

"Love you too. Idiot."

Notes:

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!! thank you so much for reading, and comments and kudos are greatly appreciated as always!! ♥

special thanks and much love to:

- my dear friend bea who, as always, lets me send them screenshots of the fics that i write and who agreed with me that this silly fic is a much needed break from writing pure angst 24/7
- raven, for the genius input on matsukawa's nickname in the gc and for swapping their fic with mine for ten minutes in order for us to both get our writing brains back ♥ also this is never stated in the fic but the reason iwaizumi's friends refer to oikawa by his last name is cuz when iwaizumi talks about oikawa, that's how he refers to him you can retweet the fic post here, or come say hi on twitter! i have an upcoming multichapter iwaoi fic currently torturing me as i write it, and i am VERY excited to post once it's finished, so stay tuned for that! see u next time :D