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Decades of media training did that to Carlos Sainz Jr. Well, maybe not only the media training, but also the expectations of his upbringing (the same old “either you bite them, or they bite you” from his father). But overall, Carlos could see his being a charismatic, masculine, and good-haired Formula One driver is a win-win choice. Even if it meant losing some authenticity.
That was why his team chose Hackett out of all clothing brands to do a partnership, because it fits the image. That was why he got the L’Oréal’s contract even though their offerings were less sincere than others. That was why he allowed the racing teams to hype up the Carlando and Charlos pairings, knowing they were friendly-level true, while all the ambiguity was likely supported by the teams’ PR budget. That was also why he never told anybody that he secretly enjoys the Oscar Piastri × Grill’d Burger. His guilty pleasure.
It started when Piastri’s media people gave out these burgers back in Monaco, during a break between race weekends. Though it sounded absurd, apparently, the brand, Grill’d, decided that delivering some collaboration wagyu burgers across the oceans and continents by air just for some promotional photo was a great idea. They certainly believed that a single one wasn’t enough, so they actually sent twenty, and Piastri obviously couldn’t eat that much, so he somehow got the address and sent these reheated burgers to all the drivers near him. Carlos included.
It was one of the best burgers he had ever tasted—Carlos felt like the judges in those Japanese anime about cooking contests, surrounded by butterflies with exaggerated facial expressions. Ugh! Though being a very strict burger gourmet who believes in the traditions, Carlos had to admit that the very untraditional burger was a treat. The dip, crispy bacon, cheddar cheese, onions, carrots (who even put that in burgers), lettuce, and wagyu beef may be nondescript separately, but the combination brought the flavor and sensations to the next level. One bite, juicy; two bites, stuffy, and he soon lost the count. He finished it before his brain actually caught up.
It may have something to do with the diet during racing seasons, Carlos remembered his excuse. The excuse couldn’t stand anymore when Gigi changed his plan, allowing him a wider range of options containing something way more unhealthy than this burger. And Carlos craved that same flavor only a week later.
Did Grill’d add marijuana into the stuff or was there something wrong with his brain? Carlos tried to suppress the need for the burger, telling himself that he could bear with the wanting like how he had borne with the Williams’s tractor. His willpower was unparalleled, and the stupid collaboration burger is nothing compared to caviar, lobsters, and king crabs.
He was wrong. Not only because he had not loved these stereotypically expensive foods, but he had come to the fact that he was addicted to the Oscar Piastri × Grill’d Burger.
To fix this, he actually asked his assistant about getting something like food from Australia to wherever he would be racing. She told him the approximate cost of such a random endeavor, a bit concerning but manageable. He’s a multimillionaire, after all.
So he told her to get the burger for him. Though she showed some kind of twisted expression, she’d nodded like any assistant. And she got the burger delivered to his hotel room at the Miami Grand Prix.
Carlos palmed the box carrying the burger so tenderly, as if it were a fragile piece of jewelry. He placed it on the table, tore the lid up in no time, and took a bite without looking at the burger. He spat it out.
A cold, soaky, unflavored, on-the-verge-of-going-sour, and bitten Oscar Piastri × Grill’d Burger now sits in the papaya orange box demurely. Carlos wanted to cry. He took another bite, tentatively, and ascertained it was a terrible idea to believe there was anything salvageable about this burger.
But the dip tasted fine, so he licked the dip up. Pathetic, huh? It did soothe the addiction.
How come the first time tasted so good? Was there a secret Grill’d store in Monaco? Did they send a chef to cook this mundane burger that time? Simmering himself in the post-burger misery, Carlos wondered if he could ever taste the same burger without flying to Australia (and bumping into a certain driver). He did one of the best moves in his career besides moving to Ferrari (some’d disagree, but he’d probably leave the circuit winless otherwise).
Carlos opened Safari and searched: How do you deliver a burger from Australia to Monaco? Scrolling by several disheartening answers like “you cannot deliver perishable food,” he finally came across a relatively probable answer: Get the frozen items and assemble it himself, a common practice for larger supply chains across the globe and likely adopted by Grill’d.
So he did that, by letting Lando talk Piastri away at the garage, and Carlos casually slipped Piastri’s phone into his pocket, finding his commercial assistant in his contacts, sent the message telling them to “liaise with a new assistant member regarding the Grill’d contract by the number [xxx].” Deleted the message. Locked the phone. Put the phone back.
And Carlos somehow had the Grill’d Burger Marketing person’s contact as Oscar Piastri’s Assistant. And he had the courage to say that, “Mr. Piastri reckoned that the collaboration burger is necessary for his mental well-being during race week, as frozen contents for five servings shall be delivered to an address which he would provide via me every time, and going over the contract is too much of a fuss, so we shall remain active on WhatsApp.” Five is just a rule of thumb.
That worked, certainly, as Carlos received the frozen contents for five burgers at his Imola circuit hotel. He’d thrown away the ugly papaya orange packaging, dialed the dining service to reheat these burgers, and fuck, he cried when he bit the fresh, pre-made, burning-hot burger. He ate three of five burgers that evening, and he carefully put the rest of the food into the refrigerator’s freezer.
And that was how he got away with his Oscar Piastri × Grill’d Burger addiction by actually eating five of it everyother week and carrying a freezer with him. That was how he knew the podium campaign before the rest of the world. That was also how he flew to Australia during summer break since he couldn’t come up with new excuses for the frozen burgers, finding himself enjoying the burger when he saw the last person he wanted to see on Earth walk into the store.
Oscar Jack Piastri had literally no idea how he would meet Carlos Sainz Jr. 10 p.m. in the night at the most random Grill’d Burger store. The store had literally no one but the Spanish driver. Technically, it was not the most random location, since it was the closest opening fast food place near his house. He was quite sure no one had ever figured out where he lived, so he had the carelessness to walk around with no camouflage, no need to take pictures with his fans.
He had been living by himself for a few days after he flew back to Melbourne unannounced, deciding to surprise his family, only to be greeted with an empty house. They went on a cruise trip and thought Oscar would be spending his time with his girlfriend somewhere in the Mediterranean. That was the result of keeping everything as a surprise. He did not tell them he had broken up with Lily months ago.
In these days, he decided to reward himself with junk food, alcohol, little workout, little shower, a total lack of discipline, and too much guilty pleasure. Hm. He’d occupy the living room on the first floor, curtains closed, playing everything out loud, since there was no one at home.
Which also means Oscar’d met Carlos Sainz Jr. in Oscar Jack Piastri’s worst state—tipsy, hungry, hair unkempt, with the most hideous hoodie and shorts pairing on Earth—as he walked into the store, bell ringing.
Warm, greasy, and unhealthy air caresses Oscar’s face. He’d usually flinch under such conditions, but his mind could care less about such minute details when a certain figure might notice him.
He tried to pretend he didn’t see the man with his hair perfectly styled, a white T-shirt casually dropped on him but reversely making him majestic, accentuating his lean but built frame. Thighs in the pair of jeans displaying a beautiful curvature. Crotch—he tried to look away before the man noticed him as well.
Did he tell anyone that his recent guilty pleasure is opening two browser windows, one playing porn edits like men masturbating to heterosexual porno, and the other playing Carlos Sainz serving facecards for 8 minutes (2015-2025) on loop? No, he hadn’t. Did he mention he would project the screen to the television? No. He also didn’t need to tell what toys his hands were playing with when enjoying his guilty pleasure, the act of which constitutes this very guiltily pleasuring experience.
Anyways, he stopped doing so halfway tonight because of the protest from his own stomach, left the house in a haste. Probably because he kept on procrastinating his body’s needs of food intake, and he felt more hungry than ever. But it suddenly did not matter, because the subject of this pleasuring experience just magically appeared before him.
That was a terrible digression as Oscar felt something was getting hard again in his shorts. He really could not feign not seeing Carlos, as the man certainly looked at him for a short second. So he walked towards the man and sat on the seat across from him.
“Hi.” He successfully said so, in a tone between perfect composure and slight accusations. Very normal cadence of him.
“Hey.” Carlos looked up, replied, tonelessly. His eyelashes batted a few times, eyes a bit red, before reverting to enjoying whatever he’s doing.
Oscar was a little hurt when the man decided to ignore him, not even addressing him using any names. Not that he also didn’t address Carlos firstly. “Why are you here?” He tried to continue the conversation.
“Eating a burger, obviously.” The man’s nonchalance was blatant in his Spanish accent, face blushing, most likely because of the room temperature. Oscar looked down, the tray holding the pack consisted of fries, a can of soda, and a box of the burger which the man was grasping at the time, some dip leaking from the black buns—wait.
Is that the Oscar Piastri × Grill’d Burger?
Why was Carlos Sainz Jr. in the Grill’d Burger store at 10 p.m., in Melbourne, Australia, eating the Oscar Piastri × Grill’d Burger?
He had got to be hallucinating, because in no world would this be real.
The dip continued to leak between Carlos’s fingers, and Oscar took the tissue, trying to clean it before the sauce dripped down to the table. Oscar touched the slimy sauce, salt particles unsettling the surface of his skin, reminding him the scenario was realer than the real. And their fingers touched. Both Oscar and Carlos froze.
Carlos robotically lifted his gaze from the burger, “What?”
“No, no, no…ugh, I was trying to get rid of the dip before it drops on the table and messes up everything.” Oscar was biting his tongue when making the response as coherent as possible. He would be burnt by the heat exuding from the place their fingers met.
Carlos chuckled, “Hm, that’s nice of you.”
“Why are you here? I mean, the previous question. Why are you here in Melbourne, eating my collaboration burger?” Oscar definitely managed to direct the dialogue back to the track, but that came out too forced and try-hard.
The other man bit a large bite from the burger, nearly finished it. His mouth seemed to be employed full-time by this quest, so Oscar leaned in a bit closer to decipher the message in the Spaniard’s muffled voice, “Urgh, I thought the burger you gave out the other day was great. So I thought eating it freshly made is a good choice.”
The answer clearly did not suffice Oscar’s curiosity, and possibly, a bit of uneasiness, “But why here? It’s literally five hundred meters from my house. And isn’t that time, like, a few months ago?” Now he completely disclosed his privacy.
“Oh. I didn’t know about that. You have the perfect reason to be weirded out, and I was joking. I’m here for a brand campaign.” Carlos finished the burger and was now cleaning his fingers using tissue papers. And his cadence was weirdly lacking his usual Spanish accent, Oscar noticed.
“What brand, then?”
Carlos got the tissue paper to scrub off some of the bread crumbs from his plush lips. Oscar wanted to lick them off personally, and the thought brought another flush of blood towards his lower body. He diverted his gaze from meeting Oscar’s, suddenly tensing his body, “No, that was a joke, actually. I’m literally here for the burger. Mate, you don’t know how good this is. And this place is the nearest one from the airport that is still opening.” And his Spanish accent was back.
“So you’ve just gotten off the plane, I suppose?” Oscar just got more bewildered even though that line of logic was fairly convincing—why would Carlos Sainz Jr. travel, presumably, a long way from wherever he was, to Melbourne, just to eat some everyday food? Maybe he was around somewhere in New Zealand and just wanted to give Oscar a prank. The man could do something like this, but Oscar supposed they are not familiar enough for such a level of intimacy. Maybe he’d do that to Lando. It would make more sense.
“Yeah. A connected twenty-hour flight. Though it’s business, but still. Yeah.” Carlos yawned and stretched himself. Thus, New Zealand is wrong, apparently, and the man flew himself from Monaco or Spain or wherever he spent his summer break with his family and friends.
“So, a trip on a whim?”
“Kinda, if you say so. And because of the jet lag, I believe, I am a bit unable to speak in complete sentences. So forgive my attitude, Piastri.” He yawned again, agreeing with whatever Oscar was saying. And that yawning bordered on a moan from Oscar’s perspective, the man’s saliva moistening his lips, making it increasingly pinkish. Mouth-watering.
Oscar didn’t know if he should kiss them or if he should insert some objects into it.
“No worries, I reckon. I guess the time’s been messing with my mind, too. But I’m just generally surprised that you’re here, like, in Melbourne. It’s like, if you’d visit Australia, I’d expect you to fly to Sydney, and that we’re here, like, months ago.” That thought of Carlos’s open mouth featuring his inviting lips just constantly lingered in his mind when he tried to contribute some nonsense to the conversation. It might not matter anymore. He had to hunched over the table to hide his bulge.
“Hm. I’m sorry if it sounds weird, but I am actually a great fan of your collaboration burger since that first time you gave them out in Monaco. And they are not available in Monaco, so I came here.” The man blinked his eyes for an unnecessary number of times. As if he was drowsy, or as if he was doing the same as that one hypersexualized cat in Tom and Jerry, blinking to accentuate her femininity. Oscar thought it was both.
He tried to focus on the weird part of the conversation,“But what about the race weeks? When you’re obviously not in Australia, how do you deal with it?”
“Uhh…I have my own solutions.” Carlos stumbled over his words, giving an answer of nothing and seemingly decided to call it a day.
“Okay.” Oscar announced his defeat when he noticed the Grill’d staff dropped the water bucket on the floor. The store was about to close, and he had not ordered anything yet, absorbed in talking with Carlos. His stomach could protest, but he’d suppress this urge to eat when there’s something more delectable on the table. Or, across the table.
“You have any plans after this? Or just a hotel already, since the time’s a bit late, I guess…” Oscar said so without making it weirder. He stared at Carlos’s eyes, still. The man certainly had dozed off for an amount of time Oscar had zero idea of, given he had been staring at Carlos’s lips for a while. The alcohol really normalized his pervertish behaviors.
“No, Piastri, I haven’t booked one yet. Thanks for the reminder, though, my tired ass really needs some rest right now for the carbohydrates. Gigi’s gonna kill me—I mean, Gigi’s my trainer, so.” Carlos finally got out of his trance and took out his phone from his pocket immediately. He switched in his seat, obviously noticed the imminent closing of the store, and began typing, mumbling, “Hotels near me…Melbourne…”
Oscar had a brilliant idea, “No, no. Why don’t you come to my house? It’s not far, and we have a guest room, and my family’s away this weekend, and it really isn’t used as much, so it really isn’t that much of a hassle.” He regretted the idea the moment he vocalized these syllables; maybe alcohol did mess with his brain. The disorganized desire, curiosity, or the mixed unnamed feelings just overpowered his conscience, but now, his conscience overtook all these irrationalities. Oscar wanted to punch himself in the face.
What if Carlos felt alarmed by this invitation? Would he consider this as some suggestive hints? What would he possibly think of him? What if…wait. Carlos felt entirely straight, unlike a certain Australian driver who was experiencing his bisexuality awakening. The invitation was out of place only because of their relatively distant relationship. He had no reason to freak out.
So Oscar regained his composure, looked at Carlos, who was beaming, “Osc-ah-r! That is so nice of you! I could’ve slept on the street if not saved by you. I mean, maybe I wouldn’t survive to find an available hotel because of the freaking weather…” Oscar noticed the man’s attire as if he hadn’t remembered that by heart. The t-shirt and the jeans could be a little bit inadequate for the “summer” in Melbourne. But he was wearing a pair of shorts himself, so who was he to judge?
Oscar smiled nervously, gesturing Carlos to follow him out of the store. The other man complied. They walked, though a bit chilly, on the sidewalk, side-by-side. In silence. It was only half past ten, maybe, but the suburb really wasn’t populated enough to allow the duo to meet anyone other than the sporadic birds chirping. Maybe they were mating, Oscar thought, but the timing wasn’t right.
And here they were, at the driveway before the Piastris’ mansion. Very quiet, almost no lights exuding from the floor-to-ceiling windows. Oscar looked around; no one was here. His mother’s SUV and his father’s sports car were nowhere in sight. So he confidently surpassed Carlos, took out the keys from his pocket, and inserted them into the lock. The doors opened.
In retrospect, he should have thought twice before inviting Carlos to his house.
He stood before the opened door, unable to move. It was like a sensory overload that caused his body to short-circuit. Carlos was a bit unsure, observed from Oscar’s peripheral vision, not certain if he should move forward into the house. He looked between Oscar and the door for a few times before making his decision: The weather outside was indeed chilly, so the man did not hesitate. Oscar tried to block his way, but in vain, since Carlos’s body was already in huge momentum. The latter passed him smoothly. Then, no comments, and no further movements from Carlos. But there were certainly sounds—sounds that Oscar could no longer decipher. For moments, Oscar tried to hide himself.
Maybe it was like Carlos noticing him when eating the Oscar Piastri × Grill’d Burger. Instant karma.
Carlos’s voice was subtly shaky, “Hm, Oscar, you seemed to forget to turn off the electronic devices before leaving the house,” he walked towards the television for several steps, then stood before it, his head turning towards Oscar, “Also, is that…me?”
Oscar did not dare to look at Carlos from the doorway. He stood there, making no response. Maybe for another breath, he remembered to close the door. The door shut behind him.
The obscene sound made by the male actor in the porno felt faraway and subservient in comparison to the Carlos-in-television’s episodic grunting. The lights were flickering.
Neither moved.
Guilty, they said.