Based on this perfect post by @formulahs and these perfect set of tags by @janinaduszejko, team 55 from Alex's POV
He says to Lily, “I think you’d get along well with her.”
Lily shrugs, easy, beautiful. “Sure. I get along with everybody.”
The simplicity of it makes Alex smile. On occasion he fashions her into a shield on his right arm as he wades into the battle that is PR. She always knows when he’s doing it, those times he’s less inclined to be polite to a camera, and Alex can see her straightening herself up, mustering the fortitude to talk enough for the both of them and look happy while doing it.
He thinks she’d get along wonderfully with Rebecca, not that she ever needs him to point it out. It’s just sometimes, sometimes he sees Rebecca with Alexandra and feels a little bad, that Lily doesn’t have that picture-perfect friendship with anyone here in the grid, and then he feels a little bad about feeling a little bad, because it’s so silly isn’t it? Worrying about something like that, and Lily goes on to prove his point by tossing her head back and laughing.
“You know I don’t need any of that,” she says indulgently, poking him in the cheek the way no one else is allowed to. Alex endures it, equally indulgent, before he pokes her in the dimple right back. “I have my people, or person, rather,” she waggles her eyebrows at him, “and she has hers.”
“You mean Alexandra?”
“Actually.” Lily taps her index finger on her chin. “I was talking about, well.”
He recognizes that mischievous lilt in her voice. “Talking about what?”
“They’re all awful close, aren’t they?” Lily says. “It’s nice.”
“Who’s close?” Alex says, increasingly lost.
“Dummy,” she says, pinching his side fondly. “Maybe open your eyes, next time.”
By now, race weekends are tattooed into his nervous system, more memory than muscle, and Alex mostly survives the year-long schedule by allowing himself to be bothered by the important things, like his car’s lack of a usable engine, and letting everything else fly over his head. Everything. Taking Lily’s advice has never led him astray, but he’s reconsidering that statistic when he makes a point to open his eyes at the wrong place and wrong time. Over by Carlos’s side of the garage, Rebecca kisses Teto thoroughly on the lips before leaving. Teto leans into it like it’s the most normal thing in the world, getting kissed so soundly by Carlos’s girlfriend, before he turns away to wait for Carlos like an obedient puppy.
you’re the worst, he texts Lily.
aw ✌️✌️✌️ you love me
i do
k now that that’s clear, what did i do?
“The car’s feeling steadier this weekend, what do you think?” and Alex nearly jumps a foot out of his skin. Carlos is looking at him, all hopeful, something he’s never managed to polish out of any of his facial expressions. On full display, as clear and as breakable as glass.
Unfortunately, the discomfort of having that painful earnestness blasted square into his face has kinda-sorta-maybe morphed into a resigned fondness. It’s good that at least one of them can manage some optimism. Presumably it bodes well for the future. Alex nudges Carlos with his elbow, tucking his phone neatly away. He’ll tell Lily exactly what she’s done later.
“It’s not bad,” he says, purposely non-committal. The combined weight of gravity on a fuckass massive boulder is familiar to Alex’s shoulders by now, but still in the process of becoming familiar to Carlos. Carlos with his hopeful questions and hopeful Instagram posts, week in week out, hopefulness of course being the one thing Alex couldn’t have foreseen fashioned into a weapon he would be weak against. “We’ll get the McLarens in turn one, eh?”
Carlos laughs, jostles Alex back gently. Smiles at him in that agonisingly tender way before wandering out. Teto makes to follow like a planet that must orbit the sun, waving goodbye to a mechanic and cutting the conversation short the moment he sees Carlos leave. Alex can’t wrap his head around it, and even though there are some things he understands he’s not meant to understand, this has nothing to do with curiosity (a lie) and everything to do with Carlos’s wide, hopeful eyes (not a lie).
“How could you do that,” Alex demands in a hiss-like whisper, before he can rethink his stupid, life-upending choices.
Teto blinks at him, bewildered, seemingly torn between running off after Carlos and finding out how crazy Alex is about to get, before he crouches close in a very conspiratory way. “Do what?” Teto whispers back.
Somehow that gets Alex even more agitated, Teto acting all innocent.
“Do that to Carlos,” Alex says, hands waving in the air to encompass all of that. “You. I saw. You and her.” He stops, recognizing he’s being a bit of an asswipe. The rational part of himself yelling It’s none of my business! he smothers away by force.
“How could you,” he concludes lamely.
“Oh,” Teto says, eyes widening in clarity. “Oh, I mean, that’s.” At least he has the decency to look—slightly ashamed? While scrubbing the back of his neck. “It’s not—eh. How you say.”
“Cheating?” Alex says scathingly.
There’s an awkward pause to beat all awkward pauses, and then to Alex’s complete befuddlement, Teto’s face slowly splits open into a grin. Full on beam sent Alex’s way, the nerve. Alex is enroute to opening his mouth with an obnoxious insult when suddenly, Teto’s hand finds its way to Alex’s cheek. Two very gentle, very soft pats. Alex is stunned by the power of touch into submission.
“You are angry, yes? For Carlos?” Teto says. He pats Alex’s face once more, and Alex fights the insane urge to flush. “That is good. He needs teammates like you.”
“I—what?” Alex’s mouth flops open. None of this conversation is going according to plan, not that there was any plan from the beginning. “I am very confused.”
“Eh,” Teto says, shoulders going up and down, one smooth journey. “Long story. Carlos is very focussed during weekends. He doesn’t want, he calls it distractions." Teto rolls his eyes. "So we—eh, you know. Short story is if Carlos asks, I give him details.”
If Alex’s mouth stays open any longer, a family of spiders could probably make a web and set up shop in it. “So you’re not, er. You’re not—?”
“I could not,” Teto says, with an expression Alex doesn’t see very often on Teto’s face, unless it is directed at Carlos. “We,” he corrects, “could not hurt him, no?” It doesn't take long for the expression to morph into something devious, much more suited for Teto. “And you don’t have to worry anyway, at the end of the race we all give him the best—”
“Good talk,” Alex says immediately, recognizing it’s time for a strategic retreat. In the span of five minutes, he’s managed to put his foot in his mouth in the most ludicrous of ways and learned far more about his teammate than a teammate should ever learn. “I’ll see you around, Teto. I think, Carlos is waiting for you, isn’t he?”
Carlos is indeed waiting. Head angled toward somewhere between the horizon and the ground, staring off into not much of anything. Teto winks at Alex, then prances away to fetch his boy. It’s not even two seconds before Alex is on the phone.
“Lily, oh my god.”
“Left me on read, huh?” she says, amused. “You better spill.”
Fellow team55 polycule sicko reporting for duty. Do you have thoughts on the dynamic between polycule members and how the polycule formed?
YES i do have thoughts. okay so 2024, obviously the worst year of carlos's life, then the first half of 2025, which is somehow even worse. like a normal athlete (barely finished high school, believes a sport therapist is an HR plant, thinks introspection is a car part) carlos deals with it by not dealing with it and as a result, for most of the first half of 2025, he can't get it up.
there's a two week break somewhere after the first quarter of the season where there's an impromptu training camp/vacation where rebecca + carlos + team 55 are in [random isolated beach location] and rebecca is horny out of her mind and getting eaten out like her life depends on it but girl wants to get RAILED. this comes up vaguely one evening as rebecca, teto and carlos are drinking a bottle of wine on the balcony of rebecca and carlos's hotel room and teto, annoying, pries until the entire story comes out. yadda yadda charged conversation where rebecca keeps rubbing her thighs together and teto keeps looking at her legs and then looking away red-faced and carlos finally says, you two could--
and rebecca's like we could what? and carlos is like i just want you to be happy and rebecca's like i AM happy and carlos is like you're happy but you're not--you're not satisfied. and i wouldn't--obviously i'd mind if you--but if it's teto, that's--
rebecca and teto have been hanging out at garage 55 for the better part of a year now and sure, there's something, in the way that there's always some connection between two people who love the same third person fiercely and there's something there but they'd never have acted on it but now carlos is giving them permission and for the next few months a situation arises where rebecca and teto fuck while carlos watches. he IS turned on, excruciatingly so, but his dick is non-cooperative.
at the same time gigi says to carlos you're being very hard on yourself and if YOU can't be nice to yourself at least i can and after bad races gigi puts carlos on a massage table and really slowly works all the stress out of carlos's tired body. every time carlos says something cruel about himself gigi calmly reframes it to something positive until carlos is a puddle on the table and in those brief moments where carlos is not allowed to hate himself suddenly carlos finds he IS able to get hard and gigi notices and carlos is humiliated that gigi notices but gigi's like this is fine, don't worry, i'm happy your body is happy. long story short, the only way for months that carlos is able to come is to rut into the massage table, mortified, as gigi massages him and says nice things to him.
and carlos, guilt-ridden tells rebecca this and rebecca, briefly taking possession of the single shared brain in team 55, is like okay so if me and teto fucking turns you on and gigi can make your dick work, what if we all combine these parts and WAH LAH. team 55 polycule.
small & soft, flesh & blood (carlos/alex, team 55 polycule, 8.4k, rated e, written for @motorsport-halloween fest!)
But even if he was under no illusion that Carlos would be clinging to Alex’s side like a rookie, Alex still wanted them to get on well—at least until, if JV was to be believed, 2026 or 2027, when they’d be able to make a proper fight of it. So when Carlos’s contract was announced, Alex made sure his was one of the first congratulatory texts in Carlos’s phone. And after Carlos’s appendix exploded in Jeddah, Alex helped him adjust his seat belts so they wouldn’t press up against his surgery site. And after the season ended, Alex added a copy of a book to his Amazon cart titled, Supernatural Coworkers: A Beginner’s Guide, and spent the first week of his break highlighting passages from the chapter on vampires.
