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The first time Tooru sees Iwaizumi's mother he’s three and a half years old, wide eyed and gaping at the tallest woman he’s ever seen, besides his mother. In hindsight, she’s not that tall but Tooru doesn’t even come up to his mother’s hip so, to him, she’s the tallest woman in the world.
The other boy standing there is three and a half years old, too, standing next to his mother with his arms crossed and a scowl on his face like no other. The first thing he does it make a loud noise and step in front of his mother. Then he’s holding his arms out and yelling, “Stop it! She’s my Mama.”
“Hajime,” she says firmly, brushing her fingers through his hair. “Be nice. Tooru is moving into the house next door with his Mama.”
Hajime. Anyway.
“You’re pretty,” Tooru blurts, finger flying up and pointing directly at her face. “I like your shirt.”
“Oh,” she says, crouching and smiling. Tooru can’t help but reach out and touch the silk fabric on her shoulder. Softly, reverently. It’s very pretty. “Blue? It’s my favorite color.”
“You’re pretty,” he says again as he touches the side of her face.
Iwaizumi chooses that moment to shove into the conversation, well, shove Tooru, really, hard enough to send him tipping sideways.
He hears his Mama start apologizing, and that’s layered with Hajime’s Mama apologizing, but Tooru is looking at Hajime. He’s taller than Tooru and his eyes are also green. They’re best friends, Tooru decides.
“She’s my Mama,” Hajime yells, voice breaking on tears.
“Hajime,” she snaps, catching the back of his shirt as he lunges for Tooru again.
Tooru straightens up and rubs the sore spot on his chest. He looks at the pretty lady, at the boy who’s taller than him, and at his own Mama. Hajime is standing there, fists clenched at his sides as tears run down his face. His eyes are green, too, and he’s more brown than Tooru is. Tooru holds his hand up and looks at it and then he looks at Hajime’s hand, still squeezed into a fist. Hajime could be very good at holding hands. He puts his hand down and looks back at Hajime’s green eyes.
“Hajime,” he repeats, setting his hands on his hips. “You’re pretty, too, even though you’re not wearing a blue shirt. You’re still pretty.”
Hajime doesn’t hit him again that day, which is good. They play Dinosaurs and then they play Bug Monster and then Hajime teaches him how to play Stomp on the Grass. Hajime holds his hand. His hand is sweaty and warm and Tooru likes holding hands.
Tooru never really stops thinking that Iwaizumi’s mother is the most beautiful woman in the world, besides his Mama.
It’s an issue again when they’re thirteen, bursting with things like hormones and feelings and absolutely consumed with volleyball. They’re out at dinner one night and Iwaizumi’s sitting next to him, probably a bit too close, with his parents across from them.
“I like your shirt, Auntie,” Tooru says. It’s soft blue. His first memory of her is turquoise tinted with the colors of a spring sunset in Miyagi.
Iwaizumi huffs before his mother can respond, though, and then there are three pairs of curious eyes pinned on him and he has the audacity to get shifty about it.
“What?” he snaps. “I didn’t say anything.”
It’s not until later that Iwaizumi is shoving his head into a pillow in Tooru’s bed and mumbling into that Tooru never says he likes his shirts that Tooru realizes he’s jealous. It’s funny and stupid all at once and a little too much for thirteen year old Tooru’s head to wrap around so he laughs and burrows himself under the covers, into Iwaizumi’s side so he can squirm his way into being Iwaizumi’s human pillow.
“You look like your mom,” Tooru says when Iwaizumi relaxes into him.
“You, too.”
“I do not,” Tooru says, stupidly happy at the way Iwaizumi wiggles against him, pulls Tooru in closer even though they’re probably too old to be sleeping in the same bed. Well, maybe not the same bed, but definitely like this. They’re definitely too old to be wrapped up together especially because Iwaizumi has the propensity to wake up, hard and pressed uncomfortably (very comfortably, really) against Tooru’s stomach while he drools into Tooru’s shoulder.
“You do,” Iwaizumi insists, shoving his hands underneath Tooru. “Warm.”
“You look like your mom more than I look like my mom,” Tooru replies, shivering
as Iwaizumi prods at the small of his back with cold fingers. “Stop that.”
Iwaizumi just hums, rubbing his face into Tooru’s chest, “You’re warm.”
“Stop it, Iwa-chan.”
Iwaizumi’s fingers are still digging at the small of his back, his breath is warm on Tooru’s neck and it’s a lot, really, because Tooru knows he likes boys, knows he likes Iwa-chan in a way that’s not really just best friends, maybe. But he’s not sure. He doesn’t have any other friends he’s close enough with to ask if they want to kiss their best friend, too. Either way, Iwaizumi twists around until his head is on Tooru’s chest and Tooru can look straight at his stupid face. He’s got some spots on his chin, he’s sort of weird looking when he’s falling asleep with his eyelids fluttering and his breathing getting all slow and deep, but he really looks like his mom and he really looks pretty and everything's kind of alright in that moment.
Even at eighteen, looking at her sort of makes him feel like all the air’s been sucked right out of his chest. She’s unbelievably tall, her hair falls thick and dark, frames the smooth line of her jaw, the bright green of her eyes. She’s beautiful and Iwaizumi’s dad looks at her like she hung every star in the sky just for him. Iwaizumi gags at the two of them, holds his hand up in their direction and says, “I don’t need to see that shit.”
But it’s nice.
It’s nice because Tooru’s parents have never been like that. They love each other, sure, in a way that's a little more controlled, a little more traditional. Tooru’s dad is not like Iwaizumi’s dad, who sneaks off upstairs with his wife, who kisses her soundly on the mouth whenever he damn well pleases, who tells Iwaizumi that if he doesn’t want to see it he can march his happy ass up to his room and hang out there with Tooru. And Tooru grins, looks to Iwaizumi for a response but Iwaizumi is just smiling and holding up two middle fingers.
Either way, she’s breathtaking and Iwaizumi at eighteen is her spitting image. They have the same mile-wide grin, the same eyes, the same strong nose. They’re both confident and outgoing, loud-voiced and completely unaware of the stares they get.
The two of them go up to Iwaizumi’s room, anyway, because they’ve got homework to do and volleyball to talk about and Twitter timelines to catch up on because Iwaizumi’s got this little group of online gaming friends that tweet way too much and he’s alway got to show Tooru what they’re saying.
So, they talk and Iwaizumi is accidentally gorgeous. Iwaizumi has grown into the baby fat he used to carry, turned it to muscle and calloused hands paired with the most disgustingly kind eyes that Tooru has ever seen. He rolls into morning practice with un-brushed hair and his shorts on inside out and he’s gorgeous. He throws his head back and laughs at a joke about jerking off and he’s gorgeous.
That day he sits in his bedroom, brow pulled low as he tells Tooru that he’s struggling, really, to find a balance between practice and school, between volleyball and preparing for University entrance exams and Tooru can’t breathe. Their knees are touching and Tooru wants to be touching more. He needs Iwaizumi’s fingers on the back of his hand, the nape of his neck, a slap on the back during practice. He wants Iwaizumi’s face in his hands so he can trace features he’s traced a hundred times, so he can relish in the smooth slide of skin on skin, in Iwaizumi’s inevitable ruddy blush and shifty awkwardness when they’ve got to come back to the real world and stop lingering in goofy nonsense.
They’re at that point, too, where Tooru can just touch him when he gets that urge, that flutter in his gut that tells him he needs to put his hands on Iwaizumi. So he reaches out and sets a hand on the side of Iwaizumi’s face.
Iwaizumi’s mouth snaps closed and he gives Tooru a look that’s somewhere in the middle between amused and sheepish.
“Am I complaining too much?” Iwaizumi asks.
“No,” Tooru says. “You’re just handsome.”
“Thank you,” Iwaizumi says but it sounds more like a question. His eyes are wandering over Tooru’s face, slow and careful. “Are you okay, dude?”
Tooru hums and drags his thumb across Iwaizumi’s cheekbone, down the side of his face to the hinge of his jaw. He brings his other hand up and cups the other side of Iwaizumi’s face.
“Feels good,” Iwaizumi mumbles, eyes sliding closed. “I like when you do this.”
“You look like your mom,” Tooru says before he can catch himself.
Iwaizumi rolls his eyes. “Ah, shit. I know. It’s bad, right? She’s like my twin, dude.”
Tooru snorts. “It’s not bad that you look like her.”
“Yeah, I bet you think so,” Iwaizumi says, raising an eyebrow. “You’ve always had the hots for her. I remember how pissed off it used to make me that you called her pretty all the time.”
“I called you pretty, too!” Tooru brushes his thumbs across Iwaizumi’s eyelids, back across his eyebrows.
“Totally not the same,” Iwaizumi says, head leaning heavily into Tooru’s hand. “That feels good. What about me looks like Mama?”
“Everything,” Tooru says. It’s vague so he improvises.
“This,” he says, ghosting his fingers along Iwaizumi’s jaw. He likes the smooth curve of it, the shape of his chin, the arch of his brow, the slope of his forehead. He likes smoothing Iwaizumi’s eyebrows, brushing his thumbs across Iwaizumi’s eyelids, so he does it. Slow and careful until Iwaizumi’s shoulders are sagging and he’s leaning heavy to one side.
“This,” he repeats, touching the bridge of his nose. Iwaizumi’s mother has the same nose, strong and sloped far too nicely. It scrunches adorably when Iwaizumi is feeling silly, when Tooru makes a joke so stupid that Iwaizumi doesn’t even laugh, just gives Tooru a look. Iwaizumi’s eyes open again and Tooru loves his eyes, loves the slate green color, loves how honest they are.
“These,” he says as he drags his thumbs across Iwaizumi’s cheekbones. He loves how Iwaizumi’s face has matured but his eyes have always been the same as his mother’s. He loves the way they look now, relaxed and focused on Tooru easily, like they’re meant to be there or something, like it comes naturally. Tooru supposes that it probably does after being friends for fifteen years. It’s mutual, though. Tooru feels like no matter what, his eyes end up back on Iwaizumi. They gravitate towards each other. Tooru could find him in a crowd of a thousand people, easily.
“Your eyes.” Tooru cups Iwaizumi’s cheek and drags his thumbs along the hollow below Iwaizumi’s eyes.
Iwaizumi really does look like his mom. If he concentrates, though, he can see Iwaizumi’s father in the actual shape of his eyes, the tilt of smile.
Iwaizumi’s eyes are still on him after he pulls himself from his train of thought.
“Are you gonna kiss me?” Iwaizumi asks.
It’s a strange thing to tease, considering what they’ve been doing lately, which is exactly that.
Summer break means hot weather and an off-putting abundance of time that Tooru’s been dedicating to his best friend since they were old enough to go off on adventures in town by themselves. They still spend summers like that, sure, Iwaizumi panting as Tooru goads him for another race, another wrestling match, another mile but it’s different now. There’s something pressing about spending time together this summer, the summer of their third year, their last summer as high schoolers.
Summer’s been good to Iwaizumi.
The sun is good to Iwaizumi.
It pulls seemingly endless energy from the marrow of his bones at it’s peak, turns him into a lag-limbed mess of a boy in the evening. Tooru touches the shell of his ear, the soft skin behind it and watches Iwaizumi’s eyes slide shut again. The sun gives Iwaizumi dark freckles on the bridge of his nose and two lines on it that are a shade or two lighter from his sunglasses. He pulls his shirt off when they laze around in the backyard and the pull of muscle in his arms is gorgeous, the shift in his shoulders makes Tooru’s mouth dry. It shouldn't still be surprising anymore, how attracted Tooru is to Iwaizumi, but it still catches him off guard, makes it hard to breathe. So summer break means kissing and touching and being cramped together in a too-hot bedroom so they can get away with it. They haven’t done much, but what they’ve done they’ve done a lot. Tooru looks at Iwaizumi’s mouth and tries not to think too hard about the warm pressure of his it against Tooru’s neck, his cheeks, his lips.
Tooru should probably answer his question.
“Do you want me to?”
Iwaizumi looks surprised, like he wasn’t expecting his question to be answered with another question. His head tips and he looks off to the side because Iwaizumi isn’t his boyfriend and they’re not dating but his mouth tastes like home and good and warm and it just fits. Tooru can almost hear the cogs in Iwaizumi’s brain turning as he smooths the hair near his temples, down in front of his ears. He cups the back of Iwaizumi’s neck and pulls him close, presses their foreheads together and closes his eyes so he can just appreciate having Iwaizumi close to him. Iwaizumi relaxes into the touch, bringing his hand up and squeezing Tooru’s wrist.
“You okay? Sorry if that was a weird thing to joke about.”
“Yeah,” Tooru says. “Just need to recharge.”
Iwaizumi doesn’t respond to him, just lets himself be touched. Tooru cups the sides of Iwaizumi’s neck, presses his thumbs up into the soft underside of his jaw and runs them along the barely-there scratch of the stubble that Iwaizumi wants to badly to grow into something he can be at least a little bit proud of. Iwaizumi's breath is warm on the bottom half of his face, deep and steady like Iwaizumi tends to be, like he never pretends to be, sometimes. Tooru likes that, though, the way Iwaizumi isn't always solid, the way he breaks down and the way he's honest about it. The slope of his shoulders is broad and Tooru wants to slide his hands down it without the shirt.
"Off?" Iwaizumi asks.
"Mind reader," Tooru replies, leaning back and smiling.
"Hey," Iwaizumi snaps, pulling off his shirt. "Don't look at me all soft like that. Makes me feel like a mush."
"You are a mush."
Tooru sets his hands on Iwaizumi's shoulders, watches the way Iwaizumi lets out the littlest of shivers at Tooru slides his hands down them and squeezes Iwaizumi's biceps.
"Don't flex." Tooru snorts when Iwaizumi does.
"That probably would've ripped the sleeves of my shirt off," Iwaizumi says, casual and offhandedly hilarious.
Tooru gives him a pointed look and he just grins, eyes crinkling.
"You love me."
"Yeah," Tooru says.
Iwaizumi's laugh cuts off with a noise in the back of his throat and then he's leaning back into Tooru's space. He's pressing their foreheads together and he's pressing their noses together, pressing his nose into Tooru's cheek and kunik kissing him like they're in elementary school again. Tooru trails his fingers across the curve of Iwaizumi’s elbow, all the way down his forearms until his wrists are right there and Tooru can press his fingers into it, feel his pulse thrumming quick and deep.
"Is this weird?" Iwaizumi asks against the bow of Tooru’s lips.
"Probably," Tooru replies, just as muffled.
It’s definitely weird, but there’s nothing like the feeling of Iwaizumi’s breath against his cheek, of his own nose pressed into the soft give of Iwaizumi’s cheek.
""S my favorite." Iwaizumi sounds half-asleep. “You’re my favorite.”
Tooru's heart gives an awful little squeeze. "You can’t just say things like that."
“I’ll say whatever I want,” Iwaizumi mumbles.
“Don’t,” Tooru says.
Every time they talk their mouths brush.
“You’re my other half, probably,” Iwaizumi says like it’s no big deal and, again, it’s a lot because Iwaizumi just says things, blunt and honest and overwhelming and Tooru’s breath is catching in his throat when he tips his head and turns their kunik into a proper kiss, soft and lingering turned slow and deep and patient. Iwaizumi’s hand lands on the back of his neck, fingers curling warm and secure as he kisses Tooru, sighing through his nose.
“I don’t look that much like my mom, though,” he says when Tooru has to lean back to breathe, uneven and loud, and then Tooru’s reeling backwards and laughing so hard that his stomach cramps.
It’s simple, really, because Iwaizumi does look like his mother and Tooru is willing to argue with him about it until they’re wrestling loud enough that they get scolded.