A/N: I'm sorry for the terrible updating schedule. Life's been too crazy recently, which made me contract a severe case of writer's block and I'm trying to break it by writing stuff. So my deepest apologies to all of you if my writing isn't like usual, but I hope you guys enjoy!
Word Count: 1.8k
The physio's name is Markus, and he doesn't mean to say it.
Lewis is passing the medical bay after a debrief that ran long, already half-distracted, when he catches the tail end of a conversation through the half-open door… something about hydration levels, about not being able to keep up with the deficit, about how the numbers haven't looked right since Barcelona. He wouldn't have stopped except he hears Nico's name, and something cold moves through him.
Markus sees him in the doorway and goes quiet. The silence is its own answer.
"How long," Lewis says. Not a question, really.
Markus looks at his clipboard. "I shouldn't—"
"How long."
A pause. "Since pre-season, we think. Maybe before."
Lewis walks to Nico's motorhome and doesn't let himself think about what he's going to say.
Nico opens the door already annoyed, still in his race suit half-unzipped, and when he sees Lewis the annoyance sharpens into something more guarded.
"I'm busy."
"I know." Lewis doesn't move from the step. "Can I come in?"
A beat. Nico steps back, which isn't the same as an invitation but Lewis takes it anyway.
The motorhome is neat in that precise, controlled way Nico has always had. With everything in its place and nothing wasted. Lewis notices the kitchen counter. A bottle of water. Nothing else.
He doesn't say anything about it yet. He sits. Nico stays standing.
"Listen, Markus already called me… whatever he told you—"
"He didn't tell me much." Lewis keeps his voice level. "He didn't have to."
Nico's jaw tightens. He crosses his arms and looks out the window, at the paddock moving past in the late afternoon light. "Then what do you want, Lewis."
"I want to know you're okay."
The laugh Nico gives is short and hard and doesn't reach his eyes. "I'm fine."
"Nico."
"I said I'm fine." He turns then, and Lewis sees the angles of his face more clearly in the direct light that weren't there in winter, the way his collar sits differently, the hands that are too prominent at the ends of his arms. Lewis has known this face for twenty years and he knows what it looked like before. The difference sits in his chest like a millstone.
"You need to take care of yourself," Lewis says, very softly.
"I'm taking care of myself."
"Nico—"
"I will do whatever it takes." Nico says it quietly, which is almost worse than shouting. "Whatever it takes to win this championship. You don't get to come in here and tell me how to do that."
"I'm not talking about the championship." Lewis stands. He crosses the small space between them slowly, carefully, the way you'd approach something breakable. He reaches a hand out toward Nico's arm, and Nico steps back like he's burned.
The space between them holds.
Lewis lets his hand fall, his heart breaking in his chest.
"Is a championship worth your health," he says, barely above a whisper, eyes filled with memories that took the form of tears. "That's all I'm asking you. Is it worth this."
Nico looks at him for a long moment. Something moves across his face that Lewis can't name.Grief, maybe, or anger that hasn't finished deciding what shape to take.
"Why would you even care." His voice has gone flat. "It's not like we're friends or anything."
Lewis opens his mouth.
"You lost the right to tell me to take care of myself," Nico says, and now the venom is there, bright and hot, "when you started hating me."
"I never—" Lewis stops. Breathes. "I never hated you."
"Don't."
"Nico, I never hated you, what I felt was—" He breaks off, and something cracks loose in him, something he's been holding down under layers of competition and pride and two years of carefully managed distance. "This is dangerous. What you're doing is dangerous, do you understand that, not just for the season, not just for your performance, for you, for your body, for—"
"That's easy for you to say." Nico's voice rises to meet him, two decades of something finally splitting open. "Mr. Three Time World Champion. You already have everything, you've already won, you just want to see me fail like you've always wanted to see me fail—"
"That is not true—"
"I am fighting for this," Nico says, and his voice breaks on it, just slightly, just enough that Lewis hears it. "I am going to earn this, Lewis Hamilton, and you don't get to stand in my motorhome and tell me I'm doing it wrong."
Lewis stands there with his mouth open and nothing left to say.
Nico grabs his keycard from the counter. He doesn't look back.
The door closes, and Lewis is left in the neat, empty space with the single bottle of water on the counter. He thinks about a word he read once, in some magazine Nico's mother had left lying around the house in Hamburg, twenty-something years ago. Anagapesis. The falling out of love. He'd thought it was the saddest word he'd ever seen, had said so, and Nico had laughed and said that was very dramatic of him.
He looks at the water on the counter. The absence of anything else.
He doesn't feel like he's fallen out of love with Nico. He feels like he's been loving him into a wall for two years, and he doesn't know what you call that. the love that has nowhere to go, that turns up anyway, that stands in a motorhome and reaches out a hand and gets nothing back. Maybe that's worse than anagapesis. Maybe that's what anagapesis actually feels like from the inside, and the falling-out is just the story you tell yourself so the love has somewhere to go when it can't go to the person anymore.
The millstone in his chest doesn't have a name. He leaves it there and as he slowly exited the motorhome.
The heat in Bahrain was a living breathing thing, straight out of the furnace of hell.
It presses down from a sky that has gone white with it, and by the time the podium ceremony is finished the paddock is shimmering at the edges ofNico’s vision.
He knows he should go inside. He knows this the same way he knows a lot of things lately distantly, academically, the knowledge arriving several seconds after it should. His body feels translated. Like something is running a version of him and the signal keeps dropping.
He'd qualified third. Finished fourth. Toto had been careful with his words in the debrief, which meant the words underneath the words were less careful, and Nico had sat in the seat and felt the room tipping very slightly to the left and told himself it was the adrenaline coming down.
He's told himself a lot of things, lately.
Outside, the sun takes him apart. He's walking toward the hospitality building… he tells himself that he can make it. It’s just twenty meters, thirty meters away, the door is there, the shade is there.
But somewhere around the halfway point something happens to his legs. They continue moving but the information stops arriving correctly. He's walking and then he's listing and then—
Lewis is just there. Lewis is simply present, the way he sometimes is when Nico hasn't been paying attention, appearing in the periphery of things. He's been talking to someone from the press, maybe, and then he isn't, because Nico's legs have finished their consultation and reached a conclusion.
Lewis catches him.
It isn't graceful. Nico's full weight goes sideways and Lewis takes it without hesitating, both arms, and they end up half-crouched on the hot tarmac with Nico's back against Lewis's chest and Lewis saying something. His name, maybe, or something else, it's hard to tell through the buzzing in his ear and the sky above them is still very white and very hot.
Nico tries to tell himself that he is perfectly alright. He just needed a minute and he would be back up.
His body disagrees. His body has been disagreeing for months, quietly at first and now loudly, now undeniably, and somewhere in the narrowing white of his vision he understands that this is what it looks like when the story you've been telling yourself runs out of road.
The story was that he didn't need Lewis Hamilton anymore. He had moved cleanly into the future without the complicated grief of what they used to be, had shed the whole history of them like something he'd outgrown. He'd told himself that so many times it had started to feel true. He'd built his whole 2016 on top of it. The discipline, the focus, the stripping away of everything soft and extraneous. He didn't need Lewis. Not the way he used to. Not anymore.
Lewis's arms are still there.
They're holding on, and Lewis is calling for the medics with a voice that sounds like someone who is genuinely frightened, and Nico thinks about the story he told himself. The one about how he didn't need Lewis anymore.
That he'd put the feeling down somewhere and walked away from it clean. He hadn't. He'd just renamed it rivalry, called it resentment, called it the cold clean freedom of not needing anyone. He built a whole identity out of the absence of Lewis Hamilton and here is Lewis Hamilton, arms around him on hot tarmac, heartbeat fast and unsteady against his back.
You can't fall out of love with something you never stopped loving.
The medics arrive in a rush of voices and Lewis's arms loosen, slowly, the way you put something down that you're not sure you should, and the sky is very white, and Nico is aware of efficient hands on him, not Lewis's. Somewhere at the edge of things Lewis is still there. Nico can feel it without looking, the same way he can feel the heat of the tarmac, the way certain things just register.
Anagapesis. The word drifts in from somewhere deep, from a house in Hamburg with the windows open and someone's mother's magazine on the floor. The falling out of love. He'd thought that was what happened to them. He'd been so sure he'd worn it like an answer, and he'd waited for the relief that answers are supposed to bring. It never came.
He understands now why it never came.
He's very tired. The kind of tired that has settled into the bone, that makes him feel ancient, that has nothing to do with the race or the heat.
Lewis was scared. The heartbeat said so. And Nico's body has finally stopped lying, even if his head is still trying, still reaching for the shape of the old story. It keeps going sideways. It won't hold together anymore.
Anagapesis never happened. That's the thing. He'd named what was between them and called it that and built a whole year on top of the word, but the word was wrong. You can diagnose the wrong illness and still take the medicine. He took it for twelve months and it nearly killed him.
The word that fits this moment is not anagapesis. He doesn't know yet what word does. But Lewis hasn't let go, not all the way, and the tarmac is warm, and that's somewhere. That's somewhere to start, Nico thinks to himself as the darkness claimed him completely.
The concept of Oscar being so focused on yapping into Lando's ear that he not only ignores Brad Pitt but also completely FORGETS that he even MET Brad Pitt when his mom asks him later, meanwhile Mr Brad Pitt looming right over Oscar's shoulder
Incredible levels of whipped they are so insane to me
He's just a smitten kitten
no fr i cackled because how does that even happen 💀 so he met brad pitt but didn’t talk to him because “what are you going to say to that old guy” but then there’s video evidence that oscar was fully turned away from him because lando was there pleaseeeeee that’s so funny
oscar said “sir i only have one old guy on my mind and it’s not you” lol it’s landoscar and their age gap relationship until the end of time
You were trying to locate the Racing Bulls hospitality unit from the map Arvid had screenshotted and sent you at 6am with a text that read follow the red and blue, you can't miss it, text me when you're close. Thats when you felt a small brush on your elbow. Someone had gently grazed your arm.
You turned.
He was already in his race suit, the red and blue of it vivid in tthe morning sun, his hair still ungelled and going slightly in all directions. He looked exactly like he always did, which was to say he looked like Arvid, the same boy who used to race you to the corner shop on your bikes and always, always let you win on the last stretch even though he was faster. except he was also somehow completely different taller in the suit, more serious around the jaw, with a radio clipped to his chest and grease at the edge of his left wrist.
"You went past it," he said, by way of greeting. A teasing grin on his face
"I did not."
"You did. I watched you walk past it from the garage."
You looked back down the paddock. The Racing Bulls banner was, in fact, clearly visible approximately thirty metres behind you.
"I was planned on betraying you for Ferrari," you said, with dignity, a small smile pulling your lips upwar.
He laughed that soft, quiet one he reserved for you, different from his camera laugh. Then he pulled you in before you could say anything else, his arms wrapped around your shoulders and you went easily, pressing your face against the side of his neck, and for a moment the noise of Albert Park fell back. Everything did. It was just him, smelling of that specific mix of sunscreen and the inside of a race suit, his chin resting on the top of your head the way it always had since he got tall enough to do it.
Lando: Andrea and Zak don't trust me.
Lando: They're mean to me, and they say I'm "arrogant" and "reckless" a-and "whiny" and "Lando"
Oscar(confused): But the last one is your name...?
Lando(pouting): Yeah but you should hear them say it.
Charles going feral about the grey hairs in Max's beard, that's it
Pairing: Charles Leclerc x Max Verstappen
Warnings: Heavy makeout; Implied smut
A/N: Lestappen fans are in for a treat with this oneee. Cuz my exams are over I'm updating fics faster than before. Anyways I hope you guys like this!
Word Count: 2k
It starts, or rather, Charles finally admits to himself that it has been going on for some time, on a Thursday morning in the motorhome, bad coffee going cold at his elbow, Max across the table reading something on his phone.
The light comes in sideways. That's the thing. The particular quality of early morning through tinted glass, hitting the line of Max's jaw just so, and Charles looks up from his own phone at exactly the wrong moment and sees it: the grey threading through the dark of Max's beard, more than there used to be, unmistakable in this light, silver-bright against the rest.
He looks back at his phone.
He looks back at Max.
It's fine, he thinks, with the energy of a man who is very much not fine. It's nothing. He's just sitting there.
Max scrolls something, unbothered, and Charles watches the corner of his mouth do that thing where it almost becomes a smile, and the grey catches the light again, and Charles's coffee goes completely forgotten.
He is, he understands with sudden horrible clarity, absolutely feral about this. Has been, probably, for weeks. He simply hadn't looked at it directly before.
He looks at it directly now. This is a mistake.
Max glances up, catches him staring. "What."
"Nothing," Charles says. "I was thinking."
Max holds his gaze for a second, then looks back at his phone. Charles does the same. His face is warm.
By race morning Charles has catalogued it with the obsessive precision of a man who has nothing better to do with his mental energy, which is embarrassing, because Charles has a great deal of things better to do with his mental energy. He is a Formula 1 driver. There is a race today. He has had exactly two conversations with his race engineer this morning that he could not fully account for afterward.
The grey is mostly in the beard, concentrated along the jaw. A little at the temples too, but it's the jaw that gets him. Something about the way it's distributed, not uniform, not a deliberate thing, just Max's face quietly doing what faces do with time, becoming more itself. More… his.
That's the part Charles can't explain, even to himself. It's not just that it looks good, though it does, objectively, look devastatingly good. It's the possession of it. Something has changed in Max's face that Charles has been there to see happen, that only Charles notices in quite this way, that belongs, irrationally, privately, to the two of them.
Charles is aware this makes no sense. He is choosing not to examine it further.
The pre-race press conference is busy and loud and Charles is in the middle of answering something about his qualifying lap, something about the final sector, when he feels Max look at him.
He doesn't turn his head. He keeps his eyes on the journalist, keeps his mouth moving around words about commitment through the last complex, but he feels it, the specific quality of Max's attention, patient and level, and then in his peripheral vision Max raises one hand and scratches slowly along his jaw. Unhurried. Like a man privately considering something unrelated to everything happening in this room.
But he had looked at Charles first. Just for a second, before he did it. Charles had caught it.
Charles's sentence stops.
The journalist waits.
The room waits.
"Sorry," Charles says, smooth, almost convincing. "The final sector. Yes. It was about commitment through the last complex."
He does not look at Max for the rest of the press conference. He is extremely deliberate about this. He answers every question cleanly, smiles at the right moments, thanks the right people. He is perfectly composed and it costs him more than anything he will do in the car this afternoon.
In the corridor outside Max is suddenly beside him, and then Max stops walking, and Charles stops too because Max has stopped, and that's all it takes, apparently, that's the whole of it.
Max looks at him. Unhurried. Like he has assessed the situation and found it exactly as expected.
"Don't," Charles says quietly.
Max considers this. Then continues with a small smirk, "I didn't do anything," he says, and turns and walks back toward his garage, and Charles stands in the corridor and watches him go and does not move until he's out of sight.
He has a race to drive.
He turns in the opposite direction. His hands are perfectly steady and his chest feels like something has been wound very tight inside it and left there, no release, no resolution, hours ahead of him with absolutely nowhere to put any of it.
He walks back to his garage. He does not think about it.
He thinks about nothing else.
The race is fine. Charles is excellent, actually, because he is always excellent when he has something to be furious about, and whatever Max has been doing all weekend, with full knowledge and zero mercy, makes Charles want to drive like he's trying to leave his own body behind.
He finishes third. Max finishes sixth.
Charles stands on the podium with champagne in his hair and Russell's elbow in his peripheral vision and thinks, with some bitterness, that he has won absolutely nothing this weekend. The trophy is real and cold and heavy in his hands and somewhere in the paddock below Max is doing his post-race obligations and Charles cannot stop thinking about a press conference that happened this morning, a single glance across two seats, a hand raised to a jaw.
Third place. And still somehow the one who lost.
The debrief, the interviews, the team dinner they excuse themselves from early. By the time the hotel room door closes behind them Charles has been carrying it for so many hours that the silence feels almost loud.
He sits on the edge of the bed and unlaces his shoes and does not look at Max.
Max doesn't say anything either. Charles can hear him moving around the room, unhurried as always, and then the movement stops and Charles can feel him standing there in that specific way, the way that means he is looking at Charles and has decided to wait.
Charles unlaces the other shoe.
"You did that on purpose," he says, to the floor.
"Did what on purpose."
Charles looks up.
Max is leaning against the wall with his arms loosely crossed, still in his team gear, watching Charles with an expression that is patient and warm and completely immovable. Like he has been here the whole time. Like he knew this was where they would end up and simply waited for Charles to arrive.
"The press conference," Charles says. "This morning. The whole- " he gestures vaguely at his own jaw. "You looked at me first. Before you did it."
"Did I," Max says.
Not a question.
Charles holds his gaze. His mouth is dry. "You've known. For how long."
Max tilts his head slightly. The lamp on the nightstand is casting everything in warm low light and the grey along his jaw is catching it and Charles is so tired of fighting this particular battle with himself, so tired of carrying it around like something shameful when it isn't, when it's just Max, just his face, just the unbearable private fact of him.
"Tell me," Max says, quietly. The same words from the corridor but different now, stripped of the corridor's noise and distance, just the two of them and the warm room and nowhere left to go. "What is it."
Charles opens his mouth. Closes it.
He tries again. "It's the.., when the light... " He stops. Looks at Max's jaw, the grey, the particular way it sits there being completely devastating without any effort at all. "I don't know how to..."
"Okay," Max says, and pushes off the wall and crosses the room, and Charles tips his head back to look up at him and Max is just standing there, close, waiting, and something in Charles quietly gives up on words entirely.
He reaches up. Both hands. Cups Max's face in his palms with his thumbs along the jaw, right where the grey is, and holds it there. Feels the texture of it under his fingers. The realness of it.
Max goes very still.
Then something in his expression shifts, the patience softening into something warmer underneath, and he reaches up and puts one hand over Charles's, not moving it, just covering it, keeping it there.
"Okay," Max says again, differently. Low and certain. "I've got you."
Charles exhales.
Max tilts his face into Charles's hands for just a moment, lets him have it, and then his grip on Charles's wrist tightens gently and he draws it down and pulls him up off the bed in the same motion and kisses him like the whole weekend has been leading here, because it has, because Max made sure of it.
Charles makes a sound against his mouth that he would deny later and grabs at Max's collar and kisses him back just as hard, weeks of cataloguing and carrying and pretending dissolving into this, finally this, Max solid and certain under his hands and the beard against his skin.
Max walks him backward until the backs of his knees hit the mattress and Charles goes down and Max follows and it's a lot, suddenly, warm and close and everywhere, and Charles tips his head back and gets his breath and Max's mouth moves to his jaw, his throat, and Charles has his hands in Max's hair and everything is fine, everything is exactly fine, and then he turns his head and the lamplight catches it again, the grey, right there, and something in his chest does that thing it's been doing all week.
"Wait," Charles murmurs.
Max stills immediately. Lifts his head. Looks at him.
"Tonight," Charles says, and his voice comes out lower than he intends. "I want to... " he swallows. Reaches up and touches Max's jaw, deliberate, fingers tracing where the grey is thickest. "I want to watch you."
The room is very quiet.
Max looks at him for a long moment. Reading him, the way he always does, unhurried, taking Charles apart with nothing but attention. Then something shifts in his expression, the certainty still there but warmer now, softer at the edges, and he turns his face into Charles's hand for just a second.
"Yeah," Max says quietly. "Okay."
He pulls back. Gives Charles exactly what he asked for. Lets himself be watched.
Charles keeps his eyes open the whole time.
The bathroom is bright after the dark of the bedroom. Max is at the mirror, jaw tilted up, turning his face side to side with the particular thoughtful expression he reserves for decisions that aren't really decisions.
Charles leans in the doorway. He has not been offered coffee yet. He is not sure he needs it.
"Maybe I should shave," Max says, to his own reflection. Considering. "Properly. All of it. Start clean."
He picks up the razor. Weighs it in his hand.
Charles says nothing.
He says nothing with his shoulder against the doorframe and his arms crossed and his eyes tracking exactly where the light is hitting Max's jaw, the grey catching it the way it always does in the morning, the way it has been catching it for weeks now, the way Charles has completely failed to become immune to no matter how many mornings he has tried.
Max sets the razor down.
Picks it up again.
Charles's expression does not change. He is a Formula 1 driver. He is a professional. He has in the past kept his composure under conditions that would break lesser men, and he is doing that now, and he is doing it extremely well, and if his jaw is slightly tight that is nobody's business.
Max looks up and meets his eyes in the mirror.
The smile comes slow. Knowing. Curling at the corners like he has just confirmed something he already knew, like he has been conducting an experiment and the results are exactly as predicted, like he intends to keep conducting this particular experiment for a very long time.
The bathroom is bright after the dark of the bedroom. Max is at the mirror, jaw tilted up, turning his face side to side with the particular thoughtful expression he reserves for decisions that aren't really decisions.
Charles leans in the doorway. He has not been offered coffee yet. He is not sure he needs it.
"Maybe I should shave," Max says, to his own reflection. Considering. "Properly. All of it. Start clean."
He picks up the razor. Weighs it in his hand.
Charles says nothing.
He says nothing with his shoulder against the doorframe and his arms crossed and his eyes tracking exactly where the light is hitting Max's jaw, the grey catching it the way it always does in the morning, the way it has been catching it for weeks now, the way Charles has completely failed to become immune to no matter how many mornings he has tried.
Max sets the razor down.
Picks it up again.
Charles's expression does not change. He is a Formula 1 driver. He is a professional. He has in the past kept his composure under conditions that would break lesser men, and he is doing that now, and he is doing it extremely well, and if his jaw is slightly tight that is nobody's business.
Max looks up and meets his eyes in the mirror.
The smile comes slow. Knowing. Curling at the corners like he has just confirmed something he already knew, like he has been conducting an experiment and the results are exactly as predicted, like he intends to keep conducting this particular experiment for a very long time.
I would love a brothers best friend, in college, protective maybe jealous fic for Oscar or Carlos
Pairing: Carlos Sainz x Norris!Reader
Warnings: Google Translate Spanish
A/N: This was such a cute req, but ngl I couldn't have finished this without all the help from @sarcastic-nerd tysm for being my biggest fan and helping this indecisive writer with this piece. Love you girlll
Word Count: 3.2k
You'd gotten very good at being overlooked growing up with Lando.
Not in a tragic way. More in a he's so loud that everyone forgets to check if you're in the room kind of way. You didn't mind. You'd learned early how to exist quietly in spaces that weren't quite yours. race weekends, car parks that smelled like petrol and ambition, house parties where you only knew three people. You learned how to hold a drink, smile like you belonged, and leave before anyone noticed you'd arrived.
College was supposed to be different. Your space, finally. And mostly it was.
Mostly.
"He kept you back again?" Lando didn't look up from his phone, legs thrown over the arm of the sofa like he'd been poured into it.
"For like ten minutes." You dropped your bag by the door. "He just had notes on my draft."
"Right."
"Lando."
"I didn't say anything."
You looked at Carlos, who was sitting at the kitchen counter with a coffee he hadn't touched, watching you in that particular way he had — quiet, assessing, like he was doing maths you hadn't asked him to do. He'd been doing it a lot lately. You weren't sure what to do with it so you'd been filing it under things to examine never and moving on.
"He's a TA," you said, to both of them or neither of them. "It's literally his job."
"His job is to grade papers," Carlos said. It was the first thing he'd said since you walked in and it came out a little too even. "Not to keep you behind after everyone's left."
You blinked. "It was a seminar room. It's not like—"
"Lando." You turned. "Tell him he's being weird."
Lando looked up. Made the fatal mistake of hesitating. "I mean. He's not wrong exactly—"
You grabbed the closest thing. A butter knife from the counter.
"OKAY OKAY SHIT—" Lando was off the sofa before you'd even moved, nearly eating the coffee table on the way up. "PUT THAT DOWN PUT IT DOWN—"
"Say it again!"
"I'M JUST SAYING THE MAN HAS A FUCKING POINT—" he bolted around the kitchen island, socks sliding, nearly taking out a chair. "CARLOS HELP ME RIGHT NOW I AM BEGGING YOU—"
Carlos did not help.
"You absolute fucking snake—" you cut around the other side and Lando shrieked, genuinely shrieked, voice cracking on it. "—I will actually gut you like the slimey worthless FISH you are, I swear on my life —"
"SHE'S GOING TO KILL ME," Lando screamed at Carlos. "SHE HAS A KNIFE AND SHE'S GOING TO KILL ME—"
"It's a butter knife," Carlos said, slowly sipping his coffee. Unbothered.
"I DON'T GIVE A SHIT CARLOS IT'S STILL A KNIFE—"
You cornered him against the fridge. Lando flattened himself against it, both hands up, chest heaving, one sock half off his foot.
"You're so tiny," he wheezed. "That's the maddest part. You're so fucking tiny and you're an actual feral little—"
"FINISH THAT SENTENCE AND I WILL END YOU—"
"—ANGEL," Lando said immediately, voice going up an octave. "Feral little angel. That's what I said. That's all I ever said."
You stared at him. He stared back, not breathing.
"You're such a little shit," you said.
"You have a KNIFE—"
"IT'S A BUTTER KNIFE LANDO—"
"THEN WHY DOES IT FEEL LIKE I'M GOING TO DIE—"
Carlos set his coffee down. Finally looking at them, "Are you two done."
You both looked at him. A beat.
"No," you said at the same time.
You put the knife down eventually. Pulled open the fridge mostly to have somewhere to look. The TA's name was Marcus and he was twenty-six and he had a very practiced way of leaning against the desk when he talked to you, close enough to be attentive, far enough to be deniable. You'd noticed it the third week of term. You'd told yourself you were overthinking it. You'd mostly believed yourself.
"He's fine," you said. "I can handle it."
"I know you can," Lando said, finally peeling himself off the fridge, one sock still half hanging off. "You know where we are if you need us."
You nodded. That was that.
Except Carlos still hadn't touched his coffee, and when you glanced over he looked away just a half second too late, jaw tight, something sitting behind his eyes that he wasn't putting words to.
Two years between you. Not much, in the grand scheme. Enough that he'd always been Lando's friend, categorically, filed neatly away in a box with a label you'd written yourself sometime around fifteen and reinforced every year since. He was easy to be around. Warm in that unhurried way that Lando never quite managed. Lando loved loudly and then forgot to call, Carlos remembered the small things. What you'd ordered last time. That you didn't like lifts. That you preferred the window seat.
You were very good at not thinking about that too hard.
"I'm going to shower," you said.
"There's food in an hour," Carlos said.
"Okay." You picked up your bag. Paused. "You can relax, you know. I'm fine."
He looked at you for a moment. Something shifted in his expression too quick to catch, gone before you could name it.
"I know," he said.
He didn't look like he believed it.
It wasn't one moment. It was the third time in ten days that she'd come home a little later than expected, bag hiked up on one shoulder, something careful sitting in her expression that disappeared the second she saw them. It was the way she'd said he just had notes like she'd already rehearsed it. It was the way Lando had accepted that without blinking and Carlos had sat there turning it over in his hands like a problem he hadn't been asked to solve.
Lando wasn't worried. Carlos knew that. Lando trusted her completely, which was the right instinct — she was more than capable — but trusting her and paying attention to the person circling her were two different things. Somehow that distinction had landed entirely on Carlos.
He didn't examine why.
What he did instead was show up. More than usual, which was already a lot. He started walking with her between buildings when their schedules aligned, falling into step without announcing it, one hand finding the small of her back through crowds like it was nothing, like he'd always done it. She'd looked up at him the first time with something flickering in her expression.. surprise, or something softer that she'd tucked away before he could read it properly.
He told himself it was just looking out for her.
The nicknames started by accident. She'd been arguing with him about something pointless,whether the library's third floor was actually quieter, it wasn't, she was wrong... and she'd gotten that look, chin tilted up, eyes bright, and princesa had slipped out before he'd made any decision to say it. She'd gone very still for exactly one second. Then she'd called him insufferable and walked ahead and he'd watched her go with something sitting warm and inconvenient in his chest.
He didn't take it back.
Cariño came out at the party. Amor slipped out Tuesday morning when she'd stolen his coffee and looked entirely too pleased about it and he hadn't even clocked it until Lando's head turned slowly from across the kitchen like a meerkat scenting danger. Just rotated. Fully. Silently. Eyes going between Carlos and his sister with an expression that was somehow both completely blank and incredibly loud.
"Cabrón," Carlos muttered, not looking at him.
Lando said nothing. Turned back around. Carlos could feel him smiling from six feet away.
By the third week he'd stopped pretending he was being subtle. Arm over her shoulder at Lando's mate's house party, thumb absently tracing the seam of her jacket while she talked to someone else, not even registering he was doing it until Lando materialised at his elbow with a cup and a look that required no words whatsoever.
"She's fine," Lando said, which wasn't what Carlos had said.
"I know."
"You're doing the thing."
"I'm not doing anything."
Lando looked pointedly at his hand on her shoulder. Then at her. Then back at Carlos, slow, like he was piecing together the world's most obvious puzzle and enjoying every second of it.
"You know," he started, in that particular tone that meant nothing good was coming, "if you just told her instead of standing here being all—" he waved a hand at Carlos, at his arm, at the whole situation, "—this, it would save everyone a lot of—"
"Dios mío, eres un cabrón, will you just—" Carlos stopped. Exhaled. "Go away Lando."
Lando grinned. Pointed at him. "Yeah but I'm right though." And then he was gone, swallowed back into the party, leaving Carlos standing there with his hand still on her shoulder and absolutely nowhere to put the rest of it.
Across the room she was laughing at something, head tipped back, easy and unguarded in the way she only got when she forgot to be careful. Carlos watched Marcus clock her from across the room with that slow, patient kind of attention that had no business being on her. Deliberate. Like he was waiting for the right moment.
Carlos felt his jaw tighten.
She'd mentioned once, offhand, that she didn't come to their races much anymore. He'd asked why. She'd shrugged, said it wasn't really her scene, which wasn't true, because he remembered how she used to be in every car park and makeshift paddock with her dad's jacket on and more genuine enthusiasm than half the people there. He hadn't pushed it. But he thought about it every time he pulled into a circuit and scanned the faces out of habit and she wasn't there.
He'd never told her that.
She appeared at his elbow then, materialising out of the party noise, and tipped her head up at him. "You've been staring at the door for ten minutes."
"No I haven't."
"Carlos."
"Cariño."
She blinked. Something moved across her face. A quick, unguarded, gone just as fast. She looked away first, reaching for her drink, and he caught the faint colour rising at her jaw and said nothing.
"He's here," Carlos said, quieter.
She didn't ask who. "I know."
"You don't have to—"
"I know," she said again, softer than he expected. She didn't move away from him. If anything she stayed closer, shoulder tucked just inside his, and he let his arm settle back around her without either of them making it a thing.
Across the room Marcus looked once more in their direction.
Carlos looked back.
He didn't look again.
The seminar ran over by ten minutes.
You knew because you'd checked your phone twice, which Marcus had clocked both times and smiled about like it was endearing rather than you actively willing the clock to move faster. He had a way of making everything feel like a private joke between the two of you that you hadn't agreed to be part of. You'd gotten good at smiling through it.
"Actually," he said, as the last few students filtered out, folder already closing under his arm, "if you've got a few minutes I wanted to go over your last submission. Some things worth discussing before the deadline."
You opened your mouth.
"She's got somewhere to be."
You turned.
Carlos was in the doorway.
Not leaning. Not casual. Just standing there, one shoulder against the frame, arms crossed, with an expression that was completely unreadable except for the part where it was very, very readable. He wasn't looking at you. He was looking at Marcus with the particular kind of patience that wasn't patient at all.
Marcus looked at him. Then at you. "Friend of yours?"
"Yes," you said, at the same time Carlos said nothing, which somehow made it worse.
"We can reschedule," Marcus said, after a beat, and there was something clipped in it, something that knew when it had lost. He gathered his things with a tight smile and Carlos didn't move from the doorway until he'd gone through it, which meant Marcus had to angle past him, which you were fairly certain was entirely intentional.
The door swung shut.
You stared at it for a second. Then you turned around.
"What," you said, "was that."
"I walked you to class."
"You stood in the door like... like some kind of—" you grabbed your bag, crossed the room, and stopped in front of him. "You can't just do that Carlos."
"He was going to keep you alone in a room."
"It's a seminar room—"
"Y/N."
"—in the middle of the day—"
"Y/N." His voice was low. Even. "I've watched that man look at you for two months. I'm not apologising for it."
You stared at him. Something in your chest was doing something inconvenient and you needed it to stop.
"You are such a—" you grabbed the front of his jacket without deciding to, fingers twisting into the fabric, "—such a bloody tosser, you know that—"
And then he stepped in.
One hand coming up beside your head, palm flat against the wall, your back finding it a half second later, and he looked down at you and you looked up at him and the words just. Left. Every single one of them. Gone. Your hand was still twisted in his jacket and your brain had gone completely and totally offline and you were fairly certain your entire body had just ceased normal function.
"I'm not doing this because of Lando," he said, quieter now, jaw tight like he was choosing words carefully for the first time in his life. "Or because I think you can't handle yourself." His eyes dropped to your hand still twisted in his jacket. Back up. "I'm doing this because I've been going out of my mind watching him look at you and I don't—" he exhaled. "I don't know what to do with that. I've been trying to figure out what to do with that for a long time."
"How long," you said.
"Longer than recently."
You kissed him.
Not gently. You just grabbed his neck and pulled him closer, one hand still coiled around his jacket, and kissed him and he kissed you back like he'd been thinking about it for a very specific and unreasonable amount of time, one hand cupping your jaw, the other still flat against the wall, and everything that had been sitting in a carefully labelled box since you were fifteen just collapsed open.
When you pulled back you were both breathing differently.
His thumb stayed at your jaw.
"Dipshit," you said softly.
He laughed, low and warm, forehead dropping to yours.
The quiet settled between you, soft and unhurried, and then he pulled back just enough to look at you properly.
"What just happened in your head," he said. Quiet. Careful.
You laughed before you could stop it. A real one, a little breathless still. "There are books," you said. "Dark romance books. There's a whole umm the wall thing is a thing in them and I just—" you pressed your lips together. "You wouldn't get it."
He stared at you. "...books."
"Forget it."
"What kind of—"
"Carlos I will walk out of this room."
He looked like he had approximately seven hundred more questions. You were not going to answer a single one of them.
His thumb traced your jaw anyway, slow, and the smile he was trying to suppress was doing something unfair to his face.
"I stopped coming to races because of you," you said, before the moment could close over it.
He went still.
"All those girls," you said, keeping your voice even, easy, like it hadn't cost you anything to admit. "Every circuit, every weekend. They all wanted to talk to you and you were always so—" you shrugged. "It was easier not to be there."
Something moved through his expression. Slow and a little undone.
"I always looked for you," he said. "Every time. You were never there."
You didn't say anything. You didn't have to.
He kissed you again, softer this time, and you let him, hands finding the front of his jacket again like they already knew where to go.
His phone buzzed against his pocket and he ignored it. It buzzed again. And again, choosing to remain lost in the taste of your lips.
"Dios mío—" he pulled back just enough to check the screen. Lando. Of course. He answered without thinking. "What."
"WHERE are you both, I've been—" Lando's voice was already at full volume. "Is she with you? I've been calling her for—"
"She's here," Carlos said.
You were not pleased about the interruption. You made this known by doing something to his collar that briefly made him forget what language he spoke.
"Your brother," he managed, tilting the phone slightly away from his mouth. "Mi amor."
You pouted. Looked up at him. And then said, quite clearly, without fully registering the phone was still live—
“You started this… now you’re just gonna leave me like this, all needy for you?”
The silence on the other end lasted exactly two seconds.
"I'M SORRY WHAT THE FUCK DID SHE JUST—" Lando's voice hit a frequency that probably wasn't audible to most mammals. "CARLOS. CARLOS WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW—"
Carlos held the phone slightly away from his ear.
"—I just heard my SISTER say — oh my GOD — oh that is absolutely DISGUSTING I want to UNHEAR that — CARLOS HOW LONG HAS THIS BEEN— I have gone BLIND. I've gone blind and deaf and I am NEVER recovering from this—"
"Lando—"
"DON'T YOU DARE LANDO ME RIGHT NOW, since WHEN is it mi amor, WHAT THE FUCK, I live with you both, I EAT BREAKFAST WITH YOU BOTH EVERY MORNING—"
"You knew," Carlos said.
"I DIDN'T KNOW KNOW, KNOWING AND KNOWING ARE DIFFERENT THINGS YOU ABSOLUTE—" a crash in the background. Something falling. Lando swearing again, a separate stream of it, away from the phone. "—I cannot BELIEVE this, I am actually going to be SICK, she said — and you just — oh my god I need to SIT DOWN—"
"We're coming home—"
"You better be coming home, what the FUCK Carlos, my SISTER, my actual SISTER, I introduced you, I let you into my HOME—"
"Your shared lease," you offered helpfully, loud enough to carry.
"YOU." A sound of pure betrayal. "You KNEW the phone was on, you did that on PURPOSE you little—"
You were shaking against Carlos's shoulder, completely silent with laughter.
"Twenty minutes," Carlos said.
"You're making burgers," Lando said, voice cracking between furious and broken. "From scratch. Both of you. That's what you get."
"Lando—"
"AND YOU'RE SITTING ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE TABLE, I MEAN IT—"
"Okay."
"I hate you," Lando said. "Both of you. So much. Equally. I hope you know that."
A pause. Long suffering. Devastated.
"...don't be late."
He hung up.
Carlos stared at the phone. Then looked down at you, still laughing against his jacket, tears forming at the corners of your eyes.
"Burgers," he said.
You looked up at him, cheeks flushed, eyes bright, and he thought about the races he'd driven without you in the crowd and how that was never going to happen again.
"Eres mía," he said softly, just for you this time.
