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It’s raining in Monaco—not the harsh kind that lashes at windows or disrupts streetlights—but the soft, silver drizzle that makes the world feel wrapped in cotton.
The kind of rain that hushes everything into quietude. Inside Carlos's apartment, the city feels far away, tucked behind thick walls and warm lamps and the smell of something sweet baking in the oven.
Lando’s on the couch, legs folded beneath him, hair still damp from the rain he insisted on walking through instead of taking the car. Carlos had called him stubborn. Lando had just grinned and said, “I’m waterproof,” as if he wasn’t already shivering when Carlos opened the door.
Carlos had only rolled his eyes and handed him a towel.
Now, he’s curled up in one of Carlos’s oversized hoodies—navy blue, smelling like cinnamon and the cologne Carlos uses so sparingly that Lando thinks he only smells it when he’s very, very close. Which is perfect. Because Lando likes being very, very close.
Carlos sits beside him now, one leg tucked under him, fingers curled around a steaming mug of thick hot chocolate—real chocolate, melted and stirred slowly with milk, because “powdered things are an insult to your tastebuds,” according to Carlos. Lando’s holding his own mug with both hands, blowing gently over the surface. There’s whipped cream on top. And tiny marshmallows. And, because Carlos is secretly the most extra person alive, chocolate shavings.
They’re watching The Holiday, a comfort movie Lando picked after thirty minutes of scrolling and Carlos mocking every single Christmas rom-com with a fond smile and zero resistance. Half the subtitles are in Spanish. Lando doesn’t complain. He likes when Carlos translates the lines he thinks are important. Especially when he whispers them close to Lando’s ear, like a secret.
“You look sleepy,” Carlos murmurs during a lull, glancing sideways.
“I’m always sleepy when I’m warm,” Lando says, tucking himself further into the corner of the couch. “And I’m…warm.”
Carlos doesn’t ask what he means. He doesn’t have to. The fireplace glows across the room, a little electric thing that tries its best to mimic the real thing. But the warmth Lando means is the kind you don’t get from heat. It’s the kind that curls in your chest when someone makes you hot chocolate from scratch. The kind that bubbles behind your ribcage when someone keeps all your favourite snacks in their pantry without mentioning it. The kind that sings in the back of your throat when someone lets you be soft without asking you to explain it.
“I like this,” Lando says quietly, eyes never leaving the screen. “This—us—like this. Just…quiet. Safe.”
Carlos hums. “I like it too.”
And it’s not just words. It’s truth, laid bare in that gentle way they’ve learned to love each other. Without grand declarations or fireworks. Without hands grasping too tight or mouths seeking too much. They love in sideways glances, in mugs handed over without being asked, in playlists sent at 2 a.m. with songs that say what neither of them can.
Carlos doesn’t touch much. Not because he doesn’t want to, but because touch means something too big, too heavy. But today, slowly, cautiously, he shifts his hand just a little closer to Lando’s on the couch cushion. Not touching. Not yet. Just near. Near enough that if Lando moved a little—just a little—
Lando’s pinky nudges Carlos’s.
They both pretend not to notice. But they sit that way for the rest of the movie, pinkies brushing, hearts thudding like something sacred.
When the movie ends and the credits roll, Lando is drowsy-eyed and soft around the edges.
“You could stay,” Carlos offers, voice barely above a whisper. “I can make the guest bed.”
Lando smiles, eyelids fluttering shut. “I’d rather stay here.”
Carlos blinks. “On the couch?”
“Next to you.”
It makes something ache in Carlos’s chest, something tender and raw and so incredibly full. He nods. Mutely. Carefully. Like any sudden movement might break this gentle thing between them.
Lando curls against his side—not quite hugging, not quite not. Just close. Like a cat. Like sunlight. Like a heartbeat syncing up beside his.
“You’re my favourite person,” Lando murmurs, already half asleep.
Carlos exhales. He doesn’t say it back. He feels it back.
He rests his cheek against the top of Lando’s head and closes his eyes. Outside, the rain falls softer now. And inside, everything is warm.
Wrapped in this quiet, cotton-soft moment, they both drift. Not into sleep, not fully. But into the spaces between heartbeats, where a kind of love that doesn’t need fixing or proving or naming lives. Where a kind of love just is.
And it is enough.
It is everything.
Lando wakes before the sun.
He doesn’t open his eyes at first—just lets his mind resurface gently from a dream where everything was warm and safe and slow. A dream where someone’s heartbeat thudded steady and quiet beneath his ear. Where the world hadn’t asked anything of him. Where he hadn’t needed to perform or smile too wide or explain himself.
And then he realizes: that wasn’t a dream.
Carlos’s chest rises and falls against his cheek, slow and even. The weight of his arm is still there, draped gently over Lando’s shoulder like a question no one’s asking out loud.
Lando breathes in, slow. His cheek presses further into Carlos’s hoodie—one of the older ones, soft with wear, worn at the cuffs. It smells like cinnamon and something sharper, something that’s just… Carlos. He holds very still. He doesn’t want to move. Doesn’t want to disturb this sacred, hazy peace.
Carlos shifts just slightly in his sleep, and Lando can feel his heartbeat now, steady and alive under his hand.
It makes him ache.
But not in the way it used to, years ago—when he was sixteen and terrified that everyone else was moving forward into a world of kisses and touches and wanting and he wasn’t. When he’d lie awake and wonder what was wrong with him. When he’d say “maybe I’m just a late bloomer” while secretly hoping no bloom would ever come.
He’d kept it locked inside for so long, behind charm and sarcasm and a laugh that could deflect anything.
Until Carlos.
Until now.
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Carlos stirs beneath him, groggy and confused and already concerned.
“Lando?” Carlos’s voice is soft and husky with sleep. His hand rises—hesitant—and comes to rest lightly on Lando’s upper back. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
Lando shakes his head, tries to wipe at his face. “Nothing. I’m okay. It’s just…”
He breathes out. It catches.
“It’s a lot,” he finally says.
Carlos is fully awake now. He gently shifts Lando so they’re sitting upright, knee to knee, still wrapped in the warmth of the blanket Carlos must’ve draped over them both in the night.
Carlos doesn’t push. He never does. He just waits. And that—more than anything—makes Lando want to say everything.
So he does.
“I used to think there was something wrong with me,” he begins. “Everyone else in school talked about their crushes and hookups and—whatever—and I just… I didn’t feel any of it. I wanted to want, you know? But I didn’t. And I kept waiting for it to change. I thought maybe once I had my first kiss, or once I fell in love—maybe then.”
Carlos is quiet, but not in a distant way. In the way that makes it clear he’s listening with every part of him.
Lando smiles, sad and soft. “Spoiler alert: it didn’t change. And I tried. I really tried. I kept thinking maybe I wasn’t doing it right. Maybe I was broken. Or scared. Or being difficult.”
Carlos’s brow furrows, and he reaches out—fingers brushing against Lando’s wrist, grounding. “You’re not broken.”
“I know,” Lando whispers. “Now. But it took a long time.”
They sit in silence for a moment, the kind that fills the air like honey—not heavy, not uncomfortable, just full of feeling.
Then Carlos says, very quietly, “Me too.”
Lando looks up.
Carlos’s eyes are soft, full of things he rarely says out loud. “I didn’t have the words for it until later. I thought maybe I was just… reserved. Or private. Maybe even cold. But I’d go on dates, and everyone always wanted more. More touching, more kissing, more—more than I could give without lying. And I thought maybe I’d just not met the right person.”
He smiles faintly. “But I did. I met people who were good. Kind. Attractive. And I still didn’t feel it. I tried to pretend. I hated myself every time I couldn’t match their wants.”
His hand drifts to Lando’s again, this time more sure. Their fingers intertwine, soft and certain.
“I didn’t know there were people like me,” Carlos continues. “Until I saw you. The way you talk. The way you don’t talk about certain things. The way you look relieved when people let you be.”
Lando feels something catch in his throat.
“I didn’t want to assume,” Carlos says, voice quieter now. “But I hoped.”
“I’m glad you did,” Lando says. “Because I’ve never felt safe like this before.”
They sit there for a while—holding hands, wrapped in a blanket and the soft gold of the early morning sun beginning to filter through the curtains.
And then Lando laughs, sudden and surprised and full of light.
Carlos blinks. “What?”
Lando grins at him, eyes still damp but glowing now. “You remember when you made that TikTok about ‘Spanish men don’t fall in love, they surrender’?”
Carlos groans, half-laughing. “I told you not to bring that up again.”
“You swooned, Carlos.”
“I did not swoon.”
Lando bumps their shoulders together. “You did. You absolutely did. And I think—maybe—I’m a little glad you did. Because I think I surrendered too. To you.”
Carlos looks at him, eyes warm and amused and deeply, deeply full.
“Good,” he says simply. “Because I surrendered the moment you told me you hate powdered hot chocolate.”
They both laugh, a little too loud for the hour, a little too soft to matter.
—
Later, they’re in the kitchen, making pancakes together. There’s flour on Carlos’s nose and syrup on Lando’s elbow, and it’s a disaster in the best way.
“You know,” Carlos says, flipping a pancake with suspiciously perfect technique, “I used to worry I’d never get this.”
“This?” Lando asks, licking whipped cream off his thumb.
“This. Us. Someone who didn’t think love was about sex or proving something. Someone who didn’t make me feel like I was missing a piece.”
Lando’s grin softens. He sidles up behind Carlos and wraps his arms around his waist, face pressed into his back.
Carlos stills. Breathes.
“I don’t need to be fixed,” Lando says quietly. “And with you, I don’t feel broken.”
Carlos turns around, hands on Lando’s hips, close but not crushing. Gentle, like always.
“Same,” he whispers.
They eat at the kitchen counter, pancakes stacked high and golden, conversation slow and easy. They talk about the past, about the first time they noticed each other beyond the paddock. About how Lando would always find a way to sit beside Carlos during team dinners. About how Carlos would wait after Lando’s interviews, just to walk with him. Little things. Everything things.
“I never knew what love could look like when it didn’t come with all the things everyone said it had to come with,” Lando says, fork paused midair. “But this? This is it for me.”
Carlos nods. “Me too.”
They don’t kiss. Not then. Not because they’re afraid or holding back, but because the moment doesn’t need it. Because their kind of intimacy isn’t built on mouths pressed together or passion set on fire. It’s built on safety. On choosing each other every day. On whispered translations and shared hoodies and pinkies brushing in the dark.
It’s built on knowing.
And right now, they know everything they need to.
Carlos is reading on the couch, glasses low on his nose. Lando is on the floor with a blanket and his laptop, editing a silly TikTok of their pancake disaster. They’re not touching. They don’t need to.
“Hey,” Lando says suddenly. “Do you think we’ll ever have to explain this? Us? To someone who doesn’t get it?”
Carlos closes his book. Thinks. “Maybe.”
Lando hums. “What’ll we say?”
Carlos looks down at him, eyes soft. “We’ll say that love doesn’t always look the same. That sometimes it’s quiet. Sometimes it’s slow. And sometimes, it’s two asexual idiots who just really like making pancakes and watching holiday movies in June.”
Lando laughs, climbing up onto the couch and tucking himself into Carlos’s side.
“Good,” he says. “Because I really, really love you.”
Carlos’s breath hitches.
He turns, fully, and looks at Lando like he’s something celestial. Like he’s a miracle in a hoodie.
“I love you too,” he says. “Exactly like this.”
And when Lando leans in—not for a kiss, but to press their foreheads together, eyes closed, breath shared—it feels like the most intimate thing in the world.
And maybe it is.
Because this? This is their love story.
Quiet. Gentle. Warm.
And yet—everything.
The vinyl crackles faintly in the background as the soft hum of Nat King Cole’s Unforgettable fills the living room. It’s almost absurd how cinematic it feels—Lando even jokes about it as Carlos adjusts the volume on the old turntable he bought on a whim in Florence.
“What, are we suddenly in a 1960s love montage?” Lando teases from the couch, stretched out like a spoiled cat, socked feet crossed, hoodie three sizes too big.
Carlos turns and raises an eyebrow. “Would you rather I put on reggaeton?”
“No,” Lando says quickly, blushing. “I like this. I just… didn’t expect you to be a crooner.”
Carlos walks over and holds out his hand. “Come here. Dance with me.”
Lando hesitates—nervous, always, when it comes to being seen. But then Carlos is smiling like the world’s already perfect, and that smile is magnetic in the worst (best) way.
He lets Carlos pull him up.
They sway, bodies close but not tight, hands loosely clasped. Lando’s cheek rests against Carlos’s collarbone as the music curls around them like mist.
Carlos hums along at first, his voice low and rich. Then, as the chorus swells, he leans close and starts softly singing into Lando’s ear.
“Unforgettable… that’s what you are…”
Lando shudders—not in fear, but in the overwhelming safety of it all. He feels like his bones could melt from the tenderness.
Carlos’s breath brushes the shell of his ear as he continues.
“Like a song of love that clings to me…”
Lando tightens his grip around Carlos’s waist, eyes fluttering shut.
“How the thought of you… does things to me…”
His fingers slide under the hem of Carlos’s sweater, just to feel warm skin. Just to anchor himself in this.
“Never before… has someone been more…”
Carlos trails off and just hums, letting the song carry them gently across the room in lazy circles.
They don’t speak again until the record ends.
And even then, neither one lets go.
Carlos is exhausted.
It’s one of those days that leaves your muscles aching and your mind fogged—long sim sessions, back-to-back interviews, a media appearance that went ten minutes too long and a hundred smiles too many. The kind of day that makes your body hum with static.
When he finally gets home, the door barely closes behind him before Lando’s already appearing from the kitchen, barefoot, holding a mug of herbal tea.
“I made your sleepy blend,” Lando says softly, pressing it into Carlos’s hands. “You look like someone left you on the tarmac for six hours.”
Carlos huffs a tired laugh. “That’s oddly specific.”
“It’s also accurate,” Lando says, guiding him toward the couch.
Carlos sinks down with a groan, setting the mug aside. Lando doesn’t press him to talk. Just curls up beside him, curling his legs over Carlos’s lap, pulling a blanket over both of them.
And then—without a word—Lando shifts until his head rests over Carlos’s chest, ear right where the heartbeat lives.
Carlos is still. His eyes flutter shut.
Lando rubs gentle circles into his sternum, soothing. “Just breathe. I’m here.”
Carlos doesn’t even realize he’s crying until Lando’s fingers find his hair and scratch gently at his scalp, grounding him.
“You don’t have to be anything right now,” Lando whispers. “Not strong. Not charming. Not ‘Smooth Operator.’ Just Carlos. That’s enough.”
The warmth of Lando’s body, the quiet reverence of his voice, the way he smells faintly of cinnamon and cotton—it all works like a lullaby. Carlos lets go. Fully. Breath hitching. Muscles unclenching.
And eventually, Lando naps too. Heartbeats syncing again, breath slow and even, as the world fades outside their little haven.
It’s later that night when Carlos wakes again, body still sore. Lando’s already up, padding around in sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, hair wild, carrying a bottle of massage oil in one hand and a determined expression on his face.
Carlos lifts an eyebrow. “Dare I ask?”
“Don’t fight me,” Lando says, walking over. “I know your back’s killing you.”
“I’ll survive.”
“You’ll survive better after this,” Lando counters, grabbing a cushion from the couch. “Now. Lie down. Shirt off.”
Carlos opens his mouth to make a cheeky comment, but something in Lando’s face stops him.
This isn’t performative. This isn’t playful.
This is care.
So he obeys, stretching out on his stomach, cheek resting on the throw pillow. Lando straddles his hips (carefully, reverently), warming the oil between his palms.
And then—he touches.
Carlos exhales sharply at the first press of Lando’s hands.
Not sexual. Not even sensual. Just—intimate.
Lando’s fingers move with purpose, slow and gentle, thumbs pressing into the knots along Carlos’s shoulders, palms spreading warmth down his spine. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t rush.
Carlos melts.
“I used to think I couldn’t give this kind of touch,” Lando murmurs eventually, “because I didn’t want the other kind. But this… this isn’t about want. It’s about love.”
Carlos swallows thickly.
“I want to give you everything that makes you feel safe,” Lando continues. “Everything soft. Everything real.”
Carlos reaches behind him, fingers finding Lando’s.
He squeezes once. A wordless thank you.
They stay like that for a while. Carlos face-down, pliant and warm. Lando perched above him, rubbing small circles between his shoulder blades, oil glistening under soft lamplight.
Eventually, Carlos mumbles, “I love you.”
Lando bends forward and presses a kiss to the space between his shoulder blades.
“I know,” he whispers. “Me too.”
Carlos wakes to the smell of coffee and the sound of quiet humming. He pads into the kitchen, hair rumpled, only to find Lando with two mismatched mugs in hand: one says "Grumpy Before Grid," the other, "Soft Boy Supreme."
"You used mine," Carlos says.
Lando shrugs. "It matched your mood last night."
Carlos takes it with a smile. They stand there for a moment, sleepy and barefoot, sipping their coffee in silence. Lando leans into him like it’s second nature. And it is.
They go shopping on a Tuesday afternoon, hats pulled low, fingers brushing more than necessary. Carlos reads the ingredients aloud on every pasta sauce. Lando picks snacks just because Carlos likes them.
"We could make our own," Carlos suggests.
"What, like sauce? Or memories?"
Carlos laughs. "Both."
And they do.
The sky opens up mid-afternoon. They cancel plans, close the blinds, and throw on a movie they’ve seen a hundred times. Lando curls in Carlos’s lap, blanket up to his chin, eyes heavy.
Carlos strokes his hair and whispers, "You're safe, mi amor. Sleep."
Lando does. And Carlos watches over him, love etched in every breath.