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The photo album is heavier than it looks. Dust flutters up when Max opens it, a slow ache unfurling in his chest like an old engine trying to turn over. The handwriting on the inside cover is unmistakable.
"For when I'm gone. So you never forget. So I never leave. Still yours, always. — C.S.V"
His fingers trace the familiar scrawl. His throat closes up.
He flips the page.
…………..
📸 Toro Rosso, 2015 — Their First Podium (That Wasn’t)
They're both soaked in champagne, even though it wasn’t a podium finish. Just points. Just the start. But they grinned like champions, like immortals. Someone snapped the picture when Carlos grabbed Max’s face in both hands and yelled, “We made it, coño!”
Max remembers the weight of Carlos’s gloves on his cheeks, the closeness, the wild heartbeat that had nothing to do with the race.
He didn’t know it yet, but that was the first time he loved him.
…………..
📸 A Balcony in Monaco — Their First Kiss
The sky was lavender. Carlos had leaned against the railing, hair damp, towel slung low on his hips. It wasn’t planned. It was instinct.
“Are we really doing this?” Carlos had asked, barely above a whisper.
Max had nodded.
He tasted like mint and salt and uncertainty. But he kissed back.
They didn’t speak for ten minutes after. Just stood there, shoulder to shoulder, watching the city breathe below.
………..
📸 Barcelona, 2018 — Their First Fight
Max doesn’t look at this photo often. It’s blurry. Caught mid-argument, hands gesturing, mouths open in anger. The kind of fight that rattled the floorboards of their hotel room. Team orders. Ego. Pressure. Insecurity. Max had said, “You always think I’ll leave first, don’t you?” And Carlos had shouted, “Because you always do.”
Neither of them slept that night. One sat in the bathroom. One stared out the window.
…………
📸 Silverstone, 2018 — The Reconciliation
They were quiet the entire morning.
Carlos handed Max a banana and a bottle of water without looking at him.
Max took it. Sat down beside him. They didn’t talk until warm-up.
After the race, when they were alone again, Max pulled Carlos in without a word. Buried his face in his shoulder.
“I didn’t mean it,” he whispered. “You’re my home.”
Carlos kissed his temple.
………….
📸 Tuscany, 2025— The Proposal
Carlos had mud on his jeans and a scrape on his chin from falling during a hike.
They were in a vineyard, alone. Max had carried the ring in his pocket for three days, too scared to ask.
When he finally did, he didn’t kneel. Just stood there, heart hammering.
Carlos blinked.
Then laughed.
Then cried.
“Yes,” he choked out. “Of course. Always.”
…………..
📸 Amsterdam, 2025 — Their First Night as Fiancés
No cameras. No filters.
Just Carlos in Max’s bed, back arched, laughing as Max tried to pull the too-tight shirt off him.
“I should’ve proposed years ago,” Max had muttered against his skin.
They didn’t sleep much that night.
There are no photos from it, but Carlos left a note in the album:
“You kissed every scar like they were medals.”
……………
📸 Daniel Ricciardo's Kitchen — Burnt Pancakes and Wedding Advice
Daniel is holding a pan in one hand, a charred pancake in the other, while Carlos laughs so hard he’s crying and Max looks deeply unimpressed.
Behind the photo, Carlos wrote:
"Dan gave us advice on marriage: 'Never go to bed angry. Unless you’re hungry. Then eat first, then fight.' We laughed for days."
Daniel had been their chaos, their steady joy, their brother in everything but blood. The day before the wedding, he hugged them both and whispered, “You idiots better last forever.” They did.
………….
📸 Madrid, 2027 — The Wedding
It was private. Close friends, family, a summer afternoon.
Carlos wore white linen. Max wore a soft blue suit.
They didn’t exchange vows on paper. They just spoke from the heart.
“You were always the turn I never saw coming,” Max said.
“You were the finish line I didn’t know I wanted,” Carlos replied.
There are dozens of photos from that day — but Max only looks at the one where their foreheads touch, eyes closed, rings visible on each hand.
………..
📸 Monaco Apartment, Rainy Day — Playing Uno with Lando and Charles
Lando is mid-scream. Charles is mid-eye-roll. Max has a smug smirk, and Carlos is holding up four +4 cards like a war god.
Carlos wrote:
"They never played with us again."
Those rainy off-season days — game nights, movie marathons, wine-stained laughter echoing down hallways — became the backbone of their off-track life. Friends that turned into family.
…………….
📸 Unlabeled — The Quiet Years
Picnics. Garden soil under their nails. Carlos asleep with a book on his chest. Max fixing a crooked shelf. Sunlight filtering through dusty windows. Ordinary, soft life.
Max whispers: “We were so good at the boring stuff, weren’t we?”
………………
📸 The Last Photo — Carlos in the Garden
White hair, sun hat, dirt-streaked cheeks. He’s smiling up at the camera, holding a single blooming rose.
He died three weeks later. Peacefully. Holding Max’s hand.
…………..
📸 No Photo — Max’s Final Moment
He’s in bed. The house is quiet.
The photo album is closed beside him.
His last breath leaves him with Carlos’s name on his lips, with the feel of his voice in his ear.
…………
And then—
Max opens his eyes.
He exhales — not a wheeze, not a cough, but a breath, full and easy and young. His body feels light, unburdened. No pain in his knees. No tremor in his hands. No gravity pressing on his chest like grief.
The world smells like rubber, sun-heated asphalt, and something sweeter — like summer blooming wild in the air. The sky above is impossibly blue, the kind of blue that never existed in his old age but now stretches wide and endless, like possibility.
He hears the low rumble of engines, distant laughter, the echo of tyres on tarmac.
And then —
He sees him.
Carlos.
At the far end of the pit lane.
Backlit by golden light, hair longer than it ever was in life, caught in the wind like flame. His smile — God, that smile — is as bright as the first sunrise, the first kiss, the first everything. His eyes meet Max’s like they’d been waiting all this time. Like they never looked away.
He’s beautiful.
Ageless. Glowing. Familiar and brand new all at once. Like a dream Max had spent a lifetime forgetting and finally remembered in perfect clarity.
Carlos laughs softly — Max hears it like a melody stitched into the fabric of the world — and calls out, voice warm, teasing, so very alive:
“Took you long enough, Verstappen.”
Max’s chest breaks wide open. Not with pain — but with joy. With wonder. With love that rushes in like a tide and leaves him breathless.
He takes a step. Then another.
The distance collapses like it never mattered.
He reaches him, and Carlos’s hand slides into his like it always belonged there — like it never left.
Max looks at him again, like he can’t quite believe he gets to — and falls in love all over again, just like the very first time, and every time after.
They don’t need words.
They just turn.
Helmet in hand. Engines waiting. The track before them.
This time, not rivals.
This time, not for trophies or points.
This time — for each other.
They race.
Together.
Forever.
.................
Author’s Note
This fic is the story of a love so deep it refuses to end .....not with time, not with death.
I wrote this .....because I needed it. Because I think we all do.....sometimes.
Because grief, though inevitable.......is the price of something extraordinary.
Because love doesn’t vanish just because someone is gone ......it lingers.. in voices.....in memories..... in photographs...... in the way we keep choosing them again and again, even when they’re not here to choose us back.
I believe in love that stays....... Love that softens even the sharpest loss.
Love that leaves behind more than pain ......it leaves behind meaning...... It teaches us how to live, and how to keep living. And maybe, just maybe, it greets us again at the end of the road.
This was for every “I miss you” spoken to a photo.....For every whispered “I love you” in an empty room...... For everyone still carrying someone with them.
Grief is not the end of love.
It is the echo.
And it’s worth everything...... Sorry for the tears if I made you cry believe me I cried while writing this
Tysm for reading.
– Ria <3