Yoongi was lying back on the bench in the empty gym. Practice had ended forty minutes ago, but he didn't really know what to do or where to go. He was still trying to make sense of all the noise in his brain.

First, hearing from his coach saying that he could go back to playing normal basketball.

Then hearing from his ex asking if they could talk.

Another ten minutes passed before Yoongi sat up and dialed a number on his phone.

"Yoongi, thanks for calling me," she said.

There was an awkward pause where both of them hesitated.

"I just-" she started just as Yoongi went to ask, "What did you-"

They both fell silent again. Yoongi decided that he would just wait for her to speak since she was the one who had pushed them to have the conversation in the first place.

"Hi," she said after a moment with a breathy chuckle. "It's been a while."

"Yeah." He hadn't talked to her since she'd broken up with him over text, and he didn't feel particularly inclined to make it easy for her now.

"Thanks for agreeing to talk," she said after realizing that he wasn't going to continue. "I know how I handled things back then was wrong, and I just...I don't know, I felt like we ended on the wrong foot and I wanted to revisit that."

"So...you want to break up with me again, but better this time?" Yoongi asked in a dry tone, raising an eyebrow.

"No! No, I just..." Another pause. Then, quietly, "I miss you."

"Well, that's what happens when you break up with someone," Yoongi said, crossing his arms even though he knew she couldn't see it. "You don't get to hang out with them as much."

"Yoongi, I'm sorry. I know I hurt you. But I want to try again. A relationship, I mean. With you."

"And this has nothing at all to do with me getting reinstated to the basketball team, right?" Yoongi asked with a roll of his eyes.

"What?"

"Be honest, for once," Yoongi said, clenching his jaw. He thought this would be easier, that he was completely over her, but he was surprised by how difficult it was for him to stay emotionally detached. "You broke up with me after I got suspended from the basketball team, and now you're only sniffing around again because the coach said I could play again."

There was a long pause. "Yoongi," she said, sounding incredulous. He could picture her eyes right now and how big they would be on her face. "Is that why you think I broke up with you? Because of basketball?"

"Yeah," Yoongi said. "The timing's more than a little coincidental, and when you told me literally nothing about why we were breaking up, that was the conclusion I came to. Are you trying to pretend that they're not related?"

"Yoongi, I broke up with you because you got more and more emotionally distant with me," she said. "The only thing basketball had to do with it is that you seemed to put more energy into your varsity sport than into our relationship."

Yoongi was quiet. "So why are you calling me now?"

"Because I heard you were helping out with the wheelchair basketball team," she admitted. "And it sounded, well, not very like you. So I was curious, and I wanted to see if you had changed, so I went to one of your games and I...you were smiling, Yoongi. Maybe you didn't even realize it, but you looked like you were having fun for the first time in a long time. And after the game, you were talking and laughing with your teammates, which I've never seen you do at a normal game."

Yoongi was quiet because he was at a loss. He couldn't really deny what she was saying, not in good faith. While he'd been reluctant and not entirely willing to join the team in the beginning, he'd...grown to enjoy it. Which he hadn't thought possible. And even now that they'd only been practicing with four players for the past two weeks, he still looked forward to practices, even if they couldn't compete in any games.

"Are you...are you going to go back to varsity basketball?" she asked after a moment, sounding more hesitant than before.

"I don't know," Yoongi admitted. That was most of the reason he'd been sitting alone in the gym. Throughout high school, he'd been operating under the assumption that he would go on to play basketball in college, and the only way to get noticed and recruited was by playing varsity. His dad was even more invested in Yoongi's athletic career than Yoongi himself was, which added a layer of complication. It was the only thing they connected on, and Yoongi was hesitant to destroy that.

But he liked playing with Jin (even if he was essentially useless on the court), Jimin (even if he occasionally got scary-angry), Hoseok (even though he was an annoying asshole), and Jungkook (even if he wasn't really on the team anymore and had more or less ruined someone else's life).

"Well...good luck," his ex told him. "With whatever you choose."

"Yeah. Thanks," Yoongi said. He paused, and before he could decide to keep silent, he heard himself say, "Let's talk again soon."

A surprised pause on the other end of the line. "All right, looking forward to it."

A brief pause as both of them fought the instinctive "Love you" at the end of the call.

Then, "Bye, Yoongi."

"Bye."

Yoongi stared at the phone in his hand before setting it down on the bench just as the door to the gym opened with a click. There was a pause as he squinted and identified the person he was seeing.

"Jungkook? What are you doing here?"

"Yoongi? What are you doing here?"

Yoongi took a second to process the reverse card he'd just been dealt. "Just thinking," he said after a moment.

There was a long pause. Jungkook had been gone for two weeks now, and it was weird for Yoongi to see him in the gym even though that wouldn't have seemed strange several weeks ago.

"I talked to the person I hurt in the accident," Jungkook said after a moment. "And you were right."

"About what?" Yoongi looked up at the gym ceiling while he tried to remember what they'd said. "About him being a bitch?"

"I heard someone calling for me," came a voice from outside the gym doors. "Let me in, Jungkook."

"One second," Jungkook said while Yoongi frowned in confusion while Jungkook propped the door open before stepping out and pushing in a kid in a wheelchair. "Yoongi, this is Taehyung,"

"Hi, Yoongi," Taehyung called out while Jungkook wheeled him further into the gym. "Wait, he's the one who hit you in the face, right?" Taehyung asked, twisting in the wheelchair to look up at Jungkook, who flushed.

"Well, yes, technically that's him."

Yoongi wanted to stand up, but he felt like maybe the stranger would feel more comfortable if they were on the same level, so he remained sitting. Which was weird, because that wasn't something he would have ever considered a month ago. "You're the other kid in the accident?"

"That's me," Taehyung said with a grin. "I'm also coincidentally an old friend of Jungkook's since before the crash. This is my first week out of the hospital, and Jungkook's showing me around."

"I told him about the wheelchair basketball team here that's short a player," Jungkook said with a small smile.

"So my mom is considering letting me go to school here instead," Taehyung summed up. "Although we'd have to move or find somewhere for me to stay or whatever, but there's no wheelchair programs at my old school so I'm trying to convince her."

"If you find a place to stay, I could give you a ride to school," Yoongi offered with a shrug.

"Really?" Taehyung looked surprised. He looked over at Jungkook skeptically. "You're sure he's the one who hit you in the face?"

--

Jungkook cheered as Taehyung made a basket to tie the score with just a minute left in the game. There was a small part of him that missed the feeling of being part of the team and battling it out on the court, but it was better this way. Taehyung got to hang out with kids who faced the same physical difficulties as him (he had been very excited last week to tell Jungkook that he'd officially joined Cripples Anonymous), and Jungkook was able to watch from the sidelines without causing conflict.

Jimin hadn't treated him much differently after learning the news, but Hoseok had never really been able to see past it. But Jungkook knew that Hoseok was still struggling to see past his own accident, so he didn't hold it against him, just kept his distance. Everyone's healing process was different.

Jungkook was still going through his own healing process. There were a lot of mornings where he still woke up feeling guilty, and there were a lot of mornings where he still woke up wanting feeling that he was a bad person for what he'd done. But he knew there wasn't a single morning that Taehyung woke up wanting Jungkook to feel either of those things, and it was that thought that pushed Jungkook to get out of bed, give his mom a big hug for always supporting him, and keep shooting for the moon.

--updated 09/07/20 (mm/dd/yy)--