A/N: All fics posted from this account are authorized reposts from a specific group of writers on AO3. For info on who we are and links to the original AO3 fics, check out our profile! This fic was written by Alana, Crysty, Maddie, and Melissa.

Inspired by the prompt "au where you have a tattoo and it tells you what theyre most passionate about like drawing or grades" from a Tumblr post. (pumpkinpyrrha dot tumblr dot com slash post slash 94395639239)

Everyone is born with a tattoo somewhere on their body. For Kuroko Tetsuya, it was a small, bright orange basketball that covered the inside of his wrist. When Kuroko learned that the tattoo represented his soulmate's passion, he decided he should learn to play the sport his soulmate loved. If his destined partner loved it, he should too.

And that was how Kuroko ended up muttering curses to himself as another teammate nearly crashed into him on the Teikou Middle School basketball court.

"Damn, Tetsu. I'm still not used to that magical appearance shit. Sorry."

Kuroko resisted the urge to roll his eyes and replied, "I was here the whole time, Aomine-kun."

Aomine ignored the usual statement and ruffled Kuroko's hair. "Nice pass during practice earlier, and you didn't pass out today, too. I think you might actually be getting better."

"That doesn't sound like a very nice compliment Aomine-kun." Kuroko frowned. "Also, please don't treat me like a child."

"Tetsu has a surprisingly cute side, huh?" Aomine grinned.

"And Aomine-kun is unexpectedly mean. I believe Akashi-kun has a rule against bullying teammates. It will be a shame to see you leave the team," Kuroko replied with his usual blank face, hiding his amusement.

Aomine feigned hurt, but couldn't help smiling in the end. "You know he wouldn't do that, Tetsu. Besides, you'd miss me too much." He laughed and ran off to join the rest of the team.

Kuroko smiled at his back before following, a warm tingle in his wrist to match the happiness in his heart.

Aomine had never cared that his tattoo was in the small of his back. Why would he want to stare at a book all the time? Apparently his soulmate was just really boring. But when it changed to a basketball, he might have been a little disappointed that he wasn't the first to notice.

"Why were you even staring at my back anyway, Satsuki?!"

"Shut up, Dai-chan. You're secretly happy I pointed it out, aren't you?"

So maybe he'd been a little happy that his soulmate had realized the finer points of basketball. And maybe that happiness had resulted in a "stupid, childish grin" that Satsuki again pointed out.

Whatever.

Maybe his soulmate wasn't so bad after all.

The first time Kuroko noticed something was wrong was when his tattoo was a slightly dimmer colour than usual. He realized it during one of Teiko's practice games while he sat on the bench.

Slightly worried, he mentioned it to Aomine during half-time. "Has this ever happened to you, Aomine-kun?"

Aomine barely spared him a glance. "No. Maybe you're just…tired or something? I don't know." He shrugged, turning away.

As the game resumed, Kuroko noted something was off with Aomine. He was playing as well as usual, but there was a look on his face—of frustration? Of...pain? His wrist throbbed when Aomine rose for another dunk with an expression devoid of energy, only emanating melancholy. Strange...

The look on Aomine's face almost matched the pain in Kuroko's wrist.

The next time Kuroko noticed the pain, he decided to seek out advice.

He had considered asking his parents or grandmother, but decided to ask the one person who seemed to know everything-and thus, was found waiting for Akashi in the club room after practice.

"Kuroko, what are you still doing here so late?" Akashi asked as he walked through the door.

"I had something I wanted to ask you, Akashi-kun. Do you mind staying a bit longer?"

"I don't mind. I just finished my errands for today. What did you want to ask me about?" Akashi sat down on the bench next to Kuroko.

Kuroko wasn't too sure how to broach the subject with Akashi. He'd never talked about something as personal as their soulmate tattoos with any of his friends, at least not in-depth. He unconsciously rubbed his wrist while struggling for words.

"Does this, by chance, have anything to do with the soulmate tattoos?" Akashi asked with a knowing smile.

Kuroko stopped rubbing his wrist and looked at Akashi with his normal blank expression-the only indication of his thoughts was a slight twitch of his brow.

"You're not as hard to read as you think. So what was it that you wanted to ask me? I have to admit this isn't one of my stronger fields of knowledge but I'm willing to help if I can."

Kuroko hesitated a bit before asking, "What does it mean if the area where the tattoo is starts to hurt?"

"If it starts to hurt..." Akashi gave a small hum. "Is it also slightly faded?"

Kuroko nodded.

"Then I believe that means that your soulmate is starting to lose interest in whatever they're passionate about. The more faded the tattoo, the less passionate they are. How much the area hurts is an indicator of how severely your soulmate is struggling with their loss of passion. Once the tattoo is gone completely, your soulmate will have lost all interest in their previous passion. This isn't that uncommon. There are many whose tattoos change all the time without any pain at all."

Kuroko stared the dimming basketball on his wrist with a small frown. He didn't really like that answer.

Akashi gave him a knowing smile before standing up to leave. "You shouldn't worry too much Kuroko. Having you around, I don't think that basketball on your wrist will ever completely fade." He then left Kuroko alone again to his thoughts.

Kuroko really hoped Akashi was right about this.

Kuroko's wrist began stinging the moment Aomine ran out the door of the gym, and not even the cool raindrops against his skin granted him any relief as he ran after him.

When Kuroko caught up to him, Aomine was sitting underneath a nearby bridge, by the river.

"Aomine-kun, please come back to practice."

"Why?"

Kuroko felt a heavy weight settle in his stomach, and couldn't quite figure out what to say before Aomine continued.

"Why? So I can get even stronger? So I can crush our opponents even worse, when they've already given up?"

Kuroko's mind wasn't moving fast enough, so when words finally came, they weren't exactly what he meant to say. "I… I understand, but—"

"Understand?" Aomine's sharp interruption felt like a punch to the stomach and left Kuroko short of breath. "What could you possibly understand, when you can't even do anything on your own?" He let out a humorless laugh. "You know, I wish I had been born like you, Tetsu. I could've had so much more of a goal in life!"

Kuroko tried to ignore his own pain and focus on Aomine, on how badly he needed to be able to connect to Aomine and bring him back. But still, the words cut through him, and he lashed back.

"I'm also…envious of Aomine-kun, and everyone else," he said, slowly at first. "I'd like to try dunking… and shooting three-pointers, and dribbling past my opponents." He gained momentum. "But it's no use lamenting over things I can't do! So instead I'm putting all I have into my passes—"

"Passes?" Aomine interrupted him again. "To who? To Kise? Midorima, Murasakibara? Or, if they're for me, to what end? I can beat anyone all by myself, even without you."

He paused, and it was possibly the longest moment of Kuroko's life, his heart pounding painfully, Aomine's gaze burning into him and stopping his breath.

"I…don't even remember…how to receive your passes anymore."

Silence stretched between them.

Time seemed to stop.

Tears burned in his eyes and blurred his vision.

At some point he vaguely registered Aomine turning around and walking away, and he was overwhelmed with the urge to go after him, because it felt like he was taking a piece of Kuroko with him, the piece of his heart that would never ever give up on Aomine and would always love him so so much, and he wanted it back, he couldn't just give that away and lose it forever, he couldn't—

He gasped as pain suddenly spiked through his wrist, worse than ever before, and he fell to his knees. The rain beat down cold and heavy upon him and he was anchored to the spot.

The pain lessened slightly, but the aftershocks still seared through his skin and muscle and bone, each pulse marked by memories of Aomine's smile, his laugh, his arm around Kuroko's shoulders, his passion for basketball… and Kuroko watched each and every happy image fade to black before his mind's eye.

And suddenly, he understood. Kneeling in the wet grass and mud, his wrist a knot of agony, his thoughts comprising one person… he realized the truth.

Aomine Daiki was his soulmate.

And he'd just watched him walk away.

As the bright colours of his tattoo faded from his back, Aomine was almost too numb to care.

The dull grey, barely visible on his dark skin, seemed no more significant than its brighter precedents—a sign of something yet to come that made no difference in the present. He could barely feel a thing while playing the sport he loved more than anything, so why would losing his soulmate be any different?

He briefly recalled Satsuki's worried remarks over the pain in his back and the fading colours but he'd never put them together because his back didn't hurt when she noticed the colour—he was usually sleeping somewhere. Now though, he wondered if maybe he would have seen some connection between those sharp spikes of pain and more common dull aches that lingered in the base of his spine.

He'd just thought the mental and emotional turmoil of his life was finally affecting his body. He was losing the only thing he'd ever loved. He wouldn't cry over some person he'd never met. He wouldn't cry for himself either.

Shudders racked through Kuroko's entire body as he cradled his shaking wrist, squeezing it like a vice in a desperate attempt to draw more colour out onto his skin. His vision blurred with unshed tears and he choked back a sob, on the precipice of breaking down completely.

He shut his eyes, refusing to cry.

He couldn't stop his soul from crying, but he could hold back the tears.

Broken lines, just barely darker than Kuroko's already pale skin, reflected the shattered state of his heart. No more bold orange or stark black. A faint grey was the only colour left. He pressed his forehead to the tattoo, trying to will the bright lines back into existence, but even his mind betrayed him now. He could only see the faded reminders of what used to be so bright and happy. The lines were so so faint. Just like Aomine.

No.

He refused to go down that route.

His last thought before he drifted into sleep was of Aomine's back, moving into the distance—as faint as his fading tattoo.

When Aomine's tattoo went away completely, it was almost anti-climactic.

He had suffered massive sharp pains throughout the last week. The worst one was during the game versus Meiko-not that they would have lost had he given into the pain and doubled over like he'd wanted to do.

But when the muted grey finally faded to nothing, all he felt was a dull ache that felt…sad. Or empty. It matched his own mood so well he thought he imagined it sometimes.

But no. The pain was real, as was the lack of tattoo. And while he felt a little sorry for his soulmate, he was also a bit relieved. Satsuki had been worried, wondering if he should do something about the stupid thing. What would he do? He had his own problems to deal with already.

First, he loses all interest in basketball. Then, he loses Tetsu. In fact, his stupid tattoo had decided to throb like hell the day Tetsu mentioned something about quitting…

Actually, his tattoo had been hurting a lot whenever Tetsu was in pain… Like that time when Tetsu almost quit the team, back in their first year… Or when Tetsu stuck that damn popsicle down his shirt... Or that day at the river… And, now that he thought about it, that splitting pain at the end of the Meiko game had happened immediately before he had turned around to see Tetsu fall to his knees in tears.

...Shit.

Aomine may have been losing the sport he loved most.

But he'd managed to lose the love of his life first.

It was around the time of Seirin's win against Shinkyo. Kuroko had thrown himself into basketball once more, inspired by a new light and reigniting his old passion. It was a heady feeling-getting back into the game he used to love so much, the game he wanted to love so much again.

He covered his wrist constantly now, and firmly engrained in himself the habit of never looking down at it. But every once in a while, when he was having doubts, he would uncover it and remind himself that he wasn't only doing this for himself, and that he couldn't just give up now. Not until the colours came back. Not until Aomine came back to him.

It had been just another day when he got the text from Momoi. Upon opening it, he nearly dropped his phone, but luckily he managed to keep it together until he could excuse himself to the bathroom - he'd been out getting ice cream with Kagami and the other first years on the team.

Tetsu-kun~! 3 Dai-chan's tattoo is coming back! I'm so glad you're doing better. :)

He stared at the message, then dared to peek at his own tattoo, to see whether maybe, just maybe, there was some sort of correlation…? But no, it was just as faded as ever. He replaced his wristband, disappointed… and yet, he couldn't help but stare at the second half of Momoi's message and think that, yeah, maybe a big part of his motivation was Aomine… but, he was doing this for himself, too. He smiled a little. He could consider this one more battle won.

(When Satsuki had noticed his tattoo returning and informed him excitedly, Aomine feigned ignorance and put on an air of disinterest, as if he didn't check his back almost every day when he was alone.)

"Aomine-kun, I'd like to ask a favor of you."

"...What?"

Kuroko held out his fist, his arm shaking from fatigue. "You never returned my fistbump that day."

"What?! Who—who cares about that?" Aomine exclaimed.

"I do," Kuroko said firmly.

Aomine just looked at him silently for a few moments, and Kuroko gazed back steadily. He wasn't going to let Aomine walk away this time.

"...Alright," Aomine conceded.

The moment their fists connected, Kuroko felt warmth shoot down his arm, and the skin on his wrist tingled. At that moment, he didn't think much of it, partly because his entire body was sort of numb and tingly at that point from exhaustion, and partly because most of his attention was focused on Aomine—for the first time in almost two years, Kuroko was looking into his eyes and seeing the hope of the future, instead of the despair of the past.

The night after the loss to Seirin was a long one. Aomine was exhausted, physically and emotionally, but when he laid down in bed and closed his eyes, he just saw the game replaying in his head. And when he tried pointedly to think of something else, anything else, all he saw was Tetsu looking up at him with those big blue eyes and that little smile. He never fell asleep, and the next day passed in a blur of fatigue.

The next night started out the same way. He stopped checking the clock at some point, because it was just too off-putting to see time moving forward as usual when all his thoughts seemed to be chasing each other around in circles over and over again. So, he had no idea what time it was when his phone rang, but he answered it immediately, hoping it might snap him out of it.

"Hello?" he muttered, bracing himself to hear Satsuki's loud, bubbly voice-she was the only person who ever called him anymore, he never even had to look at the caller ID to know it would be her.

"Hello, Aomine-kun."

Aomine froze. "...Tetsu?"

Thirty minutes later, he was standing on a street court with Tetsu in the middle of the night. And there was something about the way Tetsu was looking at him, he wasn't sure what it was, but it had him rambling to Tetsu about his sleepless night, and the way he felt kind of lost at the moment.

Tetsu looked sad at first, and Aomine regretted dumping all his gross feelings on him like that. He was about to change the subject when the corners of Tetsu's mouth pulled up into a gentle smile and he said, "I think you're going to be alright, though, Aomine-kun.'' And then he pulled off his wristband to reveal a tattoo of a basketball on his wrist. It was faded around the edges, but vibrant and bold in the middle.

With a jolt, Aomine realized this was Tetsu's soulmate tattoo. Of course, Aomine had already figured out who his own tattoo was for, and assumed that Tetsu knew as well, since Tetsu was definitely smarter than he was, but they had never really gotten the chance to talk about it before… well, before everything went to shit in middle school.

"Momoi-san told me yours has come back as well," Tetsu said quietly when Aomine didn't respond. He looked more hesitant, now, and Aomine felt guilty, but he really just wasn't sure what to say. He kind of felt like he was having the realization all over again, and it was a little overwhelming. Tetsu is my soulmate.

Tetsu was silent now, and moved to pull his wristband back on. That's what finally spurred Aomine to act. He grabbed Tetsu's wrist, holding it up so he could look at the tattoo, gently brushing his thumb over the skin as if to confirm it was really there.

Kuroko shivered as Aomine touched his tattoo, as it sent a burst of warmth down his arm. The warmth also spread to his face as Aomine continued holding his wrist. But when he recovered from the shock, Kuroko snatched his hand back-not unkind but very firm. He wasn't willing to lay his heart out just yet.

"You know what this means, right?" He forced the words out, a little hesitant at the strange look on Aomine's face. It wasn't completely awe-filled… it was more of a mix of emotions. And he still hadn't done anything beyond grabbing Kuroko's hand.

"I… yeah, but…" Aomine looked from the tattoo, to Tetsu's face, and then to the ground. "After… everything, does it… Does this change… us?" Aomine wasn't really sure what he wanted, but now that Tetsu was here, he knew one thing - he didn't want to walk away from him again.

Kuroko paused. Aomine couldn't even meet his eyes. Maybe he really shouldn't have asked to meet. "I'm sorry if I'm implying things you'd rather not think about. You don't seem pleased by the idea. Please forget I ever arranged this meeting." He turned around and started to walk away.

Aomine reached out and grabbed his arm again. "No! Tetsu, that's not… that's not what I meant," he said. The image of Tetsu walking away from him pulled the words out of him as he continued. "I'm glad you're here. I honestly didn't expect you to want to-to even look at me again. I've spent the last two years assuming I had completely fucked up any chances of ever having you in my life again. But now you're here, and..." He looked right at Tetsu. "...And I want it all back. I never thought I could, but if… if you'll let me, I want to have you back. I miss you."

Kuroko had his head down, refusing to look at Aomine, instead focusing on the blush he felt coming onto his face. He wouldn't let his emotions get the better of him. He couldn't bear to have his heart broken again. "I—" he bit his lip and swallowed down the "I want you, too". It wasn't going to be that easy. "How—how do you want me? Am I just going to be thrown away again later on?" In his rising anger, the blush from earlier had faded and he raised his head to stare down Aomine with the fire in his eyes. "I loved you." It wasn't a confession. It was a fact and he needed it out along with the rest of his speech. "And you ripped my heart to shreds and stomped on it and I refuse to be a doormat for a temperamental teenager that doesn't even love me back. I will concede that I miss you—" He paused, floored by the emotions on Aomine's face, but continued, "But I need to know. What do you want?" Oh god. There were tears. He could feel them forming. Kuroko lowered his head. "Why do you miss me? Daiki, why?"

All the questions and bared truths finally brought a realization to the surface, a fact that Aomine had buried deep within himself along with his hopes for the future, a truth that was finally kicking and screaming its way up through his throat in the form of a few small words—"Because I love you, you idiot! I want to steal you away from stupid Seirin and stupid Eyebrows and lock you away where only I can see you and I want you to stop smiling at that bastard, Kagami, because Tetsu, you used to smile like that at me and—and god, I love you, Tetsu." He practically begged that last sentence but he'd finally realized how much he loved Tetsu and like hell would he let him walk away from him now. "That's why I miss you. And that's why I want… I just—I just want you. I want you to love me too. Please, Tetsu?" Aomine turned around, baring the small of his back to Kuroko. "I want you to tell me that this isn't a lie. We're soulmates aren't we?!" He turned back around, wanting to grab Kuroko and shake him—his body practically vibrated with his desperation. "I love you, Tetsuya… Shouldn't that be enough?"

Kuroko threw his head back, tears streaming down his face, and laughed. "Oh… oh god. I'm… I'm so stupid." He smiled through his tears and looked at Aomine. "God, Daiki. You really know how to make a guy cry, you know? I was trying so hard to keep them in too."

"Wha—I—wait! That was supposed to be a good thing I said! Erm, um—" Aomine panicked. Crying wasn't a good sign, right?!

"Nononono." Kuroko's laughing increased at the sight of Aomine so flustered. "You know there's such thing as happy tears, right?" He walked up to Aomine and hesitantly placed a hand on the bottom of his shirt in question. "We're… we're soulmates, right?" He stood on his tiptoes and pressed a kiss to Aomine's lips. "I suppose you loving me might be enough." He smiled once more, tears still staining his cheeks, but happiness glowing underneath.

The kiss made Aomine grin stupidly. He brought a hand up to cup Tetsu's cheek and wiped at the tears with his thumb. "So… do happy tears and a kiss mean you love me too, or…?"

Kuroko hesitated only a moment this time. "I-I love you... maybe." He blushed, turning his head to the side.

Aomine frowned, then bent to kiss Tetsu's flushed cheek. "...How about now?"

Kuroko's face was an inferno now. "Um… Do I get another kiss if I say it?"

Aomine smirked. "...Maybe."

Kuroko smiled. "How cruel, Aomine-kun." He rose up for another kiss. "I wonder why I love someone like you." He shook his head in mock exasperation before meeting Aomine's eyes with a beatific grin. "I love you too."