Work Text:
“Do you think I got enough packets?” Will asked. His parents both shot him condescending looks through the mirror, Grace was pressing her lips together trying not to laugh, and Mack? Macklin looked just as confused as Will expected him to be.
After all, Mack hadn’t seen the hundreds of packets Will had snuck off and paid for at another till. He hadn’t seen the way Will was stuffing packets of Haribo rings into every crevice of his backpack that could take one. He most definitely hadn’t seen the memo on Will’s phone that said ‘DON’T FORGET RINGS’ and nothing else.
Will shifted, eyes widening softly when he heard the crinkle of packets from the backpack sat between his legs. Grace broke next to him, laughter spluttering out of her as she leant against the car door. “Oh my fucking god, this is so dumb,” she said.
“What did you do?” Mack asked. That only sent Grace laughing further, and even Will’s parents joined in, soft chuckles drifting back from the front of the car. Mack, adorably, was even more confused. Will hummed and dropped a quick kiss against Mack’s cheek.
“Don’t worry about it, babe.”
❅❅❅
Will and Grace scarpered up the stairs, satisfied that their parents had Mack fully distracted. Of course, Will knew Mack was probably panicking on the inside about being left alone with Will’s parents, but Will could only hope they’d treat him just as nicely as they had this entire time.
“Right, we have twenty minutes and two hundred packets of Haribo rings to wrap… why did you do this to us? Hell, why are you doing this to Mack?” Grace cursed. Will didn’t respond, just dropped to the floor, procured the wrapping paper and scissors from underneath his bed, and slid them over to Grace. As she started unfurling the paper, Will had an idea.
“What if we made it like a bomb?” Will said.
“Excuse me?” Grace all but spluttered. Will laughed and turned to his backpack. He swiftly procured the packets of sweets, each one crinkling merrily as it tumbled to the floor.
“We wrap them all up as one gift. That way, when he opens it, it explodes onto him like a bomb. A gummy bomb,” Will said. Grace huffed but immediately got to work unrolling the wrapping paper further. “Shall I just pile them onto the paper?”
“Yeah, but don’t let it get too close to the edges, otherwise we’ll never be able to seal it,” Grace said. Will hastily got to work, deftly trying to stack the packets all nice and neat before he gave up and started dumping them onto the paper by the handful instead. “Are we gonna have enough paper?”
Will looked up. The roll was creeping dangerously close to its end and Will gulped. He met Grace’s eyes and the two exchanged amused smiles before Grace shook her head and muttered ‘idiot’ under her breath. Will couldn’t say he disagreed with her.
“It’ll be fine!”
❅❅❅
Will waited until he was positive Mack was asleep, his face smushed into Will’s bicep, before he slowly extracted himself from Mack’s grip. He pressed a quick kiss to Mack’s head, heart clenching fondly when Mack shuffled closer to him even in his sleep, before he left the room.
Grace waited on the landing, arms crossed over her chest. She yawned, gesturing for him to hurry up, and Will smiled at her appreciatively. They entered her room, silence flowing between them until the door clicked shut.
“Fuck, my arm is numb,” Will’s hissed gently. He rubbed at the numb part of his arm from where Mack had been, gently encouraging and coaxing the blood to flow again. It took a few moments before the pins and needles started.
“Here,” Grace said. She’d been rooting through her closet the entire time and, at last, procured a small, velvet-lined box. Will gently took it into his hands. He didn’t want to hold it too tightly lest he damage the box or ruin the lining, but he also didn’t want to put it down in case it vanished from his sight. “Hey… you’re panicking.”
Will looked up at his sister. Sure enough, he could feel his heart jackrabbiting into his chest, breaths coming out in short, sharp bursts. He muttered a small ‘oh god’ before he was dropping to the edge of Grace’s bed, his hands still curved loosely around the box. He couldn’t let go of it, couldn’t stop staring at it either.
“What if he says no?” Will said. His left leg started jerking and bouncing anxiously, a soft, steady tapping filling the air as his heel met with Grace’s plush carpet. “I don’t know what I’ll do if he says no.”
“He won’t say no,” Grace said. Will sucked in a shaky breath and shook his head.
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, Will. The way he talks about you, too. Even the way he talks to you practically screams that he sees you as his future husband,” Grace said. She sat on the bed next to him, curling an arm around his shoulders. Will sighed. He felt shaky and unstable.
“You know… I’ve technically already proposed to him,” Will muttered. Grace snorted with laughter.
“Of course you have. When and what happened?”
Will sighed. It wasn’t even that old of a story, just over a year ago, but Will still treasured it as such an important, relationship-defining moment. He laughed fondly and shook his head.
“We’d lost a game, I barely remember where we were other than it being a road game. I’d scored, but missed another shot that would’ve tied us,” Will started. His cheeks grew warm as he continued to speak and he knew Grace would rib him about it later, but he hardly cared. “Mack said something like… about how he’d take any loss if he got to see me score, and something in me just caved. I told him I wanted to marry him.”
“What did he say in response?” Grace prompted once Will had gone silent for a few minutes, hands shaking as they still cradled the ring box. He couldn’t answer her in that moment. He needed to see the ring.
Slowly, slowly, Will prised open the lid. It snapped upwards after a certain point, revealing the simple band of silver, the date of their first kiss engraved on the inner part of the banding. As Will stared at the ring, he remembered what Mack’s response had been.
“He, um… he said yes.”
❅❅❅
It was silent in Will’s house when he finally exited Grace’s room and returned to his own. As he opened the door, a soft light greeted him, and he almost startled when he realised Mack was awake, browsing on his phone whilst lying on his side.
“Where’d you go?” Mack asked, immediately locking his phone and slipping it back under the sheets. All his attention was on Will in a way that made Will fuzzy and disoriented. How could someone’s attention be so disarming yet so reassuring at the same time?
“Sorry, had to sort something out with Grace,” Will said. The ring had been perfect, exactly what Will had wanted. Grace had promised to keep it safe for the following day, so he’d let her take it back and slip it into her bedside drawer before he’d finally left.
“Leaving me alone on Christmas is pretty cruel, don’t you think?” Mack hummed playfully. Will slipped under the sheets, laughing softly when Mack immediately clung to his side. His hand settled at the back of Mack’s head, finger softly slipping through his fluffy strands as he tried to coax Mack into sleeping once more.
“It’s only Christmas Eve, don’t pull that card on me,” Will chastised. Mack sighed and nuzzled closer, his eyes already drooping shut due to Will’s ministrations. “Hey, you wanna know something?” Will whispered. Mack hummed, one eye popping open as he peered up at Will.
“What?”
“I’m giving you an early gift tomorrow,” Will said. He shouldn’t have said anything, knowing fully well how ravenous and dog with a bone Mack could be once he learnt something that intrigued him, but he couldn’t stop himself. He just wanted to pour every inch of his brain into Mack’s so they could truly share each and every last part with each other.
“You are? Oh, but I didn’t plan anything to give to you early,” Mack pouted. Will hummed and pressed his lips to Mack’s, coaxing and soft as he slowly shifted so Mack was pressed against the sheets, Will’s weight above him. When he pulled away, Will couldn’t help but smirk at Mack’s blushing, flustered face.
“Oh, I’ve got plenty of ideas.”
❅❅❅
Mack was syrupy slow and still sticky with a post-sex haze when they woke up in the morning. Will, however, was practically vibrating, the anxious energy within his skin manifesting like he’d gotten ants in his pants, or something.
It didn’t surprise him, then, when Grace huffed and slapped a pancake onto the plate in front of him, pulling a startled yelp from his mouth. Even Mack jolted. “Will you calm down already? God, you weren’t even this bad as a kid!” She chided him. He knew that she knew why he was acting the way he was, and he appreciated her dogged attempts to try and cover up the true cause of his insatiable, unceasing shuffling.
Will met Mack’s gaze over the table and he shot him a wink before he focused on his breakfast. One step at a time, he reminded himself as he chewed his pancake. One step, and one more step, and so on and so forth until he was down on one knee and uttering the words he so desperately wanted to say. The speech that he’d built up in his head over many nights full of Mack’s soft snores and Will’s overactive mind.
Anxiety flared hot in Will’s veins again and he felt himself crashing. The vibrating, over-hyper energy was fading now, melting into something more distraught and untrustworthy. Mack frowned at him softly, and Will tucked his head down.
What was he doing? Was he actually stupid? Mack wasn’t going to say yes, not when they were so young, when their relationship was so young. Will was being stupid, more stupid than he had any right to be, more chaotic and scatterbrained than normal. He felt like a livewire, all fizzy and crackling.
“Smitty?” Mack whispered. Will jolted, whipping his head up and meeting Mack’s much closer than before gaze. When had he circled round the table? Will could see his abandoned plate, knife and fork still resting atop the half-eaten food almost artfully.
“Sorry. What happened?”
“Are you alright? You started zoning out hardcore,” Mack said. Will sighed and shook his head before he shot Mack a reassuring smile. He knew it didn’t reach his eyes, couldn’t feel the way they crinkled up, but he hoped Mack bought it all the same.
“I’m perfectly fine.”
❅❅❅
Will was not fine.
Mack was holding the fake, gummy present, soft giggles falling from his lips as he tried to undo the ribbon that Grace had knotted around the top almost too tightly. Eventually, Will gave up and entered the kitchen before returning with a pair of scissors.
“Here, these might help,” Will said. Mack accepted the scissors with a soft thank you before he snipped the ribbon. The paper unfolded with a rustle and Mack practically yelped as two hundred (give or take, Will was sure Grace had pocketed one at some point) packets of Haribo rings dropped to the floor, pooling around his ankles.
“What the…? What is this?” Mack said with a chuckle. His cheeks went a soft shade of pink as he stared down at the mess of sweets on the floor. “I didn’t realise this present was gonna cause such a mess, I’m really sorry.”
“It’s fine. Will got an idea in his head based off of that one time he gave you a Haribo ring or something,” Grace said. Mack frowned and turned to look at her over his shoulder. Will took a deep breath, procuring the box from his pocket to instead hold gently in his hands. Grace gestured for Mack to turn to face her properly and when he did, she threw something at him. With a soft chuckle, Will realised it was the missing packet of sweets. “Now turn back around.”
Will lowered himself down, his kneecap pressing against the floor just as Mack spotted him. Almost immediately, Mack’s eyes widened, his pupils expanding until only the faintest ring of hazel peeked around the edges.
“Sometime last year, I told you I wanted to marry you in a random hotel after a road game loss. You… you said yes, but I wasn’t satisfied with that. I wanted… I wanted to propose to you properly with the big shiny ring and the speech and me down on one knee. And,” Will paused, took a deep breath, willed his anxiety away. “And when I said I wanted to do it properly, you said you’d wait for me. I can’t remember exactly how long, but you said it.”
“Forever and a day,” Mack whispered. Tears swam in his eyes now, and Will knew he wasn’t faring much better. He could see both his mother and Grace recording, Grace’s phone fixed on Mack, whilst his mother’s phone was fixed on him. He almost dreaded having to watch it back later.
“Forever and a day. Well, it hasn’t quite been forever and a day, has it? I couldn’t wait that long, even if I knew you would. I love you, and I think I have done since the day we first met, I just didn’t realise what love was until you were my teammate and we got to play side by side, day in and day out. And I don’t wanna spend another day without you by my side. So,” Will stopped again, lower lip wobbling as he felt a single tear trail down his face. “Macklin Celebrini… will you marry me?”
Mack smiled and shook his head fondly as tears flooded down his face before he was diving forward and dropping to his knees, arms curling around Will’s body as he sobbed. Tears dribbled down Will’s neck, but he could hardly bring himself to care, not when Mack’s hands were holding onto him so tight, his warmth pressing against each fibre of Will’s being. He pulled back moments later and cradled Will’s face in his hands.
“Oh Will… of course it’s a yes.”