Rivals.

That’s what you’ve always been.

Kyle ‘Gaz’ Garrick, the captain of the Stormhawks. Drafted first overall in your rookie year, his stats were genuinely impressive. From the moment he entered the league, he lived up to every expectation placed on him.

You were drafted second overall that same year to the Stormhawks’ biggest rivals.

Really, it was inevitable.

From the second your names were announced back-to-back on draft night, the comparisons never stopped. Every game became another chance to prove who should have gone first. Every goal, every assist, every playoff run was measured against the other.

The rivalry didn’t take long to turn personal.

Games became brutal.

Scathing words were spat across the ice, every hit carried just a little more force than necessary, and more than one ended with both of you sitting in the penalty box, refusing to look away from the other. There were injuries on both sides, fines from the league, and more than a few warnings from officials to cool it before someone got seriously hurt.

Eventually, it became common practice to keep the two of you separated whenever your teams crossed paths off the ice.

Clearly whoever was in charge of planning the All-Star Weekend charity campaign did not get the memo.

When Kyle got the email saying he’d been paired with you of all people for the entire weekend, he was convinced someone was messing with him.

His coach quickly confirmed that, no, it wasn’t a prank, and then promptly reminded him to stay on his best behaviour.

So he did.

When the two of you visited hospitals to spend time with sick kids, he was almost painfully polite.

You treated him the same way.

It was… strange.

You held doors open for one another. Waited while the other finished talking to patients and their families. Shared awkward conversations in hallways between appearances. There were no sarcastic comments, no subtle jabs, no glaring competitions over who could make more people laugh.

Just an uncomfortable amount of politeness.

The media, naturally, had expected fireworks.

Instead of heated arguments and barely concealed glares, they got two longtime rivals awkwardly trying to figure out how to coexist without making things uncomfortable for everyone around them.

It made for surprisingly wholesome television.

As the weekend went on, though, the awkwardness slowly started to disappear.

Conversations that had once consisted of little more than clipped answers turned into actual discussions. You found yourselves laughing over shared stories from junior hockey, comparing disastrous rookie-year moments, and discovering that beneath years of rivalry, you actually had more in common than either of you had ever realized.

Kyle started laughing at your jokes.

You caught yourself looking for him whenever you walked into a room.

Somehow, somewhere between hospital visits, youth hockey clinics, charity dinners, and media appearances, spending time together stopped feeling like an obligation.

It started feeling… easy.

It only took a few days for the media to notice.

Headlines quickly appeared.

HOCKEY RIVALS TURNED UNLIKELY FRIENDS

ALL-STAR WEEKEND MELTS YEARS-LONG FEUD

And, of course, the tabloids couldn’t help themselves.

SECRET RELATIONSHIP? HOCKEY RIVALS GET COSY

The photos certainly didn’t help.

A candid shot of Kyle resting a hand against your back as he guided you through a crowd.

The two of you laughing so hard during a charity cooking competition that you stopped noticing the cameras.

None of it looked particularly platonic.

Neither of you paid much attention to the headlines.

The media had been inventing stories about the two of you for years. This was hardly the first ridiculous rumour they’d run with, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

But it was becoming increasingly difficult to laugh them off.

Because for the first time…

They weren’t entirely wrong.