#but i can't keep spiralling in thoughts like this

[beanarie]

@bucktommywhumpweek days 6-7

thank you for such lovely feedback! i started this event with nothing but a nebulous hope to turn out a cohesive story, but the hype i got from all of you kept me going and what almost ended as a 300 word ficlet became something much more ❤️

~

"That parking job took a while," Maddie says pointedly.

"I stopped at the gift shop. Think Tommy'll like it?" The bear is a shade of blue similar to Tommy's flight suit. Thoughtful of him.

Buck raises his eyes to look at Chim, leery.

"Hey, stand down." Chim tosses the bear at Maddie and puts his hands behind his back. "Look, I'm unarmed."

Maddie lets out a groan. "I'm gonna go get coffee. No, Buck, don't even ask. Water for you. Or hot chocolate."

"Water," Buck says. Hen's soup is sitting a little too heavily in his stomach.

"You got it." She smiles, touches his face, and leaves the bear on the table.

Chim pulls a pack of cards out of his pocket and steals her seat. "We all know Whist was Bobby's game, but you're feverish and Hen said you took two Percosets not too long ago. Let's do Go Fish."

Buck lifts one shoulder. It'll keep him from dozing off.

After dealing them out, Chim starts by picking up a seven of diamonds. "I am your captain," he says, discarding a ten of clubs. "That's more than paperwork and getting to tell you what to do." He slumps back in his seat. "Bobby left really big shoes to fill. The biggest."

Buck takes the ten, even though he didn't have any. He doesn't feel like opening his mouth just yet.

Chim takes the four of diamonds Buck discarded. "But I promised I would keep his house in order just as he left it. I pledged that to all of you, and to him. That means I can't kick back and assume Eddie or your sister are looking after you. I need to be annoying, like he used to get annoying." He moves his cards around in his hand, changing the order so many times it can't possibly be helpful.

Buck clears his throat. "Chim."

Chim lowers his cards and eyes Buck. "He would've been here as soon as the call wrapped up. Not just because it was you but because you were one of his. I need to start taking that responsibility more seriously."

Buck ignores that Chim forgot to discard. "Threes?"

"Bobby would've noticed you never stopped spiraling. I mean, he caught it with Eddie and he was working dispatch at the time. He would've stepped in and done something before you got hurt." Chim's expression twists. "Big shoes."

Buck collapses his cards into a tiny stack. "Am I supposed to say something?"

Chim takes their cards and puts them aside. "No, Buck. I'm the one who messed up. If I can't get my longtime teammate, the one who's literally my family, to come to me with a problem, then I definitely haven't fostered that environment for anyone else under my command. I need to work on that, otherwise I might as well have let you and Eddie go."

Buck shrugs again and looks away.

"What's going on with you two? I thought when he came back, we'd all... you know." Chim threads his fingers together and lets them go with a sigh. "Hen said you won't even look in his direction."

Buck rolls his shoulders back and runs a thumb along the top of his cast. "Don't worry about it, Cap."

"I will worry about it," Chim says, nudging him. "But I'll give you a chance to deal with it first."

~

Eddie hands Buck a grocery bag. "Fresh shirt, deodorant, hand towel, toothbrush, and face wash. I almost put a razor in there, too, but that seemed like a lot to configure in a hospital restroom."

"Thanks," Buck says, closing his hand around the bag.

Eddie jerks his head towards the restroom. "Go, clean up. If Tommy saw you now, he'd have a heart attack."

Buck wheels himself over and emerges a few minutes later, slightly cleaner and marginally less uncomfortable.

Eddie sits up straighter. "You look almost human again," he says, nodding.

"Feel it, too." Buck rubs his knuckles against his cheek. A shave would've been nice, but Eddie was right about it not being practical.

"Hey, man."

Buck tries not to look away as Eddie ducks his head a little.

"We're gonna be okay, right?"

Buck runs a hand along the back of his neck. "H-How do I talk to you," he says, "if every time I feel something you tell me I'm being selfish?"

"Buck, come on."

Buck glances at Chim and Maddie, bickering in low tones over a shared latte. "It makes me feel so alone. Like I can't confide in anyone, n-not just you."

Eddie leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "You're not alone, man. I never meant to do that to you."

"Family of Thomas Kinard?"

Chim puts the stupid bear in Buck's lap and claps his shoulder. "Go get 'im."

~

Tommy is on a mask now.

"Just as a precaution," the nurse says. "If he continues to improve, we'll swap it for the canula before the end of the day."

"Okay," Buck says, slowly approaching the bed. "Good. Thank you."

His face is partially leaned towards the wall. From what Buck can see, his color is noticeably better, which makes sense. He's not gradually bleeding out anymore.

"Hey," Buck calls softly. "You awake?"

Tommy turns his head, and beams, his cheeks pushing at the top of the mask. "You came back," he says, muffled and perfect.

Buck lays his hand on the side of Tommy's face. "No," he says, needing him to understand. "I stayed. Never left."

[p0ltus]

This tiktok comment really pissed me off so I'm gonna go on a tirade LMAO

Blaming South for "letting competition ruin the relationship of family" is such an insanely moronic take. Did you pay attention when you watched the show? Do you actually understand what was going on? Because it doesn't seem like a lot of people do.

A lot of the lore around the Freelancers is given to us through offhanded comments during longer dialog scenes, so sure, a good handful of it could've been missed on a first watch, but if you took even the shortest moment to think about these characters I cannot understand how you'd come to the conclusion "South was a bitch and it was her fault for being mad".

The Director was a manipulator. He was A BAD. PERSON. A BAD PERSON.

North and South were signed onto the project by their parents. The Director saw the opportunity to play psycho-scientist with twins and only gave one of them an AI to see what would come of it. It was an experiment. SOUTH was the experiment.

We get some tidbits here and there from North about what his life with his sister was like before they became Freelancers. 90% of this dialog suggests South has always had an inferiority complex when it comes to being compared to her brother. This has been a life long issue. This was not brought upon by Theta. It was NEVER about Theta.

For her entire life South has felt as though she'll never be as good as North and that mentality is what made her grow to be so cold and snappy. The feeling of inferiority weighing on her for that long ruined her. North was always kind to her, but we've seen this trope before both in fiction and reality.

When the person you continuously get compared to shows you unwavering kindness your brain starts telling you they're being facetious. They're fucking with you. They know they're better than you, they're just being overly warm and understanding to keep that facade up. If they're kind to the person beneath them that just makes them look better.

Even though that was never North's intention, that's clearly how South was taking it. She envied him for so long that it drove a wedge between the two. Again, it was never about the AI. It was never about being a soldier. It was about feeling inferior for your entire life because no matter what you'll always be compared to someone else. North getting Theta instead of South was an intentional decision and that was her breaking point. She is a victim.

Stop villainizing South for "letting jealousy ruin family" because this was never about JEALOUSY. It was about INFERIORITY. She didn't want what North had, she only wanted to stop feeling lesser than him. She wanted to stop being treated like the younger sibling. She thought Project Freelancer was her chance to finally show she was just as good, if not better than her brother, but The Director played right into her insecurity and that downward spiral was what got both her and her brother killed.

South. Is a victim. South is a victim.

Edit: someone reblogged this blaming North. Idk how you misinterpreted his character THAT bad but no, he is not the problem. He doesn't see South as inferior. His problem is that he still sees her as someone he needs to care for. He's not dumbing her down or implying she's not as good as him in a combat/technical sense. This is a brother who can't get it out of his head that he doesn't need to raise his sister anymore. He never implies she CAN'T BE as good as him. He does not at all consider her inferior to him/that he's better than her. Not once does he say anything to her or to anyone about her to imply that. I have no clue where that came from.

"But it didnt bother HIM" yeah. Because from his perspective he only sees Souths personal struggle, not the fact The Director is intentionally manipulating BOTH of them. He sees Souths situation as her struggling with FEELING inferior, not BEING inferior, but the problem is that The Director is INTENTIONALLY PUNISHING AND PICKING ON HER because he is trying to pin the freelancers against each other. CT has an entire scene where she confirmes this to Wash. What did you expect North to do? It was The Directors call on who got an AI. Whats he gonna do? Go tell The Director to give his sister one??? NO???? He supported her until the second he died. He NEVER saw her as inferior to him. The real issue was the fact he still loved her too much to truly let her be her own person. She expresses that exact sentiment of wanting to be "her own person" in Recovery One. Thats not "a superiority complex" from North thats called being family. He cared for her deeply and acknowledged her struggle. He did what he could. Do you really expect him to try to argue with his superior? Are you forgetting this is the military? This is not a safe space for North hate either. Both the twins were victims and deserved better.

I rewatched the saga to see where this take could've come from and if anything that rewatch only further proved my point. I'll make a separate post about that with clips probably

[white-btterfly]

Profuse amounts of happy tears emojis under the cut.

The way Jayce thought Viktor would be better after they ALMOST KISSED?!?! Clueless man!! Get a grip! It's continuously ironic how Jayce tries harder and harder to make Viktor feel better, and it only succeeds in making Viktor love him hopelessly more and more.

Well, Jayce is 100% convinced he was the only one to initiate, AND that Viktor doesn't love him anyway. He became convinced that he's the cure... and in a way he is... except that for now he definitely isn't, since Viktor is convinced Jayce doesn't love him... Even now as I'm writing this I am still in awe at how silly they both are.

I'm desperately hoping for the confession chapter even though I know there's so much more of the story left. I'm going to snap my phone in two out of frustration before Jayce connects the dots.

The confession chapter will arrive... eventually... I would rather not give you an ETA to keep you on your toes, but for the sake of your phone, let's just say that there will be some room after the confession chapter to describe Viktor and Jayce's happily ever after.

I do love seeing Jayce nervous about things. I find him so relatable in that way. He's kind of a people-pleaser and wants to do a good job. And damn if I don't behave the same way before giving a speech, running through the script andtrying to get the wording just right. And Jayce's distraction by the shared moment when they almost kissed, it cracks me up. He's like, "Viktor? Kissable? Well..no..wait, unless? NO STOP THINKING ABOUT IT." Oh Jayce, you are so in love with him.

I like to imagine Jayce is the kind of person to have his thoughts circle back again and again. The poor man is spiraling.

"I can't believe I wanted to kiss Viktor -> why would I want to kiss him anyway, he isn't that attractive right? Better check -> Oh my God, maybe he is -> no he definitely isn't -> I can't believe I wanted to kiss Viktor"

And on and on!

AAAA the trope where one person realizes their attraction and thinks only "oh." I'm obsessed with it. I've used it in my own writing before too, because it's just so perfect. Such a simple word to describe a shift in perception so large, it's rewriting every thought in Jayce's brain. And he tries to deny it to himself later! A trick of the light? His lips aren't that enticing in the daylight pshhh I was offended on Viktor's behalf. Jayce, how dare you? Viktor is totally kissable at all hours of the day (glad he realizes that later lol, what a goofball).

The famous italicized 'oh' moment... And Jayce got his off-screen... Ahah. There is no other word that could have explained what happened in Jayce's head at that moment. One moment, he was seeing his best friend, feeling like he finally managed to bury his jealousy for good, and the next... He was seeing his whole reason to live, smiling at him. Everything changed. He felt the Pull™ at full power, the one that has always been there although he never really questioned it, and from that moment onward, it never left him.

Also I personally love it when Jayce tries to deny how attractive he finds Viktor. Sure, it's a little unfair toward Viktor, but my God, how I love when a character claims someone is unattractive, and yet can't help but feel the sharp stab of desire and longing whenever they see them. Awww wonderful.

"He's my partner," Jayce hissed, baring his teeth and taking a threatening step toward the man. "Careful how you talk about him." I'm screeching. I'm dead on the floor. Protective angry Jayce, my beloved. I'm so glad he did shit like this in the show because I can imagine exactly how he'd look while saying this. Bless the people at Fortiche for animating Jayce and for you @white-btterfly for creating this story. My brain will never be the same after consuming these chapters.

Neither will my brain after reading your comment! 😭❤️

Smirking at Caitlyn giving Jayce shit about being a convicted felon. Smacking and flicking each other like brother and sister. I love their dynamic so much. I love Caitlyn showing up in stories. She always adds this break in the tension, a peaceful comfortable friendship with Jayce despite whatever else is going on.

I too love Caitlyn and Jayce's sibling relationship! We'll see her again.

Someone please draw Viktor in his gala outfit, I'm dying.

I had the idea to commission some artists to draw fanarts for BYSS. I desperately want to see Jayce and Viktor nearly kissing while floating!

And Jayce can't even hold himself back. He did miss him all day. He thinks Viktor is charming and handsome aaaaaaAAAAAAA!!!!! If only Viktor could hear Jayce's thoughts. He would be astonished.

Viktor would have a hard time believing it indeed.

I decided to give Sky what she deserves, which is a happy life. When I first watched the show, I was revolted by the way her character got used to further Viktor's story. For a show that usually respects its female characters, the way Sky got fridged was horrible. I was indignant! Furious on her behalf! Anyway, in my story, she's happy, working on projects she loves, she's getting over her feelings for Viktor and staying friends with him, she's befriending Jayce and she danced with him and got a flock of admirers like she deserves!

Some readers couldn't understand why Jayce asked Sky instead of Viktor, but Jayce wasn't ready to ask Viktor yet. And asking Viktor in front of everyone would have been a sure way to make Viktor die of embarrassment. He hates being the center of attention.

About Jayce, there's nothing more charming than a man who has no idea how attractive he is. Jayce could easily have anything and anyone he wants, and yet all he wants is do science and love Viktor. When you said Jayce's whole world revolves around Viktor, nothing has ever been more true.

There's so much anticipation every time Jayce switches partners for dancing. I was waiting with bated breath like "who will he ask next? Will he ask Viktor yet? Next time, maybe? What about now? Ask Viktor, he clearly wants to dance, Jayce. Jayce, please!! Please ask Viktor you idiot!"

I have sprinkled the previous chapters with so many talks about dancing, that scene was bound to happen. Piltover, especially on Progress Day, seemed like the perfect setting to have a gala. I've seen so many fanarts of Jayce and Viktor with matching outfits, so many fanarts of them dancing... Plus, dancing can feel so intimate when the right conditions are met... I just had to write it!

Hilarious that Jayce was talking over Viktor and sacrificing his good time to dance with potential investors, all because he's trying to earn Viktor's praise and help their Hextech dream. Viktor tried so hard to let him know that he didn't have to dance and Jayce just trampled all over it like the dumbass he is. "I'm ready to dance with every woman in this room to make it happen." Jayce, stop it, please. Viktor might crush his champagne flute from the jealously running through his veins.

Ahahah oh my God. I love that line. I giggled when I wrote it. Jayce is just so oblivious.

My blood and Viktor's blood ran cold when Mel came into the equation. She's just so charismatic and beautiful. Nobody can hold a candle to her. It was heartbreaking to watch Jayce realize that he made a big mistake. Viktor rarely looks that hurt by anything. Annoyed? Yes. Betrayed? Sure, occasionally. Angry? Definitely. But genuinely hurt? Oh that's reserved for only the most important person in Viktor's life, Jayce Talis, the bumbling fool.

I think Mel, being an empath and the perceptive woman we know, sensed the yearning vibes as soon as she entered the ballroom, coming as much from Viktor as from Jayce. They were so strong she felt compelled to do something.

The whole exchange when Jayce says he's married to science and Mel refers to Viktor as "science," now that was genius. The whole exchange between the two of them was literal gold.

Thank you!!! 😭😭😭😭😭

Viktor is so not subtle at this gala. The yearning and jealousy are at 10/10 levels. I'm eating it up. 10 course meal of the finest words ever put to a page.

😭😭😭😭😭

Also yes, Viktor was 100% jealous. To think seeing Viktor dance with Mel during the Distinguished Innovators competition was exactly what triggered his first coughing fit of nightblooms... And to think Viktor has to watch them dance again... It was heartbreaking for him.

I hope that list comes back to bite Jayce in the ass later. Literally. I hope the paper comes loose and smacks him in the face, forcing him to see his own signature on the page and have the whole world come crashing down around him. I can't believe how many times he has thought back to that list as the reason Viktor can't possibly have feelings for him. Jayce, you fool! Take another look! Fresh eyes! See the truth!

We haven't seen the last of the List™. We will see it again. And it will plague Jayce again. And again. The list will be crucial in the grand finale.

Oh, the glorious moment when Jayce asked Viktor to dance. I'm so glad it happened. The fact that Viktor was jealous so long ago and believed Jayce loved dancing the whole time, only to find out he doesn't really like it. And to have Jayce finally see him and ask him to dance. It's coming full circle. Viktor is getting what he wanted all this time. He just can't see how genuine it all is.

This was the scene I struggled on the most in this chapter—Jayce asking Viktor to dance. Because it was such a delicate balance of longing and hope and bitter disappointment and denial followed by intense joy and I had to temper it all. So many feelings in such a short amount of time. I revised this part so many times! I think I am quite satisfied now.

Jayce Talis, the man that you are. I love how he blurts out the truth like it'll burn him from the inside if he doesn't share it. I love how honest he's being in this chapter. Such growth compared to the beginning! He'll get there eventually. I believe in him! Slowly letting himself act on these feelings he has. He's scared of rejection, but does it anyway.

That's the thing with Jayce, he's so honest he can sometime act on impulse. Although he tried a lot to repress his feelings for Viktor, they guide all his actions, so sometimes he can't help but say or do what's on his mind. In an earlier chapter, Jayce thought to himself that he "couldn't imagine himself being in love with someone and keeping it to himself for more than three seconds". Viktor kept his feelings for Jayce locked away in his heart for four years. How long do you think Jayce is going to last?

I've read the scene of them dancing like five times. What's in this story? God damn, the sentences are laced with some kind of illicit magic that keeps my eyes glued to the screen.

Lots of love and care!

Plus a little bit of Shimmer sprinkled on top to keep you addicted.

(Oh my God, thank you 😭❤️)

They are so soft?!?!?! So gentle with each other. And Jayce's apology? I'm crying. There's an ocean full of tears and it's from me, laying face down on the floor sobbing about how cute they are. Viktor's forehead on Jayce's chest? Oh my god. Just when I think they can't get any more in love without realizing it, it just gets WORSE.

Jayce's apology... I love it... I love that he's talking using the third person because it makes it easier for them to talk about their feelings. Urgh, they're so in love it makes me sick.

Okay, hear me out. The moonblossoms lighting up. The dancing out in their own little world in nature. It's giving...that scene from Little Mermaid where they're in the boat together and about to kiss. (God I haven't seen that movie in forever, somehow it was summoned from the depths of my childhood memories) Anyway, I'm giggling and kicking my feet.

Awww, honestly, you humble me. 😭 I can't say for sure that I had this particular scene in mind when writing my own scene, but I put so many tropes I love into this fanfiction, that statistically I must have drawn inspiration from some Disney stories, even if subconsciously.

Also fucking RUDE of you to suggest The Scientist as the song for Jayce and Viktor, I'll never be able to listen to that song again without melting into a puddle and thinking about jayvik. Even if you picked it just for the vibes, it actually fits them so well. I'll be adding all three suggested songs to a playlist and then daydreaming about them dancing together.

While writing BYSS, I actually created a playlist lovingly called "Cringe is dead", to which I added all the musics I shared with you for this chapter, plus a few other instrumental covers of popular songs. I used to listen to it a lot to motivate myself to write, and to daydream about our favorite idiots dancing while stuck in public transports. It means a lot to me that you like these songs!

Before Your Sun Sets - Chapter 7 is available!

Viktor is sick with Hanahaki. Jayce would do anything to save him—whether it be by developing an impossible cure or trying to find out who Viktor is in love with to smack some sense into them. Little does he know, he’s chasing his own shadow.

Read chapter 7 now

Read from the beginning

[littlemoondarling]

Wow this nightmare REALLY messed me up

[evercelle]

2024 art summary! it sure has been a year

[lvrclerc]

i saved this for my three-hour car ride because i knew it would keep me plenty occupied, and god it did.

clara, this was heartwrenching in the best way possible. i usually take notes when i read fics, but i was too engrossed in it to even think about stopping. the way you wrote carlos' longing and heartbreak broke my own heart, how he couldn't help but want her back no matter how much he tried to push her memories away. the flashbacks at the planetarium ended me, and i can't tell you how much the references to the planets, like jupiter, had me spiraling. your writing is so thought out and and intricate, i was blown away. the - voyager at the end? god, i can't get over it. i'm so glad i requested this because the setting, the lush wording, the metaphors and allegories... i was tearing up in the backseat. maybe i'll come back later to word more coherent thoughts, but the one thing for sure is that you never fail to impress me <3

· · · · ♡ THREE BILLION GIRLS (YET I WANT YOU)

… starring carlos sainz x f!reader ... 9.5k words ... in which there are seven billion humans on earth, maybe three billion girls in the universe—but carlos sainz only loves one. ... soundtrack dans l'univers by nekfeu ft. vanessa paradis ... featuring angst, fluff, second chance romance, language, alcohol, lando norris & carlos sr. as supportive characters, suggestive content, one mention of smut, carlos dates other women (Not Cheating), thalassophobia (? there's one scene on a boat at sea), reader is some kind of space scientist (left vague). english is not my first language. ... author notes this fic is full of physics because physics is the secret poetry of the universe. a girl's gotta use her engineering degree somehow! requested by and dedicated to the talented brilliant showstopping @ivyquity ‹𝟹 MASTERLIST / ASK BOX

MERCURY.

SÃO PAULO, 2019.

Carlos wasn’t sure why he was reminded of the planets all of a sudden.

No evening could have been more different from this than the last time he’d seen the planets, though. The treacly heat of the nightclub, funk basslines snarling through the floor and into his ribs, the relentless procession of limbs twisting to the pulse; nothing of that other night remained. The planets had dissolved. And yet—

the tint of the lights, bleeding from mauve into wine into the deepest cosmic blue—

(What had she called them, those shimmering spectres of space? Redshifts? Blueshifts?)

—rays of false stars, tumbling from the ceiling and spinning at the edge of his vision…

Fucking hell. He looked down at the glass in his hand, where the liquor was swaying with him. No planets there. This was intoxication of a lesser kind. Mundane.

It should have been anything but, he thought, lips curled in a half-scorn. It wasn’t every day one partied in Brazil; not every day one earned a first podium in Formula One.

And it wasn’t every day one counted one hundred and eighty days since a breakup.

A face peeled from the blur of the crowd, eyes alight, lips drawn in the pull of laughter, and Carlos swallowed back the bile before it could rise to his throat. On anyone else, a joy so unchecked would’ve felt jarring, but he had learned young Lando’s agitation was to be received whole, not understood.

“Smoooooooth operatorrrrrrr,” the Brit slurred, wrapping a sweaty arm around his teammate’s neck. “How you doing, podium sitter?”

“Landooooo,” Carlos replied in the same sing-songy manner. “You abandoned me. You were out there… DJing.” Carlos wasn’t sure who was drunker now—him,  whose speech was definitely more accented and slurred than he’d imagined, or giggly Lando, for whom every accented and slurred word he spoke was the peak of hilarity. “What’s your problem?”

“That’s not even a word, mate, that’s… it’s mixing. Mixing,” he repeated, self-important.

“How about you mix your racing with some overtakes?”

“Arsehole.” As always, the swat he gave his stomach packed no punch, just affection. As always, Lando evaded Carlos’ chokehold to ruffle his hair, just barely, and the sudden doubling over had the Spaniard’s head spinning dangerously. No play fighting four cocktails deep. Got it.

“No, but for real, how are you doing?” Lando took advantage of the lull between songs—a transition almost less awkward than what he could’ve come up with—to yell the question above the noise.

“Great! How could I be anything else than great?” Carlos laughed, genuine enough, thankfully, to fool Lando.

“No, I mean how are you do-ing,” he pressed, sweeping his gaze over the dance floor below, the tables and bursts of champagne fireworks.

It took one more chin-jab, cartoonish and anything but subtle, at a group of women by the bar for Carlos to finally catch on.

“Come on! There’s got to be someone who caught your eye. This place is literally swarming with hot girls.”

“I…” Again those galactic lights burned into his retinas, blotting out the crowd, the dancers, their gold and emerald jewelry, until only remained the smoldering unease of the void. Like leaning over the edge of the Milky Way. “Yeah. I don’t know. Not sure I’m in the mood tonight.”

“When are you ever gonna be in the mood if not when you get a podium? In Brazil?”

“When I win in Brazil?”

Lando chuckled, but shook his head. “Mate, I get it’s been rough, but that was—when did you guys break up again?”

“May.” The twenty-first.

“Right, May. So that’s like…” One, two, three, four, five fingers and a furrowed brow. “... six months ago, no?”

One hundred and eighty days, on the dot. He’d been counting every last one. “Yeah, more or less, I think.”

“Don’t you think it’s time to get back on the field? Dip your toes a little? I think you’re just, like, out of practice, mate.” Carlos must’ve pulled a face right then, because Lando held up both his hands, almost knocking over some guy’s drink. “I’m not saying she has to be the love of your life or whatever! It’s just about moving on. And not�� ruminating like you are.”

“Ruminating? What am I, a cow?”

“No, a bull,” Lando beamed. “What was it again? El Matador?” His gaze trailed off to the side, where two young women, long straight hair and leather miniskirts catching the club lights, had been stealing glances at the drivers since the beginning of the conversation. Carlos followed. The brunette he locked eyes with did not look away first. “So get back to the ring.”

There certainly was some merit to Lando’s reasoning, however unwilling Carlos had been to see it. At least, not right away—not when Lando vanished back into the crowd and he was swept up by his team. Not when they paid him a line of shots and carried him into a euphoric whirlwind of Spanish shouts. Not when they hoisted him onto their shoulders in front of the DJ booth and, from the height of his newfound apex, he locked eyes again with the dark-haired girl. Unyielding. Alluring.

Dip your toes a little, had said Lando five shots ago. Those same feet now tingled with a new kind of electricity as they carried him toward her. She’d seen him coming from afar, was already watching him with the ghost of a smile playing at her lips well before he’d found the nerve to approach. 

He wasn’t thinking of planets anymore, even though the supernova-colored spotlights on her ochre skin shone brighter than ever. Like watching the same scene play out from the far end of the galaxy.

“Hola,” he huffed out. “I’m Carlos.”

She giggled, biting her lip, “Eu sei quem é você.”

She was gorgeous, exposed neck like the bronze he’d just won and dark doe eyes begging to touch him and… and blurry features melting into one another and the darkness of the club, a faceless dream you remember so long as you don’t blink.

She didn’t say anything more, just smiled at him like the sun, and the next second his mouth was on hers, one hand pressing her waist flush against him. She’d opened her lips before they’d even met his, and her warm tongue distilled the aroma of alcohol into his mouth when she moaned into the kiss. Her fingers tugged slightly at his disheveled hair, settling at the nape of his neck; slowly, so slowly, his hand snaked down her back, cradling the curve where her miniskirt ended.

He thought it was the leather, cold and callous under his fingertips, before he realized he really was touching her skin. She was cold. Not even cold, really, but—lukewarm. Tepid. Like her very skin held back, uncommitted; yet her hands caressed his neck, her kiss grew famished. No—she wasn’t cold. She wasn’t hesitant. He was.

He forced his eyes shut, pleading, begging the spiral of thoughts in his head to wane, to relax—enjoy it enjoy it enjoy it you want this; scanning the flow of his own veins, every part of him she grinded against for a flush of heat, for a glimmer of desire—and came up short. Not even the coarse rumble of lust. Nothing.

The smoldering unease of the void.

Jupiter, he thought then like a drowning man breaking the surface of the ocean. That’s what her big brown eyes reminded him of. Jupiter.

He broke the kiss with a retch. She stared, with her head tilted to the side and blinking fast—to avoid those Jupiter eyes Carlos had no choice but to look at her swollen lips, but this was unbearable too, so he unfocused his vision to an indefinite point over her shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he repeated louder, not hearing himself over his tinnitus. “I have to go.”

“Está bem? Are you okay?”

“Sí, sí, yeah, I—I have to go. I’m sorry.”

If he stayed one minute in the club—with his mouth dry, his body adrift in a tangle of other bodies, hot then cold and spinning like tops—he was going to throw up. Eyes fixed on the floor, he pushed his way toward the exit, but he hadn’t made it ten steps before stumbling into Caco, thank God. A steadying pat on the shoulder, a look hovering somewhere between scolding and concern, and then they were out on the street, scratched raw by the cold breath of the Brazilian night.

Carlos was still panting when he drew out his phone. 4:59 in São Paulo—and just beneath, though the difference had long since etched itself into habit, Spain’s time. 9:59. She would be awake. She would be at work. She would be lost in her solar kingdom…

He turned his back on his cousin slightly as he scrolled through his contacts, like he knew this was a mistake he was intoxicated enough to make. Letter by swaying letter, each keystroke a lurch through an unstrung chicane, he typed the name until it surfaced.

One hundred and eighty-one days now.

His thumb hovered over there, heavy. Above the name he hadn’t dared to summon aloud in all that time. Like a fault line you don’t name, afraid it might finally split.

Headlights split the night, and a sedan slid into the curve at the end of the elegant marble drive. Someone took him by the arm; he nearly dropped the phone as he stuffed it deep in his pocket. All the planets and their ink-dark sky were swallowed by leather and gasoline.

Like many Madrileños before him, Carlos has never visited his city.

Through no fault of his own, he would retort somewhat defensively when asked. That’s just what happens when you’re the child of a sprawling city; you have no time for her as she has no time for you. How many Parisians have never climbed the Eiffel Tower, or New Yorkers the Empire State? 

So your wide eyes and catastrophized gasp do not come as a surprise when he admits he’s never sat on the velvet cushions of the Lope de Vega theater. Never had his breath stolen out of his chest by the immensity of the Guernica. Never even slumped at a marble-topped table in San Ginés, worn out at dawn, cradling the chocolate con churros of the capital…

“Do you even live here?” you question after he confesses his one and only visit to the Catedral de la Almudena dates back to a decade.

“Of course I live here, that’s why I don’t do all that stuff. It’s for tourists. And I do know Madrid,” his voice perks up. “I’ve been to the Prado and the Royal Palace and the Bernabéu a million times.”

“Because your dad is always getting invited places! You’ve never lazed about the city, seen her just for the sake of seeing her. Twenty-two years on Earth and you’ve spent them all looking for cheap thrills all over the world instead of discovering what’s right in front of you.”

Those kinds of conversations always end with that little pout of his, and the way you look at him: insistently, already dreaming up some wild plan to fill in the gaps of his illustrious little prince education.

He’s walked thousands of streets with you, seen thousands of landscapes in the years he’s known you—beautiful and remote and sometimes crass and adventurous and accidental—but his favorites are always the ones you choose. Gravity in those places feels more supple. Soft enough to make him forget the smell of scorched rubber; botanical gardens full of sickly-sweet flowers that seem to bloom open in your wake, following your laughter; hidden restaurants tucked away between sun-warmed stones in the Mediterranean…

and above all, the planetarium.

It’s your most revolted reaction yet, and it starts with a game of Trivial Pursuit at his parents’. A question about the first manned mission to the Moon—and, frankly, not even that easy of a question, may he be forgiven—has Carlos grimacing and his mother throwing her head back with a hopeless, “Ay, hijo, how do you not know this!” Carlos Sr. interjects with his good-humored tone (Come on, Reyes, I don’t think he was paying too much attention to that in school), his son attempts to defend himself (I don’t even know the order of the planets! How am I supposed to know this?), but the damage is done.

Carlos Sainz will not go one day longer without knowing everything there is to know about the planets.

Lucky thing you are assigned closing hour the following Monday.

The planetarium’s main room is long deserted by the time you shoot Carlos a text message—“you can come out of hiding now, tonti”. All the school excursions and strolling pensioners have kindly been kicked out by your little white lie, something about the projection room closing early for maintenance; and there is no way any other staff would investigate the lack of visitors at 5 p.m. instead of quietly scurrying home. Still, Carlos waits five long minutes before he slips out the side door, his fist tight around… a balaclava?

“What the hell is that?” you giggle as his head swipes the room, cautious. “Do you think we’re robbing a bank?”

“I don’t know, I thought there might be cameras in here,” is all the defense he has, and you snort.

“I can tell you’ve never done anything slightly rebellious,” you roll your eyes, but he wraps his arms around you from behind and you melt like you always do. “No, the nose ring doesn’t count.”

“I could’ve gotten expelled! They were super strict!”

“You, Carlos Sainz Junior, could not have gotten expelled from anywhere.”

He chuckles, an unhurried thing rumbling against your back, and buries a kiss in your hair before freezing up.

“This isn’t, like, illegal, though, right?”

You whip around, stealing the balaclava from his grasp and dangling it in front of his face. Daring him to reach for it. “What if it is?”

“Well I’d probably lose my job.” He can’t stop smiling, despite the seriousness of his words, like your closeness chisels the bronze of his lips into a perpetual grin. “I don’t think McLaren would like that look on one of their drivers.”

“For guys whose job is literally speeding, you lot sure are booooring.”

“Sorry I’m not exciting enough for you, miss astrophysics.”

You click your tongue in mock outrage, and he leans in for a forgiveness peck but you’re quicker to push him away, grabbing him by the shoulders and turning him around.

“Nuh-uh! Time for the conference now. Hope you brought something to take notes, cause there’s a surprise quiz at the end.”

He mutters something about bringing it on and not being scared when you sit him down in the front row’s deep-blue cushioned seats, palms outstretched in front of you and a half-stern glare like you’re trying to get an unruly puppy to behave. Surprisingly, he shuts up, and you miss the fond gaze he drapes upon you as you type commands away into the computer—until suddenly all the lights in the room flicker to sleep, like inhabited by a more secret kind of life… and slowly at first, then like silent starbursts, planets and constellations and comets emerge from the void, as though beckoning the curious closer. It’s a spectacle you’ve seen hundreds of times, colorful reflections sprawled across thousands of enthralled kids’ faces… but you know no star that shines brighter than Carlos’ eyes as you take the stage just for him.

“Welcome to the Madrid planetarium,” the words come out chipper, though unmistakably rehearsed. “You are about to embark on a voyage across the cosm— Carlos!” your shoulders slump, pouting at his wheezes. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Sorry, sorry, it’s just… I never thought I’d see you like that. At work. It’s a little funny.” His gaze roams over your body, from the pin to your breast pocket and the corded card around your neck, to the tight updo you’ve locked your hair in—you never do them that way at home, nor do you paint your lips so. He’s thought about it before—how you’ve been to a few races, witnessed him don the fireproofs and the helmet and disappear into the car, as though swallowed by the higher existence of the team, the speed; but he never returned the favor. Until now. “You look smart. I mean I know you’re smart, but now I can tell just by looking at you.”

An intense blush creeps over your cheeks, though thankfully the ambient night obscures it.

“Please save all your remarks for the end.” And, very softly: “Thank you.”

You know his smirk is not going anywhere anytime soon, so you carry on, comically louder.

“So! As I was saying…”

The usual lecture is forty-five minutes: enough to cover an introduction to planetology and crack a few jokes with the audience without boring the kids to—literal—tears. With Carlos, though, time dilates. He’s quiet at first, bewitched by your ease as you recount all the things the planets have whispered to you. Slowly, though, his timidity wanes, and he asks more questions, surprisingly pertinent (though he can’t help slipping in a cocky “What planet is the hot guide from?”), until Carlos, the riotous kid who used to race past the world, takes the time to bask in it. You show, you tell, you open the vault for all the little things you know about astronomy; tales and figures spill out of you like a solar flare, and each ray touches Carlos’ heart with an overpowering sense of warmth.

By the time you suggest you move on to a more immersive part of the exhibit, he is a hundred times more in love with you than he was before he met Mercury.

And so it may be an hour, or perhaps two, after Carlos snuck into the planetarium after hours, and you’re both lying on the night-dark carpeted floor—“No way I’m letting my hair touch that, you really don’t wanna know when this was last cleaned.” “Well lay your head on me, then.”—with your eyes fixed on the spherical roof where celestial shapes parade. Lazily, like dust shelling off the sky.

Neither of you have spoken in what feels like centuries, and the rise and fall of Carlos’ chest beneath your neck almost matches Antares’ pulsating glow. Over your heads, numerical meteors ignite and vanish.

“How did they manage to send rocketships and satellites so far away?”

He shimmies a little underneath you, like the sudden question wiggles within.

“All these distances you mentioned, they’re all so huge. How do we send and pilot stuff so far out there? Wouldn’t they run out of fuel?”

You smile like the break of dawn.

“Not everything is about gasoline, racer boy.”

“That’s not what I implied,” he groans with a little shake of the head, the citrus of his shampoo enveloping your nostrils.

“I know. Well, most spatial vehicles don’t run on fuel. Only rockets do, for brief minutes. The rest are solar or nuclear-powered, and besides… engineers know a trick or two.”

“Like?”

He speaks with the rising inflexion of a diligent student, the one you’ve heard him get with Tom Stallard once or twice before, and you laugh to yourself at the idea he might be hoping to draw inspiration from astromechanics for his car’s next breakthrough.

“Like… You ever hear about a gravitational slingshot?”

“Mi vida, one hour ago I had no idea that half the planets don’t actually have solid ground.”

His chuckle sounds exactly how you imagine the Big Dipper does, when she shakes off her morning dew before disappearing into the rosy horizon, so you chuckle back.

“Okay, well, a gravitational slingshot is… a way for probes to travel to the ends of the solar system with minimal energy. You throw your satellite into the path of a bigger body, say, a planet, and use the momentum from its orbit to propel it forward. Somewhat like swinging from vine to vine in the jungle.”

“So is it a bit like using the slipstream from the car ahead of you?”

Of course he’d find a way to tie it back to the cars.

“In a way, yes.” One of his hands nestles in your hair, scratching it softly. Overhead, Saturn preens its rings like a peacock’s feathers. “But think of it more as… galactic hitchhiking. You use it to adjust trajectory more than speed. These planets, they’re on their invariable course through the universe, and you’re meeting them for a fraction of an instant to redirect your path. Get you where you wanna go. The calculations have to be exact… or else you might be too late or too early for the rendezvous. Like Voyager I,” you straighten up slightly, careful not to elbow Carlos, and draw imaginary lines across the ceiling. Too absorbed in your explanation to notice he’s only staring at your fingers and the golden threads they weave. “They launched it precisely at the right moment, on a slightly offset path, so it would meet Jupiter. And it did, and it got caught in its orbit, and that’s when they gave it just a little extra power boost and boom—off it went into the void and on its correct course.” You angle your head up to meet his face. “Isn’t that romantic? How they were interstellar soulmates?”

“It’s just a big box of metal and an even bigger ball of gas,” Carlos chuckles.

“Oh come on, I’m sure you have a lot to say about the poetry of big boxes of metal.”

His smile remains on his face long after Saturn has dipped below the artificial horizon, making way for constellations with names he can barely read. His voice comes out a little subdued, though, when he asks after a while:

“What would’ve happened if Voyager I had missed its shot and never met Jupiter?”

You shrug. Perhaps the tragedy of it all doesn’t weigh on you the way it does Carlos.

“Maybe it would’ve met another planet, and that would’ve sent it in a totally erroneous direction. Or maybe it would’ve just drifted off into the void forever. Who knows? The only important thing is they did find each other, and it did work out.”

Pensive, Carlos plays with your hair, wrapping and unwrapping it around his finger. As always when he’s entirely surrendered to you, he forgets. He forgets about the smell of charred rubber and unimpressive lap times cascading one after the other—forgets the omnipresent roar of the engine and inhumane shriek of the crowd. You alter gravity, make it more bearable; alleviate the g-forces.

In a year or so, he will make the gravest mistake of his life—he will confuse lightness with lack, bliss with distraction. He will panic, for the very first time in his life, and he will cut you off. At once so it hurts less—so he doesn’t get the time to hurt and you to hate him—because when you are standing in Mattia Binotto’s office and he offhandedly mentions Sebastian Vettel doesn’t want his red seat next year, you cannot ever afford to forget about the rubber and the lap times and the engine and the crowd.

For now, though, he lets the beams of your sun bathe him in the tranquil glory he’ll forget later.

“I feel like you’re a bit like my Jupiter at times, aren’t you?” he murmurs against the crown of your head. “Putting me on the right track when I stray too far.”

“Hope that means you’re always staying in my orbit,” you reply, tummy fluttering with love at his words.

But you know it better than anyone, don’t you?—

All it takes is a just a little extra power boost and boom—

off he goes into the void.

VENUS.

MILTON KEYNES, 2022.

It wasn’t raining the very first time Carlos Sainz climbed the top step of a Formula 1 podium, though until the end of time he would remember it that way.

Perhaps the champagne droplets Checo drenched his race suit with left a more striking impression than he thought, colder than he remembered. Perhaps it was his sweat, dripping from his helmet and down his temples. Or perhaps he needed something external to explain the vague gloom he’d felt that day, and he’d decided to blame the sky.

The celebrations themselves had been dizzying: a whirlwind of cheers and congratulations and crimson fists raised in the air; his father hugging him tight, and Lando, excitable, loving Lando running up to congratulate him for his first victory in red. His first victory ever—¡lo conseguiste, cabrón, y con Ferrari! 

Never had he ever heard a sweeter Marcha Real than the one lauding him on English soil. The sound etched itself in his mind, like all the Tifosi’s adoring eyes lifting toward him.

A tiny serpent wrapped around his ear murmured that one pair of eyes was missing. The drums of Fratelli d’Italia drowned it out.

Later, after he’d answered every question and taken every picture, when he reconvened with his father in the quiet of his driver room and unlocked his phone to zero missed calls, the indefinite malaise he’d felt rising all weekend came growling back. He braced himself as he dialed the number and pressed his phone to his ear.

He should’ve been feeling anything but weighed down by those wormy nerves in the pit of his stomach. He should’ve been triumphant and invincible and…

“Hello?”

“Hi, love,” he said, bracing himself for an outcome he already knew would not be different than every other time. “Um, just calling to let you know I won the race.”

“You did? Oh, wow, congrats!” her voice was shiny with enthusiasm, genuine and gentle, just like she always was—charming and polite and chipper—, but there was an edge of confusion to it that Carlos could never miss. “But, um… I thought it was yesterday?”

“I…” he scoffed, bit the inside of his mouth as he wondered if this was worth feeling defeated over. Probably not. Not today, at least. “Yesterday was the qualification round, remember what I explained to you? So I won that too, but that just means I started first for the race today. And that’s what I just won right now. That’s the important part.”

“Oh! Right.” At what point did her flippancy become too frequent, too intentional, to be excused by her sweet and kind disposition? How long until he’d start resenting a partner who did not shoulder anything of the world alongside him? “That’s great! Proud of you.”

“So… I take it you weren’t able to catch the race on TV?” Like she’d said she would. Then again, had he attended any of her fashion shows lately, or had he been furiously cycling down some bumpy slope in the Alps?

“No, sorry, I was out for brunch with the girls and then since I thought it was yesterday and all—” she droned on and on, but Carlos was already out of it, struggling to avoid the knowing, empathetic looks from his father. “But that’s okay, I’ll watch it on YouTube or something. Right after I get my prediction for Cancer season,” a little giggle escaped her. “You know, I might be more emotional than usual this summer, because—”

Astrology was always her favorite cheat sheet to look at the world, its deepest secrets and inner workings unveiled by the fantastical movements of planets and constellations. Carlos didn’t believe much of that—to be fair he didn’t believe much of anything that wasn’t computable, solvable, and repeatable—but for her he had been willing to give it a try. He’d jokingly asked her to intercede for him, pray that the twelve houses trace a clement path for him at Ferrari, but she’d looked terribly offended about the implication you could ask anything of the planets, and he hadn’t uttered another word about the cosmos since.

“I’m a Libra, right, so that means I’m ruled by Venus,” she’d excitedly rambled on one of their first dates. “So that means I’m really lovey-dovey, sensitive to aesthetics, and all that. My modeling career and all; that was all written. Predestined. Because of Venus, cause it’s the planet of love and beauty. You know anything about Venus?”

And to anyone else he would have answered the truth—what Venus had whispered to him years before. I know a day on Venus is longer than a year. I know Venus is so bright it was originally believed to be a star. I know astrophysicists debated the possibility of life in her clouds but she was ultimately ruled out as “too hostile”.

“No, I don’t. I think I’m a Virgo though?”

When he hung up, after a “Bye, love you” he’d hoped was earnest enough, Carlos turned to his father and his shoulders fell. The older man was already looking at him, decades of careful love swimming in his eyes.

“I know what you’re gonna say.”

“What am I going to say?”

Now his son was taller than him, but if he could have, Carlos Sr. would have crouched down to the floor and patted his little head gently. As though he weren’t a two-time world champion, but simply a dad with the answer to every question in the world.

You’re gonna say that she’s not Y/N. You always wished I’d never broken up with Y/N.

“That I’m not right for her and she’s not right for me and you have no idea why we’re even together? It's been months and she can’t even remember how a race weekend works.”

Young Carlos drooped against the wall with a soft thud, muscles still sore from fighting gravity and lifting gold trophies, and threw his head back to stare at the ceiling. Unable to look at his father, who replied in the soft, measured tone he’d use when his son would lose hope in karting.

“Well, I never said that, and I think you’re putting words you believe in my mouth to legitimize yourself. And you’re being harsh on her. Do you know what her workday is like?”

The race winner sighed, a long, thick breath escaping through his nose like it had been trapped in there for thousands of years.

“It’s just… I can’t connect with her. I can’t connect with anyone. We’re so… mismatched. But she’s kind, and she’s so patient with me. That’s kind of all I can ask of anyone, with the life I lead.”

“No, Carletes.” Slowly, Carlos Sainz picked up his son’s Silverstone trophy and handed it to him. Just like he would the stuffed animals thrown off the bed by a frantic nightmare. “It’s precisely because you lead this life that you need the best copilot you can find. Someone who’s there for you through thick and thin, and challenges you, but keeps you on track.”

A small beat. Then muscle memory kicked in, and Carlos’ head dipped against his father’s shoulder, like a mighty willow bending to the tempest. The father cradled the son, wrinkled hand caressing the bark of his strong neck.

“Things will make sense, hijo. They always do in the end.”

Like planets locking into place, on the same orbits until the end of time and long after that.

“What’s this one?”

“That’s Vega.”

“That’s Vega,” he mutters in a mocking tone, slightly muffled by your head on his abdomen.

“What?” you chuckle.

“You say that like it’s obvious! Like it’s sooooo easy.”

“It is obvious, it’s my job, Carlos! It’s like if I asked you what the yellow line on the edge of the tire means.”

“Okay, okay, well…” He cranes his neck, scanning the animated ceiling for just the speck of stardust that will end your streak. “Ooh, and this one?”

Squinting your eyes, you try to make out the small dot Carlos is pointing at… before your lips melt into a knowing smile.

“You’re taking the piss, Carlos, there’s nothing there.”

He swears, and the slight contraction of his stomach sends tickles down your spine. How long have you two been floating in that vast expanse of universe, moored to nothing but one another?

“Wow, why is that thing over there so green? Is it like that in real life?”

“That’s the emergency exit sign, amor.”

Carlos groans, trying to cook up a reasonable defense, but he’d ridicule himself a million times over if it meant hearing your wind chime laughter, like fairy dust speeding through outer space.

“And that one over there? The red one? Is it also the emergency exit sign?”

“No, that one’s real. It’s a galaxy.”

“Is it actually red?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because of redshift.”

You stay quiet, and he doesn’t press you further. He knows the explanation is just one carefully collected silence away. Instead, he stares at the star cluster, immobile unlike most of the planets on display, faint crimson clashing with the infinite mauve around. Like a watchful creature lying in wait.

“You know that the universe is expanding, right? It’s growing right now.”

“Yeah.”

“So the light that’s emitted by this galaxy must travel a huge distance to get to us, and in the time it takes to reach Earth, the empty space between us has grown. Stretched out, like someone is pulling at the ends. From our perspective, it looks like the galaxy is moving away. Farther from the observer. So the light’s wavelength increases, because of the Doppler effect, and that’s why the galaxy looks red to us.”

“So when something expands or moves away from you…” he recapitulates slowly.

“It turns red, yeah.”

The words will haunt him far longer than he expects. They have no reason to—out of the thousands of shattered promises and declarations of love and ineffable vulnerability and jokes and harsh truths and supplications—yet they do. They linger like a mist as he sits in his bedroom, two years later, cradling in his lap the very first helmet Carlos Sainz will wear for the Scuderia Ferrari. His belly, swollen with pride earlier from the fifty-five on the side and the red star on the back—all so unbelievably him, side by side with the prancing horse at last—, grumbles with bile. His phone lights up with the notification he’s been avoiding all day.

A year and a half or so—he stopped counting the days. His mom said that meant he was healing?—without a word and on the morning of the announcement, you text him “Congrats on the move”.

Like you couldn’t keep it in, like no rough breakup and unbearable radio silence could prevent you from cheering your champion on. Watching him expand.

He texts back a sober “Thanks. hope you’re doing well”, and deletes your number before he can catch himself dialing it once again.

MARS.

MARANELLO, 2024.

For the first time in his life, the last thing Carlos Sainz longed for was combat.

Little Carletes had been born pugnacious, tiny fists that closed around no claws. Not a troublemaker, per se, but rambunctious, like an inexhaustible volcano. What he lacked in sharpness, he’d made up for in belligerence, for he could never be half the raw talent his father was at everything but he could bleed twice as hard on the jagged rocks of greatness. For every kid that ran him off the track in go-karts he could push two more; for every hour his teammate would stay in the sim, he’d spend one night. As if, far from deplenishing him, the fight gave him energy.

He was always outrunning something, it seemed. The clock, his father’s shadow. At the end of the 2024 season, after months of trying to outrun the end, Carlos was so unfathomably tired.

The end came as a roaring tornado on February first, and all he could do was turn the ignition on and speed away. To no avail, of course. Ferrari never regrets a decision, no matter how fast you are, when the decision comes with seven world titles.

Therefore, when Carlos Sainz heard the loud footsteps stomping down the hallway, he knew with immense lassitude that he would not be combating today.

“Care to explain what the hell this is?”

She was fuming, arm outstretched toward him with an accusatory glare. She stood taller than ever before in their almost-bare bedroom, a giant among piles of moving boxes and polystyrene. They’d barely had the time to touch ground in Maranello before being uprooted again.

“That’s… your phone,” Carlos sighed. Wrong answer, he knew as much, but at least he’d delayed the battle for just a few instants.

“Yeah, right, play dumb all you want,” she scoffed, shoving her phone right under her boyfriend’s nose. “What the fuck were you doing with her? It’s all over Twitter.”

As soon as his eyes had gotten used to the sudden brightness, Carlos recognized the pictures; him, strolling down the streets of Madrid, a lifetime ago. Unmistakable. On his arm, looped around his bicep, was hers. A lifetime ago indeed.

He would’ve frozen even if he hadn’t wanted to. The afternoon came back to him in a kaleidoscope of memories, colors, and smells—the ozone of Madrid’s thousands of exhaust pipes, the faint scent of frying oil from some churrería, and how she’d drop his hand to press her nose against every bakery’s window display. How many years had it been? How many artifacts of that era had he neatly wrapped up and stored away in cardboard boxes, traveling around the world with him because he couldn’t throw them away?

“Love, these pictures are old. See how my hair is totally different? That’s from, like, 2018.”

“Why are they making rounds again then?” she spat, distrustful. “Your fans won’t stop posting them. Tell me the truth.”

She’d always been combative, irascible—she never backed down from what she wanted, even when it simply didn’t exist, and perhaps that was the reason Carlos had been drawn to her when they’d first met. Someone to challenge him, to spar with. Someone who’d stand by his side because they know what it means to fall and rise again.

But for the first time, all Carlos Sainz wanted was peace and familiarity. A soft bed to crawl into, and not one he must cut through thorns for.

“I’m telling you the truth, I have no idea why they’re posting them. They do weird things sometimes.”

That was a lie, but one he could stomach without batting too obvious an eyelid. Carlos knew exactly why fans kept posting old pictures of his very first love to social media, the same reason he had never been able to delete them from his phone, but instead kept them in a passworded folder inside a folder inside a folder. The formidable and harrowing impression of unfinished business. A story you keep adding chapters to, yet stray away from the epilogue of.

She didn’t buy it. She never did anything he said. Was she this wary of him when they’d met, or had fame and scrutiny made her paranoid? He toyed with the inside of his cheek. Was she paranoid? Or could she read him better than he could, and he’d been a horrible person—a horrible boyfriend—to her this whole time?

“And you’re not even fighting for us! Gosh! If you still love her so much, why don’t you just find her?” she cried out, throwing her arms in the air.

She didn’t leave him time to say anything; not that he would have anyway. She turned on her heel and slammed the door, sending flakes of white paint flying into the barren bedroom.

“So what happens when something gets close to you?”

His question cuts through the surreal silence that has curled up between you; in the soft space between your bodies, slouched together on the carpeted steps of the planetarium. Slowly, you lift your head from his belly and look at him, attentive.

“Hm?”

“You said that when an object moves away from the observer, it turns red. That’s redshift. So what happens if it’s coming closer?”

The corner of your lips lifts into one of those half-moon smiles only you know how to wear.

“Blueshift.”

Violet light floods the craters in your eyes, as though an angel had filled them to the brim.

“When an object comes back to the observer, it turns blue.”

JUPITER.

NICE, 2025.

Damn you and your punctuality.

With all the years you’ve been working at the Nice Observatory, you know very well by now the inescapable ballet of convertibles cruising down the coast in the summer months—rich Parisian families on vacation and English retirees enjoying the last days of tolerable Riviera heat—, but you have grown particularly wary of the month of May. When the Cannes festival and Monaco Grand Prix draw closer, the city and its surroundings bubble up with a sort of effervescence that makes everything unbearable. Tourists and kids and journalists swarm about the streets; the sea itself becomes more dazzling, like it’s dressing in its finest garments for the season; and you’re just trying to get to work.

(Of course, that’s the sole reason you hate late May in Nice. Nothing to do with the Monaco Grand Prix itself, nor the faces you see plastered at every damn bus stop and on every damn television every year. Well, face.)

Thus, to avoid traffic, you have taken the habit of leaving home earlier in the morning. An invigorating springtime promenade, with the Mediterranean as your sole neighbor… as far as you can remember, you have always found comfort in the still nooks of early dawn and late dusk, after all.

Had you been just a little less conscientious of your work… held up just a little longer on the beltway… you wouldn’t have made it to your office in time to check your emails before you’re whisked away for day-long observations and meetings. You wouldn’t have opened your inbox, you would’ve only read the message tomorrow, after the fact. Too late. Or late enough to play the Sorry-I-missed-it card.

But you don’t, and you do, and you find the email sitting there. In bold letters, as though mocking you. No subject—of course he wouldn’t know private correspondence in an office is supposed to say, well, PRIVATE—and a sender address that looks too stupidly obvious to be real.

carlo55ainz@gmail.com.

The sun blinks for an instant, and gravity holds its breath, pinning you against your chair. That’s probably the second where you open the email, because you don’t remember moving your fingers.

“Hi. Sorry, I had no idea how to contact you, and no idea where to start either. I might have looked you up on LinkedIn and found your work email. You’ve been doing amazing I see, you have a PhD now! But I never doubted you or how smart and cool you were. I knew you’d get here.

I’ve been thinking a lot about you lately and all the things I did wrong. I was young, but that doesn’t cover everything. It doesn’t cover almost anything, actually. If you’re willing to hear me and let me apologize properly, even if I’m really really late (I can’t be the fastest all the time), can we meet up in Monaco tonight? I’d be the most grateful man in the universe.

C”

It’s all in Spanish, and the font isn’t the same size across all the text, and you can tell he doesn’t send emails too often because instead of sending the pictures as an attachment he pasted them directly underneath the paragraph, but they’re of two concert tickets wrinkled with brown stains—your favorite band, and he’d dropped his coffee on them the morning of and you’d sworn to every god that’s ever existed you’d flail him alive if the security guard’s scanner couldn’t read their barcode.

The first thought that comes to your mind, somehow, is “Of course it’s real. What a loser.”

You shouldn’t reply—of course you shouldn’t reply, your boss is calling you over from outside the office to go down the observation room and if your best friend were there she would tell you to delete the message and never speak of it again.

“I don’t go to Monaco anymore. Too much traffic and parking’s a nightmare. Also I feel stupid over there with my Clio IV.”

You only catch his reply late in the evening, when the sun is slowly descending behind the Mercantour and you’ve awkwardly evaded your coworkers’ offers for celebratory drinks downtown. Sure, the tests were a resounding success today, but you just need to run something by your office real quick. Just one thing, and then you’re going straight home, because you’re exhausted, but thank you so much for offering, you’ll join them another time—

If the timestamp is any indication, the reply came two minutes after your first email.

“I’ll come to you then.”

Your heart is pounding like a quasar when you step out the Observatory’s main entrance and into the Southern night, seemingly the only person in the whole world. The only person, except for the silhouette you notice immediately just a few meters ahead, draped in night and leaning against a Vespa. He looks stronger than when you last saw him, a little wider and buffer; a soft breeze ruffles his dark hair, and you spot the faintest hints of white within. Something he probably hasn’t noticed yet, but observing details has always been your life’s work.

Six years after shattering your heart and disappearing into the gaping mouth of a race car, Carlos Sainz stands before you, and he beams the brightest grin this side of the Mediterranean when he spots you. And you, as if no minutes had passed at all, cannot do anything but smile in return.

“Where’s your Ferrari?” you ask, pointing at the little scooter with your chin.

“Didn’t you hear? I had to downsize.”

He sounds more mature, less boyish; maybe all the furious air he ingests has eroded his vocal chords too, or maybe his throat is thick with emotion as he takes you in. Neat shirt, tight bun, ever-so-slightly painted lips. Taking the stage of his life just for him, if only for an evening.

A moment passes where you’re both too dizzy to say anything. The first shooting star of many pierces the sky millions of kilometers over your heads, though neither of you see it. Then, Carlos extends his arm and hands you one of the two helmets he’s carrying.

“Do you still trust me?”

Of course you don’t. He told you a life with you would be incompatible with his other goals—he once dreamed of a life in which you were not, and it matters little whether that thought existed in him for a tenth of a second or a whole year, because he’d said it, burned it into your ears like tinnitus.

But he would make you laugh to tears, and he held you for eight hours straight when you sobbed yourself into exhaustion the day your childhood dog died, and he took pictures of you sleeping in a pile of limbs with Piñón, and your fingers once dug into his ribs as his rental bike drove you down a secret cove, where he made love to you like waves lapping at the shore.

“Yeah.”

You have yet to find a single planet, by some faraway nebula, where you don’t trust him.

The ride down to the harbor is perfectly quiet. Not only do you not exchange words—no use over the small engine’s agonizing screams—but the whole city falls silent, from the groups of twenty-somethings hitting their first bars of the night to the seagulls shrieking and descending upon unsuspecting gelati. Like Nice’s narrow, treacherous streets bow their heads to Carlos and you, shrinking and moving and shifting to open a perfect path. Eventually, he stops the scooter by the docks, in front of a yacht that would probably fall under the small umbrella in his circle; to you, it looks like a mansion.

“That’s new.”

“You’ve been gone a long time,” he shrugs, but you can tell by the glint in his voice that he’s proud of his trick.

He helps you up on the boat, disappears into the cabin—busying himself, as always, only at ease when in control—and the yacht rumbles to life in a harmony of swells, then casts off into the Mediterranean night.

“I’ll admit I didn’t check the weather,” Carlos breaks the silence long minutes later, after you’ve helped him drop the anchor in the middle of nowhere, just a tiny dot kilometers from shore. Your unbreakable bubble, suspended outside of time and reality. As far from any asphalted road as can be. “Sorry. I thought it would be a little nicer.”

“This is very nice,” you reply.

And it is—you don’t need to slip into fake courtesies with Carlos, not even after so many years. In the half-decade since you’d parted ways, you’d imagined this meeting a million times under a million circumstances and a million watchful planets, and every time you feared the awkwardness of silence; the one thing that would betray an irrevocable destruction of what you once had. But there’s nothing close to it here, on the deck of his yacht, each sitting on a banquette and eating olives in the middle of the sea. Only the inexplicable familiarity of those who know every inch of each other’s soul.

You throw your head back and prop your knees underneath you. Sure, the sky is a little cloudy, but every milky spot you expected to find is perfectly visible. You smile at them, like old friends on a school photo.

“This is really beautiful, actually.”

Carlos is only staring at you from the port side.

Yeah, yeah it is.

“I’m sorry.”

“You said that already, it’s okay,” you chuckle, but he interrupts, voice trembling slightly from the solemnity.

“No, I mean sorry for six years ago.”

You bite your lip. Turn your head to face him, slowly, but his nose is pointed at the sky, his arm lazily grazing the waves from over the gunwale.

“Is that it?”

“Well, I could say sorry for being such an asshole. Sorry for being a coward and not knowing how to deal with your expectations and the expectations of the world, and choosing to cut one off. Sorry for hurting you and not even allowing you the time to grieve. I tried to numb it with the racing, and the parties, and that kind of stuff, but honestly I don’t think there’s been a day where I don’t regret that decision. But I don’t know, I don’t want you to think I’m making up excuses for myself or… or rubbing salt in the wound, so I’ll just leave it at Sorry. It’s not even a tenth of what you deserve, but… I wanted to start there.”

Your next words, after long, languid moments of silence, are carried over to shore by the salty breeze, so soft he barely catches them.

“I forgive you.”

When you look up and your eyes finally meet, they are shiny with tears. Like the diamonds that rain in the heart of Jupiter’s storm.

“I forgave you the second you walked out.”

“Why?”

“Because I loved you.” It’s self-evident, and you almost giggle at the admission, disbelieving of how disbelieving Carlos can be. How does he not get it? The core principle upon which all of the world’s mechanisms were built? The barest, rawest axiom to ever befuddle science? “I think some part of me will love you till the day I die. I know you’re a logical person, Carlos, but surely you can understand that…”

He nods. Mutters to himself more than to you, to the moonbeams that caress the tide. “Yeah, yeah I can understand that.” You stuff your mouth with olives to swallow back a sob.

Your lashes are still wet—from tears or the boat’s lull gently splashing your face, you’re not sure—when you breathe deeply and attempt to defuse:

“How was the race?”

“Awful.”

His response is so instantaneous you can’t help giggling.

“I heard you and Alex both scored points though!”

“Yeah, but it was ugly raci… hold on, have you been keeping up with me?”

“No,” you blurt out hastily. Actually, yes, you have, indirectly; through a colleague of yours, fifty-something and red-faced, who’s been a diehard Williams fan since childhood and excitedly talks your ear off every week about the team’s historic revival. Needless to say, you don’t peg him the type to know much about the drivers’ personal lives from ten years ago, and see no elegant way nor immediate utility in telling him you are Carlos Sainz Jr.’s ex-girlfriend.

“Are you a Williams fan, Y/N? Or maybe more of a Tifosa?”

“Shut up,” you groan, but he wiggles his eyebrows at you, so you throw him your olive pins. One, and two; he jumps to his feet with an indignant “hey!”; the third one hits him square in the forehead, and you burst into incredulous laughter as he jogs up to you.

“Stop it! You’re on my boat, I could—” in just a few steps he’s towering over you, lying on your back on the cushioned seat and spraying him with pins and peanuts between giggles. He grabs your machine-gun wrist, devoid of ammo, and you yelp when his charcoal eyes bore into yours. “—throw you overboard whenever I want.”

“Try it.”

The words come out on their own, taking you both by surprise. Carlos’ breath catches in his throat, and his eyes travel from your parted lips, breathing in ragged little pants, to the lines of neck your crumpled up shirt reveals, then to your whole frame, pinned against the seat, with his knee between your legs—he doesn’t even remember setting it there, the same way he never remembers downshifting six gears at turn 1 in Bahrain. The shadow he casts on your face conceals the acute flush to your cheeks when you notice the proximity of your faces.

“What is this for, Carlos? Why did you invite me here? Just to apologize?” you murmur.

“No,” he breathes out.

He needs no further explaining. You read it all, in the earthly browns of his torrid eyes, consuming you entirely like a hearth. All the desperate wondering if this dull ache ever goes away, or if it is only alleviated when its source is near—if a planet’s core can ever be replaced by another gemstone, of another chemical composition, a placeholder, anything to make the solar system spin again.

Of course it can’t. You get the feeling he’s known this for a while. That he knew this before you even taught him anything about the Moon who answers no prayers, or Jupiter who sets explorers on their right course. 

You could kiss him right now—but you don’t. Neither does he. Instead, he releases your wrists, not without the faintest of caresses to your cheek. If you knew him any less, you’d think it accidental. But the outline of his orbit is no mystery to you. 

Carlos sails the yacht safely back to shore a few hours later. What happens between you on the high seas during those hours will remain a secret that only early-rising constellations know.

Slowly, in deliberate movements, as if to dilate time and space further than physics will allow, he clasps the helmet on your head, and drives you back up to the Observatory, where he picked you up a lifetime ago. His driving is prudent, uncharacteristically so, as if he could fracture reality by hitting the brakes too hard, yet the pang of despair that creeps up your stomach all the way up the hill is so strong you fear you might puke.

Up there on the hill, at the foot of the slumbering dome, another shooting star slices the atmosphere, but Carlos is unclasping your helmet and you are staring into his eyes, so neither of you miss it, per se—you just see it elsewhere. For the first time the silence threatens to suffocate you, so you suffocate it first; you throw yourself in Carlos’ arms, and cradle his furious heart for an eternity. He parts first, but his hands remain on your shoulders. Then, with a reverence you’ve only seen in a scientist when they handle a meteor, he kisses your forehead.

“See you soon?”

“I hope.”

You part ways. The sidewalk is blurry, though it hasn’t rained yet. A Vespa’s engine roars to life, waking up the barking of every dog on the street.

When you reach for your car keys, your fingers graze an unfamiliar piece of paper in your blazer’s pocket.

By holding it against the light, you discern a phone number, an address. And just as you unwrap it, you hear the unmistakable click of the universe falling back into its axis.

“Pick you up same time, same place tomorrow?

Hope I’m not a little too late or a little too early.

- Voyager”

© musicallisto, 2025

[sonderden]

Physically, I'm already lying down.

Emotionally, I feel like I need to find a soft spot and crumple dramatically to the ground and lay down for a few weeks.

[snowshinobi]

hanahaki disease trope captivates me because (as I interpret it) the call is coming from inside the house. bc you see, the solution is easy. the flowers stop trying to tear their way out of your body if you confess your affections (or get over them, depending on the adaptation). Speak your feelings (or let them go): let the flowers see daylight. but sometimes ... catharsis ... is worse.

it's like when Fall Out Boy said "I'll keep my jealousy close 'cause it's all mine" and when Taking Back Sunday said "if it's not keeping you up nights, then what's the point?" these warm, bloody, one-sided feelings might be as close to reciprocal love as you're gonna get. if you confess and aren't loved in return (or you let the feelings go) ... you're healed. free of pain. free of flowers. that precious thing you were holding onto so fiercely, for months ... vanishes.

hanahaki studies the compulsions that drive self-destruction. that turn pain into the means to its own end. human resilience is our greatest strength and an agent of literal body horror. hanahaki paints an intentionally romanticized picture of how vital wanting to get better is to actually getting better. as the adage goes, you can't control how you feel, but you can control what you do about it.

healing is terrifying. watching a character reject it until their death is sobering. watching a character choose it when they are at their most scared and sad and hopeless is ... devastating. it makes me press my hands against the walls of my consciousness.

[bambiraptorx]

sometimes i wish my brain had a fucking off switch

[jacksintention]

I really can't stand Gil

[greyedian]

.

[inkskinned]

you're not quite an emergency, is the thing. you're just having a bad spell. so what if you can't ever really catch your breath. can't ever really feel at ease. a buzzing, terrible feeling.

but emergencies are loud, and passionate, and hit the floor. you are not a lion or a hurricane, you just live in a pretty okay apartment and your back hurts. you wake up and drag yourself out of bed and banish what if i was dead thoughts like cobwebs. you pick out your clothes and try to stay active. you apply for jobs on the internet.

the anxiety is a wave, and the depression is a spiral. the other stuff keeps things "colorful." you mitigate your symptoms and take your meds when you have them and you try to hang out with friends. you go home and your head is full of riverwater. no matter how much you sleep, you still stay tired. you journal and practice gratitude and build from the bottom upwards. and still, the haunting.

you're not a 911 call or a shriek. you're just staring up at the ceiling and feeling the house settle into your bones. you feel you are playacting as a wolf when you're only a sheep. not quite dry and not quite drowning.

over and over, you slog through the creek.

[ghostlynimbus]

I'm having a bad brain day today

[lacyblades]

౨ৎ baby daddy!satoru who wants needs you back.

in fact, you should've known he was playing a game the instant that text blinked onto your screen: pick your daughter up from his place, not school. a casual oops, totally forgot it was your day! that sent a shiver of unease down your spine.

what choice did you really have? the entire drive to that too-familiar house, your nerves were a tangled mess. pulling into the driveway, parking crookedly in your haste, the only thing screaming in your head was this used to be ours.

this small, unassuming house, a world away from the sterile grandeur of his old penthouse. the first grand gesture of your marriage had been this new place.

"the bigger the house," satoru had murmured against your bare skin that first night, "the further i'd have to be from you." so, your mornings had begun with tangled limbs and hurried kisses, and your evenings had ended in the same breathless way.

it had been the kind of dizzying happiness you foolishly thought would last forever. but then the cracks had started to show – the endless work trips, the hollow promises of things changing. he had gotten better, ironically, after the papers were signed.

satoru stood in the doorway, that infuriatingly charming, utterly knowing smirk plastered across his face. your gaze darted around the living room, a quick, almost desperate search. "where's she?" you asked, trying to keep the tremor out of your voice.

his reply was a casual flick of his wrist. "oh, she's at a friend's."

a harsh scoff escaped you. arms crossed tight against your chest, you scoffed, "what? why? i drove all the way out here!"

"you were coming anyway," he purred, those soft puppy-dog eyes locking onto yours. "i can bring her back later. thought we could, you know… catch up."

"catch up?" you repeated, incredulous. "are you serious right now? we're not catching up, satoru. we're divorced."

but those eyes. they always had been your undoing. and somehow, against your better judgment, you found yourself agreeing to this ridiculous "catch-up." you'd pictured awkward small talk over lukewarm tea, maybe a stale cookie.

not this. not being bent in a cruel mating-press, his body a brutal, insistent press against yours, fucking you with a desperate hunger that stole your breath and any semblance of rational thought.

"god, it's been so fucking lo- long since i felt this," he grunted, his hips slamming into you with a possessive force that made you cry out. "this tight little cunt clenching - shit - around me like that."

"ah, 'toru," you gasped, your fingers digging into the hard muscles of his back, clinging on for dear life.

"been even longer si- since i heard you say my name like that." his sweaty bangs were plastered to his forehead, a flush creeping up his neck. his pace was relentless, each thrust deeper, harder, a raw, primal need driving him. he hadn't touched anyone since you, didn't want to.

tears streamed down your face, a messy mix of pain and something dangerously close to pleasure. and that bastard, your soon-to-be-not-ex-husband-anymore, thought you looked beautiful. his thick cock stretched you, filled you completely, your legs instinctively wrapping around his waist.

"did you miss this, huh?" he muttered, his voice thick with lust. "because i fucking did. bet- bet no one else makes you feel like this."

a choked whine escaped you as his teeth sank into your shoulder, a stinging sensation hitting. you can't think of a response, literally. you can't even think of your own name - you can't remember.

all that mattered was the way he was making you feel, the dizzying spiral of sensation. and in the name of "catching up," he makes you come, at least half a dozen shattering orgasms ripping through you before he finally relented, burying his face in the space between your tits.

he looked up at you, panting, a triumphant smile playing on his lips. "so… about moving back in?"

fuck those puppy-dog eyes.

[nymphaura777]

How to manifest your dream life in hard circumstances

People love to say just feel good and raise your vibes like that’s easy when your life is literally crumbling. like girl, i’m broke, crying, spiraling, mentally fighting demons and you want me to assume that a mansion is already there? be serious. But here’s the thing you actually don’t need to have it all together to manifest. You can be a total wreck and still be shifting your entire life in the background, because manifestation isn’t about being perfect, it’s about being persistent, like yeah, i’m crying, but i’m still that girl, i’m still rich, i’m still chosen, i still gonna get everything i want.

The 3D might look like trash rn but that doesn’t mean anything but that’s old news, that’s just not your truth anymore. It’s literally just leftovers from past thoughts. Stop letting it gaslight you into thinking you’re stuck. You’re not. You’re actually in the middle of a whole reality flip but you keep pausing it by reacting to the bs around you. The moment you stop giving the 3D authority, you win. stop arguing with it. stop explaining yourself. just be like, nah, my manifestations are done. and then move like it even if you’re tired even if you’re lowkey doubting, keep deciding, keep choosing the version of you who already has it.

It doesn’t have to feel magical you don’t have to float on vibes and moonlight. sometimes manifesting looks like dragging yourself out of bed and whispering everything is working out for me even when you feel like oh everything's falling apart and that’s powerful, you’re powerful. even in your worst moment, you still have the power to flip it all. You’re not behind, you didn’t ruin anything. You’re literally always one decision away from everything shifting. Keep going. The 3D will catch up. it always does, and stop victimising yourself like oh I can't manifest because of this and that, GIRL PLEASE???? So stop treating it as an excuse and just decide for god's sake.

[valiasims]

Cozy Cabin Collection - Living Room

Hey everyone!

Finally it is done and here! The new part of the Cozy Cabin theme is based around the living room and of course Christmas. My plan was to create a living room full of warmth with a touch of the holiday spirit. This set will match perfectly with the previous ones, for the picture I used the deco cushion from the Entryway set and the candle holder from the Dining room. (Also used the cushion from the Naturali Living Room set.)

I wanted to make a Christmas tree for this collection and I took inspiration from the viral, floating, spiral Christmas tree made by Marco Zamora on Instagram. I loved his idea and I tried to use it as a base for my Sims tree. It comes in 3 heights because it is attached to the ceiling. Although it is not functional as the in-game tree so your sims won't be able to decorate it and place present under it but I managed to add the light interaction to it so it can give your sim the buff and counts as a tradition. (I think it adds to the decorate tradition, if I'm remembering correctly.) This tree was a lot of work and I left it to the very end because it came together really slowly but I think in the end it's not that bad looking as it was in the beginning. (Trust me, it was bad looking just scroll back to that WIP, I know you didn't like it, don't lie! :D)

The other big part of this set is the fireplace which also comes in 3 heights because it's a floor-to-ceiling fireplace. I separated the screen from it so you can use it or not, you decide. (Thanks to a tumblr follower.)

I made 2 versions of the garland, one is perfect for fireplaces the other can go on tables, coffee tables or even on the dining table, I tried it sized down and it looks good as a table decor.

I think that's it! I hope you like this festive living room as much as I do! I loved creating this one. Let me know you thoughts or if you have any problem with something. And thank you everyone for the 8000 followers here, on Patreon! I'm just so thankful you like my work, it keeps me going. Can't believe I started creating cc almost a year ago! I have to come up with some celebration!

The Set Includes

Sectional Sofa (5 different variations)

Fireplace (3 heights)

Floating Spiral Christmas Tree (3 heights)

Coffee Table

Firewood Holder

Fireplace Screen

Garland (2 versions)

Poinsetta Flower

Rug

Throw Blanket

Ceramic Houses Light

-DOWNLOAD HERE- Public release on the 16th of January 6PM CST