Work Text:
Charles Leclerc did not remember dying.
Not properly. Not in any clean, cinematic way. There was only the aftermath now—the scorched tang of rubber still burning his nose, the phantom pressure of a steering wheel against his chest, and the sickening, heart-jolting sensation of impact still vibrating in his bones.
He stood there, messy-haired and wide-eyed, still clad in the fireproof racing suit he had qualified in, faintly blackened at the seams. His hands shook at his sides. His knees felt hollow. His mouth tasted like iron and smoke.
And in front of him sat a man he did not recognise.
The stranger wore a perfectly tailored Yves Saint Laurent blazer, pressed so sharp it could cut. His tie was knotted with surgical precision; his glasses glinted under the sterile overhead lights. He was young, or at least younger than Charles had expected a clerk of the afterlife to be, his hair a muted, dark gold that fell into his eyes just enough to soften the ruthless lines of his face. His skin was smooth, almost luminescent under the grim fluorescent light, and he looked...out of place here. Like a piece of some high-end Parisian magazine ripped out and stapled to the linoleum floor.
The man—Oscar, his nameplate read, if Charles could still be trusted to read—regarded him with the flat, exhausted indifference of someone who had seen far too much and cared far too little.
"Welcome to the Department of Eternal Affairs," the man said, voice monotone and clinical, like a surgeon reporting a death he hadn’t caused. "We handle soul processing, afterlife allocations, and interdimensional inquiries. If you have questions about your final destination, please refer to Form 14B. If you wish to lodge a complaint about the circumstances of your death, that would be Form 27C, though I must warn you, we have a substantial backlog."
Charles only stared.
He couldn't make his mouth work. Couldn’t make anything work. He simply stood there, blinking stupidly, trying to understand where the pit of terror growing inside his chest was supposed to go.
The man—Oscar—waited. Patient. Still. Like he had all the time in the world. Maybe he did.
“I—” Charles forced out, his voice cracking horribly. His throat felt scraped raw, like he'd been screaming, though he couldn't remember a sound escaping him. “I had a race.”
Oscar only nodded, unbothered, flipping through a file on his desk with the dispassion of someone flipping through a grocery list. “Yes.”
Monza. Charles clung to the word. Monza. He could still hear the roar of the crowd, the high, bright whine of engines cutting through the humid September air.
“I was in Monza," Charles said, squeezing his eyes shut against the rising nausea. "The car—there was an impact. I remember—" His chest spasmed. "I remember the impact."
Oscar glanced down again, almost lazily. “Yes.”
Charles curled his fingers into his suit, nails digging into the flameproof material. His body felt heavy and light at the same time, like he was either going to collapse or float away.
He barely heard Oscar’s next words, but something in the stillness of the room—some awful gravity—made him look up.
"Would you like to request confirmation of your cause of death?"
Death.
The word made something twist inside him, a deep, nauseating wrench.
Charles’ eyes swept the bleak, endless rows of desks stretching out around them, only to fall back, with a terrible, magnetic pull, to Oscar’s too-sharp suit, his too-calm face.
And the question crashed through him without permission, urgent and burning.
"Where’s Max?"
The words broke out of him, brittle and desperate.
Oscar blinked once, slow. “Max?”
Charles lurched forward, feet numb against the ground. “My Max," he said, like the world should know, like it should mean something here, wherever here was. "We crashed. He was right next to me. Is he—” His breath hitched. “Did he—”
He couldn’t say it. He couldn’t make his mouth wrap around the idea of Max being here too, scorched and wide-eyed and just as broken.
Oscar flipped through the file with clinical detachment, the sound of shuffling paper so casual it was obscene.
"Your mortal companion, Max Emilian Verstappen, born 30 September 1997," Oscar said, "currently still alive."
Alive.
The word shattered inside Charles.
He exhaled like something sharp had been dragged out of his chest. His hands found his hair, threading through the damp curls, tugging, desperate for the feeling, the proof he was still tethered to something.
“Putain,” he gasped. “Merde, merde, merde—”
He was trembling. He was breaking.
"I take it you were hoping for a different outcome?" Oscar asked, voice flat, detached, so clinical it felt like a scalpel.
"No!" Charles’ head snapped up. His eyes burned. “No, I—I just—” His voice collapsed into nothing. His shoulders caved inward, like his skeleton had given up the fight.
He loved him.
He loved him, and he had left him.
Oscar watched him crumble without flinching.
“So,” Charles said, his voice a bare whisper. "Max... Max is alive?"
The hope hurt more than the fear.
Oscar smoothed a hand down the front of his immaculate jacket, suppressing something that might have once been a sigh. “Yes.”
The world tilted. Charles clung to the edge of the desk like a man clinging to the side of a shipwreck, knuckles whitening, chest rising and falling in short, panicked bursts.
“But I—” he stammered. “I remember him hitting me.”
Oscar checked the file again, voice as empty as the space between stars. “Indeed. Collision with secondary vehicle, frontal impact, lap thirty-seven.” Another page flipped. “Other driver sustained minimal damage.”
Charles closed his eyes. A sharp, wet breath escaped him, something too broken to be called a sob.
"Of course he did," he whispered, voice like a blade pressed against his own throat.
The words tasted bitter, poisoned.
Oscar tilted his head in clinical observation. “You don’t seem pleased.”
Charles laughed then, a sound so hollow it seemed to bleed out of the walls themselves. It wasn’t laughter. It was the death rattle of hope.
"I love him," Charles said.
The correct tense would be loved.
Oscar said nothing.
Charles dug the heel of his hand into his forehead like he could push the pain back inside.
“We were supposed to grow old together,” he whispered, voice fraying at the edges. His breathing hitched. A raw, guttural sound clawed up his throat, but he swallowed it down. Swallowed everything down. “He’s going to blame himself.”
“Survivor’s guilt is common,” Oscar says, flat.
Charles barely hears him. His own heartbeat is a thunderclap in his ears, drowning out the sterile office sounds, the ticking of some unseen clock. His hands feel cold. His mind keeps conjuring the same image over and over again — Max, standing somewhere he can't reach, broken in a way no one could ever put back together. Max, alone. Max, blaming himself.
“Statistically, however, most living individuals do not waste away from grief. They continue their lives, as people do.”
Charles flinches like the words physically strike him. His stomach knots into something vicious and trembling. Max isn't most people, he wants to scream. Max isn't built for this kind of pain. He isn’t built to survive it.
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?” Charles snaps, but the words are thin, brittle. He can already feel the tears welling in the back of his throat.
“No,” Oscar says simply, like the end of a sentence Charles can't afford to finish.
Charles shifts, the chair squeaking under him, but it's not discomfort — it's desperation. It claws under his skin, frantic and suffocating.
He sees Max's face every time he closes his eyes — wide, furious, frightened. Max, who once muttered in the small hours of the morning, “I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost you.”
Max, who had once held Charles like he was the only steady thing left in the world.
Max, who could barely survive his own mind with Charles alive — what would he do now?
The panic rises sharp in his throat.
“I need to see him,” Charles says, voice cracking around the edges.
Oscar blinks. “That is not a standard request.”
“I don’t care.”
And he doesn’t. He can’t. He can't sit here in this dead, empty space, while Max tears himself apart, thinking it was his fault.
Charles can see it — Max shutting down, Max blaming himself for things he never could have stopped. Max staring at walls until the weight of guilt crushes the breath out of his lungs. Max, maybe, wondering if it would just be easier to—
No.
Charles crushes the thought before it can finish forming. But it lingers like poison.
Oscar adjusts his thick glasses, straightens his back against the chair, and recites, in that dry, clinical voice, “If you mean through a visitation permit, that requires at least three documented cases of unfinished business. If you mean haunting privileges, you would need to be tied to a specific location or object—”
“I mean actually see him.” Charles leans forward, every nerve alight with a terror too big for his bones. “I can’t just—leave him. Not like this.”
He can't.
He knows Max — the ugly, beautiful, breakable parts of him.
Max doesn’t know how to ask for help when it matters. Max doesn’t know how to survive the things he thinks are his fault. Max is stubborn enough, reckless enough, self-hating enough to think he deserves to suffer. To think maybe he doesn't deserve to stay.
Charles can't—won't—let that happen.
Oscar clicks his pen against the desk, expression unreadable. For a second, Charles thinks he’s going to say no. That he’ll be condemned to some sterile eternity while Max fades into something unrecognisable, or worse—
(He thinks of Max’s trembling hands, once, after a bad crash.
“Don’t leave me.” Max had whispered, voice almost too soft to hear.)
He can't imagine Max walking through that front door and finding everything the same except him —
The coffee mug still sitting half-washed in the sink.
The book Charles had been reading still splayed open on the couch.
His voice still echoing in the rooms Max would never dare enter again.
Charles can see it too vividly — Max sinking to the floor, gasping for breath, curling into himself because there’s no one left to pull him out of it.
He could be gone before anyone even knew he was breaking.
Oscar clicks his pen, considering.
He’s seen this before, Charles realises vaguely — Oscar has probably seen every flavour of desperation the dead have to offer.
Mothers clawing their way back for their children.
Lovers folding time in half for one more touch.
Souls stitching themselves into curtains, doorframes, half-empty beds — because they couldn’t bear to leave.
Because love — terrible, magnificent, selfish love — didn’t recognize endings.
Charles clenches his fists in his lap, nails digging into his palms.
Oscar lets out a tired sigh. He looks weary, like the weight of too many broken hearts has settled into his bones.
“You have two options,” he says. “One: you proceed with standard afterlife allocation. Reincarnation, ghosthood, purgatory, etcetera. Or two: you file a Deferred Afterlife Request.”
Charles frowns, eyes burning. “What is that?”
Oscar pulls out a thick form — A12-D — and drops it onto the desk with a heavy thud, like a verdict.
“This allows you to delay your final allocation until a chosen individual has also passed. You will remain in limbo—no aging, no sensation, no concept of time—until their file is processed.”
Charles’ breath catches painfully.
No sensation. No time. No warmth.
Just endless, frozen waiting —
—but he would wait forever if it meant Max wouldn't have to cross over alone.
If Max falls — if the grief chews him up and spits him out — if he decides it’s better not to exist at all—
then at least Charles would be there, waiting.
At least Max wouldn’t be punished by dying into a world even lonelier.
“And then?” His voice wavers, childlike.
“Then, you move on together. To whatever comes next.”
Together.
Charles swallows hard, something sharp slicing down his throat.
Oscar flips to the last page, expression blank, as if this isn’t the biggest decision Charles has ever made. As if it isn’t everything.
Charles stares at the form, hands trembling.
He thinks of Max, sitting alone at their kitchen table, the fridge humming loudly in a house too quiet to survive.
He thinks of Max staring at the wall for hours, trying not to reach for Charles' hand across the bed.
He thinks of Max giving up.
The rope. The pills. The gun.
Charles squeezes his eyes shut.
He can’t let Max find nothing on the other side when he finally reaches here.
His fingers close around the pen like it’s the only thing keeping him tethered. His entire body shakes with the effort of it.
“And he—” Charles chokes out, desperate, “He won’t be alone?”
Oscar doesn’t sugarcoat it, doesn’t offer comfort. He just says, flatly, “Statistically speaking? No.”
It’s not a promise.
But it’s enough.
Charles exhales, a sound broken and raw and small.
“Okay.”
Charles exhales sharply, almost a sob, and says, “Okay.”
His hand is shaking as he presses the pen against the paper, the ink pooling on the signature line like blood.
One more moment. One more breath. And then he’ll be locked in this waiting room of existence, suspended until Max finds him — if Max finds him.
He barely notices when Oscar shifts across the desk, the chair creaking under him. A thick hand flips over the next page of the document with a soft, heavy sound — a sound that feels too loud in the sterile room.
“Wait,” Oscar says.
Charles’ whole body locks up.
He stares at Oscar, heart hammering so loudly in his ears he almost can’t hear anything else.
No, some primal part of him screams. Don't take this away from me.
His mind races. Maybe they won't approve it. Maybe they’ll tell him he can’t wait. Maybe they’ll tell him Max will be forced to live on alone without Charles ever being able to reach him.
Maybe—
Maybe he has to leave Max behind after all.
Charles’ breath stutters painfully in his chest. His fingers tighten around the pen so hard it feels like it might snap.
Oscar, flipping to a different form in the stack, adjusts his glasses with the casual detachment of someone who doesn't realise he's about to destroy another person’s entire universe. His voice is clinical when he says:
“The individual you requested — Max Emilian Verstappen — his death file has just been processed.”
Charles blinks.
It takes a moment for the words to actually reach him — to pierce through the thick, choking fear that had taken root in his chest.
Processed.
Processed.
Not living.
Not waiting.
Dead.
“What—” Charles chokes on the word. His stomach drops so hard he feels like he might be sick. “What do you mean?”
Oscar flips the file open and reads aloud, monotone, as if reciting a weather report:
“Confirmed time of death: five minutes ago.”
Charles' mind blanks out.
Five minutes.
While he was sitting here.
While he was desperately trying to hold onto something that could tether him back to Max — Max was—
He grips the edge of the table like it can anchor him to the ground. Like it can keep him from falling apart completely.
“How,” he whispers, the word torn from his throat like it costs something vital. “How did he—was it—the crash?”
He prays it was the crash.
Please, he thinks wildly. Please let it have been the crash. Please let it have been an injury no one caught. Please don't let him—don't let him have done something stupid like he did when he was fourteen, and thought nobody would care if he was gone. Like he did when he was eighteen, and couldn't see a future past the weight of the world on his shoulders. Like he did when he was twenty-one, and the loneliness got too loud inside his head.
Please, Charles thinks. Please.
Don't let it have been his choice.
Oscar doesn’t look up from the file.
“Cause of death: self-inflicted strangulation using an IV line. No attempts at resuscitation were successful. Form 33Q.”
The pen slips from Charles’ fingers and clatters loudly to the floor.
He barely notices.
The room tilts violently, the fluorescent lights overhead smearing into cruel, blurry halos.
He can’t breathe. He can’t think.
Max is dead.
Because of him.
Because Charles was selfish enough to die first.
Because Max — stubborn, brilliant, fragile Max — couldn’t bear a world without him.
It wasn’t the crash.
It wasn’t fate.
It was a choice.
It was Max’s choice to follow him.
Charles presses his hands to his mouth to stop the sound clawing up his throat, but it doesn't help. A low, broken noise escapes anyway, and the grief inside him fractures into something huge and unbearable.
He failed him.
He failed Max.
He left him, and Max — Max had loved him enough to make sure he wouldn’t have to be alone.
Loved him enough to die for him.
Charles shudders violently, his vision swimming, the walls tilting and collapsing around him.
He remembers Max at fourteen, sitting small and furious on the hospital bed after his first suicide attempt, refusing to meet anyone's eyes.
Remembers Max at eighteen, sitting on the edge of a hotel balcony, smoking in the dark, looking out at nothing.
Remembers Max at twenty-one, curled into Charles’ chest, drunk and shaking, whispering, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me, don’t leave me—”
Charles had promised him he never would.
And he broke it.
And now Max is gone.
Gone because he couldn't survive the one thing Charles had always known he wouldn't — a world without him.
Charles sinks forward, his forehead hitting the desk with a hollow, helpless thud. His hands claw at the wood like he could tear the world apart with his bare fingers, like he could somehow, somehow, rewind time and choose differently.
His whole body shakes with the force of it, sobs he can't contain wracking his frame.
This is his fault.
His fault.
His fault.
He’s trapped in the moment — the moment he signed away Max’s future — and he knows he will never escape it.
The world outside the thin office walls hums on, fluorescent and detached.
Charles barely hears it — barely hears anything through the roar of blood in his ears.
He's still hunched over the desk, shaking, when Oscar clears his throat — awkward and stiff, as if he's trying to force the universe to stitch itself back together with formality alone.
“At least,” Oscar says carefully, almost clinically, “you and Max will be together now. No waiting. No deferred afterlife necessary.”
Charles lets out a sound.
It’s not a laugh. It’s not a sob.
It’s something raw and hollow and torn straight from the place inside him that Max used to fill.
He drags a trembling hand through his hair, yanking too hard at the roots, like pain might keep him tethered, might stop him from completely falling apart.
Together.
Together.
Not in life.
Not in a future where Max got to keep racing, got to win his stupid tenth championship and break every record the world ever built.
Not in a world where he got to grow old, maybe stubborn and grumpy and still too fast for anyone to catch.
Not in a world where he smiled, where he stayed alive.
Together — but only because Max died.
Charles curls in on himself, hating the word, hating the cheapness of it, hating how it tries to make this into anything but what it is:
Loss.
Loss.
Loss.
Oscar — poor, tired, useless Oscar — reaches across the desk and nudges a cheap, floral-patterned tissue box toward him.
Charles stares at it blankly.
He doesn't move.
He’s spiralling so hard it feels like the whole room is spinning, like gravity itself is peeling off his skin.
He doesn’t want a fucking tissue.
He doesn’t want comfort.
He wants Max.
Alive.
Alive.
He wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and scream at him and tell him he’s an idiot, that he wasn’t supposed to follow Charles, that he was supposed to stay, to live, to be the stubborn bastard who survives everything.
Charles fists his hands in his hair again, harder, and lets out a broken, shaking breath.
He can’t stop trembling.
His hands, his shoulders, even his jaw — everything shakes.
Max is dead.
Max is dead.
Max is dead because Charles left him first. Because Charles was weak. Because Charles didn’t hold on hard enough.
Max didn’t just fall into death — he chose it.
He chose it because he couldn’t stand a world without Charles.
And Charles — Charles, selfish, heartbroken Charles — doesn’t know if he should scream or sob or tear the whole world down around him with his bare hands.
He slams a hand down on the desk, hard enough to rattle the tissue box to the floor.
Oscar doesn’t flinch. He just watches, solemn and exhausted.
Charles stares at his own trembling fingers, white-knuckled against the polished wood.
He wants to shatter it.
He wants to break something.
He wanted Max to live.
He wanted Max to live so badly it’s tearing him apart, molecule by molecule.
He wanted Max to win his fifth championship, and his eleventh, and his fucking fifteenth if he wanted to.
He wanted Max to stand on podiums and spray champagne and scowl at journalists and crash rental scooters into barricades and exist, exist, exist in every messy, brilliant way that Max existed.
He didn’t want—
This.
Not this cold, sharp finality.
Not this broken echo of a boy who loved too much and followed too fast.
Charles wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, breath ragged, and nearly chokes on the bitterness in his throat.
He is shaking so badly now that his chair creaks under the strain.
And somewhere in the back of his mind, a horrible, vicious thought digs its claws in:
I killed him.
Not with hands. Not with knives.
But with absence.
Max had always been so fucking bad at being alone.
And Charles —
Charles left.
And Max followed.
Because that’s who Max was.
Because that’s who they were.
Charles drops his head into his hands, fingers threading into his hair again, pulling until the pain buzzes behind his eyelids.
He wishes he could tear himself apart.
He wishes he could take back every second, every choice, every breath that led them here.
Charles heaves in a shaking breath and tries to steady himself.
He fails.
He tries again.
And again.
But the truth doesn’t change.
Max is gone.
By his own hand.
Because of Charles.
The door to the office stays closed, silent and indifferent.
The universe spins on, cruel and unfeeling.
And Charles —
Charles sits there, trembling and broken, waiting for a boy who loved him enough to die for him.
And he knows, with gut-wrenching clarity:
He didn’t want togetherness like this.
He wanted Max to live.
And now, it’s too fucking late.
Charles presses his palms hard into his eyes, as if he can scrub the image out of existence —
Max, cold and still, somewhere he should never have been.
Max was supposed to live.
Max was supposed to fucking live.
He was supposed to grow old.
Supposed to win another ten championships if he felt like it, and then storm into retirement with a dramatic press conference and a middle finger to the cameras.
He was supposed to pick up stupid hobbies.
He was supposed to drink too much whiskey on the weekends and scream at the TV when new kids tried to beat his records.
He was supposed to get married, if he wanted.
Find someone — someone solid and warm and alive — who would love him the way he deserved.
Maybe even forget Charles a little.
Maybe — maybe — Max would’ve met Charles again in the afterlife.
Fifty years from now.
Sixty.
After living a life.
After having everything he ever fought for.
Not now.
Not like this.
Charles chokes on a breath that feels like it could rip his ribs apart.
He stares down at the crumpled tissue still in his hand, his knuckles burning white, his shoulders heaving.
Oscar, mercifully quiet until now, shifts in his chair. The old wood creaks under him.
“He’s—”
Oscar clears his throat.
“He’s waiting. Outside.”
Charles stiffens, blood going ice-cold in his veins.
Oscar goes on, as if reading off some boring internal memo: “We can process you together. Easier, cleaner that way. Less paperwork.”
Charles can’t breathe.
Max is here.
Not an idea. Not a memory.
Here.
On the other side of a cheap office door.
Close enough to touch.
Charles shudders violently, like the thought physically slams into him.
How could he face him?
How could he even look at him?
The last time he saw Max, he was alive — wild and furious, with too-bright eyes and that stubborn set to his mouth.
The Max who would scream at the world and refuse to lose.
And now —
Now Max is dead because Charles wasn’t there.
Max is dead because he followed.
Because he couldn't live without Charles.
Charles doesn’t know if he’ll collapse into him or shove him away.
If he’ll sob into Max’s shoulder or throw the nearest chair at his head.
Maybe all of it at once.
He wants to yell at him —
Scream at him for being so stupid, so reckless, so utterly fucking Max.
He wants to tell him how fucking dare he.
How fucking dare he love Charles enough to throw everything away.
How fucking dare he choose death over a future.
Charles swipes at his face with a shaking hand, barely registering the wetness on his cheeks.
He's furious.
He's shattered.
He's terrified.
He doesn't want Max to see him like this — cracked open, bleeding from places he didn’t even know could hurt.
He wanted to be strong when they met again.
Wanted to meet him after a long, long life, both of them old and wrinkled and laughing at the world.
Not like this.
Not hollow and broken and trembling.
He shudders again, violent and helpless.
Oscar silently pushes the tissue box closer to him, a mute reminder.
Charles stares at it.
His fingers twitch uselessly at his sides.
He doesn't know how he'll stand up.
He doesn't know how he'll walk to that door.
He doesn't know how he'll survive seeing Max, alive in death, waiting for him with that same stupid stubborn love.
But some part of him — the part still stitched to Max’s heartbeat, even in death — knows:
He has to.
He has to face him.
Even if it destroys him.
Even if it already has.
Charles doesn’t hear the door creak open.
He doesn’t register Oscar standing up, doesn’t notice the soft shift of papers or the cold air from the hallway bleeding into the office.
But his body knows.
It turns for him — instinctual, inevitable.
Like a compass finding true north.
And then—
Then he sees him.
Max.
Max, standing in the doorway like some half-formed thing.
Still in a rumpled hospital gown, bare feet peeking out from under the hem.
Pale, washed-out skin except for the furious flush of pink in his cheeks.
A red, angry mark wrapped around his throat like a noose that was almost too tight.
Charles’ heart doesn't stop.
It detonates.
Something inside him cracks with a soundless, keening wail.
Everything he’s been holding in — the fury, the terror, the grief —
It shatters out of him all at once.
Before he even knows what he’s doing, Charles grabs the tissue box off the desk —
Hurls it across the room.
It hits Max square in the chest with a pathetic little thud.
Max barely flinches.
Just looks at him — wide-eyed, raw, fucking broken —
Like Charles is the only thing that’s ever made sense and he’s still trying to figure out how the world works without him.
And that’s what undoes Charles completely.
He sobs — an ugly, guttural sound that scrapes out of his chest like it’s been clawing to get free —
And runs.
He collides into Max so hard it almost knocks them both over.
His arms wrap around him desperately, clutching, gripping, like he can somehow stitch Max back together with just the force of his love.
Max lets out a soft, wounded sound and buries his face in Charles’ shoulder.
Charles is trembling so hard it feels like the ground is shaking with him.
He can't tell where his body ends and Max's begins.
They're just a mess of limbs and tears and the kind of grief that doesn’t have words.
"You—" Charles gasps, voice shredded. "You fucking idiot, you—"
He chokes on the rest.
He meant to scream.
Meant to yell at him, shake him, ask him how he could do something so fucking stupid.
But all he can do is hold him tighter.
Max is too thin under his hands.
Too light.
Too fragile.
Charles can feel every bone, every tremor.
Max’s fingers knot into the back of Charles’ racesuit like he’s afraid Charles might disappear if he lets go.
Charles presses his face against Max’s hair and sobs so hard his chest physically hurts.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
Max was supposed to live.
Max was supposed to stay.
Max was supposed to find a reason to keep fighting.
Not—
Not follow Charles into the dark like this.
Not leave the whole world behind for him.
Charles doesn't even realise he’s whispering until he hears his own voice, wrecked and pleading:
"I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Max, I'm sorry—"
He’s sobbing it into Max’s skin, over and over, as if it could somehow rewind time.
As if apologies could save either of them now.
As if love had ever been enough to stop this kind of devastation.
Charles doesn't even realise he's shaking until he feels it —
A soft, fleeting pressure on his forehead.
A kiss.
Max’s lips — chapped and trembling — press against him like a benediction, like an apology, like a promise they’ll never be able to keep.
Charles lets out a broken gasp, like the breath’s been punched out of him.
And then Max whispers, voice frayed and hoarse, barely there:
"I missed you."
Charles almost screams.
He wants to —
Wants to grab Max by the shoulders and shake him, wants to yell until the universe hears:
You weren't supposed to miss me.
You were supposed to live.
You were supposed to stay.
But the words won’t come.
They're caught in his throat like barbed wire.
Because Max is dead.
Because Charles is dead.
Because they collided at Monza —
Wheel to wheel, stubborn to the bitter fucking end —
Because Charles wasn’t careful enough, wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t good enough to avoid it.
Because Charles didn’t deserve to keep Max safe.
So now they’re here.
Two stupid ghosts wrapped around each other like wreckage.
Charles is crying so hard he can’t see straight, fists twisting into Max’s hospital gown like it’s the only thing anchoring him to reality.
Max is crying too — silent, miserable sobs pressed into Charles’ shoulder.
They’re just wrecked, both of them.
Completely, irreversibly wrecked.
And then—
Someone clears their throat politely.
The sound cuts through the hurricane of Charles’ grief like a blade.
He startles — so does Max — and they both turn, dazed and broken, toward the desk.
Oscar adjusts his glasses, looking as impassive as ever, though the corner of his mouth twitches like he might actually feel something.
"If you two are finished," Oscar says, tone dry but not unkind, "that would be a Form 12A. Standard processing for joint afterlife assignment."
He lifts a new form from a stack — crisp, bureaucratic, impossibly mundane considering how the world just ended.
Charles blinks at him, hollowed out.
He can feel Max trembling in his arms, still clinging to him like he's afraid Charles will slip through his fingers again.
Oscar gives them a patient look.
"You’ll both need to sit down," he says. "Paperwork waits for no one. Not even soulmates."
The word hits Charles like a slap.
Soulmates.
He hadn't earned that.
He didn’t deserve that.
Not after what he’d done.
But Max is looking at him — raw, desperate, forgiving — and Charles knows he’s already lost the right to argue.
So, with shaking knees and a heart still splintering apart inside his chest, Charles helps Max across the room.
They sit side by side — still touching, still holding on — and watch numbly as Oscar slides the form across the desk toward them.
And Charles can’t stop thinking:
It should have been different.
It was supposed to be different.
Max should have lived.
Max should have grown old, and smiled again, and maybe — maybe — found someone new to love.
Not—
Not this.
Not dying with a needle in his arm and a red ring around his throat because he couldn’t imagine a world without Charles in it.
Oscar’s voice drifts over Charles like static, a buzz in the background of his mind. He’s already heard it all.
“Form 12A. Sign at the bottom. And please use black ink—blue is not accepted for official documentation.”
“Form 12A determines your standard placement,” Oscar continues, his words a monotonous hum. “Your options include corporeal ghosthood, temporary purgatorial processing, or reincarnation under Clause 7B of the Soul Continuity Act. However, given your situation…” He lets the sentence hang in the air, his eyes darting between Charles and Max, before he continues, “I’m guessing neither of you will be choosing any of those.”
Charles can feel his heart hammering painfully in his chest. He’s trying to focus, but his mind keeps drifting back to moments with Max, distant, hazy flashes — a blur of memories flooding through him like waves crashing against jagged rocks.
Max's hand in his. Always.
He was still stuck in memories, in the before. The sharpness of Max's touch, the way his lips curved when they were five, the way they fought like hellions every time they saw each other at the track. How they couldn’t stand each other when they were younger.
And then, at twelve — twelve, when everything shifted. When Charles found Max's vulnerability, wrapped tightly around his stubbornness, the depression Max had hidden beneath the bravado, and how Charles had fallen for him, hard. No warning. Just there, without explanation.
They didn’t talk about it — that first kiss when they were fifteen, or the night Max came to him at eighteen, standing on Charles' doorstep, trembling under the weight of a world that wouldn’t stop crushing him. The way Charles held him, murmured to him, though neither of them ever said the words out loud — those words that needed to be said.
I love you.
But no. Max was always too heavy for words. Too quiet. And Charles was too anxious, too afraid, too scared to ask for what he wanted.
Now, those years, those memories, they all feel so irrelevant. And yet they’re the only thing holding him together.
Max’s hand in his, warm and steady.
Max was still here. Max was still with him. They were together again.
Charles doesn’t notice when Oscar stops speaking, doesn’t hear the dull sound of paperwork shuffling until Max’s hand gives his a small, subtle squeeze.
Charles blinks, his gaze finally focusing on Max.
Max’s eyes are bloodshot, tears still clinging to his lashes, but there’s something there now — something new. A quiet, unspoken plea. Max is still trying to protect Charles, even in the afterlife.
Oscar’s voice cuts through the silence again, now softer.
“I usually don’t recommend anything to the newly deceased, but,” Oscar pauses and glances at the forms in his hand, “Form 116 might suit you both.”
Charles frowns, his stomach turning.
Oscar pushes the paper forward, the edges sharp and clean. He continues, “It’s the form for purgatory duties. The closest thing the afterlife offers in terms of therapy. It’s more than just processing your death—it’s… help.”
Charles doesn’t register the last part. His thoughts keep spiralling, an avalanche that can’t be stopped. Max had been depressed — Charles had known that. He knew the weight Max carried, the way Max closed off when he needed to open up the most.
But Max... had killed himself.
Charles’s chest aches, the crushing weight of realisation sinking in. Max hadn’t just been sad. Max hadn’t just been depressed. He’d been lost. Completely lost, in ways Charles hadn’t been able to reach him.
And now… now they’re here, together in this empty, sterile place, signing papers that seem so absurdly mundane compared to the wreckage they’ve left behind.
Charles reaches for the pen, his fingers trembling so violently he almost drops it.
Oscar watches them quietly, the corners of his lips tugging into a half-smile — the kind that makes Charles feel like he’s losing his grip on everything.
Max cracks a joke, his voice rough but trying for lightness.
“So, when do we get our ‘I’m dead and all I got was this shitty form’ T-shirt?”
The joke hangs there, and for a brief, fleeting moment, it feels like they’re alive again. Like they could still laugh, like they could still be themselves, despite everything.
Charles glares at Max, his frown deepening. He wants to punch him, or maybe kiss him, or maybe both — something, anything, to stop this ache in his chest.
Max just smiles softly, unbothered, and leans in to place a gentle kiss on the back of Charles’ hand.
And for the first time in forever, Charles feels Max’s touch—tender, loving, like everything might be okay.
Then Max mutters softly, "God, I love you."
And that's the problem, isn't it?
Oscar raises an eyebrow, unaffected by the weight of Max’s muttering. "That would be Form 10D if you wish to request a meeting with Him."
Max chuckles softly under his breath. "I think I’ll pass."
Charles clenches his jaw, and for a moment, he feels so small, so completely broken.
But Max’s hand is still holding his.
Max’s hand.
And in that moment, Charles realises that maybe, just maybe, they can still hold on to each other in the way that only they ever could.
Together.
Oscar looks at them, waiting patiently.
Charles turns his eyes back to the form, the ink from his pen already blurring with his tears.
Max’s voice is quiet as he murmurs, "We’ll be okay, Schatje. I’m right here."
Charles doesn’t know if he believes it, but when Max presses another kiss to his hand, he decides to trust him.
They sign the forms.
Form 12A.
Form 116.
And when it’s done, Charles doesn’t feel relief. Not yet.
Max leans against him, his shoulder brushing Charles’.
“Together, right?” Max whispers.
“Always,” Charles answers.
And when they look up at Oscar, Charles can see the ghost of a smile on his lips, soft and fleeting.
“Good. Now, let’s get you processed.”
But Charles doesn’t care about that right now. He just pulls Max into him, wrapping his arms around him, pressing his face into Max’s hair, and closes his eyes.
They are together.
And for now and for all of eternity, that’s enough.