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Mack is roped into an interview, one of those when they reach the road city a day before the actual game so they ask about all kinds of stuff that’s not game related, when the question hits him like a smoke bomb.
Unassuming at first, but then lethal.
“Is it kind of like an inside joke for you and Will, that you always add a picture of you two in your monthly recap posts on insta? Or is it just another aspect of your friendship?”
Mack is stumped. “Uhm, what? What do you mean?”
The interviewer is puzzled for a moment, but then he asks again. “You just posted your November wrapped on insta. As usual, it features a few pictures of you and Will together, along with shots of just you and fans have been noticing that it’s been a theme since your rookie days. Like, you’ve never posted something where the other wasn't included.”
“Oh, uhm, I mean,” Mack starts, confused and still not quite sure what the guy wants from him, “I didn't even notice before you just said that, so uh, I don't think it means anything.”
“So you’re saying it’s just coincidence?” The guy asks again, clearly looking for a juicer angle and not the lackluster answer Macklin just gave him.
Mack just shrugs, nonverbally signaling to the guy that he wants to move on from that question.
What the interviewer doesn't know is that Will’s been unofficially managing Mack’s insta since he caught him obsessing over a few bad comments at the start of their rookie season. Will had taken one look at Mack’s clenched hands, the death grip on his phone, and promptly stole the phone out of Mack's grip and logged out of the app.
“Hey!” Mack had complained.
“You should know better than to check social media, Mack.” Will had answered, stern but kind. “It’s not gonna help you to sit there and read bad comments. Or good ones, doesn't matter.”
“But they still want me to post and stuff.” Mack grumbles, half inclined to agree but still upset enough to argue. “I need to show a good media presence, or whatever.”
“Okay, then I’ll just take over that for you. I can do your posts and you don't have to worry about accidentally seeing something you shouldn't.”
And that had been it.
Since then, Mack’s only been lurking on his burner accounts, the algorithm trained to show only cute dog videos, funny memes and carpet cleaning content.
Will has the password for his official one, Mack can't even remember it at this point, and every month like clockwork he shows Mack three to four pictures of himself, either a few particularly good shots from a game, or a few nice ones from walk-ins or team dinners to post for the monthly recap.
He’s been doing that since last October, and Mack now has to embarrassingly admit that he hasn't even checked once to see if Will actually follows through.
He trusts Will blindly. He trusts him to be on the ice where he needs him to be, he trusts him to always take him to the best food spots whenever they're on the road and he trusts Will to be his best friend, for however long the league will let them stay together.
Trusting Will to post some good pictures of him seems laughably small in comparison. But could his trust have been misplaced? Nah, that’s ridiculous.
Still, the thought of the insta pictures doesn't leave his mind for the rest of the practice.
As soon as they're back in the hotel room and Smitty has gone into the shower, Mack jumps on Will's bed and takes his phone from where he placed it on the bedside table to charge.
He unlocks it with ease—his face has been added to the biometrics since around the same time Will got his insta password—and directly moves over to insta.
Conveniently, it's still open on Mack’s official mackcelebrini account. Will did tell him he wanted to post a few new pictures yesterday, and even showed him which ones he thought suited the mood of last month best.
Ignoring the thousand unread dms and follow requests, it doesn't take Mack long to click over to is profile page and click onto it.
And there it is, his latest official post: It starts with a few pictures that were taken during games, and then comes one with Toff in the locker room. After that some more of the same snapshots before Mack reaches the last picture in the slide. It's taken from behind, the Celebrini and Smith unmistakable in teal on their jerseys.
Huh.
Interesting.
Will didn't show him this one. Maybe he just forgot?
Then Mack scrolls to his second latest post. This one starts with a walk-in photo of him and Will together before sliding over to walk-in pictures of just him, a dog and some airport pictures. Again, Mack didn't know Will planned to post that picture of them as well. He’d shown him all the other pictures in the post beforehand but that one. Still, it's just a harmless walk-in photo, nothing bad.
He scrolls further down but must conclude that Will is, of course, not included in his off season pics—as much as Mack would've liked for Will to be there for each of the moments captured in the photos, but whatever. Will can hang with his old BC pals all he wants. Mack doesn't care.
Deflated, Mack slumps down into the bedsheets. He doesn't know what he expected, but that wasn't it. Sure, Will posted some pictures of the two of them together that Mack didn't know about, but they were nice, harmless pictures.
Mack would've agreed to post them had Will asked for the approval.
Noises from the bathroom alert him that Will is getting out of the shower, and Mack quickly chucks the phone away. He’s not doing anything forbidden, but he still doesn’t want Will to think he snooped through his phone or something.
When Will comes out, he’s clad only in a small towel around his waist, hair still dripping wet. Mack takes a moment to appreciate the work Will put in over the summer, the bulk visible in his broader chest and arms.
He walks over to his bed, leaving water pooling on the floor in his wake. He stops on the side where Mack is still lying down and watching him. Suddenly, an evil grin overtakes Smitty’s face.
The next second, he shakes his head like a dog, the water droplets flying everywhere and soaking Mack.
“Hey! What the hell! That was so unnecessary, dude.” Mack complains. His face scrunches together in displeasure.
“That’s what you get for lying in my bed.” Will answers, smug. He turns around to put on some boxers before he joins Mack on the bed. “What are you doing here anyway?”
Mack quickly does the mental gymnastics to come up with a plausible excuse. “There was a draft on my side of the room.”
“Mhh. Sure, buddy.” Will clearly doesn’t believe him, but he’s nice enough to let it slide. “So, I was thinking we could watch this movie today…”
˙✧˖📷 ⋆🫧˙
Mack almost forgets about the whole thing. As he’s told in several interviews already, he really does stay off social media for the most part. On the rare occasion that he finds himself scrolling, it’s on his burner accounts flicking through a mix of cute dog videos, funny cat meme compilations and the occasional golf content. He’s careful to keep hockey far away from his feed, because he doesn't want to ruin the peaceful oasis that is his carefully groomed for you page.
Now, he and Will are at another hotel somewhere in the midwest, chilling on Mack’s bed. Will is on his stomach with his elbows propped up to dick around on his phone, and Mack’s lying next to him, legs thrown over Will’s just to annoy him.
He can’t completely read Will’s screen from where he’s lying, but he can recognize the familiar instagram layout. It looks like he just finished getting another post ready.
Then Mack remembers that in an effort to keep his feed clear of hockey, he’s never even checked out Will’s account. But now he’s curious enough to change that.
He rolls over and switches slides, so that now his feet are at Will’s head, and clicks onto Will’s instagram profile on his burner account. He’s careful to keep his slippery fingers from accidentally pressing any liking or following buttons, and clicks on to Will’s most recent post, posted only a minute ago.
He swipes through it, brow furrowing a little, before systematically going through each of Will’s posts until he reaches October of last year.
What he finds is incriminating, kind of. It’s definitely surprising, and for some unexplainable reason Mack’s heart rate picks up.
Apart from promo stuff and the off-season pictures, Mack is included in every single one of Will’s posts since they became friends at the start of their rookie year. His presence on Will’s page is occasionally accompanied by Toff and Delly, but he remains the common factor among all of them. Will’s latest post even features him twice.
He can kind of see why the interviewer asked him the question now. It is kind of weird.
He also feels kind of flattered and…special? To be the only one being so prominently featured in Will’s online presence.
But maybe it’s normal to just post your buddy all the time. Mack wouldn’t know, as he doesn’t really follow other players' posts.
He can change that though, just to get a better read on the situation. Watch some game tape, so to speak. Do a bit of research.
“Hey Will?” He asks, “Do you remember my insta password?”
“Why?” Will cranes his head around and narrows his eyes. “I thought you didn’t want to touch hockey social media?”
“It’s just to look up some accounts.” Mack hastily explains. “I don’t wanna mess up the algorithm on my burner, so…” He shrugs, hoping he comes across as casual and relaxed. He’s white-knuckling his phone. Nothing out of the ordinary here.
If possible, Will’s eyes narrow even further. “You’re not going to look at any comments, are you?” Mack would be annoyed if he didn’t know Will is doing this from a point of protection.
“I promise. I really just wanna see what Connor is up to.” He says. It’s not a complete lie.
“Y’know what. Just use my phone. I can't be bothered to remember your password right now. I'm following Connor anyway.” Will eventually decides and throws his phone Mack’s way.
Mack thanks his exquisite hand eye coordination for catching the phone before it can forcefully bash into his face.
He flutters around for a second. It's not what he was going for, but he can just as well do the research from Will’s phone than his own.
Just as he’s about to type Connor Bedard into the search bar, several massages from a Leno🦅 flit across the screen.
Lol I see what you did there 👀
Ur not slick u know💀
One of these days someone is gonna notice and call you out on it
Mack carefully tries to keep his expression neutral, but judging by the way Will is watching him, he’s clearly failed.
“What is it?” Will asks sharply.
“Nothing!” Mack insists. “Leno just texted you. Guess it just caught me off guard.”
Will's face blanches before it goes suspiciously blank. “Just ignore him. He’s an idiot and you shouldn't believe anything he says.”
“Okayyyy.” Mack agrees. He swipes away the messages, leaving them for Will to find later, and tries not to think about it for too long.
Finding out that Will has a secret that apparently only Leno knows is not his mission right now, he reminds himself. He’s here to check out the insta posts of their friends—like a creep—and compare them to Will’s page.
So he clicks through the pages of their friends, or like at least the ones Mack knows through years of playing hockey at the same age. He goes through Connor’s, Leno's, Lane’s and even his own brother's.
The research yields mixed results. Including your hockey bros in your posts—absolutely normal. Featuring your hockey bro in every post you make? Not so much. In the case of his brother, including your girlfriend in almost every picture, also totally normal, and even expected, honestly. But even then, Acacia is not in nearly as many pictures as he is in Will’s, or the other way around.
Mack doesn't know what to do with that information. He feels kind of special, obviously, but why does it feel so significant? Why does it make him feel so on edge?
Before he can spiral further, Will snatches the phone out of his hands. “Enough. You look stressed. Why are you stressed?” He turns the phone around to look at the screen, sees it’s still open on Connor’s homepage.
Mack would laugh at the confused expression on Will's face if he wasn't about to spiral. “I'm fine.” He insists. “I'm not stressed.” He flails around for a more believable excuse. “I just suddenly got sad for Connor. Like, what if he can’t go to the Olympics because of that freak injury? It would be really sad, I know how hard he worked last summer.”
Instead of relieved like Mack was hoping, Will looks even more displeased by his words. He even scrunches his nose in that cute way he sometimes does. “Okay, let’s stop talking about Connor. I know he’s your buddy and all, but I don’t wanna hear about him. Let’s just go to sleep, yeah?”
Mack snorts at Will’s obvious dislike for Connor, but he can't really judge. He can’t stand Leno either. Although he doubts WIll hates Connor for the same reason he can’t stand Leno. But whatever.
Will is really trying to sell the going-to-sleep part. So much so, that he moves up the bed so his head is on the pillow next to Mack. He plugs his phone back into the charger, and then pulls Mack close until they’re chest to back with their legs intertwined.
That fucker, he knows Mack gets immeditly sleepy when he’s the little spoon, and he’s shamelessly using that information in his favour.
Will is just such a nice warm blanket behind him, and he feels protected by the arm slung across his chest and the hair he feels tickling his neck. Anyone would fall asleep under these circumstances.
“You’re cheating.” He mumbles in accusation, voice already drowsy and cozy.
“I don’t hear you complaining.” Will smirks against Mack’s neck. Mack can feel the way Will’s lips move across the sensitive skin. All thoughts of instagram posts and weird interview questions fly right out the window.
Mack mumbles something that might’ve been something along the lines of you suck, before he grabs onto Will’s arm, pulls it even tighter around his chest, and drifts off to sleep to the feeling of warmth, comfort, and safety.
˙✧˖📷 ⋆🫧˙
With a new morning comes new clarity, and the thoughts that did not feel as important when Will hugged him like a koala last night are suddenly pressingly urgent in the daylight.
Mack knows himself, and thus he knows that he can’t possibly figure this out on his own. He needs an unbiased outside opinion.
And comes up embarrassingly empty when he tries to think of someone. He obviously can’t ask anyone from the Sharks, and he didn’t keep in touch with anyone from BU. His closest friend outside of Will is probably Bedsy right now, but he’s probably too busy with PT and shit to listen to Mack unload his Will-related baggage for the tenth time in a row.
That leaves him with his family. His parents are immediately out. Not only do they not have a clue about social media, but he doesn’t think they’d get what the problem was at all.
RJ is out because he’s even less emotionally aware than Mack. And he’s thirteen. That leaves only Aiden and Charlie.
In the end, he decides to call Charlie, on the basis that she’s as far away from hockey as one can be in their family, and probably more aware of unspoken social media rules than Aiden.
He entangles himself from Will’s clutches, careful not to wake him up, and slinks his way into the bathroom. He turns on the shower just in case and then calls Charlie. She picks up after three rings.
"Who is dying?"
“What?!” Mack splutters. “Nobody’s dying.”
“Okay then why are you calling me right now? You never call. It’s four am Mack, this better be an emergency.” Charlie says, rightfully annoyed to be woken up at ass o’clock by her brother.
“Did you know that Will always posts pictures of the two of us?” Mack asks, anxiously chewing on his fingernails.
“That’s the emergency?!” Charlie screeches. “Are you serious?”
“Yes!” Mack says, pleading. “This is freaking me out, so please, just answer the question.”
Charlie groans into her phone. Mack can hear the rustling from where she’s probably turning around in her bed. After a few seconds, she finally answers. “I guess, so? I don’t really notice, but yeah, if I see that one of you posted I’m kinda expecting a picture of you two one way or another. At this point, it’d be kind of weird if you wouldn’t be in a post together. Feels wrong, maybe.”
Mack lets the information sink into his brain, mulls it over, and thinks of how to convey the issue to his sister. “I haven’t posted anything on my insta for a year.” Mack eventually settles on.
“Uhm yes, you did.” Charlie insists, confusion sinking into her words. “You posted just last month. You had a story up two days ago. Did you hit your head?” She adds on.
“No I didn’t.” Mack sighs. It's quiet for a while as Mack tries to calm down. “Will manages my social media, because I’m not good with the avoiding-comments-and-not-looking-yourself-up thing. The thing is just, uh, usually he tells me what he’s gonna post on my account, or I thought he did, but I just recently found out that he’s adding a picture of us to every post that he doesn’t tell me about.”
Charlie is silent on the other end.
“Just—what does that mean?” Mack asks her, voice breaking slightly on the words. He hopes the shower is loud enough to swallow any sounds Will might hear if he woke up by now.
“I don’t know what to tell you, Macky.” Charlie eventually replies. “Are you mad at him? For lying about it?”
“No, I don’t care about that.” Mack insists. Although he is slightly hurt and confused why Will didn’t just ask him about it. “I just wanna know what it means, I’m so confused.”
“Okay, different approach.” Charlie tries again, more rustling in the background. “What do you want it to mean?”
That I'm special to him, the way he is special to me. Mack thinks but doesn't say.
On the other line, Charlie can probably guess what he's thinking from the silence alone. “Figured it out?” She asks.
“Mhh.” Mack mumbles into the phone, dazed by the realization.
“Good, then do something about it. We're all tired of your pining.”
“Pining? What—” But the phone only beeps, signalling that Charlie already hung up.
Okay, so, he gotta talk to Will about this.
Determined, he shuts off the shower and stomps back out into their hotel room.
Will is already awake, mindlessly scrolling on his phone. His hair is sleep tousled and unkempt, but Mack still thinks he looks like a Greek god.
Will looks up when he hears Mack enter, and immediately purses his lips.
“Why aren't you wet? The shower was just on.” He asks, suspicious.
“You ever heard of a towel?” Mack snarks back.
Will clicks his tongue. “Don't give me that, we both know you don't bother drying your hair with one. So, why are you dry when you presumably barred me from using the bathroom so you could hog the shower?”
Ignoring Will’s valid question in favour of getting back to what’s fresh on his mind, Mack hurries on and jumps onto Will’s legs on the bed.
Will is startled enough that he forgets that Mack evaded his question. Before he can get his wits back, Mack barrels on. “Are you just using me for cloud?”
“What the fuck? Where’s this coming from?” Will asks, visibly upset by the accusation. He sits up straight, almost dislodging Mack from where he’s settled on his outstretched legs. “You're my best friend!”
“You’ve been lying to me!”
“About what?!”
“Your instagram posts!” Mack yells. He crosses his arms and stares down at Will. “You’ve been posting pictures of us without asking me about it. On your account and my account. Like, I thought you always show me all the pics you wanted to post, but turns out you don’t. I didn’t even know you had that many pictures of the two of us on your phone.”
Will’s mouth opens, his eyes wide and terrified. With every further word out of Mack’s mouth, he shrinks into himself more, trying to bury himself into the headboard. “I’m not mad about that.” Mack adds on, as he sees the look on Will's face. “I mean, I would’ve agreed to post them, if you’d asked me. But you didn’t. So I’m just— confused, I guess. I don’t get why you would do that behind my back.”
Mack slumps back down, still half sitting on Will’s legs. He's only now realising that he’s unwittingly managed to pin Will to the bed by sitting on top of him, hindering Will from running away from this conversation.
He’s glad for it now, because Will looks about two seconds away from bolting.
“C’mon, just tell me why. I’m sure it can’t be that bad.” Mack whines, impatient for an answer.
“You say that now.” Will mutters. He’s still refusing to look him in the eyes.
“I promise I won’t be mad.” Mack says earnestly. He takes Will's face in both of his hands to force him to look at him. He scoots up another few inches so he’s basically sitting on Will’s lap over the blanket. “I promise. Please just tell me.”
Will visibly swallows, his throat bobbing up and down, before he lets out one big breath and practically deflates on the bed.
“It’s so stupid.” Will eventually grits out. When he looks like he's not going to follow that up with anything, Mack works his best puppy dog eyes at him. It works. “Okay, okay, fine.” Will grumbles. “I posted the pictures because I wanted to.” Mack cocks his head to the side, obviously puzzles. “Okay, go on.” He urges.
Will sighs. “I just—It feels like what we have is special right?” He quickly looks at Mack for confirmation, and Mack just encouragingly nods his head, so he continues. “And I guess it just felt wrong to omit you from the monthly recap pics, because every month—scratch that—every one of my memories in the league is featuring you. We’re always together, and I love it that way, and I think I just wanted to show the world that we have something special. That we orbit around each other. I guess I wanted to show us off.” He explains. When he’s finished, Mack notices that Will is honest-to-god blushing.
Mack is almost giddy with the realization. Will doesn’t blush, he’s usually too cool and composed for that. Not like Mack, who gets looked at two seconds too long and immediately breaks out in red hives.
“And there is nothing wrong with that.” Mack assures him, still holding onto his face. “But I’m still not sure why you did it for my account as well.”
“I didn’t want it to look one-sided.” Will admits meekily. “I didn’t want to be the loser with an unrequired crush that was obvious for everyone to see. And I had your account right there, so I thought it would look less pathetic if you also posted the same kind of posts as me. That we seemed mutually obsessed. I know that's so dumb, please don’t hate me now.”
A tear escapes from Will’s beautiful blue eye, and Mack sits there, transfixed by Will’s words and the fact that Will looks even prettier when he cries.
“I could never hate you, Will.” Mack says, voice shaking only a little. “And you didn’t have to make it seem like it, we are mutually obsessed. I’ve been obsessed with you since training camp. And I meant it when I said I would've approved to post every one of those pictures of us, had you asked. I want the people to know that we’re weird about each other. What we mean to each other.”
Will sniffles a little, but a small smile breaks out across his features. “Yeah? And what do we mean to each other?” He asks, voice full of hope. Boldened by Mack’s positive reply, Will’s hands slowly gravitate up towards Mack's waist and hold it softly, reverently.
Mack full on grins, the one where even his gums show. “I think you said something about being a loser with an unrequited crush earlier? Well, turns out it’s not unrequired. I like you, Will, and I probably like you a little too much for how long we know each other, but it’s just as you said. We spend every minute of every day together, and somehow I still want to be closer to you. During the few times we’re not together, you’re all I can think about. You have no idea how much I missed you over the Christmas break.” Mack rants.
“So when I saw that you were posting these pictures of us, all I could think was, what does it mean? because I didn't want to get my hopes up and think I was special, but then I didn't see any of your buddies posting their buddies with the same frequency, so I just—I had to know what it meant.”
Will is also full-on smiling now. His grip on Mack’s waist tightens ever so slightly, and he pulls Mack further towards him.
“Well then, I’m so glad you asked.” He chirps, and then suddenly they’re kissing.
It’s soft and slow at first, both of them just getting a feel for each other. Mack leans forwards into Will’s space, and Will gladly lets him in. Mack’s hands start to wander, from Will’s face down to his shoulders, his waist, his back.
Will tilts his head just so, and now the angle is so much better. Both of them are probably still tasting of morning breath, but neither of them care for that at the moment. Mack presses his lips closer against Will’s, needing to feel, to taste, now that he knows he can.
Will pushes back with just as much enthusiasm, the hands that were previously on Mack’s waist slowly but surely wandered down to his ass, kneading and squeezing the skin as he goes.
Mack starts to squirm on top of him, torn between concentrating on Will's lips or the magic feeling his hands leave imprinted on his skin.
It’s actually getting quite overwhelming, but Will notices the way Mack’s mouth has gone slack, unresponding in the panic, and retreats his hands back to the safe location on his waist.
“We have time for that later.” Will states, like a promise, and then he goes back in to place little kisses all over Mack’s face. On his cheeks, his nose, his forehead, then his nose again, until Mack is giggling in his arms.
At last, Mack is brave enough to lean forward, initiating the kiss this time. By now his hands have found their way back to Will’s face, gently cradling his jaw before he scratches and pulls slightly at the strands of Will's nape.
He can practically feel the goosebumps he leaves in his wake, and smiles into the kiss, lips open and moving passionately against Will’s. This close, he can practically smell Will’s shampoo and the leftovers of his cologne. Then he remembers that they slept snuggled up, so he probably smells like Will as well. The thought makes him unproportionally happy.
After a while, the kiss turns slower and languid again, both of them pulling back to just look at each other.
Will plants one last kiss on Mack’s lips before he lightly taps his ass, gesturing for him to get up.
“C’mon, baby, we gotta get up if we don’t want to miss breakfast.”
˙✧˖📷 ⋆🫧˙
Later, when they’re standing side by side in the bathroom and brushing their teeth, Will suddenly turns to him.
“You never explained why you were in the bathroom this morning with the shower on and came out dry.”
“Oh that.” Mack smiles sheepishly. “I just found out about the posts and had to call Charlie to rant to her. I didn’t want you to overhear so I turned the shower on. She convinced me I needed to talk to you.”
“So you jumped on me as soon as you came out of that conversation? You act fast, huh?”
“I needed answers! You know I’m not patient when it comes to things like this.” Mack whines.
"Yeah," Will says softly, gently removing a bit of toothpaste on Mack’s chin “I know.”