Chapter Text
“Home, Mack! Sorry I took a while— Oh, hey bud, hey. How long have you been there for? You not dizzy?”
The upside-down gaze Will’s greeted with as he appears in the lounge doorway is both baleful and doe-eyed. Mack’s lash lines brimming with wet below cheeks that look as though they’ve been pinched, the pink of them radiating warmth. Strewn ever so dramatically across their three seater, Mack’s head, dangling from the arm rest, is directed at the door and his his lips are fat with a pout around the knuckles of the middle and pointer finger of his right hand, his left fastened around a ridiculously large shark plush to keep it balanced on his chest.
Said shark was initially a bit of a gag gift from Will. Something to dump on their new couch beside the tasteful Pottery Barn blanket and throw cushions Grace had had delivered to them when she couldn’t make their housewarming party. But Mack had taken a shine to it almost immediately— with all of it’s stitched fabric teeth that look rather like his. Now the toy tends to end up in his lap whenever they lounge in front of the tv. Will’s noticed because it’s fucking… more endearing than he quite knows what to do with, if he’s honest.
In Will’s well-informed opinion, Mack is often endearing but he’s somehow clueless about it. So, Will finds himself putting a lot of energy into appearing chill and unaffected, lest Mack realise and school himself out of it.
He’s undeniably cute flopped across their tastefully beige couch, sullenly askew in his wrinkled basketball shorts and old, faded Sharks tee. With the little V of a frown etched between his eyebrows and the slow bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallows around his fingers, dragging them, spit slick, from his mouth (Will pretends he doesn’t know Mack still sucks them to self-soothe and Mack pretends he hasn’t caught him at it a hundred or more times).
The morning’s barely passed but Mack looks tuckered out already. That’s what Colleen always called it back when Will was a grade school kid, grumpy about being summoned back home after some grass-stained Summer day spent baking himself down to the bones in the July heat. Will could never be contained between breakfast and dinner, considering a day entirely wasted if he wasn’t exhausted from neighbourhood-wide softball games and mini sticks tournaments in unoccupied driveways. By the time he was called in to eat, he’d slump down in his chair at the dining table, all sweaty and sun-kissed and sleepy-eyed from his adventures and Colleen would smile, knowing and fond— tuckered out, kiddo?
“You took forever,” Is Mack’s welcome home, bro, the whine wrapped around his words giving his voice more of a lilt than usual. “Been like hours and hours,” Huffed just in case Will hasn’t noticed that he’s pissed about it.
Spoilt brat, but whose fault is that? The blame lands squarely with Will and their team won’t let him forget it.
“Aw, yeah, I’m sorry,” Will says after a pop of his gum, hip cocked to the doorjamb and sunglasses raking his hair back, “Costco was packed so Toff was out with Stella at the groomer’s by the time we got back to their place. I helped Cat put their stuff away, bud. Talking of— you gonna help me get our shit inside? Half of it’s your Biosteel.”
Mack’s scowl deepens and Will doesn’t miss the telltale kick of his heels against the other arm rest but he thinks better of arguing. Especially after the demands he’d made when Will had mentioned going on a Costo trip with the membership card the Toffs had helped them get.
For a split second, once he’s upright, he keeps a childish, full-fisted clutch on the shark’s fin. Almost as though he’s gonna haul him out to the Bronco, too. If Will had blinked he might have missed it. As it is, he feels a little tug on his heartstrings when Mack thinks better of it and drops him to the floor instead, before padding after him, to slip his feet into his sliders and tail him outside.
“Went for a run and you still weren’t even back,” He tells Will, again with that whine, and for all that he tries to sound furious, all that Will hears is missed you too much, was a lonely little boy, never leave me again.
He turns to him, with that soft-edged something to his eyes that only Mack can draw out of him. It’s condescending in a gentle way that makes Mack feel weirdly buzzy rather than combative. Like, why instigate a tussle when he can drape his whole front against the strong line of his best friend’s back, hook his chin over his shoulder, and settle the sudden fizz of it?
His weight is solid with his sulk but Will finds that he welcomes it, the hot press of Mack’s tummy through their thin t-shirts; their thighs knocking with every step they take and Mack’s slides catching on the heels of his sneakers. Mack can’t really be unaware of his size— not with the way his body is monitored and well-oiled by a whole team— but he doesn’t seem to care when it comes to laying all of his bulk on Will, expecting that his best friend will hold him up without any real complaints. Off the ice, as long as Will’s within arm’s reach, he lets himself be a little clumsy with his wants.
“Your shark kept you company, though?” Will asks carefully, concealing the something that he knows but couldn’t begin to name, and Mack huffs again, a petulant puff of damp air against Will’s neck. But, tellingly, he does not say no.
Outside, directly under the swell of the midday sun, it’s far too sticky to have Mack hanging off of him and it slows them right down as they begin the game of jenga needed to fit all of the bulk boxes into their pantry, stuffing it with enough packages of brown rice and gatorade to see them through a surprise apocalypse, but Will lets him linger throughout. Even as it adds twenty minutes the chore. Mack needs this, he knows. Some buried deep, far-too-fragile part of him would fall apart without the permission he’s given to slump and sniff at the sweat sticking curls to Will’s neck, scenting him as a puppy would. Reacquainting himself with Will as though it’s been months and not hours since he tossed his car keys at him and waved him off.
Nothing had really happened between then and Will’s arrival home, other than Mack’s pavement pounding run, and yet. So much had happened, too. All of it a whirlpool in Mack’s brain that had left him disgruntled and at a loss at what to do other than wait impatiently.
〰️〰️〰️
After every box has finally found a place, the pair hoist themselves up onto the breakfast bar to chomp through their reward of a blueberry protein bar each and Will sneaks impossibly fond grins at Mack every time the swing of the younger man’s legs jostles him. Mack yaps inanely and Will’s well trained ears half-listen, well enough for him to respond monosyllabically in all of the right places.
Will’s distracted though, attempting to place this Mack on the ice beside Crosby in his C emblazoned red tarp. Try as he might, Will can’t make the two align. The Mack he has with him is too much of a little kid, complete with grabby hands when Will fills up their water bottles at the sink and heavy, panting breaths when he gulps down half of his in one over-eager go.
That’s okay, though. That just means that this Mack is all for him. A small, secreted away Mackie for Will to fawn over within their four walls. Cute, yeah, with crumbs scattered down his front, untamed hair and a blotchy flush of colour dappling his cheeks and elbows. The bridge of his nose peeling where he’s caught too much sun (Will makes a mental note to apply his sun screen when they next head out).
“Feeling better now?” Will asks after Mack’s scoffed the last of his protein bar with a final bite so big it gives him hamster cheeks.
Mack isn’t that stupid, he knows Will’s teasing him— the telltale light of it dances in the blue of his eyes— but he really does, is the thing. Feel better. So he’d be lying if he didn’t nod.
It was mean of Will to leave him for longer than he said would but he’s taken such good care of him since he got back home. Been so patient. Always is. In a way Mack’s not sure he’d ever known people could be before Will first wrapped an encouraging arm around his shoulders.
“Sorry I didn’t message,” Will adds, voice feather soft at the shell of Mack’s ear, nose tucked between the mussed strands of his hair, “I’ll take you with me next time, deal? Gimme your pinkie, gotta make that official.”
〰️〰️〰️
The shark begins to migrate between Mack’s spot on their couch and his bedroom later that week. That it’s no longer static in their home adds further dimension to the glaring something Will hasn’t managed to come up with a label for.
At about nine pm each night, the toy travels to bed with Mack. It must wake up at the same ungodly hour as him, too because it’s always back in the living room by six am, nestled beside the folded Pottery Barn blanket. Will notices because where Mack’s concerned, Will watches. But also because Mack isn’t half as sneaky as he’d like to think. Really, it would be difficult for anyone to be subtle about a thirty-something inch stuffed shark clamped under their armpit. It makes Mack look like a toddler toting around a cherished lovey, illustrates a precious picture, with the tips of Mack’s favourite two fingers nudging at his lips and his eyelids drooping.
The sight of him has Will remembering the comfort blanket he’d clung to until the night after his Kindergarten graduation ceremony. When he’d stood, wobbling atop the coffee table, and declared himself too grown for it, Colleen had teared up before tucking it away into one of her many wicker memory boxes, the blanket Bill had brought to the hospital with a bear and a foil It’s A Boy! balloon. It had been silky on one side, with a sail boat pattern on the other, and when he thinks back on it, Will can still remember the calming rub of one of it’s ragged corners against the tip of his nose. It doesn’t escape his notice when Mack begins to do the same with the fin of the shark, thumb worrying at his lips beneath it.
Will has his particular voice for Mack when he seems to have shrunk down smaller, too. He hears it when it escapes from his throat without his say so. It’s as soft-edged as his eyes, perfect for when he needs to coax Mack into making good decisions— go wash up before dinner, bud and okay, iPad off, that’s enough tape for tonight, let’s think about teeth and bed, yeah?. And for all that Mack might pout and posture as though he thinks Will is being ridiculous, he keeps doing just as he’s told. Responding so well to all of the affection Will lets himself offer when Mack shows him he can do good listening.
Besides, Mack must like it because he starts seeking it out whenever it’s just the two of them. Bullying his way into Will’s personal space and then immediately melting into something all gooey once he’s nestled into the safe embrace of it, not quite knowing what to ask for beyond that first move. It’s interesting, witnessing the wunderkind with the sky high hockey iq being so lost on how to make this one play.
Will though, he’s got a high hockey iq of his own and that connection he has with his Mack across the expanse of the rink during a game? That doesn’t just disappear once they’ve tromped off the ice. One behind the other, two and seventy-one.
When it comes to Mack, Will is always at his most observant. He reads Mack in all of his big, spotlit-for-broadcasting moments and all of the flickery, hand-held analogue camera in-between ones, too. Cataloguing every shape his mouth twists into, every slant of his shoulders, every shiver and twitch and shuddered breath, to figure Mack’s shit out before the other boy even begins to consider half of what he’s feeling and then following through with what he finds. That codependence had always been there, woven through them since dev camp. But it’s so much easier, once they’re properly living under the same roof, to take Mack’s hand and lead him towards the rising crest of what he so clearly needs.
Between joint and solo career commitments, they settle into a cosy domesticity that Dickie will definitely rib them for once the season starts up again. And alongside it, Will cluelessly gentle parents Mack into a headspace that has always been there, simmering beneath his superstar surface. Bubbling like sugar beginning to swirl into caramel, sweet and oozing between the gentle snap of Will’s neat, white teeth.
Truthfully, it’s not so much like following a recipe as much as it is winging one with a basket full of raw ingredients and the vaguest idea of the cake that should come out of the oven. But let it never be said that Will Smith Multisports has ever met a challenge he couldn’t ace.
It makes him feel fucking paternal, is the thing. He even googles it to make sure he’s using the word correctly. And like, he shouldn’t be, should he? Paternal over his best friend, his liney, his housemate of a few months. But no, he is, for sure.
Paternal— characteristic of or befitting a father; fatherly— explains all the urges he has around Mack that he’s never experienced with any other friend. Ecky or Misa or Voter or like, Leno. Even Gabe. As gentle as he could be with him, it’d never become dropping kisses into the crown of his messy hair or squeezing the remaining pudge of puppy fat padding his cheeks. Will knows he’d balk if he had to grab a tissue to mop up anybody’s else snot, snail trailing amid their tears, but when the stress gets the better of Mack and he starts sobbing as soon as they’re buckled into the Bronco, he does it without hesitation. Keeps a pack of aloe vera Kleenex in his door for that very reason, because Mack had told him once that the scent of them calms him down, too.
Mack’s not just his boy. Mack’s his baby. Or rather Mack’s a baby, was probably a baby even before he had a Will to coddle that part of him. To encourage it by tucking Mack in tight against his side as he idly scrolls tiktok, one hand cradling his phone and the other petting along the line of Mack’s jaw so that he can feel it’s faint, repeating movements as the twenty-year-old sleepily sucks at his fingers.
Entirely by chance, he lands on a video of a girl rescuing a bow-legged baby deer which had gotten trapped in grate. The fawn trying to stumble after her, once it’s free. Tottering hopefully, imprinting on it’s hero because of her act of kindness.
“That’s you, you’re the baby deer,” He tells Mack, tilting his phone for the other to see, and Mack’s so contentedly snug that he doesn’t even try to argue it. Possibly because he can’t bring himself to let his fingers go so that he can do so.
Instead, he squints and fumbles his free fingers over Will’s phone screen until the video replays from the beginning. He watches it twice over, three times, four, giving Will’s phone the kind of focus he usually reserves for the iPad between challenging shifts. When he’s satisfied that he’s seen what he needed to, he hums something unintelligible, his gaze flicking up from the screen to meet Will’s. His eyes are too big and too green and too vulnerable for Will to really take in. So Will brushes his knuckle up from his jaw to his cheek, until they close again and Will can make a go of counting his lashes, instead.
It’s a crying shame that Will can’t carry Mack to bed when he almost passes out half-way across his lap an hour later. But he can carry his beloved shark as he dutifully ferries Mack from the couch, to his ensuite, to his bedroom. Nudging him this way and that as Mack yawns through a series of stumbles; helping him locate his baby blue toothbrush and the case with his retainer in (that he’ll spit out in favour of his fingers), flicking his white noise machine to Mack’s favourite mode and then tucking his plushie in beside him once Mack’s clambered beneath his comforter.
It begins a routine they pivot to whenever they’re home. A ritual that remains incomplete until Will smudges a kiss to Mack’s forehead and whispers, with a voice steadier than it should be, considering the rush of his heartbeat, “Sleep tight, kiddo. I’m just across the hallway if you need me, yeah?”.