Battle of the Captains

5

Ethan

I shouldn't be here. I know that before I even walk through the door, know it the way you know ice is too thin before you hear it c***k, but Marcus talked me into it, some line about team morale, about not letting Noah Brooks and his whole roster think they scared us off the biggest party of Rivalry Week. I told myself I'd stay an hour. Say hello to a few people, keep my head down, leave before anything stupid happened.

The music hits me before the smell does, some bass-heavy song shaking the windows of a house that's clearly not built to hold this many people, and the whole place is packed shoulder to shoulder, red cups everywhere, somebody's Wolves flag draped over the stair rail like a trophy. My guys spread out fast, grabbing drinks, falling into conversations, and for a while it actually feels fine. Normal. Like just another party.

Then the football team walks in.

I feel the shift before I even see them, feel the whole room's energy change, conversations dying mid-sentence, heads turning toward the door. Noah's at the front of the pack, of course he is, wearing that easy grin like he owns whatever room he walks into, and the second his eyes land on me across the crowd, the grin sharpens into something else entirely.

"Didn't think Ice Boy left his rink," somebody from his side calls out, loud enough to carry.

"Didn't think your team knew how to read an invitation," one of ours calls back.

It goes like that for a few minutes, jab after jab, nothing that would matter on its own, except every comment stacks on the last one until the whole room's crackling with it, until I can feel Marcus tensing beside me and I catch myself gripping my cup tighter than I need to.

I don't see who throws the beer. I just feel it, cold and sudden across the side of my face, and the room goes electric, gasps and shouts all at once, and somewhere in the noise somebody shoves somebody else and that's it. That's all it takes.

I don't know who throws the first punch either. By the time I turn toward the sound of it, three separate fights have already broken out, bodies colliding near the kitchen, a lamp crashing to the floor, somebody's shoulder driving through a side table hard enough to snap one of the legs clean off.

"Ethan—" Marcus starts, but I'm already moving, because across the room I've found Noah, and he's already found me, and neither of us needs an invitation for what happens next.

We meet in the middle of the living room, and there's no talking this time, no insults, nothing clever, just his fist catching my jaw hard enough that my vision actually white's out for half a second before instinct takes over and I swing back. He takes it on the cheekbone, staggers half a step, comes right back at me like it barely registered. We're not fighting like people who've been in a real fight before. We're fighting like two guys who've spent two weeks needing an excuse, and now that we've got one, neither of us is interested in stopping first.

Somewhere behind us glass shatters, a window giving way to somebody's body slamming into it, and a girl near the stairs screams loud enough to cut through the bass still thumping from the speakers nobody's thought to turn off. I catch Noah across the ribs and feel him fold half a second before he grabs a fistful of my shirt and hauls me sideways into the coffee table, wood cracking under both our weight as we go down together, still swinging, still tangled up in each other in a way that feels like it's got nothing left to do with football or hockey at all.

His knuckles split my lip. Mine catch him above the eye. Around us the whole party's turned into a battlefield, bodies everywhere, hockey jerseys and football jerseys indistinguishable in the chaos, somebody's holding their phone up sideways getting every second of it, the little red dot in the corner of the screen glowing like a threat neither of us notices until it's far too late to matter.

Red and blue lights hit the windows before either of us even hears the sirens.

"POLICE, EVERYBODY OUT, MOVE—"

The room empties in a scramble, bodies pouring out every door and window that's still intact, and it takes two officers hauling us apart by the collar to finally stop me and Noah from finishing whatever this was. I'm breathing so hard my ribs ache with it, blood in my mouth, one eye already swelling, and across the wreck of the living room Noah looks just as bad, lip split, one eyebrow cut open and bleeding down the side of his face, and for one strange second, chest heaving, blood everywhere, we just stare at each other like neither of us can quite believe what just happened.

Nobody gets arrested. Somehow. A stern warning from the responding officers, a name taken down for the report, and both of us sent home in the back of separate cars belonging to teammates too sober to argue with a cop.

I don't sleep. I lie in bed with ice against my jaw, replaying it over and over, and by two in the morning I already know it's out there, because Marcus won't stop texting me links. The livestream's already got half a million views. Somebody's stitched together a highlight reel with dramatic music. A sports blog with actual national reach has already picked up the story: COLLEGE RIVALRY BRAWL GOES VIRAL, CAPTAINS AT THE CENTER OF IT ALL.

I finally fall asleep somewhere past three, phone face down beside my pillow, half hoping the whole thing will look smaller in the morning.

It doesn't.

At seven a.m. my phone buzzes with an email, subject line stripped down to nothing but urgency: REPORT TO THE OFFICE OF THE COLLEGE PRESIDENT IMMEDIATELY. FAILURE TO APPEAR WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE SUSPENSION.

I sit up too fast, jaw throbbing, and check the sender twice like it might say something different the second time. It doesn't. I already know, before I even open my texts, that Noah got the exact same one.