Work Text:
"I am going to do it tonight."
Carlos taps at his phone, selecting two words for Connections. Tuna and sword are both fish. "Okay."
"I am. My brothers know. I have decided - we have decided."
"Okay."
What the fuck is a grouse? The English language is completely ridiculous, in Carlos' opinion.
"Monaco is tomorrow, Carlos, I must do something."
Carlos looks up at that. There are circles under Charles' eyes, blue and delicate, like the underside of a butterfly wing on one of those nature shows. Everything about Charles looks delicate. There are always circles under Charles' eyes recently.
You have a face for dying, Carlos thinks about telling him. Most of the things Carlos thinks about telling him go unsaid.
"If you say," Carlos goes with instead. He opens up Google on another tab.
Grouse /ɡraʊs/
noun
noun: grouse; plural noun: grouse
a medium to large game bird with a plump body and feathered legs, the male being larger and more brightly coloured than the female.
verb
verb: grouse; 3rd person present: grouses; past tense: groused; past participle: groused; gerund or present participle: grousing
complain about something trivial; grumble. "she heard him grousing about his assistant"
So. Not a fish.
"Yes, I am saying."
"Yeah." Carlos is sure there is a fish that is like the church. He looks at the words again. Monk? That sounds not entirely wrong. "I heard you."
Carlos sees Charles' hands twist in his lap out of the corner of his eye. He knows exactly how soft the skin is between Charles' fingers, though they have never held hands out in public.
Surely there is a crabfish. That could work. Carlos presses SUBMIT. That was his last guess. The category was: __FISH. What the fuck is a silverfish?
"I can't say no to them now."
Carlos exhales. There is a tension in his neck that he will need to get Gigi to work out tomorrow before the race. He powers off his phone, slipping it back into his jean pocket. He stands up. Thank fuck he never took off his shoes when he came over to Charles' hotel room, Charles insisting that they need to talk before morning.
Carlos has already said everything he needs to say. Charles will not hear it. Or he does, but simply does not care. Carlos prefers to think about it like this - Charles not caring about him at all, rather than him not caring enough.
"No," Carlos gives him, allows him, because there are circles under Charles' eyes and Carlos is never going to hold his hand again, won't know how the skin there changes as he grows old, and he has always been weak. "You can't."
Ferrari has always been Charles', and after tonight, Charles will always be Ferrari's.