Work Text:
Charles Leclerc had a habit of getting paint on things.
His fingers. His hair. His phone screen. The remote control in the shared lounge. The doorknob of Room 408. Sometimes even on Pierre's journalism notes, which, admittedly, didn’t need more drama than they already had.
But tonight, the paint had bled red and violet across someone else's neatly folded, towel-warmed laundry.
Charles hadn’t meant to use the wrong machine. He was tired, okay? And post-class haze combined with a hot almond croissant and a failed sketch attempt of a boy he saw from across the quad had left him floating. Floaty Charles didn’t read labels. Floaty Charles just grabbed the machine closest to the door and shoved in three pairs of jeans, one hoodie, and a shirt still speckled with titanium white.
He didn’t expect the door to swing open with the force of a Spanish hurricane.
Carlos Sainz entered the laundry room like it had personally offended him. T-shirt sleeves rolled up, jaw locked tight, headphones around his neck, and basket stacked with towels organized by texture and color. His appearance was… precise. Purposeful. Too clean for this floor, where nothing ever worked right. Charles noticed that about him. Carlos was always frowning at something—coffee machines, vending machines, humans who breathed wrong.
“Tell me,” Carlos said, voice clipped, “that you didn’t use the far-left washer.”
Charles blinked.
Carlos stepped closer. His eyes scanned the laundry machine—then the sticky red streak along the inside rim. His nostrils flared.
“Tell me you didn’t put painted clothes in there.”
Charles blinked again. Then glanced down at the deep purple hoodie in his basket.
A single drip of crimson slid from the hem and splashed—directly onto Carlos’s sock-covered foot.
“I... may have?” Charles offered, sheepish. “It was spinning already when I noticed.”
“That machine doesn’t belong to you.”
“It doesn’t have your name on it.”
Carlos stepped back like he’d been personally wounded. “That’s because I built it.”
“You built it?”
“Okay—fixed it. It broke in September. The housing department didn’t care. I replaced the motor belt and reprogrammed the rinse cycle.” He pointed at the duct tape on the handle. “That’s not aesthetic. That’s engineering.”
Charles just tilted his head. “Still. The red’s quite bold on you.”
He pointed to Carlos’s forearm—where his sleeve had brushed against it and left behind a streak of color. Carlos looked down like it physically pained him.
“You painted on me.”
“I enhanced you.”
Carlos made a noise that was half a sigh, half a snarl.
…..
After that, they kept running into each other.
In the common kitchen when Charles was trying to microwave leftover crêpes and Carlos was burning the edges of his muffins. In the lounge when Charles was sketching shadows of strangers and Carlos was tutoring Lando with half-exasperated mutters and scribbled notes in fluent math. At the campus café, where Charles sipped on overpriced lavender lattes and Carlos ordered black coffee with a quiet apology to the barista for being too early.
Every time, they said less and noticed more.
Carlos started doing his laundry late—only after Charles had clearly already left. Charles began lingering in the hallway, doodling in the margins of his sketchbook, just to hear Carlos complain about the water pressure. They weren’t friends. Not yet. But something tethered.
…..
The disaster began, as all disasters in Room 408 did, with Pierre Gasly being dramatic in the bathroom.
Charles had just started sketching a half-dressed sun god lounging on a cloud (purely academic, not a reflection of anyone he may or may not see in the hallway every morning) when there was a thunderous clank followed by a high-pitched yelp, a crash, and then:
“CHARLES! I NEED ASSISTANCE! I think I killed the shower!”
Charles blinked. “You what?”
“I think it bit me! And then it… broke?”
Charles rushed into the tiny bathroom to find Pierre standing in two inches of rising water, holding what was once the shower head in his hand—now severed at the base and sputtering like a miniature geyser.
“I was singing Celine Dion,” Pierre explained solemnly. “And I may have gotten passionate with my choreography.”
“Did you think it was a microphone?!”
Pierre blinked. “Well. It was in my hand.”
…..
Ten minutes later, Charles was barefoot, ankle-deep in water, googling “emergency dorm plumbing” on his phone while Pierre attempted to stop the flow with a stack of hand towels and a misplaced yoga mat.
No response from maintenance. No answer from their RA.
So Charles did what any desperate, slightly soggy art student would do—he knocked next door.
Room 407. Carlos Sainz’s room.
Charles hesitated. He really should have texted. Or emailed. Or maybe just flooded quietly and accepted fate.
But then the door swung open.
Carlos stood there in grey joggers and a fitted white tee, curls damp from his own shower. He blinked at Charles. Slowly.
“What happened?”
Charles rubbed the back of his neck, already regretting this.
“So. Uh. Minor situation. Nothing fatal. Pierre broke our shower.”
“Pardon?”
“With passion,” Charles added, helpfully.
Carlos sighed. “Charles, I’m a mechanical engineer. Not a plumber.”
“But you fixed the laundry machine that one time,” Charles said, deploying maximum doe eyes. “You know water and pipes and… tight spaces?”
Carlos stared at him. Deadpan
“Please, I will get you banana bread.” Charles said.
Carlos sighed. “Lead the way.”
….
Back in Room 408, Carlos surveyed the flooded bathroom with an expression that could curdle milk.
Pierre looked up from where he was wringing out a towel. “Oh, hello, handsome handyman. Ignore the Celine Dion poster on the mirror.”
“I wasn’t looking,” Carlos said tightly, stepping over a puddle.
He knelt by the base of the faucet, pulling out a flashlight and muttering something in Spanish about “misaligned seals” and “incompetent water pressure regulations.”
Charles, very helpfully, leaned against the doorframe.
“You’re really good with your hands,” he said, before realizing that sounded a bit—
Carlos looked up. One brow raised.
Charles coughed. “I meant. Technically. Like. With tools.”
“Mhm.”
Then the shower sputtered violently.
Water burst up, Carlos jolted back—and the spray hit his shirt full blast. Soaking it entirely. It went translucent in three seconds flat.
Charles froze.
He hadn’t expected to see that much of Carlos’s body before noon.
The shirt clung to every defined inch of him—chiseled abs, sculpted chest, broad shoulders. Like some kind of Greek god in a wet t-shirt contest. He wasn’t even flexing, just existing.
Pierre let out a loud, unapologetic wolf whistle from the sink.
“Oh, helloooo, Señor Fix-It.”
Carlos glared over his shoulder. “Do you want your shower fixed or not?”
“Yes!” Charles said a bit too quickly. “Absolutely! Yes. Please continue. Ignore me. I’m a wall.”
…
Carlos eventually stopped the leak, twisted a few things, muttered about replacing the whole hose tomorrow. By the time he stood, shirt still clinging to his frame, Charles had stopped breathing entirely.
Carlos wiped his hands on a towel and turned to Charles.
“Don’t forget the banana bread.”
Charles nodded dumbly. “Uh-huh. Walnuts. Yes.”
Carlos didn’t leave immediately. He looked at Charles for a moment too long—maybe noticing the blush, or the stunned silence, or the way Charles’s fingers still held onto the edge of the sink like it was an anchor.
Then Carlos smirked—just the tiniest curve at the edge of his mouth—and left.
……
Later that night, Pierre poked his head out from under his duvet.
“So. You gonna sketch his abs from memory or… need help remembering?”
Charles threw a pillow at him.
Then opened a fresh page in his sketchbook.
And started drawing.
….
“Sketch something ethereal,” Professor Laurent had said, like he was asking Charles to pluck moonlight from thin air.
Something soft. Something transcendent. Something breathtaking enough to make people pause.
And naturally—of course—the only thing that had come to Charles Leclerc’s very tired, very sleep-deprived mind was:
Carlos f*cking Sainz.
Not the concept of “love” or “angels” or “mystical light.”
No.
Carlos, walking out of the shower like some rain-soaked deity with a scowl and the body of a Roman sculpture.
…..
So now Charles was aggressively stabbing his mashed potatoes at the lunch table, trying to pretend he wasn’t spiraling.
“I mean,” he mumbled to Pierre between bites, “it’s just stupid. He's not ethereal, he’s just... warm-colored and annoying. With nice eyebrows.”
Pierre looked up from where he was silently glaring daggers at Esteban Ocon from across the cafeteria. “You’ve been talking about his eyebrows for seven minutes.”
“I have not.”
“You described them as ‘architecturally poetic.’ You literally said that.”
“Shut up.”
….
At the end of their table, Daniel was dramatically sprawled over his tray like a Shakespearean ghost. “I’m going to die,” he announced to no one in particular. “I’ve been partnered with Max Verstappen for the next two weeks and I think he wants to murder me with a physics textbook.”
“He doesn’t,” Charles said, eyes flicking toward the corner table, where Carlos and Max were hunched over something engineering-y.
“Does too,” Daniel muttered. “He said ‘We will get this done efficiently, please don’t bring... extra energy.’” He mimicked Max’s monotone in a mocking baritone. “I’m literally extra energy. That’s my brand.”
“Should I stab Esteban with a fork?” Pierre interrupted, staring across the room with pure rage. “He just smirked like he invented gravity. I hate him.”
“I think he just sneezed.”
“It was smug.”
Charles sighed. This was what lunch hour with his friends looked like. Daniel was spiraling. Pierre was plotting violence. Lando was halfway across the cafeteria chasing Oscar, who had been tutoring him recently. And Charles—
Charles was absolutely not glancing back over at Carlos.
….
Except.
He did.
Just once.
And Carlos—beautiful, serious, golden-skinned Carlos—was already looking at him.
Their eyes locked.
And then—then—Carlos’s ears tinted red.
He looked away sharply, turning back to Max and rubbing the back of his neck like he’d been caught thinking something he shouldn't.
Charles froze.
He blinked. Then blinked again. His fork was mid-air. His brain stuttered like an old printer.
Pierre noticed. “What just happened.”
“Nothing.”
“You’re flushed.”
“No I’m not.”
“You look like a flushed Victorian heroine about to faint into a river.”
“I said shut up.”
….
When Charles got back to the dorm that night, he opened a fresh page in his sketchbook. His assignment was due next week. He needed something ethereal.
He stared at the blank page.
Thought of Carlos’s soft profile in the cafeteria light.
Thought of the blush, the glance, the way Carlos always used his hands to explain engineering concepts with too much intensity.
And then he whispered aloud to no one:
“Shit. I’m screwed.”
…..
Charles had practiced asking three times in the stairwell.
Once casually, like “Hey, wanna help with an art thing?”
Once pretending it was a joke, like “Haha, imagine if I asked you to pose shirtless for class?”
Once with full-blown panic, like “Bonjour! I’m mentally unstable and can’t stop thinking about your face—may I please capture it in graphite?”
He decided to go with the first one. Casual. Cool. No heart palpitations, please and thank you.
He knocked on Carlos’s door.
It opened halfway—and Carlos peeked out, brow raised. He was wearing a soft hoodie with sleeves pushed up, curls mussed, and reading glasses perched low on his nose like he’d been mid-notes.
“Charles?” he asked, blinking.
Okay, so. Casual was already gone. “Hi,” Charles blurted. “I have a favor to ask.”
Carlos stepped back to let him in, curious. “If it’s about the leaky pipe again, I already told you I’m an engineer, not—”
“No no no,” Charles said quickly, stepping inside. “Not plumbing this time. It’s… um. It’s artistic.”
Carlos gave him a look. “Artistic?”
“Yes.”
“…As in, painting?”
“Drawing.”
Carlos crossed his arms. “Drawing what?”
And then Charles did something very brave and very stupid: he looked Carlos Sainz dead in the eyes and said, “You.”
A pause.
Carlos’s eyebrows lifted, his lips parting in surprised amusement. “Me?”
“For an assignment,” Charles added quickly, already flushing. “We’re supposed to sketch something ethereal and—and you just have very defined bone structure and a thoughtful face and… that’s all. It’s purely academic.”
“Purely academic,” Carlos repeated, smiling a little too much.
“Yes.”
And then Carlos tilted his head, walked to the bed where his engineering notes were splayed—and casually peeled off his hoodie, leaving just a thin black T-shirt clinging to his chest.
He looked over his shoulder and smirked.
“Should I lie on the couch and say, ‘Paint me like one of your French girls,’ or would that kill you on the spot?”
Charles made a noise—somewhere between a choke and a scandalized gasp.
“Carlos!”
Carlos just laughed, low and warm. “I’m joking. Relax.”
“I am relaxed,” Charles said, extremely unconvincingly.
Carlos padded over and dropped onto the couch anyway, one leg over the side, the other bent. “Okay. Sketch me then.”
Charles blinked. “You’re serious?”
Carlos shrugged. “You asked. I’m here.”
His eyes were soft but sharp. His mouth was curved in a way that made Charles forget how vowels worked.
So Charles sat on the desk chair, cracked open his sketchpad, and tried very, very hard not to tremble.
…..
Fifteen minutes in, Carlos shifted. “So… do I have to stay completely still?”
“No,” Charles mumbled, focused on the curve of Carlos’s jaw. “But do not smile. I’m trying to draw your serious face.”
“So not the face I make when you rant about how green shouldn’t exist in paint theory?”
“That was one time.”
“Or when you spill coffee on your own sock and apologize to it?”
“I have manners.”
Carlos snorted softly. “Right.”
Another pause.
Then:
“You think I’m ethereal?”
Charles’s pencil froze. “What?”
“For the assignment,” Carlos murmured. “You picked me.”
Charles’s throat went dry. He looked up—and Carlos wasn’t smiling anymore.
He was looking at Charles the same way he had across the cafeteria that day—like the truth had snuck up and wrapped around them both.
And before Charles could deflect—
Carlos stood.
He walked across the room slowly.
Stopped in front of him.
Took the sketchbook gently out of Charles’s hands. Set it on the desk. And then cupped Charles’s jaw with a warm, callused palm.
“God, you are perfect,” Carlos whispered, voice husky.
Charles blinked. “What?”
“Nothing,” Carlos said—and leaned in.
The kiss was soft at first. Gentle. Like a whisper against skin. Charles felt his heart stutter—then race, then melt.
Carlos tilted his head, deepening it, one hand in Charles’s hair, the other gripping the arm of the chair. And Charles—who’d spent days sketching this boy in his mind—finally stopped pretending he didn’t want to trace every line with his mouth instead of charcoal.
When they broke apart, breathless, Carlos rested his forehead to Charles’s.
“Still academic?” he asked, lips brushing Charles’s cheek.
Charles smiled.
“Very. Thorough research.”
…..
Charles was nearly finished sketching the lines of Carlos’s throat—the soft, strong shadows under his jaw when the door burst open with a slam.
“CAR—!”
Too late.
Daniel and Lando stood in the doorway, eyes wide like they’d just walked in on a scandal—and to be fair, it kind of looked like one.
Carlos was lying on the couch, one arm behind his head, golden light from the window hitting just right. Charles sat cross-legged in front of him on a stool, sketchbook open, a clear blush rising up his cheeks.
There was silence for two whole seconds.
Then Daniel deadpanned, “Didn’t know we were shooting Titanic 2.0 in the dorm today.”
Lando leaned against the doorframe, smirking. “Should I bring in a fan for dramatic effect? Maybe mist the windows a bit?”
Carlos bolted upright so fast he nearly knocked over Charles’s pencil tin.
“Get out!” he barked, face going bright red. “Out!”
Charles, meanwhile, buried his face in his hands, muttering, “Mon dieu,” under his breath as Lando and Daniel dissolved into wheezing laughter.
“I was just gonna grab my charger,” Lando said, cackling, “but this is so much better.”
Daniel nudged Charles with his elbow. “Look at you, Leonardo DiCaprio. Got your own Spanish muse and everything.”
Carlos stood up, flustered, trying to herd them out like a panicked cat dad. “It’s an art assignment, idiots. Get your minds out of the gutter.”
“But Carlos,” Daniel said, feigning a swoon, “you looked so... beautiful, Miss Rose.”
“Out!” Carlos shoved them both toward the door.
Lando, still laughing, grabbed his charger off the desk. “Alright, alright. But we’re telling George. Group chat’s gonna explode.”
“You do and I’m disconnecting your speakers permanently.”
Before they left, Daniel peeked over Charles’s shoulder at the sketch. His teasing faded for a second.
“Wow,” he said quietly. “That’s... really good.”
Carlos froze.
Charles looked up.
Daniel smiled, softer this time. “You’ve got a hell of a subject.”
Then he winked and dragged Lando out by the hoodie.
The door slammed shut.
Carlos exhaled like he’d just finished a sprint race. He turned slowly to Charles, sheepish.
“That was... mortifying,” he muttered.
Charles shrugged, a shy smile tugging at his lips. “Could’ve been worse. They didn’t quote Celine Dion.”
Carlos groaned and flopped back onto the couch. “You’re never living this down, by the way.”
Charles returned to his sketchpad, blushing again as he gently added the shading beneath Carlos’s lips.
“Neither are you.”
……
Charles was running late to his Tuesday figure drawing seminar, arms full of charcoal tubes and a half-finished espresso. He barely noticed Pierre waving at him from the studio’s glass doors, too busy mumbling curses at the strap of his messenger bag getting tangled in his headphones.
“Charles!” Pierre called out as Charles barreled past. “I brought your sketch folder—you forgot it this morning, remember?”
“Ah, merci, merci, I owe you lunch,” Charles gasped, grabbing the folder without checking it. “You're a lifesaver.”
He slid into the seminar room just as Professor Lavigne was booting up the projector.
“Today,” she said crisply, “we’ll be critiquing your midterm figure studies. We’ll do this blindly—each image will be anonymous. This is about form, tone, emotion. Not names.”
Charles sat down, exhaled slowly, and cracked open his sketchbook to prepare notes for the other students. It was going to be a calm, low-key class. No drama.
Until the lights dimmed.
And the first sketch appeared on the screen.
Carlos Sainz.
Lying on Charles’s couch.
Half-lidded eyes. Strong jawline. Collarbone like a goddamn sculpture. One arm tucked behind his head, his black T-shirt rucked up just enough to show the glorious V-line every horny Greek statue strived for.
And it was unmistakably him. It wasn’t just the features. It was Carlos. His exact posture, his annoyed-but-soft expression, the tiny dimple at the corner of his mouth.
There was stunned silence in the room.
Then a student in the back whispered, “Damn.”
Another said, “Whoever drew this is in love with their subject.”
A third: “Is this... from life? That’s not a photo?”
And then Professor Lavigne, peering thoughtfully at the sketch, said with a smirk, “Well. Someone has a muse.”
Charles stopped breathing.
He glanced to Pierre, who blinked at the screen, horrified, then slowly turned to Charles with the slow dawning realization of oh no.
“I thought it was one of your class pieces,” Pierre mouthed, eyes wide.
Charles turned pink. Then red. Then purple.
Professor Lavigne was now circling the projected image, pointing at the contouring on Carlos’s ribs. “Exceptional linework here—see how the artist translated physicality into something tender? There’s an intimacy, but restraint too. Admirable control.”
Charles was dying.
Like, actual spiritual departure from the Earth.
He was about to slide under the desk and evaporate when the classroom door creaked open—
—and Carlos walked in.
Holding Charles’s sketch pencils.
“Hey, love you left these in our bed—”
He froze.
Looked up.
Saw his own half-shirtless form staring back at him in front of twenty stunned art students and one very delighted professor.
There was a moment of total, crushing, annihilating silence.
Carlos blinked.
Then, slowly, he turned to Charles with the flattest expression ever worn by a man who had been nothing but supportive of an artist boyfriend until this exact second.
“You said it was for an assignment.”
“It was!” Charles squeaked. “It is! It just—Pierre—folder mix-up—I didn’t mean—”
Carlos walked slowly to his seat in the back row and dropped the pencils on Charles’s desk.
“Well,” he muttered under his breath, “at least you got my good side.”
Pierre tried to stifle a laugh and failed so hard he nearly slid out of his chair.
Professor Lavigne, with a glittering eye and no shame whatsoever, said cheerfully: “Mr. Leclerc, Mr. Sainz, would you two be willing to come speak to the class about collaborative intimacy between artist and subject?”
Carlos turned bright red.
Charles died. Again. Spiritually. Completely.
And somewhere in the back row, someone whispered, “Please tell me there’s a sequel.”
……
Charles swears to never draw Carlos again. Carlos sulks. Charles finds him dramatically shirtless two days later, lounging on the bed with a single red rose and says, “...In case you need inspiration.”
Pierre starts selling fake autographed prints of the infamous sketch.
......
Next story of Campus Hearts Series : Landoscar - The Study Buddy bet
Coming soon....
......
Author’s Note:
Hope you enjoyed Charles and Carlos’s chaotic masterpiece of paint, pining, and painfully obvious crushes. ......tbh they may have started with a broken shower and ended with a half-naked sketch scandal, but hey—art is beauty. And thirst.
Up next:Oscar and Lando—where academic betrayal meets romantic disaster..... Buckle up for math fights, suspicious quizzes, and Oscar slowly realizing he’s not immune to Lando’s golden retriever charm. (Spoiler: no one is.)
(me whispering)...tbh Campus Hearts AU is basically my fantasy of finding my one true love while wandering through my very real, very dense campus where people don’t even look up from their phones. If you’re out there, please walk into a door dramatically or drop your books. Give me something to work with. ......💕
Thanks for reading....and may your roommates never break the shower. AND DONT FORGET TO COMMENT
– Ria 💌