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It's when Charles loudly enters the apartment on what had been a perfectly peaceful afternoon for Max and plops down on one of the kitchen stools announcing miserably, "I have wisdom teeth," that Max knows that he's never going to hear the end of this.
Max briefly considers making a comment about using them every once in a while, but by the tragic pout on Charles' face, he senses Charles isn't going to laugh.
"Hi," Max says instead, and closes the fridge because he's unlikely to be making any decisions on what to eat tonight now.
Charles has just come home from his biannual dentist checkup. Max remembers a week or so ago when Charles had mentioned a slight discomfort in his jaw and shrugged it off because he was going to the dentist anyway. Apparently he got his X-rays done for the first time in a while.
"Two of them!"
Max refrains from mentioning that most people actually have at least four so Charles should count himself lucky.
"And they have to come out?" Max deduces, wincing partly for Charles, but mostly for himself because Charles is going to be insufferable about the wisdom teeth right up until he's anaesthetised and probably a good two weeks after that too.
"Yes! Because they're going forwards," Charles moans and helpfully illustrates that concept with both his indexes on his cheeks, pointing forwards as he pouts.
"Ah. That's terrible."
"I know. It's going to be horrible! They're going to cut me open and dig around in my jaws and pull out my bones and then stitch me back up and just send me home. And I don't even get to keep the teeth!"
Max makes a face. "Do you, uh, want to keep the teeth?"
"No!" Charles says, like that was obvious. "But I would have liked the option! And then I'm going to come home in pain and looking like a— an écureuil and I'm going to be puffy and sad and ugly."
Max rolls his eyes. "You won't look like a squirrel, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
Because Charles would have to put so much effort in to actually look ugly and puffed-up cheeks certainly won't do the trick.
"I hate being ugly," Charles laments, ignoring that.
"You have never been ugly once in your life—"
"And I'm going to get dry socket!"
Max doesn't even bother asking what dry socket is because he's sure it won't be long before Charles explains that to him regardless.
"I looked it up! It's when the blood clot comes out before it's healed and then the bone and nerves are just— just exposed and it's horrible and painful and I'll have to go to the hospital."
"You're not going to get dry socket."
"You say that and then I get dry socket and then at my funeral everyone will say aha Charles told you so, did he not? And you will have to live with yourself forever."
Max raises his eyebrows. "Alright, there's probably a small chance you could get dry socket, but you probably won't and it's no use worrying about it before it happens."
Charles blinks at him, looking absolutely disgusted. "Max, please, I don't want all this sensible nonsense, I want pity, now pity me."
Max sighs. He doesn't even know why he bothers.
"Whatever you say, schat," Max says and pets Charles' hair as he drops his forehead to the marble counter.
Charles moans miserably.
Charles, predictably, barely shuts up about the wisdom teeth long enough to get his eight hours of sleep a night for the entire week between going to the dentist and his actual wisdom teeth being removed.
As much as Max sympathises, because wisdom teeth removal probably sucks, Charles is being very dramatic and Max is about two more 'Max, feel sorry for me's away from pulling Charles' teeth out himself.
"And if I say something stupid when I wake up you have to tell me," Charles says.
"If it's something stupid, sure, if it's something disgusting then I'm sorry, but I'm not forcing myself to repeat it for your sake."
"Disgusting like sexual or disgusting like you're the love of my life?"
"Either."
"Oh well, whatever. And Maman must come over every afternoon, you have to make sure she does," Charles says for the umpteenth time as they’re driving to the hospital.
"Don't you just want to stay at your mum's house then?" Max groans, because he’s very insistent about this.
"No, I just need her to drop off fresh soupe de cresson and say ‘ma pauvre petite puce’, and then leave." (My poor little flea.)
"Uh, why?"
"Well, my mother doesn't appreciate the fact that I'm a beautiful, talented, charming, and successful young man who has never done anything to deserve this even once."
"Ah."
"Although I did call Lorenzo an ass again this morning, but he deserved it, he was being very insensitive."
"Okay, Charles."
"Anyway, the point is she will not feel sorry enough for me."
"Right."
"You will take good care of me, non?"
"Of course I'll take good care of you, schat," Max sighs.
"I want lots of soup and jelly and yoghurt and ice cream and chocolate mousse and you can't stop feeling sorry for me after the first day, okay?"
"Sure. If I do, I'll pretend."
"Good."
"Okay, now will you shut up?"
"No, of course not, I'm having my wisdom teeth removed, Max!"
"Charles, look, I love you very much, but shut up, please just shut up, just for five minutes."
There are two seconds of glorious silence.
"You can't just tell me to shut up, Max, I'm having my jaw sawed open—"
Max groans.
Charles very much does not shut up.
By the time they actually get to the hospital, Max is torn between just finding the anaesthetic and putting the mask over Charles’ face himself, and just sitting there, patiently enduring all of Charles’ complaints because what if he does get dry socket and the last thing Max said to him before it was ‘shut your face’?
He ends up sitting there and listening to Charles because he doesn’t really have the heart to tell him to shut up again, not now that Charles genuinely seems to get a bit stressed.
"I want lilies at my funeral by the way, I forgot to tell you. And I don't want to be cremated."
"You didn't forget to tell me, you've said that a thousand times now. You'll be fine, Charles."
"Yes, okay. You'll be here when I wake up?"
"Yes, schat."
Charles bites the inside of his cheek. "Alright, bye, I love you."
"I love you too, Charles," Max says softly as he gives him a kiss on the cheek for good luck and gives his hand a squeeze before they take him away.
Max distantly hears him asking a nurse about dry socket as he's taken down the hallway.
It seems to take forever.
Just as Max is getting a bit antsy in the waiting room wondering if they accidentally dropped a tooth down Charles’ windpipe and he choked to death a nurse finally calls him to a room and there is Charles, eyes shut and breathing steadily, cheeks puffed with cotton, hand slack on the bed beside him.
Max sits down on the chair next to the bed and slips his hand into Charles’ as the nurse pulls the curtain shut around them.
Charles doesn’t wake up for what feels like hours.
Max is just about to drift off, head pillowed on Charles' thigh, when the fingers he’s still holding in his hand twitch and a familiar hand strokes through his hair.
Max blinks his eyes open to see Charles looking down at him, soft-eyed, no different from usual really, much to Max's relief.
"You look like an angel," Charles says, slurred from the anaesthetic and muffled through the cotton in his mouth.
Max smiles. “Hi there.”
Charles’ forehead wrinkles just a little bit. "I always dream you up a little wrong."
"What?"
"But I can never make you be like real Max. Funny, you're always just like him like that, you never listen to what I tell you."
"Right."
"Except when I—"
Max knows Charles well enough to know by just the cocky shift in his expression that he's about to say something unbelievably sexual and slaps a hand over his mouth just in time to muffle it, gently, because he’s not sure how much Charles can feel right now.
Charles makes a disapproving whine, pouting.
At least he doesn’t look like he’s hurting, so Max just sighs and says, "I am real Max, schat, and we’re kind of in public so you can’t say things like that, please."
"No, you're not, you're dream Max," Charles insists, apparently having forgotten whatever inappropriate thing he had wanted to say, much to Max’s relief, and is now pulling Max’s hand away from his mouth and putting his hand back in Max’s hair.
"Charles, I’m normal Max.”
"You can't be real Max though, you're definitely dream Max,” Charles insists and strokes Max’s hair back.
"Why can't I be real Max?"
"Real Max would never let me pet him and call him an angel like this without smacking me."
Max snorts and refrains from smacking Charles out of habit, because Charles is injured and all that. "Oh, I see."
Charles hums.
"Do you like dream Max better, then? Because he— because I don't smack you?"
"Of course not, I like when he smacks me, it's cute."
"Oh, is it?"
"Mmhm,” Charles hums dreamily. “You know I'm going to marry Max someday."
Max's head goes blank because what.
His heart does a flip in his chest.
He breathes, helplessly, "Are you?"
"Yes,” Charles just says, completely unaware that he just made Max’s brain short circuit. “At least I hope so. He still has to say yes."
Max laughs incredulously. "Is that so?"
"I've been thinking of how I'm going to ask him."
"Have you?” Max whispers.
"Mmhm. I can't decide how. Or where. At home, or on a holiday, at the beach or in the mountains when we go skiing. I was thinking after he wins his next world championship, but I don't want to make it about that so that doesn't work either."
"Hey, who says I'm winning another championship?"
Charles bats weakly at Max's head as he scoffs. "He will, just you see."
"You’re jinxing it, stop it."
"He won't want a public thing, but what if I just ask him in the kitchen and he throws a pan at me?"
"I wouldn't throw a pan at you."
"What do you know? You're just dream Max."
"Not very hard anyway," Max mutters under his breath.
"Or what if I ask him and he's not ready?"
Oh.
Max, impossibly, softens even more. "Charles."
He really thinks there's even the slightest possibility that Max could say no to Charles wanting to marry him even if he asked him in the damn shower.
"What? I’m nervous. How do I know if he wants to go from boyfriends to husbands yet? It's a bit of a leap, no?"
"We’re practically husbands already, Charles.”
“Yes, I know, but still.”
“And what if I ask you first?"
"You wouldn't."
"I might."
"You don't know because you're not real, obviously," Charles informs him sagely, patting his head.
Max bites the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. "Of course not."
Max is just about to properly interrogate him about this when the nurse comes in to check on them and hand Max the discharge papers and the sheets of information on the do’s and don’ts of taking care of Charles when they get home and the conversation is lost.
Max is forced to let it go because Charles refuses to use the wheelchair to be taken to the car, freely admitting that the only reason he does so is because he wants to hold on to Max, about which Max is slightly embarrassed and the nurses are very amused.
So Max wraps one arm around his waist and pulls Charles' arm over his shoulder to help him to the car.
Charles is actually mostly capable of walking, even if not in a straight line probably, but he puts most of his weight on Max anyway because he 'wants to be closer to Max’.
Max indulges him because he’s horrifically in love with Charles at the moment.
He manages to get Charles into the passenger seat and narrowly stops him from getting out again to come back into Max's arms by trapping him with the seatbelt, the mechanism of which is a bit too complex for Charles to figure out in his addled state of mind.
Max desperately wants to interrogate Charles some more about when he decided he wanted to marry Max and when he wants to ask and whether that’s a definite plan or if Max can propose himself, or even should propose himself or if that was all just anaesthetic babbling and nobody is getting married any time soon at all.
But as Max drives them home, Charles goes off on a tangent about how he thinks Max will win this year's championship, completely ignoring Max's plea to not fucking jinx it, and doesn’t even let Max get a word in about, you know, the whole marriage thing.
Max doesn't really understand how he can talk so much with the cotton in his mouth, but he keeps yapping nonetheless. Max refrains from joining in to the strategy talk because he doesn't want to encourage him and he's also finding it hard to think about anything other than the fact that Charles has been thinking about proposing.
And that he's nervous about it.
Every time Max thinks he can't possibly love Charles any more he goes and does something like this.
Charles talks all the way home and all the way through his dinner of soup and chocolate mousse, which Max will personally tell his dieticians to fuck off about if they dare to ask, and he can't even bear to tell Charles to please shut up a second and swallow his soup because that’s his future husband.
Charles is absolutely insufferable the entire week afterwards as he's healing, but Max doesn't nearly have the capacity to be annoyed with him. He doesn’t even say ‘I told you so,’ when Charles doesn’t get dry socket.
When he complains about having to sleep on his back, Max just kisses him on the forehead in sympathy before he lays his head on Charles' chest and lets Charles wrap his arm around him, which Charles seems happy enough with. When he demands Max call his mother to bring him his soup Max just pats him on the head and does so. When he moans tragically around his gulps of water while he drinks his pain pills Max just makes a sympathetic grimace and murmurs some apologies even though he knows full well Charles is being dramatic.
Charles’ mother rightfully feels a great deal less sorry for Charles than Max does.
But the problem is just that Max loves him a far too much to even pretend to be annoyed with him and he can’t stop thinking about how he wants to deal with Charles and his dramatism until death do them part.
So a few days later when Charles is able to lie on his side again and is now using that privilege to stare lovingly into Max’s eyes while he trails light fingers over Max's waist, Charles asks absently, "Hey, I forgot to ask, did I say anything weird when I woke up from the surgery?"
And Max just hides his ridiculous smile in Charles’ neck as he wraps his arms around him to pull him closer and says, "Nothing you need to worry about."
Max still has his wisdom teeth, so he's wise enough to stay very quiet as he scrolls through engagement rings on his phone over Charles’ shoulder.