Notes: In the comments section, someone has remarked that Kagami is "OOC [...] because he sounds quite arrogant". Normally, I would refrain from dealing with this in my author's notes, but I feel this matter requires a public address. As I have already pointed out to the commenter, Kagami is, in fact, not out of character. Indeed, he sounds arrogant because he is (well, not as much as in the beginning, but I digress), and the fandom tends to forget this a lot. If you don't believe me, reread/rewatch the first arc(s) of the manga/anime. I'm trying to stick as close to the original sources as possible and write this while literally cross-referencing the manga page by page.
Notes 2: I apologize for the short chapter, but I really wanted to cut it this way.

"It is difficult to explain," Kuroko said, feeling sick. How could Kise not know? How could anyone be so dense? "But … the team was missing something."

"Missing?" Kise scrunched up his nose in confusion. "Sports are all about winning. What else is there?"

"I used to think that too, once." On their way to Kuroko's mouth, the words hollowed him out, carving out his flesh and blood, and only shame and bone remained, coated in the traitorous mantle of humanity. "Even now I do not fully understand what was missing back then, but I remember it made me hate basketball. I had loved it before. That is what I find incredible about Kagami-kun. He loves basketball from the bottom of his heart."

"I still don't get it." Kise shook his head. "Well, even if that's why you're so taken with him or whatever it is that's going on, it's not going to last." He smiled nervously, lips strained. Kuroko presumed it was his go-to expression in emergency scenarios, those rare occasions when he wasn't sure what to do with his face. "There's a difference between me and the others of the Generation of Miracles. You all have a special talent that no one else has, that nobody could ever replicate. Not even me. During the match today, I realized this applies to Kagami as well. He hasn't figured it out yet, but he will someday. He'll be on the same level as the others, maybe better. The rest of your team will never catch up to him, including you. He'll leave you behind and change."

A fleeting image of Aomine flashed through Kuroko's mind, and he felt even sicker. So Kise wasn't dense. He'd played him with his oblivious attitude and steered him toward this outcome of the conversation. He'd played him like a pro, which he probably was, really, given that he worked in showbiz. Kuroko could have whacked himself over the head for not having anticipated this.

The universe seemed to have overheard his inner monologue because, next thing he knew, he felt how a nagging pain unleashed itself over the back of his skull.

"Bastard," Kagami snapped, hand still raised as though he hadn't decided yet whether to hit him again or leave it. "Don't just disappear when you can't even walk straight."

Kuroko was about to retort something when Kise asked, "Were you listening?"

Kagami raised his shoulders, and Kuroko was distinctly reminded of a cat arching its back, ready to hiss and scratch. "Like hell! What did you kidnap him for, anyway?"

"'Kidnap'." Kise rolled his eyes. "It was just a few minutes, geez."

Kagami roared something about how the whole team had been looking for him all over and what a hassle it'd been, but Kuroko had already stopped listening, distracted by shouts ringing across the playground from a nearby basketball court. Some thugs were beating up a couple of boys about his age — trying to threaten them into forfeiting the current game, it seemed.

Anger flooded over him in harsh torrents. Leaving Kagami, Kise and their bickering alone, he jogged over to the field, picked up the forsaken ball and began spinning it on his index finger.

"This is unfair," he said as loudly and intimidating as he could. Perhaps he should have taken Kagami with him to take care of that part.

The hoodlums shrieked. "What the — where did you come from?"

"This is not basketball," Kuroko continued. "You should not hurt others."

Sharing a round of mean grins with his friends, one of them said, "Guys, I think we've got some kind of wannabe hero here." He turned back to Kuroko and snickered. "Well. You want basketball, do you?"

"Do you mind if we join you?" Kise cut in coolly, all of a sudden right next to Kuroko.

A big hand rested on his head and ruffled his hair. He peered upward to see Kagami scowling at him.

"Why the heck did you have to butt in, huh?"

The group of thugs gaped at Kise and Kagami in faint terror. A small grin slipped onto Kuroko's mouth.

"Are you afraid you will not be able to beat them?"

Kagami snarled and stomped forward. Happily noting the ruffians' cumulating fear, Kuroko and Kise trailed after him.

"Did you hear what Kise and I were talking about before?" Kuroko asked later, once the hoodlums had been defeated and Kise had gone home. Although anxious to approach the topic, he wanted to sort it out now rather than later. "About whether we will stay a team? Well, maybe not a real 'team'. We do not even get along, after all."

Kagami gazed at him seriously, and that in itself was unsettling enough, but then he said, "You told me I couldn't make it on my own, and I won't leave the club just like that, so no sweat, alright? Besides, always being by the light's side — that's what your basketball is all about, isn't it?"

Floored, Kuroko fumbled for something to reply. "Last time, you said I was talking big," he muttered, ears burning. "You do, too."

Kagami spluttered, equally flustered, and ordered him to shut up. Out of sheer mortification, Kuroko did.

There wasn't much time to relax. Aida-san instantly carried on with the preparations for their next and first official game. Their opponent, Shinkyou High School, possessed one strong suit, an exchange student from Senegal, whom Kuroko had dubbed "Dad" in response to the boy's amusingly unlikely first name, "Papa".

Part of Aida-san's preparations comprised an extra joint training regimen for him and Kagami, which Kuroko was pretty partial to. While he was, cognitively, aware of the gradual shift in their relationship from stifled hostility to grudging acceptance, he did not particularly care for the prospect of having to spend more time with Kagami. As good a mechanism they built on the court, he doubted they'd ever boil down to more than partners of convenience, jumbled together by happenstance. In this regard, Kagami was quite the reverse of what Aomine had been.

Two weeks slipped by, time pulling Kuroko in like quicksand. Despite the shared additional practice, he and Kagami did not talk more than they had before. Partly because they were too exhausted most of the time, partly because neither of them had any inducement to. They weren't friends, and maybe it was better this way for now. The mere thought of the betrayal and loss of another friend gutted him, dug deep into his body, and curled around his insides, all set to rip him apart at any moment. He wasn't ready yet to hand over this much power over himself to another person again.