Chapter Text
Contrary to all popular rumors, Lando wasn't some pretty young thing thrust upon Carlos as a gesture of goodwill. But it was a wonderful stroke of falsehood that kept the idiotic truth at bay.
He was only supposed to be a nondescript fosterling, a page for some lesser marquis that Lando could not remember the name of for the life of him. He had been at the Button villa for only a few days to refuel for the next leg of his journey further east, planning to continue on in the morning.
But by a sheer stroke of fate, Carlos and his entourage had stopped for a night of rest and human hospitality on the way to attend a ceremony for the knighting of Sir Lewis Hamilton.
The energy within the palace walls was whipped into a fury as the servants frantically tried to prepare the palace to be fit for a prince. Carlos of Castile, son of our great ally Carlos the Elder, they whispered hurriedly, and twenty of his men.
This was the first time he was going to meet bonafide royalty. He chewed his bottom lip nervously. No one had told him what he had to do, what etiquette to follow, and he was terrified to ask. So when he stood with everyone, placing himself at the end of the welcoming line, he copied the lady beside him, he had stumbled into a curtsey to greet the visiting Spanish princeling.
“What are you doing, you little fool?!” The woman had hissed at him. “You don’t curtsey to a man!”
Lando could have smacked himself. He fell unto his knees, his blood turning into ice at his mistake. He could hear the rest of the procession tittering at his massive faux pas.
But Carlos had stopped in front of him. He could see the grime coating his well worn riding boots and the splashes of mud that climbed up his shapely legs. Carlos had drawn him up, his eyes full of gentleness until he caught sight of Lando's deeply anguished expression. Lando was practically vibrating with hot embarrassment, his head falling forward into his chest to hide his emotions.
"I-I apologize, sir." Lando gasped out, hot tears threatening to overflow out of his baby blues. He clenched his fists together tightly in desperation, trying to not wring them like his lord father told him not to.
"There is no need to be so anxious, cariño." Haltingly, the Spanish prince spoke in the most tender tone that Lando ever heard. "I am nothing but a mere man like you."
With the pads of his tanned hands, Carlos gingerly tilts Lando's chin up with the measure of approaching a wild animal for the first time. Watery, tear filled blue irises meet steady brown ones, and Lando is lost in the softness of Carlos' gaze. There is no trace of mirth or cruelty in his dark eyes, and Lando manages to relax his tightened shoulders. He hiccups once, and unfolds a fist to swipe across his eyes, breaking the spell between them.
“I...I…” Lando stammered, flushing pink to his ears. “You’re so nice.” He blurts out without thinking, and he claps a hand over his mouth.
Carlos lets out a raspy chuckle. “Come here.” He tugs Lando against his side with one sinewy arm, ensconcing him in his dusty blue cloak. Exhausted by the scene that he had accidentally caused, Lando lets himself get gathered up. Carlos was surprisingly warm, the scent of woodsmoke and wind calming him, and Lando desperately wanted to be hidden away from the now confused prying eyes of the rest of the court. “You come with me.” He guides Lando down the quieted entrance hall, ignoring all the perplexed looks that bore into their backs.
They find themselves in a cozy guest room with the help of one of Carlos’ men. A robust fire roars in the hearth, and the Spaniard throws his body into the centre of the featherbed, clearly relishing the ability to finally rest on something soft instead of compacted dirt and stones. At first, Lando perches on the edge, unsure of where he stands. This isn’t his room, after all. But Carlos, rolling his eyes, pulls him closer to the centre where they face each other.
“Now, cariño, what is your name?” Carlos cajoles, his voice low and full of sugar. The firelight is causing the reflections of his darkened irises to dance, and Lando gives an involuntary shiver. As his shock of his previous embarrassment starts to bleed away, he is eventually able to fully take in Carlos’ figure. He is sinfully handsome, with sun-bronzed skin, a lush crown of hair and scratchy stubble shadowing his sharp jawbones. Lando is overtaken by the want to rub his cheek against it to see if it is ticklish or rough, and he tightly twists the coverlet to force himself from inching any closer.
“Lando.” He whispers shyly, chin to chest, unable to bring himself to continue appraising Carlos’ form in hopes that the Spaniard didn’t catch him checking out his muscled physique. “Lando Norris.”
When Carlos brings the young man to his room, he isn’t in control of his full faculties. After that incident in the entrance hall, he is struck by how much he wants to bundle the boy up and carry him away far from England. And he dislikes this greyed island, with its perpetual damp weather and lack of real warmth from the weak sun. He is only here to do his father a favour.
But what an awkwardly charming young man has fallen into his grasp.
Carlos recalls the shock of shame in Lando’s expressive face, and his heart hardens. He wanted to silence the bevy of badly suppressed laughter at the throats of the so-called welcoming procession. His people would have never done such a thing - the moment they caught on that someone was unfamiliar with the etiquette in their midst they would have shown the newcomer what was proper.
He turns to shamelessly survey the pretty boy in front of him. Aristocratic high cheekbones with narrowed shoulders, and the complexion of peaches and cream. Lando is delicately fine-boned with slender wrists and ankles, and mierda, that absolutely has always been his type.
Carlos wets his lips and reaches out, running a single digit down Lando's exposed arm, delighting in the trail of gooseflesh that he leaves and in the bright blush that blooms from the Englishman's pale throat. Lando's eyes dart over to his face, and Carlos steadies them with a heated, loaded gaze that seems to freeze them both in time and space.
His generous mouth parts in a honeyed purr, in a tone that burned with wicked, filthy promises to come.
"It is a pleasure to meet you, Lando Norris. I am Carlos Sainz."