Work Text:
It starts after Pride Night during their second season, multi-colored tape and jerseys and signs still swirling through his head in a rainbow kaleidoscope as he lays in bed with Will, both of them tipped towards each other but not folded together just yet. He’s restless and buzzing, and the adrenaline crash of a good finish on an important day has left him too tired to sleep. He’s tracing the lines of Will’s palm with his fingers, following the texture of the dips and folds so gently that it makes Will twitch, fingers flexing until he finishes his doodles and links their hands together.
Will scoots forward to the edge of his pillow and Mack follows, close enough for them to breathe the same air. This close, he has to go slightly cross-eyed to put Will’s face into focus, so his eyes dip to the soft knot of their fingers, instead.
“Do you think we could do it?” he asks quietly. Will doesn’t reply for a long time, but Mack waits for him without elaborating. There are a million things he could be talking about, but he’s confident that Will knows without it being voiced. He’s always listening to Mack, through a thousand other silent confessions he’s given in the middle of the night with or without realizing. For a moment Mack is transported back to last year, when Will hadn’t used the tape and Mack was so scared of his rejection that he couldn’t find the words for the confession itself until Will had cradled his head and kissed him gentle enough to ache.
“I think you can do anything you put your mind to,” he said back then, just like he does now. Will always thinks it through before he answers, which makes it feel more true than when anyone else has used that cliche on him.
Mack knows that a lot of people would say that it’s a bad idea. In some ways, it feels like half of the league is trying to inch forward while the other half is digging their heels in to hold the rest of them back. They’re lucky to have ended up with the Sharks, where vets like Wenny and Toff set the tone of the room and the rest of them love each other enough that it wouldn’t be a disaster there. He knows that they’re valuable enough that anyone who might want to throw a fit about it wouldn’t be able to without a dozen other guys coming to their defense. That doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be issues with the rest of the league: players, management, and fans alike. That doesn’t mean that it still won’t be a horrible idea.
It doesn’t feel like a horrible idea right now, though. It feels pretty good, actually, to have Will’s hands clasped around his and know what it means for them both. To want something besides hockey and pretend that he might be able to keep it.
Mack feels more present when he’s with Will like this, like who he is around everyone else is a series of masks that he switches between, but who he is at three in the morning curled up with Will is the unchanging core of him, unfurled in the only place that truly feels safe.
He tries to imagine a future where this part isn’t a secret anymore. He can’t quite envision it, not the way he’s been taught to visualize all of the goals he wants in front of him. It’s too out of focus and nebulous, like looking out a frosted-glass window.
“Do you really think so?” he asks, tightening his grip on their hands. Will nods, hair frizzing against the pillow.
“I know so, Mack. You’re a supernova; you can do anything.”
-/-
“I think I want to, for real,” Mack says a few days later, both of them tangled up on Will’s bed in the guest house. Will is scrolling through TikTok, phone angled so Mack can see the screen too where he’s half resting on his chest, and they just stumbled across one with clips from the Pride Night game. Will hums and clicks his screen off, tipping his face down to look at him. It’s a bad angle, showing too much of his nostrils and chin to be attractive. Mack loves him so much that it sends a heady wave of affection through him, thankful that he gets Will from every angle, not just his press-ready ones.
“Okay,” Will says steadily, bringing a hand up to card through Mack’s hair, the callused pads of his fingers brushing against his scalp. “I thought we were waiting a few years?”
Mack shrugs against him, dropping his eyes to the sweatshirt making up his pillow. He traces a finger over the Sharks logo on it, the path familiar enough that Will barely flinches at the gentle touch anymore.
“I don’t want to have to wait that long.”
The few times they’ve spoken about coming out with each other, it’s been in a distant, hypothetical future where the spotlight isn’t on them as much, both of them fading into the shadows rather than standing directly in the sun. It’s far enough away that Mack doesn’t know what they’ll look like then: how many new lines might adorn their faces, which teeth will be fake due to pucks to the face, where streaks of gray might lay like silver in their hair. Until then, the plan had been to keep everything buried. So much of their relationship is rooted in their friendship, and they get away with a lot of closeness that can be written off that way, but the rest was going to be suffocated in the dead of night, only dug up like precious treasure when it was deemed safe enough.
Mack doesn’t want to have to kill that part of himself, hoping to resurrect it for everyone else to see in years when he feels so alive with Will now. He wants to turn their graves into gardens, flowers thriving in the sun.
“It could be dangerous,” Will says. “People will be mean.”
It isn’t a disagreement or a chastisement, just an additional check-in. A simple are you sure? because neither of them are good at blindly trusting their guts and making impulse decisions unless it’s on the ice.
“I know,” Mack says quietly. “I want to do it, anyway. It’s not fair that we have to hide when no one else does. It makes me mad if I think about it too long. Who knows, maybe there are others like us that are just waiting for someone else to do it first.”
He’s watched the video about the NHL player who was considering coming out and didn’t about a thousand times, wondering who it might be and if he’s happy. He’s watched Luke Prokop’s career and wondered if he knew he would never get called up from the AHL by the time he came out. It makes him so angry, knowing that there are other people like him who also feel like they have to kill part of themselves to follow their dream while the organization makes insignificant gestures with meaningless symbols while the culture never changes.
Mack knows that they aren’t irreplaceable. If the league hates them enough, it can find a way to get rid of them. He also knows that a not-insignificant portion of the fanbase, their teammates, and the Sharks organization value them enough to raise hell about it if that happens. He’s confident he can make smothering them more trouble than it’s worth.
Mack wishes he had won at the Olympics, just to give them that extra bit of insurance. He wishes Will hadn’t gotten injured earlier in the season so his stats at a glance would show the full picture of how much he contributes to the team.
“You think others will follow suit?” Will muses, scratching gently at his scalp again. Mack pushes himself up so he’s hovering over him and they can make eye contact without either of them needing to crane their necks. Will looks angelic all of the time, but Mack particularly likes him like this, eyes serious but mouth relaxed, one split-second away from a smile if Mack gives him cause for one.
“They will,” Mack says with no room for argument. “If not now, then there will be someone in the future.”
Will does smile, then.
“Maybe we’ll start a movement,” he says, cuffing Mack gently on the chin as he does. “A revolution of queer players taking over the league.”
“They say the first pride was a riot,” Mack replies. Will softens, cupping his jaw instead.
“I’d follow you anywhere,” he says. The aching sincerity in his voice brings a flush to Mack’s cheeks, making his whole body feel like it’s on fire. He turns his head to kiss Will’s palm.
“I wouldn’t be able to do it without you,” Mack says. “You’re my good-luck charm. My four leaf clover.”
“You don’t need any luck,” Will chuckles.
“I don’t when you’re there,” he says, then leans down to kiss him.
-/-
Mack waits a few weeks to tell his dad.
The initial confession about Will went okay, all of those months ago. Rick didn’t yell or say he was disappointed like Mack had feared. He just… didn’t exactly take it well, either.
“We can prepare a statement in case anything unwanted happens, then discuss a plan for your actual coming out closer to retirement if that’s what you want.”
Mack loves his dad, and he knows that his dad loves him. It still would’ve been nice to get a reminder of that.
Last time, he had spent the whole morning vibrating out of his skin with nerves. He doesn’t make that mistake this time, heading over to his parents’ place for brunch on an off-day so he has less time to needlessly worry. He still spends the entire drive alternating between heavy dread and a restless, bubbling nervousness that gives him whiplash and lasts through the meal.
He and Rick go out to the porch, after. Mack has stopped wishing that his mom would join them in conversations like this. Part of growing up was learning that he doesn’t need her protection, and that she’ll always defer to Rick when it comes to his career or well-being, anyway.
She was silent for a long moment when he told her about Will, then asked him if he was sure. Out of everyone in the family, Charlie had the only response that actually made him feel loved. Aiden said all of the right things, but there’s enough distance between them over the phone that Mack can no longer tell when he’s being sincere and when he’s just telling Mack what he thinks he wants to hear to make everything easier for them. RJ’s reaction showed just how young he still is, too young to know better with the locker rooms he’s growing up in.
Before those conversations, Mack would’ve thought that Will’s family was the one they needed to be wary of, but the Smiths are the type of exuberant, loving family that embraced Will fully and joyously for who he is. They’re the type of people to reply Jesus loves everyone as quick as a whip to anyone who questions their response, smothering Will with love proudly for everyone to see.
They smother Mack a bit, now, too, and Mack can recognize the twinges of annoyance it gives Will when he wants Mack to himself and has to pry him out of Colleen’s grip to get him. It always makes Mack feel special, like he’s precious to the whole Smith family and an invaluable treasure to Will specifically.
Mack takes a deep breath, trying to hold on to that feeling as he faces his dad head on like a man.
“I’m going to come out this summer.”
Rick doesn’t say anything for a very long moment, the silence filled by the whistling of the wind in Mack’s ears.
“No, you’re not.”
It lands like a blow. Mack stops his knees from buckling, but only just.
“I am,” he argues, feeling so much like the petulant child he will forever be to his dad.
“Be reasonable, Macklin,” Rick says with his eerie, detached calm.
“I’ve thought about this a lot–”
“No you haven’t,” Rick interrupts, and Mack does stumble this time, grabbing onto the railing of the porch to stop from giving his dad the ammunition of more than a brief wobble. “If you’d put any thought into this at all, you’d remember that we have a plan in place. You need to stay focused on your career right now, not allow your personal life to become a spectacle.”
“It isn’t my personal life, it’s who I am,” he argues, despising the desperation he can hear in his voice. “I can’t hide that forever. I need that energy for my game.”
“It isn’t forever, Macklin,” Rick says, still infuriatingly even. “It’s until you retire. The league has been making progress, but it isn’t there yet.”
“Has it?” Mack asks. “Has it been making progress? Because it seems to me like we’re stalled until someone actually does something.”
“And you think that someone is you?” Rick asks. “You’re not ready. You’re doing really well, but it isn’t enough to survive the kind of heat this would bring to your organization. You still haven’t won anything. And what about Will? He’s good, kid, but he’s not good enough for something like this.”
Mack’s lungs freeze. It’s a more violent death than suffocation, like the air was stolen directly out of his grasp, or a knife slipped with clinical precision between his ribs. He feels the tell-tale sting of tears in his eyes, the traitorous warmth of the ugly flush he always gets when his feelings are too big, something Rick never quite managed to train him out of.
“Do you really want this more than your career?” his dad continues.
Mack grips the railing until his fingers turn white and forces air into his lungs.
“Why can’t I have both?” he asks, vision turning blurry with tears, obscuring the fence line curtaining their yard from the rest of the world.
“Oh, Mackers,” his dad sighs, placing a heavy hand on his shoulder. Mack turns his face away and Rick starts rubbing his back instead with smooth, even pressure, just like he used to when Mack was small enough to sit on his knee.
“You don’t understand,” he says, hating how small it makes him feel despite the truth. “There’s this big part of me that I can’t show anyone. I’m always thinking about how I need to hide it, and what I’m allowed to say, and who will take things a certain way and who won’t. I can’t participate in any of the conversations the guys have about their wives or girlfriends, and I have to make stupid excuses whenever we go out and the single guys try to pick up. I have to listen to people make mindlessly stupid comments because they think they don’t apply to anyone in the room until Toff shuts it down. I’m always thinking about it, wherever I am, because I always have to hide it. I can’t act gay, which means I can’t act like myself unless I’m certain that I’m alone except for Will. It’s exhausting. I hate it.”
He swipes angrily at the few tears that have overflowed onto his cheeks, sniffling.
“Why don’t I get to be proud?” he asks. “Why aren’t I enough? All of me. I don’t want to keep being a lesser version of myself. I don’t want to keep feeling like I don’t belong anywhere because I’m not allowed to be honest and actually be part of my community. I want– I want to get married someday, with a big wedding, and I don’t want to have to retire first. I want to show Will off, because he makes me happy, even if some people think he’s not meant to. I want to be happy.”
He swipes at his cheeks again, although it’s a lost cause. The tears keep spilling over, months of aching hurt bubbling up uncontrollably, like a dam bursting.
“Why don’t I get to be happy?” he asks thickly.
Rick keeps rubbing his back. Mack can’t look at him; he thinks he’ll die if he does.
“This has been bothering you a lot, hasn’t it, bud?” Rick sighs. “I didn’t realize.”
Mack shrugs.
He didn’t expect to cry over this today. He didn’t actually know that all of this had been building inside him until it was tumbling out like an avalanche, one snowball breaking away tons of ice and snow, covering everything in its path.
But it has been bothering him when he’s allowed himself to look at it head-on instead of out of the corner of his eye. It’s part of him that’s getting harder and harder to ignore, especially when he has someone as wonderful as Will loving him and asking to be loved by him in return.
He wants to be able to give Will everything. He wants Will to give him everything, too.
“Okay,” Rick says. “Come here.”
He pulls Mack into a hug. It’s strong and secure, like the way he held Mack after the Olympics, or before he left for Shattuck, or when he was little and fell on the ice for the first time. Mack sniffles against him. His dad keeps rubbing his back, that same steady, dependable pressure.
“I need to do this, Dada,” he says, his voice muffled against Rick’s spring coat even though he’s just as tall as him now. “I feel like I’m dying.”
Rick doesn’t say anything else. Mack tries to enjoy the hug, rather than acknowledging that it feels like a consolation. The actual prize is still so far out of reach.
-/-
The end of June sneaks up on him, arriving on an unassuming weekday in the middle of training. Will is across the country, but he’s here on Mack’s phone screen as well, regulated to a small box in the corner while Mack finds all of the pictures that he already set aside in a folder for this Instagram post. They’re both holed up in separate bedrooms, the moment feeling too big to do with anyone but each other.
Mack knows that his family is down in the main room, and that his dad will get the notification for this post on his phone. He asked Mack just yesterday if he was sure again, or if he would consider easing people into it with a supportive post rather than an actual coming out.
Mack told him that he won’t compromise on this. He’s so used to coming in second, to not being able to show his full potential, and the thought of doing that here presses like a weight on his chest. He’s going to be free of it, and he isn’t going to settle for simply lessening the pressure. He’s all in.
Will is going with him. Will, who always needs to control things but said he would follow Mack anywhere. They might not physically be together, but he’s with him every step of the way.
“Okay, I think I have my pictures,” Will says, voice close through Mack’s headphones like he’s whispering directly in his ear. Mack likes facetiming him with headphones on for that reason, not just because Will sometimes says things that make Mack flush that his family would tease him for if they heard.
Mack takes a shaky breath and glances at Will’s face in the corner of his screen, another reminder of one of the many reasons he’s doing this.
He’s been thinking a lot about pride lately. There are so many different ways to interpret that word, and so many different parts of himself to be proud of in different ways. He understands being proud of a skill or accomplishment, like his hockey ability. It’s hard for him to feel it without guilt, like he’s being vain by acknowledging any personal successes when he can’t bring his teams up with him, but Will is working on it with him.
He’s proud to be dating Will. He likes that someone as beautiful, talented, and charismatic as Will has chosen him as the object of his affections. He’s proud that Will sees something worthy in him, and he’s proud of himself every time Will gives him that beaming smile that tells Mack he’s made him happy. He’s proud when he gives Will something that he needs, and he’s proud that Will has taken the time to know what he needs, as well. He’s proud to love and be loved.
Being proud of himself simply for who he is, though… that’s something that’s a bit harder for him to grasp.
Mack didn’t choose to be gay. He hasn’t done anything particularly worthy of celebration to earn this pride.
But that’s not the point, is it? Maybe existing as himself is enough, when so many others haven’t had that opportunity. Maybe it’s enough that he’s made it through every locker room jab that unintentionally cut deep, every homophobic campaign disguised as a school debate or protective pieces of legislation, and every late night spent questioning if the sport that he loves will still love him back once everyone knows the truth.
He’s going to find out today.
He’s being very brave, and that’s something to be proud of. Anyone who comes after won’t need to break that barrier themselves, and that’s something to be proud of, too.
Mack looks at the photos in his folder, a collection of shots from their Pride Night games and a few of him and Will that are harder to explain away as two buddies, especially in the context of the other pictures, caption, and the date that he’s making this post.
His eye snags on one particular photo. It’s a selfie that Mack took of the two of them after a hike near Boston, sunglasses on and smiles wide. Mack has one arm stretched out for the selfie, his other wrapped around Will’s shoulders to pull him in. Will is pressing his lips against Mack’s cheek, his baseball cap flipped backwards specifically so the brim wouldn’t get in the way when he wanted to kiss him. It’s the type of picture that Mack could set as his lock screen after today.
“I think I’m ready,” he says once he’s arranged the pictures in an order he likes, typed out his caption, and tagged Will. All that’s left to do is press post.
They talked about their pictures and captions together, workshopping them until they found something that would suit each of their profiles. Will has a collection of hockey and Mack pictures as well, but he’s leaning more on pictures of the two of them, with a simple rainbow of hearts as the caption. Mack feels cowardly for choosing so many pictures of their Pride Night hockey games or moments of him and Will on the ice, but he also doesn’t want anyone to think that these are things he can keep separate. He’s proud of both of those parts of himself. For every picture of him on the ice that doesn’t include Will, he’s included a picture of them off the ice: their hands forming a heart together, a candid Cat took of the two of them giggling at each other during a team get-together, Will smiling at him across a table with their hands clasped together on it, and the selfie from Boston.
He doesn’t want those moments to be a secret anymore. He wants to be proud.
“Okay,” he exhales. “Are you ready?”
“I love you,” Will says in lieu of a yes. Mack wishes the scheduling had worked out so he could reach out and touch him, holding his hand while they both press post.
“I love you, too,” he says. “I really–I’m really proud to do this with you. I can’t imagine doing it without you.”
“Me too,” Will says, face twisting into a smile. “Ready?”
“Ready,” he says.
Will counts them down, and then they both press post. Mack watches the colored bar at the top as it loads, and then it’s out there for everyone to see. He gets the notification for Will’s post a second later.
It’s done.
“I’m proud of us,” Will says, as if he’s reading Mack’s mind.
“Me too,” Mack says, and feels lighter at the realization that he really, truly means it.
mackcelebrini: Happy Pride 🌈 Hockey is for everyone, including you and me 🍀