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Unconsciously, Lando pushed his lower lip forward after watching Carlos' video of the past year. Although he had had many clips cut into it - it was no surprise that the Spaniard had not made it himself - that Lando liked, there was no trace of him himself. Okay, it did not surprise him that none of their rare couple photos had made it into the shortlist, but at least he could have inserted a video of them golfing, right? After all, they had gotten engaged this year, and Carlos kept stressing that it had been the most beautiful moment of his life.
On the other hand, Lando had to admit that Carlos had always kept their relationship private in front of just about everyone. It had taken months for them to tell their families and closest friends because Carlos had not yet wanted to. At the time, it was annoying Lando. He couldn't understand why his boyfriend didn't want to tell anyone, while he wanted to post every single photo of them on his private account because he loved them so much. For a long time, he had assumed that Carlos was ashamed of him until he had realised that Carlos just liked to keep special things to himself. This did not only include their relationship, but also friendships. Carlos kept everything important to him mostly private because it was reserved for certain people. His special smile, which he almost always wore when Lando told of a new passion, the cheek kisses he gave his family - and now also Lando's family -, the laughter when one of his friends told some anecdote from their childhood. These things were part of his private life that he didn't want to share.
And since Lando had realised that, he had adapted that behaviour, albeit subconsciously. He rarely posted photos of Carlos and himself on social media - neither on his official account nor on his private account. And if he did, he made sure it wasn't a private moment. All photos were either taken from the paddock or staged. Hardly any had been taken from the moment, but all with the pure intention of taking a picture. His gallery, of course, looked different. There were many blurry pictures, pictures of Carlos sleeping, videos and photos when they thought they were not being watched but were captured by someone in their family. Lando's favourite picture was one of them on the couch, taken during a skiing holiday with Max F., Rupert, Caco and Marc Marquez. A wild group, but by far the best holiday they had spent so far. After a successful day on the slopes, they only wanted to sit down briefly but instead fell asleep. Lando's head in the bend of Carlos' neck, the Spaniard's arms loosely wrapped around his neck. A grip that Lando knew only too well because if he wanted to break away from it for some reason, it immediately became firmer. This photo was closely followed by one taken at Caco's wedding, where they danced slowly.
"Honey, I'm home!" Carlos suddenly shouted, and Lando rolled his eyes immediately. Carlos loved to greet him like that when he was away for some hours while Lando worked from home.
"As productive as ever," was the older one's comment when he found Lando on his phone in the living room.
"I'm judging your Instagram feed," he defended himself. "This is important work you obviously don't do."
'Touché." Smiling, Carlos kissed his cheek before he glanced at Lando's phone and his eyes began to light up. "I didn't know it was being uploaded today. The video turned out good, didn't it?"
"Except for the fact that there is no trace of me, it is perfect. Not too much content from Charles and-" He didn't get any further, as Carlos immediately pinched him in the side, whereupon he just laughed. "I'm joking." At the beginning of Carlos' Ferrari era, Charles had been a reason to fight, yes, but by now they had put that aside - or rather, Lando had put it aside. There was just no reason to be jealous.
"I couldn't find any videos of us that I liked," said Carlos, shrugging his shoulders. Lando knew that by "liked" he meant "appropriate" because there were plenty of videos that he knew Carlos loved. But they were too private. Nevertheless, Lando smiled at him and Carlos rolled his eyes. "No videos I could have posted," he corrected, and Lando's smile just widened.
"But there are good videos," Lando remarked and opened his gallery.
"I know, mi amor." Smiling, Carlos took the phone out of his hand and locked the screen, which Lando accepted. "You don't have to show them to me, I look at them often enough."
"Yes?" Satisfied, Lando placed his head on Carlos' shoulder but turned it so that he could look at his fiancé. Carlos immediately took this as an opportunity to put an arm around him and kiss his forehead.
"You have no idea," he said. He lovingly strokes a curl off Lando's face with one hand, finally leaving it on his cheek. Immediately Lando snuggled into the touch.
They remained in that position for a few moments, just smiling at each other before the Spaniard finally cleared his throat. "I went grocery shopping. Shall we cook?"
"Not now," Lando replied, grabbing Carlos' wrist to prevent him from leaving. "I want to enjoy your presence for five more minutes after you've been gone all day."
"I didn't leave until 12," laughed the older man, moving his arm until he had wrapped it around Lando's hip.
"And I was still in bed at 12," he rebuked and stretched out to kiss his fiancée - for the first time since he had arrived. When Carlos made his typical grumbling sound, Lando smiled to himself. Every day, he wished their wedding would not take place in the summer, but sooner because he wanted to make it official. He finally wanted to marry the man who, after spending a few hours apart, missed him just as much as Lando missed him - even though Carlos would probably never admit it because he was reluctant to agree with Lando in matters like those.
"It's not my fault you're lazy." After these words, Carlos ducked his head, as Lando was already stretching out to give him a loving slap.
"Well, first of all, it's winter break right now, and even Jon said I had two weeks off," he began. "And secondly, I wasn't hanging around lazily, I was planning a new collection with Quadrant. It's not my fault our call wasn't until 1. Besides, you haven't been very productive either. You met Charles."
"Ah, right. How was the call?" Carlos asked, ignoring all the other statements, so the younger one snorted, "Good. Tomorrow we have another one, and by then, we should have some rough drafts for the designs."
"May I see them then?"
"If the others agree, then yes," he replied, knowing that the others would agree without hesitation. In fact, when the first designs were agreed on, they always asked what Carlos thought of them since the Spaniard had been at a meeting in England once and had been involved in the planning at some point - with admittedly very helpful comments. Apart from that, Carlos was always present at the shootings, sometimes even in front of the camera. However, it would probably take some time before these photos would make it to the Internet.
"Then I'm looking forward to seeing them tomorrow," Carlos winked, kissed him quickly and then got up before Lando could stop him again. "Let's cook."
Grumbling, Lando let himself get pulled on his feet, even though he would have preferred to sit on the couch a little longer, but well. You should do anything for the love of your life, right?
Later in the evening, they made themselves comfortable on the couch again and watched a movie. Or rather: Lando was watching a movie, while Carlos was constantly playing with Lando's fingers. At some point, he could not stand the nervousness of the older one and huffed. Apologising, Carlos kissed the back of his hand.
"What are you thinking about?" Lando wanted to know and sat down a little more upright as Carlos picked up the remote and paused the movie.
"The video..." Carlos muttered cautiously. "There's a second version that wasn't published. Because I knew you'd complain."
"Okay?" Confused, he tilted his head and watched Carlos look for something on his phone.
"And before you make a bratty comment afterwards because you don't know how to deal with the situation, just don't say anything and appreciate the effort, okay?" Carlos smiled a little forced, and Lando frowned. He would have liked to complain now but then let Carlos' comment slip. He could handle any situation well, thank you very much, Carlos.
His fiancé took the silence for his part as approval and pressed his cell phone into his hand. He had started a video; "Our Year 2022" stood on a black background. Then a year review began - in the same format as the video published on Instagram. The difference: it was just videos of Carlos and Lando. Private videos.
January. Their holiday in Thailand. Videos of sunsets, which they had observed together on the beach. Videos of them lying together on a boat, far from the shore, exchanging sweet kisses.
February. Screen recordings of their daily FaceTime calls, in which they laughed, cried, slept. Lando remembered the calls. During the preparations for the next season, they had both been quite strained and consequently had hardly seen each other for the whole month.
March. The season had started again. Videos of Carlos' driver's room, where Lando had snuggled up with him before the race, and of hotel rooms, where they were fooling around. Not in a sexual way, of course.
April. Their date in Australia, when Carlos first took him to a beautiful restaurant and then went for a walk on the beach with him. One could see Lando challenging Carlos to a race to the sea and then running off.
May. The clip showed the two of them at the pool at Carlos' parents' house. Lando lay in Carlos' arms, talking about something, while Carlos listened and looked at him with the infinitely loving look that Lando knew only too well.
June. Lando, who walked as inconspicuously as possible through the Ferrari motorhome, looking around again and again and finally disappearing into Carlos' room. The Ferrari hoodie he wore was supposed to protect him, but obviously, that did not work out too well. The video was probably recorded by a Ferrari employee.
July. It was a new version of Carlos' first podium. Lando suddenly came running with a bottle of champagne during the team photos after Carlos' victory and sprayed Carlos with it before he ran away from the Spaniard. Eventually, however, Carlos was able to catch him and pulled him to himself with one arm. At the latest, when Carlos kissed him with a big smile in front of his team, any protest from Lando that he was now also full of champagne died out.
August. A video of Lando, who facetimed Alex, George and Max and proudly presented the engagement ring to them. No video of the engagement itself, but Lando wasn't expecting that either. But the fact that Carlos had watched him call his friends the next day made his heart melt.
September. It was a shot of the two of them at the club they had booked for Carlos' birthday. While everyone was on the dance floor, they were sitting at the table, only having eyes for each other. The camera turned around and one could see Max rolling his eyes and pretending to throw up.
October. This time Lando had planned a date for their anniversary in Mexico. Once again, they watched a sunset by the sea. Lando had snuggled up to his fiancé and had closed his eyes.
November. Carlos threw him a surprise party for his birthday. Overwhelmed, Lando stared at all his friends before turning purposefully back to Carlos and involving him in a far too deep kiss for not being alone.
December. Carlos was sitting on the couch with Lando's parents and chatting with Flo and Oliver as Lando entered the room. Immediately Carlos' attention was completely on him, he held out his arms to him and less than ten seconds later Lando had taken his place on Carlos' lap.
Speechless, Lando looked at the screen before slowly lowering the phone. What overwhelmed him so much was that he didn't know a single one of these recordings. Obviously, they were videos that either Carlos or friends and family had made of them and which were only in Carlos' possession.
"Carlos..." he whispered stunned and wiped his eyes, which had become suspiciously wet. No one had ever done such a thing for him. Carlos had gathered videos of them that Lando didn't know about to make a review of their year because he had known very well that Lando would complain about the other one because he wasn't in it.
"These are the actual highlights of the year. Of course, I couldn't post that on Instagram." Embarrassed, he scratched the back of his head and shrugged his shoulders somewhat helplessly. "But I wanted you to know that this video is far more important to me than the other."
"Carlos." Lando had to swallow heavily when he realised how stifled his voice sounded. "I love you so much."
Now the lips of his opponent turned into an honest, relieved smile again. "I think you've already noticed that I love you too."
"Fucking hell, Carlos. Sometime in the last four years, I noticed that," he laughed and then finally bridged the distance between them to kiss his fiancé.
Well, thank you, Carlos. Now he'd have to work his whole life and think of a thousand sweet gestures so that they would eventually be even again. Of course, he would never admit that he was very happy to do so.