Yo, just in my feels

The Cancellation

Madrid in May smelled like orange blossoms, expensive perfume, and people pretending they weren’t looking at celebrities.

Isabella Rayes moved through the lobby of the hotel with the kind of confidence that came from years of knowing exactly where she belonged. Cream blazer. Gold earrings. Dark sunglasses pushed into glossy chestnut hair pulled back in a low knot. Phone in one hand, espresso in the other.

Elegant without trying.

Which, frankly, irritated some people. But she never gave a damn.

At twenty-seven, Isabella had mastered the art of making impossible things happen for obscenely wealthy clients. Last-minute yachts in Capri. Private flamenco performances in Seville. Closing entire museums for anniversary dinners because someone’s billionaire husband suddenly decided, “I want that extraordinary feeling.”

Luxury concierge work wasn’t as glamorous as it sounds. It was organized warfare with prettier lighting and sleepless nights.

And right now, she was about to lose a battle. And she never liked to lose.

“Darling, the penthouse reservation was confirmed two weeks ago,” Isabella said calmly in Spanish, though the muscle in her jaw had begun to twitch. “My client specifically requested this suite because of the terrace access.”

Across from her, the hotel manager looked deeply stressed. The poor man had the expression of someone who hadn’t slept since Tuesday.

“Yes, señora Rayes, and we sincerely apologize-”

“You cancelled it 8 hours before arrival. That is not how we’ve done things before.”

“There were… special circumstances.”

“There always are. But we always, and I repeat always, discuss before complete cancellations now aren’t we?”

“Bella-”

“No, Javier, don’t ‘Bella’ me. My client is flying from Monaco in three hours, and I have absolutely nowhere for them to stay?” 

She pressed even though she already had a plan B and a C in place if this thing didn’t go well. But she wants the best option first.

The manager lowered his voice.

“We received a priority VIP request. That well, we could not refuse.”

Ah. There it was.

Isabella crossed her arms. “Royal family?”

“No.”

“Politician?”

“No.”

A pause then Javier continued.

“Well… a Basketball Player”

Bella blinked. “Madrid Plaza cancelled my reservation for someone who doesn’t even play football?” And the sarcasm was hard to ignore.

The manager hesitated.

Isabella almost laughed. “Who on earth is important enough to shut down an entire hotel floor for_” She stopped and made finger quotes “basketball”?”

Javier hesitated whether it’s ok to reveal the VIP.

“It’s Luka Dončić.”

Her smile halted in the moment. The name hit her like a song she hadn’t heard in years. It's not that she hasn't heard it, it's the fact that he was mentioned in the same context as hers.

Silence. Not outside. Outside the hotel, the city still moved loudly, cars, conversations, tourists.

But inside Bella’s head, something paused. A flash of a smiling teenage boy, too tall for his age, walking towards her with a basketball tucked underneath his arm, crossed her mind. 

“Oh,” she said softly before she could stop herself. 

Javier shrugged. Madrid treated Luka Dončić at the same level as they worship footballers, so there’s no surprise there. 

“Please understand the circumstances.”

“Well,” she said professionally, smoothing herself back into the present, “if the penthouse is unavailable, I’ll need another property with equivalent privacy, staff flexibility, and secured underground access.”

Javier visibly relaxed now that she wasn’t threatening homicide.

“I may have a solution.”

“Good. Because if my client ends up in the Four Seasons, she’ll complain about the marble for six months.” She turns around and leaned against the front desk, taking a sip of her espresso. “And you will lose my contracts.”

That earned a reluctant laugh from him.

Isabella pulled out her phone, already mentally reorganizing transportation schedules, floral deliveries, and chef arrangements, when the atmosphere in the lobby suddenly shifted.

Someone near the entrance whispered, “He’s here.”

The front desk staff straightened almost imperceptibly. Two suited men she hadn't noticed before moved toward the entrance with practiced efficiency. Through the arched windows that faced the street, she could see the dark shape of a large vehicle pulling up. Then another.

She saw a bunch of people huddled in front of the entrance, and saw a couple of security keeping them at bay when a tall guy got out of the large black vehicle.

Luka Dončić. Ten years later. Still absurdly tall.

That was Bella’s first thought. She squinted but couldn’t see a lot, except he was wearing a grey hoodie and signing autographs for fans. Her expression did not change.

That was the thing about Isabella Reyes. Her expression almost never changed when it mattered. It was something she'd been born with and then spent years refining into a very deliberate skill.

“Senore Rayes, please this way.”

He ushered her toward the manager’s office while quietly instructing the receptionist to keep the VIP attended to.

Isabella turned away before Luka could possibly look up.

He wouldn’t even remember me now anyways. They are pretty much stranges now. He's a celebrity. Too much life happened in between. 

How fitting, she thought dryly as she walked away.

After ten years, Luka Dončić still managed to ruin her plans.

After finalizing the contract and the new arrangement with Javier, Bella stepped out of the office, calculating what remained of the rest of her day. 

The corridor that led to the hotel's private parking level was one of those transitional spaces that luxury hotels preferred guests not to linger in, functional rather than beautiful, lit in a warmer tone than the lobby but stripped of its theatre. Stone gave way to sealed concrete. The sound changed. Isabella's heels found a different register. 

She was already composing the email to her client in her head, a more intimate venue, exclusive garden access, we felt it better suited the occasion_ when she heard it.

"Izzi?"

She stopped.

Not because she was startled, exactly. More because the word landed somewhere so specifically internal that her body responded before her mind caught up- the way a familiar song might find you in a supermarket and briefly make you someone slightly younger than you were a moment ago.

Izzi.

Only he called her that name.

Slowly, Isabella turned around.

And there he was.

He was standing at the entrance to the corridor, still in the same grey hoodie she'd seen from across the lobby. Up close, the scale of him was different. He'd filled out considerably from the last version of him she held in her memory. The height was the same, still that slightly-too-tall-for-the-room quality, but the leanness she remembered from school had been replaced with something more settled. He looked like someone who had grown completely into himself.

Security hovered nearby but kept their distance.

Luka stared at her openly for a second. The expression on his face was, uncertain. Almost boyish. Like he wasn't entirely sure he'd gotten the right person and was quietly hoping he had.

She couldn’t help but smile at that. “Hi, Luka” 

His eyebrows shot up.

“No way.” He laughed softly under his breath.

And there it was. That smile.

Dios mío. Of course the smile survived.

She walked a little closer. Not all the way. Never all the way. Enough for him to meet her halfway if he wanted to. Which he did.

“I thought I got the wrong person” He said with that signature smirk of his. Still irritatingly charming.

He stepped forward and hugged her briefly. Polite. Friendly and most importantly, safe.

“Never thought you’d recognize me now,” Bella said in her friendly voice.

His voice was deeper now. Rougher around the edges.

Still familiar.

“C’mon you look the same” 

She deadpanned immediately, “Wow. Thanks. I feel incredibly confident knowing I apparently still look like a teenager at twenty-seven.” 

Ah, stop talking, Isabella thought immediately. This was exactly why she found him dangerous at fifteen too. Most people got her polished version. The composed one. The elegant one. Luka somehow always dragged her actual thoughts out into the open before she could stop them.

He laughed.

God. This was dangerous already.

Because it felt easy immediately. No awkwardness. No weird celebrity distance. Just… familiar. Like slipping into an old conversation, they accidentally paused for ten years.

Luka shook his head once, still smiling slightly.

“I seriously can’t believe it’s you.”

She grinned.

Then tilted her head, studying him properly now.

“You look different, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes, you have a beard now.”

Luka instinctively touched his jaw. “That’s the difference?”

“Well, as I remember, you had a hard time growing a beard back then,” She said with a shrug. 

Luka narrowed his eyes. “What bullshit is that? You just left before I hit puberty.”

Before she could stop, a very unladylike snort escaped. “Like you weren’t 6’2 at the age of 13 already? Please…”

They both laughed at that. It was easy… It’s the same as 10-12 years ago. 

Up close, she could see traces of the boy she remembered beneath everything else. Beneath the fame. The NBA. The exhaustion around his eyes that came from years of cameras and pressure and travel.

Same eyes though. Still annoyingly expressive.

A hotel staff member approached carefully. “Señor Dončić, the medical team is waiting upstairs.”

Luka nodded without looking away from her.

“Right.”

The moment shifted slightly as the reality hit.

Isabella reached into her bag and pulled out a business card.

“If you need anything while hiding mysteriously in Madrid,” she said lightly, handing it over, “my company handles impossible requests.”

Luka glanced down at the card.

Isabella Rayes Senior Experience Consierge

A grin tugged at his mouth, and he whistled.

“That sounds expensive.”

“Yes, and?” she replied smoothly. “I'm sure you can afford it.” 

“I’m not rich.”

She rolled her eyes. “Right… says the guy who ruined my original VIP client reservation with zero influence and no money, I bet.” Then she reached for the card dramatically. “Fine. Give it back then. I’ll save it for an actual rich client.” 

But Luka flipped it away before she could grab it and slipped it into his pocket.

“Well,” he said casually, “you never know.”

Dangerous sentence. Very dangerous sentence.

“You should go,” she said softly. “They’re waiting.”

Their eyes held for one brief second longer than necessary.

“And…” Isabella cleared her throat lightly. “Good luck with your recovery.”

Something gentler crossed his expression then.

“Thanks, Izzy.”

There it was again.

That stupid nickname. That nickname he came up with out of nowhere on a randome Tuesday afternoon.

She couldn’t help but smile.

“I’ll check with you before cancelling reservations next time,” he called after her.

She glanced back over her shoulder.

“Don’t make promises.”

Because promises made too quickly had a nasty habit of turning into hope. And Isabella knew better than anyone how dangerous hope could be.

Luka Doncic x Female OC (High School to Present)

Prologue

There is a theory about soulmates.

Not the kind scrawled in cheap romance novels or whispered over half-finished glasses of wine, but an older theory. Sadder, somehow.

It says you meet the same soul three times in your life.

The first time, they are nothing more than a passing shadow, a stranger woven into the background of your surroundings. You glance at them once across a noisy room and think nothing of it, never knowing that years later, their name will live inside your chest like a second heartbeat.

The second time, the spark catches.

But timing is wrong.

Maybe you were too young. Too afraid. Too hungry for something else. Life pulls harder than love does, and no matter how desperately your souls lean toward one another, the world drags you apart before anything real can take root. You become an almost... the kind that leaves a specific, unnamed ache. Not quite a wound. You just learn to live with it.

Then comes the third meeting.

When you've been through life. When grief has carved wisdom into your bones. When love no longer feels like something to outrun. When you no longer seek to satisfy your ego.

Just recognition.

Because some souls are destined to find each other more than once. Not to test each other,

...but to finally meet in the middle.

____________________________________________________________

The first time Isabella Rayes saw him, she wasn't paying attention.

She was thirteen, mid-laugh, mid-conversation, surrounded by the particular chaos that followed her everywhere. He passed through the background of it, a ridiculously tall, painfully lanky boy weaving between cafeteria tables with the gracelessness of someone who hadn't grown into his own limbs yet. All elbows and long strides and messy hair.

Another sports prospect probably, she thought, and returned to her conversation.

A passing face. Background shadow.

—

The second time round, she got to know him.

She was fifteen, walking into her senior Spanish class on a Tuesday afternoon, and she stopped.

He was sitting across the room. The same boy, only older, and somehow even taller, and the awkwardness had begun settling into something else entirely. Time had been working on him quietly.

Handsome, she noted, and sat down.

Every Tuesday for one hour, they shared that classroom. One hour became inside jokes murmured beneath their breath, glances held a beat too long, the kind that meant nothing and everything when you were fifteen.

"I'm going to be an NBA player," he told her one afternoon, with that crooked, unhurried grin.

Isabella raised an eyebrow. "And I'm going to travel every city worth knowing and learn every language worth speaking."

She believed him. Not blindly, she somehow knew by the way he said it. With an absolute confidence.

He was never meant to stay. That was simply what he was, for her. He was a foreigner to begin with. A kid came to Spain from Slovenia. He's always going to leave.

And he did. At the age of 16, they went their separate ways. He went on to become a professional basketball player for Real Madrid, and she went to London for higher studies.

Their story ended the way the best almost-stories do, quietly, without ceremony. No labels. No definitions. Just two people suspended in the tension of almost. Almost feelings. Almost together. Almost something that mattered.

Never nothing. Never something.

He left to become what he always said he would. She left to collect cities and languages and versions of herself she hadn't yet met.

And life happened after that, indifferent, relentless, occasionally magnificent. Beautiful things. Terrible things. Love. Heartbreak. Loss. The slow, quiet architecture of becoming a person.

Ten years turned like pages in a book she hadn't meant to finish so quickly.

—

At twenty-seven, she's now a high-end luxury concierge. Fitting for her outgoing and organized personality. Isabella was at Madrid Plaza Hotel, busy thinking about her high-end client, doing what she always did, three things at once, and making it look effortless.

Then she heard it.

A voice. A voice she would always recognize. Deeper than she remembered.

"Izzy?"

But that name. Only he calls her by it... She looked up.

She did not find the lanky boy from the cafeteria. Nor the teenager whose crooked grin once cut straight through every wall she built. The man standing in front of her was... a global superstar, the franchise player of the NBA's most storied club, six-foot-seven and built like someone who had spent a decade becoming exactly what he said he would.

Older. Broader. Even a beard now, jaw sharper beneath it. The dirty blonde hair has turned to a darker brown shade now.

The world had written itself all over him.

And yet... when his steel blue eyes found hers, something deep and long-dormant turned over inside her chest.

That same impossible feeling. That same quiet electricity, still there, after everything. After ten years of silence and cities and whole different other lives.

Her soul recognised his before her mind could form a single coherent thought.

Luka.

And here she was. Meeting him for the third time…

Black Knight - Luka X AR

Summary

In which Luka accidentally becomes Austin's Black Knight...

Not Alone - Luka x AR

Summary

The MRI result stopped Austin Reaves’ world in its tracks. At his lowest point, Luka found him and stayed, pulling him back from the edge when everything felt like it was falling apart.

To my biggest fan To my #1 fan

Carlos is that logical and intellectual guy, who needs order and routine to function better. As he said himself, he won't try new risky things but enjoy routine stuff. He hates things he cannot logically understand (like magic tricks). Man's favourite app is the weather app for gods sake.

Meanwhile, Charles is that carefree and unpredictable guy, who needs constant changes in life (side quests) and doesn't hesitate to try new things on a whim. He's passionate and poetic and all things romantic.

It's so funny when Carlos was asked about the van trip, he said those are the moments they will rememer when they get old, like that's what he thought by himself. Only for Charles to come out and say Carlos was frustrated, and HE said to Carlos that it's the little adventures like this that they'll treasure for life. It's like Carlos truly believed that when Charles said it and went along with it.

Like the emphasis that Charles always put on them two talking after getting out of the car, looking each other in the eyes because they know each other so well so they can see the situation from the other’s pov, the ability to apologise when they’ve done something wrong and then everything was fine. I feel like that team would implode without such competent, professional and good people as drivers that were able to race each other fiercely without crashing (Monza 2023), put the team first (Singapore 2023), be happy about each other’s success, while being extremely competitive and navigate their relationship in the team on their own. I don’t think this gets praised enough. Like holy shit are Ferrari bad at communication and team management that this is nothing short of a miracle.

I hate to talk about FerRArI f*ckass team communication handling. If they won anything, it's because their drivers ignored the strategy and went on their own lol. You probably already know how latest one panned out with the swap in Baku. As I see Charles is a guy who would understand things from another person's perspective if explained correctly. And he always said that he was glad to have teammates who would honestly discuss stuff that happens during races and move on. Like Max, charles does not care about anyone else when on-track. On the other hand Carlos is sensitive and could get hurt and personal and would probably judge your whole entire personality based on that one thing. SO it's essential thet they make up right after. Obviously they know how Ferrari fck up the communications and trigger misunderstandings. imo it's purely to maintain their off-track relationship.

Charles absolutely went f*ck PR. Imma make myself and my EX teammate go viral on the internet by posting on every single social media platform. (Like who even posts to Threads lmaoo)

TeamLH is losing it over his post-race radio while he's like "Darling hold my haaaanddd...." and Carlos went right with it.

Funny thing is, they were so awkward and feeding crumbs in the first half of the season only for VistaJet to go Say NO MORE. We provide private in private jets and let them trauma bond leisurely. Truly grateful for that multi-million dollar company for sponsoring Charlos.

Football Practice Match - AO3

Drixton Hall - Chapter 9

Helloo?? this is HUGE like coming from the Carlos-i-dont-use-the-term-friends-lightly-and-fellow-drivers-are-not-my-friends-Sainz????

He literally said like 3 months ago in an interview that he cannot share everything with drivers so he cannot call them friends. In the same interview, he said that doesn't mean he will call Lando and tell everything right after he retires either.

For him to literally say that "we talk about everything" with Charles?! Ok people, we rest our case. Charlos just said say no more. We're gonna be together forever, no one can do anything about it lmaooo

Lando, and...?

Drixton Hall - AO3

Chapter 8 - sneak peek