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"You guys seem pretty close to me."
Sawamura's deep voice crackles across the connection. Kuroo can hear Hinata yelling incoherently in the background.
Kuroo glances down at Kenma's dark roots keeping pace with him and says, "Every team could use some work, right?"
What he doesn't say is, "Karasuno is the gayest volleyball team we have ever encountered. I aspire to reach your level of brazen homosexuality for the sake of team cohesion and understanding," and, "Lev is never going to get better at receiving if he keeps pretending like he's not staring at Yaku's ass."
"I suppose that's true." Sawamura sounds distracted.
"Noya-san, you're so cool!" There's a full thirty seconds of obnoxious laughter, loud enough to make Kuroo turn around to see if Nishinoya isn't actually in Tokyo right behind him, before Sawamura yells at his team to be quiet. A heavy sigh escapes his phone's receiver. Kuroo imagines Sawamura taking a moment to collect himself.
"Well, here are a few things I try to do to boost team morale..."
1. Eating together after practice
Let's start off nice and easy, Kuroo tells himself.
"Alright, let's go get some ramen," he says to his team, clapping Yamamoto on the back and flashing a winning smile. Lev looks like he's about to pass out from the practice drills Yaku has been grinding him through, but he gets up on his feet as soon as Kuroo mentions food.
"Sounds good to-"
"I want yakisoba," Yaku says, interrupting Lev. He looks Kuroo dead in the eye, his eyebrow cocked with a challenge.
This one was supposed to be easy.
"We'll decide this with a match of janken," Kuroo says because he's feeling diplomatic today.
Yaku beats him soundly. Kuroo frowns and stares at his fist the same way he stares at Lev when it's been a long day and Lev's arms are nothing more than glorified spaghetti strands when he tries to block.
"Best two out of three?"
The final score ends up being 25-24 in Kuroo's favor.
"Ha! Ramen it is," Kuroo says triumphantly. He turns around for a high-five, but everyone else has already gone home. Only Kai remains standing behind them, offering them an unamused grimace.
"This is your fault," Yaku says.
2. Karaoke
"ONE OK ROCK," Kuroo insists.
"Kyary Pamyu Pamyu."
"Kyary Pamyu Pamyu?" Yamamoto mouths in shock at Kuroo. Kuroo is equally as stunned, and Yaku takes the opportunity to steal the microphone from him. He shoves Lev out of his way, but Lev is too busy being doubled over in laughter to care.
"She's a Japanese treasure," Yaku says seriously before launching into PONPONPON. Inuoka enthusiastically joins in during the chorus. At some point, everyone except Kuroo and Kenma begins dancing along to the pop hit.
"I need a drink," Kuroo says.
There's a beat of silence between them. Yamamoto starts wall twerking. Yaku and Shibayama don't miss a single dance move. Lev shakes the tambourine right into Kenma's left ear.
"I need to go home," Kenma says.
3. Taking care of each other
Kenma misses practice one day because he's down with a cold, so Kuroo makes the entire team visit him at home after they finish.
"Kuro, why did you bring everyone here," Kenma says. He sounds tired and miserable from underneath a pile of blankets.
"We wanted to make sure you were doing okay! Here, I brought you some Tylenol." Kuroo moves to put the bag down but is stopped by a hand to his chest.
"Kenma, I brought you some herbal medicine and ginger tea," Yaku says. He grabs Kuroo's bag and throws it out of the bedroom with a sweet smile.
"Everyone takes Tylenol when they're sick," Kuroo argues.
"Eastern medicine has worked for thousands of years. I don't see why it would stop now."
"There's no empirical support for it, what exists out there-"
"The fact that my ancestors survived is enough evidence-"
"Pity that their bloodline has to be continued by you-"
Kenma coughs weakly, and the sad sound cuts them both short. Kai is in the back of the room, shaking his head. Everyone else has already left, having told Kenma to feel better before quietly filing out in the middle of the argument.
"Kenma, do you need anything?" Kuroo asks worriedly. He gets down on his knees and pushes back Kenma's bangs from his sweaty forehead.
"Please go home," comes the weak reply.
4. Board games
Yaku ironically suggests Twister, and Kuroo unironically agrees. The rest of the team doesn't want to destroy this fragile moment of peace, so they reluctantly go along with it.
Yamamoto can't even touch his toes without bending over, and it's no surprise that he's the first to be eliminated. Shibayama, on the other hand, is ludicrously flexible. When he twists his body over to put his left hand on a green circle, his rear end unknowingly attracts the stare of everyone in the room except Kenma.
"Lev, right hand on red," Yaku says. He sounds distracted, and when Kuroo looks over, his mouth is slightly agape. On some level, Kuroo understands, but at the same time, Shibayama is like, five years old. He's about to call Yaku out for his leering when Lev puts his hand on Shibayama's ass, outlined by his red shorts.
"Do liberos just inherently have perfect, tight asses?" Lev asks the room.
"It is a nice ass," Inuoka chimes in.
Shibayama looks proud underneath his blush.
"Am I supposed to feel flattered?" Yaku frowns. He's still staring.
"What is wrong with our first years," Kuroo says. There are warning bells going off in his head, like the police are going to barge into his house and arrest him if they don't stop soon. He drops onto his elbows, accidentally crushing Kenma, who has the misfortune to be in this team. "We're playing cards next time."
"Strip poker?" Lev looks overly hopeful.
5. Talking about their feelings
Kuroo brings in a baton from the track and field team and presents it to his team after practice wraps up.
"This is our talking stick for today," he says.
Yaku's incredulous face already spells doom for this activity. Kuroo should have known. Sawamura is lucky enough to have Sugawara's support behind these activities, but Yaku's a vicious demon who eats his dreams for breakfast.
"You have got to be fucking kidding me-"
"Hey, only the person with the talking stick gets to talk," Kuroo says. "If anyone has any complaints about the team, you can speak your mind if you have the stick."
Lev swiftly grabs the baton and clears his throat.
"I wish Yaku-san would stop hitting me-"
"You deserve it, Lev."
"Yakkun, you're disrespecting the talking stick."
"This was a dumb idea in the first place-"
Everyone stops talking at once. Fukunaga gently balances the baton in his hands.
"Uh," Fukunaga starts. Yamamoto looks like he's going to have a heart attack. Even Kenma looks up from his 3DS. "This isn't a complaint, but this past week has actually been... kind of nice. I liked playing Twister especially," he says, his voice trailing off to a whisper at the end.
"I agree! This week has been full of gyun but also gwaaah, you know?" Inuoka cuts in excitedly, as if Fukunaga hadn't just spoken his first full sentence since joining the team. Kuroo kind of wants to throttle him.
"Yeah, Twister was great," Lev says. He smiles at Shibayama, and Kuroo starts to get weirded out by this turn in conversation.
"Talking stick. Use it, please," he begs.
"We don't need the damn stick, Kuroo," Yaku says. "I know you're getting these ideas from Sawamura, which means you've sought him out for advice. You're worried about our team with the Spring Tournament coming up, but you should know better than anyone that we're fine the way we are. We're going to win Nationals with the team we have right now."
"Yaku-san is right," Kenma says softly. "We don't need to be like Karasuno. We just need to be Nekoma." The entire team nods along thoughtfully. Yamamoto has gone from potential cardiovascular patient to imminent emotional breakdown. Honestly, Kuroo feels his throat tighten up a bit, too.
"Huh," Kuroo says. He looks at Yaku, who has never seemed more sure of anything in his life. "This was surprisingly insightful."
During their next training camp, Sawamura comes over to talk to Kuroo while the court is still being set up and their teams are warming up.
"So, how'd it go?" he asks.
Kuroo crosses his arms and stares at his team.
Lev lets out a wolf whistle when Shibayama and Yaku help each other stretch. Fukunaga blushes as Kai massages his shoulders. Yamamoto slaps Inuoka's ass after a particularly good spike. From the other side of the court, Kageyama looks both constipated and confused. He hears Hinata say, "I heard they've been working on team bonding to improve their playing," and shortly afterwards, Hinata tries to slap Kageyama's ass, as if he seriously thought it might improve their performance somehow, and then he's bolting from the gym as a scarlet Kageyama hunts him down. We've made it, Kuroo thinks, we're gayer than Karasuno.
"I think it went pretty well."
They win their first practice match against Karasuno. Yaku's smile is blinding when he looks back, and Kuroo finds himself breathing easily for the first time in weeks.
(Bonus:
"Akaashi!" Bokuto cheerfully bounces towards him after scoring a clean point.
Akaashi instinctively covers his ass with his hands.
"Damn that pain in the ass Kuroo-san...")