Chapter Text
Spring semester had ended, and everyone had gone home. Aiden and Mack were back in Vancouver. The draft had happened, and dev camp was starting. Aiden had gone into the city for it. According to Will’s Instagram, that Mack wasn’t stalking thank you very much, Lane, he’s in San Jose for dev camp. Since that night three months ago, Mack had learned a lot. One was that Will probably hadn’t cared about Mack as much as Mack cared about him because he was done begging for Mack’s attention before April even ended. And two, that the girl he’d made out with had been Ella Myers, his ex-girlfriend. Which sort of made sense to Mack because Ella was the epitome of a hockey WAG. She was everything Mack wanted to be and tried to be for Will but could never be. Mack had spent the last couple of months trying to hate her, but he just couldn’t.
Ella was gorgeous with her black hair and from endless scrolling on her page had never suffered from acne a day in her life. She was kind online and offline, responding to comments that were just compliments from her friends or followers with compliments of her own. She was studying to become an elementary school teacher because she wanted to work with kids. If Will and Mack were dating, they’d have to keep it a secret so Will didn’t become a victim of the media or his teammates. He was better dating Ella because of that; she could wear the WAG jackets and support the team in public. He could post photos of their dates and vacations, be happy with her within the public eye. Ella was someone that Will could be proud of and show her off at games, bring her home to his parents; all the things he couldn’t do with Mack because hockey culture didn’t agree. Everyone wore the pride jerseys, they used the pride tape, there were any known reports of Luke Prokop getting called slurs, but really that all meant shit when you know what goes on within a hockey locker room. Mack had witnessed it all firsthand; it had been one of the reasons he quit. He had tried to play after coming out to his close friends and family, but word spread quickly. The jokes that never really felt like jokes began to cut deeper; his teammates didn’t want to stay with him on his trips because they thought he would infect them. They isolated him, only caring when he scored a goal or gave them an assist. The only reason he had stayed was because he thought it would make his dad like him more; it hadn’t though.
Mack wasn’t quite sure what he expected from Will after he’d stopped answering his texts. He thought that he’d get an apology from him, maybe a few drunken voicemails, but that never happened. Will stopped texting before the end of March; the last text he sent had been asking if Mack could help him study for some test. He never responded because why would he? Will had fucked him up so badly, he hadn’t left his dorm, of course, of those two months they had left at BU for the fear of running into Will. He wasn’t sure what he would even do if he did run into Will; he’d probably make a fool of himself, that he was sure of. Mack had thought they were together or at least getting there, and Will clearly hadn’t if he’d gone to make out with his ex-girlfriend or maybe a new girlfriend. Mack wasn’t sure.
They hadn’t posted anything together, and Ella seemed to be posting a lot with some guy, but maybe they were keeping it secret. Mack sighed, shutting off his phone. It wasn’t any of his business anymore. Will wasn’t his and never had been. He didn’t need to keep up with him and his life because he wasn’t a part of it anymore, even if he so desperately wanted to be. It was Will’s book to write, and if he wanted to erase Mack’s name from all the pages he appeared on, he could, and there was nothing Mack could do to stop him. Frankly, Mack wished he could do the same and take white out to all the pages that involved Will in his own book, but he couldn’t bring himself to. The pages that involved Will Smith, Mack’s Will Smith, the one who would hold him close, basking in the afterglow of sex, smiling at Mack brightly as he told him, “You’re the prettiest boy I’ve ever seen.” The one who would take Mack out of his own head or make sure he had gotten something to eat on nights he spent in the studying. Those pages that involved that Will Smith would be something Mack held closely for the rest of his life or until he found someone that looked at him the same way, maybe him feel seen, if he ever found another boy who did.
He needed to get out of his own head, so he did what he’d done before he had met Will: he went for a run. He didn’t bring his phone or AirPods; it wasn’t that time of run, the one he’d done for fun or to keep himself in shape. This was one to push himself hard, leave his legs burning and screaming to stop even though he wouldn’t. He took the trail behind his house, the one that he used to ride his bike on with RJ before his dad stuck his claws into him as well, making the kid push himself to all kinds of levels he wasn’t ready for. It had been what his dad had done to both him and Aiden that had been another one of the things that ruined hockey for Mack, his dad. Before Mack had quit, he was projected to be this amazing player, maybe go first overall, and his dad hadn’t wanted him to lose that, so he pushed Mack hard, harder than he had Aiden. He had treated Mack like some hockey machine, made him think that without hockey, he would be nothing, and for a while after Mack quit, it had felt like that. He lost a lot of friends; he had nothing to talk to his dad about anymore. It had sucked, what was Macklin Celebrini without hockey for a while he wasn’t sure. He had tried to find something to fill that hole that had been left after he quit hockey, nothing had quite filled it until Will.
It was stupid. Mack had been looking for something to fill that void that hockey left behind, and when he finally did find something, someone, they managed to leave a bigger hole than hockey ever had. Mack sighed, frustratedly. He was coming up on the end of the trail. It was one big loop leading back to the end of his neighborhood. His whole body ached, and his legs had that familiar burn in them, but it wasn’t relieving like it usually was. Everything he’d gone on the run to forget was still present in his head. He made his way down the street, keeping his head down as he entered his house. “Mack, honey, is that you?” his mom called out from the kitchen.
“Yeah, mama, it is,” he called back. If it had been his dad, he would have kept climbing the stairs. He wouldn’t want him to Mack like this, like a mess; it would only make him more disappointed in Mack than he already was. His dad was in the city with Aiden, though, so he didn’t have to worry about running into him. His mama made her way out of the kitchen, wiping her hands off on her apron.
“Oh, honey, you look sickly. Are you coming down with something?” she asked, putting the back of her hand against his head, checking to see if he had a fever.
Mack shrugged her away, “I just went for a run. I’m fine.” He hoped she believed him. His mama and Aiden both had always had this way of sensing when something was wrong with him before it was. He hated it because it made lying to them hard, even if he didn’t want to lie to them in the first place. His mama frowned, pulling her hands away.
“Okay, sweetheart,” his mama said. She didn’t believe him; she wasn’t going to push. He kinda wanted her too; he was sick of talking about what happened to just Aiden and Lane because he knew they were done with hearing about it. They didn’t understand, and his mom wouldn’t either, not really, but she was his mama. He told her everything, not Will though. She had asked him several times if he’d met a boy in Boston; he’d just shook his head. He wanted to tell her now, but it wouldn’t be worth it. He gave her a smile, one that didn’t reach his eyes, and climbed up the stairs. He grabbed his phone off the nightstand, where it had been charging when he went for his run. There were a bunch of notifications, which was kinda surprising. He clicked on the first one using Face ID to open his phone. It took him to a conversation over Instagram with Ryan Leonard.
ryan.leno_4: will probably js fucked up his career for you, so u better thank him
mackcelebrini: what are you talking about?
Leno sent a reel to Mack, something that the Sharks had posted. It was a video from dev camp, the ones all the teams made where they asked the players questions about themselves. Will came off the ice onto the screen, “Whose your biggest supporter?” the girl behind the screen asked.
Will stood there seeming to think about it for a second before speaking, “Uh, my boyfriend, probably. He watched all my games back at BC.” Mack clicked on the comments, not surprised at what he said. Some of them were about the other players, though most of them were about Will. They were either very supportive or very cruel. Mack watched the video play over and over again, running through all the different players before it got back to the beginning with Will. Mack didn’t know what to say or think. Will had seemed so sure of himself as he walked off before anyone could elaborate or ask any more questions. He didn’t understand why Will had even done that. He hadn’t asked him too. Will had just done it out of his own accord, after not talking to Mack in months.