chomp chomp i'm a sharrrrk

made this sidey to post my guilty pleasure rpf! call me helly, minors dni

[bookwyrminspiration]

a red string of fate can be a leash. if you're enlightened

[wacklins]

[chellabrini]

pony boy, ride on (3)

part 3 of ? [part one] [part two]

willmack / soulbond au / red string of fate / angst / background celebedsy and mack/thomas harley (both nonromantic)

Mack might be a little slow sometimes, but even he can tell the Edit is sus as fuck. 

Homoerotic, the blogs call it, which is a word he has to google to check if it’s supposed to be a slur or not. It doesn’t make him feel better to realize it isn’t, that they’re just being called a little gay rather than a full hundred. 

Mack has never thought about that word in relation to himself. He’s had his girlfriends, and he’s had guys he’s blown off steam with, and there’s never been any pressing need to label that if it doesn’t serve the Hockey of it all. But now, with the string on his hand, watching it catch the light in the mirrors of the gym as he and Will get in some off-ice maintenance instead of optional skate…

Yeah, he’s maybe gonna have to think about it. 

He and Will wouldn’t be the first soulbound guys in the NHL; they wouldn’t even be the first OUT ones, if they decided to tell the org and the rest of the world. He bets his dad would have some opinions on that: Kane and Toews getting outed as soulmates had been okay for them, coming as it did off the back of their second cup run. But they hadn’t really had a choice, their messages being leaked making it so crystal clear it wasn’t a platonic thing like most of the famous hockey bonds are — or claim to be. Mack’s never got the guts up to ask Sid about him and Malkin, and whether the whole wife and girlfriend situation is like, legit.

Mack imagines that for him and Will. Like, getting married to other people and raising kids in houses with conjoined back yards and spending summers split between the same Canadian lake house and Cape Cod cottage. He tries to imagine saying goodnight to Will on some patio and climbing into bed next to some faceless woman, knowing Will is next door fucking someone who isn’t him.

Fuck. It makes him wanna hurl.

He’s abruptly aware that his legs are burning, the exercise bike turned all the way up.

“Dude,” Will says, when Mack finally looks up and meets his eye across the Sharks’ gym. He’s biking at a totally normal sedate pace, on the kind of long stamina grind Mack usually thrives on. “You back on the planet or what?”

“Did you have to choose that song?” Mack says instead of answering. He slams on the Cool Down button, trying not to sound too out of breath. His legs are actually on fire.

“The edit?” Will laughs. “You don’t think it was funny? Dumb and dumber?”

He sounds so innocent, like he doesn’t even know the unholy hell he’s unleashed in Mack’s brain.

“Ugh,” Mack can’t help the noise he makes. “You’re such a fucking idiot.”

Will grins, and Mack can’t help the laugh that bubbles up in him. Like, song aside, he can’t help but think the edit was actually kind of sick. Will and his Boy. It makes him feel claimed, gives him a little shiver of hope just thinking about the message it sends. 

Will and Mack. A package duo. Belonging.

Mack can’t help but look at the thread, stretched across the gym between them. He’s so busy looking at it that he almost totally zones out, misses what Will is saying. Something about…

“…Harley?”

Yeah, he totally missed that.

“Sorry, what?” Mack asks, finally getting up from the bike. His legs are wobblier than he’d like — he might need to actually jump in an ice bath after this, ask his dad about the foam roller. This workout was supposed to be way more chill than this.

“I asked,” Will asks, tone a little snotty. “If you’d spoken to Harley since you got back.”

Mack snorts. “Why would I do that?”

Will gives him an exasperated look as Mack flops to the ground and starts massaging his sore quads absent-mindedly. Mack raises an eyebrow in response as Will stares down at him.

“So it’s not a thing?” Will asks, and Mack frowns, because fucking hell, obviously not. 

“Dude,” he says reproachfully. Will shouldn’t even have to ask — surely he knows Mack well enough not to imagine Mack’s trying to make Harls his regular hookup. Like, even if not for the Will of it all, Harls is an NHL player. In Dallas. It would be the least convenient hookup of all time.

“It wasn’t even good,” he finally says, and Will’s eyebrows shoot all the way up his forehead. It’s kinda funny, actually. Mack can’t help but laugh at him.

“Oh yeah?” Will sounds weird now. “Why not?”

Maybe Mack should have eased him into talking about the gay shit, but he’d not even thought about it when he’d admitted to blowing Harls before. He knows enough about Will and the BC line brojobs — admittedly, mostly secondhand knowledge from rumours Aiden heard, not anything he’s ever confirmed with Will — not to think Will would latch on to it.

“Like, we don’t have to talk about it,” Will says, when Mack doesn’t answer straight away. But Mack kinda wants to dig deeper into his expression, figure out what the root of his awkwardness here is.

He looks at the red thread that ties them. Hopes Will’s curiosity means bringing him closer to Seeing.

“It was just depressing,” he finally says. “Couldn’t really turn my brain off, which was like. The point.”

“The point?” Will’s expression is unreadable. Intense. His legs keep working beneath him, solid and steady.

“Yeah, man,” Mack forces out a laugh, trying not to sounds so fucking awkward. He doesn’t actually want Will to think he’s like, bad at it, or something. “I just wanted to do something well, you know?”

“You’ve done it, uh, a lot, then?” Will asks. Mack hopes to God he’s not gonna be weird about it.

“Not a lot,” Mack says. It’s not like he’s some sort of blowjob prodigy or something. He feels his face heat just at the prospect. “Or–I dunno. What’s a lot?”

He wouldn’t mind practicing more, really getting good, if it was Will. That’s kinda slutty, he thinks. 

“You like it, though?” Will presses, and Mack can almost feel the phantom tug at his pinky as Will runs a hand through his own sweaty curls, all pretense of paying attention to his own workout totally dropped. “Have you, like… done it with any of the vets here?”

Mack can’t help it, he bursts out laughing. “Smitty,” he says. “Smitty, what the fuck. No. That would fuck with team chemmy so bad, imagine.”

Will hits his own Cool Down button a little petulantly, clearly annoyed by Mack’s amusement. Mack thinks it’s adorable.

Mack doesn’t know how Will’s jumped from actual 24 year old Harls to vets. He thinks about those jokes from last season, about Will and cougars, and mentally shrugs. Maybe Will just has a thing for experience…

“Sorry,” Will grimaces, then swallows hard. “Sorry, that was weird.”

Will stands up from his own bike, chugging his Gatorade. His eyes slide over Mack and then away, twitchy as hell.

“No, hey–” Mack says, because it feels like the conversation has gone sideways somewhere without him realising. He’d just wanted to poke Will a little, get him to see Mack maybe in a more sexual light…

“I forgot,” Will says, and he’s stumbling away now, body jerky and weirdly ungraceful. Mack looks him over, confused, then freezes, his eyes catching on the bulge in Will’s gym leggings. “I gotta go– meet someone–”

Mack doesn’t get a chance to say anything else before Will’s leaving the gym, leaving Mack still clutching at his own tightening leg muscles in astonishment.

What the actual fuck was that?

[chellabrini]

pony boy, ride on (2)

part 2 of ? [part one]

willmack / soulbond au / red string of fate / angst / background celebedsy and mack/thomas harley (both nonromantic)

-

The truth is, Will has given up all hope of his red string being reciprocated.

The truth IS, Will saw his thread for the first time at the 2020 All American Prospects Tournament Final. Yes, 2020. 

He was fifteen years old. One second he was untethered, then BAM. A shiny ribbon of soul stretching across the pure white. His eyes followed it all the way to the ‘05 team, shuffling miserably on the ice towards the photographer, to a kid with a face like thunder clearly still pissed at his team’s loss.

Celebrini.

He’d been on Will’s radar a while already as a kid-who’s-gonna-make-it, someone he’d noticed on the ice immediately. But a soulmate?

Will had never imagined finding one that young. It was pretty much unheard of. Mack had been barely fourteen.

He’d skated in close anyway, drifting right to the center of the picture so that his arm brushed up against Celebrini’s, wondering how long it would take for the other boy to see his own string. Will hadn’t thought at all about maybe being gay, not at that point, but he supposed there would be time to think about it. Either that or the bond would be platonic, which was also kind of rare, but… whatever. 

He’d imagined things would fall into place, in time.

Now, it’s been nearly six years, which is a fucking statistical anomaly of a crazy amount of time to wait. Six years is also unheard of, even for young bonders. All signs point to it being unlikely Mack will ever be able to see the other end. And so, over the years, over their matchups as rivals and the growth of their friendship, Will has become really fucking good at ignoring the thread, pretending it doesn't exist.

Maybe too good. Honestly, it kind of fucks him up.

Will’s starting to fear his own string has started to fade, since being on the Sharks, in anticipation of his soul giving up on asking. There’s only so long you can knock at a door and not get an answer. It’s not the same as the bond being rejected, but it’s also not a possibility you really learn about in health class.

The predominant red string theory says that they form when your soul recognizes the right person for you. It’s not random, when it happens–it happens when it needs to happen, at the right time for you to be open to it. Like your soul is saying wakey wakey, there they are, go get them now. Asking for a thing it needs. It’s a push, looking for recognition, but it’s also a promise of something really good, once you seal the bond and turn the thing golden. It’s not rare, but it’s not for everyone, either–soulbonding maybe happens to one in eight people. 

Something like one in eight thousand go completely unanswered. 

It’s not that Will really believes his soul got it wrong, or anything. He’s spent enough time with Mack to know why his soul would reach out, think Mack’s the best possible fit, think Mack’s the best thing that could ever happen to him. But recently Will has become only too aware of the fact that maybe Mack needs something that isn’t Will.

The Olympics were a case in point. Everyone could see how Mack thrived with those Big Name Guys like McDavid and Mackinnon. And not just them–Will had heard Mack’s grin as he talked about the people he was bonding with off ice, namely one Thomas Harley.

Mack had been weirdly cagey about Harley over facetime.

Anyway, the point is that Will’s already most of the way to giving up on his soul thread when he drives them to Toff’s barbecue and Mack casually drops into conversation that he sucked Harley’s cock.

He tries very hard not to react, because Mack says it like it’s no big deal, just something that happened when they were both sad about the silver medal and alcohol hadn’t done the trick in cheering them up.

Will thinks about Mack’s mouth, puffy and shiny with spit. His teeth, the ever-widening gap. The cut high on his cheekbone, Harley’s thumb pressing against it to make Mack hiss.

Will is so jealous he could scream.

He stays up all night that night once he drops Mack home that night, scrolling through Tiktok edits of Mack at the Olympics. The glimpses are enough to drive him insane: Harley whispering in Mack’s ear on the ice and making him giggle. Other guys giving Mack that fond look that says they, too, have fallen into his orbit. Mack never even realises he’s doing it. 

When Will wakes up the next morning, head pounding and eyes crusty, there’s a new email in his inbox. Rick and his dad have been going back and forth with the agents for a while on social media strategy, and he’d usually stay out of it, but Rick’s been on a roll with his little media tour lately, so he reads it.

Blah blah blah, something something joint exposure, he skims. Rick wants to market them as a package, the whole Two-Headed Monster/Kane-Toews special. Always has done, which has sometimes sucked. He’s pretty sure half the time Mack hung out with him at the start was to please Rick and his ideas about what made a good hockey narrative. 

Will’s dad has always tried to push back, argue for marketing them on their own merits, not wanting Will to spend forever in the shadow of THE Macklin Celebrini… but his dad doesn’t know about the soul thread, or that Will’s long since resigned himself to his fate being tied to Mack’s. 

Any other time, he might let the dads argue it out amongst themselves, but he’s exhausted, the images of Mack and Harley still swirling around his head. The thread on his finger feels heavy, like it’s tugging at him anew to do something, step up, take his soulbond into his own hands.

Fuck it.

heyy everyone, he sends, not even bothering with capitalizing anything. i was thinking of doing a video for instagram, do we have anyone who can make us an edit?

[userautumn]

i love fics that feel so... grown. fics about adults that were written by adults who have years of life experience under their belts who pour that into their writing. fics where you can tell this is a person who has lived through a marriage or a divorce or a child or children or parent death or any number of Huge Life Events because the way they write with an emphasis on the highs and lows of the human experience rather than an emphasis on tropes (not throwing shade) is just so. oh man, it's just so fucking good. if my blorbos are grown men, grown women, grown people, i love it when they feel like grown people, not just extensions of the (young) author's imagination. (still not throwing shade). you know?

[chellabrini]

pony boy, ride on

part 1 of ?

willmack / soulbond au / red string of fate / angst / background celebedsy and mack/thomas harley (nonromantic) later probably

--

The thing about Mack’s red string is that he doesn’t see it materialize.

One minute he’s at Toff’s back-to-the-season barbecue, knocking back a tequila shot with Ned and wincing at the burn – and the next he’s staring at his own hand, still on the shot glass where he slammed it down to Toff’s kitchen counter, a glistening crimson soul thread tied to his pinky finger.

He follows the other end of it with his definitely-not-sober gaze, but once he sees it he already knows where it’s going to end.

Will, across the room, surrounded by the vets on the U-shaped sofa, is talking animately with his hands waving in the air. The sparkling string tied to his own pinky catches the light in the room so obviously that there’s no way he couldn’t see it, if he were able to see it. The chain that links him to Mack, that marks him as Mack’s perfect match.

Fuck. The sight is so overwhelming that Mack feels it in his knees. 

“You good?” Ned asks, and he forces himself to look back at the goalie and smile with teeth.

“I’m fine.”

Ned nods, but doesn’t say anything else. 

Mack’s not been fine, but Ned’s smart enough that he probably knows Mack doesn’t want another post-mortem of the gold medal game from a well-meaning teammate. After landing back in San Jose, he’d been numb from the all consuming grief of silver for maybe 24 hours before the threat of the Sharks missing the playoffs began to sink in. 

They need to lock in, Mack needs to lock in. No time for grieving anymore. He didn't even want to come tonight, but the season's about to start again and he needs to jump back into the Sharks of it all.

Milan was a shitshow, but Mack can’t talk about it any more than he already has, to Will and to his dad and to Sid… even to Davo, when he called to check in like the bonus brother he’s decided to become. 

He knows he’s been kind of a nightmare, even if he’s tried to limit running his mouth to Will in the privacy of Will's truck. His teammates can clearly tell how Mack feels anyway tonight, because they keep shooting him these pitying looks.

He’s never been good at hiding his emotions like that. Has never tried, except maybe when it comes to his increasingly huge thing for Will.

He chances another look over at the sofas, and Will meets his eyes like he was waiting for it. He grins, and Mack grins, and then Mack looks down at his own hand again, a subtle flick that he’s desperate to see Will repeat. He telepathically wills Will to look at his own finger, to see what Mack sees. But when he looks back up, Will has already looked away, full on doubling over laughing at something Reavo’s saying to him, leaning into his side like the puppy he is.

So: no, okay, it definitely hasn’t materialized for Will. His eyes aren’t open like that yet… if they’ll ever be. 

The thought makes a shiver run through Mack.

It just fucking figures that Mack would get his string sight first. Mack’s already aware that how he is about Will is not normal–he'sfaced the chirps at the Olympics from guys who have clocked enough bonded-pair NHL weirdness to spot his particular brand a mile off. 

But Will… Mack has no idea how Will feels about their friendship. He’s seen Will with lineys before, the way he can light up any room he wants and make a guy feel valued if he turns on the charm. Mack has no way of measuring if their thing is different, or if it’s just proximity for Will. Easier to have a best friend than not, in the league, a built in support system and buddy in an unfamiliar place.

Mack knows he’s kind of a lot, is all. That he wants too much, can be too intense. 

This, too, feels like proof of that. A potential soulbond forming in front of him, 19 years old and in his second NHL season. Like, Mack’s spent two weeks in the most hideous stress of his life with the worst possible heartbreak at the end and apparently his soul has locked in and decided now’s the time for some big gesture. It’s fucking embarrassing, honestly, to see the proof of his need tied to his pinky….

If he has a string, if his soul says Will is the one it needs… well. Fuck. He’s not surprised, but it’s terrifying.

“Gimme another one?” he asks Ned, nodding at the tequila bottle, and Ned doesn’t hesitate before topping them both up.

Mack doesn’t let himself look at the string again, his stomach churning with too much emotion to sort. All he needs to do is wait for Will to notice too.

But, like. He will notice, eventually, right? He will accept it?

The only heartbreak worse, Mack thinks, than losing the gold medal… would be for their string to snap.

(Of course, that’s exactly what happens.)