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pitchcom · 50 minutes ago

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ooh boy the possibilities of so many of these.... what about "Realization of feelings at the Worst Possible Moment" for carcar??

(combining prompts from this prompt game that i reblogged eighty years ago. ty sea and @testarossa for the prompt! carcar + personality swap + realization of feelings at the worst possible moment)

Oscar’s coffee is the first clue.

He’s not a snob with what he drinks, usually just opting for whatever instant powder or pods the team keeps on hand. So it’s more than a bit surprising when he takes a sip during morning debrief and finds it so bitter he has to spit it back out into the paper cup.

“You okay?” Tom asks him, brow furrowed, as Oscar does the mental calculus as to how weird it would be if he started shoving paper napkins in his mouth to rid himself of the taste.

“Yeah, sorry,” Oscar replies, opting to take a long pull from his water bottle instead. He swishes it around in his mouth a few times before swallowing. “I just— has the team’s coffee gone off or something?”

Tom takes a whiff of his own identical coffee, then, before shrugging and taking a sip. “Mine’s fine,” he says after a thoughtful second, “Sorry, mate. Maybe you just got a bad one.”

Oscar chances a second sip just in case he’s gone mad, finding it just as rank as the first. “Yeah,” he replies. Maybe.”

It must be something in the air, Oscar thinks, as he zips up his jacket against the cold. He and Lando are walking the track, and it feels like all of Oscar’s senses have been dialed up to eleven. His breakfast is too salty, and everyone’s voice is too loud, and he has to excuse himself to the bathroom halfway through a meeting to cut the tag off of his shirt because he can’t focus with the way it’s scratching the back of his neck. His weather app tells him it’s a solid 16 degrees out, but it feels much cooler, the breeze that he’d normally find soothing nearly enough to make him shiver. He tucks his hands in his pockets as they walk, hoping that’ll be enough to stave off the chill.

Lando must notice something’s off with him, because he keeps staring at Oscar as they walk. “I’ve got a McLaren beanie in my driver room,” he says, once they’re about halfway done with their circuit. “You want me to ask someone to fetch it for you?”

“Nah, I’m alright,” Oscar replies. It sounds nice, actually, but the thought of the ribbing he’d get—rightfully so—for wearing something like that when it’s barely even overcast is enough to put him off of it. And anyway, Lando’s a bigger baby about the cold than any of them, always in long sleeves regardless of the weather. If he’s doing fine, then surely Oscar must be, too.

“If you’re sure. ‘S just. You look kind of miserable, so,” Lando says, before jogging a few paces ahead to examine a divot that wasn’t there last year. And that remark, somehow, is more unsettling than the cold itself. Lando’s always telling Oscar how hard he is to read; his face must be doing something utterly atrocious for Lando to pick up on it. Oscar tries to school his features back into something neutral, but it’s like they’re operating on a hair-trigger, going too far in every direction no matter how Oscar tries to get them to settle. Oscar sighs, clenches his teeth to keep them from chattering, and forges ahead. Hopefully he isn’t coming down with anything.

Carlos and his cabal of cycling buddies are chatting outside of McLaren hospitality when Oscar returns from his track walk. Carlos is in the middle of dumping half a bottle of water over his head when Oscar spots them. The droplets saturate his hair, drip from the planes and contours of his face onto the pavement below like they’ve been choreographed, a live version of one of those fucking L'Oréal adds that keep torturing Oscar any time he wants to ride the tube. It’s unfair, really, that Carlos should look good even like this.

Carlos and his group must’ve just gotten back from biking the track—Oscar can see the stupid wavy tan line Carlos gets from his helmet starting to form. He doesn’t know what good it can possibly do them, how they can possibly spot any of the track’s year-to-year idiosyncrasies when they’re flying by so quickly.

“What the hell did you do, mate?” Lando snorts, gesturing to Carlos’ thigh, on which Oscar can now see is slapped a fat, skin-colored bandage. Oscar must make himself noticeable in some way, because Lando turns to him then with a “Hey, Osc,” giving him a friendly slap on the back.

“This one absolutely ate it while taking a corner on his bike this morning,” the long-haired one—Roberto, maybe?—says, elbowing Carlos gently in the ribs. “Took off half the skin there.” Oscar winces. That’s why he prefers to walk.

Carlos rolls his eyes. “I did not,” he replies, “Teto is being dramatic. See?” He peels back the bandage halfway, and Oscar peers at it with morbid curiosity. The skin there is hairless, scraped raw, bits of it already starting to scab over.

Oscar grimaces. “Looks pretty nasty.”

“Blame him,” Carlos replies, gesturing to apparently-Teto. “He fucked with my seat this morning.”

Teto gasps, affronted. “I did not! Is it so hard for you to believe you just fell?”

“Yes,” Carlos replies, deadpan. “I do not just fall off of my bike.”

“Maybe you hit something without realizing,” Oscar offers, and Carlos gives him a look like Oscar just overtook him for P1 at the last corner of the last lap.

“Not you, Oscar,” he groans, put-upon, “Not you too. First my bike, and then the weather, and now you.”

“Wait,” Oscar says, “The weather?” Maybe it really does feel colder than usual, if Carlos can feel it too. Maybe Oscar isn’t going insane.

“Yes,” Carlos says, “It’s so hot. I don’t understand. My weather app said it was 16 out, so I put on an extra layer, but it turns out I did not need it at all.” Oscar sees it then, the lightweight jacket bundled up under Carlos’ arm.

“Let me get this straight,” Oscar replies, deadpan. “You’re upset because the weather was nicer than you thought it would be?”

Carlos nods. “Normally, I run cold, but today I was so warm I had to take it off halfway through the ride and carry it the rest of the way.” He turns his gaze to Teto then, accusatory, as if his henchman was capable of controlling the weather. “Maybe that is why I fell.”

“Don’t look at me, cabrón,” Teto responds, and Carlos flips him the middle finger.

Unfortunately for him, whatever weirdness currently affecting Oscar follows him into FP1. The car feels strange in his grasp, his instincts operating on a fraction of a second of delay. Everything feels somehow more; the slight rumble in his seat that’s usually easy enough to tune out becomes an incessant annoyance, his eyes get drawn to the wrong bits of data on his steering wheel. The team sends him out on softs near the end of the session for some qualifying lap simulations, and he can’t seem to put a good lap together, nearly brushing the wall a few times. He hops out of the car at the end of the hour feeling frustrated—with the car, with himself, with the universe at large.

His annoyance is intensified even further mere moments later, when Charles calls out to him in the hallway, where he seems to be engaged in an intense debate with a group of other drivers.

“Oscar!” he says, practically dragging Oscar by the wrist to bring him into the little half-circle of bodies. “You are a Sinner fan, yes?”

“Yes?” Oscar replies, hesitant. If Charles starts chatting about the French Open with him right now, he might just lose it.

Charles gestures over to the drivers stood across from them—Pierre, Fernando, and Alex, at a glance. “They are slandering Jannick’s performance from last week,” he says. The French Open. Fucking lovely.

“Not slandering,” Pierre protests, “Just pointing out, correctly, that Alcaraz was very impressive, no?”

Yeah, impressive was one word for it. Oscar remembers watching last week, a rare off week for them, as Alcaraz had mounted an insane comeback from two sets down to win the final. Oscar had been perched on the edge of his seat by the end, heart slowly sinking to his stomach by the last set.

Oscar sighs, pained. “To be fair, Alcaraz did sort of wipe the floor with him at the end there.”

Charles stares at him, betrayed. “You are useless,” he moans, and it’s then that Carlos rounds the corner. Oscar can spot the exact moment Carlos realizes they’re talking about tennis by the way his eyes light up like he’s a dog who’s just heard the word walk.

“You must be pretty happy about it, eh?” Oscar offers, subconsciously widening the semicircle of people with his body so Carlos can step in.

Carlos’ jaw hinges to the side, the hallmark of a Carlos In Deep Thought Moment. “Oh, definitely,” he says, “But I think people are exaggerating a little, no? Jannick held him off for a very long time. I was certain he was going to win, at one point.”

Oscar already has his mouth open and ready to defend Sinner when Carlos’ words hit him. Carlos is usually quite gracious and measured when it comes to his own sport, sure, but others? Oscar has heard him talk football enough to know that when it comes to the sports he likes as a spectator, Carlos is a relentless gloater. When the people he supports win, it’s because they’re the best, and when they lose, it’s because the other party is a dirty, no-good cheater. Oscar scans the room for any cameras or boom mics, in case Carlos’ sudden humility has been inspired by the presence of any lurking Drive to Survive crew that Oscar hasn’t spotted, but he doesn’t see anyone.

“Thank you,” Charles says, and then, seeming to register that those words have come out of Carlos’ mouth, he adds, “Wait. What?”

“I’m only being fair,” Carlos replies, looking confused. “It was good tennis. From both of them.”

“Mate,” Alex intejects. He’s wearing the same expression Oscar imagines he himself has got on: jaw hanging slightly open, eyes squinted in disbelief. “Who are you, and what have you done with Carlos?”

“Yes,” Charles nods, and then he rounds on Oscar, “And now that I think about it, who are you, and what have you done with Oscar?”

“What did I do?” Oscar protests. It’s like the universe has it out for him today, or something,

“I can’t believe what I am seeing,” Pierre says. “Oscar defending Alcaraz and Carlos defending Sinner. It’s like someone has transplanted your personalities into each other.”

And— oh. Oh.

The coffee. The cold. His sense of discomfort in the car. It all starts to add up.

When Oscar turns to look at Carlos, he finds Carlos already staring back at him, eyes wide.

“One minute, please,” he says, and then grabs Carlos by the wrist, dragging him away.

Oscar has barely time enough to guide them into some empty meeting room before Carlos is laying into him.

“You ruined my bike ride.”

Oscar gapes. “Well, you fucked up my morning coffee.”

“You made me want to defend Sinner.”

“You made me want to defend Alcaraz.”

“What kind of Aussie are you, that you don’t need a jacket in 16-degree weather—”

“I nearly sent my car into the wall because of you—”

“Come on, that’s not fair, you know I can drive—”

“I have my doubts. Frequently, if I’m being honest—”

“Stop,” Carlos says, as though he wasn’t the one to open his mouth first. “Stop. How did— what did you do?”

Oscar laughs, feeling sort of hysterical. “What did I do? What makes you think this was my fault?”

Carlos shrugs. They’re close enough now that Oscar can see the slight flush in Carlos’ cheeks, the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he breathes. “Who knows with you,” he says. “Maybe you wanted to mess with me on purpose. Maybe you went out and did something stupid and got us hit with a personality swap curse. I don’t know.”

“I can’t believe you think I’d do this on purpose,” Oscar scoffs. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve not been having a great time of it either. I feel like I need to crawl out of my skin. How do you feel so… so much all the time?”

He hadn’t meant to say it like that. Say it at all, really. But it just doesn’t make sense, how someone can exist like this constantly. With Carlos’ personality slotted in alongside his own—his influence coloring Oscar’s thoughts, feelings, base instincts—it’s like playing a video game with the sensitivity cranked up to the maximum. The slightest wave of sensory input has his skin crawling, the most fleeting whiff of an emotion and it’s a losing battle to keep it off his face. It’s— fucking exhausting, frankly, knowing his heart is bared on his sleeve for anyone to gape at as they please. He doesn’t know how Carlos does it.

“You are one to talk,” Carlos responds. “With you— your feelings in my head, it is like— like there is an inch of plastic between myself and the rest of the world. Everything is so… muted.”

“Muted?” Oscar echoes. It makes sense, he supposes, if their baselines of feeling and sensation seem so wildly different from one another. If all Carlos has ever known is this version of things—everything always so loud and bright and everything all the time, Oscar’s version of reality must seem dull in comparison.

“Yes,” Carlos says, “I suppose I know why you can bear to drink such terrible coffee all the time now, if you can barely even taste it. It is driving me crazy, Oscar.”

Oscar laughs. “Hard same,” he says, “If you have any idea how to fix it, though, I’m all ears.”

“I don’t know, but we should figure it out before we have to race,” Carlos says, “I have experience in a McLaren, but you, with a Williams—”

“Yeah,” Oscar snips, “Can’t have you missing out on a P10, can we?”

And Oscar knows, then, that Carlos must be telling the truth, because Carlos’ face only shows the briefest twinge of annoyance at Oscar’s words before settling back into neutral. If Carlos were himself, Oscar would’ve been able to see it on his face—the way the barb would’ve lodged beneath Carlos’ ribs, the way his big brown cow eyes would have flickered with poorly concealed hurt.

“Look,” Carlos says, “This has been hard for me too, you know. All day, I have felt so— blunted. It is so annoying! Being around you, really, is the only time, all day, that I have felt—” Carlos cuts himself off, then. Jaw snapping shut, eyes narrowing.

“Felt what?” Oscar prompts, suddenly feeling distinctly on the back foot for reasons he can’t explain, even to himself. “What, Carlos?”

“Anything,” Carlos replies, devastatingly simple. Slowly, his expression begins to morph in a way that sets off Oscar’s fight-or-flight. “I could not explain it, but every time I have seen you today, my heart would pick up. My face would get hot and my hands all sweaty, like I was a… Like I was a teenager with a cr—”

Oscar’s eyes get wider and wider as Carlos talks, and suddenly, he can’t bear to have Carlos finish his sentence. “Weird!” he says, voice pitching and cracking, out of his control, “That’s weird, Carlos, see, that’s why we need to swap back—”

“Like I was a teenager,” Carlos finishes, mouth suddenly curling into a terribly knowing smile, “with a crush.”

If he were entirely himself, Oscar would be able to brush it off easily with an eye roll and a yeah, right. But with his current lack of facial control, Oscar knows with a sickening certainty that Carlos can see plainly every ounce of mortification that Oscar feels. “That’s not—” he begins to protest, but he knows it’s a losing battle. He might’ve been able to get away with it under different circumstances, but not now. Not like this.

“Oscar,” Carlos says softly, “Do you like me? Like, like like me?”

Oscar covers his face with his hands, but it’s far too late. If he were smarter, he would’ve had this conversation with Carlos facing the wall. “You sound like a four-year-old,” he says, muffled through his hands.

“You do,” Carlos says, voice sounding far too smug for Oscar’s liking. “Is that why you are always crashing into me? You like me?”

“Less and less by the minute, mate,” Oscar groans. He wishes they were back in Monaco for this conversation, so he could escape it by diving headfirst into the harbor.

“Don’t be embarrassed, Oscar,” Carlos says. When Oscar spreads his fingers apart to peek at him, his expression is startlingly… soft. “I like you too, even if you have bad taste in tennis players. We can get coffee when we are normal again, okay? Real coffee.”

Scratch that, Oscar thinks. If he were in Monaco right now, he’d be sending Carlos into the harbor.

“Yeah,” he says, resigned. No point in trying to deal with all of this until he gets his own feelings back, he figures. “Yeah, Carlos, okay.”

#LOVE THIS #beautiful carcar and their differentiated levels of feeling things …

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