Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Max is five when the visions start. He's five, laying in bed, drifting in that small space where you are between consciousness and unconsciousness, when the vision appears.

There is a woman, talking to him softly, as he lays in bed, but this is not Max's mother. Max does not know who this woman is. She seems to be reading him something, a bedtime story probably, but that makes no sense..? Max's mother, Sophie, has long since escaped to dreamland in her room shared with his father, while Max has failed to fall asleep. It's way past his bedtime, too.
Still, the kind woman continues to read him a story in a foreign language and Max hears himself respond in that.. weird language. She laughs, and then she—.

Victoria is shaking him softly, "Maxie?", she calls, and Max blinks away the voices in his head, and the pictures in his eyes. He doesn't know what that was, but he guesses he probably fell asleep. A dream, he thinks.
It's not important to figure out what that was, when Victoria is still giving him that curious look and he has to find out what she wants.

Something inside him is adamant to tell him that that wasn't a dream. He ignores it, he has no time to dwell on it.

The visions do not stop, and Max does not talk about it to anyone, opting to keep it a secret. He does not want his family to think of him as if he were a lunatic.

Max is nine, when the arguments keep getting worse, his father, harsher, and the visions get more frequent.

Max is nine, listening to his parents argue- no, fight, as he attempts to distract himself and Victoria.
They are playing some stupid game that he doesn't care about nor remembers the name, and there are sounds of glass shattering that causes Max to stiffen, fear simmering in his veins. Victoria, much to Max's relief, does not take notice.

As bad as it sounds, the only closure to Max is the fact that the voices have not stopped. Even covered over Jos' demanding, harsh, angered voice, he can hear his mother. He wants to run out to the kitchen, to help, to do something, anything, but the last time he tried, it did not end well for either of them, Victoria thankfully not included.
Still, that doesn't stop him from wanting him to do anything he could, but the fear slowly, slowly inching its way up his body, causes his body to freeze up, nerves and all.

That is when the next profound thing happens to Max. It is a known, but still uncommon fact that soulmates can share emotions. He is a kid, he still does not know how to control that, and he is still in denial about it all, that he doesn't realize that his fear did leak into the bond of him and his soulmate.
Victoria presses something into his hand, urging him to make his move. He attempts to, but the sudden feeling of comfort, warmth, and whispers of a foreign language engulfing him completely, shocks him so bad he ends up dropping it.

He is still, unnervingly so, not even blinking, as he processes what the fuck just happened. Victoria shoving him muttering about how she won't get the piece back, and he has to do it himself, breaks the sudden spell he was in.
He shakes the feelings away, locking those and his thoughts into a separate file present in his brain, specifically named, "What the fuck is my life.". A pretty good name, if you asked Max.

Max is eleven, when the fights come to a halt.
Max is eleven, when his mother comes into his room, Victoria following behind, loyally.

Max is eleven, when his mother tells him softly, that she is divorcing his father. She obviously doesn't tell him so bluntly, he is still a kid, and this is jarring news to him. He thinks that for all his life, he thought that his parents would be together, forever.
What use is a marriage if you are not going to stay with that person forever? He thinks, but he does not say. He is too young to know how different people need to divorce their spouse for varying reasons because of some stupid true-love fantasy he had read a couple months back.

Max is eleven, when his world stops in its place, and Victoria is crying into his mother's arms, but he can't bring himself to react. Slowly, he nods, but that is only out of obligation. The "Okay.." he tells her, is also the same. He cannot really process this.. world-altering..? news.
Maybe he should've seen it coming, but it doesn't shock him much, and instead, it causes him to worry. Where will Victoria go? Will he see his mom? His dad? What's going to happen to him? What's going to happen to.. karting, and his dreams of becoming a world champion in formula one?

He doesn't voice any of that out, either.

Max is eleven, dealing with the news of his parents divorce, when the next vision appears. He should have suspected it would appear sometime soon, they always do, when he needs them.
It's of that same boy he does not know the name of, yet his face is nearly clear, this time. It is of the boy, his brothers, his parents, all laughing and talking. Love filters through a bond he does not want to accept.

Perhaps he should feel bitter about it, how he can't have the same loving family the boy has, but he just feels happy for him. Happy that he will not have to go through what Max is right now. He does not have a name nor face to attach to the boy, and still, that is enough for him. He does not know what he would do if he had been given anything more than what he had. Perhaps he would have gone mad with desperation to find him.

Max is fourteen, when he meets his soulmate. Not that he knows that, of course.

Max is fourteen, standing on the top step of a podium, relishing in the sense of victory once again, when he thinks back to the boy standing just a step below him. He's been the closest to stopping Max from victory, than anyone else has been.
They had overtaken each other more times than he could count, hell, they'd nearly pushed each other off track. He shudders thinking about what his father would be like had he been pushed off.

Still, he is curious about him. When the boy, Charles, as he'd introduced himself, in broken english with a French accent, had come up to talk to him, his curiosity had not been sated. No, in fact it grew the more Charles talked to him. He wanted to know more about the one who could've beaten him. Curiosity kills the cat, but knowledge brings it back to life, right?

His name is Charles Leclerc, and he's a couple months younger than him. He talks to Max about how much fun he had, how he enjoyed racing against Max, all in broken english and switching to french more often than not. A very confusing conversation, but still manageable.
Max has never had this. Sure, he's had people congratulate him all the time when he wins, but not like this.

Not like they're genuinely happy for him. It's usually disdain masked in fake joy because they have to congratulate him. Nobody likes being beaten, but this is something entirely different. Max has never had someone come up to him and look like they're sincerely happy for him, and his victory. This is different. This is nice.
And when Charles' accenty voice asks him to be friends with him, he jerkily nods because he's never had that, too. He ignored the voice at the back of his head, repeating his father's words and how he friends in karting would only be a distraction and he needs not of them.

He would have loved to spend more time with Charles, get to know the boy his mind is screaming at him to get close to, but the voice of his father shouting out for him is like a bucket of cold water being thrown all over him. He murmurs a soft goodbye before dashing off towards where his father's voice is coming from, his mind still stuck on the fact that he's made a friend.

He doesn't think to connect the dots on how he's sure, faintly though, that he's seen the boy before. That the voice is somehow so familiar, and that he's seen the man accompamying him, too. No, it's all washed over by the fact that Max has made a friend.

Max is fourteen, when he unknowingly meets his soulmate, made his first proper friend, and he steals, borrows, really, his father's phone to figure out what is happening. He doesn't have his own phone yet, but by the whispers of now, no longer profund arguments of his parents, he knows his mom wants to get him one.

Still, he researches all about what is happening to him. The visions, emotions that aren't his but feel as if they are, the sometimes weird whispers of a voice in his head telling him to breathe. He researches all of that.

He spends the whole night reading every single speck of information he could get his hands on. Soulmates aren't new things, no, but it's stupid that they haven't found out what the voices and emotions and everything else means becauss that just means either Max just has a really strong connection with his Fated, or he has some mental disorder.

Even if his situation was different, he would not have offered to talk to the professionals because he'd rather stay in a home he didn't want to be in, then stay in what was probably some form of a cell and getting examined twenty-four seven.

So, Max is fourteen, when he makes his first friend and discovers Soulmates and Fated's. He choses to continue to not let anyone know about this all. There's nothing good about getting people's hopes up that one day he'd meet his Fated, or being flaunted around to the media because he had one. Or being given to the scientists.

Max is also fourteen when he and his Fated run each other off the track and are summoned to the Stewards room. It's not ideal, actually, and they're both pretty angry. Max definitely didn't deserve to be disqualified, and Charles shouldn't have pushed him off the track. His anger isn't reduced because it's Charles, the boy who enjoyed fighting his for first. No, it remains the same, if not more. Perhaps his father was right when he said, "There are no friends in racing, Max."

What also doesn't help is the anger filling Max's bond up, from both their emotions. It makes it confusing for Max to sense why he's angry, why he's not, and what's really going on.
It is times like these, when their emotions sync up, that should normally be something Max appreciates, but he in fact loathes. Not everyone gets this, he's aware, but he'd rather have no soulmate than have his emotions breached and shared with someone else's, for good, and bad.

When Max sits in his father's car, nervously biting his lip for the argument he's going to get as soon as he even breathes a bit too long, his next vision appears.
It's a laptop screen, the search bar having his and Charles' name in, and a replay of their crash and their interviews following. Max should have expected his soulmate to know him, but he didn't and that's his own fault.

He inhales sharply as he watches the video replay again, anger yet.. fondness..? Echoing into his bond. Maybe He is a fan of him. Or Charles. That would be a mess. His Fated a fan of Charles fucking Leclerc. He'd sooner kill himself than have to deal with that can of worms.

He makes the mistake of shifting a little bit as his own vision returns, and suddenly Jos is at his throat, berating him for everything under the sun. This time, he does not even try to argue. He curls up further into himself, trying to make himself as small as possible without making it seem like that's what he's doing. It always ends up hurting worse when he tries to fight back.
His only source of comfort is the emotions of comfort, care, and a side of worry rushing into the bond all at once, hoping to calm Max's fear — That he unconsciously releases into the bond.

Maybe he does not hate having a Soulmate.

Either way, Max is fourteen when he hopes that he never loses whatever it is that he has with his Fated.

Max is fifteen when he figures out Charles Leclerc, someone who was technically meant to be his mortal enemy is his Soulmate. It goes something like this:

He and the monagesque are going head to head, wheel to wheel, overtaking at every turn, neither one willing to back off. In their desperation to prove themselves to the world, to every watching eye, and their burning desire to win, they crash. Their desire was gasoline that they were willingly dousing themselves in, and the want to win was the matchstick, lit up and waiting to cause ashes to flutter up in the sky and drop to the asphalt.
Max feels the vision burning at the edges of his sight just before the crash. He sees his own kart right infront of him, and hands willing another to chase after his. They're far, far away from any other car, having gapped them, their only opponent the other. The realisation of who he's seeing, of what this is, slams into his chest with such force he feels himself jerk away, and reality returns to him.

With the way Charles' own car lurches at the same time as his, it's proof that they've both seen the other's vision. The next thing Max sees, or rather feels, is a kart slamming full force into his own and then there is pain, for a bit. He keeps his wrists onto his steering wheel, he doesn't know that that is stupid, only knows that that is what his father wanted from him, so he must obey.

Perhaps he feels a touch of anger, too, that his race is now ruined by someone who is meant to.. support him? And maybe a sense of betrayal, that his own soulmate was the reason that he was going head-first into the gravel. But there is relief, too. Relief that he is not simply crazy, but there truly is someone molded to what he needs, shaped perfectly for him, someone to match him. Relief that he will not die alone with no one beside his death bed, and certainly no one to mourn his loss of life.

He feels laughter bubble up his throat, and he shoves it back down. With shaky hands he surges to his feet and clambers out of his kart. Charles is already out of his kart, and waiting for him. Max feels giddy. He meets the other's eyes, and sees Charles make a hand sign that he knows means 'Later'. Later it is, then. He is lucky that the mask covers his face, not letting his stupidly wide smile be broadcasted to whoever was watching because he's just been in a crash that cost him his race and shouldn't be laughing and smiling like the world was just handed to him on a golden platter served with a side of whatever-the-fuck-he-wanted.

So, yeah, that's what happened.