Work Text:
November, 2010
The biggest learning curve in Sam’s currently-very-short road cycling career is trying to figure out how to ride with another person next to him.
The biggest learning curve in George’s equally-very-short road cycling career appears to be the time trial.
“I fucking hate this,” George complains audibly, wobbling on the boards.
They’re in the Cambridge velodrome, kit-testing their bikes. George’s skinsuit somehow makes him look even skinnier than his usual lycra, and the massive point of the aero helmet gives him a bobble-headed look. The flat of the track isn’t flat enough for him, clearly, as he overcorrects and manages to stick his foot out just in time. The team doesn’t have the budget for things like time in a wind tunnel, like the big Euro teams are starting to do, which means that George’s first encounter with the too-light time trial bike is on the gentle cant of the velodrome.
“Don’t be a wuss,” Sam calls back.
His own bike testing had gone smoothly, all his data from the national track team adapting easily to the road time trial. He could have headed out for a coffee, but George had looked at him like a kicked puppy, and so Sam had stuck around for moral support.
George keeps his foot planted on the ground. “I’ve never ridden anything like this, why the fuck is it all slippery and vertical and shit?”
Sam has a quick glance around - the PureBlack staff are still plugged into their laptops, deep in the data like it’s fascinating - and puts his helmet back on, trundling his bike back onto the boards.
“What’s got you in a fucking tizz, huh?”
George presses his lips together so hard they turn white, and Sam can feel his gaze through the tinting of his visor. “I’m really fucking uncomfortable with this, Sam.”
And then, said so quietly that Sam nearly misses it: “This is scary.”
“You’re trying to tell me this is scarier than doing your downhill shit?”
“Yes, absolutely,” George says, and Sam knows from the exasperation in his tone that he’s poked a bit too far.
“Okay, alright,” Sam clicks one of his shoes into the pedals, “we’ll start from square one.”
They skip the stuff about how to fall on the track - George falls in way worse ways all the time - and move straight into following the dark line at the base of the banking, pedalling evenly, moving from the handlebars into the aero bars. It’s a couple of laps before George is able to awkwardly fold himself down into a passable tuck, and another lap before Sam decides he doesn’t need to be pacing anymore, swinging off and cruising down towards the infield.
George keeps going.
It’s an achievement second only to Sam’s bronze medal, possibly superseding it - George Bennett, downhill mountain bike specialist, upright and clocking consistently terrible lap times. He’s only slightly unsteady through the corners, and he definitely has the posture of a beginner, but he is riding a time trial bike and he is riding it in a way that would not make a coach weep tears of inconsolable misery.
Sam cheers like he’s on the roadside at a grand tour, cleats clacking on the floor as he half-runs carefully alongside George for a few metres. One of the staff previously glued to a laptop looks up, decides this isn’t his problem, and re-glues himself to the histogram ticking away on the screen.
Sam’s cleat skids, and he staggers, wobbles, and catches himself on the barrier to the infield.
George grins, turns to look back at him, wobbles, and tumbles spectacularly onto the blue band.
He’s red raw all up his left leg between his shorts and his sock, sitting bemusedly with his bike beside him and his legs splayed straight out in front of him. He looks a little shell-shocked, shaken up, and Sam thinks he’s broken until George starts laughing, and then Sam’s convinced he’s in shock and needs one of those tinfoil blankets they keep in the serious first aid kit.
But George picks himself up from the floor, gingerly touches the grazed skin on his leg, and click-clacks over the boards to pick up his bike.
March, 2013
Sam has somehow managed to live the vast majority of his life a stone’s throw from some of the best mountain biking trails in the country, if not the entire southern hemisphere, and yet has never ridden down any of them.
George has semi-permanently jumped over the strait, and he has a new bike, and he’s got an email confirming his participation in some downhill competition sponsored by Red Bull.
As George sets up in his spare room, Sam belatedly realises that he’s got one of George’s bikes from their pre-PureBlack days in the garage. He offhandedly mentions this over dinner.
“Oh, sweet,” George says through a mouthful of mashed potato. “You can come and do a recce with me.”
“Pardon?”
“I’ll clean it up and make sure the tires are good, we’ll go for a spin on the weekend.”
“George, I don’t have a fucking death wish. I am not throwing myself downhill for fun.”
“It’s civilised, it’s that fancy park with the gondola they built-”
“I’m going to break a bone-”
“I’ll give you padding.”
“-and your bike won’t fit me-”
“We’re basically the same height.”
“-and you couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to get me to do this.”
George sets his cutlery down beside his peas. “You live, like, right next to the good bike trails. Are you scared or something?”
“Yeah, because if I fall off, I’m gonna get, like, a fucking tree in my leg.”
George looks at him pensively, hums like he’s thinking. “You taught me how to ride on the track, which I hated every second of and I’ve never had to do since.”
“And?”
“If you let me take you down the easiest trail at the fancy bike park, where there’s barely any dirt to hurt you, I promise I’ll never make you ride a mountain bike ever again.”
“Pinky swear?”
George huffs, but sticks out a long-fingered hand, extending his pinky towards Sam.
They pinky shake on it.
He’s got a good mind to just give George a hammer and let him go to town on his hand, but for reasons known only to him, he finds himself crammed into a gondola uphill with George and two bikes. George isn’t in the lycra he’d usually race in, instead pairing his cleats with a rubbishy old t-shirt and khaki shorts. Sam fidgets with the zip on his own rubbish shorts pocket, trying to think of some last minute way to get out of this.
“Earth to Sam,” George says, “what’s going on in there?”
“Trying to come up with some poetic and endearing last words before I break my neck.”
“You’ll be fine,” George says, encouraging but not quite hitting the mark, “I’ve been doing this for years and I’m still in one piece.”
“Physically, yes, but I think your brain would beg to differ.”
Neither of them make it out of the gondola with much grace or style, pushing their bikes along to the start of the trail with the little green symbol marking it as the easiest one.
“Do you want to lead or follow?” George asks, swinging his leg over his bike.
“Follow,” Sam answers immediately. “Go slow, if you don’t mind.”
George smiles, far too softly and genuinely for Sam’s liking considering he’s hurling them both downhill. “I can do slow. Haven’t won anything in years, remember?”
He clicks into his pedal, and pushes off down the dirt track.
Sam follows suit, feeling the dirt crunching under his tires. The trail is bumpy with small stones and grass creeping in, and the handlebars are taking some getting used to, Sam’s fingers twitching reflexively over the brakes with every jolt. George gives him clean lines to follow through the corners, picking the smoothest paths over the uneven surfaces with well-practiced ease.
As he gets comfortable with the brakes and the handling and the weight of the bike, he starts to understand why the allure of gravity has proven to be so strong for George - the wind whips against his face and knifes through the vents in his helmet, gravel pings up into his spokes and stings his shins in little pops and dings, and as they follow a curve around the side of the hill he’s struck by the rolling lines, grass, trees, sky, all laid out before them like a patchwork quilt.
The trail finishes at a gravelly flat similar to where they started, but they’re more level with the treeline here than they were at the summit. Another trail carries on from here, still marked green, disappearing into the dark greenery of the trees.
George swigs from his water bottle, looking Sam up and down. “Well, you’re still in one piece.”
Sam makes a show of looking himself over, patting himself down. “Guess so.”
“Do you want to face the trees, or will you jump on the gondola and meet me at the bottom?”
There are more obstacles in the bush, roots and rocks and debris that are practically threatening to send him off his bike. And yet, he’s finding the call of the path through the copse of trees to be too irresistible.
As loath as he is to admit it, Sam’s kind of enjoying himself. Plus, George is right there, leading the way, which takes most of the scariness out of the rest of the ride. He feels safe with George, safe in the way he assumes (he hopes, he secretly kind of knows) George feels with him. Sure, the last time George had trusted him explicitly he’d fallen off a time trial bike and taken off half the skin on his left leg, but that was years ago. George had hated that, but Sam’s starting to think he gets it.
“How bad can it be?”
And the rest of the trail is really not that bad - but he sticks firmly to the spectator zone on the double-black course, amidst a sea of adrenaline junkies and Red Bull marketing, watching as George takes a gap jump with a zingy little twist of the handlebars, and he cheers in the roar of the crowd as he sticks the landing.