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littlewitchcoffe · 4 days ago

Note

Ooooo for the prompts 11) mother in law, I was originally going to say maxiel but this seems more fun w carcar

Aaah, first I was unsure, but oh my god...This was so fun to write! My first time writing carcar in an established relationship as well. I love writing established relationships btw! Thank you for prompting me!!! Here is 11) mother in law, carcar, around 2k words:

They don’t speak for the first stretch of the drive. Not heavy silence, just the kind that sits evenly on your lap. The radio murmurs. The vents do their quiet push of air. Carlos keeps adjusting them even though it’s fine. Oscar drives like the car came with him.

At the lights, Carlos says, “I am sweating.”

“You’re not sweating,” Oscar says. He checks his blind spot like it insulted him once.

“I am sweating emotionally,” Carlos says. “Different category.”

“That’s not a category,” Oscar says, and then, because he can’t help himself, “But your hands are a bit clammy. I noticed earlier.”

Carlos wipes his palms on his thighs. “Traitor.”

It's actually a crime that Oscar took so long to introduce him to his mother, Carlos thinks.

They roll past a man walking a dog the size of a pillow. Carlos follows it with his eyes. “That dog is too small. It looks like...how do you say—a croissant with legs. Probably called croissant too.”

“You have Piñón,” Oscar says.

“Piñón is a proper dog,” Carlos says instantly. “This is…snack-sized.”

“You named your dog after a pine nut,” Oscar says.

“Piñón fits him. He is not too small but very dignified.”

“Sure,” Oscar says, but he’s smiling.

Another set of lights. The sky is that thin gold Melbourne does before it remembers it’s winter again.

“Okay,” Carlos says. “Give me the rules.”

“Shoes off,” Oscar says. “Say yes to tea. If she offers food, take it even if you’re full. If she says, ‘Come look at this,’ you go. No asking what it is.”

“That’s all?” Carlos asks. “No…formal titles?”

“Nicole,” Oscar says at once. “Please don’t ‘Mrs Piastri’ her. She’ll get that look.”

“A look?”

“You’ll know it if you see it.”

Carlos drums his fingers on his knee. “What if she does not like me?”

“She will,” Oscar says.

“You are very sure.”

“Because—” Oscar starts, and then he blows out a breath and says it like he’s telling the road, “Because I love you.”

Carlos looks straight ahead. His ribs do that thing where they become too many. He swallows. “Oh.”

“Oh?” Oscar says, dry, but his hands go steady in a way they weren’t before.

“No, I mean— good,” Carlos says. “It is good that you love me.”

“Yeah,” Oscar says, deadpan, but the corner of his mouth tips up. “It is.”

“And I love you,” Carlos says, equally casual, equally not. He can feel the words settle in the car like a weight that makes everything level.

“Okay,” Oscar says softly, like they’ve ticked the last box on a form no one else saw.

They take a left. The indicator clicks. Tick. Tick. Two polite little knocks.

“Any other things?” Carlos asks. “She likes football? She hates architects?”

“She’ll call you handsome,” Oscar says. “Immediately.”

Carlos blinks. “Immediately?”

“Yes. And then she’ll tell me I’m ‘punching.’”

“Punching?”

“Out of my league.”

Carlos thinks about it. “She is correct.”

Oscar snorts despite himself. “You’re unbearable.”

“I am preparing,” Carlos says. “Also, should we have brought…flowers or something?”

“No flowers! She likes mandarins with the leaves on,” Oscar says like it's normal. “But they have to be the right size. Too big and she thinks they’re show-offs.”

“Why are we not bringing mandarins then?”

“Because I love you,” Oscar says again, with the exact same tone he uses for weather and food choices.

Carlos smiles faintly at the window, but his voice is warm when he says, “You didn’t always say it that easy.”

Oscar flicks him a look. “Yeah, well. You didn’t always make it that easy.”

Carlos lets out a laugh, quick and pleased, and the rest of the street hums by, little shopfronts with peeling paint, a corner bar with the lights already on, a tram clanging far enough away to sound friendly.

“You’re stalling,” Oscar says finally.

“I am not stalling.”

“You’re stalling like you stalled the first three months we knew each other.”

Carlos turns in his seat. “Excuse me, I stalled? You were the one who took forty-seven years to realise I was interested.”

“Forty-seven is generous,” Oscar says. “It was closer to fifty.”

Carlos groans and sits back. “Unbelievable. I should have just kissed you the first week.”

Oscar smirks. “You’d have scared me off.”

“See? This is why it took so long,” Carlos says, pointing at him. “You live in your head, doing maths about feelings, while I am—” he gestures at himself— “here.”

“That’s not an argument,” Oscar says, but he’s grinning as they turn down a street where every lawn looks recently told off. The houses sit back from the road like well-behaved dogs. Somewhere, someone’s sprinkler makes a little metronome out of the air.

“Ready?” Oscar asks at the curb.

“No,” Carlos says. “Yes.”

They walk up the path edged with rosemary. The porch light is already on. Oscar raises a hand to knock. The door opens before he gets there.

Nicole fills the doorway like she was built for it. Jeans, jumper, hair down, that open Australian smile that reads as an invitation and a dare. She hugs Oscar first, fast and firm, and then turns to Carlos and looks him up and down with delight.

“Oh thank God,” she says. “You’re handsome.”

Carlos forgets most of his words for a second. “Gracias. I—hello. Hi.”

“Shoes off, love,” she says, stepping back. “Not for the carpet. For my blood pressure.”

They toe off their shoes. Oscar lines his up without looking. Carlos lines his as if the shoes might be graded later. The hallway smells like lemon and butter and laundry powder. Frames on the wall: little Oscar with a tragic hair cut surrounded by his sisters, Nicole squinting at a barbecue, a dog in antlers. Someone has written that’s not your hat on the frame in marker.

“In the kitchen,” Nicole says, already moving.

The kitchen isn’t designer-perfect...it’s used-perfect. Tea steam curls up from a fat pot. A plate sits under a tea towel in the middle. A bowl of mandarins gleams, stems and leaves on like they’re not fully resigned to being indoors.

“Sit,” Nicole says, pointing to the table. “Carlos, milk? Sugar?”

“Milk, no sugar,” he says.

“Same,” Oscar says.

“No one asked you,” Nicole tells him, sliding a mug to Carlos first. “Biscuit?”

Carlos reaches, hesitates, reaches again. “Shortbread?”

“Correct,” Nicole says. “Eat two so I can trust you.”

“Mum,” Oscar says, long-suffering already.

“It’s a joke,” Nicole says. “I trust him more than I trust you. Look at him. He has honest eyebrows.”

Carlos bites into the biscuit to stop a laugh and then laughs anyway. It’s perfec, butter and sugar and care.

Nicole watches him, satisfied. “So,” she says, eyes bright. “Who asked who out?”

“Mum,” Oscar says, warning built in.

“I’m making conversation,” she says, innocent as a lamp.

“I asked him,” Carlos says, quick because it feels like the right line to take. “But it took long because he is very—” he gestures to Oscar without malice— “in his head.”

Nicole gives the world’s most unsurprised nod. “Absolutely. He was like that with even with the toaster. Took a week to admit he liked it.”

“I never said—” Oscar starts.

“You said everything with your little face,” Nicole says. “Whole paragraphs.”

“I don’t have a face,” Oscar says, which goes over poorly for obvious reasons.

“You have a face,” Nicole says, saintly. “And the face says a lot. Carlos, does he do that thing with his mouth? The…pressed line when he’s pretending he’s fine?”

Carlos chokes on a laugh. “Sí.”

Nicole points at Oscar’s mouth. “There it is.”

Oscar drops his forehead to his palm. “This is why it took so long. Why are we here?”

“Because I wanted to meet the man who made you look at your phone like it’s poetry,” Nicole says, sipping her tea. “I told all my friends about the hot Spaniard! Imagine if I had to lie about him. I’d have to go to confession and I’m not even Catholic.”

Carlos stares into his mug to keep his brain attached to the hinges. Oscar groans.

“Alright,” Nicole says, clapping her hands once, tiny. “Quick mission. Carlos, come with me. Oscar, stay. Consider your sins.”

Oscar looks instantly wary. “Do I need to call someone?”

“No,” Nicole says, cheerful. “It’s not a snake.”

“It better not be a snake,” Oscar says, and when Carlos follows Nicole down the hall he hears him mutter, “It’s never a snake until it is.”

The laundry is domestic ambition. A massive drying rack is wedged diagonally in the doorway like a metal giraffe caught in a turn. A basket of clean shirts balances on top as if belief alone will keep it there.

Nicole sets her hands on her hips. “I thought I could pivot it,” she says. “I was wrong. Rescue me. Don’t smash that vase. My friend made it and she will know.”

Carlos grimaces in sympathy at the vase, then grips the rack. “On three,” he says. “One, two—now.”

They angle, shimmy, lift, swear softly in two languages. Nicole narrates like an air traffic controller: “Left, no, your left, sweetie—hold—good—mind the silk shirt, that’s my funeral outfit, don’t crush it and I’ll live forever.”

They clear the doorway with a sigh.

“Look at that,” Nicole says, delighted. “What a man.”

Carlos grins, breathless for no good reason. He wipes his hands on his jeans. “All good.”

“Don’t tell Oscar,” Nicole says in a stage whisper. “He’ll get competitive.”

“Too late,” Oscar says from the doorway, because he is a soft-footed menace. “How long have you known him? Ten minutes? You’re already conspiring.”

“Fifteen,” Nicole says. “We’re best friends now. Go make me proud by acting normal for five minutes.”

“I don’t have that in my toolkit,” Oscar says, but he is smiling, so the mission is declared a success.

Back in the kitchen, the teapot has done its job. Nicole whips the towel off the plate with a flourish: a cake, sticky jam line in the middle. “Not fancy,” she says, which is how people introduce something they’ll defend in court.

Carlos takes a square and tries not to look like a man who wants to propose marriage to a baked good. “It is perfect.”

“Correct,” Nicole says, then turns the interrogation lamp back on Oscar. “So. When did you realise you fancied him?”

“Mum,” Oscar says in a tone that suggests leaving the country.

“What?” Nicole says. “I’m allowed to ask. I’ve seen the way you talk about him. You did that thing...what was it—oh!” Her eyes light. “Remember after that meeting? You called and you were pretending not to care and then you did your little voice—”

“I don’t have a little voice,” Oscar says, doomed.

Nicole drops into a ridiculous low register, “‘It’s not that big a deal anyway, hey,’” and then snorts at herself. “God, that was the worst Oscar impression. But the energy. The energy was ‘if I pretend it’s rubbish then no one can see me wanting it.’”

Carlos looks between them, delighted and horrified. Oscar looks like he’s trying to fold himself into the teapot.

“So how did you get together eventually?” Nicole asks, suddenly softer, actually curious, and it’s not a trap so much as a hand held out.

“There’s no normal way to explain it,” Oscar says, then clamps his mouth shut.

“Try anyway,” Nicole says.

He shakes his head. “Later.”

“Fine,” she says, and pivots without friction. “Then we’ll talk about how you’re punching.”

“Mum—”

“Don’t ‘Mum’ me. Look at him.” She points at Carlos like a game show hostess. “He looks like—like they messed up at the dude factory and set the dial to ‘too handsome.’ The whole machine’s rattling. Sparks. HR is involved.”

Carlos covers his face with one hand. “Oh.”

“And you,” Nicole says to Oscar, fondly savage, “look like a smoke show too—”

“Mum,” Oscar says, appalled. “Don’t—”

“—but in a quiet way,” she finishes, undeterred. “If he walked past my Pilates class, half the room would fall off their reformers. The other half would say something about his bone structure.”

Carlos peeks through his fingers. “Bone structure,” he repeats, helplessly amused.

“Exactly,” Nicole says, triumphant, and then she reaches across and pats Carlos’s wrist. “Don’t worry, darling, I’m not trying to adopt you. Yet.”

Oscar points at the bowl. “Give him the mandarins and you will.”

“I’m going to,” Nicole says, matter-of-fact. “But only the good ones. With leaves. I have standards.”

They settle, finally, into a rhythm that feels less like an interview and more like a dinner with running commentary. Nicole asks about Madrid properly. What food is actually good, which streets feel safe at midnight. Carlos answers in bits. He tells her about his abuela’s kitchen, too small and always too warm, onions and garlic in everything, a pot that lived on the stove year-round because it was more a family member than a tool.

“Good,” Nicole says. “Food should be a person.”

Oscar sips his tea, content to let them trade stories and jabs. Every now and then he tries to steer the conversation away from an embarrassing anecdote. Nicole is immune to steering.

“I remember when Oscar labelled every drawer,” she tells Carlos, beaming. “Every single one. And then you got offended when I used them.”

“That’s a lie,” Oscar says, eyes closed.

“It’s absolutely true,” Nicole says. “He used the label maker like it was a hobby. Spoon Drawer. Knife Drawer. Drawer Drawer. My favourite was Mystery Drawer.”

“What was in it?” Carlos asks, compelled.

“Mysteries,” Nicole says solemnly. “Rubber bands. Batteries that we called ‘maybe.’ One single Allen key.”

Carlos laughs so hard he has to set his mug down. Oscar stares at the fridge like if he focuses hard enough he can phase through it.

The conversation is actually easy with her and towards the end they agree on a meet-up with Oscar's sisters, which Oscar looks terrified by.

Nicole grabs a jar from a shelf by the door as they slip into their shoes again. “Pesto,” she says, handing it to Carlos. “I made it myself. You’ll take that.”

“I can’t—”

“You can,” she says. “And you will.”

She packs a paper bag with mandarins, choosing them like a jeweller, flicking stems, discarding one with a spot and adds two slices of the cake into the bag as well. She looks delighted.

Nicole hugs Oscar first, long enough to fix the set of his shoulders. Then she hugs Carlos, properly, cheek pressed briefly to his. “Lovely meeting you, darling,” she says into his shoulder. “Truly. Next time I’ll bring out the really embarrassing albums.”

“I look forward,” Carlos says.

Nicole tucks the paper bag under his arm like it is a baby. “Text me when you get home,” she says. “Both of you. I’m not being left on read.”

“We will,” Oscar says.

“And don’t let him eat your slice in the car,” she tells Carlos. “He’ll try. He’s slippery.”

Carlos clutches the bag. “He will not succeed.”

Oscar glares very without heat. “I wasn’t going to.”

“You absolutely were,” Nicole says. “I raised you. I know the crimes you’ll commit.”

They make it to the porch. The night is cool and clear. The porch light puts a ring around them. Nicole leans on the frame, happy.

“Go on, before I start giving you leftovers you didn’t ask for,” she says.

Oscar steps down first, Carlos a half-step behind, the paper bag tucked like something fragile under his arm. The front garden smells faintly of rosemary and wet brick. Nicole’s wave follows them down the path.

At the car, Oscar pauses with his hand on the door. Carlos tilts his head, questioning.

“Thanks for…coming. I know she's not...I don't know,” Oscar says, awkward only in the way sincerity is with him.

Carlos smiles, soft. “You say that like I did not want to come.”

Oscar huffs a laugh through his nose, then reaches out and tugs lightly at the front of Carlos’s jacket, enough to pull him closer, enough to make it not an accident. Carlos steps in the rest of the way, one hand finding the side of Oscar’s neck like he’s done it a hundred times in the dark before.

The kiss is brief, but steady. Warm. Not for show, not even for Nicole, who’s probably still at the window. Just because the evening deserves it.

When they break apart, Oscar’s mouth tips like he might say something but doesn’t. Carlos grins instead. “Now I really am keeping the slice from you.”

Oscar rolls his eyes, opens the car door, and they get in and he pulls away from the curb. The indicator clicks. The rosemary brushes the tyres on the way out.

“So?” he says, aiming for casual and landing somewhere sweeter.

“So,” Carlos echoes, and then, because he can’t help himself, “She is too funny. And too kind. It’s annoying.”

Oscar smiles into the dark windscreen. “Yeah.”

“She called me handsome,” Carlos says, entirely not smug.

“She has eyes,” Oscar says. “She also said I’m punching.”

“She is correct,” Carlos says solemnly.

“Unbelievable,” Oscar says, but he’s grinning now.

They drive a few blocks in that way you do when the evening has been better than expected and you don’t want to touch it too much. The mandarins smell like a good morning. The foil-wrapped cake radiates promise.

At the next red light, Oscar taps the wheel and then stops tapping. “Hey.”

“Mhm?”

“It did take me too long,” he says, not looking. “At the start.”

Carlos turns his head. “I know.”

“I’m—” Oscar begins, then shakes it off. “I’m in my head. You know.”

“I know,” Carlos says again. “I waited. It was worth it.”

Oscar glances over. The light turns green. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Carlos says. He knocks their knees together, gentle. “Drive. No crashing. I have your cake.”

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littlewitchcoffe · 4 days ago

Text

It’s a yacht party that gets them.

Oscar wakes to a violent shove from Carlos. He makes a confused mumble, his brain clawing out of sleep enough to realize that his phone has been ringing, and ringing, and ringing.

“Turn that off,” Carlos groans, burying himself back in the pillow.

Oscar’s tangled in a blanket. He hauls himself over to the nightstand, just enough to flip over his phone and hit “Decline.”

As he does so, he sees Zak Brown’s name.

Before he can wonder why his boss is calling him at five fucking AM during summer break, a new call lights his screen.

It’s from Mark.

Something lurches in Oscar’s stomach.

He peels himself out of bed and goes onto Carlos’ balcony. The sky is just beginning to pinken.

“Wha?” he answers.

“Oscar.”

“What? It’s five AM—”

“Have you seen?”

“Seen what?”

“Aw, shit.”

Mark’s voice is shaking.

Oscar’s already navigating over to Google. He’s a famous person doing a famous job: he has nightmares about being exposed in some Internet scandal about once a week.

“Am I fired?” Oscar jokes weakly.

Mark is silent.

Headlines greet him. His blood runs cold.

Formula One driver Oscar Piastri caught KISSING fellow driver Carlos Sainz on Monaco Yacht Party!

Secret Gay Romance EXPOSED Between Two Elite Formula One Drivers!

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz CONFIRM Gay Relationship by Passionately Kissing on Summer Break!

There’s a monstrous second where Oscar doesn’t understand. Down the phone, Mark stays silent.

Every article sports the same three pictures. Blurry, grainy, and undeniable.

In the first, they’re not doing anything, just standing together. Carlos is mid-laugh, his face bright and easy. His arm is reaching towards Oscar, who stands chest-to-chest with him, less than a foot of distance. Oscar’s turning, acting out some joke, a sliver of his face visible to the camera. This one’s already enough, to be caught mid-conversation, in a secluded corner of this mega-yacht, glowing with delight.

In the second one, Carlos’ arm has completed the movement and pulled Oscar in. His arm is wrapped around Oscar’s waist, and his other hand is cupping his cheek. His eyes are closed and his brow is furrowed, like he’s concentrating hard. The picture doesn’t show Oscar’s face.

No worries, because the final one does.

They’ve generously turned so the camera can catch the worst angle. Oscar’s blissed out, crinkly smile into the kiss. Carlos’ thumb right above the hinge of his jaw. There’s not an inch between them. Behind them, the darkness is spotted with Monaco’s glittery lights.

Oscar remembers this moment. Remembers the warm salt of the air and the luxury of Carlos’ linen shirt against his fingers. He remembers the delicious heat of Carlos’ mouth against the faint breeze and the way his stomach jumped, like a little boy.

It was so stupid to do that. So fucking stupid. How could they have thought that place was private enough? How could they have ever let down their guard this far? Now, they pay the consequences.

Carlos still doesn’t know, Oscar thinks with a horrible lurch. He’s still inside, asleep. Naked under the covers of the bed they’ve shared for the last however-many months.

“Oscar?” Mark croaks over the line. “Are you okay?”

What an irrelevant question, Oscar thinks. Shouldn’t Mark be worrying about his brand? His sponsors? God-fucking-forbid, his contract?

“They’re fake,” Oscar tries out. “Photoshop. It’s fucking crazy, it looks so real. But it’s fake. You know I can’t stand Carlos. I dunno why they would even choose us both.”

Mark is silent, and Oscar has to bite back a peal of hysterical laughter.

As if. Mark knows Carlos went with him to Australia last winter, which is enough. Why else would Oscar bring him, if they weren’t shagging? Why else would Oscar shag him, why else would Oscar ever let anyone see him naked, if Oscar didn’t trust them with his life?

For Monaco, it’s so quiet. Every window is dark— except for one that glows yellow in the apartment building across the street, twenty stories down from Oscar.

“Oscar, you’re going to be okay,” Mark begins. “We’ve got a meeting with Zak and Andrea in two hours. We have some options. There are people who are ready to help you. Over my dead body, you will still race in F1. I promise you, okay? Okay? It’s how— it’s how things work, nowadays. I promise you. Things work out nowadays.”

“Carlos is inside. He’s asleep. He’s my boyfriend.”

“Okay. That’s— that’s—”

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“That’s okay.”

Oscar traces a crack in the concrete with his toe. He’s not even got socks on.

“‘M not afraid for me. Carlos has the— his family, you know? They don’t know. They’re conservative. And his car is slower.”

“It’s okay if you’re afraid, too.”

Jesus. Oscar’s nose is burning with tears. “But he was always the one who was more sure. He isn’t— he’s braver than I am. He could trust things even when he wasn’t sure about them.”

Oscar’s rigid. But Carlos yields.

That’s a strength. Carlos bends where Oscar snaps. Carlos bounces where Oscar shatters.

“I don’t want him to be upset,” Oscar continues, nonsense. “Okay? We have to… Someone has to take care of him. He’s going to be very panicky, but—” Oscar gulps a shuddery inhale— “he has to know that, that, that—”

“Oscar—”

“I’m not panicking.”

“I know.”

“We have to protect Carlos, okay? Can your people— those people, are they talking with Williams too? Has, has Vowles said anything? Or Alex?”

“I will check in.”

“His contract is only until ‘26. They could use this— there's a risk, here.”

“Okay.”

Oscar wipes his palms over his boxers.

Mark repeats it again: “Okay.”

Three weeks of summer break remain. At the very least, they have time to talk. Oscar can build it back up, if it fails.

“The priority must be Carlos,” Oscar says, and then grinds the bridge of his nose into the crook of his elbow. Another shuddery inhale.

He just wants to race. He just wants them both to race.

Mark says, irrelevant again, “I’m so sorry this is happening to you, Oscar.”

“I—”

“You’re being very brave.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re brave.”

“Will sponsors drop because of this? And, what about— what about Qatar?”

Oscar can feel Mark wince. “We’re not sure, okay? It will depend on how you decide to address it. We don’t have to deny it, but we could frame it as a privacy violation. You’re leading the championship. The directors may be willing to adopt a… don’t ask, don’t tell policy—”

“And we go back to hiding?”

Mark grimaces, “It’ll be an open secret.”

Oscar wants to vomit. Another year poured into hiding the brightest part of his life. He must accept a lifetime sentence of blackout curtains and dinner dates at the kitchen table. Vacations planned like spy missions and fumbling to find plus-ones for events.

“Carlos was always braver than I am.”

“Okay.”

“His ego never got in his way. He could… he could cry for things. He could ask for things. I didn’t understand it, but now… I— I want to—”

Oscar turns and looks at the sliding glass door behind him. The sky keeps getting brighter.

Mark says, “I’m getting calls, I have to go. I’ll send you the details for the meeting. Stay calm. Oscar— it will work out. Why don’t you go eat something? Or, sleep if you can.”

“Um.”

“We’ve got you.”

And the line is dead.

The pre-dawn morning is fresh and cool. Oscar takes heaving breaths, until his spinning thoughts whirl into each other and collapse, until his shaking hands mellow out, until his heart hardens with an animal focus, not unlike watching five red lights on the cusp of blinking out.

Oscar pads back into the bedroom. It’s dark and cozy. Carlos is passed out under soft sheets.

Oscar crawls on top of him and pulls down the covers.

Here, Oscar’s favorite part of Carlos: the birthmark on the left side of his lower back.

It’s the size of his thumbprint. It’s only a whisper lighter than the rest of his body, the faintest mark, imperceptible at a quick glance, invisible on pictures— yet, it is stark and undeniable once Oscar realized it is there.

No one has ever noticed it before, Oscar is sure. No one has studied Carlos’ back like Oscar has. No one has devoted the time, the effort, the attention. No one in the world has ever loved Carlos Sainz like Oscar does.

He kisses it, once, twice, three times. Runs his thumb over it. Kisses it again, and one more time, and one more time.

He can't lose this, Oscar realizes. He can’t lose this birthmark, he can’t lose Carlos’ sleep-hot skin. What would happen to their favorite songs, their morning kisses, or their secret hiking spots? To love something is to want it beyond safety.

No one has ever noticed the birthmark.

Oscar was the first.

And, no one has ever risked a successful Formula One racing career, at the height of its potential, to publicly love a man.

Oscar will be the first in this, as well.

Beneath him, Carlos stirs as he wakes.

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littlewitchcoffe · 4 days ago

Text

It’s a yacht party that gets them.

Oscar wakes to a violent shove from Carlos. He makes a confused mumble, his brain clawing out of sleep enough to realize that his phone has been ringing, and ringing, and ringing.

“Turn that off,” Carlos groans, burying himself back in the pillow.

Oscar’s tangled in a blanket. He hauls himself over to the nightstand, just enough to flip over his phone and hit “Decline.”

As he does so, he sees Zak Brown’s name.

Before he can wonder why his boss is calling him at five fucking AM during summer break, a new call lights his screen.

It’s from Mark.

Something lurches in Oscar’s stomach.

He peels himself out of bed and goes onto Carlos’ balcony. The sky is just beginning to pinken.

“Wha?” he answers.

“Oscar.”

“What? It’s five AM—”

“Have you seen?”

“Seen what?”

“Aw, shit.”

Mark’s voice is shaking.

Oscar’s already navigating over to Google. He’s a famous person doing a famous job: he has nightmares about being exposed in some Internet scandal about once a week.

“Am I fired?” Oscar jokes weakly.

Mark is silent.

Headlines greet him. His blood runs cold.

Formula One driver Oscar Piastri caught KISSING fellow driver Carlos Sainz on Monaco Yacht Party!

Secret Gay Romance EXPOSED Between Two Elite Formula One Drivers!

EXCLUSIVE: Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz CONFIRM Gay Relationship by Passionately Kissing on Summer Break!

There’s a monstrous second where Oscar doesn’t understand. Down the phone, Mark stays silent.

Every article sports the same three pictures. Blurry, grainy, and undeniable.

No worries, because the final one does.

It was so stupid to do that. So fucking stupid. How could they have thought that place was private enough? How could they have ever let down their guard this far? Now, they pay the consequences.

Carlos still doesn’t know, Oscar thinks with a horrible lurch. He’s still inside, asleep. Naked under the covers of the bed they’ve shared for the last however-many months.

“Oscar?” Mark croaks over the line. “Are you okay?”

What an irrelevant question, Oscar thinks. Shouldn’t Mark be worrying about his brand? His sponsors? God-fucking-forbid, his contract?

“They’re fake,” Oscar tries out. “Photoshop. It’s fucking crazy, it looks so real. But it’s fake. You know I can’t stand Carlos. I dunno why they would even choose us both.”

Mark is silent, and Oscar has to bite back a peal of hysterical laughter.

For Monaco, it’s so quiet. Every window is dark— except for one that glows yellow in the apartment building across the street, twenty stories down from Oscar.

“Carlos is inside. He’s asleep. He’s my boyfriend.”

“Okay. That’s— that’s—”

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“That’s okay.”

Oscar traces a crack in the concrete with his toe. He’s not even got socks on.

“‘M not afraid for me. Carlos has the— his family, you know? They don’t know. They’re conservative. And his car is slower.”

“It’s okay if you’re afraid, too.”

Jesus. Oscar’s nose is burning with tears. “But he was always the one who was more sure. He isn’t— he’s braver than I am. He could trust things even when he wasn’t sure about them.”

Oscar’s rigid. But Carlos yields.

That’s a strength. Carlos bends where Oscar snaps. Carlos bounces where Oscar shatters.

“Oscar—”

“I’m not panicking.”

“I know.”

“We have to protect Carlos, okay? Can your people— those people, are they talking with Williams too? Has, has Vowles said anything? Or Alex?”

“I will check in.”

“His contract is only until ‘26. They could use this— there's a risk, here.”

“Okay.”

Oscar wipes his palms over his boxers.

Mark repeats it again: “Okay.”

Three weeks of summer break remain. At the very least, they have time to talk. Oscar can build it back up, if it fails.

“The priority must be Carlos,” Oscar says, and then grinds the bridge of his nose into the crook of his elbow. Another shuddery inhale.

He just wants to race. He just wants them both to race.

Mark says, irrelevant again, “I’m so sorry this is happening to you, Oscar.”

“I—”

“You’re being very brave.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“You’re brave.”

“Will sponsors drop because of this? And, what about— what about Qatar?”

“And we go back to hiding?”

Mark grimaces, “It’ll be an open secret.”

“Carlos was always braver than I am.”

“Okay.”

“His ego never got in his way. He could… he could cry for things. He could ask for things. I didn’t understand it, but now… I— I want to—”

Oscar turns and looks at the sliding glass door behind him. The sky keeps getting brighter.

Mark says, “I’m getting calls, I have to go. I’ll send you the details for the meeting. Stay calm. Oscar— it will work out. Why don’t you go eat something? Or, sleep if you can.”

“Um.”

“We’ve got you.”

And the line is dead.

Oscar pads back into the bedroom. It’s dark and cozy. Carlos is passed out under soft sheets.

Oscar crawls on top of him and pulls down the covers.

Here, Oscar’s favorite part of Carlos: the birthmark on the left side of his lower back.

He kisses it, once, twice, three times. Runs his thumb over it. Kisses it again, and one more time, and one more time.

No one has ever noticed the birthmark.

Oscar was the first.

And, no one has ever risked a successful Formula One racing career, at the height of its potential, to publicly love a man.

Oscar will be the first in this, as well.

Beneath him, Carlos stirs as he wakes.

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littlewitchcoffe · 4 days ago

Text

Candid of "Hot Carlos" (and Lando ofc)

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littlewitchcoffe · 4 days ago

Note

please do keep pondering "carcar praise kink sex" where Carlos calls a very overwhelmed Oscar beautiful i feel like that has so much potential

(re: my tags on this post of oscar implying he’s never been called ‘beautiful’ before) lol nonny, you hit the nail on the head! have some established relationship!carcar as a reward for your excellent sleuthing skills :)

“What is this?” Carlos says, shoving his phone practically between Oscar’s eyes. Oscar squints the image into focus, finding his own face staring back at him, a video of him making some dumb joke about how he’s never been called beautiful before. “This is not true, Oscar. I’m calling you beautiful all the time.”

Carlos’ eyebrows are furrowed in confusion when Oscar looks back up at him. Oscar hadn’t been thinking, really, when he’d said it, hadn’t imagined Carlos watching it back. Carlos had confessed to him once, in the middle of post-sex small talk, that he only ever watched the bits of F1 media that featured himself. Oscar had called him an arrogant dickhead before kissing him silly.

“Yeah, but you don’t really—” Oscar cuts himself off before he can say, mean it, but Carlos hears the unspoken words anyway.

“Of course I mean it,” Carlos replies. His voice, thank god, is empty of pity, inflected instead with that same disbelieving, self-righteous tone he gets when he’s arguing with Oscar about anything. The perfect racing line. The most efficient way to navigate the grocery store. The reasons why Oscar really should not keep his phone right next to him when he sleeps anymore, did Oscar not listen to the podcast Carlos sent him about it? As though the fact that Oscar would even entertain a different opinion should be a sign that he's sustained one too many concussions. “Why would I not mean it?”

Oscar’s jaw works as he tries to explain—a tic he’s probably picked up from Carlos, somehow. It’s not that he thinks Carlos is lying to him. And it’s not like he doesn’t believe Carlos is attracted to him, in his own way. But Oscar also knows that when people call him beautiful, they mean something different from what they mean when they call Carlos beautiful, with his full hair, and his big, dark eyes, and the perfectly shaped bow of his lips. When people call Carlos beautiful, they mean it in the most objective sense of the word. Model-worthy, out-of-this-world, magazine-cover beautiful.

When people call Oscar beautiful, though—beautiful, which is rarely ever used to describe him; not cute, or sweet, or nice-looking, but beautiful—they mean it in a different way. To them, Oscar is beautiful in the way that a perfect quali lap is beautiful, purple in all three sectors. Beautiful like how, on the rare occasion Oscar lets Carlos drag him along to the golf course, Carlos will sometimes swing his club in a way that, to Oscar, looks practically identical to his last dozen swings, but which makes Carlos let out a low whistle and go, beauuutiful.

That’s how Oscar’s beautiful, if he can be said to be beautiful at all. Not for how he looks, but for what he can do, and how well he can do it.

“It’s not like— I don’t have some complex, or something,” Oscar says, because he doesn’t. As long as his body keeps his hands steady on the wheel and his feet late on the brakes, he doesn’t much care what it looks like.

“I did not say you did,” Carlos says, casual. Too casual. Oscar can see him getting that set to his jaw now, the one that means this is about to be a Conversation.

“Quit looking at me like that,” Oscar says, but he already knows it’s a losing battle. “It’s not a big deal.”

The thing is, Oscar’s learned there’s no fighting it, when Carlos decides it’s time for a Conversation. When Oscar was a kid and he’d have a fight with his sisters, they’d usually scream their heads off and then ice each other out for a few days before coming to some silent agreement that whatever they’d been arguing about was probably stupid in the first place. Then one of them would ask the other if they wanted to come play, and they’d carry on like nothing ever happened at all.

The first time Carlos and Oscar had a fight, by contrast—a proper couple-fight, something about someone not showing up for dinner, instead of who had the right to defend their position against the other during the race, or whose tyre strategy was going to be better if there was rain on Sunday—Carlos had allowed Oscar exactly thirty minutes to stew before he’d plopped himself down on the couch next to him and said, We are talking about it now. When Oscar had snapped back, would you just let me— I need a fucking minute, mate, Carlos had replied, how many more minutes?, and Oscar, slightly baffled, had replied, I don’t know, fifteen?

Carlos had nodded sharply and left, returning exactly fifteen minutes later with a glass of deeply oversaturated Milo—clumps of totally dry powder floating in the milk like little islands, just the way Oscar liked it. He’d set it down on the coffee table like a peace offering, asked, We talk now? And Oscar had taken a sip of it, the gritty chocolate coating his tongue, and replied, Okay, yeah, we talk now.

The stare Carlos is giving him now is the same one he did then, that we-talk-now look that’s a question in theory but a demand in practice. Oscar sighs, gets up to grab the Milo from the pantry.

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he says, pushing Carlos’ giant tub of creatine out of the way to find the canister. He pulls it off the shelf, grabs a glass. “‘S just. We can’t all be L’Oréal models, can we?”

He nearly spills milk all over the countertop when he feels Carlos’ warm body at his back, his arms looping around Oscar’s middle.

“That does not mean I don’t mean it when I say it, Oscar,” he says. “Of course I think you’re— every time you take your helmet off, every time you step on the podium, every time I walk through the door and see you, how could I not—”

Oscar finishes pouring his milk, wrestles out of Carlos’ grip to grab a spoon from the drawer so he can stir the mixture together into chocolate sludge. Carlos works his arms back around him the second he gets the chance. Fucking limpet.

“I know,” Oscar says, a hint of frustration creeping in at the edges of his voice. Because how does he explain? How does he explain that Carlos might find him beautiful, but in the way that mothers always find their children’s artwork beautiful, displaying their messy scribbles proudly on their refrigerator for all their guests to see? Beautiful not because it’s a masterpiece, but because it’s theirs, because it symbolizes someone they— care for, someone they want to keep around. “I’m not calling you a liar, can you just forget I ever—”

“Ay, look at me,” Carlos snips. He squeezes at Oscar’s hips until he turns around and meets Carlos’ eyes. Oscar isn’t sure what to call the look he finds there.

“Oscar,” Carlos says. “I think you are beautiful all the time. Like that—” here, Oscar follows Carlos’ gaze as it flicks over to the shelf where Oscar keeps all the replicas of his trophies, his helmets; before leaning in and pressing a kiss to Oscar’s temple. “—and like this. When you’re up on the podium—” Again, Carlos’ gaze wanders, this time down to Oscar’s own mouth, then back up to his face, “—or down on your knees for me. I think you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

Oscar feels the back of his neck heat, knows he must be turning red all the way from his cheeks to his chest. Hearing those words come out of a mouth like Carlos’ feels— surreal, heady. Embarrassingly, he can feel blood beginning to pool low in his stomach, his cock starting to firm up in his gym shorts.

Carlos, because he insists on making Oscar’s life a living hell, seems to notice at the exact same time, the corner of his mouth curling upward.

“Oh,” he says, “you like it?” Like he can't see the answer to his question with his own eyes, like he doesn’t know what he does to Oscar all the time, constantly. “You like when I talk to you like this?” He brings a hand to the front of Oscar’s shorts, just brushing the backs of his knuckles against the fabric, and Oscar has to bite down on a gasp.

Oscar stays silent, lets his head fall to his chest. It’s not like he can deny it, his body speaking for him well enough. But to say the words aloud, to make that big of a concession, feels—

It’s just. Oscar’s always prided himself on not caring about that kind of stuff as much. Never fussed over the fact that people could see the acne littering his jaw when he walked into the paddock, never spent much time fixing his hair in the mirror in the morning or wondering whether he should get his front teeth shaved down. Scoffed the first time Carlos found a grey hair in the mirror and asked Oscar whether he ought to buy some Just For Men to cover it up, as if Oscar didn’t think Carlos’ scant grays were the most wonderful thing he’d ever seen.

But now, like this, Oscar’s body seems set on proving him wrong, Carlos’ praise lighting him up from the inside out. Making him feel like something— precious, maybe. Like he could be beautiful not just for what he does, but who he is.

“I think you are especially beautiful like this,” Carlos adds, once it becomes clear Oscar’s not going to answer. “When you are all—” Carlos swipes his index and middle finger down the apple of his cheek, mimicking what Oscar is sure must be his own wicked flush. “You get red so easily. So pretty.”

“Please, don’t—” Oscar says, because it feels like getting cracked open. Like Carlos is plunging his hands in Oscar’s chest and rooting around in there. Too much, too exposed, Oscar's body unruly in a way it rarely is on track.

Slowly, gently, Carlos shakes his head no. Damn him.

“Open up,” he says, resting his thumb on the seam of Oscar’s lips. On instinct, Oscar does, and when Carlos slides it inside, it’s all Oscar can do to wrap his lips around it and suck. His dick throbs in his shorts, and it’s awful, the way his body is letting Carlos know all too easily what Oscar thinks, how much it means to him that Carlos might actually find him—

“Beautiful,” Carlos breathes, and Oscar’s knees go weak.

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