sport for our neighbors

Kuroo bursts into Kenma’s room (which happens more often than Kenma would like), waving his laptop, eyes bright.

This can’t be good.

“Kenma!” says Kuroo. “I have a brilliant idea.”

*

Kenma watches a whole of two episodes as Kuroo translates in rapid Japanese, watching Kenma’s reactions as if he’s expecting him to be excited about this too.

Kenma slides the laptop off his lap.

“When did you get so good at English?” he asks.

“Never mind that!” Kuroo’s squatting on his bed, elbows on his knees. “So? Whaddya say?”

“I don’t get it,” says Kenma. “What would be the point of recreating the Lizzie Bennett Diaries?”

“It would be fun! Also, you would make the perfect Lydia,” Kuroo says gleefully. “Wouldn’t you?”

Kenma stares at him.

*

Kuroo runs into the problem of actually having a Lizzie for their Lizzie Bennet Diaries remake. He’s been texting Tsukishima all last night and evening about this brilliant idea. Tsukishima’s response had been, why the hell do you think I’M George, which makes Kuroo absolutely ecstatic, because otherwise Tsukishima wouldn’t have admitted to knowing exactly what he was talking about.

He flops a long arm around Kenma during volleyball. “Kenmaaa,” he whines. “We need a Lizzie.”

“You need a what?”

Kenma tosses the ball in his hands. Kuroo says, “A redhead protagonist! For our—”

A thought suddenly occurs to him. He gasps.

“Wait, there’s a redhead on the Karasuno team, right? The little guy?”

Kenma blinks. “Shoyo,” he confirms, and Kuroo grins.

“He can be our Lizzie! And! And and and,” he adds, thinking of the rest of Karasuno. “That angry setter kid can be Darcy! It’s perfect.”

“Am I—”

“You’re still Lydia,” Kuroo says, waving a hand. “But this time it actually makes sense. You are totally the Lydia to Shoyo-kun’s Lizzie.”

“I don’t think—”

“Text him,” says Kuroo. “And tell him to bring the rest of the Karasuno team, too. We are making this happen.”

*

Turns out that even though asking the Karasuno team to come to Tokyo to hang out takes but a minute, they have to wait weeks until they’re both free to use a practice match as an excuse to meet up.

The freak quick duo is not impressed by the casting choices.

“Isn’t he the main character’s love interest?” Kageyama growls, staring at the script.

Kenma is gaping, because holy shit, Kuroo wrote scripts.

“When did you have the time for all this?” he asks.

Kuroo grins at him and doesn’t answer. Instead he says to Kageyama, “Yep!”

“And Hinata’s the main character?”

Hinata, from the other end of the gym, is flipping through his script. They hear him shriek.

“WHY IS THERE A KISSING SCENE?”

“There’s a kissing scene?”

Kageyama’s scowl could penetrate the souls of baby kittens. Too bad Kuroo’s not a baby kitten.

“I mean, c’mon,” he says to Kageyama. “You guys are basically the same character and couple anyway. Hinata-kun’s… a redhead. And you’re grumpy and rude.”

“I am not grumpy and rude!”

“You kind of are.”

Hinata’s come over, clutching his script. In the background, Daichi and Sugawara are voicing their confusion as being cast respectively as Jane and Bing, while Nishinoya seems completely ecstatic at being the Charlotte to Hinata’s Lizzie.

Kageyama scowls more—apparently that’s possible—as Hinata throws his arm around Kenma’s shoulders.

“But you’re my sister in this,” he chirps to Kenma. “And that fits, doesn’t it?”

Kuroo smirks as Kenma agrees.

*

Hinata and Kageyama-kun are still being weird about their roles even after they’ve filmed the first few episodes like amateurs on the volleyball court.

“I don’t see why – ”

“There’s a kiss scene – ”

“But you know they started off hating each other?” says Sugawara.

“Yeah,” they both say.

“And that’s how you started off too, right?”

They don’t look at each other.

“Yeah.”

“And then they grow to like each other, and you two did too. Right?”

Hinata and Kageyama make vague sounds of affirmation. Sugawara beams.

*

Tanaka, who’s cast as Fitz, complains about not being in enough episodes, so they kick Kuroo off being on camera duty (“But I’m the one who got all of us together!”) and let him do that too, which means that their version of the Lizzie Bennett Diaries won’t be too friendly for the easily motion sick.

Nishinoya yells, “SHOYOOOOO” a lot. Kuroo’s pretty sure it’s not in the script, but he loves it anyway because it truly highlights Lizzie and Charlotte’s friendship. When Collins comes in, Asahi blunders over to Kuroo.

“Isn’t,” he says, “isn’t Collins, y’know, Charlotte’s love interest later?”

“Aha!” says Daichi. “You read!”

Kuroo shrugs. “Take it as you will,” he says. “He and Charlotte elope in the books, but they just get engaged in the original web series.”

“O-Oh…”

Asahi leaves, scratching his head, not feeling any less confused.

*

Tsukishima watches most of it from the side, smirking. He probably thinks he’s not in it at all. But Kuroo’s been saving his part as a surprise.

“Tsukki~” he calls, as they prepare to film another episode. The Karasuno kids have been staying at a hotel all week, and it’s only day three. Since they can’t exactly stay forever, despite that it’s vacation, Kuroo had cut the script down to an amount of episodes that are workable in a week.

Tsukishima glances at him, arms still folded.

“What do you want?”

“Aw, c’mon. You know you’re enjoying this.” Kuroo slings an arm around his neck. Tsukishima doesn’t look at him. “Since you’re the only other one of us who’s watched all of it, too.”

Tsukishima mutters, “Shut up.”

“Ha!”

Kuroo pats him on the back, takes his arm off him. “Here’s your script.”

“My—what?”

“You’re playing George,” Kuroo tells him cheerfully, and then skips off.

Tsukishima nearly rips his script in half.

*

“Why aren’t you anyone?” Kenma asks him at the end of the day.

“I’ve decided I’m Mary,” says Kuroo. “So I’m only there with you in spirit.”

Kenma pauses his game to stare at Kuroo.

“What the fuck. We are not cousins.”

*

Yamaguchi’s thrown off when Kuroo gives him a script, too, says, “You’ll be our perfect Gigi!”

He runs off. Yamaguchi and Kageyama stare at each other.

“…welcome, sister,” Kageyama deadpans.

Yamaguchi swallows.

*

“Oh my god,” Kenma says, not even bothering to pretend he’s not reading the script. “Shoyo, you can’t wear that.”

“Why not?” Shoyo glances furiously between his script and the camera, smiling too wide. And too fake.

Sugawara whispers, “He’s an awful actor.”

“Yep,” says Daichi. “Yep.”

Sugawara looks at him. “Not like I can say any better for you.”

“Hey!”

“I’m,” says Kenma into his microphone. He clears his throat. “I’m totes adorbs.”

*

“Hey, Kuroo-san,” says Hinata, walking over to him. “I just looked over the episode list and we haven’t filmed a few in between? Why’s that?”

Kuroo sighs despairingly. “Because we need a Caroline,” he says. “She’s interested in Darcy and Bing’s sister, but she’s also evil and I don’t know anyone evil enough to be her.”

Hinata’s eyes light up.

*

“This is so stupid,” Kageyama mutters. “He’s going to say no.”

“He’d like Kuroo-san, though!”

“… you might be right about that.”

The door to the little tykes volleyball club opens up then. Oikawa comes out holding a small child’s hand, and almost trips over several others at the sight of Kageyama and Hinata.

Kageyama coughs.

“Tobio-kun!” Oikawa says, narrowed eyes betraying him. “And shrimpy-kun! What are you doing here?”

“We have a favor to ask you,” says Kageyama.

Oikawa waits.

Kageyama nudges Hinata.

“Oh! Uh.” Hinata fumbles with his fingers. “Are you interested in… joining a. Thing. We’re doing?”

“What thing?”

“A. We’re.” Hinata coughs this time. “We’re recreating this American web video series, it’s based on the books Pride and Prejudice.”

“No way.” Oikawa’s eyes widen. “You watch the Lizzie Bennett Diaries?”

Kageyama and Hinata glance at each other.

*

Shit hits the fan when Tsukishima refuses to flirt with Hinata, much less Kenma, and Asahi gets distressed that his portrayal of Collins isn’t at all like how he is in the actual series. (“I mean, have you seen Kenma?”) Then Sugawara says something about why his character is related to Oikawa’s, and Oikawa says, “What’s wrong with that?” and Tanaka jumps in and says, “Sugawara being related to you is a compliment!” and Asahi mutters, “I’m not sure I’d say that.”

It all turns into a big mess and Kuroo’s pretty sure they break a roll of film with the chaos and the volleyballs because someone apparently thought it was a good idea to let them out. Oikawa’s too violent but so is Tanaka and Nishinoya yells a lot. Most of the Nekoma team, who’ve been standing around and helping with the set ups but otherwise have been doing nothing, go home that night with headaches.

*

“So I guess we’re done,” says Hinata, swinging his arms.

Kageyama stares up at the night sky. “I guess.”

“We’ve,” says Hinata. “We’ve still got a few days left in Tokyo.”

Kageyama makes a noise of agreement.

“Too bad we didn’t get to do that kiss scene.”

“Yeah.” Kageyama laughs half-heartedly. “Too bad.”

They’re silent. Then Hinata starts, “Do you – ” and Kageyama says, “But what if we – ” and they both stop, stare at each other.

Neither of them is in costume, but they both figure that it’s for the better when they do the kiss scene anyway.

*

“None of this is workable!” Kuroo wails as he watches what he managed to save of their recording on his computer a few days later. “I can’t post any of it online!”

“I didn’t think you would post it anyway.”

“Of course I would. It would’ve been a masterpiece.” Kuroo wipes a single invisible tear. In his mind, Adele is playing in the background.

Kenma says, “There’s no way this would’ve ended well, you know that, right?”

“It could’ve ended perfectly.” Kuroo sighs. “At least shorty-kun and Kageyama-kun are fucking in real life, now. It’s a dream come true.”

“Stop that,” says Kenma. “You’re so weird.”

Kuroo picks up the camera. “Well,” he says, looking at it thoughtfully, “we could always film our version of the Lydia and Mary episodes.”

Kenma makes plans to destroy the rest of the empty tape that night.