I started this blog because I couldn’t find the Carlos’s stories I was craving—new, tender, comforting, and full of feeling—so I decided to write them myself.
If you’re here for:
quiet love with a hint of spice
emotional tension and soft longing
gentle affection & stolen moments
love spoken softly (sometimes in Spanish)
…then welcome. You’re home 🤍
🌶 About me
🏁 F1 fan since 2019
🧡 Blood type: papaya, half my heart belongs to Carlitos
🌎 Latina | English is my second language
🫶 she/her
🍊 What I write
✨ Fluff & angst only
✨ Suggestive content allowed (tasteful, never explicit)
🚫 I do not write:
smut / explicit content
male reader or bromance (Carlando, etc.)
poly relationships, threesomes
graphic depictions of rpe, abse, EDs, or similar topics
(Mentions only, never in detail.)
🧡 Age gap allowed (21+ only)
📖 Style notes:
y/n or “you”
usually third-person POV
💌 Requests
🌶️ OPEN 🌶️
I accept:
one-shots/series
blurbs
headcanons
Don’t be shy—send what you’re craving, even if it’s just a vibe or a single line 🤍
I also post my own ideas regularly.
🏎 Writing about
🧡 Carlos Sainz Jr.
🧡 Lando Norris
📌 Masterlist #1
📌 Masterlist #2
📌 From The Vault Masterlist
📌 Prompts List
If you enjoy my work, likes, reblogs, and comments mean everything to me 🤍
can i request a carlos fic where the reader is dating some guy who treats her poorly. reader and carlos have been friends for years people always asssumed they’d end up together. maybe the readers boyfriend is jealous of carlos and tries to cut her off but carlos helps her see through him and they end up together at the end
Hi! This was sent back in February 😅 So sorry to leave you on delivered, it’s been a rough couple of months.
🌶️ In which years of friendship are tested by your controlling relationship, until you finally realize what’s in front of you. || requested
🌶️ pairing: Carlos Sainz Jr. x Friend!Reader
🌶️ warnings: manipulation, controlling/possessive, toxic relationship, jealousy, gaslighting, angst, friends to lovers, happy ending. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK⚠️
🌶️ chilli note: hello. i don’t know how this is going to turn out, I feel like it’s been so long… but I hope you enjoy it🫶🏽
Support me with a reblog, like, or comment🤍
•
You meet Daniel when your life is in one of those strange in-between places: steady enough to look good from the outside, uncertain enough that attention feels like certainty.
He is charming in the beginning, and that is the problem.
Not in an over-the-top way, not in the kind of way that would make your friends immediately suspicious. He is the sort of charming that slips past defenses easily. He remembers tiny details you mention in passing. He texts good morning every day for the first few weeks. He brings you coffee once without asking your order because he had “a feeling,” and when it turns out to be exactly right, everyone around you makes the same little impressed face, as if that means something permanent.
You are not stupid. You know attraction and effort are not the same thing as goodness. But he arrives at a moment when you are tired of waiting for something real, tired of people assuming your life is secretly incomplete just because the one thing missing from it is romance. So when he pursues you with enough consistency to feel serious, you let yourself believe seriousness means safety.
Carlos does not say anything at first. That, somehow, is more noticeable than if he had.
Carlos, who has known you long enough to call out a bad haircut, a worse mood, and every terrible decision involving exes, says very little when you tell him you are seeing someone. He smiles, hugs you, says he hopes Daniel makes you happy. And because you know him so well, you hear everything he is not saying hidden beneath the calmness of it.
“Don’t,” you tell him that night, when the two of you end up alone after dinner with mutual friends.
He lifts an eyebrow. “Don’t what?”
“Do that thing where you pretend to be supportive but are actually judging me.”
A small smile pulls at his mouth. “I’m not judging you.”
“You are a terrible liar.”
He leans back in his chair, turning his glass slowly between his fingers. “I’m not judging you,” he repeats. “I just don’t know him.”
“You don’t have to know him.”
“No,” he says lightly, “but I have to know you.” It is such a Carlos answer that it irritates you on principle.
You roll your eyes and tell him he is dramatic, and he laughs, and the conversation moves on. But later, lying in bed, you replay it longer than you mean to.
Because Carlos has always known you. Not in the flimsy way people say it after sharing one big conversation or a few vulnerable moments. He knows you in the accumulated way. He knows how you go quiet when you are upset and louder when you are trying not to be. He knows what your face looks like right before you cry and right before you do something reckless. He knows how you pretend not to care about your birthday and then get hurt if people forget. He knows the names of your childhood pets, your coffee order, your worst fear, the exact tone of your voice when you are overwhelmed. He has known all of that for years. And everyone has always assumed that one day the two of you would stop orbiting and finally collide.
At first, it was a joke. Then it became a theory. Then it became one of those facts other people believe so deeply that they stop considering alternatives.
You and Carlos never really helped yourselves. There was history, though not the kind people wanted. A thousand almosts that never became anything because the timing was always off, because one of you was traveling, because the other was healing, because friendship was easier to protect than feelings were to confess. And after enough years had passed, it became simpler to leave it unnamed.
But Daniel notices it immediately. At first, he notices it like people always do: with curiosity.
“So you and Carlos never dated?” he asks one night, stretched out beside you on the couch, your phone lighting up with a message from Carlos asking if you got home safe.
“No.”
“Never hooked up?”
You laugh once, dryly. “Jesus. No.”
He shrugs. “Just asking. You seem very close.”
“We are.”
He nods, but his expression changes in that tiny, almost imperceptible way that you only recognize later. At the time, it feels harmless.
Everything with Daniel shifts gradually. That is what makes it hard to point at. He does not become cruel overnight. He becomes critical in pieces. At first, it is your clothes, not insults exactly, just preferences disguised as affection.
“You’d look prettier if you wore your hair down more.”
“That dress is a little much, no?”
“I like when you don’t wear that much makeup. You don’t need it.”
Then it is your time.
“You’re always out.”
“You don’t have to answer every call.”
“It’s weird how much your friends rely on you.”
Then, inevitably, it is Carlos.
He says Carlos’s name with a smile that never reaches his eyes, as if the very act of pretending not to care gives him moral superiority.
“It’s just funny,” he says once, while scrolling through photos from a group dinner where Carlos has his arm slung around the back of your chair. “He looks at you like he’s in love with you.”
You snatch the phone from his hand, more irritated than shaken. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not saying he is. I’m saying he looks like it.”
“That’s just his face.”
Daniel laughs, but there is satisfaction in it. He has planted something.
After that, Carlos becomes a recurring problem in every argument you have, even when the fight starts somewhere else.
You are ten minutes late? Maybe if you did not spend so much time texting Carlos, you would not always be distracted.
You cancel a dinner because you are tired? It is interesting how you are always too tired for him but never too tired for your friends.
You mention a story from years ago? Daniel asks if Carlos was there with a tone that makes the memory feel dirty.
The worst part is not the jealousy. The worst part is how skilled Daniel is at making you defend things that were never wrong to begin with.
You stop bringing Carlos up because it is easier. Then you stop answering some of Carlos’s calls because Daniel notices every time your phone lights up. Then you stop showing up to things if you know Carlos will be there, just to avoid the cold silence that follows you home when Daniel has decided you have disappointed him. It is not a dramatic disappearance. Carlos is too steady in your life for that, but there is a thinning.
One afternoon, he calls you three times in a row, which is unusual enough that you answer immediately, pulse jumping with worry.
“What happened?” you ask.
“You tell me.”
You blink, thrown by the sharpness in his voice. “What?”
“You’ve missed dinner twice, bailed on Bianca’s birthday, and now apparently you can’t make it to brunch either. Did I do something?”
“No,” you say quickly. “No, of course not.”
“Then what is going on?”
You look toward the bedroom, where Daniel is napping, and lower your voice instinctively. “Nothing is going on.”
Carlos’s voice is quieter when he speaks again. “You know I know you’re lying, right?”
Something hot and defensive rises in your chest. “I’m not lying. I’m just busy.”
“You are not too busy for me,” he says, and there is no ego in it, only certainty. “Not unless something changed.”
His confidence in your friendship should comfort you. Instead it makes you furious, because it nudges too close to a truth you do not want to look at.
“I have a boyfriend, Carlos.”
Then, very calmly, he adds, “And?”
“And things are different.”
“For you,” he says. “Not for me.”
You close your eyes, exhausted suddenly by the conversation, by yourself, by all of it. “I can’t do this right now.”
“Then tell me when you can.” He hangs up before you answer. You stare at your phone for a long time.
That night, Daniel asks who called. You tell him it was Carlos, and you saw his mouth tightens.
“He needs to learn boundaries.”
You are too tired to fight, so you say nothing. But the phrase sticks under your skin.
A week later, the fight that changes everything begins over nothing.
It is raining. You are late leaving Daniel’s apartment because he wanted to order dinner and you wanted to go home. Your phone buzzes with a message from Carlos: Hope you got your umbrella. You always forget it when it rains.
Daniel sees the screen before you can tilt it away.
His laugh is short and ugly. “Seriously?”
You put the phone face down. “Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything. I just think it’s pathetic.”
“What is?”
“The way he hovers. The way you let him.”
You stand still, keys in hand. “He texted me about an umbrella.”
“Yeah, because apparently you can’t think for yourself.”
Your jaw tightens. “That’s not what this is.”
“No? Then what is it? Because from where I’m standing, he acts like your boyfriend and you act like I’m supposed to be okay with that.”
You stare at him, incredulous. “Carlos has been in my life for years.”
“And I’m here now,” Daniel snaps. “So maybe act like it.”
It is the first time he has spoken to you like that without wrapping the meanness in a joke.
You feel the room sharpen around you.
“Excuse me?”
He steps closer, not threatening exactly, but crowding. “I’m saying maybe it’s time to grow up. Maybe it’s time to stop keeping some other man around as your emotional backup plan.”
The sentence lands like a slap.
You hear your own voice before you fully feel it. “That is not what he is.”
Daniel scoffs. “Please. Everyone knows you two have some weird thing. I’m just the idiot who had to pretend not to notice.”
For a second, all you can do is look at him. Not because you are shocked he is jealous. Not because you are hurt he is insecure. Because suddenly, with almost nauseating clarity, you see the pattern. The constant criticism. The way every conversation bends until you are apologizing. The way he keeps trying to convince you that love means shrinking your life until he fits at the center of it.
And more than that, you realize something else. Carlos never asked you to choose him. Daniel is the one asking you to choose by subtraction.
“Move,” you say quietly.
Daniel folds his arms. “You’re really leaving over this?”
“No,” you say, grabbing your bag. “I’m leaving because I should have left a while ago.”
He laughs at that, mean and disbelieving. “What, you’re going to run to Carlos now?”
You look at him for one long, steady moment. “No,” you say. “I’m going to run to myself.” Then you walk out.
The rain is brutal, immediate, soaking you through by the time you get to your car. Your hands shake so badly you have to sit behind the wheel for several seconds before you can put the key in the ignition. You do not cry right away. You make it halfway home before the tears come hard enough that you have to pull over.
Your phone is in your lap before you consciously decide to call him.
Carlos answers on the first ring. “Where are you?”
There’s no hello. No hesitation. That is what undoes you. You make a sound that is not quite a sob and not quite his name, and his voice changes instantly.
“Tell me where you are.”
When you tell him, he is there in less time than should be possible.
You see his car pull up behind yours through a blur of rain and headlights. He gets in the passenger side without asking, wet from the sprint between cars, breathing hard, eyes scanning your face like he is checking for injuries.
“What happened?”
You try to explain. The words come out broken and tangled. Daniel said this, Daniel did that, Daniel made you feel crazy, small, guilty, disloyal, difficult. The whole time, Carlos says nothing. He just listens, one hand closed so tightly around his knee that his knuckles pale.
When you finally finish, wrung out and embarrassed by your own tears, he exhales through his nose and looks out at the rain for a moment.
Then he says, very evenly, “I need you to hear me.”You wipe at your face and nod. “He is wrong.” Carlos turns back to you, eyes fierce and unbearably gentle at once. “About all of it. About you. About me. About whatever story he’s been telling you to make you easier to control.”
Your mouth trembles. “I should’ve seen it sooner.”
“No.” His answer is immediate. “Don’t do that.”
“But-“
“No.” He leans closer, not touching you yet, as if even now he is careful with your space. “You do not get to blame yourself for someone else hurting you slowly. That’s how it works. They make you doubt your own instincts until staying feels easier than leaving.” He swallows, and his next words are quieter. “I knew something was wrong.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
His laugh is short and humorless. “Because every time I tried, you defended him. And I couldn’t be the jealous friend everyone already thinks I am.”
The words sit between you as he finishes talking. “Jealous?”
He looks at you for a long moment, then shakes his head slightly like he is annoyed with himself. “Not the point.”
“Carlos.”
He closes his eyes once, opens them again. “Yes,” he says simply. “Jealous.”
Of all the things you expected tonight, this was not one of them.
“You never said anything.”
“What was I supposed to say?” he asks, and there is no bitterness in it, only old fatigue. “You were with someone. I was your friend. I chose the part of your life I was allowed to have.”
That hurts in a way you do not expect. Because it sounds dignified. It sounds mature. It sounds like years of restraint you had mistaken for ease.
The rain drums against the roof of the car, loud enough to feel private. You stare at him, at the familiar face suddenly rearranged by honesty.
“How long?” you whisper.
He lets out a breath. “Long enough that I’m embarrassed.” Despite everything, a watery laugh escapes you. His mouth softens at the edges. “I did not stay in your life hoping he’d screw up,” he says. “I need you to know that. I stayed because you matter to me, and I would rather have you as my friend than not have you at all.” Your throat tightens painfully. “And if all you ever wanted from me was friendship,” he adds, voice quieter now, “I would have kept giving it.”
You look down at your hands, then back up at him. “I don’t know what I want,” you admit.
“That’s okay.”
“I feel stupid.”
“You’re not.”
“I feel like I let him rewrite me.”
Carlos’s expression breaks then, just slightly. He reaches for you at last, one hand coming up to cup your cheek, thumb warm against rain-cold skin.
“No,” he says softly. “You’re still here.”
That is the moment you cry for real. Not because Daniel hurt you, not even because the relationship is over. Because there is something devastating about being known this well and held this gently after you have spent months being diminished.
Carlos gathers you into him awkwardly in the cramped front seat, your forehead pressed to his shoulder, his arms around you solid and careful.
You do not kiss him that night. It would be too much, too soon, too unfair to the bruised shape of your heart.
Instead, he helps you get home. He makes tea you do not drink. He checks the locks. He sleeps on your couch because neither of you says the word stay, but both of you know he is not leaving.
In the weeks that follow, he does not push.
He helps in the practical ways first. He comes with you when you return Daniel’s things. He does not speak during the exchange, just stands beside you with a stillness that makes Daniel look away first. He answers your late-night calls when shame hits unexpectedly. He reminds you, over and over and over, that being mistreated does not mean you invited it.
Slowly, life returns, not all at once because healing never does. You begin showing up again. Dinners. Birthdays. Long drives with music too loud. Coffee on your balcony. You laugh more. Sleep better. Wear your hair however you like. Answer your phone without flinching.
And Carlos is there through all of it, not as a reward waiting at the end of your suffering, but as himself. Steady. Funny. Occasionally overprotective. Infuriatingly patient.
One night, months later, you are at a friend’s house for a dinner that spills out into the garden. Summer air, string lights, too many half-empty glasses on the table. Someone makes a joke about how it is nice to see you smiling again, and you smile because for once it does not feel performative.
Later, when everyone has gone inside for dessert, you find Carlos alone by the far edge of the patio.
He is leaning against the railing, looking up at the sky.
“You disappeared,” you say.
“So did you.”
You move beside him. “I was getting cake.”
“Mmm.”
You stand in easy silence for a while. It has always been easy with him, even when it is charged. Then you say, “People still think we’re going to end up together.”
He glances sideways at you. “People think a lot of things.”
“Do you?”
The question lands softly, but you feel the impact of it in your chest.
Carlos straightens a little. “Do I what?”
“Think we’re going to end up together.”
He studies you carefully, as if there is a correct amount of honesty that will not scare you.
“When I was younger,” he says, “I thought maybe we had some grand timing issue. Like eventually life would stop being inconvenient and it would happen.” He smiles faintly. “Then enough years passed that I stopped building stories in my head.”
“And now?”
His gaze drops to your mouth for half a second before returning to your eyes. “Now I think if it happens, it happens because you choose it freely. Not because other people always expected it, and not because someone else treated you badly and I happened to be there.”
You take a breath. “What if I’m choosing it?”
The garden seems to hush around you, the distant laughter from inside suddenly far away.
“Are you?” he asks, and for the first time in years, he sounds uncertain with you.
You nod once. Then, because there is no elegant way to confess something that has apparently been waiting half your life for air, you say, “I think maybe I’ve been choosing you in pieces for years. I just never let myself admit it.”
Carlos looks at you like the world has tilted.
“You cannot say things like that casually,” he says, almost under his breath.
A laugh trembles out of you. “I’m trying very hard here.”
“I know.” He steps closer, enough that your knees nearly touch. “I just want to be sure.”
“I’m sure.”
His face changes then. The restraint you have always mistaken for distance dissolves all at once, revealing something deeper and more frighteningly tender.
He lifts a hand to your cheek, giving you every second to change your mind, but you don’t.
The kiss is not wild. It is not desperate or triumphant or years-too-late in the dramatic way films like to pretend. It is careful and full of awe. It is the kiss of two people who have known each other in every other language and are finally trying this one.
You feel his exhale against your mouth before you feel the kiss itself. Then warmth, then certainty. One hand at your jaw, the other settling lightly at your waist as if he still cannot believe he is allowed to touch you this way.
When you part, neither of you goes far.
Carlos rests his forehead against yours and laughs once, quietly, in disbelief. “I have wanted to do that for an embarrassing amount of time.”
You smile, eyes stinging unexpectedly. “You should’ve said something.”
“Look who’s talking.”
That makes you laugh for real, and the sound seems to undo whatever tension remains in him. He kisses you again, a little less carefully this time, like confidence has begun to bloom where patience used to live.
Inside, someone shouts your names, wondering where you disappeared to, but you do not answer immediately.
Carlos brushes his thumb beneath your eye and says, with the gentleness that has always made him feel like home, “You okay?”
And maybe that is when you know this is real Because after everything and even now, even here, his first instinct is still to check on you.
You smile and nod. “Yeah.”
He smiles back, softer than you have ever seen him. “Good.”
When you walk back inside together, something has changed in the way your bodies move around each other. Your hand brushes his; he catches it. People notice immediately, of course they do, and the room erupts exactly the way you expect it to.
Someone yells that they knew it. Someone else demands money from a friend over a bet apparently placed years ago. Carlos only laughs, hand still wrapped around yours.
And for the first time in a long time, being seen does not feel dangerous. It feels simple.
Later, when the house is quiet and the night has stretched soft around you, you ask him the question that has lived unspoken between you for years.
“Why did you stay?”
Carlos looks at you for a moment, like the answer is too obvious to require words.
Then he says, “Because it was you.” And that’s the only answer he could’ve given you, because it was the only one.
Hope you’re doing okay chilli. I missed seeing you on here 🫶🏻🫶🏻
Hi!! I’m doing okay, thanks for asking🤍 I just don’t exactly feel the same about this app anymore. This is actually the first time I’ve checked it since my last post in April so yeah
I’m sorry I don’t have anything new to post, I know I owe a few stories to you. Hopefully I can get my inspo back and give the stories you asked for🫶🏽🫶🏽
Thank you for the support and for still waiting for me!! ❤️
Hi! 👀 Just passing by to let you know I’m alive, I haven’t really been into this app much as you might have noticed lol I know I owe you guys a couple of requests, I’ll do them whenever I feel like coming back, sorry about that🫶🏽
🧡 chilli note: this is the only that looks like a full post but it’s not. Part two of Champion Mentality that never made the light of the day.
🧡 Masterlist
Support me with a reblog, like, or comment🤍
•
You hadn’t been to a race since everything fell apart.
The decision to come hadn’t been impulsive. It had taken months of distance, therapy sessions you didn’t tell many people about, long talks with your brother over late-night takeaway cartons, and a slow rebuilding of yourself without someone else’s name attached to it. When the British Grand Prix approached, your brother had been the one to suggest it.
“Let’s go,” he’d said casually. “You used to love it. Don’t let him own that too.”
So you bought paddock passes, because you refused to feel like a trespasser in a world you once belonged in.
Walking into the paddock again was surreal. The familiar scent of rubber and fuel, the hum of team radios, media crews rushing past, drivers slipping between motorhomes.
Your brother stayed close without hovering, sunglasses on, protective but quieter than he used to be about it all.
“You good?” he asked as you both paused near the hospitality units.
“Yeah,” you nodded.
It wasn’t supposed to happen so quickly; that’s was your first thought when you were rounding the corner near the McLaren motorhome when you nearly collided with someone stepping out. His mum.
She froze when she saw you, and for a second, neither of you spoke. She was in her usual colorful clothes, ton of bracelets in her arms, her signature two pigtails. She looked exactly the same as you last saw her, last year, months before everything happened, a little older maybe, but still the same.
Her expression softened into something painfully gentle.
“Oh,” she breathed. “Hi.”
“Hi,” you replied, polite but careful.
She looked like she wanted to hug you. Like she almost forgot she wasn’t sure she was allowed to anymore.
“You look… well,” she said quietly.
“I am,” you answered.
Your brother shifted slightly beside you, protective instinct flickering back to life, but she gave him a respectful nod. She understood his position and didn’t want to repeat that scene that happened in her home on Christmas Day.
“I’m glad,” she added, voice thick with something unsaid.
The tension didn’t spike until he stepped out behind her. Lando stopped dead when he saw you. He took a sharp inhale as if someone has knock the air out of his lungs.
You hadn’t seen him in months. Not in person at least, only in curated glimpses on social media and race broadcasts you sometimes muted.
He looked… the same, but different. Thinner, maybe. Or just worn in a way that didn’t show on podiums. His eyes locked onto yours like he wasn’t sure you were real.
Your brother moved instinctively in front of you.
“Don’t,” he said low, not loud enough for the world—just for Lando.
Lando swallowed, remembering the warning, the threat he said months ago.
“Can we talk?” he asked anyway. He knew he didn’t deserve the time of the day from you, his petition actually sounded like someone asking for something they weren’t sure they deserved, but he had to talk to you even if your brother is standing a few feet away, supervising, and ready to punch him if he did one wrong move on you.
“No,” your brother said immediately.
But you placed a hand on his arm. “It’s okay,” you said quietly.
He turned to you, searching your face. “You don’t owe him anything.”
“I know.” You gave him a small, reassuring smile. “But I owe myself clarity.”
Lando led you a short distance away, toward a quieter corner near the back of the hospitality area. Not private enough to feel dangerous, just private enough to speak without microphones hovering.
For a moment, neither of you said anything.
“You look good,” he said finally.
You gave him a faint smile. “That’s usually what people say when they don’t know where to start.”
“I deserve that.”
You crossed your arms — slightly defensively, and steadying yourself. “What did you want to say?”
“I’m sorry.” He didn’t hesitate this time. He ran a hand through his hair, nerves showing in the movement. “I’ve replayed everything a hundred times,” he continued. “The way I acted, the things I said, the way I made you feel like you were too much when all you were asking for was the bare minimum.” Your throat tightened slightly, but you held eye contact. “I was arrogant,” he admitted. “I let the championship get to my head. I let the attention feed something ugly in me. And instead of protecting what mattered, I pushed it away. I never stopped loving you,” he said, voice quieter now. “I just stopped showing it, and that’s worse.”
“I don’t hate you,” you told him. Something flickered across his face—relief and pain tangled together. “But you hurt me,” you continued. “And you weren’t busy, you weren’t tired for everyone else but me. You made me feel small, like loving you was inconvenient.”
“I know. I’m-“ he started but you weren’t done.
“I started doubting myself,” you continued. “That’s what scared me the most, I got to a point where I wasn’t scared of losing you. I was scared of losing me.”
The wind shifted between you, carrying distant cheers from the grandstands.
“I hated who I became,” he whispered. “I hated that I made you feel that way.” He looked at you carefully. “Are you happy?” he asked.
“I’m healing,” you said. “I’m not the same girl who left Monaco, and I don’t want to be.”
He nodded slowly. “I don’t expect you to come back,” he added quickly. “I’m not asking for that. I just… I needed you to know I see it now. I see what I did.”
That was all you’d wanted months ago. Accountability. Something he now gave after he has lost you entirely.
You stepped a little closer. “I forgave you,” you said quietly. “But forgiving you doesn’t mean I can trust you the same way again.”
His eyes shimmered, but he didn’t look away. “That’s fair.”
“This was my closure,” you admitted after another moment of silence. “Hearing you say it. Seeing that you understand.”
He nodded once. “Thank you for loving me the way you did,” he said. “Even when I didn’t deserve it.”
“I hope you win today,” you told him gently. “I know how much it means to you and...” you hesitated before saying it out loud: “I’m proud of you.”
He swallowed hard, and nodded, smile tight against his lips. “I hope you keep choosing yourself,” he replied.
You gave him one last look—memorizing him not as the boy who broke your heart, but as the lesson that helped you rebuild it.
When he spots you near the exit hours later, something inside him panics at the thought of you leaving without another word. He jogs over before he can second-guess it.
“Hey.” He calls out. The word feels too small for everything sitting in his chest. He keeps his distance, hands loose at his sides, careful not to crowd you. “I just wanted to say… thank you. For what you said earlier.”
For telling him you were proud of him. Even if your voice didn’t carry the softness it once did. For not pretending he didn’t exist. For being strong enough to face him here.
When you tell him he drove well, he almost laughs at the formality of it. You used to tease him relentlessly — about braking too late, about overthinking strategy calls, about the dramatic sighs over the radio. Now it’s polite and that somehow, hurts more than anger ever would.
When you tell him he doesn’t get to ruin things for you anymore, he nods because you’re right. He spent too long letting his own fears and career pressure bleed into your relationship. Too long assuming you would just wait while he figured himself out. He thought ambition justified distance, how wrong he was back then.
“I know,” he says, and he means it in the deepest way possible.
He doesn’t ask you to try again. He doesn’t say he misses you every time he walks into an empty flat after a race. He doesn’t say he still instinctively reaches for his phone to text you after qualifying, forgetting for half a second that he lost that privilege. He doesn’t say he hasn’t let anyone else in. Because some things are selfish to say. And he promised himself that if he ever got another moment with you, he wouldn’t make it about what he wants.
So when he says goodbye, he forces himself to let it be final. He turns first because if he waits for you to, he might not be strong enough to hold his ground.
He doesn’t know what the future holds. Whether your paths will cross again in a year, five years, never. Formula 1 moves fast, life moves faster.
But as he walks back to McLaren’s hospitality, he allows himself one honest thought:
If timing hadn’t been so cruel, he would have married you. He would have built a house somewhere quiet. Maybe near family. Maybe somewhere neither of you had to perform. He would have learned how to balance love and ambition without sacrificing one for the other.
Maybe he still can, just not with you. And for the first time since everything fell apart, that realization doesn’t destroy him. It makes him determined because he can’t change the ending you had. But he can become the kind of man who wouldn’t lose someone like you again.
Somewhere out there, you’re driving away from Silverstone without looking back. He hopes you’re smiling. He hopes you’re building something beautiful.
And when the next race weekend comes and the lights go out, he’ll do what he’s always done — chase the fastest line, take the risks, fight for the win.
But he’ll carry you differently now. Not as a wound anymore or as unfinished business. Just as a chapter that taught him how to love better than he knew how to before.
Carlos asks to talk after the kids go to bed. The words don’t hit you at first — they’re ordinary, almost routine, it wouldn’t be the first time you two talk about whatever when the kids are asleep. But something in his tone is unfamiliar, it’s unsettling even.
Now you’re standing in your bedroom, the door closed but not locked, the faint glow of the hallway light sneaking through the crack beneath it. The house is quiet in that fragile way that only exists when children are sleeping.
Carlos is standing by the dresser. There’s an envelope in his hand.
Your heart starts beating faster before you even know why. “What’s that?” you ask, trying to keep your voice light.
He doesn’t respond, he just walks toward you slowly and hands the envelope over. Your name is printed on the front in clean, official lettering. You open it because you don’t know what else to do and it takes you three seconds for the words to register.
Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.
Your world falls at your feet, blood stops circulating through your veins while your eyes try to record what you are reading. You let out a nervous laugh, praying to all the gods that none of this is happening.
“This isn’t funny,” you say automatically, your voice already thinning.
“I’m not joking,” he answers.
You look up at him slowly, and something inside you fractures. “You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
The silence in the room is heartbreakingly painful, and now you understand his tone of voice when he told you before that you should talk when the children were sleeping.
“Why?” Your words come out small.
He drags a hand over his face, pacing once like he’s been practicing this. “We’ve been drifting for a while.”
“Drifting?” you repeat, your fingers tightening around the papers. “Carlos, we have two children.”
“I know.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
He exhales sharply. “We’re not the same anymore. Everything feels like… logistics, schedules, parenting shifts, conversations about school and travel and bills. When was the last time we actually talked?”
Your mouth opens, but nothing comes out, because he’s not entirely wrong. Life has been busy and demanding for the both of you. You’ve both been tired in ways that feel permanent, but you thought that was a phase, another phase that you would get over together. You never thought it was an ending.
“So this is it?” you whisper. “You just decided we’re done?”
“I didn’t just decide,” he says, frustration flickering now. “I’ve been thinking about this for months.”
Months.
“While I was planning Sofia’s recital?” your voice trembles. “While we were picking out Santi’s birthday cake? You were thinking about leaving?”
“I didn’t want to hurt you.”
You let out a hollow laugh, and the sound breaks halfway through. “That’s exactly what you’re doing.” Tears spill before you can stop them, your chest aches like something is pressing down on it. “Is there someone else?” you ask, because the question feels inevitable.
“No,” he says immediately. “There isn’t.”
“Then why isn’t this worth fixing?”
His silence is the worst answer of all. Your breathing becomes uneven, you turn away from him because you can’t stand the look on his face — that detached sadness, like he’s already halfway gone.
“I don’t want the kids growing up thinking this is what love looks like,” he says quietly behind you. “Two people just… surviving.”
You press a hand to your mouth to stifle the sob that escapes. “They won’t think that,” you choke. “They think you hang the moon.”
“And that’s exactly why I don’t want them watching us fade.”
Before you can respond, there’s a small sound behind you. The soft creak of the bedroom door. You both turn at the same time. Santi is standing there in his dinosaur pajamas, hair messy from sleep, Sofia is half-hidden behind him, clutching the edge of his sleeve.
“Mama?” Sofia’s voice is tiny. You swipe at your tears instinctively, but it’s too late, they’ve already seen them.
Santi’s eyes shift from you to Carlos, confused. “Why are you crying?”
“Hey, hey,” he says gently, walking toward them. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”
Santi doesn’t budge and insist. “Papa, did you make mama cry?”
The question lands heavy in the room. Carlos crouches down to their level, his expression crumpling for the first time tonight. “No one made anyone cry.”
“That’s not true,” Sofia whispers, her lip trembling as she looks at you. “She’s sad.”
You drop to your knees beside them before you can think, pulling them into your arms. They fit against you automatically — warm and real and everything that matters. The papers dropped on the floor.
“I’m okay,” you murmur into their hair, even though you’re not. “I promise.”
Santi looks at Carlos again. “Are you fighting?” Carlos hesitates and that hesitation says everything his little mind needed to know.
Sofia’s small hands grip your shirt tighter. “You’re not leaving, right?”
Silence reigns again in the room. You look at Carlos for a second and in his eyes you see the conflict, the guilt and the weight of what he has just done. You close your eyes briefly, gathering whatever strength you have left.
“Come here,” you whisper to them, standing slowly. “Let’s go back to bed.”
“But—” Santi starts.
“Please,” you say softly.
There’s no room for them to argue. They cling to you as you guide them down the hallway, you tuck them in again, smoothing Sofia’s hair back, kissing Santi’s forehead twice instead of once.
“We’re okay?” Santi asks sleepily.
You force a smile that feels like it’s cutting your face in half. “We love you more than anything, okay? Never forget that.”
When you return to your bedroom, Carlos is standing exactly where you left him.
“You didn’t think about that part, did you?” you ask quietly, even though you knew his answer.
“I did,” he says hoarsely. “I just… didn’t know how it would feel.”
“Well,” you whisper, your voice steady in a way that surprises even you, “now you do.”
Carlos is at the kitchen island, laptop open, fully concentrated on something mildly important—emails, contracts, something that requires his serious driver face. He’s dressed casually, just a fitted white t-shirt and grey sweatpants, but unfortunately for him, that combination should be illegal inside your own home.
You’re leaning against the doorway watching him for a solid minute before he notices.
“Why are you staring at me?”
“I’m not,” you reply immediately.
He glances up slowly, eyebrow raised. “You are. I can feel it.”
You push off the doorframe and walk toward him with exaggerated confidence, hips swaying just a little too dramatically for someone walking five steps.
“Excuse me,” you say sweetly, stopping right in front of him.
“Si?” He looks up fully now, confused but amused.
You tilt your head, pretending to inspect the area around him. “Is that seat taken?”
“What seat?” He asks, still confused. You smiled innocently just as you point very deliberately to his lap. “Are you serious right now?”
“I just saw it from across the room and thought, wow… that looks comfortable.”
He lets out a disbelieving laugh, running a hand over his face. “You are unbelievable.”
“So… is it taken?” you insist.
He leans back in the chair, pretending to consider it. “I don’t know. I think someone very exclusive has a reservation.”
“Really? Do you know her?”
“Unfortunately,” he says dryly, but the corner of his mouth betrays him. You don’t wait for further permission, you simply climb into his lap, straddling him with zero hesitation.
He instinctively grabs your hips to steady you. “Dios mio,” he mutters, but he’s smiling.
You lean closer, lowering your voice dramatically. “Do you come here often?”
“I live here.”
“Oh,” you whisper, nodding thoughtfully. “That’s hot.”
He laughed at your very much awful flirting. “Where is this coming from?”
“I have to keep the spark alive.” You simply said, eyes tracing his face.
“The spark is fine,” he says, squeezing your waist gently.
You ignore him and stay silent for a second before continuing with your little task. “Are you French?”
“No?”
“Because Eiffel for you.”
“That was terrible,” he says flatly, staring at you.
“Thank you.”
He can’t help it now but he starts laughing, the sound warm and genuine, his hands tightening on your hips as if he’s worried you might slide off from how much he’s moving.
“Oh, I’m not done,” you warn. You lean closer until your lips are just barely brushing his ear. “Do you have a map?”
“No.” He groans already knowing what’s coming.
“Because I keep getting lost in your eyes.”
He drops his head back dramatically. “Please stop.”
“You love it.”
“I absolutely do not.”
You pull back slightly to look at him. “Really? Because your hands say otherwise.” Said hands are still holding you. His fingers are still firmly spread across your hips.
“That’s just… safety. You’re sitting on me.”
“Mhm.” You shift slightly on purpose. His breath catches for a mili second and that makes you smile grow. “Oh… I think this seat definitely isn’t taken.”
He narrows his eyes at you. “You are enjoying this way too much.”
“I haven’t even used my best one yet.”
“There’s more?” he asks, half laughing, half concerned.
You nod seriously, preparing for the next one. You place your hands on his shoulders and lean in again.
“Are you a parking ticket?”
He stares at you cautiously. “Why?”
“Because you’ve got ‘fine’ written all over you.”
And that one is the one that makes your mission successful. Carlos Sainz, your husband, is blushing right here and there, in front of you.
“Did you just blush?”
“No,” he says immediately.
“You did!”
“I did not.”
“After all these years? Carlos Sainz blushing because his wife called him fine?” You gasp dramatically, pressing a hand to your chest.
“You’re being annoying.” He says, rolling his eyes.
You soften slightly then, brushing your nose against his gently. “Maybe. You knew that before marring me so.”
“That was my first mistake,” he teases.
“Oh?” You snorted. “So you regret this?” You wiggle slightly in his lap. His grip tightens instantly, stopping your moves.
“…No,” he says very calmly, even though he’s far from being calm. “I do not regret this.”
“That’s what I thought.” You grin triumphantly.
There’s a quiet second where the teasing fades just a little. He looks at you the same way he’s been looking at you all these years, as if you were hanging the moon just for him to see. His thumb traces small circles against your hip.
After a whole minute of just staring at each other, you decide it’s time to let him continue working and say: “Is this seat still available later?”
He laughs softly under his breath. “It’s permanently reserved.”
“Lifetime membership?” You pout pretending to be disappointed.
He pulls you closer, arms wrapping fully around you now. “Lifetime,” he confirms.
The baby is finally asleep in the bassinet beside your bed, tiny chest rising and falling in uneven little rhythms that still make you check every few minutes just to be sure. Your body feels unfamiliar, heavy in ways that have nothing to do with pregnancy now and everything to do with what it took to bring your child into the world.
You’re sitting on the edge of the bed when Carlos kneels in front of you.
“Okay,” he says gently, like he’s approaching something fragile. “We’re going to do this properly.”
“Do what?” You ask, exhaustion full in your voice.
“Shower. The first one that actually feels like a shower.”
He helps you stand carefully, one arm steady around your waist, the other hovering near your back as if you might break. You move slowly toward the bathroom, every step a reminder that your body did something monumental and is still trying to recover from it.
The steam builds quickly once he turns the water on, he checked the temperature with his hand three times making sure it was warm and gentle.
He helps you out of your clothes with quiet patience, and absolutely no rush. His touch is different now, like he’s aware of every bruise, every tender place. When you finally step under the water, you exhale in a way that feels like it’s been waiting days to leave your body.
Carlos steps in behind you without hesitation. “I’ve got you,” he murmurs.
The water runs down your shoulders, over your collarbones, down your stomach, emptier but no less sacred. You feel his hands at your hips, steadying you as you lean slightly into him.
His fingers reach for the shampoo, pouring a small amount into his palm before gently working it into your hair. His movements are slow, careful, massaging your scalp like he’s afraid to press too hard.
“Too much?” he asks.
“No,” you whisper. “It feels nice.”
The word nice feels inadequate, but you’re too tired to find a better one. The warm water, his hands, the quiet — it feels like being taken care of in a way you didn’t realize you needed.
He rinses your hair patiently, shielding your face from the spray with his hand. Then comes the conditioner, his fingers combing through tangles gently, starting at the ends the way you once taught him.
“I remember,” he says when he catches you watching him.
He reaches for the body wash next, lathering it between his hands before sliding them slowly over your shoulders, your arms. There’s no tension in his touch, no urgency, just love and care. When he moves lower, he hesitates briefly, eyes flicking to yours for permission and you nod. His hands are even gentler there, respectful of soreness, of stitches, of the invisible trauma your body is still processing.
You lean back against him slightly, letting the water rinse everything away — the hospital smell, the dried sweat, the exhaustion clinging to your skin. He stays close the entire time, one hand always anchored somewhere on you.
When he turns the water off, the bathroom feels cooler instantly. He wraps a large towel around you before you even step out, patting your skin dry instead of rubbing.
“Sit,” he says gently, guiding you to the closed toilet lid while he grabs another towel for your hair.
You watch him move around the bathroom, comfortable and focused, and something in your chest swells. This man who stands in front of cameras and race cars and flashing lights is now carefully applying lotion to your arms like it’s the most important job he’s ever had.
“Cold?” he asks when he notices you shiver slightly.
“A little.”
He kneels again, rubbing warmth back into your legs with slow, firm strokes. “Better?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you want the loose pajamas or the button-down?” he asks.
“Button-down. It’s easier.”
He nods, helping you into them carefully, buttoning each one with patient fingers. When he’s done, he presses a soft kiss to your forehead.
“Okay,” he says quietly. “Mama’s first everything shower complete.”
You look up at him, eyes glassy with exhaustion and something deeper.
“Thank you,” you whisper.
He brushes his thumb gently under your eye where a tear has escaped. “You don’t thank me for this.”
He turned, dark eyes tired, apologetic before you’d even accused him of anything. “Es solo por unos días,” he said, automatically. The same phrase he’d been using for months.
A silence settled between you, heavy and full of uncertainty. You leaned against the counter, arms crossed more for balance than defense. Your body felt hollow lately, like you were always bracing for impact.
“Williams called,” he added, unnecessary explanation trailing behind the fact.
You let out a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Williams always calls.”
“I’m trying,” he said, stepping closer. “De verdad que sí. I’m doing everything I can.”
“I know you are,” you replied, voice steady despite the ache building behind your ribs. “But trying isn’t the same as being here.”
He rubbed a hand over his face, frustration mixing with exhaustion. “¿Y qué quieres que haga? This is my job. You knew what out life would be like.”
You looked at him then. The man you loved. The man you were engaged to. The man who felt further away than ever, even standing three feet from you.
“I didn’t know it would feel like this,” you admitted. “I didn’t know I’d be eating dinner alone five nights a week, falling asleep to voice notes instead of you, planning a life around a schedule that keeps changing.”
“Esto es temporal,” he insisted. “It won’t always be like this. Once I’m settled with—”
“But it is now,” you said quietly, interrupting his overused speech. “And now is what I’m living in.”
Carlos reached for you, fingers brushing your wrist, you didn’t pull away, but you didn’t lean in either.
“Mi amor,” he murmured, softer now. “I’m doing this for us. For our future.”
“I know. But I feel like I’m the only one actually living in the present.”
He dropped his hand, taking a step back like you’d physically pushed him. “So what are you saying?”
You closed your eyes for half a second, gathering courage you didn’t feel. When you opened them, your voice didn’t shake — and that scared you more than if it had.
“I’m tired, Carlos.”
“¿Cansada de mí?”
“No,” you said immediately. You pressed a hand to your chest, as if it physically hurt. “I’m tired of missing you while still being yours.”
The ring on your finger suddenly felt heavy. Like a question you didn’t yet have the answers to. Is this the life you want? Is this the life you deserved?
Carlos noticed your gaze drop.
“No,” he said quickly. “No hagas eso.”
You slid the ring off slowly, as if sudden movements might shatter something fragile. You placed it on the counter between you, the soft clink louder than it should’ve been.
“I love you,” you said, tears threatening to spill out. “That’s why I can’t keep pretending this isn’t breaking me.”
“This isn’t what I want,” he whispered. “No es así como debía ser.”
“I know,” you replied. “But wanting isn’t enough anymore.”
Hello! Just updated my intro post with the From The Vault masterlist, and also updated masterlist #2 that had a couple of missing fics. Everything is all in one post now✨
Requests are open for Carlitos and Lando’s are kind of on pause because I’m not getting any requests and it’s probably gonna be a while before I write one of my own (probs will stop writing about him as well for the same reason).
In regards to From The Vault updates; I’ll try to schedule the posts daily, since they’re already written and saved in my notes, I just need to choose which part to post, and paste them here so yeah, you’ll probably have another one coming out tomorrow.
Thank you for the support, as always🤍 Welcome to the new chillies; hope you stick around 🫶🏽
You’ve been staring at the ceiling for so long the white tiles blur together, your hand resting protectively over your stomach as if you can physically keep everything in place just by pressing hard enough. The word “complications” keeps echoing in your head, sterile and terrifying, even though the doctor told you they’re “just being cautious.”
You didn’t call Carlos. He had meetings all day, you told yourself there was no point in panicking him over something that might be nothing. You told yourself you could handle a few tests, a few hours of monitoring, alone.
Your phone buzzes violently against the bedside table. But before you can answer, the door to your room swings open hard enough to hit the stopper behind it. And there he is, your husband.
His hair slightly disheveled like he’s been running his hands through it, face pale in a way you’ve never seen before. His phone is clutched tightly in his hand.
“Why,” he starts, voice shaking in a way that makes your chest tighten, “did I find out from a video on the internet?”
“What video?” you whisper.
“A fan posted it,” he says, anger barely contained under the surface. “You walking into the maternity wing, crying. Do you have any idea what that does to me? To see that before hearing it from you?”
“I didn’t want to worry you,” you say quickly, sitting up despite the nurse telling you to rest earlier. “They said it might be nothing. I thought I’d wait until I knew more—”
“Wait?” he cuts in, stepping closer to the bed. “You thought you’d wait to tell me we might be losing our baby?” His voice cracks at the thought.
“Carlos—”
“No,” he says, running a hand over his face before looking at you again, eyes red-rimmed and furious and terrified all at once. “You don’t get to decide that alone. You don’t get to protect me from this.”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“You were,” he insists, softer now but no less intense. “You were trying to carry it by yourself.” He reaches for you then, hands shaking as they cup your face. “If something like this ever happens again, you call me. I don’t care where I am. I don’t care who I’m with.”
“I didn’t want you to panic,” you whisper.
“I’m allowed to panic,” he says fiercely. His forehead then drops gently against yours, his breath uneven. “Don’t shut me out when it gets hard,” he murmurs. “I need to be here. Even if it’s bad news, especially if it’s bad news.”
You nod against him, finally letting yourself lean into his chest, into the safety of him being here. “I’m sorry,” you breathe.
He wraps his arms around you carefully, one hand instinctively moving to your stomach, protective and desperate all at once. “Don’t ever do that again,” he whispers, pressing a shaky kiss into your hair.
INTRO || Masterlist 1 || Masterlist 2 || Prompts list
🌶️ chilli note: welcome to From The Vault. Pieces taken from deleted stories that once existed as full fics. Some will come with context, others won’t. Some are longer, some are shorter but all of them are little gems I chose not to fully post for one reason or another, and will remain here as they are 🫶🏽
This post will be a little long, thank you in advance for reading it to the end.
I want to start by saying that I never imagined reaching this point of a thousand followers on my account. From the beginning I always did it without expecting anything in return, more than a few likes or comments, because that’s the only way to know if you like what I’m writing. I started years ago on Wattpad, when it was in its prime, then the years passed and I stopped doing it. I created an account here for another fandom, it lasted a few years and then I stopped because the fandom was practically dead. In parallel to all this, I became a fan of F1, and I spent my free time here reading fanfics, always Carlos or Lando. After a while, I kept seeing the same stories over and over again and there was nothing new to read, and that’s how this account was born. In just a few days, it will be two years since my first post (my intro post) and it is a total coincidence that I have now reached a thousand followers.
I guess what I mean is: thank you very much to all those people who have been here since the beginning, if they are still here. Thanks to those who came later and decided to stay. Thanks to the most recent ones who also decided to stay. And thanks to those who left too.
It’s no secret that this is just a hobby for me. Something I enjoy doing, that I do in my free time, or during my busiest days even if I only manage to write ten words. I recognize that I’m not the best, I’m not a professional nor do I try to be either, but I do it with all the love in the world and that says a lot. As for my writing style, I feel that I can improve a lot more, I do it every day, sometimes it works for me and I feel good about what I did, sometimes it doesn’t work for me (we already know how that particular style ended and I won’t mention it again), but anyway, leaving the past behind, we are here to improve, so thanks anyway for those not so good reviews lol.
Once again, thank you for everything, I hope there is Chilli Pepper Sainz for a while longer, who knows how much. Thank you all for everything. I carry you all in my little chicken heart (sounds better in Spanish).
I’m two followers away from 1k!!! Oh my, I can’t believe this!! 🥹 2024 chilli wouldn’t believe this was gonna happen in 2026😩
Should we do something about it to celebrate when we hit 1K? I could do a fake character Q&A, even if I have no idea what to do there. OR I could do a deleted scenes/stories snippets? Like Taylor’s From The Vault but Chilli’s Version 👀 What do you guys want me to do? We deserve some celebration after these past few weeks in this blog🙂↔️🙂↔️
Ps. Only for Carlos chillis (that’s gonna be your nickname now). My writing for Lando is officially on hiatus from today onwards, until further notice 🧡
I’m two followers away from 1k!!! Oh my, I can’t believe this!! 🥹 2024 chilli wouldn’t believe this was gonna happen in 2026😩
Should we do something about it to celebrate when we hit 1K? I could do a fake character Q&A, even if I have no idea what to do there. OR I could do a deleted scenes/stories snippets? Like Taylor’s From The Vault but Chilli’s Version 👀 What do you guys want me to do? We deserve some celebration after these past few weeks in this blog🙂↔️🙂↔️
Ps. Only for Carlos chillis (that’s gonna be your nickname now). My writing for Lando is officially on hiatus from today onwards, until further notice 🧡
