Chapter Text
September 26st, 2025
They’re silent. A loss to the Golden Knights isn’t the reason, though it is the catalyst.
They’re both showered and changed into clothes that haven’t been tinged by the sweat and anger of their locker room.
They look exactly like they did before the game. Except for Will, who’s lip is split.
He’s been angry, even since before the game. About five minutes into the third period, just after Macklin scored with an assist from Will, Mack looked across the ice to see Will pounding his first into Carter Hart.
The knights scored just after that, winning the knights the game and making Will go nonverbal.
Usually Mack is the one to get pissy after a loss and although he is upset, he’s more worried about Will.
Will's tongue swirls in his mouth, running over his teeth as he stares straight at the wheel he sits behind. They’ve been sitting in the parking lot of the SAP center for twenty minutes, now dark and empty.
Will's anger hasn’t subsided.
“Smitty just-”
“Fuck!” Will hits the steering wheel, hard. Mack doesn’t flinch but his eyes snap shut with a sigh.
Mack turns his head sharply to his friend. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with Will but it doesn’t look like he’s getting home without finding out. “What the fuck is your issue- We lost, yeah, it fucking sucks! Man the fuck up!”
Will shakes his head, not daring to look at Mack, who’s fault this is in the first place. “Man up, are you serious!?”
“Yeah! You played fucking fantastic. Is this about Hart? Are you really gonna let him get to you?”
“It’s not Hart!” It’s partially Hart. “I’m allowed to be pissed that we lost- and I didn’t play fantastic, I beat a guy up! You played great, Mack, you always fucking play great!” He spits the last part out.
“Sounds like hockey, dude. Be pissed, sure, but don’t take it out on me!” Mack scoffs, “I did play great, but the Knights are assholes who can’t shut their mouths! You think I didn’t wanna hit one of them!?”
“You don’t get it.” Will mumbles.
“What!? Stop with this fucking act and tell me what your issue is- Is it me!?”
“No! It’s- Harts an asshole, you’re right.”
“So it is Hart!” Mack slams himself back into his seat, “Is your lip burning?”
Will rolls his eyes. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” Mack yells, too amped up to stop.
“Fuck- Mack, You don’t- Just shut the fuck up.”
Mack feels like he just got slapped. “You better tell me your fucking issue or else i’m walking!”
“I played like shit.” Will bites out.
“Why’d you beat up Hart?”
“He started it.”
“How? How did he ‘start it’, Will?”
A tense moment passes, air bitter with upset. “He called me a fag, alright!?”
Mack pauses, his brows furrowing as he reads Wills face. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not!”
“Don’t fucking lie to me.”
A tense second passes, heavy and pregnant with words unsaid. “He called you a faggot- It’s nothing. It’s chirping, It just- fuck, it made me mad.”
“Mad enough to give him a black eye and a matching split lip? You didn’t stop when he hit the ice, Will.”
“I didn’t want to! He deserved whatever was coming to him and if you think any differently then maybe he was right-”
It hits Mack like a bullet to his heart. “Say it to my face.”
Will doesn’t move, his eyes stuck on his dash. Mack grabs Will’s face in his hand, forcing him to look dead in his green eyes. “Call me a fucking faggot, Will.”
Mack’s fingers are so close to Will's pulse he wonders if he can feel his heart pounding. “I’m not like Hart.”
“You want a star?” Mack shoves Will's face away, his head buzzing with anger. “You’re so- I don’t need you to stand up for me. Let them believe whatever, it’s not worth it!”
“Don’t act like a rumor like that wouldn’t ruin you.”
Mack’s eyes are tired, He’s really fucking tired.
“You mean ruin us.”
They stare at each other, both unblinking and angry.
Macklin says it straight to his face. “You’re worse than Hart. You’re a pussy.”
“And you aren’t?”
It’s the one thing to set Mack off, to force him into movement, pushing himself up to slam into Will, their lips meeting in a crash.
It’s not soft or pretty or kind, it’s nothing like what they usually are. Upset and hot, they smash together in built up tension.
Mack slides his hand into Will's hair but the blonde flinches, making Mack stop and move an inch back, his body stretched over the middle console.
Their pants fill the silence between them, unsure and dizzy in a mess of need.
Mack’s gaze shifts from Will's lips to his eyes, a dark blue that’s barely seen around his pupils. Mack swallows, scared to do anything but stay here.
Will watches Mack’s mouth, the breath that escapes it hitting his face in a delirious fashion. His lip is bleeding again, he thinks. He doesn’t care.
Wills hand claps the back of Mack’s neck, pulling him in again as they return to each other in a harmonized moan.
They both need this. Not one or the other- they need each other in every conceivable way.
“Fuck. I’m sorry.” Will gasps between kisses, his lip stinging and arm hurting from how hard Mack is gripping him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Mack shakes his head but forgets that their tongues are intertwined, his hands caressing Will's neck. “I know. ‘s okay.”
Will wants to cry, but he just pulls Mack closer and savors the saliva in his mouth. Will has wanted this- wanted Mack for too long.
Mack doesn’t know when his feelings shifted, but he suspects that the nerves he felt when first shaking Will's hand wasn’t because they were competition.
“I really fucking like you, Smit.” Mack kisses his jaw. “Like a lot.”
“Fucking better.” Will kisses his lips again, never wanting to stop now. A craving that can never be curbed. “All I want, Celly. You’re impossible not to want.”
Macklin holds his face in his hands with a smile pressing against his lips. If they’re gonna do this, they are going to do it right.
Macklin falls back into his seat, both breathless.
“Hart was right, you know.” Mack will say those words ever again. He looks at Will, chest rising and falling, his lip split back open, and that gorgeous blonde that Macklin just had his hands in… messy and still damp from his shower. “That felt pretty fucking gay.”
Will, after everything they just went though, laughs. “Want me to send him a thank you card?”
“Drive, Smitty.” Will does what he’s told, pulling out of the lot, scared and comfortable all at once. “Sleep over tonight?”
Will licks his lips, swollen as if Macklin’s signature is on his skin. “You my consolation prize?” He smirks, adding a lightness to the air.
Mack punches Will in the arm, and then takes his hand in his. “I lost too!”
“Win win situation then.”
Mack rolls his eyes and then looks at their hands, and then at the road. “We’re kinda fucked, huh?”
Will looks at him, the nerves settling in now. “Nah, we got each other, right?”
Mack’s lips turn up slightly, “Told you we didn’t need girlfriends.”