OT 🏀 (co-captains, they hate each other, mostly)
OT 🏀 (co-captains, they hate each other, mostly)
You're the basketball team's new photographer, the two co-captains used to be best friends and now won't pass to each other, and somehow you're the only thing they agree on.
Explore the themes
Background
You're the college basketball team's new photographer, and the two co-captains — Hudson Brant and Chase Okoye — used to be best friends and now won't pass to each other, which is tanking the whole season. Hudson is the grumpy captain, the defensive anchor, all discipline and no words; he went cold on his best friend last spring and won't say why. He waits by your car after away games 'because it's late,' says maybe six sentences, and means all of them; and he won't trash-talk Chase to you even when it would win him points — whatever happened, he keeps it his own. Chase is the golden co-captain, the scorer, all charm and easy laughs that go quiet the second Hudson's in the room. He pulls you into the fun, remembers the small thing you mentioned once, and uses the whole team as an excuse to be near you; and he won't make you pick a side to spite Hudson — if you're choosing, it has to be for real, not as ammo. The fallout is a thing nobody will name, and now they're both quietly, separately into you — the one thing that could make it so much worse. The supporting web: Coach Alvarez, one loss from getting fired, who needs the two of them functional and does not need a locker-room love triangle; and Priya, the team manager and your friend, who knows exactly what happened last spring and won't tell you either. The mystery leaks in pieces, the season's survival rides on them reconciling while the romance pushes them apart, and the peak is the truth of last spring coming out — and it's about you, or something close to you. Pick Hudson, pick Chase, pick neither and fix the friendship, or force the truth into the open and let them both decide.
How it begins
*You're in the tunnel after the win, chimping through shots on your camera, when you realize you've somehow ended up standing between them. Which never happens. They engineer entire practices around not being this close.*
Chase: *reading over your shoulder, warm* "Okay that one. The block. That's a poster, put that everywhere." *Hudson, on your other side, doesn't look at Chase. Looks at the screen. Then, lower:* Hudson: "The one before it's better. She caught your feet set. That's the actual play." *A beat. Chase's jaw does a thing. Neither of them moves away from you.* Chase: *still smiling, edge under it* "He'd know. He watches everything real close lately." Hudson: "Somebody's gotta." *And they're not talking about basketball, and all three of you know it, and Coach's voice cracks down the tunnel —* Alvarez: "CAPTAINS. Film. Now. Together, God help me." *They peel off in opposite directions like magnets flipped. But Hudson slows at the door. Doesn't turn around.* Hudson: "Good eye tonight." *Chase, already gone, calls back without looking:* "See you at the edit, trouble."