Work Text:
Max loves Charles. He’s loved him ever since their University days, when they were making hasty glances at each other from across the room, and slowly gravitating closer and closer together with each party.
He loved Charles when he drunkenly decided to throw caution to the wind and push Max against a wall, kissing him so fiercely and cradling him so gently, like nothing mattered more than them.
It had been six years since that. Max still feels overwhelmingly happy whenever he remembers that this is his life, his person, and hopefully, his future husband.
He supposes it’s a good thing that his life is going so fantastically well, that every time he needs to deliver bad news to Charles he gets a deep pit in his stomach.
He really shouldn’t, he knows that. Charles loves him, that will never change. He always manages to sniff out Max’s hesitation and stop the spiral before it starts, because there’s no issue they can’t work through together.
He has to chant that in his head the whole route home.
Charles loves you. This won’t change anything. You’ll figure it out.
If only Christian hadn’t gotten himself fired, then Max wouldn’t even be in this predicament.
Christian loved Max, probably more than Charles, even. Max wasn’t sure why, but Chrisitan always seemed overjoyed at anything he did. Max was good, sure, but even his most basic preliminary designs got praised to the heavens.
It was honestly overbearing at times, but at least he was being appreciated. And at least he was certain for a promotion. He needed it, too. He and Charles weren’t struggling but they weren’t particularly stable.
Neither of their careers had shot them into the millions like they were supposed to, certainly not enough to offset all the student debt they were still trying to pay off, as well as their apartment and their car and their life insurance and the pet’s life insurance and the groceries and literally anything else. Even with Charles picking up the occasional modelling job on the side, it only ever meant that they would maybe get a takeaway that night.
They were both sitting there, waiting for the next big break, the moment when they’d start living.
That was what the promotion was supposed to be. Max’s salary would almost triple, the stress would drop off of both their shoulders, they could even start going for weekends away and spontaneous dinners.
Max was, is, by far the best in his unit, the promotion was his to get.
Until, of course Christian got fired all of eight days before it would be finalised and a new manager came in who knew nothing about them, came in.
Fine, Max could’ve worked with that. Had it not been for the fact that his section of the project was done and he really didn’t have much work to do, aside from some paperwork and drafts.
Obviously Laurent hadn’t found his scribbles as impressive as fucking Micheal’s designs, even though he was running behind schedule and Max was running ahead and that’s why Max was finished.
Max didn’t get the promotion.
Micheal, obviously, got the promotion.
Fine. Bad, but not an issue. Max could’ve worked with that. Except the very moment he touched the power, Micheal rushed to drop all of his work onto Max, and then say it was in the companies best interest to reduce hours, to save money.
His hours have been halved. His salary has not increased.
Logistically, Max’s salary has halved.
Rent is due, they’ve been eating out of cans, and now Max has to tell the love of his life, his heart and soul, that he’s not sure he can scrape up enough money for this.
He’s so scared he’s barely even given himself time to be angry at how unfair this whole thing is. That’ll be Charles’ job. He’ll tell Max it’s okay, they’ll figure it out and he can stop rubbing at his face, and then they’ll get into the details of it all and Charles will get fired up, and then Max will get fired off, and then he’ll send of a series of strongly worded emails, with Charles over his shoulder to cite legal policies and rules that this sudden cut is not abiding, and then they can live it rough for a few days until everything gets sorted. Maybe Max can even talk to Helmut, he always seemed relatively fond of Max, at the very least he knows that Max is the better worker. Maybe he can fight to get the promotion he rightfully deserves. Yeah. Everything’s going to be okay.
He holds his breath as he turns the key to their apartment. He probably won’t even need to introduce the topic, Charles will smell the nerves right off of him.
He pushes the door open to… a dark room.
He flicks the lights on. It’s empty.
Charles should be back by now? Max always worked the longer hours.
He turns his phone on, which he’d been diligently avoiding doing, too scared to see a how’s it going? text from Charles and having to respond saying it is not good, it’s horrible and they need to talk.
Schat:
Hey
Some of the guys want to go out for a drink tonight, so I’ll be back a little later
Text me if you need anything chéri
Fuck.
Max can feel his panic rapidly kicking in again.
It’s fine. It’s just a delay in his plans. It’s not an issue.
Me:
Okay, have fun
Be safe, call me if there are any issues.
He should probably tell Charles he has something important to tell him when he comes home, but he can’t bring himself to ruin Charles’ night. This will be stressful for both of them, he should be a good boyfriend and give Charles a little bit more time to be free from that.
He usually comes home pretty sober anyway, they’ll talk then.
He didn’t anticipate how nerve wracking it would be just waiting for Charles to come home.
Leo has his head on Max’s thigh, looking up at him with big wide eyes every so often. Sassy even managed to get over her dislike of being around the dog to sit on his other thigh, purring. He’s not sure he likes that he’s so obviously stressed even the pets can tell. It’s probably quite bad if even Sassy is doing something about it.
He takes to pacing, but that’s not good enough, so then he moves to the kitchen, not that he needs to move far, it’s a small apartment. He cooks up a basic pasta dish that Charles loves, it’s one of the few meals that’s simple enough that he could trust Charles enough to make, except Charles always insists he cook it anyway because Max’s tastes of love.
It’s way past midnight now, the pasta is in a pot on the stove on the lowest setting, just enough to keep it warm. Charles hasn’t texted any updates. Max has almost ripped out a full head of hair.
There’s a sound of keys opening in the door.
Max is alert instantly, staring at the door.
“Heyyy,” Charles slurs, breaking off into a giggle.
Max pales a little. Of course he’s drunk. How the hell does he have this conversation now?
“Hey, Charles.” He says, reaching his hands out for Charles to fall into as he stumbles towards him.
With great effort, Charles pulls himself back and studies Max’s face, he puts on an exaggerated frown, that would be fake if it were anyone else, “Maxieee, what’s wrong? You’re sad.”
Max smiles, it’s a sad smile, even though he doesn’t want it to be, “Nothing’s wrong, I’m okay.”
Charles huffs, “Don’t lie to me, you’re too obvious. Just tell me.”
He says it so sternly Max might be convinced that he wasn’t drunk, except for the fact that Max was keeping up his entire body weight.
“You’re drunk, Charlie. We can talk tomorrow, okay?” He says placatingly.
“No! Just tell me now. We can continue talking about it tomorrow, but I want to know now.” He moves back, separating from Max so they can talk face to face.
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,”
“It’s clearly worrying you! You won’t sleep like this. Just get it off your chest.”
“Charles…”
“Max.” Charles says, and he knows he’s won.
Max wrings his hands together to try and calm his racing heart. He feels lightheaded.
“Do you, uh. Do you remember all the stuff about Christian leaving and the promotion?”
“Yes,” Charles says slowly.
“I... I didn’t get it. And they reduced my hours.” He braves a look up to Charles’ face. It looks blank. Calculated blank.
He doesn’t know how it’s possible at this point, but his heart beats faster.
“By how much? Your hours.” Charles says, still no emotion in his voice. Giving nothing away.
“Half.” It’s meek.
Charles blinks. His eyebrows furrow. “Max rent is due in a week.” He says, and it sounds like an accusation.
Max’s heart drops.
“I know, but-”
“A week.”
“But we can-”
“We?” Charles spits. “Who is we, Max. Why do I always have to clean up your messes, why do I always have to take the fall for your problems.”
His eyes feel wetter than they were before. His vision a tad more blurry.
“I can fix it,” He rushes to say, he has to fix this he can’t lose Charles, it would break him, “We can talk about it more in the morning, once we both have a clear heads. I’ll sort something out.”
“How?” Charles yells, “How do you manage to scrape up the money in a week? What are you going to do, huh? Gamble? Beg? Whore yourself out?”
His whole body aches. This hurts more than any hit he’s ever taken in his life.
“It’s not happening, Max. You’re too useless to figure it out. So I’ll solve it, like I solve all of your problems.”
“Charles…”
“Fuck off, Max. I don’t want to even look at you right now.”
Max can only watch as Charles storms off to their bedroom and slams the door behind him.
He stares blankly ahead of himself as he turns the stove off and puts the pasta in a bowl in the fridge.
He continues to stare blankly as he slides down a wall and brings his knees up to his chest, laying his head down.
It’s unfair. He knows, logically, that it was unfair. The promotion was out of his hands, the hours were out of his hands.
Charles had no right to yell about fixing Max’s issues because they fix each other’s issues. That’s why they work.
Max isn’t useless. He knows that. Logically.
But logic feels far away when he’s sat on his kitchen floor with tears leaking out of his eyes, silently shuddering his body with each muffled sob wracking through him.
Really it was only a matter of time before Charles decided he was done with him. Max has always known this. He’d just forgotten it, with time and reassurances. It felt forever.
He should’ve never forgotten his worth. He should’ve never thought he was anything more useful or important than he actually is.
Charles wakes up with the feeling of something wrong.
He has a pounding headache, the room reeks of alcohol, and he’s alone.
He hasn’t woken up alone for a long time. Maybe he’s slept in? Maybe Max is already awake and active.
He would rather die than get up, but he will also die if he’s away from his boyfriend for one more minute, so regrettably, he wakes up.
The clock says it’s seven. Maybe Max had something he really needed to do? Or maybe he was in the bathroom?
He leaves his bedroom and sees Max.
Max who is asleep on the couch in his work clothes without so much as a blanket.
Memories crash into him so violently he thinks he might fall over.
He feels the wrongness change, molding into an intense feeling of impending doom. A memory just out of his field of vision. So close but he can’t quite touch it.
Quietly, he goes to the kitchen, it smells familiar. He opens the fridge and his suspicions are confirmed. Pasta, made specifically for him, probably.
Pasta that he didn’t eat.
Jesus, he's such an asshole.
Max came home stressed and upset, cooked him pasta because he knew Charles wouldn’t have eaten. Spent the entire evening nervous, and once Charles finally came home, instead of fixing it he just made it so much worse. He yelled and argued and screamed and it was all undeserved.
He left Max to wallow in it all as he went upstairs and-
Oh.
Oh god no.
The doorbell rings.
Max wakes up to arguing.
Charles and… someone else? Several other people?
It’s aggressive, Charles most of all.
He’s so confused.
He lifts his head up, Charles is blocking the doorway with himself and the door, arguing through a slit, Max can’t see the other side.
“You signed the contract,” A voice argues.
“I didn’t sign shit, this is illegal you have no right.” Charles bites.
Huh, he speaks like me when he’s angry.
“Yes we do, actually, read the contract.” Says the same voice.
“Let us in,” says another.
“No!”
“Charles?” Max asks, interrupting.
He stiffens immediately, “Max! Go to our room. Now. Please.”
He looks legitimately panicked and Max is so confused.
“What’s going on, Charlie?” Can he even call him Charlie after everything that happened last night?
“Nothing, mon cœur, please leave.”
“That’s him?” A new voice comes, muffled, “Let us in!”
“Fuck off!” Charles yells before turning to Max, “Mon amour, chéri, please go to our room.”
Charles is pressing himself against the door to keep it closed now. Max has never been more confused in his life.
The door bursts open. Five men stand there.
“I’ll fucking kill you!” Charles shrieks.
“Niall, grab him.” The man at the front says, but keeps his eyes firmly locked onto Max.
Charles gets grappled back by presumably Niall.
“Get the fuck off of me! You can’t have him, You can’t take him from me!” Charles screams.
The leader slowly peels his eyes away from Max, glancing at Charles, writhing in the other man’s arms.
“Oh, but I can. You’re the one who sold him, remember?”
Charles looks a mix of outraged and distraught. Max is so confused.
The leader turns back to Max with a cheeky grin, “ ‘ello love, I’m Harry Styles, and you’ve been sold to one direction.”
What.