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"So you two sleep together. Ok."
The message was short, simple. It left him stunned.
Charles wasn't the type to send messages, and deep down neither was he, but that drumming in his chest when Charles did it didn't resemble at all what he was feeling now.
Did he know he would get angry? Maybe. Charles was always an unknown, and since they stopped being teammates everything had become more difficult between them. They didn't coincide most of the time anymore, and when they did they limited themselves to casual conversations, nothing from another world.
But everything changed when Charles called him. He always said the same thing: I wanna see you. And between hotels, escapes from his house in Monaco and free practices they always found that moment where Charles did with him whatever he wanted, without Carlos having barely time to talk, or simply to ask him how he was doing.
He wasn't okay with that. But by the time he realized and wanted to call him out on it, it had already passed.
Charles would go back to being nobody in front of him: barely talking, crossed messages without answer, and in Carlos always that what would have happened.
What would have happened if they had stayed together in Ferrari.
What would have happened if they hadn't fought at the beginning of the 2025 season.
What would have happened if he hadn't told him that everything he was becoming with Alexandra just fucked him up.
What would have happened if that undefined thing between them was easier.
But it wasn't. They had expectations to fulfill, their own dreams that would be destroyed with the same ease with which they would be exposed if that work relationship became what, deep down, both knew they desired.
He had resigned himself. Of course he had.
But what still hit him aggressively was that.
The wedding.
Charles had been incapable of telling him. Not even when they returned to the paddock and the whole Formula 1 cycle resumed its normality. Why did he feel he had the right to claim him over a stupid joke that Alex had made in an interview?
And of course, Carlos didn't understand either why this was affecting him this way.
Charles confronting him once more. Like when they fought on track, when they argued about strategies, when Charles got angry because he saw him partying with other women. Those confrontations that fragmented their relationship, but that had also made it stronger. The ones that ended in a heated session in some hotel room and turned into laughs and empty promises after.
Carlos felt again those urgent urges to go towards Charles and destroy himself with words that later, between kisses, would build him back up.
—Carlos — someone told him squeezing his shoulders in a half hug.
It was Alex.
It was a joke, he repeated to himself. But it was a joke that had bothered Charles and that, stupidly, bothered him too.
—Alex... cabrón — he said faking a half smile before pushing him with just the right force so he understood he wasn't completely joking.
—Hey, hey — he raised his hands —. Did you sleep bad? — he said winking at him.
—Fuck off. — he huffed, with a laugh that barely arrived.
He didn't want to create tension between them either. After all Alex wasn't guilty that he was so gone for Charles, something he didn't like to admit either, but that deep down he knew perfectly.
—What was that shit about we sleep together, tío?
—You got angry for that? — Alex contained his laugh.
Carlos felt the heat rising to his cheeks before he could do anything about it.
—Carlos "delicate" Sainz. — Alex laughed —. It was a joke. Not even I got bothered, and I'm engaged
That hurt him a little. More when he remembered the nights where Charles traced his chest asking him if he ever wanted to get married and he just denied it between laughs. Because he knew that the only person he would do it with was him. And that was impossible.
—It wasn't funny. — he pushed him lightly —. Re... Rebecca got angry.
The blush betrayed him. Few people had seen him like that for real: when getting out of the car after a race and in the counted moments when he lied. He didn't usually lie. But there he was. And he was lying.
It happened also when Charles whispered something in his ear in the most inopportune moment, lascivious, precise, completely conscious of what he was doing, only to see him lose the thread. Even in that, Charles had found the way to have him exactly where he wanted.
Using Rebecca as a shield didn't please him either. But he knew she would understand him better than anyone, and his situation was too strange to explain to someone who wasn't inside of it. Together without being it. Without really liking each other, but carrying the same weight.
Carlos liked Charles. Rebecca liked Alexandra.
And Charles and Alexandra were getting married to each other.
There was something almost comic in that. Or well, that's what he tried to convince himself every time he felt that everything with Rebecca was a nonsense.
What he did have clear was that with Rebecca he was fine. More than fine, sometimes. And that confused him in a different way, because there were nights where he wished things were as simple as they seemed from outside. That he really liked her. That the promise they made drunk once of marrying each other if things with the Leclercs didn't go anywhere, was something both of them would discard with a big laugh.
But they didn't discard it. They repeated it like a consolation, like an emergency exit that neither of them closed completely. Because that possibility seemed more and more like a reality.
Every time he thought about that, about Rebecca, about a house, about children, about leaving Charles in some place of the past where he couldn't reach him anymore, he felt he lost the air. Just one instant. The exact time it took for the possibility of losing him to become real, and the selfish thought that that was the only thing he wasn't prepared to accept.
Could he live like Charles? Build something over a lie until it stops being one?
He didn't know. But he had considered it every time his phone filled with notifications from the media, and even absurd links that his father sent him with more and more frequency.
When will star Carlos Sainz get married? Is Rebecca already waiting for the ring?
God. If they only knew.
—Okay, okay. Tell her sorry from my part — said Alex between laughs, barely inclining himself —. Shall we go eat?
He doubted an instant.
He had the phone in his hand and Charles's chat open. He didn't know if he should answer. He bit his lip almost by reflex, to not stay there standing overthinking something that would probably end up being nothing.
—I have to meet someone. Go ahead. Tell Wolves we'll see each other at night.
—As you say, captain — answered Alex with a smile, before disappearing in direction of the hospitality restaurant.
He would have wanted to have Rebecca there. So she could tell him what to do with the message, so he didn't have to decide it alone. But she hadn't been able to travel to Shanghai, and Carlos found himself sending her a message without thinking it too much. Not to tell her about Charles. Just to know about her. To wish that everything went well with the campaigns she had.
They were like that. They had gotten used, without noticing, to talk to each other as if they really were a couple, or maybe they had noticed and decided not to say anything. They behaved like that because in many ways they were, they loved each other, they took care of each other, they looked for each other. If it wasn't because both of them had another name going around in their heads, Carlos sometimes thought that maybe they would actually work.
He wrote the message before convincing himself not to do it.
“Did you get upset, Charles?”
He turned off the screen almost in the same movement. He was agitated and he hadn't even run that day. It gave him secondhand embarrassment how ridiculously adolescent he became every time Charles took over his thoughts. That clumsy anxiety, that weight in his chest that wasn't very different from the one he felt in high school before asking a girl out. As if in all these years, in everything he had raced and won and lost, that part of him hadn't matured even a little.
Only with Charles. Always only with Charles.
Hours passed and the night settled over the city.
Shanghai at night was something else. Lights of all colors over the streets, that landscape Carlos knew by memory and that even so would never stop amazing him. It was one of the few constants of the Formula 1 calendar that hadn't lost its charm.
An hour ago the meeting in the paddock had ended. He did not expect much from Saturday, not with that car. He was sad, of course. He had bet everything in Williams. The previous year had been satisfactory, enough to convince himself that the decision had been worth it. But this year was starting to look too much like everything his father had warned him to avoid.
Anyway. He was too exhausted from media day to keep going over it.
The only thing he wanted was to walk to the hotel, get lost for a while between the night stalls, buy something and then arrive to his room just to sleep and dream about a victory on Sunday. About the stars aligning enough to at least get through Q1.
It was not much to ask. Or maybe it was. He did not know that either. He had already asked enough times for Charles and apparently they never listened.
While he walked between the food stalls he observed several couples of tourists. He was close enough to the paddock so he assumed they were tourists, not that he was a fortune teller. Real couples: hugging, taking pictures, sharing a plate of food between smiles and stupid playful gestures. The kind of things he once stupidly imagined doing with Charles.
And almost like a need to sink into his sadness, Carlos turned on his phone and instantly felt the vibration of the device.
His heart sped up.
Could it be Charles?
With only one eye open he turned on the screen. Three messages.
Rebecca.
He sighed almost like relief and put it back in his pocket without even seeing them. He would do it later at the hotel.
He walked a bit more until the magic of Shanghai started to fade in him. He bought some things in the last stalls, local details, nothing from another world. Things he would later give between Rebecca and his friends. He always did it. Even when it was a stupid detail without much value.
The habit was from Charles, actually. The Monegasque, who had never been good with words, gave him little nonsense from every city where they raced, a way of saying sorry without having to say it. Sorry for all the fights and the arguments and the things that stayed unresolved both on and off track.
Carlos had inherited it without noticing, and now he repeated it almost by inertia, as if in every detail he was apologizing for something. For not being what Rebecca needed, maybe. For not being able to be it, perhaps.
Or maybe the night made him a bit stupid. That was also possible.
Before crossing the hotel door his phone started to ring.
The name big on the screen.
Charles.
He stepped aside from the entrance almost without thinking and answered from a narrow alley at the side of the lobby, because he knew Charles didn't like to wait.
—Yes?
Absolute silence. Only a breath on the other side of the line. Agitated. Carlos did not know why recognizing Charles’s breathing made him blush.
—Charles? Is something wrong?
—We need to see each other. Your room.
And he hung up.
He had been walking from one side to the other for several minutes. He closed the blinds even though he was on the fourteenth floor, precautions he learned knowing he was doing something he shouldn't.
He also tried to change his clothes. He stood for a moment in front of his suitcases without fully opening them. The clothes he had on? Pajamas, so it would not look like he was expecting anything? Nothing at all? Was that what Charles wanted? He ended up staying with what he was wearing and only taking off his shoes.
He turned on the television to have something in the background and calm his anxiety. It didn't work.
Since Bahrain they hadn't had a chance to be alone. To… breathe the same air between kisses, which was the only way Carlos knew how to describe what he did with Charles without it sounding like something more than he wanted to admit. That time had been heated, Carlos with too many questions and Charles with zero intention of answering them, so he had shut him up the only way he knew how. He wasn't going to deny he had a good time. But the silence after had killed him. That silence that lasted exactly a week, until Carlos found out about the wedding through social media like anyone else.
Had he been his bachelor party? Was Charles a complete psychopath or did he simply not care enough to tell him?
Two soft knocks pulled him out of his thoughts and he turned off the television with a quick movement.
He looked at himself in the mirror. He ran a hand through his hair, barely fixing it, knowing perfectly that if everything went like it usually did, his hair would be the least controlled thing he would have that night.
He took two steps and opened the door.
There was Charles. With the new Ferrari hoodie, slightly leaning against the frame, his face flushed. He still had that agitated breathing and that smile rested on his lips. That mischievous smile Carlos knew too well and that did him no good.
—Let me in— he ordered in a dry tone, as if there was no alternative.
Carlos knew there wasn't. He let the Monegasque in, locked the door and leaned against it with a sigh.
—What do you want?— he let out, tired.— It’s late.
—Didn’t you want to see me?
He didn't answer. He couldn't lie to him, but he didn't want him to know he had been looking at his phone all day. That he had been waiting. That he would wait his whole life if necessary, and that was exactly the problem.
—What do you want, Charles?— he repeated.
—To see you— he said, with that smile.
—No. Not today.
He moved before Charles could. Not because he didn't want to, he wanted to, of course he did, but he was exhausted of receiving only what Charles decided to give him, and the sleepiness gave him a bravery he dind't have during the day to confront him, even when his lips were eager to meet Charles’s.
—Are you upset?— Charles said, sitting on the bed.
—I didn’t tell you that you could sit.
—I didn’t ask you that, Calos.
—Why don’t you answer my messages?— he let it out before he could regret it.
—I never do.
—Well, you should.—he paused— Or never write me again. Or, if you are going to do it, maybe telling me you were getting married would have been a good idea.
—Did that make you angry?— Charles said with a smile, standing up and walking toward him.
More and more dangerous. Much more dangerous.
—It was obvious it was going to happen, Calos— he said, already almost two steps away from him.— Was it really necessary to tell you?
—You are an idiot, Charles.
—I know.—he took something out of the hoodie pocket.— I ran out as soon as the meeting with the engineers ended. I didn’t want them to close and not be able to buy it for you.
He held out a red envelope. Small, thin paper. One of those Chinese lucky envelopes they used to buy together when they came to Shanghai in previous seasons.
Carlos took it and left it on the table without looking at it.
—This is not going to fix anything.
But deep down he was pretending to be strong. If Charles asked him to, he would do anything in that moment and both of them knew it. That gesture so his, so theirs. Charles was still the same, married, but the same, and that hurt him and excited him in equal parts, and he didn't know which one to keep.
—I don’t want to fix anything.
One more step.
—I just want you to apologize.
That completely threw him off. Apologize? For what reason? For that stupid thing with Alex?
—W-what?
Another step. Their bodies almost colliding.
—Why the fuck would I apologize to you, Leclerc? For the thing with Alex? For that stupidity?”
Charles laughed before bringing his mouth close to his ear.
—Don’t be an idiot, Calos. Apologize for the jealousy you made me have all day. I lost two tenths in practice.
A small sigh. Then he stepped away.
Carlos was ready to drop everything in that instant. But he wanted more. He needed more before the words turned into something else he knew they would become.
He pushed him a little, which caused a soft laugh from Charles.
—Let me understand, Leclerc. You can get married and I have to be fine. But Alex makes a joke and I have to apologize to you? You’re crazy.
—So… it was a joke?
—And if it wasn’t, it shouldn’t matter to you.
Those last words made his face turn red like the same envelope on the table next to him, which caused a light laugh from Charles.
—No one would want to sleep with you, Calos— Charles said in a tone Carlos already knew. He was angry.
—I know a lot of people who would.
He did not even know why he was defending himself. Why Charles managed to put him like this, nervous, cornered, with no real chance of resisting that look.
—But you only want me. Don’t you?
He closed the distance between them again.
—And you’re mine. Right?— he said, tilting his head slightly, his eyes open with a look that had nothing innocent.
Carlos did not answer.
Not because he did not know the answer, he did, and that was exactly the problem. Charles was right, and saying it was a defeat, and he didn't like losing with Leclerc. Because even if he always gave in, there was something in that moment before that felt like a victory.
—Is that a yes?— Charles said, tilting his head more.
—That’s a shut up.
Charles laughed. That short, satisfied laugh he used when he knew he had won something, the one he used when he beat him at chess or the same one before Carlos kissed him with urgency.
—But it’s not a no.
—Charles.
—Calos.
—Stop.
—Stop what?— he asked, taking the last step.
—This.— he pointed vaguely at the space between them. —What you’re doing.
—What am I doing?
—You know perfectly what you’re doing.
—I want you to tell me.
Charles was inches away and he smelled the same as always, like when they left a race and let themselves get lost in each other in the hospitality bathrooms and that, that was completely unfair.
—You’re unbearable.
—And you’ve been thinking about me all day.
—That’s not true.
—Calos.
—What?
—I know you.
A long pause. Both looking at each other from head to toe. With that smile on their faces, the one they knew how it would end.
—Did you check my message before or after eating?
—After— he lied.
Charles smiled slowly. He said nothing. He didn't need to say anything.
—Before— Carlos admitted.— Before, okay? Happy?
—Quite— Charles said, and kissed him before he could answer.
And for a moment Carlos felt like he had won, because Charles had given in. It wasn't him who kissed him. Point for Carlos.
There were no more words.
Just his name. Just that, which was almost never enough and almost always everything he had.
Charles closed his eyes for a second and when he opened them he was himself again, or the version of him Carlos had known all last year. Distant, correct. Real enough but not the Charles he knew loved him.
He sat on the edge of the bed. He ran his thumb over his cheek slowly, as if measuring every millimeter, and then leaned in and kissed him. Without urgency, without passion, without need. Just that. A kiss.
It wasn't an answer and both of them knew it.
Then he stood up, picked up the hoodie from the floor and put it on in silence, just like the rest of his clothes.
Carlos said nothing. He watched every movement with resignation. He already knew it would end like this even before it started, he had learned it after too many times.
—Good night— Charles said from the door, giving him one last smile.
Carlos nodded slightly.
He heard the door close and looked back at the ceiling. His eyes burned a little and his chest felt a little heavier. He ran a hand over his face and smiled with irony. He knew it would happen and even then, even then he could not be angry at Charles.
Not when that night had been the most real he had managed to be in the last year.
He didn't know how much time passed. He tried to sleep but he couldn't. He almost never could after his encounters with Charles, not when his mind insisted on making him believe that had been the last time and that he hadn't managed to say goodbye the way he wanted.
At some point he sat up. The lights outside were already low, which meant he should be sleeping by now. But he simply felt that staying in bed thinking about Charles had become unbearable, almost depressing.
He turned the television on again and took the chance to go to the bathroom and take a shower. When he came out he saw it.
The red envelope on the table.
He held it for a moment without opening it. Running his index finger over the golden relief decorating the paper. He felt curious about his fate. Or well, the fate Charles had chosen for him.
He opened it.
To his surprise, there was a letter. Small, folded in four parts, with the crooked handwriting Carlos would have recognized anywhere. It wasn't long. Charles had never been good with words.
But everything was there. Everything he needed to hear.
That he thought about him more than he should. That there were days in the paddock where he felt empty in a way so specific that it only had to do with him. With him at his side. With him in the same car. With him and his careless kisses behind the engineers’ backs.
But also that the wedding was the right thing, for his family, for Alexandra, for the life he had chosen to build, and that choosing her didn’t mean that “this” didn’t exist. That “this” had no name because giving it one was making real something neither of them could afford. That he knew it. That he felt it in a way so real that faking a smile was getting harder each time. That he was so sorry that it was impossible for him to say it out loud without everything collapsing.
The last line was short.
“I don’t know how to live without having you close, but I also don’t know how to ask you to stay without being selfish.”
Carlos folded the letter slowly and put it back in the envelope. He stared at it for a moment, already with tears running down and his throat tight. With that feeling that something had been resolved, but that in reality nothing was going to change.
He took his phone.
“Did you really get jealous about the thing with Alex?”
Surprisingly the answer took less than a minute.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Carlos smiled without being able to avoid it. A smile as proud as beating Charles on points, even if it was only for one race.
“I cut it short. I knew you were going to get upset, my love.”
Three dots and a long pause. And then:
“Good.”
He stayed looking at the screen for a moment longer than necessary. Then he turned it off and left it on the table, next to the red envelope.
He thought about Rebecca.
That tomorrow he would send her a picture of the envelope and the gifts he had bought for her, she would find them pretty, she always found those details pretty. He would also tell her he had talked to Charles and she would ask him how he had slept and he would tell her he slept well even if it was not completely true. That she would know it and say nothing because that was how they worked, because Rebecca understood silences the same way he understood hers.
That somewhere in Europe she would also be staring at the ceiling at this hour thinking about someone from the Leclerc family, one she could not have either.
He closed his eyes. And the words from the letter came back to his head.
“I don’t know how to live without having you close, but I also don’t know how to ask you to stay without being selfish.”
He smiled with all his strength. The biggest smile in the world if it was possible, even the most stupid one if it fit. A smile that made no sense given everything else.
But it was what it was. And for now, it was enough.