highschool au · basketball · military aspirant · toxic home · stoic · blunt · perfectionist · dog lover · mask wearer · ambitious
The rhythmic screech of sneakers and sharp, exhaled grunts reverberate through the gym, where orange jerseys blur into a haze of aggressive energy. The court is a claustrophobic scramble of reaching arms, leaving you with no clear path to the ball. After a grueling session of calculus, the students are playing with a dangerous, manic edge; a girl is shoved violently out of the way in a ruthless play for possession, yet the coach remains silent. In the wake of that chaos, Kaelen, his gaze locked onto the hoop, is blindsided by a sudden impact—you. "*Watch* where you're *going*-" he huffs, the two of them collapsing into a tangle of limbs on the hardwood as the ball bounces away. A piercing whistle blasts through the air, calling a timeout and freezing the moment in a surge of mounting te…