Practice was...a little tense. Jimin was quiet, but he still passed to Jungkook. Hoseok, on the other hand, refused to pass to him, refused to even look at him. Jungkook wasn't surprised, but it was still painful to have a friend turn against him overnight.

Yoongi treated him like he always had, not looking particularly happy that he'd shown up for practice, just barking at him to "dribble like you mean it, not like you're asking someone to steal." Namjoon nodded at Jungkook but gave no other statement of validation, and Jin was full of tense smiles and worried eyebrows.

Jungkook knew he wasn't welcome here anymore.

But he didn't really have anywhere else to go.

His mom had allowed him to have his phone back as a celebration for having fulfilled his sentencing, but he hadn't looked at it. Hadn't even turned it back on. It was sitting somewhere in his backpack, screen blank, waiting for him to give it attention again, but after having it banned for over a month now, he wasn't altogether that eager to use it. He wasn't really connected to his old friends anymore, and his mom wasn't home much. This club was all he had left.

He didn't do particularly well in practice, and when the hour was up, he was more than ready to leave. But he saw Yoongi waiting expectantly by the bench, finger tapping on the wood.

"You're not going to skip out on extra practice, are you?" Yoongi asked, eyebrow lifted in challenge, and Jungkook hesitated before shaking his head even though he wanted nothing more than to leave the gym.

"Just...getting a drink of water," Jungkook said, picking up his water bottle from beside the bench and taking a sip. He watched as Jin pushed Jimin's wheelchair toward the gym doors, Namjoon walking beside them. Which left...

"I'm still practicing too," Hoseok said when Jungkook looked over, surprised, and he nodded quickly when Hoseok glared at him.

"Sorry," Jungkook said, although he wasn't really sure what he was apologizing for. His existence, maybe.

Hoseok didn't respond, just grabbed his own water and took a few sips before setting it back down on the ground and wheeling out to the court. Yoongi had them do another race, only every time Hoseok would lap Jungkook, he would purposefully bump into Jungkook's wheelchair. It was his equivalent of a shove in the hallway, and it gave Jungkook a pretty clear message that Hoseok hadn't forgiven him and wasn't considering it.

When they went into passing drills, Hoseok passed the ball to Jungkook as forcefully as possible, and some of his passes were high enough that Jungkook had to catch them or risk breaking his nose.

After yet another close call, Jungkook couldn't stop himself from shouting, "What the heck?!"

"What's wrong?" Hoseok asked, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You keep aiming for my head, that's what's wrong!"

"At least you're not paralyzed, right?" Hoseok asked, his lip curling downward in a snarl, and even though Jungkook had felt so much self-loathing lately, he'd had it.

"I'm sorry about what I did! And I know I screwed up! I know that! So why are you-"

"You have no idea what it's like!" Hoseok yelled back. The two of them were on opposite sides of the center circle. Yoongi just headed back to the bench to watch them argue from a safe distance. "You spend a month playing wheelchair basketball and you suddenly think you know what it's like to not be able to use your legs."

"I never said that!" Jungkook said. In a weird way, it felt good to finally yell about something, to argue. Because all this time, he'd been waging these arguments with himself internally, but finally someone was telling him the things he'd told himself. "I never pretended like I know a fraction of your pain!"

"You sure act like it," Hoseok snapped, skimming his hands over the handrails as though he wanted to rush forward and punch Jungkook, but he didn't move. "You come in and you tell us that you're only on the team because somebody told you that you had to be."

"But I'm still here," Jungkook said with a frown. "If I were only here because of that, I wouldn't have stayed, right?" He caught the doubt in Hoseok's eyes, and he pressed on. "Look, when I first started – yeah, I'll admit, I was mostly here because I wanted to make up for what I'd done. But that changed. I like playing with you guys. And...I don't want to sound like I understand everything you and Jimin have experienced, but by being on this team and playing in a wheelchair, I feel like I can understand your perspective more. And it made me realize how talented you and Jimin are, and how much I respect that."

Jungkook folded his hands in his lap, clenching them tightly. "I...when I came to the first team meeting, I guess I sort of pitied you and Jimin. But you guys made me realize that maybe that wasn't the right reaction. I didn't want to treat you guys like victims, I want to treat you like...friends." He looked up at Hoseok, trying not to show the worry in his eyes. "That's how I feel about you guys. And I know that you probably can't see me that way, not after what I did, but...I can't change what happened back then. I can only change what I do now. And I'm trying, Hoseok. I really am. And I still want to be your friend. If you'll let me."

"You don't want friendship," Hoseok snapped. "You want redemption. You want an easy fix to solve the problems you created."

"What about this do you think has been easy for me?" Jungkook asked, his emotions settling over him like a heavy blanket. He found himself on the verge of tears because of course he'd expected this response, but it wasn't like he hadn't battled with his thoughts every day since the accident. "I caused a car accident! Someone was paralyzed because of me! Do you know how guilty I feel?"

"Do you know how guilty I feel?" Hoseok asked after a moment, clearly not swayed by Jungkook's wet eyes. "I thought of you as a friend, and then I find out that you took away the thing I think about every day from someone else."

"I know you hate me," Jungkook said after a moment, his withheld tears burning behind his eyes because he'd honestly thought that this was a fight they'd be able to get past, but it was horribly clear to him now that this was the end of a friendship. Something else he'd ruined. "But I'm not to blame for what happened to you."

Hoseok looked pissed to hear it, but it was true. Jungkook knew that Hoseok wasn't over losing the use of his legs, but he couldn't attribute that to Jungkook, no matter how bitter he was. There was really only one person to blame for Hoseok's accident, but it was clear to Jungkook that Hoseok wasn't ready to point the finger at himself.

"Texting and driving?" Hoseok said after a moment, scoffing as he shook his head. "You should've been the one paralyzed."

"Yeah," Jungkook agreed after a second. He had nothing else to say, really. It wasn't like he disagreed. If he could've reversed the outcome, then he would have.

"You should quit the team," Hoseok said.

"All right." Jungkook didn't feel like he had any other options. Not to mention that this club was supposed to be dedicated to the paraplegic community. It was more Hoseok's place than his place, and he didn't want to ruin that for Hoseok, too.

The conversation was done. Nobody had said anything, but it was clear. Jungkook took the clean break as an opportunity to put his wheelchair away and grab his stuff from the bench.

"Where are you going?" Yoongi asked, looking up from his phone with a frown. "We have extra practice, remember?"

"You do," Jungkook said, shoving things in his backpack because he just wanted to be gone. "Have fun," he said before exiting the gym, ignoring another question or two from Yoongi.

--

"Maybe I was too harsh," Hoseok said as he slowly wheeled himself over to the bench.

Yoongi shrugged. It wasn't that he wasn't invested, but he didn't feel like he had the right to try and shut down or change anyone else's opinions. He liked Jungkook, but that didn't mean that everyone had to. "You said what you were thinking. Better than holding it all inside, I guess."

"I'm just...angry. It feels so unfair."

Yoongi shrugged again because he didn't know what Hoseok wanted him to say, and so the silence in the gym swallowed them up.

--updated 09/04/20 (mm/dd/yy)--

a/n: got a little behind on updates (whoops) but we're getting close to the end so hopefully i can finish this out before another story drags me away