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!"
