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They are friends now, Oscar thinks. Shared plane rides and conversations in the paddock. They even text sometimes, about tennis, about Lando, about anything really. As long as Carlos texts Oscar responds. 

Oscar tries really hard to keep all this normal. He thinks he's doing a great job, with the way people believe him expressionless and all. Oscar would disagree, say he has plenty of expressions, plenty of reactions. Maybe he tampers it down around Carlos, but so often that embarrassing fascination peaks through. 

The biting words when they collide on track. The “heart-eyes” Piastri face he made when Carlos photobombed the McLaren picture. The small smile he gave Carlos when they were both lying on that press-couch in Monaco before tapping Carlos’s feet with his own. 

The point is it's embarrassing how much Oscar cares. How he can’t seem to keep Carlos’s name out of his mouth, almost begging for attention. 

So it surprises him after. After the Bahrain GP, Oscar finished first, a whole 15 seconds ahead of George, even more ahead of Lando. He’s ecstatic, now second in the WDC standings. He knows this wasn’t a good race for Carlos, a DNF, the ending to a trying race. 

So, it surprises Oscar, when Carlos shows up in front of Oscar’s hotel door, the number he had given him sometime earlier in the weekend. He opens the door to an annoyed Carlos, eyes creased and lips pouting. Oscar tenses, on guard. Usually when Carlos looks at him like that Carlos believes Oscar fucked up his race, but that was impossible, how far there cars were, never a change to meet. Not a magnetic pull but instead a negative charge repelling them. 

Oscar opens his mouth, about to ask Carlos why he’s here, but before he can Carlos charges ahead. 

“Why did you not invite me to padel?” Carlos says, accusatory, frustration in his tone. 

It throws Oscar off, both physically and mentally. He flinches, surprised. Nothing to do with his race, but instead the padel game he played with Lando, Alex, and Mark.

“What…?” 

Carlos flushes, a blush over his cheeks. He ducks his head down as if embarrassed. As if realizing that maybe this could’ve been a text, or something Oscar saw clipped on twitter two days later, instead of an impromptu appearance at Oscar’s hotel room, demanding to know why he was not invited. 

He looks up, eyes level equal to Oscar’s but not making eye-contact. Darting around the edges of Oscar’s face as if Oscar will be tricked into thinking Carlos is looking at him. 

“You went to padel with Lando and Alex. I like padel. You could have invited me. We could have been a team.” Carlos explains, voice tripping over his words, trying to explain himself. “I thought we were friends now, you know. And I’m good at padel really, and Alex says your bad so–”

Oscar cuts Carlos off with a hand landing on Carlos’s arm, a soft grab, pulling Carlos out of his ramble. “Carlos, we are friends. I was invited by Alex, and I thought he invited you, until he asked me to invite someone the day before. I didn’t know if you would want to go, and I knew Mark was free, that’s all.” 

It’s earnest, Oscar’s response. He would’ve invited Carlos. Almost did in fact, stared at Carlos’s contact for a good fifteen minutes before asking Mark instead. Asking Carlos felt too much like begging for Oscar. To much like revealing his hand, that somehow a padel invitation from Oscar would reveal Oscar’s feelings for Carlos to the man. 

“I should’ve asked you.” Oscar says, forcing Carlos to make eye contact with him. “I wanted to ask you..really..I just didn’t want to bother you.” Now Oscar joined Carlos in the blushing, his ears red with this minuscule confession. Oscar now is the one drawing his eyes away from Carlos, looking past Carlos’s right ear, at the cream wall of the hallway of the Hilton. “...I didn’t know if you would want to go if I was the one asking.” 

That's the crux of it really. Oscar can be as confident and self-assured as any other driver within his car, in the engineering room. But here, navigating feelings, Oscar falls short. An ever-existing inability to make himself known or even to understand others. 

“No, no, no” It’s now Carlos who grabs Oscar’s arms, his head shaking, Oscar’s grip having fallen sometime during the conversation. “I want you to ask. I want to hang out with you…I…I want to know you Oscar.” 

Oscar suddenly, is eternally grateful there are no cameras around to film there conversation, because he is definitely giving Carlos heart-eyes at full force right now. 

The agonizing existence of sitting out of practice. Of recovery. Of taking it easy. Needing help to walk down the hallway, to put on shoes. The twinge that exists forever after the injury, the fear of a reappearance. You go crazy, you lash out, you push yourself too hard too fast. Desperate to do something.