Archive of Our Own

            It’s Wout who finds him, rouses him, peels him off the bed, takes him outside, and lets him see the sun.

            The light blinds Jonas with the way it rushes through his front door, along with the cool air carrying the scent of the sea. He probably looks ridiculous, still wrapped in the duvet he’s wearing like a cloak. He hadn’t let go of it, despite Wout’s urging, and Wout eventually let him keep it on his person, let him walk across his living room in his socks until they reached the entrance. Now he pulls it closer around himself and the back of his closed eyelids glow red.

            “You stopped answering your phone,” Wout says without prompt.

            Jonas squeezes his eyes tighter, letting the red melt into static, then peeks at Wout through one eye. Standing beside him, Wout looks the same as he does when they’re at team presentations: shaded by a cap and wearing a soft smile as sunlight hits him. He tips his head down slightly to look at Jonas before turning his gaze straight ahead, as if to focus on a faraway point he wants to reach. Maybe the stark line of a race finish. Maybe the top of a mountain.

            It hits Jonas all at once, that he really, really, terribly missed his teammate.

            If Jonas was a different type of person, the first thing he would have done when it happened was call the team, tell them he couldn’t do it. Tell them his numbers were shit and he deleted it off his Garmin and that the bike scared him too much and he abandoned his home trainer and that he was so, so sorry. But instead, he hid in his room and let his phone die on the kitchen island, battery drained from its relentless ringing.

            And really, he couldn’t bring himself to say sorry.

            “Well, if you don’t want to go to the Tour, you don’t have to,” Wout continues in Jonas’ silence. He says it easily like he’s agreeing with Jonas’ dinner order or approving his choice in footwear. “Let’s not do it.”

            Jonas loses track of which one of them should be the voice of reason. When he speaks, it feels scratchy in his throat.

            “What do we do, then?

            Wout looks at him again, smiling the way he does when he sneaks too many pastries into their shared room, untracked by nutritionists, or when he convinces Jonas to take a detour into the gravel.

            “Well, where do you want to go?”

            He’s not sure why he says it, but in the moment, it’s the farthest place he could imagine.

            “Durango, Colorado.”

            Wout does all the talking with the team, sitting on the steps by Jonas’ front door. Jonas is letting the grass stain the duvet and his socks as his skin gets reacquainted with the daylight. The conversation is in Dutch, and he tunes it out—Jonas said he would learn the language, but he never really improved into conversational. His ear catches a few phrases that he can parse out: No, just time. We just need time.

            He doesn’t want to hear any more, so he sits on the grass, the duvet still draped over his shoulders, then tilts his head up at the sun, eyes closed. He feels better, already, maybe—or different. At least, he thinks, that he’s expelled the stale air from his lungs. Maybe shed off the darkness that’s been clinging to him the past few days.

            The other stuff though—those things that feel like ropes tangling up his insides, marking every painful move he makes with his body, they’re still there.

            A shadow falls over him and it could only be Wout, his body blocking the sun—so steady and familiar and Jonas can already predict the way Wout will reach out his hand, like he’s always done. And Jonas will take it, and get on the bike, and they’ll pedal to whatever horizon Wout delivers him to. Back to Visma’s arms.

            But when Jonas opens his eyes, Wout is squatting in front of him, meeting his level. From this distance, Jonas can see his own gauntness reflected on Wout’s face—bruised and a little pale. Wout had his crash a week before Jonas’: fractured collarbone, ribs—the works. He knows how it goes. But he should be in recovery too, what was he doing here?

            “What are you doing here, Wout?”

            Wout pauses, frowning, then shrugs.

            “You stopped answering your phone,” he says again.

            “They sent you here to check up on me?” Jonas doesn’t usually mean to sound spiteful, isn’t sure if he’s capable of it, but he tries.

            Wout shrugs again. He doesn’t deny it.

            Jonas laughs, sardonically. He’s painfully aware it doesn’t look quite right on him.

            He wants to tell him to go away. Or maybe, he wants to tell Wout the truth—that he can’t be their leader anymore and there’s no use seeking him out in his home. Jonas knows that nobody who wants to win the Tour is afraid of the taste of blood in their mouth. That’s a nonstarter.

            Jonas doesn’t say anything, despite all the bitterness that’s been bubbling inside him, suddenly finding the words to form. His thoughts are running a mile a minute, but a nausea overshadows it all, he thinks he’ll throw up first. Wout leans forward, dropping to his knees, then reaches for the edges of the duvet. Jonas panics, fights him weakly, but quickly realizes he doesn’t have the strength to. So he lets his arms fall to the side and Wout carefully unravels him.

            “Shit,” Wout says quietly.

            Jonas looks down at himself and sees the unwashed kit still on his body. His first return to the bike; it might have been a couple of days ago, if his timekeeping is accurate—it could be a little more. He feels too tender, embarrassed and exposed, but accepts that there is not much to do except suffer under the gaze of his teammate.

            “That bad, huh?”

            Jonas nods slowly and tears prickle at the corner of his eyes: twenty minutes on the bike before keeling over and copper on his tongue. He remembers hyperventilating, black spots dotting his vision. He remembers desperately wanting to feel the floor for something stable, something he’s sure won’t slip out from under him. He remembers crawling back to his bed in the dark. He doesn’t remember moving much after that.

            “Okay,” Wout says slowly. He doesn’t ask any more questions. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

            When Wout stands up and offers his hand, Jonas, like always, takes it.

            Jonas turns the heat up too high in the shower and comes out red and blotchy. He looks for a towel and finds that he’s left it on the floor a few days ago, forgotten, and decides against using it. He exits the shower, pooling water with his every step and realizes that he doesn’t know where the towels are supposed to be—he hasn’t seen his cleaning lady since he told her that he’s well enough to housekeep for himself. She looked doubtful then, his arm was just out of a cast, and he supposes she was right.

            He freezes when he walks out into the hallway, startled—he’s almost forgotten that Wout was there. He looks up at Jonas from where he is, leaning on the wall opposite his door with his arms crossed. Jonas is used to this much protectiveness from the team, the closeness, even seeing each other naked from time to time. But he sees something glaze over Wout’s eyes when he does a once-over on Jonas’ body.

            Jonas remembers too-long touches and gazes that linger when they’re moving through group rides. He remembers laughing too late on the balcony and comparing scrapes and bruises on rest days. He remembers champagne-drunk kisses and sweet-tasting lips and his fingers clinging so tightly at the back of Wout’s shirt because he didn’t really know how to handle winning the big thing. The biggest thing.

            “I—towel—” Jonas says, finding his words. He was starting to get cold.

            Wout nods and walks to the closet at the end of the hallway.

            “Here?” he asks, although he’s already opening the door.

            Jonas hums in the affirmative and Wout gets him a towel and a robe. And maybe it should be a concern how he expects it, when Wout helps him put on the bathrobe. Jonas tries not to imagine a bizarre sort of jersey ceremony. But despite his initial surprise, he feels better, more grounded, with the soft fabric enveloping him. He’s hyperaware of Wout’s closeness when he then drapes the towel over him, rubbing the top of Jonas’ head a few times before crossing his arms in front of him again. Wout doesn’t move away.

            “Wout,” Jonas says, voice just above a whisper. Wout meets his eyes. He asks again, “what are you doing here?”

            The air stills and something akin to devastation flashes in Wout’s eyes. He looks at Jonas for a few desperate seconds before leaning forward, bowing his head sharply until his forehead lands on Jonas’s shoulder. Lightly, without putting weight on it—his healing collarbone doesn’t react. But he feels him there, and it might be the clearest sensation he’s experienced in the past few days. Might be the first thing he’s felt that isn’t derivative of the pain.

            “I told you,” Wout says, and his low voice vibrates throughout Jonas’ body. “You weren’t answering your phone”

            Sitting in the lounge of Copenhagen Airport, Kastrup, Jonas can see Wout pacing by the large glass walls in his peripheral vision, fervently talking on his phone. Jonas suspects that he’s fielding calls from the team, arguing rehabilitation logistics, denying all offers to just take them to Tignes early. He hears it again: give us time. Jonas tries not to think about what that means.

            The one thing Visma didn’t budge on: they had to bring their bikes—they’re already packaged and waiting for them in Frankfurt. Visma even paid for their luggage.

            The only people Jonas texted was his family. His mother asked, who are you with? When he answered Wout, his mother didn’t have any more questions for him, just telling him: That’s good, guldklump.

            Wout walks into his field of vision and catches his eyes and sends him that same wry smile he has been giving Jonas since they’ve left the house in Glyngøre. He feels as curious about it as he is nervous, thinking of that scene in his hallway. He wants to ask him again, what are you doing here?

            Instead, Wout mouths, you okay?

            Jonas feels a bit overwhelmed, too wired to tune out the bustle of the airport. He misses his isolation, the crippling stillness that took hold of his limbs. It felt like being stuck in a tar pit, it felt like life slowing to a complete stop. But it was something he decided for himself—no zooming asphalt, no slick rain, no unforgiving concrete. No losing control.

            He gives Wout a halfhearted thumbs up that Wout seems to accept. Jonas goes back to staring at the clouds.

            Like promised, their bikes were there in Frankfurt Airport and Jonas can’t quite look at it—inconspicuously boxed up as it was. Wout met the Visma liaison person all on his own, not giving him a chance to see Jonas. It’s for the best, probably, although it feels like if Jonas doesn’t do anything for himself soon, he will melt into nothing. A part of him welcomes the idea.

            “Coffee?” Jonas suggests after check-in, even though he knows that airport coffee is going to be shit.

            “Airport coffee is going to be shit,” Wout confirms. “And it is good to sleep on a long flight. It’s ten hours—did you know that? We have one more connection after.”

            The furthest place Jonas could think of. With a clearer mind, he might have changed his answer to Saitama. But Durango is good—might be better. He vaguely remembers Sepp talking about it, his time mountain biking with the local development team, their laid-back mindset, the beautiful scenery. And it is better to go somewhere he can speak the language in case he gets lost, if he gets separated from Wout.

            “No coffee, then,” Jonas says.

            Wout gives him another lopsided smile.

            Another round of calls excuses Wout from Jonas, and he passes time before boarding by looking through the airport shops, finally giving his legs a proper stretch. He needs a little space, anyway, there is a nervous tension in the air between him and Wout, and he doesn’t know what to do with it—so different from the frenetic energy of training and races and the looming threat of a grand tour. Maybe he doesn’t really believe it, that they’re really going to skip the Tour, that they’re being allowed. He’s suspicious that Wout ever really wanted him to, anyway, and he imagines an elaborate scheme cooked up by his team, with Wout being the agent to bring him back.

            Jonas feels guilty, really, considering the fact that it’s been Wout who’s doing all the work, booking flights and accommodations, researching Colorado weather and helping him pack. But he reads through his boarding pass twice, double-checking that they’re truly flying to a different continent.

            He wanders into a small gift shop at the far end of the airport. A bee keychain catches his eye. Without thinking too much, he buys it.

            When he gives it to Wout near the gate, Wout smiles at him, unhesitatingly this time, the lines on his face climbing up his cheek. Jonas pauses, it settles something inside him, he thinks he hasn’t seen that expression on Wout in so long—it’s just been hesitating smiles and uneasy gazes all the way here. Jonas thinks about Wout in the hallway: the shake in his voice that Jonas could feel at the single point where their skin was touching, the flush on his cheeks when he looked up and apologized. The split second his eyes darted down to Jonas lips. He doesn’t think Visma knows about that.

            Wout hangs the keychain from a loop on the strap of his bag and Jonas catches him fiddling with it a few times before they start to board.

            On the plane to Denver, Wout finally lets go of his phone. Jonas’ phone hasn’t left his backpack since Copenhagen.

            “They won’t look for us,” Wout says with finality—reclining on the comfortable window seat. Thankfully they found business class tickets despite the short notice.

            Jonas looks at Wout and mirrors him, lying back on his seat, the most comfortable he can be since he’s left the house. He wants to ask Wout if it was true, that nobody would look for them, but then a sudden fatigue descends on him. It’s as if all the tiredness he’s been holding at bay—from the travel, from being so far away from the safety of his bed— has crashed on top of him all at once, settling deep in his bones. He falls asleep as soon as the plane gets off the ground.

            When Jonas wakes up, he assumes they’re flying over Greenland. It’s a moment of blissful cloudiness before his lungs start screaming at him, reacting to the pressure— the higher altitude is hurting him, maybe, or it’s the travel that’s starting to take its toll on his body. It shocks him awake, those familiar sensations he’s been numbing hitting at this moment: aching on his ribs, his collarbones, his elbow, his breathing. All reemerging with stark clarity. He thinks it’s his mind that’s magnifying the pain—he’s experienced that before, back in those early days on the bike when he found himself giving up the fight way before he reached his limit.

            Jonas realizes, acutely, that the worst parts of him, he’s brought onto the plane. They’re sitting with him. It makes him cry, suddenly, tears quick to well up and pour out of his eyes. And really, he doesn’t know what he’s doing here, doesn’t know why he’s running away. It’s still his body that is going with him— the body that crashed, the body that never wants to ride a bike again.

            “Jonas—Jonas are you okay?” Wout is awake now, too, eyes growing bigger in alarm as sleep leaves his body.

            “Wout—I can’t, I can’t do it anymore. I can’t—” Jonas can hear his own voice but it’s as if someone else is speaking, and there’s a part of him that wants to shut himself up, to strangle the words that are coming out of him. But it’s like blood again, flooding his mouth, and he can’t swallow, he can’t make it go away. It threatens to drown him. “It’s my body, it’s me—”

            Jonas knows he’s not making much sense, can feel himself shake and mouth stutter, and he catches the attention of a concerned-looking flight attendant. He gathers the wherewithal to turn away from the aisle, towards Wout. Jonas reaches an unsteady hand towards him.

            Wout meets him halfway.

            Jonas sees Wout look at the space above his head, waving the attendant off. He clings onto the familiar warmth of their palms pressed together and feels a sort of greed take over him. He pulls Wout closer, until he’s hugging his arm with both of his. Wout pauses for a second before leaning closer to Jonas’ side.

            Like many things he’s mastered doing silently, Jonas cries without a sound. His head dips until his face is pressed onto Wout’s arm and he lets his tears soak the fabric of his sweater. He doesn’t know for how long it goes for, but Jonas think he’s cried all the tears he could possibly cry, more than he has in that dark room in Glyngøre. He’s vaguely aware of the mess he’s making on Wout’s sleeve, but he doesn’t move away, doesn’t stop until he falls asleep like that. Before drifting off completely, he feels Wout’s hand on his head, rubbing through his hair gently. He remembers something like this has happened before.

            Jonas wakes up again when the seatbelt sign is on and finds that Wout has placed a pillow on the console between them so he can more comfortably lean on Jonas’s side. It’s embarrassing, really, he’s aware he looks like a child, the way he’s clinging to Wout. He hasn’t done this since breaking his femur years ago and he cried to his mom that maybe he would never again race professionally in his life. He recalls how he got over that quickly, how he was making plans if his bones didn’t heal right, that he could have a job related to bikes. As long as he could be near cycling, still.

            He squeezes his eyes tight, he doesn’t want to think about it, his past-self blinding in his innocence and passion. He doesn’t want to wonder if he’s betraying that kid and forces himself back to sleep. He loosens his grip on Wout but doesn’t let go.

            Jonas lets the flight attendant wake them for landing and they must separate to set their seats upright and secure their seatbelts. Jonas waits for what Wout will do. After rubbing his eyes a few times, he takes Jonas’ hand again.

            They touchdown in Denver and Wout goes to the bathroom to change his shirt. Jonas watches him disappear into the crowd with a shameful sort of feeling in his chest. Especially since he knows that he’s about to tell him that he can’t do another flight, even one that is only an hour long. The idea that such a panic attack could strike him again is enough to keep him grounded. He's aware that he’s being spoiled, endlessly, on this trip, and normally he wouldn’t be such an inconveniencing person (the current situation with the team notwithstanding), but it’s so easy to ask with Wout. The Wout who would look him in the eye before races, telling him pointedly: if there’s anything you need, Jonas, you tell us. We will be there with you.

            So when Jonas says he doesn’t want to fly anymore, Wout rents a car.

            A few meters away from the rental booth, he watches Wout deal with customer service.

            Jonas doesn’t really have an idea of how famous they are in America, he doesn’t think it’s much but the lady on the counter looks a little starstruck with Wout. Most likely, though, it’s because he’s a very handsome man. Sharp jaw, with kind, brown eyes, and a lightly slicked-backed hair that reveals his blonde streak. An easy smile that lights up his whole face and carries the sort of casual confidence that Jonas could never quite pull off. That hint of boyish recklessness that urges everyone to join him for a ride.

            The lady at the counter laughs a little too loudly and Jonas thinks that maybe he shouldn’t have let Wout give him his cap. But he tilts the brim down over his head, trying to hide his puffy face from the bustling airport crowd that probably won’t recognize him nor find him particularly handsome.

            He reaches an arm around his backpack and fishes out his phone. When he turns it on, the texts come flooding in, all of which he promptly ignores except Sepp’s:

            I hear you’re going to my part of the world. If you need anything, hit me up, my friends can help you.

            He thinks again of Wout: We will be there with you. Jonas tries to feel grateful, but really, all he feels is guilt.

            It’s a six-hour drive to Durango in an overpriced rental car and Jonas doesn’t know what will happen to their bikes as Wout only loaded their suitcases on the 4Runner. Then he thinks that maybe, he doesn’t really want to ask.

            Sitting on the passenger seat, Jonas rests his elbow by the door, leaning his head onto his hand. He looks at Wout, thinking again about how handsome he is and how the car suited him. They arrived in Denver early in the morning and the direction they’re going faces away from the rising sun. Wout’s face is a cool blue, a bit blurry at the edges from Jonas’ point of view.

            “Stop staring at me,” Wout says.

            Jonas doesn’t look away.

            “You’re handsome,” he says, pondering. Wout frowns, seeming to make a concentrated effort to not look at him. “Surely, you know that.”

            “Are you teasing me?” Wout asks and Jonas makes a surprised noise. Because maybe, maybe he is. It’s a little surreal now, when he thinks about the games they would play with the team, the tension that builds—but it’s always in the context of an exhausting grand tour. Emotions high, affections inflated towards teammates. Champagne, always in the equation. But now, they’re on the run from all those things and there’s only an unfamiliar country, maybe there’s seeing each other in a different light.

            “Do you like me?” Jonas asks, not entirely sure why he’s choosing this moment to ask, although it’s something he’s been wondering since the hallway. Or maybe even before that. It feels juvenile, the way he puts it, but regarding these kinds of things— in the midst of chasing his dreams and all the suffering that comes with it— he hasn’t really figured out how to grow up. “Like… like that?”

            Wout turns to him this time, the sun now a more confident yellow behind the car, casting rays of light across the space between them. Yes, Jonas decides, he looks handsome indeed.

            Instead of answering him, Wout gives him a long-suffering look and sighs. He turns his gaze back to the road but reaches for Jonas’s hand blindly. Jonas meets him halfway. Jonas looks away, letting his head rest on the window and watches as the view of buildings and wide parking lots give way to mountains. Without seeing it, he feels the moment Wout lifts his hand up to his lips, kissing it lightly. The warmth of the touch lingers; it settles something inside him.

            Jonas has a hand outside the open window, feeling the cool mountain air, when he hears Wout yawn beside him.

            “Do you want to switch?” Jonas asks.

            “You,” Wout begins, slow and deliberate, “know how to drive?”

            Jonas scoffs but he doesn’t tell Wout that the number of times he’s driven since getting his license can probably be counted on one hand. It takes a bit of convincing but eventually Wout pulls up on a ditch and they both get out of the car. It feels good to stretch his legs again and to take in the view of the mountains now that everything is bright and clear.

            It’s automatic, the way he analyzes the mountain route. He thinks the road is a bit sketchy but as a descent it would not be too technical. If he pushes himself, he can probably do it fearlessly, can push 90, maybe more. But then it could be that confidence that gets him—like it did in Basque, when he let it override the bad feeling in his gut and next thing he knew his skin was being grated off on the asphalt. Jonas closes his eyes tightly and tries to blink the thoughts away.

            Driving back to the road, Jonas feels Wout slump in his seat, reclining it all the way back. He must be exhausted, which makes sense, he’s been the one spearheading the logistics of the trip, with Jonas simply letting himself be dragged through terminals and carried off a little less than halfway across the globe. He takes the cap off his head so he can return it to Wout. Wout takes it and uses it to shield his face from the sun.

            Jonas avoids potholes and drives down the winding road easily. When he reaches the foot of the hill safely, he texts Sepp.

            “Jonas… goats…” Wout murmurs groggily as Jonas pulls up on the driveway of the lodge. Jonas parks on the gravel lot and Wout sets his seat upright, the cap falling on his lap. He squints outside his window. “Where are we?”

            “A lodge,” Jonas answers, a goat bleats in the distance. “We’re both super tired. We should sleep on a bed, probably.”

            According to the GPS, they’re only halfway through their drive to Durango, but they’ve spent the majority of a 24-hour span in transit. It’s Jonas’ fault, anyway, for setting them off on such a time-consuming detour. Although this whole trip can be considered as one big detour.

            “Okay,” Wout says blinking, more alert now. “And the goats?”

            “It’s a farm, I think,” Jonas says, and he looks at the small herd that’s watching them from beyond the fence. He holds out his phone, showing Wout the email Sepp sent him, confirming their booking.

            “This says there’s only one bed,” Wout says.

            Jonas shrugs.

            “We’ve shared a bed before.”

            And Jonas means it innocently, they have— afternoon naps exhausted after a race, falling asleep on the day bed after a long day in altitude camp. But Wout clears his throat a few times before hopping out the car, walking over to the trunk.

            The owners greet them warmly, an elderly couple that owns the property they’ve named after the goats. As they were being checked in, the woman asks, “so what is it you two do?”

            “Cycling,” Wout answers for them, handling the interaction as easily as he always does. Predictably, his smile charms the couple easily.

            “Oh, how nice! Do you know Sepp Kuss from Durango?” She says excitedly. “He’s won a race! One of those big ones, I forget the name— not the Tour de France but somewhere else…”

            “In Spain,” Jonas fills in for her and the couple looked surprised that he spoke, having let Wout take over the pleasantries from the start, but he smiles at them. “Sepp is the best.”

            They return his smile.

            “Well then, your room is ready. It has a great view of the mountains,” the woman says, handing them the keys. “So, where are your bikes?”

            Jonas bites the inside of his cheek.

            “We’ll see them in Durango,” Wout says quickly. “Actually, we’re headed there.”

            “Oh, how nice!” the woman exclaims again. The sweetness of her voice begins to make Jonas feel queasy. “And you two have such fun accents, where are you from?”

            Jonas tunes out the rest of the conversation.

            When they make it to their room, Wout drops his suitcase unceremoniously and falls face first onto the bed, groaning into the pillow. It’s not unlike how he is when they were roommates in hotels, freshly showered, ready to collapse after a super hard stage. Many of those times, he wanted to run his fingers through Wout’s hair, pat the back of his head, and tell him how he did such a good job.

            He doesn’t hesitate this time.

            At Jonas’ touch, Wout hums contentedly, and it stirs something in him, something warm stemming from the pit of his stomach. In the middle of the US, he feels so far away from his real life, hours on endless roads in an unfamiliar continent. But Wout is here with him, and he looks the same, sounds the same, and smells the same. Jonas has felt so unmoored, has been lost since April, but here is Wout, as steady as an anchor. He promises to be something familiar.

            When Jonas starts to pull away, Wout catches his wrist. He turns his head, lifting it slightly so he can look up at Jonas who was standing bedside.

            “There’s only one bed; do you want me to sleep on the couch?”

            “Don’t be ridiculous,” Jonas answers.

            Wout smiles at him, easy and lazy, then drops his head on the pillow again. He re-places Jonas’ hand on his head, urging him to continue, and Jonas obliges, rubbing circles with his thumb on Wout’s temple. His eyes flutter close again, and soon enough, he falls asleep.

            Jonas feels too awake to follow him so he takes a shower first, his first real one since leaving the house, and hopes the warm water can wash away everything that he’s carried from Denmark—from Basque. He stares at himself in the mirror for too long, looking at his scars—some fresh, some old. No amount of washing can replace his body, can bring it back to the way it was before the crash. The knowledge sits on him with despair, like before, but it’s as if he’s cried out the well inside him, and now that he’s seen the bottom, he can see something that isn’t a tarpit, just fresh earth. He feels a little unmolded and brand new.

            Above his lip, a decent amount of fuzz has grown. Well at least he can change that. He takes the disposable razor and cheap foam from the sink and starts shaving his face. He nicks himself twice across his chin and watches as the blood surface on his skin. Maybe if he was still on that spiral, Jonas would think too much of it, but he knows that these types of cuts will come and go. There are those that don’t, but he’ll keep on living. He hasn’t figured it out yet, what it all means for him— for his body, for his career. But things do heal, one way or another: well or badly or otherwise.

            He exits the bathroom and sees that Wout is still asleep so after fishing some clothes from his suitcase, he takes a walk outside. He follows the sign pointing to a short, 30-minute trail that begins at the edge of the property. It’s a little more uphill than he was expecting and he struggles through the steepest parts, but he welcomes the burn this time, familiar and not foreboding, and when he reaches the top of the hill, he takes the view in. He doesn’t quite know where he is, but he can see a big, strong river flowing beyond the tops of the trees below him and snowy peaks a bit farther away. It’s a beautiful view, one would think that he’d be tired of such sights, that he’d seen more beautiful mountains—but he never is. In flat Denmark, he’s always longed for the mountains, so it’s easy for him to not take them for granted. He takes a picture and sends it to Sepp, accompanying it with a Thank you.

            When he continues the route, he finds that he’s circled back down to the goat farm. He enters the enclosure, figuring that walking through it is the fastest way back to the lodge. His phone vibrates in his pocket, it’s Sepp.

            No prob. How is Wout? Take it easy on him, yeah?

            Jonas frowns and wants to ask what he means by that but then he feels a small bump behind his thigh. He looks over and finds that one of the goats have taken interest in the brochure he had grabbed from the lodge common area and stuffed in his back pocket. He tries to shoo them away, walking through the field of grass. The goats follow.

            He stumbles upon a tree stump, almost tripping on its roots, before giving up and sitting on it, letting the goats have their way with the brochure, tearing it to pieces. They calm down soon enough and Jonas waits for them to leave but they don’t, settling around him, taking interest on the grass by his feet. Jonas watches them and reaches out to pat a few on the head. They’re a little weird, he thinks, rectangular pupils and all, but they’re cute, too, and they haven’t bitten him so that’s good. He absentmindedly stares at their unending chewing with a small smile on his face.

            Later, as the sun was setting, the goats scatter suddenly, and Jonas knows that Wout has found him.

            “You like it here?”

            “I like animals,” Jonas says and it’s true. He’s always been good with them, better at dealing with them than people.

            “How about becoming a farmer?” Wout asks, sitting next to Jonas, making space for them both on the small stump. “Or a fish monger? Maybe that suits you more.”

            “Maybe,” Jonas hums. He thinks about the fish factory in Thy, and how his father said that it’s good that he keeps his options open. Maybe he could’ve been a fish monger. Or, if not a cyclist, he could have stayed close as a mechanic or a soigneur. He could support people like Wout instead of having to bury themselves for Jonas at the top of every climb. Maybe that would be better.

            “I think I will be good with horses,” Wout says. Jonas looks at him doubtfully, thinking about how quickly he spooked the goats. But he imagines Wout riding on a saddle, sitting tall and handsome, gaining speed quickly as his horse gallops confidently. He’d be good, Jonas thinks. All terrain. “But then it would be weird, no? If you were a fish monger and I was a rancher?”

            “Would it?”

            “Maybe I should be a fisherman then,” Wout says, and Jonas can hear the smile in his voice. “And you check my catches.”

            “How’s that better?”

            “Well, I get to see you every day,” Wout says easily.

            “So, you want to stay close, still?” Jonas asks and he can’t help but smile, too.

            “Yeah,” Wout says and bumps his knees into Jonas’. “It would be good to be together.”

            Jonas closes his eyes, lets that warm feeling in his stomach grow. He leans closer and let his head rest on Wout’s shoulder. The temperature drops as the sun vanishes under the horizon and Wout is as warm and comforting as ever.

            “I want you to keep racing, though,” Jonas admits. Unfair, maybe, to say it now, when they’re so many miles away from where they should be, with training camp in Tignes threatening to start without them. “You’re really not doing the Tour?”

            “If you aren’t, then there is no point, no?”

            Jonas squeezes his eyes tighter, until it’s all staticky in his vision. He wants to pretend that it doesn’t all hinge on him, that he’s not the one who will make or break the team’s campaign for the year, for the biggest race in the world. But it does. He knows it does.

            “Do you want me to do it?” Jonas asks, then realizes that he’s afraid of the answer.

            Wout lets the silence fall as the sky turns a midnight blue. It will be difficult to get back to the lodge.

            “I want to be where you are,” Wout answers, and the sincerity in his voice makes Jonas cry. He wipes his tears away with the back of his hand. Wout doesn’t say anything, just stays as steady as ever, letting Jonas keep his weight on him.

            Take it easy on him, Sepp had said, and it makes him nervous to admit, that he knows, really, how much Wout loves him. He doesn’t think he deserves it, never thought he did, not when Wout would check up on him after races back when he couldn’t keep his food down. Not when Wout smiled at him from across the room when Richard made a particularly egregious pun. Not when Wout would gut himself on every mountain just so he could bring Jonas to the finish line. Faster than everyone, but not faster without Wout.

            Jonas’ job was to take, to be greedy for the win on the hardest sport there is, to have everyone else catch his wind and save his watts. But ever since Itzulia, all he wanted was to give, to give it all up. And because no one would let him, he ran away.

            And Wout is still there.

            Jonas turns to Wout, the moon casting shadows on the sharp lines of his jaw. He thinks, just time. Just give me a little more time. He strains his neck so he can place a kiss on Wout’s cheek and when he does, he remembers the same words that Wout said to the team. He realizes that Wout knows, he always knows what it is that Jonas needs.

            “You have to do two more,” Wout says, smiling as he points to his cheek. “Three is traditional.”

            Jonas laughs and obliges. In the tangled mess of his insides, he feels something unravelling.

            Wout’s constant shifting keeps him awake.

            “Hey now, go sleep,” Jonas murmurs. When he turns around to look at Wout, Jonas finds him very much awake and uncomfortable, almost twitchy and nervous at the edge of the king-sized bed. Jonas frowns, it’s unlike Wout to be like this, so he beckons him closer. “Come here.”

            Wout does so, hesitantly, and Jonas meets him halfway. He inches nearer until their legs can graze each other. Wout looks handsome in the moonlight, Jonas thinks to himself, and he reaches over to touch him. He slides his hands up from his neck so he can rest his palm on Wout’s cheek, almost on his ear. Jonas swipes his thumb on Wout’s temple, moving it in circles in hopes that it would work like earlier, that it’ll put Wout to sleep.

            But Wout lets out a shaky exhale instead.

            “It’s hard,” he says, quiet and a bit strained. “To sleep.”

            Jonas nudges closer to hear him better. He feels it then.

            Oh.

            “Oh,” Jonas says. He has vague memories of a similar sensation—post-race embraces and too-thin skinsuits. But never quite so… prominent and hard. Jonas pauses, slowly realizing that he’s the cause of this. He swallows, suddenly wide awake, thinking about how long it’s been for himself. His libido hasn’t exactly been stellar recently. But sometimes, it just takes a flick of a switch. And Jonas knows that, right now, he is very much on. Before he can stop himself, “I can—I can help you with that.”

            Wout looks at him, wide-eyed, and makes a motion to move away.

            “Jonas—”

            Jonas goes after him, not letting him create space, and leans forward to kiss him. Half-blind in the dark, he lands on Wout’s chin. Wout freezes and he continues, tracing his lips up Wout’s sharp jawline, peppering it with soft kisses until he reaches the space below his ear.

            “I want to,” Jonas says, voice low. And he’s so close, can hear Wout’s breathing grow shallow, his throat swallowing nervously. He can’t resist; he takes Wout’s earlobe between his teeth and tugs slightly. “Use me.”

            Wout groans loudly and in one, swift motion wraps his arms around Jonas body and pulls him close into a tight embrace. He captures one of Jonas’ thighs between his legs and Jonas can feel Wout’s erection pressing on him through his grey sweatpants. Wout doesn’t hesitate anymore and starts rutting against him desperately. It’s not what Jonas expected but it’s also a surprise how turned on Jonas is, how much he likes it: Wout’s rough movements as he chases his pleasure using Jonas’ body, the undeniable ache that echoes through him. Jonas can give him this.

            “Feel good?” Jonas asks and Wout gives him a desperate nod. He thinks, sorry Sepp, as he’s very decidedly not taking it easy on him. But it’s too intoxicating—there are many ways that Wout has shown his devotion—but this is too raw and physical. And he knows, exactly, how he can reward it.

            “Fuck, Jonas…” Wout growls and hearing his name like that makes Jonas’ blood rush, his own erection calling attention to itself.

            “What do you want, Wout?” Jonas asks, still by his ear, listening to the way his breathing gets ragged and uneven, as if he’s going flat out on a climb.

            “Kiss me—”

            So Jonas does, soft at first, cherishing the feeling of their lips meeting again. Then more frantic, harsher and more forceful, like they simultaneously realized that this is what they should have been doing all along. It’s their first kiss outside of those champagne-flavored nights, outside of team kits and the threat of their teammates on the other side of the wall. Their first kiss outside the excuse of a post-race adrenaline.

            And Jonas knows he loves him. Jonas loves him beyond what he gives him on a race, loves him beyond the brilliance that is his cycling. He loves him for taking him out of the shadows of his house, for being handsome and accidentally flirting with every receptionist there is, for being frightening to goats and imagining a Jonas that exists outside the bike.

            Jonas loves him and one day he’ll tell him but not yet, not when his heart strings are tangled up with every vicious cord in his life. For now, he just wants Wout to feel good.

            He slides a hand down Wout’s chest, feeling the soft fabric of his shirt, a hint of his tense muscles underneath. He pauses just below Wout’s abdomen and with a firm press of his palms, signals Wout to stop moving. He does, settling his hips, and he looks at Jonas with a questioning look, hazy and fascinated as Jonas begins to play with the hemline of his shorts.

            “You don’t have to,” Wout says, strained and breathy, not very convincing.

            Jonas responds with another kiss, slow and sultry, letting his mouth fall open slightly so Wout’s tongue can slip in, so he can taste him as much as he wants. Jonas’ hand drops further down until it’s underneath Wout’s boxers. He can’t believe it’s so easy—it’s too easy to have his hand around Wout, to have him hot and throbbing on his palm. Jonas feels through Wout’s entire length, and he swallows the moan that claws out of Wout’s throat.

            Jonas refocuses on the tip, pressing his thumb on the slit, spreading the precome on the head, before twisting his grip. Wout rips his mouth away from Jonas to whisper a chain of expletives into the air.

            Fuck, he hadn’t really imagined that Wout would be so vocal. He knows that now.

            “Have you thought this before?” Jonas doesn’t really know what compels him to ask, but he feels heady and a bit delirious, his mouth faster than his brain.

            “A lot,” Wout breathes. “A lot of times before.”

            In the darkness, Jonas can say so much more.

            “I do, too,” he admits and starts moving his hand in earnest—maybe a bit too frantic and uncoordinated and dry, but Wout tightens his embrace around him, almost crushing. His breath is fast and harsh against Jonas’ neck and the whimpers Jonas hears is driving him a little crazy. “I’ve thought about it—”

            “Yeah?” Wout asks with a slight bit of wonder. “What do you—what do you think about?”

            “Sometimes, in the same room…” Jonas starts softly against Wout’s skin. “But you’re on a different bed… sometimes I touch myself.”

            “Fuck Jonas.” Wout’s hips buck harshly, fucking into Jonas’ hand.

            “And I think that maybe—that maybe you catch me,” Jonas continues, and he feels the embarrassment burn his face, but he’s too turned on to shut up.

            “What do I do then? When I catch you.”

            Jonas swallows.

            “You… you fuck me,” Jonas whispers and he can feel Wout stop moving completely. “And you come inside.”

            There’s a moment of complete silence, the stillness of the night recapturing the air for a moment. Before Jonas can understand what’s happening, Wout has flipped him on his back, hovering over him with one hand pressing down on the space by his head. He takes Jonas’ hand, placing it back onto his cock, wrapping his own hand around Jonas’ so he can use it to jerk off. It doesn’t take long, Jonas can tell from Wout’s strained face, lower lip caught between his teeth, his brown eyes burning through him.

When he comes, he does it on Jonas’ stomach, spilling himself onto the exposed skin where Jonas’ shirt has hiked up, belly button showing. Jonas feels it warm and wet on him, sending full body shivers along his spine. He can almost follow right after.

            Wout collapses on top of him. Jonas snakes his arms around him and waits for his breathing to slow down.

            “Sorry,” Wout murmurs and makes a move to roll off but Jonas holds him in place, shaking his head. It’s a bit sticky and uncomfortable on his stomach but he likes it: the weight of Wout on top of him, bigger and heavier than him and almost completely limp, spent and panting like he’s seen him many times after races.

            “I like it—to make you feel good.” Jonas doesn’t say it out loud, after all you’ve done.

            “I want you to feel good, too,” Wout says in a rush. “I can feel your—”

            Jonas shakes his head again.

            “No, just stay like this.”

            Wout is quiet for a second, considering.

            “I don’t want to hurt you.”

            “You’re not going to,” Jonas hums. He starts moving his hand in circles on the space between Wout’s shoulder blades. He remembers how much he liked that when he was a kid, how fast it got him to sleep.

            “Okay,” Wout concedes, and Jonas can feel him begin to drift off. “But you have to do the stretching exercises properly – starting tomorrow.”

            Jonas laughs lightly, “Okay, I will.”

            If he’s being honest, there’s still a part of him that is paranoid, that this whole thing is the team’s ploy to get him back to doing the Tour again. But when he falls asleep, he dreams of a small house on a hill, the sea on a nearby horizon. The goats keep his grass short and ground fertilized.

            In Jonas’ dream, when he slides down the hill, the herd breaks his fall and nothing hurts. In his dream, Wout is waiting at the bottom, smiling and reaching a hand out to him. The goats aren’t afraid of him; they can eat all the brochures they want.

            They leave early the next day. He doesn’t feel more sore than usual and assumes Wout got off him a few moments after falling asleep. He still had that mess on his shirt, though, when he woke up, that was a bit too embarrassing to think about. He stuffed it at the bottom of his suitcase.

            They have breakfast in comfortable silence, not unlike how it is when they wake up in an unfamiliar hotel room in France, ready to eat the cooking of their staff. They smile at each other over their coffee cups and look out the distant mountain, contemplating its climb.

            The owners wave them off as they load the luggage in the car.

            “Oh, and Jonas!” The lady shouted, she pronounces his name with a hard J. “Please come back for the cheese-making workshop!”

            Jonas smiles shyly, then waves back.

            Wout is looking at him oddly when he slides into the driver’s seat. Jonas shrugs.

            “I took a brochure.”

            Wout starts the car, setting up the GPS in silence. It’s only when they’re back on the paved road that he chuckles.

            “Jonas the dairy farmer,” he says amusedly. “I like it. It suits you. Maybe better than the other stuff.”

            “Yeah?” Jonas doesn’t know if he means being a fish monger or a cyclist.

            “Definitely,” Wout answers. Then he adds, “maybe better to do in Denmark, though. I think the cheese in Europe is much better.”

            Jonas agrees, although the goat cheese that was served with their salad can put forward a compelling argument.

            “I think I’ll be good with cows, too,” Wout says.

            Jonas smiles and rolls down the window. He looks outside and allows the cool mountain air to fill his lungs.

            Their first agenda in Durango is to visit Sepp’s old development team.

            “You don’t have to go, you know,” Wout tells him after they’ve dropped off their luggage in a rental at the base of a mountain. It’s more luxurious than the goat farm, they have the whole lodge to themselves this time. “I just have to get our bikes.”

            So that’s where they are. Visma isn’t usually too keen on handing their gear to strangers, but Sepp probably vouched for them considerably. Also, an organization like Durango Devo has the kind of heartwarming philosophy that can win over someone like Grischa.

            “I want to go,” Jonas says and for the most part it’s because he isn’t too excited about being left alone in the big house. Another is that he hasn’t prepared himself yet, to be separated from Wout after what happened last night. For the rest of the drive, Jonas wanted to keep close contact and Wout indulges him, keeping their hands together on straight roads and rubbing the back of Jonas head periodically.

            “Okay, let’s go,” Wout says cheerfully. Jonas wants to kiss him again, knows that if he asks, Wout will. That’s why he’s always been careful about indulging himself, he knows how greedy he can get.

            For the most part, they’ve been able to move around the US inconspicuously. Jonas almost forgot that he was somebody—but in Durango, they get intrigued side eyes and excited whispers. And in Durango Devo, they were practically rockstars.

            The kids surround them as soon as they step in the building, and the first thing Jonas hears is:

            “No way, that’s Wout Van Aert! He’s a cyclocross LEGEND.”

            It makes Jonas smile, especially with how Wout immediately takes to the praise, hi-fiving some kids immediately.

            But soon enough, they spot him.

            “Omg Jonas, Jonas Vingegaard?”

            “He’s the Tour de France champion!”

            “They’re from Visma, Sepp’s teammates, that’s so cool!”

            Jonas looks around, feeling shy, the building is a small warehouse that seems to function first as a workshop with half-built bikes and a workstation set up with various bike tools. On the other side is an open space, a sort of makeshift classroom with a standing whiteboard situated in the corner. It has routes listed with a corresponding time and names of riders, and multiple reminders to Have fun!

            “Sorry,” says the girl who introduced herself as Reilly, one of the coaches of the program and a childhood friend of Sepp’s. “It got out to some of the kids that Seppie’s teammates were going to come over.”

            Behind her seems to be another coach with a chastised look on his face, he apologizes.

            Wout waves them off with a smile. He squats down to greet the shorter kids, and they immediately start asking about his hair. He tells them a lie about getting hit by lightning when he rode up a mountain while it was raining. Jonas catches the older kids, pre-teens if he would guess, roll their eyes. But still, they are buzzing with visible excitement, hanging on to Wout’s every word.

            “We’re sorry to cause such a fuss,” Jonas tells Reilly.

            “No, oh my god, we’re so honored!” she answers. “But I thought we were only going to see Wout today. Seppie didn’t mention you’d be the owner of the other bike.”

            “Your bike is here?” One of the older kids interjected, materializing close to Jonas. “Can we see it?”

            Reilly looks at him apologetically, but she also has that wide-eyed, excited look on her face, and really, Jonas doesn’t have the heart to curb their enthusiasm. Wout shoots him a look, wary, but Jonas gives him a lopsided smile, shrugging slightly before telling Reilly he can do that for them. She rushes to the back and Wout follows her, helping her roll the bikes out into the middle of the crowd of kids, and they part to let them through.

            Jonas walks over and unlatches the hard case of his bike, when he opens it, they all break out into an excited chorus of oohs and ahhs.

            “Wow a Cervélo!”

            “That’s an R5!”

            “That cost like, a million dollars.”

            “No way, that’s too much!”

            “With the SRAM gears, too. Electronic.”

            “It’s yellow, like mine!”

            Jonas exhales loudly and looks at his bike, realizing he hasn’t really looked at one since he abandoned his on the trainer at home, and he didn’t anticipate how it would affect him. Nausea hits him, a bit sick with emotion, suddenly brought back to the moment where he thought he’d lost it all, when he was crawling in a panic on his floor and thought he would never get up.

            He thinks about where that has brought him, ultimately: in a room of lifelong cyclers and enthusiastic kids who ride for the hell of it. Wout by his side and his bike in front of him, in pieces.

            “Can we help you build it?” One of the kids ask, a young girl, he thinks. It’s an innocent enough question, but it pulls him out of his stupor. “Or we could just watch. Please.”

            Jonas stays silent for too long, maybe enough to leave the air slightly uncomfortable for everyone. Wout interjects.

            “Uh, sorry, I don’t know if we have time—”

            “It’s okay,” Jonas says, and he looks up at Wout who is staring at him with a questioning gaze. Jonas nods at him once. “I want to build it.”

            Wout’s expression softens, then with his signature smile, addresses everyone:

            “Okay, who wants to ride with me?”

            The room explodes into loud cheers.

            “Is that okay?” Jonas asks Reilly. She nods enthusiastically.

            “Are you kidding? This is amazing!”

            “I will borrow a mountain bike, yes?” Wout says to her, and she gives him a thumbs up. “I will teach these kids how to kick up some dirt.”

            More cheering and Wout takes to it, laughing with them. He sends a wink Jonas’ way.

            Reilly tells the kids that those who want to ride with Wout can follow her outside and those who want to watch Jonas can stay in the warehouse. The kids all ponder this decision with an exaggerated agony which Jonas finds endearing. But most of them end up following Wout and he can’t blame them. He finds it easier, actually, and he knows Wout did it for him.

            He’s a bit awkward with the kids but those who stayed seem to be the quieter ones of the bunch. They remind him of himself, when he was younger, when he fell in love with the bike and was super eager to figure out the mechanics of it—which parts he can tinker with, how to make the machine suit him the most.

            He has the kids hold up the frame, telling them it’s best not to let it touch the floor and to always try and respect your bike. He latches the first wheel on.

            “Can you pass me that key?” Jonas says to one of the silent kids in their group. She was sitting the closest to Jonas, fully invested in him working on the bike, and he can tell she was about thirteen years old.

            “Why did you attack Sepp in the Vuelta?”

            Okay, maybe not too silent. The question catches him off-guard, that Vuelta both felt so long ago and so fresh in his mind, the familiar interrogation, too, and he stutters for a few moments. The kid stares at him with wide-eyed curiosity. Maybe a slight suspicion. When he first arrived, he never thought that he’d be regarded with any level of animosity here. But then again, Sepp is a local hero. The Eagle of Durango.

            “Didn’t you want him to win?” She probes.

            “Of course I wanted him to win,” Jonas answers.

            “Then why did you?”

            Jonas has always been weak to precocious children. He once was, too, he was told. And if he looks back at that time, he thinks that the only thing he ever wanted was to be told the truth.

            “I didn’t want Primož to win.”

            She looks surprised for a second and then a wide, knowing smile spread on her face. She seems to accept his answer and passes him the Allen key, nodding as if to say that he can continue his work. He does so obediently. Yeah, it is difficult for him to deal with these too-clever children.

            When Wout returns with the others, dirtier than he should be in that span of time, Jonas was letting his small group take turns on his bike. Wout looks at him, surprised, but all Jonas can think of is the tightening he felt in his chest, when he saw Wout with the children, their clearly admiring faces directed at him. All back together, the excited noises multiply, now with stories to tell each other. The group with Wout look at the bikes with loud enthusiasm while telling each other how fast they went and how Wout was so much faster.

            “Time to say goodbye to Wout and Jonas!” Reilly exclaims, taking control. The groans of disappointment that follow can probably be heard to the next town.

            “Will Jonas ride with us next time?”

            Jonas catches the odd look Reilly gives him before answering.

            “I’m not so sure if they have time, but you have to thank Jonas for showing you his bike.” She says it in a way that makes Jonas think that Sepp might have told her too much about his situation. He tries not to take it personally.

            After many thank yous, the kids leave in groups, with the older ones planning their route back home. Reilly goes with the bunch that will be picked up in the parking lot behind the building.

            When it’s just him and Wout, he walks over to him so he can wipe the dirt off his cheek with his thumb. Wout smiles at him brightly.

            “How did you get this dirty so fast?”

            “They have some fun trails here.”

            Jonas shakes his head amusedly.

            “We built your bike, if you don’t mind.”

            “It’s fine,” Wout shrugs, turning to look at their bike, two yellow Cervélos, standing side-by-side. “I guess we should take them apart again.”

            “No,” Jonas says, realizing his hand is still on Wout’s face. He drops it on his side. “We can ride back.”

            “Really?” Wout asks and Jonas can hear him trying to disguise his excitement. He leans back on his heels a few times and Jonas can see how the bottom of Wout’s denim pants is covered in dust.

            “Just a short ride,” Jonas says.

            Wout smiles that small secret smile that Jonas likes to think is for him only.

            “A short ride.”

            It is a short ride, just ten kilometers, and in Colorado, the sun sets beautifully, painting the sky in reds and pinks and purples. Wout paces the whole way, too delicate for both of them, but Jonas realizes he misses this, too. He opens and closes his palm on the handles, not knowing if he can fully trust his bike again. But he remembers the kids that helped him hold the frame, and eagerly watched him put his bike together piece-by-piece, and thinks, how could he not?

            Jonas does as he’s promised and lets Wout guide him through the different exercises the team’s physical therapist wanted him to do. It didn’t differ too much from the mobility exercises they would do regularly, with a few additional ones that Wout has learned from his rehab.

            They even set up a home trainer on the balcony of their too-big lodge. Jonas suspects the they is Visma. But he can’t lie, it’s the perfect place for it: the balcony doors open to a view of the nearby river that provides the ambient noise of the landscape, with fir trees lining up the base of the hill next to it. The stark greens of the slopes in front of him contrast with the hazy blue of the high mountains in the background, snowy peaks peeking through the dips of the hill.

            Nice, eh? Wout said when they first arrived. Jonas could only agree, telling him, “No goats but it will do.”

            They settle into something that resembles a routine. They wake up, make breakfast from whatever they find in their generously stocked fridge, some suspiciously pre-weighed portions of yogurt mixes or overnight oats. They idle about in the morning, Jonas taking time before fully feeling like a person, then Wout takes the lead in their daily exercises. Afterwards, Jonas rides on the trainer and Wout goes out for longer rides.

            Jonas knows he should ask Wout about his season, if he’s missing races for this, for him. But he doesn’t, chucking the unspoken questions onto the pile of convoluted mess in his heart. For Jonas program, there is only the shadow cast by the monolith of July.

            When Wout returns in the afternoon, he tells Jonas about his ride without prompt, and Jonas nods along as Wout gives his assessment of the routes and comments on his encounters with people—mostly kids from the Durango Devo program who try their best to keep up with him.

            “Some of them keep trying to race me,” Wout says, a playful annoyance in his tone. “They remind me a bit of Tadej. Or maybe Remco. Which might be worse.”

            Jonas laughs. Wout offers him a pastry he’s picked up from, according to him, the only place with fucking decent bread, and Jonas accepts. His lunch was a reheated Tupperware of brown rice and chicken breast. Wout probably ate outside.

            For the most part, Jonas wastes time, walking along the river or through the forest. Sometimes he reads through a collection of Romantic English poems from a dusty book that he found on the shelf in a forgotten corner of the house. He isn’t sure if he understands it, but he likes saying the words out loud— most of them are about nature and he feels a connection to such things, although he doesn’t think he can ever wax lyrical himself. He takes naps on the daybed on the balcony and looks up the kind of mountain goats they have in Durango. He wonders if they’d be hard to find.

            One afternoon, sitting on a large rock by the river, not too far from the property, Jonas contemplates if he’s really doing anything different than he is when he was in Glyngøre. If he’s different, if anything has changed at all. He is still petrified at the prospect of doing the Tour and he can’t stay on his bike for more than a few hours. He picks up a rock and throws it into the river, trying to make it bounce off the water. It’s not flat enough to skip, so he just watches it sink under the current.

            “Jonas?” The sound breaks him out of his reverie.

            Oh, he thinks, maybe this is what is different.

            Jonas turns to Wout standing a few feet away, sunglasses perched on top of his head. From this view, he looks tall, handsome, and wonderful. Jonas smiles at him, Wout smiles back.

            “Is it time for dinner?”

            “Hmm. Soon, maybe.” Wout considers, assessing the sky. He walks down the bank to reach Jonas. “What are you reading?”

            Jonas lets him take the book from his hands.

            “La Belle Dame Sans Merci,” Wout says in perfect French. “Do you know what that means?”

            “Of course,” Jonas rolls his eyes, he’s spent enough time in France.

            “O what can ail thee, Knight at arms, Alone and palely loitering?” Wout continues, reading dramatically from the book. “Are you understanding any of these?”

            Jonas shrugs, “I’m trying.”

            “A knight, huh,” Wout hums. Jonas recalls the image of Wout on a horse, expertly galloping by. He’ll look even better with a sword.

            He thinks, maybe that’s the only thing he has, the knowledge that will Wout always find him. Maybe that’s the only thing that has changed—that he isn’t alone.

            They kiss a lot in the dark, the sunset shifts the mood, and Jonas finds it difficult to be apart from him. He lingers as Wout cooks dinner and leans up on him on the couch. He presses his weight onto Wout and steal kisses as they clean up. Wout keeps his cool, his responses very PG until it gets too much, and then he’s pushing Jonas against the wall, hands grasping tightly at his waist and tongue in his mouth. Whatever task they were supposed to be doing, forgotten. Jonas breathes a sigh of relief whenever he does, feeling how much Wout wants him is enough to satisfy him, to keep the greedier parts of himself at bay.

            They usually end up on the couch, Wout without his shirt on, and Jonas finds that he likes kissing along his torso. In Jonas’ explorations of Wout, he finds that a lot of their scars mirror each other: same points of surgery, same pale numb lines where the doctors have cut them open. How could he hate it, then, his own marked body—it would mean he would hate Wout’s, and he can never do that.

            Wout’s hands grasp at him tightly, pulls their bodies flush together, lifts him up by his ass so he can straddle Wout on the couch. Jonas feels the hardest he’s ever been, kissing him like this, bodies slotted in so perfectly that he can feel that Wout is just as turned on. But Wout doesn’t try to do more, doesn’t do more than kissing him until his jaw hurts and his lips are swollen, doesn’t do more than whisper in his ear, how much he wants him, has wanted him all this time.

            “I’m sorry,” Jonas says, “That we don’t—I’m not yet—”

            “It’s okay,” Wout answers. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want, Jonas.”

            And Jonas can tell him now, I love you. But he doesn’t, not with a heart that he can’t look at and a body that he can’t trust. He rolls off Wout, landing on the space beside him. Wout follows him with his lips, kissing Jonas’ neck. Jonas doesn’t mean to act so virginal when he isn’t, it’s just—it’s been a while. And he’s not really a casual sex guy (although sometimes, with all the travel, it’s the only choice), but it’s Wout. Jonas is not really known for keeping cool in the face of the enormity of everything. And he has the sinking suspicion that Wout can be exactly that: everything. It’s overwhelming.

            “Can I watch you?” Jonas asks and Wout lifts an eyebrow at him. He pulls at the hemline of Wout’s sweatpants, bringing it down with his underwear. Wout doesn’t say anything, just leans back on the couch and smirks at him.

            “Pervert.”

            Jonas rolls his eyes and pulls on the fabric further until Wout’s cock springs free. Wout is still smug, sporting his nudity confidently. And he should be, really, Jonas thinks, it looks good—maybe too good if he imagines it inside—

            “Wout—can you?” Jonas asks again and Wout reaches for the bottle of lube that he doesn’t remember Wout buying but they’ve left unabashedly on the couch. “I didn’t see it well that night.”

            Somehow, Wout smiles grows, wider and wilder and he makes a show of dripping lube on his hard cock before wrapping his large hand around it. He does it slow, looking straight at Jonas, and with the lights on, Jonas thinks he might be in over his head—he leans in takes Wout’s lips lest he ends up visibly drooling.

            “Do you want to help again?” Wout asks when they separate. He doesn’t seem playful anymore, just someone who’s really, really turned on. Jonas nods, and Wout takes his hand with his own, wet and sticky, and guides him back to his cock. Jonas kisses him again, sloppy and desperate and Wout responds in kind. Wout speeds up his movement. Jonas feels like his hand is burning, body on fire, he can’t help it and he pushes himself closer to Wout’s side, pressing his erection against Wout’s thigh. Wout makes a strangled noise in his mouth that Jonas swallows in his throat and next thing he knows is Wout is pouring onto his hand, hot and pulsing.

            “I thought,” Wout breathes heavily, “you wanted to watch.”

            Jonas feels too turned on for his teasing and asks instead, “do you?”

            And at Wout’s dumbfounded expression, Jonas gathers the mess Wout made on him and pulls down his pants with his other hand. He works himself, using the residual lube and Wout’s cum to make the process smoother. He doesn’t last long at all, coming at the sight of Wout’s glazed, astonished face. He looks at Jonas like he’s seeing god.

            Later in bed, Wout holds him tight against his chest. He thinks he hears it, although it might just be the echo of his own heartbeat, I love you.

            “You crashed, right?” Layla asks, the brooding kid from when they first reassembled his bike. Today, Jonas decided to come with Wout to Durango Devo, driving to their base, and is immediately accosted by their dear precocious children. “Is that why you don’t ride your bike with us?”

            “I—” Jonas doesn’t really know how to answer. The older kids have already left with Wout, Jonas was left with the young ones who don’t really care about who he is, just Wout’s cool hair. And Layla, whose mom was going to pick her up.

            “I saw it on YouTube,” she interrupts his thoughts. “It was brutal.”

            “I’m okay now,” Jonas tells her, and it only feels like half a lie.

            “Was it scary?” She asks, mercifully, a little gentler this time.

            “Yes—super scary,” he says, and he tries not to let those flash of memories grip him fully, the scenes that replay in his head. He holds his tears in successfully this time, at least having the wherewithal not to cry in front of the kids. He wants them to love cycling, he really does.

            “Did you cry a lot?”

            “Yes,” Jonas admits.

            “My mom said that’s okay,” Layla says easily. “They used to say boys shouldn’t cry but they don’t do that anymore. So, it’s okay if you do.”

            Jonas can’t help but laugh a little.

            “Thank you,” he looks outside to where Wout has ridden off, up a nearby hill.

            “What was the scariest part?” she asks, seeming unable to help herself.

            Jonas can tell her the first thing that comes to his mind: being alone. Spending those first few days in the ICU by himself because he told his parents not to come. The rest of the team still had races to do, trying to scramble together a season with something to show for. Ultimately, his sister did go to him after a few days to help bring him back to Denmark, and he was thankful that she didn’t see him in his worst state: bleeding through the hospital bed, tubes in his lungs, his skin falling off when they turned him on the bed. But in those few days, a form of loneliness seemed to have embedded itself under his skin, one that he couldn’t quite shake off. It slowly sunk in deeper in Glyngøre, before Wout found him.

            He doesn’t tell her that. He tells her something else that is true.

            “Not being able to get back on the bike,” he says honestly. “I’ve crashed before and the first thing I do always is get up, then back on the bike. When I crashed in April, it was scary because I couldn’t move.”

            “You wanted to get up.”

            “Of course.”

            “To get back on your bike.”

            “I always want to get back on the bike.”

            “Then why aren’t you?” Layla asks innocently. When Jonas doesn’t answer, she bows her head, chastised. “Sorry, you don’t have to tell me.”

            “Why are you apologizing?”

            “Because you look like you’re about to cry.”

            Jonas blinks a few times and realizes that he is. He pauses, feeling a bit embarrassed that he’s being tugged around the conversation by this kid.

            “Do you like riding bikes?” Jonas asks. It’s a bit of a sneaky trick used by grownups, redirection.

            “I do,” she answers. “I really do.”

            “Then why aren’t you riding with them?” Jonas asks, motioning towards the path where Wout and the other kids her age rode off.

            It takes her a few seconds to answer.

            “Because I’m not good at riding with others,” she admits, sounding shy again, like that kid he first met, watching him earnestly as he rebuilt his bike.

            “That’s okay,” Jonas says, considering.

            “Really?” she asks, surprised.

            “Of course, riding alone can be fun. Many times, I ride alone,” he answers. “But sometimes, I want to go far— much, much farther than I can go alone. So, I start riding with others.”

            “Yeah?”

            “Yes, and you know what I realize?” Jonas asks and he can see her full attention on him. “That sometimes, other people are the best part.”

            Layla frowns, thinking about what he said. Jonas thinks that she might not believe him, but it feels right anyway, saying it. He can see Wout’s group coming back from afar, can see him smiling easy as he lets the kids chase after him.

            “Will you ride with me, then?” she asks.

            Jonas smiles, “Okay.”

            “It’s a great program,” Jonas tells Wout back in the lodge. Jonas is on the loveseat, drinking tea by the fireplace with a blanket over him. It’s a cold night.

            “Maybe we do something like that, then?” Wout says, walking over to place himself next to Jonas. Wout says it easily like he how he talked about the horses and dairy farming. That vague future where they’re happy and together. On a night like this, Jonas thinks that he’s pulling the string that brings them closer to that.

            “All the kids like you better, though,” Jonas says and puts his hand on Wout’s forehead so he can push his hair back. “Must be the hair.”

            “Okay then,” Wout says seriously. “I take care of the children and you, the goats.”

            And Jonas can’t help but kiss him.

            “Do you want to go for a ride tomorrow?” Jonas says quietly after pulling away, Wout has that dreamy, starry-eyed look on his face whenever Jonas kisses him. “Not a short one.”

            “Really?” Wout asks after the question sinks in. Jonas nods. Wout kisses him again and Jonas can feel the smile on his face. “Are you finally going to drop me on the mountains?”

            “Maybe I will,” Jonas says, resting his head on Wout’s shoulder, preparing to settle in.

            “Only if you go mountain biking with me.”

            Jonas lifts his head up immediately, looking at Wout incredulously.

            “You are serious.”

            “Of course,” Wout answers, that wide smile on his face, and makes a move to kiss Jonas who dodges his lips.

            “And when I bounce off a cliff and die? What will you say to Grischa?”

            Wout rolls his eyes and, too easily, pulls Jonas up his lap. He holds Jonas tighter as he tries to squirm away.

            “You will not die,” he says laughing a little bit. “Come on, Jonas.”

            “The team will not approve,” Jonas says. “I thought you were supposed to get me back on the Tour.”

            Wout’s face changes immediately, his smile dropping.

            “No,” Wout says, gravely. It makes Jonas feel a bit cold despite the fire raging on beside him. “That’s not why I’m here, Jonas. Is that—is that what you think?”

            And Jonas can tell him that he was only making a joke, that he should not think of it so seriously. But he realizes that answer is yes, even if it was only a small part of him, a part that shrinks every day, with every kiss. There is a yes.

            “Then why did you appear, Wout?”

            And from his clear brown eyes, Jonas knows that he hurt him.

            “I told you,” he says carefully. “You weren’t answering your phone.”

            “And because of that—just that—you go all the way to Glyngøre?”

            “Jonas, fuck—don’t you get it?” Wout asks, then takes a second to rub his temple with his fingers. “You crashed.”

            “You did, too—”

            “You crashed,” Wout starts again. “I was watching the race, and you crashed. You don’t get up, you don’t move. And I wanted so much to fly there but they wouldn’t let me, of course. I wanted to be there by your side, not shouting at Grischa on the phone!”

            “Wout…”

            “And they tell me, you recover so well, that you were doing all the exercise like me. But then suddenly you disappear. You don’t reply and I force them to tell me, and they tell me that you don’t talk to them, too.” Wout closes his eyes tight, like he’s trying to fight off the worst parts of a bad memory. And Jonas knows what it is, knows what it looks like from his point of view. He just never considered how it would be, for someone else. “They told me not to go, they told me to focus on my recovery, that I needed to race soon but I can’t—I can’t do it again, Jonas. I can’t… not know.”

            “I’m…” Jonas starts, not really knowing what to say, what to feel. Hating himself, maybe, for being so selfish all this time, for only thinking of himself. Or feeling so loved that there’s been someone who fights so fiercely for him to not be alone. For some reason, he thinks of the poem: O what can ail thee, Knight at arms, Alone and palely loitering?  “I’m sorry, Wout.”

            “You always—even before, you always look like you would disappear suddenly. That one day you’ll ride away into a tall, tall mountain and never come back.”

            They both fall silent, the only sound coming from the river outside. Jonas doesn’t know what to do but to slowly reach towards him so he can cup Wout’s face with both his hands. Wout turns his head, kissing Jonas’ open palm. Jonas’ heart aches, so tender, and moves in for a kiss and Wout lets him. Even if he’s been selfish and inconsiderate, Wout lets him, forgives him so easily. And he can say it now, I love you.

            “I’m here,” Jonas says, instead. “I’m here now.”

            Wout looks at him for a moment with searching eyes before wrapping Jonas in a tight embrace. Jonas can feel it, Wout’s body trembling slightly as hot tears fall on his face. It soaks the fabric on his shoulder.

            “You’re here,” he says, almost a whisper.

            Jonas holds on tighter.

            He texts Sepp: Sorry about Dauphine, that sucks.

            He heard the news from the Devo kids before Wout could tell him. It makes him feel guilty, for being so out of the loop, with his teammates, his friends. Too caught up in his own crisis. But the cycling world continues to move forward, even without him.

            Sepp replies a few hours later. It does, really. Then follows up with another: Reilly told me you were riding again.

            Jonas answers: It’s because I can drop the kids easy.

            Sepp: Try them on gravel ;)

            So Jonas does.

            Not without protest, and it takes a lot of coercion from Wout, saying that it isn’t fair that he’s only been on the road with the kids and that he should meet them on “their turf.”

            Aside from group rides with the kids, Jonas still does his full program, going on long training rides with Wout—realizing quickly, that no matter how beautiful the view, he’s never been a home trainer kind of guy. He prefers a changing scenery and a mountain that moves closer and closer. He prefers the wind pushing against him, singing in his ear.

            Tim, his coach, can’t really complain; Durango has a higher elevation than Tignes.

            He follows Wout up the gravel path and he remembers immediately why he hates it. But the mountain bike suspensions save him from the worst of it, can’t remember the last time he rode one. Most of the kids are in front of them, following the two coaches that are leading the escapade. But he can feel a couple of them marking him from behind and he thinks he sees the kid that Wout calls mini-Tadej. It’s cute, really.

            Wout leans over to Jonas.

            “Go for it,” he says and looks behind him. “I’ll keep them honest.”

            Jonas makes a show of tightening his shoelaces, feeling the buzz of excitement bubble behind him as they whisper among each other: he’s going to do it, he’s gonna go. While the road is still wide and clear on one side, he looks back once to wink at his chasers before taking off, riding on the left side of group. He drops them easily, of course, riding flat-out to the top, and soon enough he loses even the sound of their shouting and frustrated voices telling him to slow down.

            At the top of the climb, he gets off his bike and sits on a boulder that looks out towards the ridges of the taller mountains. When he sees them, they’re hopping along a nearby cliff.

            Jonas watches the family of goats expertly navigate through the steep rocks, jumping from one small protrusion to the other, climbing without hesitation, making easy the mountainside. They catch him staring and pause to look at him before going along their way.

            When Wout arrives, he brings the young peloton with him, along with the other coaches. Mini-Tadej and mini-Remco swears that they almost got him. Wout laughs, patting both their helmets, before walking over to sit beside Jonas. Wout smiles at him before looking at the view.

            “They’re not for the farm, no?” Wout asks and Jonas turns to where Wout is pointing to. Two goats at the top of the cliff, successful on their climb.

            “I don’t think so,” Jonas answers. “They will miss the mountains too much.”

            Visma is very much not happy that Jonas’ first public outing on a bicycle is him riding recklessly through a gravel road in the middle of the USA. Although the most incised party might be their bike sponsor.

            Jonas has seen the video, him on a scratched and dusty mountain bike that was almost too large for him, going full gas, off his seat as he zooms past a group of young riders who are both cheering him on and trying to run after him. Laughter can be heard everywhere, including Wout’s which was recognizable off-screen. He hadn’t realize that one of kids had a camera mounted on his bike.

            “Good, right?” the kid called Kyle said when he showed him the clip at the top of the climb.

            “You made me look cool,” Jonas said although he wasn’t sure how true it was considering that he was racing a bunch of children. But he did look good, in form. Kyle looked up at him with a big, excited smile.

            “So you like it?” he asked. “All good?”

            “Yeah, all good,” Jonas said, not really knowing what he was agreeing to.

            He catches Wout on the tail-end of a conference call as he exits the shower and he waits behind the wall. The other participants exit one by one until it’s only Wout and Grischa left. They’ve been talking in Dutch and Jonas can only understand parts of it—he hears Grischa’s voice, slightly grainy from the laptop speakers: He’s back on the bike, yeah? That’s good, that’s good. And you, Wout? You got what you wanted?

            Before Wout can answer, Jonas hears an excited crackling and Grischa speaking to him.

            “Is that Jonas? Jonas—Jonas!!”

            Wout turns around, sees him, and there isn’t really a point in escaping, so he turns the corner, emerging from where he had been eavesdropping. With only a towel around his waist, he walks over to the laptop. He leans down until he sees himself appear on the corner of the screen.

            “Ah! Long time, no see, my little warrior!”

            “Hallo Grischa,” Jonas says and finds that he doesn’t have to force himself to smile. He supposes, he’s missed this, too.

            “How are you doing? Anything hurt? The bike okay?”

            “It’s all okay, Grischa,” he chuckles.

            Grischa nods meaningfully, growing quiet. Jonas recognizes Grischa’s office behind him, the calendar marked for their camp that will start in a few days. He doesn’t know if his name is on there. And he thinks he can guess what Grischa wants to ask him the most.

            “Stay healthy, okay? You and Wout. That is the most important thing,” he says instead, seeming to rein himself in. Jonas smiles, soft now, and nods. “Anyway, Cervélo wanted to know if you want one. Uh, a mountain bike.”

            He receives a series of texts from Nathan that begins with a screenshot of a cycling rag that had saved the video before it got deleted. The headline: WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR JONAS VINGEGAARD AND VISMA? GRAND TOURS NO LONGER A PRIORITY?

            Paris-Roubaix next year? I’ll come out of retirement for you.

            Between my heart and your lungs, we podium, for sure.

            Please next time you go on a trip, invite me, too!

            Also, do take it easy on Wout.

            Jonas rolls his eyes as he reads the last text, was he such a tyrant when he was a leader?

            Wout takes his phone from him, tossing it aside, to be forgotten on the couch, so he can keep kissing Jonas, tongue tracing down his neck to his collarbone so he can leave more unseemly bruises on his torso. Jonas tries not to think about how much Grischa had seen through the webcam.

            He likes the way Wout touches him, gentle where Jonas wants him to be, forceful where he needs him to be. Greedy in the way that Jonas likes to encourage, a hunger he can satiate with letting Wout scrape at his ribs with his teeth, draw circles on his nipples with the pads of his fingers. It feels good, Jonas feels good in his body. The same body that was broken on the bottom of a Basque mountain, being put back together by Wout’s own hands.

            And when he rewards him later, a cushion under Jonas’ knees, on the floor in front of the day bed, his lips wrapped around Wout’s hard, pulsing erection—when Wout pulls at his hair slightly as he comes, Jonas lets the taste of him coat his tongue, dribble down his chin, he gazes up at Wout’s who is looking at him with that glazed look, he swallows. Out in the balcony, for all the mountains and rivers to see.

            Wout’s legs twitch and he lets his head fall backwards. He sighs, “fuck Jonas. So good.”

            Jonas thinks, see? So easy.

            On their last day in Durango, they pass by the Devo base before they go. When they get there, the youngest ones are already crying.

            “Sorry about the Instagram post,” Kyle apologizes, approaching Jonas. He has the camera on his hand. “We took it down already but—”

            Jonas reaches over and pats his helmet.

            “It was super cool video,” Jonas says. “Next time, when I get my own mountain bike, maybe we can film more.”

            “You’re coming back here?” Kyle says, not really sounding like he believes it. Jonas figures it isn’t a secret how the past weeks have been an anomaly for him. Kyle cheers himself up. “Well, it doesn’t matter. When I grow up, I’ll go to Europe, and I’ll film all the big cyclists!”

            For a second, the enthusiasm makes him think of Tadej, kind of understanding the idea of a personal photographer.

            “Maybe when you grow up, you can stick to my wheel, yeah?” Jonas answers cheekily. Kyle looks like he wants to argue, and Jonas can only laugh at the young one’s antics. Then he feels a tug at his sleeve, and he turns to see Layla signaling for him to lean down. When he does, she cups his hands over his ear.

            “Are you going to do the Tour?” she asks, whispering. “You don’t have to win; I just want to be able to see you on TV.”

            He looks at her, contemplating. He whispers something back and Jonas can see her eyes widen.

            “It’s a secret, though,” Jonas tells her, putting a finger on his lips. “You can’t tell anyone until July."

            She mimics the gesture.

            "Okay, I promise."

            They have a long drive ahead of them, and soon after, a tight series of flights and layovers. On the driver seat, Wout is as handsome as ever, dazzling and all he could ever want. Jonas reaches out, tracing the hair above his ears. It’s getting long. His is, too. They’ll probably need haircuts soon. Wout turns to him and smiles contentedly, he wonders if there’s a way to get him to look at Jonas like that forever.

            They’ll separate in Frankfurt and Jonas will fly back to Denmark where he’ll visit his parents in Thy for a couple of days. Maybe he’ll drop by his old club, talk to the kids there.

            Wout invited him to stay in Belgium afterwards and Jonas took him up on the offer.

            With their current plans, they’ll probably only miss four days of training camp. He hasn’t decided yet if it matters, ultimately.

            “So what were you whispering about back there?” Wout asks. “You and the kid.”

            “A secret.”

            Wout shakes his head, chuckling.

            After driving through the valley, the sky breaks open, and a golden light shines through the windshield, bouncing off the dashboard. It sets everything aglow, hazy and warm, and the motion of the car begins to lull Jonas to sleep. But before he does, he wants to tell Wout one, too— a secret.

            “I love you.”

            Wout laughs, tender, he reaches over to take Jonas’ hand in his.

            “I know, Jonas,” he says. “I know.”