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A rookie season was a special time for any hockey player. There was the desire to prove oneself, the new freedoms of adulthood, and the intoxication of huge paydays that made it a whirlwind of excitement. Will may have spent one year in college, but that time in Boston could never have prepared him for playing with the Sharks.
Suddenly the game was faster. Hits were harder. The teammates around him weren't peers in his age group, but men with wives and kids. That kind of pressure could break lesser people, but Will was dedicated to his dreams.
Having Macklin around helped too.
At first, Will didn't know what to make of being on a team with Macklin. Had it been any other guy from any other college, Will thought he wouldn't have blinked twice. But no, Macklin had played for Boston University. Their collegiate rivalry had been fierce, and they hated each other on the ice.
He didn't know when it changed. Maybe it had been development camp, maybe it had been after the first few games, but Macklin quickly became his closest friend. Soon they were doing everything together: sharing meals, flying on the team plane, splitting hotel rooms.
Having someone close to him made the changes easier. Adjusting to adult life was one thing, but there was a particular part of being a Shark that Will could never have prepared for: Sharkie.
Will wasn't a stranger to magic; he'd been to theme parks before, watched grand fireworks displays or been to sirens’ concerts. He'd never thought that he'd be so close to a spirit though.
It wasn't uncommon for spirits to take up residence in sports stadiums. Large masses of people congregated there to cheer and scream; they almost became the new temples for the modern age. These spirits almost never did anyone harm, but like all divine beings, remaining in the vicinity of where they housed themselves for long periods of time could have interesting side effects on mortals.
No one remembered when Sharkie moved into SAP center. In fact, people weren't sure if the team was named after him, or if naming a team after sharks had happened to attract him. He would appear during games to draw energy from fans, and they loved the friendly spirit! The athletes that played on the team, however, had to put up with his mischievous side.
Will first realized what he was getting into when he and Macklin were dragged along by the team for their first dinner together.
Macklin bounced his leg in the car, “It doesn't seem fair that we have to pay for our own rookie dinner.”
“Dunno. I think that's just how they do things.”
“We just got signed! They should be treating us.”
Will didn't think Macklin was actually upset. He wondered if it was nerves. A rock sat in his own stomach, but he was going to ignore it. Will wouldn't be here tonight if he couldn't hack it.
An expensive seafood restaurant seemed appropriate, if cliche, for their first team dinner with the Sharks. If they were living in the Bay Area, though, why shouldn't they enjoy the benefits of the ocean? Their large group was packed into a private dining room, and Will's heart was pattered loudly with the clammer of conversation.
Waitstaff brought out huge plates of crab legs and clams. He and Macklin eyed each other and laughed nervously about how badly this would hit their wallets. Will filled his plate, and just as he was looking around for a crab cracker, he heard a loud crunch off to his side. He turned to look at Toffoli, and his mouth dropped.
The man was eating the leg whole.
Will wasn't the observant type, least of all when it came to his teammate's mouths. But now, watching Toffoli chomp down a crab leg like a piece of bread was the single most captivating, if horrifying thing, Will had ever seen. A punch to the shoulder brought him back to reality.
“Dude, what?” Macklin hissed.
Will had no answers. Eklund’s laughter broke through the noise of shattering shells. “A little gift from Sharkie.”
“What does that even mean?” Will said.
Eklund gave him an open mouth grin, hooking a finger into his lip to show off his teeth. Gone were the blunt, unassuming human shapes Will was so used to. In their place were rows of serrated shark teeth.
“Oh…” Will started.
“My god,” trailed Macklin.
“Don't worry about it.” Toffoli slapped Will on the back. “You'll lose your baby teeth soon enough.”
Soon enough, Will got to learn what that meant. During practice, on what felt like a routine drill, Will was pushed into the boards. His whole mouth felt like it was shattering. Will hunched over, and in a moment of vivid horror, he spat out all his teeth. Bone and blood splattered the ice. Rather than any sense of panic, his teammates cheered around him.
“Full shark! Full shark!”
Will was surrounded by people, gloved hands slapping his helmet.
“My teef,” he said through a bloody mouth.
“They'll come back, don't worry,” said Toffoli. “Give it a couple days.”
Macklin teased Will so much for his lack of teeth for days.
“You're like a gummy bear dude. Like a grandpa! Maybe we should go get you dentures.”
The pair ended up wrestling a few times because of Macklin's continued mocking, but it always ended in them laughing it off. It only stopped when sharp points started to poke through Will's gums, and he threatened to bite Macklin.
It was a couple weeks into the season before Macklin lost his teeth too. The man had thought it was a great idea to get into a scrum with the Utah players, and in the frenzy Macklin got his teeth knocked out by Logan Cooley.
Will had to laugh after the fact. Poor Cooley had apologized profusely for ruining Macklin's mouth, but the Sharks were too happy that their newest rookie would be getting his new teeth to care. The only one who was put out by the experience was Macklin.
“Will, I need a straw!” He would lisp out when the pair got coffee.
“Dude, it's a drink,” laughed Will.
“Cold!”
Will would shake his head, but he would get up to go find his friend a straw. He'd tried to give Macklin back the same amount of teasing that he'd been given, thinking that it was only fair, but that had gone poorly.
“Will, that's so mean.” Macklin had whined through watery eyes. “I'm not a gummy bear.”
Will never tried that again. If Macklin was sensitive about it, that was fine. Will was fine to fetch straws for his friend, and to have someone to bond with in their shared dental misery.
Because Macklin had lost his teeth in such a dramatic and public fashion, very quickly did his popularity surge online. As did Will's with his proximity to Macklin. “Baby sharks.” It certainly wasn't the worst nickname. Will and Macklin would crowd around one of their phones just to look at comments on the Sharks’ Twitter account about them and laugh.
“How can you two even stand to look at that shit?” Toffoli had asked them once.
“It's funny!” They'd protested in unison.
“Oh my god, now they're talking like creepy twins too,” said Ferraro.
With more attention came more pressure to participate in social media content, which neither of them minded at first. Answering mini-mic questions was easy! What became burdensome was when Sharkie got in on it.
The cameras had become almost invisible to Will; he barely noticed them. Perhaps he should have noticed how the black lenses tracked his movement as he went to pick up his sticks for practice. Instead of the barely there weight he was accustomed to, when he picked them up they were heavy and slipped right out of his hands. The sticks clattered to the floor, and salt water spilled out from the tops of them.
“Dude, what the fuck?!”
The guys around him laughed, but the loudest laughter wasn't from a human mouth. Will flipped his head around, and peaking through the door was Sharkie.
“Did he do this?” Will pointed.
“Oh, he got you good,” said Eklund
“I bet your TikTok fans will love this one,” chimed Ferraro.
From that moment, Will swore to himself that the first moment he could, he would get vengeance on Sharkie. Not for the embarrassment, because the prank was funny. No, he wanted to get the spirit back for messing with his sticks. The salt water had completely ruined every single one of his tape jobs!
He hadn't had to wait too long. On one of the occasions where he and Macklin were playing sewer ball, Sharkie made an appearance in front of their social media admin. It was definitely unrelated to anything he and Macklin were doing, but it was in the same hallway.
Perhaps it hadn't been Will's smartest idea. In fact, when he thought back on it, it was probably up there with one of his dumbest decisions ever. But he had a soccer ball, and Sharkie was standing right there. The spirit was immortal; it wasn't like Will could actually hurt him. Without a thought for what Sharkie could do in return, Will wound up and kicked the ball directly into Sharkie’s snout.
In near slow motion, Will watched it fly into Sharkie's face. The impact distorted his nose and jaw, and Will burst into laughter at the shocked look on the spirit's face. Macklin wheezed, falling into the steel door.
Sharkie, to his credit, took the hit like a champ. The being clutched his head and spun around theatrically. His normal gray turned bright pink and he laid down on the ground, leaking enormous crocodile tears even as he chippered inhuman laughter.
“I got him right in the beak.” Will laughed.
Macklin had tears in his eyes, and their social media admin’s shoulders shook as they tried to laugh silently to capture this scene on film. Sharkie burst into a cloud of sea mist, and was gone.
“He's gonna get you back for that,” said Macklin when he could breathe again.
“No! Because that was me getting him back for my sticks!”
“I don't think it works like that.”
Will found out the hard way that it didn't.
He and Macklin had become accustomed to sharing a hotel room. After their usual ritual of ordering chocolate chip cookies from the hotel, and sharing them while watching the night’s game, Will promptly crashed out on his bed. He didn't know how long he was asleep before a pillow slammed into his head.
“Will, turn off the lights,” whined Macklin.
Will cracked his eyes open to a dark wall. “They're off!”
He was hit with another pillow for his troubles.
“Then why is it so bright?!”
“It's not!”
Will fully sat up. As he rubbed his eyes, he slowly realized that the room wasn't pitch black, but rather was bathed in a neon yellow-green. He looked around confused, trying to find the source, and realized that it was his own skin.
“Oh, fuck!”
Will scrambled out of bed, frantically scrubbing at his arms. Macklin fully woke up to witness his panic, and when he saw his best friend glowing and screaming, he joined in.
“Oh my god, you're glowing!”
“Help!”
“How!?”
They bounced on their toes, yelling at each other. Macklin ran out of the room, and Will ran after him. Neither cared they were only in their shirts and boxers. They did what they knew to do: run to the closest Real Adult.
“Toff! Toffs help! Toffoliiii!”
They pounded their fists on his door, frantic until the man opened the door. Annoyance was clear on his tired face.
“What the hell, you two?”
“I'm glowing–” “He's glowing!!” They shouted over one another.
“Jesus, what are you talking about?”
“Look!” Will gestured at himself.
Toffoli squinted. He was barely awake, and trying to find a glow in the bright lights of the hotel hallway was hard.”What am I looking at?”
“I'm glowing!”
“He's radioactive!” Macklin emphasized. “He's gonna explode or something!”
“Glowing…oh, you are kinda green,” said Toffoli, finally in agreement.
“What do I do? Am I gonna die? What if I'm stuck like this forever and everyone starts calling me a flashlight?” Will started to babble.
Toffoli raised a hand. “Dude, chill.”
“Chill? How can we be chill at a time like this? How are we supposed to share a hotel room if he's glowing!?”
Macklin sounded more upset about the prospect of having to move out, rather than having to try to sleep next to a fluorescent Will. Toffoli rolled his eyes at his shook-up teammates.
“It's Sharkie. He's messing with you.”
Will’s brain filled with static. “Sharkie?”
“The glowing. He's doing it to prank you after you hit him with that ball. If you don't want him to give you gills next, you'd better apologize.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“When we're home, go to a fish market, get him a present, and leave it by the Zambonis. Now go to bed.”
Toffoli shut his door in their faces without much ceremony. Will and Macklin looked back and forth at each other.
“He didn't have to be so grumpy about it.” Macklin said.
“Yeah. He's not glowing,” agreed Will.
When they were in San Jose, Macklin lived with Joe Thornton, and while Will didn't live there, he might as well have for all the time he spent there. As soon as the team was back from their road trip, Will was driving to collect Macklin for an emergency trip to a fish market. It never occurred to him to do this alone. The two did practically everything together.
Will pulled up, and honked his horn twice. Macklin came jogging out the front of the house, a grin on his face as he opened the passenger door.
“Hey!”
“Hey. Ready for this fish adventure?”
“Always. I'm ready for you to stop being the brightest night light I didn't buy.”
“Rude!” Will shoved Macklin in the shoulder even as the other man laughed.
As they paced back and forth the aisles of the market, the pair debated what to buy. What did one even get for a team's mischievous mascot?
“Maybe a crab?”
“Dude, I'm not transporting a live crab in my car.” Will shook his head.
“Okay, I just think he'd appreciate something alive.”
“No! That's creepy. And what if it gets loose in the stadium, and then there's just crabs running around the ice.”
“Okay, good point. Salmon?”
The two went back and forth until they settled on getting a whole cod and a few scallops. Will really wanted to stop glowing. They drove to the SAP center, and navigated through its lower levels to find the Zambonis.
“You think this is gonna work or is Toff messing with me?”
“Why would he be messing with you?” Macklin frowned.
“I don't know? Because it's funny to mess with rookies.”
“Well, yeah, but there's gotta be funnier ways of doing that than making us buy fish.”
When they got to the equipment barn, they stood in front of the Zambonis awkwardly, fish in hand.
“Should we, like, make it look nice?”
“Well he's a spirit, I feel like you have to.”
The two tried their best to make an appetizing looking pile. Brown paper and plastic wrap weren't the best stage for an offering, but they made due with what they had, arranging scallops around the fish they bought.
“Now what?” Macklin asked as he wiped his hands on his pants.
“Uhhh, I don't know. Hey! Sharkie! I'm sorry about the ball. I brought you some fish! I don't want to do a prank war, thanks…” he trailed off.
Nothing happened. The mascot spirit didn't appear and nothing occurred to their offering pile. Macklin sighed. “Maybe he's shy.”
“I don't know. You wanna go?”
“Yeah. This is awkward.”
Will ended up joining the Thorntons for dinner that night. There was nothing fancy, just hot dogs on the grill and salads Will and Macklin had picked up on their way back from the arena. It felt odd to chew with serrated shark teeth, like regular food was too soft. It was perfect anyways, as it had heart and simplicity of family in it.
As dusk rolled in, and the sky turned from bright blue to a deep purple, Will found reasons to stay later. He had his own home to return to, but hanging out with Macklin was more fun. His friend had parked himself in a hammock. Will wandered through the grass, and climbed in after Macklin.
“Dude! You're not gonna fit!”
“Yeah I will, let me in,” he said as he wiggled his butt in between Macklin's legs.
“You're gonna break it!”
“I'm not!”
The hammock bounced and swayed under their combined weight, but didn't slip from its anchors.
“Ugh, your legs are in my face,” said Macklin.
“You're fine. I wanted to show you this.” Will turned his phone around to show Macklin the latest basketball highlights.
“Oh, sick,” said Macklin.
They sat in amicable silence for a long time, passing back and forth videos between them. Will scrolled through TikTok, lost in his own world, when Macklin smacked him on the leg.
“Ow! What was that for?”
“You're not glowing anymore!”
“Huh? Really!?” Will looked down at himself, and sure enough the greenish glow was finally gone from his skin. “Oh my god I'm finally not a glowstick.”
“No more glowstick!” Macklin cheered.
“Ughhhh. That sucked. Never gonna hit Sharkie again.”
“Yeah don't do that. I can't sleep in the same room as you if you're fucking glowing.”
“Yeah.” Will rubbed his forehead, glad he wouldn't be losing his roommate and friend at night. He hated sleeping alone. He waved in the vague direction he thought the SAP center was in. “Thanks Sharkie, enjoy the fish!”
“Yeah! It cost us money!” Macklin laughed.
Will kicked his chest, and Macklin shoved him back. The two laughed as they playfully wrestled, stopping when they feared they would topple themselves from the hammock. The night air cooled around them, but neither noticed. Will and Macklin were lost in their own world, flashing sharp toothed grins at each other as the sun faded away.