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This cold makes her bones ache, makes her skin prickle.
She takes a shuddering breath and considers Valerie Bottas next to her, the hair above her lip that she doesn't shave and the bad bleach job that's started to bleed.
Everyone says they're one and the same, two women past the point where they should've called it quits. A divorcée and a dyke, two easy replacements.
Two cheaters, too, if Sergia had to bet on it. Valerie must've rolled over for Lewis on and off the track the way Nicole R. never did, must've spread her legs just as fast as she let him pass on track. What her husband must've thought... Everyone does it, that's what Sergia had spat out when Carola had gotten all up in her face about the whole thing. It's not like it counted, with a man.
"Maybe we'll be evenly matched, finally," Valerie had joked when talks first began to solidify, and Sergia had forced herself to grin good-naturedly. She hadn't thrown her whiskey in Valerie's face. Hadn't laughed at her, hadn't gotten mean. But she's better than her, she can't help but think, bitterness seeping into every clogged pore of her body.
Arrogance is a champion's mentality on a man. For a woman it simply makes her a bitch.
Valerie's sitting tits out in the ice bath beside her, a thicket of dark blonde hair between her legs. Sergia wipes at her face, beads of sweat and ice water pearling on her forehead. The warm metal of her wedding ring presses against her brow.
What to say, she wonders, wry. Remark on the way they're nothing but a bridge for a team that has never built a car before? The fact that to the world and the team and the whole fucking sport they're both no more than a diversity quota and a familiar face?
"Do you think-" She cuts off. Flexes her fingers against the crushing cold, then licks her lips, tries again. "Do you think it's easier for you, with ah, the ice? With all the saunas and the snow?"
Valerie cocks her head to the side. Her mullet's darker when it's wet. Her nipples are stood in stiff peaks. "Maybe. There is probably a study or two on that."
"But what do you think?" Checo asks.
She rests her hand idly against the flat planes of her stomach, against the downy fuzz of her treasure trail, considering. Sergia wonders if she's got an IUD. She seems the type. Sergia herself never bothered with it, never saw a reason to. Stupid.
Valerie splashes a bit of water at her and she blinks, eyes snapping back up to meet her measured gaze.
"I think you're staring at my tits," Valerie says, with a smirk like they're in on a joke together. Always with the smiles, even when they're condemning her to backmarker hell. "Do I have something on my face, maybe some, ah, some spinach in my teeth?"
She huffs, leaning back against the railing. "I'm not." She pauses, and a disconcerting thought occurs to her: "Did they give you a briefing about me? They gave Max one, he says."
That takes her back, a frown taking over her features and creasing her brows. Don't pull that face, Checo thinks, don't you know it gives you wrinkles? "What, cause you're a lesbian?"
She shrugs. A woman, a lesbian, pick your poison. Something other, something to treat with gloves on.
"You know, I don't mind it or anything." She can see the line of her throat bob as she swallows, and then, to prove the point, pushes off from the railing to grab Sergia's right tit. She blinks, baffled. Valerie's hand is shockingly hot against her skin. So much for maybe.
"See," Valerie says, finding her footing again with a small smile, "I just think it's important to have a good working relationship."
Don't make me laugh, Sergia thinks. She seems a bit unsure what to do, with the tit in her hand, and that's almost surprising; with the boxer shorts and the disgusting mullet, Checo had kinda assumed Valerie swung that way at least on special occasions.
"I don't think I'm interested in the kind of working relationships you're used to in this business." She tells her, letting something mean bleed into her voice.
Valerie flinches, ever so slightly, and moves to pull her hand away. Before she can, Checo darts her own out lightning fast, grabbing her wrist and arching up slightly to press her breast back into her palm.
She makes a little noise of shock before she collects herself again, eyes going flinty. There's the ice princess we loved at Mercedes. "You don't know what you're talking about." Her nails dig into Checo's skin for a moment. "You don't."
She wonders if Lewis ever called her the wrong name. If he ever buried his nose in long blonde hair and let the cadence of her Finnish accent - almost polished away - wash over him and take him back to a different time, a different blonde in his bed and in the car beside him on track. She wonders just how messy that got.
"Only cause I don't shit where I eat." She says, valiantly not thinking about those moments of weakness that got her a chair in marriage counselling. Or the thin blue line rotting in a garbage container somewhere, that impossibility.
But it's true, at least, that she doesn't fuck her teammates. Not that Max never tried, or Nico, or Jenson who took one look at her and had her all figured out. Briefings and meetings and inclusivity workshops don't do shit when the men in question grow up on silver spoons and entitlement and the sure conviction that no one would ever say no to them.
They're all cold and shrivelled up by the time they get out of the ice bath, but she thinks the flush on Valerie's cheeks is from more than the icy water. Between her legs, her cunt is pink and glistening in the light. If she got down on her knees right here, Checo wonders how long it'd take to warm her up with her mouth.
She keeps a professional distance as they dress again, but does slap her on the ass like all the footballers do, a mockery of camaraderie, and says "To a good season of racing, yes?"
As she's already all buttoned up and halfway out the door, Valerie stops her, calls: "Hey, Checo?"
She's still naked from the waist up, nipples pink and pebbled, and she regrets not copping a feel earlier. "Yeah?"
"If I score a point this year," she starts, and now the redness of her cheeks really does have be from something more than circulation. "If I score, you come to a Finnish sauna with me. Deal?"
The grin Checo gives in response is real and sharp. Really, she thinks, what is there left to lose. She already hits rock bottom twice a year.