"I just think it is silly, that's all," Charles says, arms crossed and definitely not pouting, no matter how exasperatedly fond Carlos looks.
"Maybe," Carlos says. "But it's not our decision. We don't make the schedule."
"But it would be so simple to put us on the same day!" Charles says, throwing his hands up. "Fans would love it. Alex and Rebecca would love it! We would be the stars of the red carpet."
"Ferrari would not love it," Carlos says quietly. "You know that."
Charles barely refrains from flinching. He watches Carlos carefully across the table, across two cappuccinos and the crumbs of a croissant they split down the middle. Carlos's smile is soft, but it doesn't quite reach his eyes as he gazes out over the busy Monaco street, toward the sparkling harbor. Charles feels a sudden urge to reach across the table, smush Carlos's strong jaw between his hands, and mold joy back into his face with his thumbs.
He takes a sip of his lukewarm cappuccino instead.
"It is stupid that they pretend you do not exist," Charles mutters into his cup. "I know they still love you. It is just… pride, or something." He glares at the milk foam clinging to the ceramic rim of his cup. "Stupid."
"Well, they can't entirely pretend I don't exist," Carlos says. "Not when you refuse to leave me alone." His lips curve into a teasing smile, and Charles's ears feel warm.
"Of course I will not leave you alone," Charles says defiantly. "You will not be rid of me so easily. What if I just show up to Cannes a day early? What will they do, throw me out?"
"No. But you'd probably stress out every stylist L'Oréal have while they scrambled to schedule you into the day." Carlos arches a brow. "Maybe not the best thing to do on your first appearance as an ambassador."
Charles huffs.
Carlos shakes his head with a grin and lifts his own cappuccino to his lips. Charles can't help but follow the motion, his gaze caught by Carlos's unfairly elegant fingers. His mind helpfully reminds him of the goosebumps left in the wake of those fingers in the dark hours of the night before, gentle touches pressed to his back, his throat, his thighs. He wonders what Carlos will look like in his tuxedo tomorrow, hair perfectly coiffed and Rebecca sleek and stylish on his arm, camera flashes sparkling in his dark eyes.
He wonders how much better Carlos would look with Charles and Alexandra on his other side, how stunning the four of them would be together, stunning and untouchable.
"Stop moping." Carlos pinches Charles's waist beneath the table. "I will see you this weekend. The girls are already looking forward to it."
"Yes," Charles says, his cheeks growing warm at the idea of the four of them alone again in the apartment Charles shares with Alex, flush with wine and laughter and easy kisses that lead to soft touches and rapturous sighs. "I—I'm also looking forward to it."
Carlos smiles at him, soft and familiar, and Charles smiles back. They sit in comfortable silence, looking out over the harbor, until Carlos's phone lights up with a reminder of his next appointment, some training session or another. They stand, and Charles leans in for la bise before he remembers that they don't always do that with each other, but Carlos catches him by the arm before he can lean away. Their cheeks brush, and Charles tries and fails to hold back a pleased shiver at the gentle scruff of Carlos's afternoon stubble.
"Have a good time at Cannes, Charles," Carlos says as he pulls away. "I'll see you this weekend."
"Yes," Charles says eloquently. "You too. This weekend."
Carlos smiles as he leaves, and Charles watches him go, his heart in his throat.
(And if he spends the next day refreshing his social media feeds, drinking in every glimpse of Carlos at Cannes, no one knows about it except Alex, who saves a few select photos of Rebecca and Carlos in between kisses pressed to Charles's cheeks.
“You keep looking at me like you want to say something.”
Carlos holds his gaze. “I do.”
Oscar looks away first. “If this isn't about the mission or Edie... don’t.”
Carlos’s voice stays quiet. “It is about you.”
Carlos is good at missions. Oscar is good at pretending he's fine. A limited assignment to chase new leads on Oscar's missing sister should be simple, until the clues start crossing and Carlos realizes the case is not the only thing Oscar is keeping at arm’s length.
“You keep looking at me like you want to say something.”
Carlos holds his gaze. “I do.”
Oscar looks away first. “If this isn't about the mission or Edie... don’t.”
Carlos’s voice stays quiet. “It is about you.”
Carlos is good at missions. Oscar is good at pretending he's fine. A limited assignment to chase new leads on Oscar's missing sister should be simple, until the clues start crossing and Carlos realizes the case is not the only thing Oscar is keeping at arm’s length.
Chapter Two is out and things are only getting started. Old as well as new faces and lots of department talk in this chapter... Can't wait what you guys think!
Getting married on Saturday, sharing the photos on Monday and doing a GRWM video for Vogue by Thursday where you talk at length about said wedding is an absolutely cursed form of turbo charged, end stage capitalism influencer grift. Especially when they'll do it all over again next year as well.
“You keep looking at me like you want to say something.”
Carlos holds his gaze. “I do.”
Oscar looks away first. “If this isn't about the mission or Edie... don’t.”
Carlos’s voice stays quiet. “It is about you.”
Carlos is good at missions. Oscar is good at pretending he's fine. A limited assignment to chase new leads on Oscar's missing sister should be simple, until the clues start crossing and Carlos realizes the case is not the only thing Oscar is keeping at arm’s length.
“You keep looking at me like you want to say something.”
Carlos holds his gaze. “I do.”
Oscar looks away first. “If this isn't about the mission or Edie... don’t.”
Carlos’s voice stays quiet. “It is about you.”
Carlos is good at missions. Oscar is good at pretending he's fine. A limited assignment to chase new leads on Oscar's missing sister should be simple, until the clues start crossing and Carlos realizes the case is not the only thing Oscar is keeping at arm’s length.
carcar (carlos x oscar), 5k words, rated M, written for @tkaptains who wanted sad!angry!angsty!oscar after the loss of the championship...i hope i could deliver <3 (i might post this on ao3 later)
summery: The championship is gone, but the anger isn’t and Oscar doesn’t know where to put it except in Carlos’s living room.
Oscar stands in front of Carlos’s door like a person waiting for a dentist appointment: tense, resentful, privately convinced this will end with blood.
The hallway is quiet in that Monaco way. Thick carpet, muted air, money dampening sound. The sea is probably sparkling. The yachts are probably sitting there like smug, white punctuation marks. Monaco does not care that Oscar has spent the last three days feeling like his ribcage is full of static.
His heart jumps into his eyeballs anyway. That’s the annoying thing. His body keeps reacting.
He’s not even holding his phone properly. It’s flat in his palm like an offering. He’s been staring at the lock screen for the entire elevator ride and the stairwell and the too-long hallway walk, watching his own reflection ghost across the glass. The screen is smudged with thumbprints. He looks like someone trying to rub a mistake out of existence.
There are two unread messages from his manager. Four from his mum. A group chat meme that he knows will be about Lando, because his friends think humor is a bandage and they are not wrong, they are just… early.
And one from Carlos, thirty minutes ago, because Carlos is the kind of person who notices absence.
You in Monaco?
Oscar did not reply. That was part of the plan.
The plan, originally, was: stop. Cut it out. Be an adult. Don’t let yourself build anything with a person who can see you. Oscar had been proud of how clean he made it. Proud, like he’d won something. Like he’d finished first in the category of Not Getting Attached.
He hates that word now. Proud.
He hates that he can feel the plan dissolving in his hands, right here, in front of this door.
Oscar lifts his fist. He holds it there, hovering, because his brain is still trying to offer him a good exit.
Turn around. Go home. Get on the plane. Australia. Mum’s kitchen, a cup of tea, a dog sleeping against your shin. Nobody asking you to smile. Nobody asking you to be okay. Nobody asking you anything you can’t answer.
Except the other version of his brain, meaner, more exhausted, whispers: And then what? Sit alone with it?
Oscar’s throat tightens like it heard that and took it personally.
The loss is not a single event in his mind. It’s a loop. It plays in fragments at inconvenient moments: opening a cupboard, looking at a mirror, standing in a hallway like this one. The last race is an involuntary highlight reel, just the worst parts, edited by a petty god. He’ll be buttering toast in six weeks and suddenly his fingers will remember the steering wheel. He’ll be walking down a beach and a corner will appear in his peripheral vision. It has started to feel like the championship didn’t end. Like it’s still happening, somewhere, without him.
And the question Are you okay? has been hunting him, too. It follows him in elevators. It hides in emails. It crouches in conversations like a cat about to pounce.
He’s been asked it by strangers with soft eyes. By Lando trying not to look relieved. By people who want to sound human on camera. He’s been asked it so many times that the words have lost their meaning and become a noise: areyouokayareyouokayareyouokay like a sensor alarm that won’t shut off.
Oscar wants to climb out of his own head. He wants to be a body only. He wants something loud enough to drown out the internal commentary. He wants heat. He wants friction. He wants a few minutes where he isn’t expected to be noble.
He wants Carlos.
And he hates that, too.
Oscar presses the buzzer before he can think better of it.
The sound is stupidly small. A polite little chirp. Like ordering room service. Like asking for a towel. Like he didn’t just choose something horrible.
His heart kicks hard enough he feels it in his fingertips.
He waits.
He can hear movement behind the door—footsteps, a pause, the faint click of a lock. That pause stretches just long enough for Oscar to feel the full stupidity of what he’s doing. Then the door opens.
Carlos is there in a T-shirt and soft pants, hair slightly damp like he’s either showered recently or has been running his hands through it because he can’t sit still. He looks tired, but not wrecked. Carlos looks like a person who has been sleeping, which is rude. Oscar hasn’t slept properly since the last race. He’s been dozing in thin slices, waking up with his jaw clenched like he’s been grinding grief into dust.
Carlos blinks at him. Surprise flickers across his face, quickly smoothed into something careful, like he’s putting a lid on a pot before it boils over.
“Oscar,” Carlos says in his stupid accent.
The Spanish accent is there, noticeable in the warmth of the vowels, the softness in the edges. It makes Oscar’s stomach dip in a way he resents. It would be charming on any other day. Oscar is not in a charming mood.
Oscar’s mouth does the thing it learned in media training: a neutral shape. “Hi,” he says.
Carlos’s gaze flicks over him in one quick scan: the set of his shoulders, the stiff line of his jaw, the fact that he has turned up unannounced after weeks of not answering. Carlos’s eyes linger on Oscar’s face, and Oscar feels the familiar irritation of being read.
“You are in Monaco,” Carlos says.
It’s a fact, said out loud like Carlos is grounding himself.
Oscar shrugs, too casual. “So are you.”
Carlos’s mouth twitches, almost a smile, but it doesn’t arrive. “Yes. I—” He stops, as if he’s about to say something softer. Oscar steps forward before softness can form.
“I need…” The word catches. He forces it out anyway. “A distraction.”
Oscar nods once, stiffly, like he’s signing a contract. “If you don’t want to, I’ll go.”
It’s the line Oscar uses when he wants to pretend he’s giving someone a choice, when really he’s bracing for rejection because rejection is easier than being held. Carlos doesn’t move out of the doorway. He just looks at Oscar, steady and quiet, like he’s trying to decide whether this is desire or desperation wearing desire’s clothes.
Oscar hates the assessment. Oscar hates that Carlos can do it.
After a beat, Carlos steps back.
“Come in,” he says. “Vale.”
Oscar steps inside.
The apartment smells like laundry and citrus and something faintly sweet, like a candle that’s been doing its best. There’s evidence of a life continuing: shoes by the door, a jacket over a chair, a glass near the sink. It makes Oscar feel absurdly angry, like the world keeps moving even when he’s been nailed to a moment.
Carlos closes the door behind him.
Oscar turns and kisses him. It’s fast and angry, like Oscar is trying to start a fire by friction alone. Carlos makes a small surprised sound—more breath than voice—and then kisses back automatically, hands finding Oscar’s waist in a familiar grip that makes Oscar’s chest ache.
The ache is inconvenient. Oscar shoves it down by moving faster.
He presses Carlos back a step, then another, steering him by the shoulders like Oscar needs to be in control of something, anything, even if it’s just the angle of Carlos’s body in his own living room. Carlos yields because Carlos is good at yielding. Carlos has always been good at giving Oscar what Oscar asks for.
Oscar wants it hot. He wants it mindless. He wants it to be loud enough that he can’t hear the season. He drags his mouth over Carlos’s, biting down on any softness. He feels Carlos’s hands tighten. He feels Carlos breathe his name against his lips.
“Oscar,” Carlos murmurs, and it sounds like a warning dressed as affection.
Oscar hates warnings. Oscar hates being reminded that consequences exist. He grips Carlos’s shirt and pulls, impatient, trying to turn the moment into something purely physical. His pulse is loud. His fingers tremble a little, and he’s furious about it, so he grips harder.
Then Carlos stops. Just… stillness. A shift of pressure: one hand firm around Oscar’s wrist, the other at his cheek, steadying him.
Oscar blinks, irritated, breath sharp. “What—”
Carlos’s eyes search his, quick and thorough, like he’s reading telemetry.
“Hey,” Carlos says quietly.
Oscar’s chest tightens. The word is too gentle. It feels like being approached by someone holding a blanket. Carlos’s thumb brushes Oscar’s cheekbone, grounding him in a way that makes Oscar’s skin prickle.
“Are you okay?” Carlos asks.
Oscar feels the question hit his sternum like a thrown rock.
It’s ridiculous. It’s four words. It’s a normal thing to ask. It’s what you say when someone looks wrong. Carlos is allowed. Carlos means it. That’s the problem. Carlos means it.
Oscar laughs once, ugly. “Don’t.”
Carlos frowns. “Do not ask?”
“Yes,” Oscar snaps, and the anger flares fast enough to cover the sudden sting behind his eyes. “Don’t ask me that. I’m sick of that question.”
Carlos goes still. The warmth drains out of his face like someone turned off a light.
“It is… a normal question,” Carlos says carefully. The accent thickens just a little at the edges when he’s irritated, when he stops smoothing himself down. “From someone who is not a stranger.”
Oscar’s jaw clenches. He hates the not-a-stranger part most of all.
“I didn’t come here for this,” Oscar says. “I didn’t come here to—” He gestures, furious at the concept of concern. “Talk.”
Carlos’s mouth tightens. “You came here to use me.”
Oscar’s head jerks up. “I didn’t—”
Carlos’s eyes flash. “You did. You said it. Distraction.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He hates being quoted. He hates being pinned to his own words like they’re evidence. He hates so much lately.
“I came here because I wanted—” Oscar stops. He can’t say you without making it sound like a confession. He can’t say sex without making it sound like a weapon. He chooses the flattest version, because flat feels safe. “I came here because I didn’t want to think.”
Carlos exhales sharply through his nose. “And you think I am what. A button you press to stop your brain.”
Oscar’s anger spikes. “You’re being dramatic.”
Carlos’s eyebrows lift. “Me?”
Oscar takes a step back, creating space because space is needed. “You are the one who stopped.”
Carlos’s gaze holds his. “Yes.”
Oscar laughs bitterly. “Right. So what’s the plan? You stop and you ask me if I’m okay and then I tell you my feelings and then you give me a glass of water and we all grow as people.”
Carlos’s jaw flexes. “Do not do that.”
“Do what?”
“Mock,” Carlos says, and his voice is low and tight. “Be cruel.”
Oscar feels a flare of shame, quick and hot, and he hates shame even more than he hates pity. Shame is how you end up apologizing for needing anything.
“I’m not being cruel,” Oscar lies. “I’m being honest.”
Carlos’s mouth twists. “Honest would be telling me why you are here after you—” He stops himself, breath catching. “After you cut me off.”
Oscar’s stomach drops. The words land with a weight that makes the room feel smaller.
“I didn’t cut you off.”
Carlos’s gaze sharpens. “Oscar. You did. You stopped answering. You stopped looking at me. You stopped fucking m—” He breaks off, frustrated, and a soft swear slips out under his breath, almost involuntary. “Joder.”
Oscar’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “I was busy.”
Carlos’s eyes narrow. “Busy.”
Oscar hears himself. He hears how thin he sounds. It makes him furious. “Yes. It was the season. And it was… complicated.”
Carlos’s expression tightens. “Complicated how.”
Oscar’s heart thuds hard. He looks away, because looking at Carlos is dangerous. Carlos has eyes that invite honesty. Oscar is trying to survive on dishonesty right now.
“It didn’t need to be anything,” Oscar says, voice flat. “It was just a thing.”
Carlos flinches, just barely, like the phrase caught on something tender.
“Just a thing,” Carlos repeats. “Okay.”
Oscar snaps his eyes back to him, annoyed at the quiet. Quiet is worse than shouting because quiet means Carlos is actually listening.
“I’m not saying it was bad,” Oscar says, too fast. “It was—fine. It was good. It was hot. Whatever. That doesn’t mean it needed to keep happening.”
Carlos’s gaze is steady. “And now you want it to happen again.”
Oscar’s face heats. “Because I need—”
Carlos’s eyebrows lift. “Need.”
Oscar’s mouth tightens. He hates that word in his mouth. He hates the way it makes him sound like he’s begging.
“I lost,” Oscar says, and the words come out harsher than he intends. “Okay? I lost. And I’m tired. And I don’t want to talk about it. And I didn’t come here to have a conversation about the moral implications of—” He gestures vaguely at them, at the air, at the fact that Carlos is still holding his wrist like an anchor. “This.”
Carlos’s grip loosens. He lets Oscar’s wrist go, slowly, like he’s trying not to startle him.
“I am not asking you for a moral lesson,” Carlos says. “I am asking you if you are okay because you look like you are about to—” He stops, searching for a word that won’t make Oscar flinch. “You look… not good.”
Oscar laughs, sharp. “Oh, brilliant. Thank you. I hadn’t noticed.”
Carlos’s eyes flash. “Oscar.”
“What?” Oscar snaps.
Carlos’s accent deepens as his patience frays. “You came here. You kissed me. And then you get angry that I notice.”
Oscar’s chest tightens so hard he feels briefly nauseous.
“You’re not entitled to notice,” Oscar says, and he hates himself the moment he says it because it’s unfair and it’s not even true. He’s just trying to build a wall out of words.
Carlos’s mouth twists. “What do you want me to say.”
Oscar opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. The truth is too big. The lie is too thin.
He wants Carlos to stop asking. He wants Carlos to hold him. He wants Carlos to want him without seeing him. He wants the impossible.
Oscar’s throat burns.
“Just—” he says, and it comes out rough. “Just… don’t.”
Carlos watches him for a long second. The silence between them hums, tense. Then Carlos turns slightly away, rubbing a hand over his face like he’s trying to reset himself.
“I cannot,” Carlos says quietly. “I can’t just… do it, Oscar, when you look like this.”
Oscar’s anger flares again because there it is: the refusal. The boundary.
“So you’re rejecting me,” Oscar says, voice sharp.
Carlos’s eyes snap to him, offended. “No.”
“It feels like it,” Oscar says, and he hears how childish it sounds. He can't help that his voice wobbles for half a second.
Carlos exhales slowly. “I am not rejecting you. I am refusing to—” He searches for the English words, frustrated. “To take you when you are using it to… not feel.”
Oscar’s hands shake. He curls them tighter into fists, nails biting into his palms like he can anchor himself by pain.
“I am feeling,” Oscar snaps. “I’m feeling angry. I’m feeling—” He stops because sad is a word he refuses to say out loud. Sad feels like surrender. Sad feels like acceptance. Oscar is not ready to accept anything. Carlos’s gaze softens a fraction and Oscar hates it so much he could scream.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Oscar says.
Carlos’s brows draw together. “Like what.”
“Like you’re sorry for me,” Oscar spits.
Carlos’s expression hardens. “I am not sorry for you.”
“Everyone is,” Oscar says, and the bitterness in his voice surprises him with how deep it goes. “Everyone keeps—” He makes a vague gesture, imitating softness, imitating concern. “And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being consoled. I’m sick of being told it’s inspiring. I’m sick of being patted on the head because I came third like it’s a participation medal.”
Carlos’s jaw clenches. “You do not think you deserve comfort.”
Oscar laughs, sharp and humorless. “I didn’t say that.”
“You do not have to,” Carlos says.
Oscar feels the sting behind his eyes sharpen. He blinks hard, furious at his body.
Carlos takes a small step back, giving space again. “Sit,” he says, gesturing toward the couch.
Oscar recoils instinctively. “No.”
Carlos’s voice is careful. “Oscar—”
“No,” Oscar repeats, louder, because sitting feels like admitting weakness. Sitting feels like letting it land.
Carlos’s gaze holds his, steady. “Okay. Then stand. But stop fighting me like I am the enemy.”
Oscar’s breath catches. He wants to say something cruel again. He wants to throw a line that will make Carlos flinch so Oscar can feel powerful for two seconds. Instead, he hears himself say, raw and sharp: “I don’t know what to do with it.”
Carlos’s face changes—softening, immediately, and Oscar can't look at it because it means Carlos heard the truth.
“With what,” Carlos asks, quieter.
Oscar’s throat tightens. He swallows hard. “With losing.”
The word hangs there, ugly. Carlos doesn’t flinch. He nods once, slow. “Okay.”
Oscar’s jaw clenches. “Don’t ‘okay’ that either.”
Carlos’s mouth twists, almost a smile, but it doesn’t arrive. “I am sorry. It is—” He shrugs a little, helpless. “It is what you do when someone tells you something you believe.”
Oscar’s chest aches. He looks away. The apartment feels too bright suddenly, even though the curtains are half drawn. Monaco light gets in everywhere. It’s greedy.
“I keep thinking,” Oscar says, voice rough, “that if I’d done one thing different—one corner, if I didn't switch like the good boy they wanted me to be, one—” He stops because his throat is closing. He swallows hard. “And then people tell me it was a great season and I want to—” He makes a small, violent motion with his hand, like snapping something.
Carlos’s voice is quiet. “Yeah.”
Oscar laughs, broken. “And then I feel like a terrible person, because Lando—” He stops. His throat tightens. “He deserved it. He drove well. He—” He can’t say I’m happy for him because he isn’t, not cleanly. He can only manage: “And I still feel like biting him. With Max it's different. You know it's different with him, because you drove against him. He is different.”
Carlos nods once, as if that’s the most normal confession in the world. “Yeah. That is… normal.”
Oscar’s laugh turns bitter. “Everything is normal, apparently.”
Carlos’s gaze stays steady. “Oscar.”
Oscar flinches at his name in that tone—gentle, careful—and the sting behind his eyes finally breaks. A tear slips down his cheek before he can stop it. Oscar freezes, horrified. It’s a small betrayal, but it feels catastrophic. He wipes it away immediately with the heel of his hand like it’s dirt.
“Don’t,” he says, voice rough.
Carlos doesn’t move closer. Thank god. He just watches, expression tight with restraint, like he knows pity would insult Oscar more than cruelty.
“I am not doing anything,” Carlos says quietly.
“You’re looking,” Oscar snaps, because looking is unbearable.
Carlos’s voice is steady. “Yes. I am.”
Oscar’s breath shudders. Another tear threatens. He hates it. He hates his body for doing this here, in Carlos’s living room, after he came with a plan to feel nothing. It's thge first time he allows himself to feel hate in a long time.
He turns away sharply, as if he can outrun his own face.
“This is why I ended it between us,” Oscar says, and his voice shakes with anger again because anger is the only thing he can hold without breaking.
Carlos’s brows lift slightly. “Because I look at you.”
“Because you make it—” Oscar gestures, frustrated, searching for the word. “Because you make it real.”
Carlos’s gaze sharpens. “You made it real.”
Oscar’s head jerks back. “I didn’t—”
“You did,” Carlos says, and now there’s real anger in his voice, controlled but unmistakable. The accent thickens around the edges. “You do not get to act like I invented feelings, Oscar. You do not get to—” He cuts himself off, breath tight. “Joder.”
Oscar’s heart thuds. He hates hearing Carlos swear; it always means Carlos is close to saying something he can’t take back. Oscar’s instinct is to run. He’s been practicing that. Avoidance as cardio. Instead he snaps, because snapping is easier than admitting he’s scared.
“I came here for a distraction,” Oscar says again, deliberately. Weaponizing the word. “If you don’t want to be that, fine.”
Carlos’s eyes flash. “Do not talk about me like I am—”
“Like you’re what,” Oscar challenges, voice sharp.
Carlos’s jaw tightens. “Like I am a thing you use when you can’t stand yourself.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. The sentence lands too close to the truth.
Oscar’s anger surges, desperate. “Then don’t be perceptive,” he says, and it’s a ridiculous accusation, but he throws it anyway. “Just—do what you always do.”
Carlos stares at him, disbelieving. “You ended it.”
Oscar’s chest aches. “Yes.”
Carlos’s voice is low. “And now you want it back.”
Oscar’s mouth twists. “Yes.”
Carlos exhales slowly, as if he’s trying to stay calm. “Do you hear yourself.”
Oscar’s eyes sting again. He blinks hard. “I don’t care.”
Carlos’s face tightens. “You do care. That is the whole problem.”
Oscar’s breath catches. He can't believe that Carlos can say that so calmly. He despises that Carlos is right. The sadness in the room is heavy now, pressing down. Oscar can feel it trying to settle into him. He doesn’t want it. He wants to keep moving. He wants heat. He wants noise. He wants anything else. Oscar steps forward suddenly, closing the distance, trying to turn the conversation back into something physical because physical is simpler. He reaches for Carlos’s shirt again, as if they can rewind to the moment before the question.
Carlos catches his hands.
It's firm.
“Oscar,” Carlos says, and his voice is tight. “No.”
The word hits like a slap.
Oscar’s anger flares white-hot. “So you are rejecting me.”
Carlos’s eyes flash. “I am rejecting this. I’m—” He lets out a breath, frustrated. “I am not going to let you break yourself on me.”
Oscar stares at him, breath ragged. “Who asked you to be my therapist.”
Carlos’s mouth tightens. “Nobody. But I am not stupid.”
Oscar laughs, sharp, cruel. “Congratulations.”
Carlos’s gaze hardens. “Stop.”
Oscar’s voice rises a fraction, finally. “Stop what?”
“Stop trying to punish yourself,” Carlos says, and his accent catches slightly on the consonants, the words coming faster. “Stop coming here to— to make hurt less for five minutes and then leaving me with the mess.”
Oscar’s stomach drops. The sentence is too true, too direct. It makes Oscar feel exposed. The tears threaten again. Oscar hates them. He hates that his body is taking sides. He goes for the sharpest defense he has: he attacks.
“I didn’t ask you to care,” Oscar says.
Carlos flinches. Just barely. Oscar sees it. The flinch lands in his gut like guilt. He detests guilt. Carlos’s voice drops, quiet and dangerous. “You can’t stop someone from caring by pretending it is not there.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He swallows hard. “We weren’t—”
Carlos cuts him off. “Do not.”
Oscar’s eyes snap up. “Don’t what.”
“Do not insult me,” Carlos says, and his voice is calm, which is worse than shouting. “Do not come into my home after weeks of silence and pretend what we had was nothing.”
Oscar’s breath catches. His chest aches. The word home feels intimate in a way that makes his skin prickle. He wants to say, It wasn’t nothing. He wants to say, That’s the problem. He wants to say, I stopped because I started to feel something and I didn’t want another thing I could lose.
Instead, he says the cowardly version.
“It was just sex,” Oscar says flatly.
The words hang there like a slap.
Carlos’s face goes very still. Then a small, pained smile flickers and disappears.
“Sure,” Carlos says softly, and the softness is brutal. “If it was just sex, why did you stop answering me.”
Oscar’s mouth goes dry.
He looks away, staring at a spot on the wall like it’s interesting. There’s a framed print—something abstract, tasteful. Monaco art: expensive and meaningless. Oscar would like to throw it out a window.
“I stopped,” Oscar says, voice rough, “because it was getting complicated.”
Carlos’s voice is quiet. “Complicated for who.”
Oscar laughs bitterly. “For me.”
Carlos nods once, slow. “Okay.”
Oscar snaps, anger spiking again because he can’t stand the calm. “Stop saying okay like you’re—like you’re—”
“Like I am what,” Carlos asks.
Oscar’s voice breaks on the truth and he hates it. “Like you’re better at this than me.”
Carlos stares at him for a long second. Then he says, quietly, “I am not better, querido. I am just… I do not run as fast.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He swallows hard. The silence between them is heavy.
Oscar’s chest aches with the urge to confess and the urge to flee. Two instincts pulling in opposite directions until he feels like he might tear. Carlos moves first—not toward Oscar, but toward the kitchen. He gets a glass of water. The clink of it is unbearably domestic. Oscar is irritated how normal it sounds, like this is what people do when someone is falling apart: they offer water. As if hydration is the solution.
Carlos sets the glass on the coffee table within Oscar’s reach, not in his hand. Carlos is annoyingly respectful even when he’s furious.
Then Carlos sits— in the armchair opposite, leaving space like a gift.
Oscar stands there, breathing too fast, staring at the water like it might bite him.
“I did not come here to cry,” Oscar says, voice rough, as if that’s the worst part.
Carlos’s mouth twists. “I did not ask you to cry.”
Oscar huffs a laugh that turns into something dangerously close to a sob. He clamps down on it. “I came here because I didn’t want to be—” He stops. The word alone catches in his throat.
Carlos’s gaze stays steady. “Alone.”
Oscar’s shoulders tense. He swallows hard. “Everyone keeps asking me if I’m okay,” Oscar says suddenly, and the words come out like a confession he’s been choking on. “And I don’t know what they want me to say. Do they want me to say yes so they can stop feeling awkward. Do they want me to say no so they can feel like a good person for asking.”
Carlos’s voice is quiet. “And when I asked.”
Oscar’s mouth twists. “When you asked, it felt like—” He stops, searching. He can’t say it felt like you could see through me. He can’t say it felt like you’d make me answer honestly. He settles for the ugly truth. “It felt like pressure.”
Carlos nods slowly. “Okay.”
Oscar glares. “Stop.”
Carlos’s eyebrows lift. “What do you want me to say, Oscar.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. “I don’t know.”
Carlos leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees, voice careful. “Then tell me what you do not want.”
Oscar laughs, broken. “Everything.”
Carlos’s mouth twitches. “That is not helpful.”
Oscar wipes his face again, furious at the wetness. “I don’t want pity. I don’t want consolation. I don’t want to be told it’s fine because it’s not fine. I don’t want—” His voice cracks. He swallows hard. “I don’t want to feel like I’m going to carry this forever.”
Carlos’s gaze softens and Oscar can't look at it because it makes the sting behind his eyes worse.
Carlos’s voice is gentle, but not pitying. “You will carry it,” he says. “But not like this.”
Oscar’s laugh is bitter. “How would you know.”
“Because I have lost things.”
Oscar’s chest aches. He knows Carlos has. Careers are built on loss. Every driver carries a museum of almosts.
Oscar’s mouth twists. “This one was… close.”
Carlos nods once. “Yes, Oscar.”
Oscar looks down at his own hands. They’re shaking again. Small tremors. He curls them into fists, nails biting in. Pain as anchor. He feels suddenly, sharply, tired. Like the last three days have been him holding a plank position in his own skull and he can’t do it anymore.
Oscar’s voice comes out small, despite himself. “I didn’t want to lose you too.”
The sentence hangs there like a dropped glass. Shattering quietly. Oscar’s heart slams. He didn’t mean to say that. He didn’t mean to say anything that true.
Carlos goes very still.
For a beat, the apartment feels like it’s holding its breath. Then Carlos exhales slowly. “Ah,” he says, soft.
Oscar’s throat tightens. He looks away, staring at the water. He doesn’t drink. Drinking would feel like accepting care.
“I know,” Carlos says quietly. “I—” He stops, searching. His voice roughens a little. “I know you did not stop because you were bored.”
Oscar’s eyes burn. He blinks hard. “Don’t make it sound romantic.”
Carlos huffs a small laugh, humorless. “It is not romantic, Oscar. It is—” He gestures vaguely, frustrated by language. “Is stupid... human.”
Oscar’s breath shudders. The sadness is finally catching up. It chose this moment. He came here to avoid feeling. Instead he has said the one sentence that cracks him open. Carlos’s voice is gentle, but firm. “You can be angry here,” he says. “You can be sad. You can—” He hesitates, then adds, quieter, “You can be a mess. But don’t pretend you don’t care. Not to me.”
Oscar’s chest aches. He swallows hard. “I don’t know how to do this,” he admits, and his voice breaks on the last word.
Carlos’s gaze holds his. “I know.”
Oscar laughs, broken. “You keep saying you know.”
Carlos’s mouth twitches. “Because I do.”
Oscar wipes his face again. He feels humiliated by the tears. He hates that Carlos isn’t reacting like it’s pathetic. Carlos is treating it like weather: unpleasant, real, not shameful.
Oscar’s voice comes out ragged. “I came here because I thought if I could… if I could have you, I could forget.”
Carlos’s face tightens with something like pain. “And did it work.”
Oscar shakes his head, small. “For a minute.”
Carlos nods once, slow. “Okay.”
Oscar glares through tears. “Stop.”
Carlos’s mouth twists, almost a smile, but it doesn’t arrive. “Sorry.”
Oscar’s shoulders slump slightly, the fight draining out of him in exhausted trickles. “I am going to Australia,” he says, because he needs to say something practical, something solid. “Tomorrow. Or the next day. I don’t even know. My calendar is—” He gestures vaguely. “My calendar hates me.”
Carlos huffs a quiet laugh at that. “Yeah.”
Oscar swallows hard. “And I thought… I thought I should cut you out. Cleanly. Because if I keep…” He stops. He can’t say if I keep wanting you. He can’t say if I keep letting you in. He tries again. “Because if I keep doing this, it becomes another thing I can’t control.”
Carlos’s gaze softens. “Oscar.”
Oscar flinches at his name again. “Don’t make it—”
Carlos interrupts, voice gentle but firm. “I am not making it anything. It already is.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He sits down suddenly on the edge of the couch, as if his legs have decided to quit. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
He feels small. He doesn't like feeling small. The silence stretches. Oscar can hear his own breathing. He can hear Monaco outside, continuing to exist as if it hasn’t ruined him.
Carlos stays where he is. He just… stays. It’s infuriatingly kind.
Oscar’s voice is quiet. “I don’t want you to think you’re—” He swallows hard. “Disposable.”
Carlos’s breath catches slightly. “Okay.”
Oscar lets out a broken laugh. “You’re doing it again.”
Carlos’s mouth twists. “Sorry. It is… I am trying not to say the wrong thing.”
Oscar looks up at him, eyes burning. “There is no right thing.”
Carlos nods once. “Yeah. I know.”
Oscar’s chest aches at the repetition. He wipes his face again, dragging his sleeve across his cheek like he’s trying to erase evidence.
“I’m angry,” Oscar says, as if confessing a crime. “All the time. I’m angry when I wake up. I’m angry when I eat. I’m angry when someone says his name. I’m angry when someone says my name. I’m angry at—” He laughs bitterly. “I’m angry at the sun.”
Carlos huffs a small, surprised laugh. “The sun.”
“It’s too cheerful,” Oscar says, dead serious.
Carlos’s eyes soften. “Yeah.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He stares at the floor. The anger he’s been living in for days feels suddenly like a thin shell, and underneath it is grief—soft, enormous, unavoidable.
Oscar’s voice drops. “I wanted it,” he says, and that’s the saddest sentence in the world because it’s so simple. “I wanted it so badly.”
Carlos’s face shifts, pained. He nods once. “I know.”
Oscar’s breath shudders. He feels another tear slip. He doesn’t wipe it this time. He’s too tired to keep fighting his own face.
He says, very quietly, “And now I don’t know what to do with myself.”
Carlos just says, gentle and steady, “You don’t have to know tonight.”
Oscar looks up, eyes wet, and something in his chest twists because that’s all he’s wanted: permission to not solve it immediately.
Why does it have to come from Carlos. And why does it feels like relief.
Oscar’s voice cracks. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
Carlos’s mouth tightens. “Maybe.”
Oscar laughs, broken. “Helpful.”
Carlos’s expression softens. “I am so glad you came, Oscar,” he admits quietly, and then adds quickly, as if to correct himself, “Not like that. Not to—” He gestures vaguely, frustrated. “But I am glad you are here.”
Oscar’s throat tightens hard enough it hurts. He looks away because if he looks at Carlos too long, he’ll fall into something he can’t climb out of. He whispers, rough, “I don’t know what we are.”
“We do not have to decide right now.”
“That sounds like you’re being nice.”
Carlos’s gaze sharpens. “I’m being honest.”
Oscar swallows hard. “You’re annoyingly good at that.”
Carlos huffs a small laugh. “I know.”
Oscar snorts despite himself, and the sound comes out wet and pathetic. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand, furious at his body.
Carlos’s voice is quiet. “Drink the water.”
Oscar glances at the glass like it’s an enemy. Then, because he is exhausted and because fighting everything is getting old, he reaches for it and takes a sip.
The water is cold. It tastes like nothing. It is, annoyingly, grounding. He sets it down again.
Oscar’s voice is small. “I’m sorry I—” He stops. He can’t say used you without choking. He tries again. “I’m sorry I came here like that.”
Carlos nods once, slow. “Okay.”
Oscar glares weakly. “Stop.”
Carlos’s mouth twists into a real smile this time—small, tired, fond in a way that hurts. “I cannot help it,” he says, the accent rounding the words. “It is my coping.”
Oscar’s chest aches again, but this time it’s softer. Less sharp. He looks at Carlos, really looks, and sees the tiredness there too. Sees the way Carlos is holding himself still like he’s trying not to make Oscar bolt. Sees the restraint. The care.
“You’re leaving soon,” he says, because he needs to say something that won’t make him cry again.
Carlos nods. “Yeah. A few days.”
Oscar nods too. “Right.”
Silence settles again. Not as heavy. Still sad, but less jagged.
Oscar knows, with a dull certainty, that he will still go to Australia. He will still get on the plane. He will still sit in an economy seat pretending he doesn’t know how to be famous in public. He will still land and be looked at by people who love him and feel the loss like a bruise. And he knows this moment won’t fix anything. It’s not that kind of story. It’s not a montage. It’s not a neat resolution.
Oscar’s voice is quiet. “If I leave tomorrow,” he says, and his throat tightens, “will you… be angry.”
“I’m already angry,” he says, then softens. “But not at you for leaving. I get it.”
Oscar swallows hard. “Will you… stop talking to me.”
Carlos’s gaze sharpens. “Is that what you want.”
Oscar’s chest aches. He shakes his head, small. “No.”
Carlos nods once. “Then no.”
Oscar’s breath catches. He looks away quickly because the relief feels too close to gratitude and gratitude feels like debt.
He whispers, rough, “Okay.”
Carlos huffs a small laugh. “There,” he says. “Now you are doing it.”
Oscar manages a watery snort. “Shut up.”
Carlos’s smile is tired and gentle. “No.”
Oscar’s eyes sting again. He blinks hard, fighting it, but the sadness is stubborn. It sits in his chest like a weight.
He says, very quietly, “I thought if I came here, I wouldn’t feel it.”
Carlos’s voice is soft. “And now.”
“Now I feel it more.”
“Yeah.”
Oscar laughs once, broken. “Great.”
Carlos’s eyes stay on him, steady. “It will pass,” he says, and then adds quickly, because he can hear how that sounds, “Not completely. But it won’t be like this forever.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He nods, because he can’t speak without breaking again. At some point, Oscar stands. Slowly, like he’s not sure his legs will work.
Carlos looks up at him, cautious. “You going.”
Oscar nods. “Yeah.”
Carlos’s mouth tightens. “Okay.”
Oscar’s lips twitch in something like a smile and something like grief. “Stop.”
Carlos’s expression softens. “Text me when you land,” he says, and it’s not a demand. It’s not a claim. It’s just… a thread offered.
Oscar’s chest aches. He nods again. “Okay.”
He walks to the door. His hand hovers on the handle. His palm is damp. His heartbeat is loud enough to be embarrassing. He doesn’t turn the handle because turning it would mean stepping back into Monaco—into the sun, the yachts, the questions. Into people’s faces doing that careful thing where they pretend they’re not afraid he’ll say something ugly.
Behind him, Carlos is still in the armchair.
“I didn’t come here to talk,” Oscar says again, because he is childish like that.
“I know,” Carlos answers, soft.
Oscar exhales through his nose. His throat burns. He keeps his hand on the handle anyway, as if contact alone can count as leaving.
He doesn’t want to go.
That thought arrives and stays. He doesn’t want to step out into the hallway and be alone with his brain again. He doesn’t want to go home and stare at his ceiling like it’s going to explain why a few points can ruin your appetite. He doesn’t want to disappear, either. Not like this.
He turns halfway. “If I… stay for a bit,” he says, voice rough, “you’re not going to—”
Carlos’s brows lift. “Ask you if you are okay?”
Oscar’s mouth twists. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
Oscar blinks. “Just like that.”
Carlos shrugs, a little helpless. “Just like that, no? You asked.”
It’s so simple Oscar almost gets angry again, just on principle. Then he realizes his anger is tired. It wants to sit down. It wants to stop performing. Oscar releases the door handle. His hand tingles like he’s cut a wire. He turns back to the room as if he’s pretending he didn’t almost leave. “I’ll stay,” he says, and the sentence is smaller than it should be, like he’s trying not to spook himself.
Carlos’s expression changes—quick, bright relief that he tries to hide, because Carlos is also not in the mood to make this a spectacle.
“Okay,” Carlos says, and then immediately grimaces like he’s heard himself. “Sorry. I—” He rubs his face. “I said it again.”
Oscar huffs a laugh despite himself. It’s barely a laugh. More like air escaping. But it counts.
“You’re addicted,” Oscar says.
Carlos’s mouth quirks. “It is my coping.”
Oscar rolls his eyes and walks back to the couch, sitting this time with less stiffness, like his bones have stopped bracing for impact. He stares at the glass of water on the table like it’s a dare.
He reaches for it, takes a sip. And then he immediately swallows wrong. He coughs, sharp and undignified. Water goes down the wrong pipe. His throat spasms like it’s trying to eject him from his own body. He bends forward, coughing hard, eyes stinging, suddenly choking on nothing like he’s never learned how to drink.
It’s absurd. It’s humiliating. It’s the least heroic thing he’s done all week.
Carlos is out of the chair in a second, halfway across the room, alarm flashing through him like a dashboard light.
Oscar lifts a hand, wheezing. “It's fine—”
Carlos freezes mid-step like he’s been shouted at by a traffic marshal. His hands hover in the air, useless. His face does a whole complicated series of expressions—concern, restraint, guilt, are you okay choking back down his own throat. Oscar coughs again, and then, finally, the obstruction clears. His lungs pull in air like they’re grateful to be alive.
He sits up, blinking.
Carlos is standing there, tense, hands still half-raised like he’s about to catch Oscar if gravity decides to be rude.
Oscar wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes are watering. His face is hot. He looks, objectively, ridiculous.
Carlos stares at him for a beat, fighting his own instincts, then says carefully, like he’s defusing a bomb, “So. The water. Not your friend.”
Oscar’s laugh comes out before he can stop it—realer than the earlier huff, a startled sound that surprises him with its own existence. He laughs again, shorter, because it’s either laugh or cry and he’s already sick of crying.
Carlos’s shoulders drop with visible relief, and the relief is contagious. His mouth twitches, then he cracks, too—this quiet, breathy laugh that makes him look younger. Less composed. More human. Oscar shakes his head, wiping his eyes. “I’m—” He coughs once, glaring at the water like it personally betrayed him. “I’m fine.”
Carlos points at him accusingly. “Don’t.”
Oscar snorts. “Shut up.”
Carlos’s smile widens despite himself. “Okay,” he says automatically, then winces. “Sorry.”
Oscar laughs again, and it feels strange. Like finding a familiar object in a house that burned down. Carlos sits on the edge of the coffee table, not too close, but closer than before. “You were very brave,” he says, deadpan, as if Oscar has survived a war and not a sip of water.
Oscar wipes his face again, still smiling unwillingly. “Yeah. Call the FIA. Tell them I fought valiantly.”
Carlos’s accent warms the sentence when he says, “We will add it to your highlights.”
Oscar’s laugh softens into something quieter, and in the quiet there’s a tender ache. He looks down at his hands. They’ve stopped shaking, for the moment. Or maybe he just doesn’t notice because his chest isn’t full of knives right this second.
Carlos shifts, glancing at Oscar like he’s checking a weather forecast. “Do you want… coffee?” he asks, careful. “Or something that is not—” he nods at the water with suspicion “—trying to kill you.”
Oscar’s lips twitch. “Coffee's fine.”
Carlos stands, heads toward the kitchen, then pauses like he’s remembered something. “Milk?”
Oscar blinks. It’s such a normal question. A question that belongs to normal life, not to whatever wreckage Oscar’s been dragging around.
“Yeah,” Oscar says, voice softer. “Milk.”
Carlos nods once, like this is important intelligence. He disappears into the kitchen. Oscar hears cupboards open, the soft clink of a spoon, the coffee machine. Domestic noises. The kind that make you feel like the world hasn’t ended, even if you’re pretty sure it did.
Oscar stares at the couch cushion beside him. It has a tiny wrinkle in it, the fabric slightly pulled where he sat earlier like a statue. He smooths it absentmindedly, then stops, because why is he making the couch neat, who is he trying to impress, the couch?
His phone buzzes in his pocket.
He doesn’t look.
He sits there with his hands empty and realizes, with a dull surprise, that he can feel the loss and also feel… this. The warmth of a room. The normality of a coffee machine. The faint sting in his throat from choking on water like a clown.
Maybe there’s room in him for more than one thing.
Carlos returns with two mugs. One of them is plain. The other one says FER in big letters, like it’s a half-finished tattoo.
Oscar stares at it. “What is that—”
Carlos looks down at the mug like he’s just noticed it exists. “It was a gift,” he says, sheepish. “From someone. I don’t know.”
“That’s not even a word,” Oscar says.
“It is almost a word,” Carlos argues. “Like you.”
Oscar makes a wounded sound. “Oh my god.”
Carlos sets the mugs down, smiling. “Too soon?”
Oscar shakes his head, smiling despite himself. “You’re horrible.”
“I am funny,” Carlos corrects, and then adds, softer, “I am trying.”
Oscar’s smile falters for a second at the gentleness in that.
He takes the plain mug. Carlos takes the FER one like he’s accepting his punishment. They sit—Oscar on the couch, Carlos on the armchair again, but angled closer now, his knee almost touching the edge of the couch if Oscar leans.
They sip. The coffee is hot. The milk makes it taste like home in a way Oscar wasn’t prepared for.
Carlos clears his throat. “I won’t ask,” he says quietly. “But… if you want to tell me anything, I can listen. And if you do not, we can—” He gestures vaguely at the room, the mugs, the absurd mug situation. “We can just exist.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He stares into his coffee like the surface might show him a better version of himself.
“I don’t want to be inspirational,” Oscar says, low. “I don’t want to be—” He searches for the word and it comes out ugly. “Gracious.”
Carlos’s eyes soften. “Okay.”
Oscar points at him with his mug. “Careful.”
Carlos’s mouth twitches. “Sorry. I mean—” He takes a breath. “You do not have to be anything. Not here.”
Oscar’s chest aches again. He swallows. His voice comes out smaller. “I’m so angry.”
Carlos nods, slow. “Yeah.”
“And I’m tired of people treating the anger like it’s… inappropriate,” Oscar says. “Like the correct emotion is acceptance.”
Carlos’s accent curls around the consonants when he says, “Acceptance is overrated.”
Oscar’s laugh is quiet, surprised. “Is it.”
Carlos shrugs. “Sometimes you accept later.”
Oscar looks down at his mug. His hands are steady. He hates that noticing it makes him want to cry again.
He says, carefully, “I didn’t come here to be… like this.”
Carlos’s gaze holds his. “I know.”
Oscar’s jaw tightens. “I came here to—”
“I know,” Carlos says again, firmer, and then, because he can’t help himself, adds, “And I still wanted you to stay.”
Oscar’s breath catches. He looks up. Carlos looks almost embarrassed, as if he’s said something too honest without permission. His ears go a little pink. He takes a sip to pretend he didn’t just do that.
Oscar’s heart does a weird, stupid lurch. He sets his mug down slowly, like he’s making sure his hands don’t betray him again. He looks at Carlos, really looks. Carlos sits very still, giving Oscar space like it’s sacred. Oscar doesn’t know how to do this without turning it into a strategy, without turning it into something he can win.
So he tries a different thing.
He asks, quietly, “Can I—”
Carlos’s eyes widen slightly. “Yes,” he says immediately, then stops himself, flustered. “I mean—what.”
Oscar’s mouth twitches. “Can I kiss you.”
The words are simple. Not a distraction. A question, like a human being. Carlos’s face softens in a way that hurts. He nods once, careful. “Yes,” he says, quiet. “If you want.”
Oscar leans in slowly, giving himself time to change his mind if panic arrives. It doesn’t. Or maybe it does, but it sits in the corner and watches, sulking.
Carlos meets him halfway.
The kiss is soft at first, tentative, like they’re both learning the temperature of something new. Oscar feels Carlos’s hand come up—hesitate—then rest lightly at the side of Oscar’s neck, thumb warm against his skin.
Oscar exhales into it, the relief of gentleness making his head spin.
It’s not the frantic heat from earlier. It’s… a candle. Steady. Warm. Something you can hold your hands over.
Oscar pulls back after a moment, forehead hovering near Carlos’s, like he’s checking whether the room is still real.
Carlos’s lips curve slightly. “Better than water,” he murmurs.
Oscar huffs a laugh against him. “Everything is better than water.”
Carlos smiles, and it’s small and bright, like he’s relieved in a way he doesn’t want to admit. “Okay,” he says again, then groans. “Joder. Sorry.”
Oscar laughs, properly this time—quiet but real—and the sound makes something inside him unclench.
He sits back, still close, and says, with a self-disgusted honesty that feels almost brave, “I don’t know what we’re doing.”
Carlos’s smile softens. “We can go slow,” he says, and he looks at Oscar like he means it. “We can… not decide tonight. We can just—” He gestures vaguely, helpless. “We can try again. If you want.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He thinks about Australia. About leaving. About the instinct to cut everything clean the moment it starts to matter. He thinks about how tired he is of clean cuts.
“Yeah,” he says. “We can try again.”
Carlos’s eyes widen slightly, the same open surprise, like he didn’t expect Oscar to hand him something real.
“Yeah?” Carlos repeats, soft.
Oscar feels warmth rise into his cheeks. He hates himself. He does it anyway. “Yeah.”
Carlos smiles. It’s gentle.
Oscar sits there in Carlos’s apartment in Monaco, coffee cooling on the table, the city glittering outside like it always does, and for the first time in days, the sadness isn’t the only thing in the room. It’s still there. It’s still heavy. But it’s sharing space with laughter and warmth and the fact that Carlos’s hand is still resting lightly at Oscar’s neck like he’s allowed to be held.
Oscar exhales, long and slow, and says, half-muttering, “Don’t ask me if I’m okay again.”
Carlos’s mouth quirks. “I won’t.”
Oscar glances at him. “Promise?”
Carlos nods solemnly. “Promise.”
Oscar’s lips twitch. “Okay.”
Carlos points at him, delighted. “Ah. Now you’re doing it.”
Oscar throws a couch cushion at his face.
Carlos catches it easily, laughing, and for a second it’s so normal Oscar could cry for entirely different reasons.
Carlos drops the cushion, leans in, and kisses Oscar again—quick this time, light, like punctuation.
“Stay a little longer,” Carlos says softly.
Oscar looks at him, then nods once. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”
carcar (carlos x oscar), 5k words, rated M, written for @tkaptains who wanted sad!angry!angsty!oscar after the loss of the championship...i hope i could deliver <3 (i might post this on ao3 later)
summery: The championship is gone, but the anger isn’t and Oscar doesn’t know where to put it except in Carlos’s living room.
Oscar stands in front of Carlos’s door like a person waiting for a dentist appointment: tense, resentful, privately convinced this will end with blood.
The hallway is quiet in that Monaco way. Thick carpet, muted air, money dampening sound. The sea is probably sparkling. The yachts are probably sitting there like smug, white punctuation marks. Monaco does not care that Oscar has spent the last three days feeling like his ribcage is full of static.
His heart jumps into his eyeballs anyway. That’s the annoying thing. His body keeps reacting.
He’s not even holding his phone properly. It’s flat in his palm like an offering. He’s been staring at the lock screen for the entire elevator ride and the stairwell and the too-long hallway walk, watching his own reflection ghost across the glass. The screen is smudged with thumbprints. He looks like someone trying to rub a mistake out of existence.
There are two unread messages from his manager. Four from his mum. A group chat meme that he knows will be about Lando, because his friends think humor is a bandage and they are not wrong, they are just… early.
And one from Carlos, thirty minutes ago, because Carlos is the kind of person who notices absence.
You in Monaco?
Oscar did not reply. That was part of the plan.
The plan, originally, was: stop. Cut it out. Be an adult. Don’t let yourself build anything with a person who can see you. Oscar had been proud of how clean he made it. Proud, like he’d won something. Like he’d finished first in the category of Not Getting Attached.
He hates that word now. Proud.
He hates that he can feel the plan dissolving in his hands, right here, in front of this door.
Oscar lifts his fist. He holds it there, hovering, because his brain is still trying to offer him a good exit.
Turn around. Go home. Get on the plane. Australia. Mum’s kitchen, a cup of tea, a dog sleeping against your shin. Nobody asking you to smile. Nobody asking you to be okay. Nobody asking you anything you can’t answer.
Except the other version of his brain, meaner, more exhausted, whispers: And then what? Sit alone with it?
Oscar’s throat tightens like it heard that and took it personally.
The loss is not a single event in his mind. It’s a loop. It plays in fragments at inconvenient moments: opening a cupboard, looking at a mirror, standing in a hallway like this one. The last race is an involuntary highlight reel, just the worst parts, edited by a petty god. He’ll be buttering toast in six weeks and suddenly his fingers will remember the steering wheel. He’ll be walking down a beach and a corner will appear in his peripheral vision. It has started to feel like the championship didn’t end. Like it’s still happening, somewhere, without him.
And the question Are you okay? has been hunting him, too. It follows him in elevators. It hides in emails. It crouches in conversations like a cat about to pounce.
He’s been asked it by strangers with soft eyes. By Lando trying not to look relieved. By people who want to sound human on camera. He’s been asked it so many times that the words have lost their meaning and become a noise: areyouokayareyouokayareyouokay like a sensor alarm that won’t shut off.
Oscar wants to climb out of his own head. He wants to be a body only. He wants something loud enough to drown out the internal commentary. He wants heat. He wants friction. He wants a few minutes where he isn’t expected to be noble.
He wants Carlos.
And he hates that, too.
Oscar presses the buzzer before he can think better of it.
The sound is stupidly small. A polite little chirp. Like ordering room service. Like asking for a towel. Like he didn’t just choose something horrible.
His heart kicks hard enough he feels it in his fingertips.
He waits.
He can hear movement behind the door—footsteps, a pause, the faint click of a lock. That pause stretches just long enough for Oscar to feel the full stupidity of what he’s doing. Then the door opens.
Carlos is there in a T-shirt and soft pants, hair slightly damp like he’s either showered recently or has been running his hands through it because he can’t sit still. He looks tired, but not wrecked. Carlos looks like a person who has been sleeping, which is rude. Oscar hasn’t slept properly since the last race. He’s been dozing in thin slices, waking up with his jaw clenched like he’s been grinding grief into dust.
Carlos blinks at him. Surprise flickers across his face, quickly smoothed into something careful, like he’s putting a lid on a pot before it boils over.
“Oscar,” Carlos says in his stupid accent.
The Spanish accent is there, noticeable in the warmth of the vowels, the softness in the edges. It makes Oscar’s stomach dip in a way he resents. It would be charming on any other day. Oscar is not in a charming mood.
Oscar’s mouth does the thing it learned in media training: a neutral shape. “Hi,” he says.
Carlos’s gaze flicks over him in one quick scan: the set of his shoulders, the stiff line of his jaw, the fact that he has turned up unannounced after weeks of not answering. Carlos’s eyes linger on Oscar’s face, and Oscar feels the familiar irritation of being read.
“You are in Monaco,” Carlos says.
It’s a fact, said out loud like Carlos is grounding himself.
Oscar shrugs, too casual. “So are you.”
Carlos’s mouth twitches, almost a smile, but it doesn’t arrive. “Yes. I—” He stops, as if he’s about to say something softer. Oscar steps forward before softness can form.
“I need…” The word catches. He forces it out anyway. “A distraction.”
Oscar nods once, stiffly, like he’s signing a contract. “If you don’t want to, I’ll go.”
It’s the line Oscar uses when he wants to pretend he’s giving someone a choice, when really he’s bracing for rejection because rejection is easier than being held. Carlos doesn’t move out of the doorway. He just looks at Oscar, steady and quiet, like he’s trying to decide whether this is desire or desperation wearing desire’s clothes.
Oscar hates the assessment. Oscar hates that Carlos can do it.
After a beat, Carlos steps back.
“Come in,” he says. “Vale.”
Oscar steps inside.
The apartment smells like laundry and citrus and something faintly sweet, like a candle that’s been doing its best. There’s evidence of a life continuing: shoes by the door, a jacket over a chair, a glass near the sink. It makes Oscar feel absurdly angry, like the world keeps moving even when he’s been nailed to a moment.
Carlos closes the door behind him.
Oscar turns and kisses him. It’s fast and angry, like Oscar is trying to start a fire by friction alone. Carlos makes a small surprised sound—more breath than voice—and then kisses back automatically, hands finding Oscar’s waist in a familiar grip that makes Oscar’s chest ache.
The ache is inconvenient. Oscar shoves it down by moving faster.
He presses Carlos back a step, then another, steering him by the shoulders like Oscar needs to be in control of something, anything, even if it’s just the angle of Carlos’s body in his own living room. Carlos yields because Carlos is good at yielding. Carlos has always been good at giving Oscar what Oscar asks for.
Oscar wants it hot. He wants it mindless. He wants it to be loud enough that he can’t hear the season. He drags his mouth over Carlos’s, biting down on any softness. He feels Carlos’s hands tighten. He feels Carlos breathe his name against his lips.
“Oscar,” Carlos murmurs, and it sounds like a warning dressed as affection.
Oscar hates warnings. Oscar hates being reminded that consequences exist. He grips Carlos’s shirt and pulls, impatient, trying to turn the moment into something purely physical. His pulse is loud. His fingers tremble a little, and he’s furious about it, so he grips harder.
Then Carlos stops. Just… stillness. A shift of pressure: one hand firm around Oscar’s wrist, the other at his cheek, steadying him.
Oscar blinks, irritated, breath sharp. “What—”
Carlos’s eyes search his, quick and thorough, like he’s reading telemetry.
“Hey,” Carlos says quietly.
Oscar’s chest tightens. The word is too gentle. It feels like being approached by someone holding a blanket. Carlos’s thumb brushes Oscar’s cheekbone, grounding him in a way that makes Oscar’s skin prickle.
“Are you okay?” Carlos asks.
Oscar feels the question hit his sternum like a thrown rock.
It’s ridiculous. It’s four words. It’s a normal thing to ask. It’s what you say when someone looks wrong. Carlos is allowed. Carlos means it. That’s the problem. Carlos means it.
Oscar laughs once, ugly. “Don’t.”
Carlos frowns. “Do not ask?”
“Yes,” Oscar snaps, and the anger flares fast enough to cover the sudden sting behind his eyes. “Don’t ask me that. I’m sick of that question.”
Carlos goes still. The warmth drains out of his face like someone turned off a light.
“It is… a normal question,” Carlos says carefully. The accent thickens just a little at the edges when he’s irritated, when he stops smoothing himself down. “From someone who is not a stranger.”
Oscar’s jaw clenches. He hates the not-a-stranger part most of all.
“I didn’t come here for this,” Oscar says. “I didn’t come here to—” He gestures, furious at the concept of concern. “Talk.”
Carlos’s mouth tightens. “You came here to use me.”
Oscar’s head jerks up. “I didn’t—”
Carlos’s eyes flash. “You did. You said it. Distraction.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He hates being quoted. He hates being pinned to his own words like they’re evidence. He hates so much lately.
“I came here because I wanted—” Oscar stops. He can’t say you without making it sound like a confession. He can’t say sex without making it sound like a weapon. He chooses the flattest version, because flat feels safe. “I came here because I didn’t want to think.”
Carlos exhales sharply through his nose. “And you think I am what. A button you press to stop your brain.”
Oscar’s anger spikes. “You’re being dramatic.”
Carlos’s eyebrows lift. “Me?”
Oscar takes a step back, creating space because space is needed. “You are the one who stopped.”
Carlos’s gaze holds his. “Yes.”
Oscar laughs bitterly. “Right. So what’s the plan? You stop and you ask me if I’m okay and then I tell you my feelings and then you give me a glass of water and we all grow as people.”
Carlos’s jaw flexes. “Do not do that.”
“Do what?”
“Mock,” Carlos says, and his voice is low and tight. “Be cruel.”
Oscar feels a flare of shame, quick and hot, and he hates shame even more than he hates pity. Shame is how you end up apologizing for needing anything.
“I’m not being cruel,” Oscar lies. “I’m being honest.”
Carlos’s mouth twists. “Honest would be telling me why you are here after you—” He stops himself, breath catching. “After you cut me off.”
Oscar’s stomach drops. The words land with a weight that makes the room feel smaller.
“I didn’t cut you off.”
Carlos’s gaze sharpens. “Oscar. You did. You stopped answering. You stopped looking at me. You stopped fucking m—” He breaks off, frustrated, and a soft swear slips out under his breath, almost involuntary. “Joder.”
Oscar’s hands curl into fists at his sides. “I was busy.”
Carlos’s eyes narrow. “Busy.”
Oscar hears himself. He hears how thin he sounds. It makes him furious. “Yes. It was the season. And it was… complicated.”
Carlos’s expression tightens. “Complicated how.”
Oscar’s heart thuds hard. He looks away, because looking at Carlos is dangerous. Carlos has eyes that invite honesty. Oscar is trying to survive on dishonesty right now.
“It didn’t need to be anything,” Oscar says, voice flat. “It was just a thing.”
Carlos flinches, just barely, like the phrase caught on something tender.
“Just a thing,” Carlos repeats. “Okay.”
Oscar snaps his eyes back to him, annoyed at the quiet. Quiet is worse than shouting because quiet means Carlos is actually listening.
“I’m not saying it was bad,” Oscar says, too fast. “It was—fine. It was good. It was hot. Whatever. That doesn’t mean it needed to keep happening.”
Carlos’s gaze is steady. “And now you want it to happen again.”
Oscar’s face heats. “Because I need—”
Carlos’s eyebrows lift. “Need.”
Oscar’s mouth tightens. He hates that word in his mouth. He hates the way it makes him sound like he’s begging.
“I lost,” Oscar says, and the words come out harsher than he intends. “Okay? I lost. And I’m tired. And I don’t want to talk about it. And I didn’t come here to have a conversation about the moral implications of—” He gestures vaguely at them, at the air, at the fact that Carlos is still holding his wrist like an anchor. “This.”
Carlos’s grip loosens. He lets Oscar’s wrist go, slowly, like he’s trying not to startle him.
“I am not asking you for a moral lesson,” Carlos says. “I am asking you if you are okay because you look like you are about to—” He stops, searching for a word that won’t make Oscar flinch. “You look… not good.”
Oscar laughs, sharp. “Oh, brilliant. Thank you. I hadn’t noticed.”
Carlos’s eyes flash. “Oscar.”
“What?” Oscar snaps.
Carlos’s accent deepens as his patience frays. “You came here. You kissed me. And then you get angry that I notice.”
Oscar’s chest tightens so hard he feels briefly nauseous.
“You’re not entitled to notice,” Oscar says, and he hates himself the moment he says it because it’s unfair and it’s not even true. He’s just trying to build a wall out of words.
Carlos’s mouth twists. “What do you want me to say.”
Oscar opens his mouth. Nothing comes out. The truth is too big. The lie is too thin.
He wants Carlos to stop asking. He wants Carlos to hold him. He wants Carlos to want him without seeing him. He wants the impossible.
Oscar’s throat burns.
“Just—” he says, and it comes out rough. “Just… don’t.”
Carlos watches him for a long second. The silence between them hums, tense. Then Carlos turns slightly away, rubbing a hand over his face like he’s trying to reset himself.
“I cannot,” Carlos says quietly. “I can’t just… do it, Oscar, when you look like this.”
Oscar’s anger flares again because there it is: the refusal. The boundary.
“So you’re rejecting me,” Oscar says, voice sharp.
Carlos’s eyes snap to him, offended. “No.”
“It feels like it,” Oscar says, and he hears how childish it sounds. He can't help that his voice wobbles for half a second.
Carlos exhales slowly. “I am not rejecting you. I am refusing to—” He searches for the English words, frustrated. “To take you when you are using it to… not feel.”
Oscar’s hands shake. He curls them tighter into fists, nails biting into his palms like he can anchor himself by pain.
“I am feeling,” Oscar snaps. “I’m feeling angry. I’m feeling—” He stops because sad is a word he refuses to say out loud. Sad feels like surrender. Sad feels like acceptance. Oscar is not ready to accept anything. Carlos’s gaze softens a fraction and Oscar hates it so much he could scream.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Oscar says.
Carlos’s brows draw together. “Like what.”
“Like you’re sorry for me,” Oscar spits.
Carlos’s expression hardens. “I am not sorry for you.”
“Everyone is,” Oscar says, and the bitterness in his voice surprises him with how deep it goes. “Everyone keeps—” He makes a vague gesture, imitating softness, imitating concern. “And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being consoled. I’m sick of being told it’s inspiring. I’m sick of being patted on the head because I came third like it’s a participation medal.”
Carlos’s jaw clenches. “You do not think you deserve comfort.”
Oscar laughs, sharp and humorless. “I didn’t say that.”
“You do not have to,” Carlos says.
Oscar feels the sting behind his eyes sharpen. He blinks hard, furious at his body.
Carlos takes a small step back, giving space again. “Sit,” he says, gesturing toward the couch.
Oscar recoils instinctively. “No.”
Carlos’s voice is careful. “Oscar—”
“No,” Oscar repeats, louder, because sitting feels like admitting weakness. Sitting feels like letting it land.
Carlos’s gaze holds his, steady. “Okay. Then stand. But stop fighting me like I am the enemy.”
Oscar’s breath catches. He wants to say something cruel again. He wants to throw a line that will make Carlos flinch so Oscar can feel powerful for two seconds. Instead, he hears himself say, raw and sharp: “I don’t know what to do with it.”
Carlos’s face changes—softening, immediately, and Oscar can't look at it because it means Carlos heard the truth.
“With what,” Carlos asks, quieter.
Oscar’s throat tightens. He swallows hard. “With losing.”
The word hangs there, ugly. Carlos doesn’t flinch. He nods once, slow. “Okay.”
Oscar’s jaw clenches. “Don’t ‘okay’ that either.”
Carlos’s mouth twists, almost a smile, but it doesn’t arrive. “I am sorry. It is—” He shrugs a little, helpless. “It is what you do when someone tells you something you believe.”
Oscar’s chest aches. He looks away. The apartment feels too bright suddenly, even though the curtains are half drawn. Monaco light gets in everywhere. It’s greedy.
“I keep thinking,” Oscar says, voice rough, “that if I’d done one thing different—one corner, if I didn't switch like the good boy they wanted me to be, one—” He stops because his throat is closing. He swallows hard. “And then people tell me it was a great season and I want to—” He makes a small, violent motion with his hand, like snapping something.
Carlos’s voice is quiet. “Yeah.”
Oscar laughs, broken. “And then I feel like a terrible person, because Lando—” He stops. His throat tightens. “He deserved it. He drove well. He—” He can’t say I’m happy for him because he isn’t, not cleanly. He can only manage: “And I still feel like biting him. With Max it's different. You know it's different with him, because you drove against him. He is different.”
Carlos nods once, as if that’s the most normal confession in the world. “Yeah. That is… normal.”
Oscar’s laugh turns bitter. “Everything is normal, apparently.”
Carlos’s gaze stays steady. “Oscar.”
Oscar flinches at his name in that tone—gentle, careful—and the sting behind his eyes finally breaks. A tear slips down his cheek before he can stop it. Oscar freezes, horrified. It’s a small betrayal, but it feels catastrophic. He wipes it away immediately with the heel of his hand like it’s dirt.
“Don’t,” he says, voice rough.
Carlos doesn’t move closer. Thank god. He just watches, expression tight with restraint, like he knows pity would insult Oscar more than cruelty.
“I am not doing anything,” Carlos says quietly.
“You’re looking,” Oscar snaps, because looking is unbearable.
Carlos’s voice is steady. “Yes. I am.”
Oscar’s breath shudders. Another tear threatens. He hates it. He hates his body for doing this here, in Carlos’s living room, after he came with a plan to feel nothing. It's thge first time he allows himself to feel hate in a long time.
He turns away sharply, as if he can outrun his own face.
“This is why I ended it between us,” Oscar says, and his voice shakes with anger again because anger is the only thing he can hold without breaking.
Carlos’s brows lift slightly. “Because I look at you.”
“Because you make it—” Oscar gestures, frustrated, searching for the word. “Because you make it real.”
Carlos’s gaze sharpens. “You made it real.”
Oscar’s head jerks back. “I didn’t—”
“You did,” Carlos says, and now there’s real anger in his voice, controlled but unmistakable. The accent thickens around the edges. “You do not get to act like I invented feelings, Oscar. You do not get to—” He cuts himself off, breath tight. “Joder.”
Oscar’s heart thuds. He hates hearing Carlos swear; it always means Carlos is close to saying something he can’t take back. Oscar’s instinct is to run. He’s been practicing that. Avoidance as cardio. Instead he snaps, because snapping is easier than admitting he’s scared.
“I came here for a distraction,” Oscar says again, deliberately. Weaponizing the word. “If you don’t want to be that, fine.”
Carlos’s eyes flash. “Do not talk about me like I am—”
“Like you’re what,” Oscar challenges, voice sharp.
Carlos’s jaw tightens. “Like I am a thing you use when you can’t stand yourself.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. The sentence lands too close to the truth.
Oscar’s anger surges, desperate. “Then don’t be perceptive,” he says, and it’s a ridiculous accusation, but he throws it anyway. “Just—do what you always do.”
Carlos stares at him, disbelieving. “You ended it.”
Oscar’s chest aches. “Yes.”
Carlos’s voice is low. “And now you want it back.”
Oscar’s mouth twists. “Yes.”
Carlos exhales slowly, as if he’s trying to stay calm. “Do you hear yourself.”
Oscar’s eyes sting again. He blinks hard. “I don’t care.”
Carlos’s face tightens. “You do care. That is the whole problem.”
Oscar’s breath catches. He can't believe that Carlos can say that so calmly. He despises that Carlos is right. The sadness in the room is heavy now, pressing down. Oscar can feel it trying to settle into him. He doesn’t want it. He wants to keep moving. He wants heat. He wants noise. He wants anything else. Oscar steps forward suddenly, closing the distance, trying to turn the conversation back into something physical because physical is simpler. He reaches for Carlos’s shirt again, as if they can rewind to the moment before the question.
Carlos catches his hands.
It's firm.
“Oscar,” Carlos says, and his voice is tight. “No.”
The word hits like a slap.
Oscar’s anger flares white-hot. “So you are rejecting me.”
Carlos’s eyes flash. “I am rejecting this. I’m—” He lets out a breath, frustrated. “I am not going to let you break yourself on me.”
Oscar stares at him, breath ragged. “Who asked you to be my therapist.”
Carlos’s mouth tightens. “Nobody. But I am not stupid.”
Oscar laughs, sharp, cruel. “Congratulations.”
Carlos’s gaze hardens. “Stop.”
Oscar’s voice rises a fraction, finally. “Stop what?”
“Stop trying to punish yourself,” Carlos says, and his accent catches slightly on the consonants, the words coming faster. “Stop coming here to— to make hurt less for five minutes and then leaving me with the mess.”
Oscar’s stomach drops. The sentence is too true, too direct. It makes Oscar feel exposed. The tears threaten again. Oscar hates them. He hates that his body is taking sides. He goes for the sharpest defense he has: he attacks.
“I didn’t ask you to care,” Oscar says.
Carlos flinches. Just barely. Oscar sees it. The flinch lands in his gut like guilt. He detests guilt. Carlos’s voice drops, quiet and dangerous. “You can’t stop someone from caring by pretending it is not there.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He swallows hard. “We weren’t—”
Carlos cuts him off. “Do not.”
Oscar’s eyes snap up. “Don’t what.”
“Do not insult me,” Carlos says, and his voice is calm, which is worse than shouting. “Do not come into my home after weeks of silence and pretend what we had was nothing.”
Oscar’s breath catches. His chest aches. The word home feels intimate in a way that makes his skin prickle. He wants to say, It wasn’t nothing. He wants to say, That’s the problem. He wants to say, I stopped because I started to feel something and I didn’t want another thing I could lose.
Instead, he says the cowardly version.
“It was just sex,” Oscar says flatly.
The words hang there like a slap.
Carlos’s face goes very still. Then a small, pained smile flickers and disappears.
“Sure,” Carlos says softly, and the softness is brutal. “If it was just sex, why did you stop answering me.”
Oscar’s mouth goes dry.
He looks away, staring at a spot on the wall like it’s interesting. There’s a framed print—something abstract, tasteful. Monaco art: expensive and meaningless. Oscar would like to throw it out a window.
“I stopped,” Oscar says, voice rough, “because it was getting complicated.”
Carlos’s voice is quiet. “Complicated for who.”
Oscar laughs bitterly. “For me.”
Carlos nods once, slow. “Okay.”
Oscar snaps, anger spiking again because he can’t stand the calm. “Stop saying okay like you’re—like you’re—”
“Like I am what,” Carlos asks.
Oscar’s voice breaks on the truth and he hates it. “Like you’re better at this than me.”
Carlos stares at him for a long second. Then he says, quietly, “I am not better, querido. I am just… I do not run as fast.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He swallows hard. The silence between them is heavy.
Oscar’s chest aches with the urge to confess and the urge to flee. Two instincts pulling in opposite directions until he feels like he might tear. Carlos moves first—not toward Oscar, but toward the kitchen. He gets a glass of water. The clink of it is unbearably domestic. Oscar is irritated how normal it sounds, like this is what people do when someone is falling apart: they offer water. As if hydration is the solution.
Carlos sets the glass on the coffee table within Oscar’s reach, not in his hand. Carlos is annoyingly respectful even when he’s furious.
Then Carlos sits— in the armchair opposite, leaving space like a gift.
Oscar stands there, breathing too fast, staring at the water like it might bite him.
“I did not come here to cry,” Oscar says, voice rough, as if that’s the worst part.
Carlos’s mouth twists. “I did not ask you to cry.”
Oscar huffs a laugh that turns into something dangerously close to a sob. He clamps down on it. “I came here because I didn’t want to be—” He stops. The word alone catches in his throat.
Carlos’s gaze stays steady. “Alone.”
Oscar’s shoulders tense. He swallows hard. “Everyone keeps asking me if I’m okay,” Oscar says suddenly, and the words come out like a confession he’s been choking on. “And I don’t know what they want me to say. Do they want me to say yes so they can stop feeling awkward. Do they want me to say no so they can feel like a good person for asking.”
Carlos’s voice is quiet. “And when I asked.”
Oscar’s mouth twists. “When you asked, it felt like—” He stops, searching. He can’t say it felt like you could see through me. He can’t say it felt like you’d make me answer honestly. He settles for the ugly truth. “It felt like pressure.”
Carlos nods slowly. “Okay.”
Oscar glares. “Stop.”
Carlos’s eyebrows lift. “What do you want me to say, Oscar.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. “I don’t know.”
Carlos leans forward slightly, elbows on his knees, voice careful. “Then tell me what you do not want.”
Oscar laughs, broken. “Everything.”
Carlos’s mouth twitches. “That is not helpful.”
Oscar wipes his face again, furious at the wetness. “I don’t want pity. I don’t want consolation. I don’t want to be told it’s fine because it’s not fine. I don’t want—” His voice cracks. He swallows hard. “I don’t want to feel like I’m going to carry this forever.”
Carlos’s gaze softens and Oscar can't look at it because it makes the sting behind his eyes worse.
Carlos’s voice is gentle, but not pitying. “You will carry it,” he says. “But not like this.”
Oscar’s laugh is bitter. “How would you know.”
“Because I have lost things.”
Oscar’s chest aches. He knows Carlos has. Careers are built on loss. Every driver carries a museum of almosts.
Oscar’s mouth twists. “This one was… close.”
Carlos nods once. “Yes, Oscar.”
Oscar looks down at his own hands. They’re shaking again. Small tremors. He curls them into fists, nails biting in. Pain as anchor. He feels suddenly, sharply, tired. Like the last three days have been him holding a plank position in his own skull and he can’t do it anymore.
Oscar’s voice comes out small, despite himself. “I didn’t want to lose you too.”
The sentence hangs there like a dropped glass. Shattering quietly. Oscar’s heart slams. He didn’t mean to say that. He didn’t mean to say anything that true.
Carlos goes very still.
For a beat, the apartment feels like it’s holding its breath. Then Carlos exhales slowly. “Ah,” he says, soft.
Oscar’s throat tightens. He looks away, staring at the water. He doesn’t drink. Drinking would feel like accepting care.
“I know,” Carlos says quietly. “I—” He stops, searching. His voice roughens a little. “I know you did not stop because you were bored.”
Oscar’s eyes burn. He blinks hard. “Don’t make it sound romantic.”
Carlos huffs a small laugh, humorless. “It is not romantic, Oscar. It is—” He gestures vaguely, frustrated by language. “Is stupid... human.”
Oscar’s breath shudders. The sadness is finally catching up. It chose this moment. He came here to avoid feeling. Instead he has said the one sentence that cracks him open. Carlos’s voice is gentle, but firm. “You can be angry here,” he says. “You can be sad. You can—” He hesitates, then adds, quieter, “You can be a mess. But don’t pretend you don’t care. Not to me.”
Oscar’s chest aches. He swallows hard. “I don’t know how to do this,” he admits, and his voice breaks on the last word.
Carlos’s gaze holds his. “I know.”
Oscar laughs, broken. “You keep saying you know.”
Carlos’s mouth twitches. “Because I do.”
Oscar wipes his face again. He feels humiliated by the tears. He hates that Carlos isn’t reacting like it’s pathetic. Carlos is treating it like weather: unpleasant, real, not shameful.
Oscar’s voice comes out ragged. “I came here because I thought if I could… if I could have you, I could forget.”
Carlos’s face tightens with something like pain. “And did it work.”
Oscar shakes his head, small. “For a minute.”
Carlos nods once, slow. “Okay.”
Oscar glares through tears. “Stop.”
Carlos’s mouth twists, almost a smile, but it doesn’t arrive. “Sorry.”
Oscar’s shoulders slump slightly, the fight draining out of him in exhausted trickles. “I am going to Australia,” he says, because he needs to say something practical, something solid. “Tomorrow. Or the next day. I don’t even know. My calendar is—” He gestures vaguely. “My calendar hates me.”
Carlos huffs a quiet laugh at that. “Yeah.”
Oscar swallows hard. “And I thought… I thought I should cut you out. Cleanly. Because if I keep…” He stops. He can’t say if I keep wanting you. He can’t say if I keep letting you in. He tries again. “Because if I keep doing this, it becomes another thing I can’t control.”
Carlos’s gaze softens. “Oscar.”
Oscar flinches at his name again. “Don’t make it—”
Carlos interrupts, voice gentle but firm. “I am not making it anything. It already is.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He sits down suddenly on the edge of the couch, as if his legs have decided to quit. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the floor.
He feels small. He doesn't like feeling small. The silence stretches. Oscar can hear his own breathing. He can hear Monaco outside, continuing to exist as if it hasn’t ruined him.
Carlos stays where he is. He just… stays. It’s infuriatingly kind.
Oscar’s voice is quiet. “I don’t want you to think you’re—” He swallows hard. “Disposable.”
Carlos’s breath catches slightly. “Okay.”
Oscar lets out a broken laugh. “You’re doing it again.”
Carlos’s mouth twists. “Sorry. It is… I am trying not to say the wrong thing.”
Oscar looks up at him, eyes burning. “There is no right thing.”
Carlos nods once. “Yeah. I know.”
Oscar’s chest aches at the repetition. He wipes his face again, dragging his sleeve across his cheek like he’s trying to erase evidence.
“I’m angry,” Oscar says, as if confessing a crime. “All the time. I’m angry when I wake up. I’m angry when I eat. I’m angry when someone says his name. I’m angry when someone says my name. I’m angry at—” He laughs bitterly. “I’m angry at the sun.”
Carlos huffs a small, surprised laugh. “The sun.”
“It’s too cheerful,” Oscar says, dead serious.
Carlos’s eyes soften. “Yeah.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He stares at the floor. The anger he’s been living in for days feels suddenly like a thin shell, and underneath it is grief—soft, enormous, unavoidable.
Oscar’s voice drops. “I wanted it,” he says, and that’s the saddest sentence in the world because it’s so simple. “I wanted it so badly.”
Carlos’s face shifts, pained. He nods once. “I know.”
Oscar’s breath shudders. He feels another tear slip. He doesn’t wipe it this time. He’s too tired to keep fighting his own face.
He says, very quietly, “And now I don’t know what to do with myself.”
Carlos just says, gentle and steady, “You don’t have to know tonight.”
Oscar looks up, eyes wet, and something in his chest twists because that’s all he’s wanted: permission to not solve it immediately.
Why does it have to come from Carlos. And why does it feels like relief.
Oscar’s voice cracks. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
Carlos’s mouth tightens. “Maybe.”
Oscar laughs, broken. “Helpful.”
Carlos’s expression softens. “I am so glad you came, Oscar,” he admits quietly, and then adds quickly, as if to correct himself, “Not like that. Not to—” He gestures vaguely, frustrated. “But I am glad you are here.”
Oscar’s throat tightens hard enough it hurts. He looks away because if he looks at Carlos too long, he’ll fall into something he can’t climb out of. He whispers, rough, “I don’t know what we are.”
“We do not have to decide right now.”
“That sounds like you’re being nice.”
Carlos’s gaze sharpens. “I’m being honest.”
Oscar swallows hard. “You’re annoyingly good at that.”
Carlos huffs a small laugh. “I know.”
Oscar snorts despite himself, and the sound comes out wet and pathetic. He wipes his nose with the back of his hand, furious at his body.
Carlos’s voice is quiet. “Drink the water.”
Oscar glances at the glass like it’s an enemy. Then, because he is exhausted and because fighting everything is getting old, he reaches for it and takes a sip.
The water is cold. It tastes like nothing. It is, annoyingly, grounding. He sets it down again.
Oscar’s voice is small. “I’m sorry I—” He stops. He can’t say used you without choking. He tries again. “I’m sorry I came here like that.”
Carlos nods once, slow. “Okay.”
Oscar glares weakly. “Stop.”
Carlos’s mouth twists into a real smile this time—small, tired, fond in a way that hurts. “I cannot help it,” he says, the accent rounding the words. “It is my coping.”
Oscar’s chest aches again, but this time it’s softer. Less sharp. He looks at Carlos, really looks, and sees the tiredness there too. Sees the way Carlos is holding himself still like he’s trying not to make Oscar bolt. Sees the restraint. The care.
“You’re leaving soon,” he says, because he needs to say something that won’t make him cry again.
Carlos nods. “Yeah. A few days.”
Oscar nods too. “Right.”
Silence settles again. Not as heavy. Still sad, but less jagged.
Oscar knows, with a dull certainty, that he will still go to Australia. He will still get on the plane. He will still sit in an economy seat pretending he doesn’t know how to be famous in public. He will still land and be looked at by people who love him and feel the loss like a bruise. And he knows this moment won’t fix anything. It’s not that kind of story. It’s not a montage. It’s not a neat resolution.
Oscar’s voice is quiet. “If I leave tomorrow,” he says, and his throat tightens, “will you… be angry.”
“I’m already angry,” he says, then softens. “But not at you for leaving. I get it.”
Oscar swallows hard. “Will you… stop talking to me.”
Carlos’s gaze sharpens. “Is that what you want.”
Oscar’s chest aches. He shakes his head, small. “No.”
Carlos nods once. “Then no.”
Oscar’s breath catches. He looks away quickly because the relief feels too close to gratitude and gratitude feels like debt.
He whispers, rough, “Okay.”
Carlos huffs a small laugh. “There,” he says. “Now you are doing it.”
Oscar manages a watery snort. “Shut up.”
Carlos’s smile is tired and gentle. “No.”
Oscar’s eyes sting again. He blinks hard, fighting it, but the sadness is stubborn. It sits in his chest like a weight.
He says, very quietly, “I thought if I came here, I wouldn’t feel it.”
Carlos’s voice is soft. “And now.”
“Now I feel it more.”
“Yeah.”
Oscar laughs once, broken. “Great.”
Carlos’s eyes stay on him, steady. “It will pass,” he says, and then adds quickly, because he can hear how that sounds, “Not completely. But it won’t be like this forever.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He nods, because he can’t speak without breaking again. At some point, Oscar stands. Slowly, like he’s not sure his legs will work.
Carlos looks up at him, cautious. “You going.”
Oscar nods. “Yeah.”
Carlos’s mouth tightens. “Okay.”
Oscar’s lips twitch in something like a smile and something like grief. “Stop.”
Carlos’s expression softens. “Text me when you land,” he says, and it’s not a demand. It’s not a claim. It’s just… a thread offered.
Oscar’s chest aches. He nods again. “Okay.”
He walks to the door. His hand hovers on the handle. His palm is damp. His heartbeat is loud enough to be embarrassing. He doesn’t turn the handle because turning it would mean stepping back into Monaco—into the sun, the yachts, the questions. Into people’s faces doing that careful thing where they pretend they’re not afraid he’ll say something ugly.
Behind him, Carlos is still in the armchair.
“I didn’t come here to talk,” Oscar says again, because he is childish like that.
“I know,” Carlos answers, soft.
Oscar exhales through his nose. His throat burns. He keeps his hand on the handle anyway, as if contact alone can count as leaving.
He doesn’t want to go.
That thought arrives and stays. He doesn’t want to step out into the hallway and be alone with his brain again. He doesn’t want to go home and stare at his ceiling like it’s going to explain why a few points can ruin your appetite. He doesn’t want to disappear, either. Not like this.
He turns halfway. “If I… stay for a bit,” he says, voice rough, “you’re not going to—”
Carlos’s brows lift. “Ask you if you are okay?”
Oscar’s mouth twists. “Yeah.”
“Okay. I won’t.”
Oscar blinks. “Just like that.”
Carlos shrugs, a little helpless. “Just like that, no? You asked.”
It’s so simple Oscar almost gets angry again, just on principle. Then he realizes his anger is tired. It wants to sit down. It wants to stop performing. Oscar releases the door handle. His hand tingles like he’s cut a wire. He turns back to the room as if he’s pretending he didn’t almost leave. “I’ll stay,” he says, and the sentence is smaller than it should be, like he’s trying not to spook himself.
Carlos’s expression changes—quick, bright relief that he tries to hide, because Carlos is also not in the mood to make this a spectacle.
“Okay,” Carlos says, and then immediately grimaces like he’s heard himself. “Sorry. I—” He rubs his face. “I said it again.”
Oscar huffs a laugh despite himself. It’s barely a laugh. More like air escaping. But it counts.
“You’re addicted,” Oscar says.
Carlos’s mouth quirks. “It is my coping.”
Oscar rolls his eyes and walks back to the couch, sitting this time with less stiffness, like his bones have stopped bracing for impact. He stares at the glass of water on the table like it’s a dare.
He reaches for it, takes a sip. And then he immediately swallows wrong. He coughs, sharp and undignified. Water goes down the wrong pipe. His throat spasms like it’s trying to eject him from his own body. He bends forward, coughing hard, eyes stinging, suddenly choking on nothing like he’s never learned how to drink.
It’s absurd. It’s humiliating. It’s the least heroic thing he’s done all week.
Carlos is out of the chair in a second, halfway across the room, alarm flashing through him like a dashboard light.
Oscar lifts a hand, wheezing. “It's fine—”
Carlos freezes mid-step like he’s been shouted at by a traffic marshal. His hands hover in the air, useless. His face does a whole complicated series of expressions—concern, restraint, guilt, are you okay choking back down his own throat. Oscar coughs again, and then, finally, the obstruction clears. His lungs pull in air like they’re grateful to be alive.
He sits up, blinking.
Carlos is standing there, tense, hands still half-raised like he’s about to catch Oscar if gravity decides to be rude.
Oscar wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes are watering. His face is hot. He looks, objectively, ridiculous.
Carlos stares at him for a beat, fighting his own instincts, then says carefully, like he’s defusing a bomb, “So. The water. Not your friend.”
Oscar’s laugh comes out before he can stop it—realer than the earlier huff, a startled sound that surprises him with its own existence. He laughs again, shorter, because it’s either laugh or cry and he’s already sick of crying.
Carlos’s shoulders drop with visible relief, and the relief is contagious. His mouth twitches, then he cracks, too—this quiet, breathy laugh that makes him look younger. Less composed. More human. Oscar shakes his head, wiping his eyes. “I’m—” He coughs once, glaring at the water like it personally betrayed him. “I’m fine.”
Carlos points at him accusingly. “Don’t.”
Oscar snorts. “Shut up.”
Carlos’s smile widens despite himself. “Okay,” he says automatically, then winces. “Sorry.”
Oscar laughs again, and it feels strange. Like finding a familiar object in a house that burned down. Carlos sits on the edge of the coffee table, not too close, but closer than before. “You were very brave,” he says, deadpan, as if Oscar has survived a war and not a sip of water.
Oscar wipes his face again, still smiling unwillingly. “Yeah. Call the FIA. Tell them I fought valiantly.”
Carlos’s accent warms the sentence when he says, “We will add it to your highlights.”
Oscar’s laugh softens into something quieter, and in the quiet there’s a tender ache. He looks down at his hands. They’ve stopped shaking, for the moment. Or maybe he just doesn’t notice because his chest isn’t full of knives right this second.
Carlos shifts, glancing at Oscar like he’s checking a weather forecast. “Do you want… coffee?” he asks, careful. “Or something that is not—” he nods at the water with suspicion “—trying to kill you.”
Oscar’s lips twitch. “Coffee's fine.”
Carlos stands, heads toward the kitchen, then pauses like he’s remembered something. “Milk?”
Oscar blinks. It’s such a normal question. A question that belongs to normal life, not to whatever wreckage Oscar’s been dragging around.
“Yeah,” Oscar says, voice softer. “Milk.”
Carlos nods once, like this is important intelligence. He disappears into the kitchen. Oscar hears cupboards open, the soft clink of a spoon, the coffee machine. Domestic noises. The kind that make you feel like the world hasn’t ended, even if you’re pretty sure it did.
Oscar stares at the couch cushion beside him. It has a tiny wrinkle in it, the fabric slightly pulled where he sat earlier like a statue. He smooths it absentmindedly, then stops, because why is he making the couch neat, who is he trying to impress, the couch?
His phone buzzes in his pocket.
He doesn’t look.
He sits there with his hands empty and realizes, with a dull surprise, that he can feel the loss and also feel… this. The warmth of a room. The normality of a coffee machine. The faint sting in his throat from choking on water like a clown.
Maybe there’s room in him for more than one thing.
Carlos returns with two mugs. One of them is plain. The other one says FER in big letters, like it’s a half-finished tattoo.
Oscar stares at it. “What is that—”
Carlos looks down at the mug like he’s just noticed it exists. “It was a gift,” he says, sheepish. “From someone. I don’t know.”
“That’s not even a word,” Oscar says.
“It is almost a word,” Carlos argues. “Like you.”
Oscar makes a wounded sound. “Oh my god.”
Carlos sets the mugs down, smiling. “Too soon?”
Oscar shakes his head, smiling despite himself. “You’re horrible.”
“I am funny,” Carlos corrects, and then adds, softer, “I am trying.”
Oscar’s smile falters for a second at the gentleness in that.
He takes the plain mug. Carlos takes the FER one like he’s accepting his punishment. They sit—Oscar on the couch, Carlos on the armchair again, but angled closer now, his knee almost touching the edge of the couch if Oscar leans.
They sip. The coffee is hot. The milk makes it taste like home in a way Oscar wasn’t prepared for.
Carlos clears his throat. “I won’t ask,” he says quietly. “But… if you want to tell me anything, I can listen. And if you do not, we can—” He gestures vaguely at the room, the mugs, the absurd mug situation. “We can just exist.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He stares into his coffee like the surface might show him a better version of himself.
“I don’t want to be inspirational,” Oscar says, low. “I don’t want to be—” He searches for the word and it comes out ugly. “Gracious.”
Carlos’s eyes soften. “Okay.”
Oscar points at him with his mug. “Careful.”
Carlos’s mouth twitches. “Sorry. I mean—” He takes a breath. “You do not have to be anything. Not here.”
Oscar’s chest aches again. He swallows. His voice comes out smaller. “I’m so angry.”
Carlos nods, slow. “Yeah.”
“And I’m tired of people treating the anger like it’s… inappropriate,” Oscar says. “Like the correct emotion is acceptance.”
Carlos’s accent curls around the consonants when he says, “Acceptance is overrated.”
Oscar’s laugh is quiet, surprised. “Is it.”
Carlos shrugs. “Sometimes you accept later.”
Oscar looks down at his mug. His hands are steady. He hates that noticing it makes him want to cry again.
He says, carefully, “I didn’t come here to be… like this.”
Carlos’s gaze holds his. “I know.”
Oscar’s jaw tightens. “I came here to—”
“I know,” Carlos says again, firmer, and then, because he can’t help himself, adds, “And I still wanted you to stay.”
Oscar’s breath catches. He looks up. Carlos looks almost embarrassed, as if he’s said something too honest without permission. His ears go a little pink. He takes a sip to pretend he didn’t just do that.
Oscar’s heart does a weird, stupid lurch. He sets his mug down slowly, like he’s making sure his hands don’t betray him again. He looks at Carlos, really looks. Carlos sits very still, giving Oscar space like it’s sacred. Oscar doesn’t know how to do this without turning it into a strategy, without turning it into something he can win.
So he tries a different thing.
He asks, quietly, “Can I—”
Carlos’s eyes widen slightly. “Yes,” he says immediately, then stops himself, flustered. “I mean—what.”
Oscar’s mouth twitches. “Can I kiss you.”
The words are simple. Not a distraction. A question, like a human being. Carlos’s face softens in a way that hurts. He nods once, careful. “Yes,” he says, quiet. “If you want.”
Oscar leans in slowly, giving himself time to change his mind if panic arrives. It doesn’t. Or maybe it does, but it sits in the corner and watches, sulking.
Carlos meets him halfway.
The kiss is soft at first, tentative, like they’re both learning the temperature of something new. Oscar feels Carlos’s hand come up—hesitate—then rest lightly at the side of Oscar’s neck, thumb warm against his skin.
Oscar exhales into it, the relief of gentleness making his head spin.
It’s not the frantic heat from earlier. It’s… a candle. Steady. Warm. Something you can hold your hands over.
Oscar pulls back after a moment, forehead hovering near Carlos’s, like he’s checking whether the room is still real.
Carlos’s lips curve slightly. “Better than water,” he murmurs.
Oscar huffs a laugh against him. “Everything is better than water.”
Carlos smiles, and it’s small and bright, like he’s relieved in a way he doesn’t want to admit. “Okay,” he says again, then groans. “Joder. Sorry.”
Oscar laughs, properly this time—quiet but real—and the sound makes something inside him unclench.
He sits back, still close, and says, with a self-disgusted honesty that feels almost brave, “I don’t know what we’re doing.”
Carlos’s smile softens. “We can go slow,” he says, and he looks at Oscar like he means it. “We can… not decide tonight. We can just—” He gestures vaguely, helpless. “We can try again. If you want.”
Oscar’s throat tightens. He thinks about Australia. About leaving. About the instinct to cut everything clean the moment it starts to matter. He thinks about how tired he is of clean cuts.
“Yeah,” he says. “We can try again.”
Carlos’s eyes widen slightly, the same open surprise, like he didn’t expect Oscar to hand him something real.
“Yeah?” Carlos repeats, soft.
Oscar feels warmth rise into his cheeks. He hates himself. He does it anyway. “Yeah.”
Carlos smiles. It’s gentle.
Oscar sits there in Carlos’s apartment in Monaco, coffee cooling on the table, the city glittering outside like it always does, and for the first time in days, the sadness isn’t the only thing in the room. It’s still there. It’s still heavy. But it’s sharing space with laughter and warmth and the fact that Carlos’s hand is still resting lightly at Oscar’s neck like he’s allowed to be held.
Oscar exhales, long and slow, and says, half-muttering, “Don’t ask me if I’m okay again.”
Carlos’s mouth quirks. “I won’t.”
Oscar glances at him. “Promise?”
Carlos nods solemnly. “Promise.”
Oscar’s lips twitch. “Okay.”
Carlos points at him, delighted. “Ah. Now you’re doing it.”
Oscar throws a couch cushion at his face.
Carlos catches it easily, laughing, and for a second it’s so normal Oscar could cry for entirely different reasons.
Carlos drops the cushion, leans in, and kisses Oscar again—quick this time, light, like punctuation.
“Stay a little longer,” Carlos says softly.
Oscar looks at him, then nods once. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”
Double Horizon - a carcar time loop/roadtrip fic written for the @motorsport-halloween fest 2025!
carlos/oscar (carcar), 5/5 chapters, 76k words, rated E, FINISHED
“If this is hell, you’re a terrible person to spend eternity with,” Oscar says and lowers his head on the steering wheel.
Carlos smiles. “At least you won’t be lonely.”
Carlos and Oscar should be in Austin, preparing for a race right now. Instead they're stuck in a time loop on a road that never ends.
It's almost as long as all the previous chapters together, I'm sorry! But it's finished. I'm so happy about it and it would mean the world to me if you read it and let me know what you think. <3
Double Horizon - a carcar time loop/roadtrip fic written for the @motorsport-halloween fest 2025!
carlos/oscar (carcar), 5/5 chapters, 76k words, rated E, FINISHED
“If this is hell, you’re a terrible person to spend eternity with,” Oscar says and lowers his head on the steering wheel.
Carlos smiles. “At least you won’t be lonely.”
Carlos and Oscar should be in Austin, preparing for a race right now. Instead they're stuck in a time loop on a road that never ends.
It's almost as long as all the previous chapters together, I'm sorry! But it's finished. I'm so happy about it and it would mean the world to me if you read it and let me know what you think. <3
i would honestly prefer max changes his number to 69 (<- at least funny) than 3 (<- swagless, pales in comparison to the iconic 33, and, worst of all, maxiel bait in big 2025)
Even as a Lando fan, this championship will go down in history as one of the most fraudulent of all time. McLaren decided that he would be their WDC. Feeling for the Oscar fans this morning. If what happened to Oscar had happened to Lando nobody would hear the end of it from the 4s. Time to reflect on that.
max verstappen won a championship because the race director made a mistake, lewis hamilton won a championship because another team cheated in singapore, michael schumacher won a championship because of team orders so aggressive and unnecessary that team orders were subsequently banned, ayrton senna won a championship because he deliberately crashed into his teammate, alain prost won a championship because he crashed into his teammate and then his teammate got disqualified. "most fraudulent" grow the fuck up
He doesn't even know the guy's name –and while sometimes he is almost grateful for that, thinks it grants him a bit of necessary emotional distance to keep his casual infatuation from turning into a full-on crush–, right about now it would come in really handy.
1.9k of carcar coming right up...
also readable on ao3
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Oscar doesn't know the guy's name. And while sometimes he's almost grateful for that – with convenience offering emotional distance to keep infatuation from becoming a full-blown crush – right now, it would come in really handy.
Because Oscar kneels on the park path over a man, who's been knocked in the head with the football. Oscar knows this because the incriminatory ball has rolled to the side, into a bush. He'd been walking and humming along to Fleetwood Mac when it happened. So quickly, in the corner of his eye: distant whizzing noise, ball in air, loud bonk noise, and the guy was on the ground. He'd run over immediately, because it's not like he could just stand there – mainly because it would be rude, and also his parents taught him to never be a bystander.
There's no name tag or anything identifiable about the man (why would there be, Oscar chides himself), except that he's wearing slightly muddy Asics, high socks, and a fancy running vest. Judging from the fashionable Oakleys tucked into a pocket and the lack of anything else, there is a high likelihood that the guy lives around here.
The man groans on the ground with his eyes closed. He rubs at the side of his head, at an orange leaf stuck there. The motion makes the foliage zigzag to the ground.
“Are you alright?” Oscar asks.
Runner Guy blinks up at him. Maybe it was a good thing his eyes were closed before. Staring into them's like staring into an obscene mug of chocolate. Not exactly a great thought to be thinking in what could be a life-threatening situation.
“Are you my husband?” Runner Guy asks.
Oscar’s face flares. He does check the ring finger of the other guy, though. It’s bare.
“If you are," Runner Guy continues, grinning, "you’re very handsome. I must have made a good choice."
"I'm not–"
In the corner of Oscar's eye, a swan has waddled its way near them. It gives a warning honk and flaps its wings, staking its territory. This won’t do. Oscar refuses to be deported on account of an altercation with one of the King’s scheming birds.
“Mate, it’s very probable that you’re concussed,” Oscar says, in a loud voice so that anyone passing by can hear that he’s not being untoward.
"Oh… is that what happened?"
“I think so. How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Seventeen," Runner Guy says. Then catches Oscar's worried face. "Okay, two."
"That's good. I'm going to help you up now.”
“Okay.”
They struggle up. The guy is lean, but more densely muscled than he looks, because Oscar has to brace his entire body weight to support him. Runner guy emanates heat through his t-shirt. He must've been on a roll for a PB or something.
At this opportune moment, a bunch of kids burst through the clearing from the nearby field.
“Mister, you alright?” comes a child’s voice to Oscar’s left.
“Sorry 'bout the ball,” says another. “Was just kicking it high, like.”
“Is he DEAD?” says a third.
Oscar has to muffle a snort by coughing into his left elbow. Runner Guy shifts his weight, and Oscar bumps his hip against him in an attempt to keep his balance.
Oscar looks at the concerned kids in an attempt to be reassuring. “He’ll be okay. But I do need to move him,”
“Let's don't move,” the guy says.
The kids look between each other, worried. They can't be more than ten years old, but even at ten, Oscar remembers having a mind of his own, and more importantly, an ability to tattle to his parents. Oscar thinks it's best not to cause a scene lest he end up on the news or somebody's social media. MAN HIT IN HEAD WITH FOOTBALL AND RESCUER BULLIED BY SCHOOLCHILDREN. YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!
“It's better if you can sit down. Come on,” he says to Runner Guy in a tone that is hopefully low and reassuring.
"Will he be alright?" asks one of the kids with knee pads and a big t-shirt.
Oscar nods. "He'll live."
"Told you not to kick that high, Chester, you're not Ronaldo," one of the girls says.
"He's not even good anyway," another kid says. This seems a bit of a discredit to Chester, who must have sent that football flying at least fifty metres.
But as entertaining as they are, it's time to leave the gaggle of kids behind. Oscar gives a polite nod at their chorus of "good luck" and "maybe you should call his mum" and "that was proper stupid mate", and the kids drift back to their game.
"Good luck, Mister, with your husband!" the girl with the knee pads cries out.
"Notmyhusband," Oscar mumbles, under his breath.
To his credit, Runner Guy just laughs it off.
They find a bench at a quieter spot, and manoeuvre to sit without either collapsing into an embarrassing heap. Pigeons run aimless circles near their feet.
“You must be a guardian angel,” Runner Guy says.
“I’m just on my way to the office.”
“Ah. And where's that?"
“I work at the zoo,” Oscar volunteers, making conversation. It’s good to keep the guy talking until he can find a park warden or maybe call an ambulance, whichever happens first. He scans the area for anybody who might be able to help, but it's quiet at this time of day, with only the burble of fountains and whispering leaves to keep them company.
“I like the penguins. They are hardier than they seem,” the guy declares. Oscar doesn’t think this is up for debate, plus it is rude to correct someone who may have a concussion, so he just nods.
“That's true. Adélie Penguins, in Antarctica, like picking the rocks out of retreating glaciers to build their nests. They're the only ones who do that. They also toboggan across the ice sheet on their bellies if there's enough snow. Sorry, I tend to go on about penguin fun facts. That are mostly fun. To me."
Runner Guy may be concussed, but a smile still breaks open on his face, as if Oscar's offered him a genuine gift. “You have enlightened me. Thank you, Doctor…”
“Oscar. Just Oscar. I’m a grad vet, so we’re not called doctors. Technically.”
“But you are still saving animals. And me.”
Runner Guy catches his eye for a moment, and some pigeons coo behind them. He's hot, a part of his brain registers. He blinks in surprise and makes a show of checking the other man's forehead for scrapes or scratches.
(Maybe it'd be good if a football bonked him in the head right now.)
At this opportune moment, the swan from earlier chooses to make an reappearance. It stares at them with beady eyes, and fluffs its feathers.
"Hey," Oscar says, in a warning tone. Runner Guy follows his eyeline to the big bird.
"Doc, aren't you supposed to be nice to the animals?"
Oscar narrows his eyes at the bird. "I am being nice. By setting appropriate behavioural boundaries."
Runner Guy snorts, and pulls out a gel from a hidden pocket, and sucks on it. Oscar tries very hard not to stare at his mouth, working on the shiny packet. Or the way his tongue darts out to suck.
“Your pupils seem fine, and you're talking steady, which is good. Though, we should probably get you to a human doctor,” Oscar says, keeping his tone even. He focuses on opening his maps app. His arm jostles Runner Guy's, and he tries to put the spark of contact at the back of his mind, focusing on his task. University Hospital isn't far from here, so maybe they could walk over there? He's got a couple of checks to make on the animals at the zoo health centre, but with more grads around now to pick up shifts, he should have a bit of wriggle room. Besides, it's technically a medical emergency. For a human. A good-looking, if confused, human.
"I should be fine," Runner Guy says.
"I'd really feel better if you got that checked out."
"Okay. I trust you. You are a doctor."
He's not, but okay.
“Doctor Oscar," Runner Guy says, rolling the rs in his mouth. "Y mi nombre es Carlos.”
Runner Guy – no – Carlos, says it like he hadn’t realised he’d switched output channels for a minute. Oscar wonders where the lyrical accent is from.
"You should probably drink something too," Oscar says, digging into his backpack for his water bottle. He can't remember if he already swigged out of it this morning, which means they would trade spit, which in another context might not be a bad thing, but he tells himself there are more pressing matters to be dealing with. Carlos accepts the bottle, staring at the stickers.
"Gracias. Is that…a turtle?"
Oscar elects to spare him the lecture about the evolutionary importance of the Galapagos Giant Tortoise. His middle sister had said that one was enthralling, in a tone that implied it was anything but.
"Just sit tight. You'll be alright."
Carlos just shrugs and drinks. Oscar watches carefully, to make sure he's sufficiently hydrated. Under his gaze, the heartbeat on Carlos's smartwatch climbs gently up.
"What?" Carlos says. His upper lip is wet.
"Keep talking. What do you do for work?"
"Ah. I'm a lawyer. I am a senior associate on the Partner track at–"
He's got the guy yapping, so now he tries to multitask and figure out the fastest way to A&E from where they are, and whether it's walkable or they should Uber or something. He vaguely makes out bits about how Carlos once wanted to play football for Real Madrid, but school became more important, so now he works at a law firm, but he's lately not sure if he really likes it, was thinking of changing teams or maybe industries, and he was also trying to figure out his work-life balance but it seems like a never-ending debate with himself, and also maybe he should get a dog?
"I'm really sorry, I didn't catch all of that. But I'm glad you're talking," Oscar says.
"Oh," Carlos says, sounding disappointed. Oscar has been told in the past that his patient manner, even with animals, could be more expressive. Less clinical. Softer. The last thing he wants to do is cause hurt when the football has already done that. An impulse sparks in Oscar, loud and simple: make the other man's sadness go away– damned be the consequences.
So in the middle of the park, amongst the prams and the peonies and the intrepid pigeons, Oscar shoves his phone in his pocket and says the thing that he was least expecting to say all day.
"Let's get you sorted out with medical. And maybe we can talk more over coffee sometime?"
Carlos stares back at him with big, brown eyes. His mouth opens slightly in surprise, as if Oscar's read his mind, and he might have been on the way to saying the exact same thing, too. Funny how that works.
"I mean– I don't drink coffee," Oscar adds. "But there's a café on Cleveland that does a great hot chocolate. I assume you drink, what, a cortado?"
Miraculously, Carlos smiles. Soft, and devastating, in a magazine cover way that works in real life. Oscar finds himself wondering what it'd be like to get the full power of that smile, sans head injury. "You assumed correctly, Doctor Oscar.
Carlos nudges Oscar's arm with his elbow. The spark of contact there travels up Oscar's arm. Possibly into his left ventricle. Who's to say.
"And yes, I would like that," Carlos says. "I would like that very much."
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big thank you to @seaplease and @georgiasbrainstuff for helping me talk through some stuff as i worked on this! the whole thing got a lot longer than i anticipated at the start, and they were very patient with me <3
from: send me a first line of a story and i'll write something for it (tho i have a backlog atm)
Double Horizon - a carcar time loop/roadtrip fic written for the @motorsport-halloween fest 2025!
carlos/oscar (carcar), 2/4 chapters, 19k words, rated E, ongoing
“If this is hell, you’re a terrible person to spend eternity with,” Oscar says and lowers his head on the steering wheel.
Carlos smiles. “At least you won’t be lonely.”
Carlos and Oscar should be in Austin, preparing for a race right now. Instead they're stuck in a time loop on a road that never ends.
For the first time in his life, Oscar has a friends with benefits situation going on and it’s fucking awesome. He doesn’t know why everybody doesn’t prefer it like this—sex on demand without any of the annoying parts. Or, well, Oscar corrects himself as Carlos’s alarm goes off at six thirty in the morning. Without some of the annoying parts.
Carlos slips out of his bed and rummages around his closet quietly. When Oscar cracks one of his eyes open he can just see Carlos leaving the bedroom in his running clothes, before sleep overtakes him once more. At seven, Oscar’s own alarm goes off and he ignores for thirty blissful minutes until he remembers he’s supposed to be at the gym with Artturi at eight.
“Fuck,” Oscar greets Carlos, who has just come back from his run and is operating his coffee machine while dripping with sweat. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
“And a good morning to you,” Carlos says, annoyingly chipper. “No coffee for you then?”
“Fuck you,” Oscar says, finally unearthing his shirt from the couch where Carlos tugged it off him last night. “Fuck, I’m so late.”
He has eleven minutes for the seven minute walk to his own apartment to get a change of clothes and then the eight minute walk to the gym, which means that if he doesn’t get breakfast and power walks he can probably avoid Artturi’s lecture on punctuality.
“Here,” Carlos says. “Catch.”
Oscar looks up just in time to avoid getting smacked in the face with a paper bag that, upon closer inspection, contains a croissant.
“Oh my god,” Oscar says, ripping it open and smelling fresh, French butter. “I love you.”
He bends down to put on his shoes and when he stands back up, Carlos is suddenly very close.
“Hey,” Carlos says, voice low. His big hand lands on Oscar’s face, curled around his cheek. In the back of Oscar’s mind, faint alarm bells are going off, but the sound gets muffled as Carlos kisses Oscar, his perfect mouth wet and eager against Oscar’s. When he leans back, Carlos's face is all creased up and content and the alarm bells start up again. “I love you too.”
“Uh,” Oscar says. The alarm bells fade and the PA system in his mind starts up. You fucking idiot. You fucking idiot. You fucking idiot.
“You’re late,” Carlos says and Oscar nods dumbly.
“I’m late,” Oscar says. Carlos is still smiling.
“Go,” Carlos says. “I will see you later.”
“Uh,” Oscar says again. And then he leaves. He arrives at the gym fourteen minutes late, the croissant still in the paper bag. Throughout Artturi’s lecture, only one word bounces around Oscar’s skull. Shit.
*****
“Ive been, uh,” Oscar says and Logan makes an encouraging noise on the other side of the line. “Sleeping with someone. Lately.”
“Congratulations,” Logan says and Oscar groans.
“No, I mean, the person I’ve been sleeping with, they, uh—” Oscar pinches the bridge of his nose. “I said something that could be, uh, misconstrued. And they, uh. They said I love you? But it’s like—it’s not like that. So now, uh—”
“Carlos?” Logan near-shouts and Oscar grimaces, moving the phone a safe distance away from his ear. “Carlos said I love you? To you?”
“Mate,” Oscar complains. “How’d you even know it was Carlos?”
“I've known you for more than a decade,” Logan says ominously. “But Jesus, mate. That’s—phew.”
“Oh, god,” Oscar groans. He’s in trouble. He’s in serious trouble.
“Maybe he doesn’t mean it,” Logan says. “He’s like—Spanish men are like—maybe it doesn’t mean the same?”
“Huh,” Oscar says. “No, you’re right, maybe it’s like—in Spanish, it could be like. Huh.”
That said,” Logan says. “You guys have been sleeping together for like, months, right? So maybe it is really—”
“No, you had it the first time, thanks, great talk,” Oscar says. And hangs up the phone.
You don’t even want to know about IMSA? Logan texts him and Oscar sighs, redials Logan’s number.
“Right,” Logan says. “Okay, but what if he does mean it, you guys are—”
Oscar hangs up again.
*****
If Oscar were a better person, he’d stop sleeping with Carlos while all of this is going on, but Carlos is the hottest person he’s ever seen naked and Oscar doesn’t think he’s an especially good person anyway, so he doesn’t. Carlos is flying back with Charles this evening and then going to Grove for three days, so they only have like ten minutes in between media and debrief to get off. They could just not get off and see each other in four days, but every time Oscar thinks about Carlos flying with Charles he thinks about the impromptu post-Baku road trip and gets a rabid urge to send Carlos onto the private jet with the taste of Oscar’s come still on the back of his tongue. Currently, Oscar’s biting the side of Carlos’s neck a little too hard while jerking him off and Carlos shudders, whimpers and comes. His jizz covers Oscar’s hand and Oscar thinks to himself don’t lick it off don’t lick it off don’t lick it off before wiping his hand on a stray shirt.
“I have to go,” Carlos says, not making any effort to extricate himself from Oscar’s grip and Oscar hums, watching with a shameful satisfaction as the skin of Carlos’s neck starts to bloom purple.
“Okay, I really have to go,” Carlos murmurs and Oscar lets Carlos escape his clutches. “See you—Thursday? We can have dinner if you—”
“Yeah,” Oscar says, so fast that he instinctually tacks on a cough at the end. “Sure, yeah, I can probably make time. I’ll move some things around.”
“I’m honoured,” Carlos says, annoyingly amused as he shrugs back into his race suit. “Okay, I have to run, love you.”
“Hurgh,” Oscar says, but Carlos is already gone.
*****
Teto knows Oscar’s sleeping with Carlos. He’s never said so, but he makes it clear with his eyes and his eyebrows and his mouth and his posture that not only does he know, he also disapproves. Therefore, as a rule, Oscar makes a point of not ever talking to Teto, but currently, Oscar’s reserve of Spanish people who can shine a light on Carlos’s behaviour consists of him and Fernando, so: Teto.
“Hi,” Oscar says. “How have you been?”
“Yes,” Teto says. “You should devote yourself to a life of celibacy. Good talk.”
“Not what I was going to ask,” Oscar says and Teto sighs.
“Then I am not interested,” he says.
“Look,” Oscar says. “I need your help. It’s about Carlos.”
Teto sighs again and finally turns to Oscar all the way. It’s kind of impressive, in how many ways he’s able to non-verbally express he wants Oscar to perish where he stands.
“It’s kind of—” Oscar says, wrinkling his nose. “This thing with Carlos is—I mean, it’s great, but—I think, maybe he’s—?”
“Right,” Teto says. “I really understand what he sees in you, now.”
“He told me he loved me,” Oscar blurts out. “And now it’s—”
“Oh,” Teto says. “Oh, I—oh.”
“Yeah,” Oscar says, wrinkling his nose. “So, like—I shouldn’t read into it, right? He’s just saying that because—”
“Oscar,” Teto says. His face does something Oscar has never seen before. It’s all soft and—oh god, it’s kindness. Teto is looking at Oscar with an expression of aching kindness. Something has gone deeply, irrevocably wrong. “Carlos is not someone who says things he does not mean.”
“Ah,” Oscar says, voice thin. “That’s—okay.”
“So don’t worry,” Teto says and Oscar says: “Wait, no—”
“If Carlos loves you, then, ah,” Teto sighs, shaking his head with a smile. “I must admit, I did think at first that, you two, not a good idea, yes? But now, maybe.”
“No,” Oscar says. “No, really, it’s—”
“We will play padel when we are back in Monaco,” Teto tells Oscar earnestly. “It is time we bond.”
“I’m not good at padel,” Oscar says weakly.
“I will teach you,” Teto pledges and if Oscar is anything, he’s a fucking coward, so he nods and watches Teto jog to Gigi and Caco with a sinking feeling in his stomach. His wallowing in self-pity gets interrupted by his phone vibrating and when he unlocks it, he sees it’s a calendar invite from Teto to play padel in the next off-week.
*****
Carlos and Oscar get dinner in Monaco that week and before he leaves for the restaurant, Oscar sternly tells his reflection he’s going to break up with Carlos. He’s still thinking about whether it’s the proper way to do it before they order or after they’ve had their mains when Carlos clears his throat, fidgeting with his menu.
“What are you doing over winter break?” Carlos asks and Oscar makes a vague gesture. He hasn’t made plans yet and—oh, if Carlos is going to ask him to spend some time together, that might actually be a perfect way for Oscar to bring up that they’re on wildly different levels about this thing between them.
“Do you maybe,” Carlos doesn’t look at Oscar, but at a point somewhere behind his left ear. “You could come. To Madrid.”
“Madrid,” Oscar says. “Right, actually—”
“To meet my family,” Carlos finishes in a wild rush and whatever Oscar was going to say gets tangled up with his tongue.
“I—what?” Oscar says. “Your—your family?”
“It is a little soon,” Carlos says immediately and Oscar takes a desperate gulp of water to avoid saying anything because—what? What?
“It’s, uh—” Oscar finally manages. Dribbles of water run down his chin.
“It is too soon, sorry, I should not have—” Carlos’s shoulders rise, rise, rise and Oscar wants to reach out, stupid, push them down. “Forget it.”
“I, uh,” Oscar says. “Think, if I’m going to Australia, maybe? And then training camp. And sponsor things, so. Planning-wise, it might be, uh. Complex.”
“No, really,” Carlos says, molding his facial expression into something he obviously means to be reassuring, but comes across as watery. “It is too soon. I should not have asked.”
“It’s just—” Oscar says, even though he doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. “It’s not—”
“Let’s have dinner tomorrow,” Carlos says, decisively closing his menu. “I made you feel awkward and now I feel a little silly, so. Tomorrow, we try again, yes?”
Oscar can’t tell him now. Carlos is smiling bravely at Oscar, knocking their knees together under the table. He can’t tell Carlos now, not when Carlos is already—when Oscar has already—
“Tomorrow,” Oscar says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
That night, Oscar stares at the ceiling and every time he closes his eyes, he can see Carlos’s fragile expression stamped into the back of his eyelids.
*****
The next afternoon, just before he’s about to leave for dinner 2.0, Oscar does what he should have done ages ago. He calls Mark.
“I’ve been sleeping with another driver,” Oscar says, in lieu of greeting. “And he’s in love with me.”
The sound Mark makes is like a revving engine. Patiently, Oscar lets him work through several combustion cycles, until Mark finally takes a deep breath.
“Are you out of your fucking mind?” Mark shouts. “I’m genuinely, honestly asking. Are you?”
“I’ve been a little stupid,” Oscar acquiesces. “Can you tell me to break up with him?”
“You have to break up now,” Mark says. “Now. Yesterday. You need to go back in time and make sure you break up before you even get together. You can’t let anything distract you from your driving. Jesus Christ, Oscar.”
“Okay,” Oscar says and then scrunches up his nose. “Okay, but, we’ve been hooking up since the start of the season and I’ve been driving well all year, so, it’s not really been—”
“Oh no,” Mark says. “No, no, no. You’re not starting this shit with me.”
“And, like,” Oscar says. “It’s been nice, really. To have something that’s not, like—coming home and only thinking about driving.”
“Break up,” Mark shouts. “Break up now!”
“Max has a relationship, and kids,” Oscar says. “Seb too. So, really, is it a distraction, or—”
Oscar realises, all at once, he doesn’t want to break up with Carlos. In fact, he wants to do the opposite of breaking up with Carlos. He wants to spend time with hateful Teto and go to Madrid and meet scary Sainz Sr. and Carlos’s sisters and his mum’s crusty little dogs. He wants to go to Carlos’s apartment and sit on his couch and not talk to Carlos while they both scroll their phones, pausing periodically to show each other stupid emails and dumb memes. He wants to tell Carlos that—oh, God. Okay. Okay.
“Thank you,” Oscar says. “This was a good talk, really.”
“I’m booking a plane ticket,” Mark says. “Don’t fucking move, I’m coming to Monaco.”
“Bye,” Oscar says, and hangs up the phone. He arrives at the restaurant twenty minutes early and keeps craning his neck around to see if Carlos walks in. When he finally does and Oscar spots him in the doorway, he feels like a dog finally seeing his owner come home. If he had a tail, it’d be wagging so much it’d give him a hernia.
“Okay,” Carlos says. “Do-over, I am not going to ask you again to—”
“I love you,” Oscar says, too loud and too fast and Carlos raises an eyebrow.
“I know that,” he says and of course. It’s really fucking typical that Carlos knew before Oscar. Carlos folds up his jacket and sits down across from Oscar, opening his menu. “Do you already know what you want to order?”
“No,” Oscar says, deliriously happy. “What are today’s specials?”
🍊🍎 a carcar fic
🦷 oscar gets his wisdom teeth out. carlos helps him through it.
📝 6.9k words, oneshot
💛 rated T
🔗 read on ao3
preview:
“Oi!” comes a familiar voice. It’s amazing that the sound travels, even from seven floors down. Equally horrifying is that Oscar would recognise that noise anywhere, even in his seventh level of dental hell right now.
“Jesus,” Oscar mutters under his breath. He flings open his blackout curtains with more force than is necessary.
Squinting in the sunny afternoon light, because Monaco had the audacity to have nice weather outside while his jaw was sore, Oscar curses his fortune and stares down into the street.
Staring back up, with a hand over his forehead like a sailor in one of those corny old movies, is Carlos. Except he’s not a black and white movie protagonist – it’s the 2020s and he has sports socks and running gear on as he stands on city cobblestone.
