Chapter Text
The canteen is heaving with people, as usual around lunchtime. It’s getting to be this side of too busy for Jonas, but it’s Tuesday, meaning Sepp has come over all the way from the other side of campus to have lunch with him, Nathan and Tiesj, and Jonas appreciates him for it.
The first few times he did it, he had a bad excuse at the ready – the food in the Sciences Building was better (it is), he was in the area (who knows), but by now everyone knows Sepp makes the rounds throughout the week to have lunch with all of them, whether it’s Dylan and Mathieu in Engineering, Olav, Christophe and Wout in the Business Dome, or the guys he spends time with in his own faculty building. Everyone enjoys his company. Usually, Jonas would, too, but clearly Sepp has come to grovel.
“Just come to one party. Please.”
Jonas swears Sepp knows what he’s doing – he must know. He’s probably one of those rare human beings who have perfected the puppy dog eyes and are now using them unscrupulously against any weak opponent. Sepp knows Jonas hates parties. He knows it. Jonas has turned him down so many times, and still Sepp keeps asking.
Jonas drags his spoon through his already empty tub of yoghurt and looks around the table for support. Tiesj won’t be much help – he’s staring down a sheet of equations, his glasses steadily travelling down his nose. Next to him, Nathan is just shrugging, a slight smile on his face. He probably likes the idea, the traitor.
“I don’t know why you even want me there,” he tries, however feebly. Sepp’s expression shifts to something resembling hurt. “You’re my friend, Jonas,” he says easily, “We all are. We’d love to have you there.”
Jonas stares at him, waiting him out. Eventually, Sepp breaks eye contact. “…and Tadej asked after you.”
“I knew it,” Jonas shouts, swatting at his friend in a somewhat pathetic attempt to bring his rage across, “I knew you couldn’t just mind your own business!”
“Look, I – ow, Jonas, come on – I was minding my own business just fine, he was the one asking after you! I just told him I’d ask!”
“Don’t lie, you love to play matchmaker,” Jonas shrieks.
Sepp sighs and stops Jonas from whacking him by taking him into a firm hug. It’s awkward like this, sideways, with both of them still in their chairs and Jonas’ arms trapped between them, but Sepp holds on.
“I just thought maybe you could give it a try, now that it doesn’t look as if Wout…you know.”
Jonas freezes.
“I’m fine just being friends with Wout. Wout’s great.”
Sepp shrugs, looking as if he’s been left with either no arguments or no will to fight a pointless battle.
“Sure. He is. But you also have a giant crush on him, and even months after he’s broken up with van der Poel he hasn’t made a move. Not so much as a step. I don’t want you to stop being friends with him, I just think moving on…would be cool, you know?”
Jonas grimaces and falls silent. Over the year, everyone has commented on his crush on his best friend – clearly he’s useless at being subtle. The only ones who never brought it up are him and Wout. Jonas doesn’t know if Wout is oblivious, or pretending to be so they can stay friends without him having to turn Jonas down, but Jonas has simply lived with his crush in silence. Like most of his emotions, really.
“I don’t need to move on, I’m not some damsel with a broken heart,” he mumbles. Nathan shoots him a mildly pitying look.
“I’m not!” Jonas repeats, but by the continued silence, no one seems to be buying it.
“Can anyone please back me up? Tiesj?”
Tiesj continues to mumble under his breath, but doesn’t look up.
“Man, Tiesj can’t hear you, he’s math-ing,” Sepp says, grinning.
Jonas rolls his eyes.
“Tiesj can hear me just fine. Why do you insist on doing your homework right before class, anyway? Your professor must know you can do it in your head the day of.”
“faster this way,” Tiesj mumbles.
“More of an opportunity to show off,” Sepp says, and Tiesj takes the time to glare at him.
Sepp gives him a sunny smile, before remembering the actual topic.
“Ok Jonas, so you actually don’t have a problem with anyone attending my end of term shindig. In that case you should just come.”
Out of what’s really just mild annoyance, Jonas launches a counter-attack.
“How’s it going with you and the exchange student, anyway?” he asks.
Sepp rolls his eyes. “Don’t call him an exchange student. He’s studying here full time by now. Also, he has a name. It’s Marc.”
Jonas relents. “Okay, then how is Marc ?” he asks, deliberately putting emphasis on the name. “Are you ever gonna tell him?”
Usually, two people like Jonas and Sepp would never have met. Jonas, a Health Sciences undergrad, would normally never have crossed paths with a Spanish Language student like Sepp, if it weren’t for their shared love of the bike. It was Sepp who advertised for the establishment of a university cycling club, ostensibly so he could use the club budget for partying, but now, a year later, Jonas knows better. Sepp loves cycling, for one. Needs it like breathing. While the club now has plenty of members, none of them ride further or more often than Sepp does. Secondly, while Sepp really loves to ride, establishing a club had actually been his fantastically complicated plot to get a guy to talk to him.
Enter: Marc Soler. Hailing originally from Spain, Marc came to their university on an exchange year and decided to stay. Jonas assumes he must like it – it’s generally difficult to tell what Marc does and doesn’t like. Sepp met him at the library trying to fight a book borrowing automat and got into a conversation with him over his book on kinesiologic concepts.
These days, the Coffee Ride Club seems like an excuse for the two of them to go on cycling dates, but there’s something about Sepp that made a lot of people, Jonas included, want to join him – and Jonas isn’t too proud to admit he’d usually rather ride alone.
Now, over a year later, Sepp has built something he can be truly proud of: a club where pretty much everyone is friends with each other. There’s Wout, the Entrepreneurial Management student in his last year. There’s Jonas’ classmate and best friend Nathan, who initially just wanted to know where Jonas went off to every week before he ended up joining. There’s Mathieu (Mechanical Engineering), Tiesj (Mathematics), Olav (Business and Economics) and Jasper (Disaster Management) and many others, and most of them turn up every week like clockwork and ride together on the weekends besides.
Without the club, Jonas would never have met someone like Wout. Wout has just entered his last year, for one – Jonas is still a second-year student. Talking to Wout is simple to the point Jonas can’t remember how they became friends or who talked to whom first. He does have a crush on Wout, true, but honestly, who wouldn’t? Wout just doesn’t seem to even have the time to think about something as simple as a relationship – he’s studying to take over the candle business that has been in his family for several generations, and Jonas has no doubt that he will be a brilliant businessman one day. It’s just the thought of returning to a life without Wout that pains him. Jonas wishes they could have met sooner, or under different circumstances, just so that he could have come up with a way to keep Wout around.
Maybe he should go to the party.
For all that Sepp pretends to have founded the club not so much for actual riding as for a booze budget, they don’t meet for drinks often – most of the budget is used on actual coffee during the coffee rides or the five hundred pieces of cake Wout and Olav competitively raze their way through during each stop. From what he’s heard, the parties have gotten a lot tamer since some of the older club members graduated. Whenever Luke, Michał, Primoz and Tom attended a party, there was no chance anyone ended up going home sober.
“Marc doesn’t need to know why I founded the club, all he needs to do is enjoy it,” Sepp huffs, “So it’s all good. There’s a party, he’s invited. As are all the other members.”
Jonas chooses not to comment on the way Sepp fiddles with the hem of his t-shirt.
**
It isn’t until he’s entered his flat and sinks straight onto the couch, his shoes still on, that Jonas thinks about Tadej. Tadej is a marketing student at a nearby university, a friend of Mathieu and Jasper’s who joined the club not to long ago. Tadej doesn’t really know the meaning of a relaxed coffee ride, half the time he’s several hundred metres ahead of the bunch doing wheelies while everyone is doing their darndest to make it up an incline or they chat among each other. If Jonas is honest, he took Tadej as a simpleton at first, but he’s slowly revising his opinion. Tadej just…lives life fully, with seemingly no worries.
There’s the fact that Tadej studies marketing – he isn't a natural talker, so for someone relatively stiff to try his hand at a people-facing profession like that is unusual. When Jonas asked him about it, he said he really wanted to do charity work, and that marketing seemed the best way in. Despite the devil-may-care attitude he displays, Tadej actually thinks very deeply on many topics, and Jonas enjoys listening to him. However, Jonas is also aware that he takes a while to thaw up to anyone, and with Tadej… well, he’s just not ready yet.
Jonas is almost dozing off when he hears things tumbling around and some heartfelt cursing from the kitchen. With effort, he raises his head from the sofa cushions. “Are you okay?” he calls.
Mads, his housemate, appears, wearing yellow cleaning gloves to his elbows, dripping suds onto the living-room carpet.
“What about this looks like I’m fucking okay?” he growls, frowning. Jonas just smiles at him. “Tutoring must’ve gone well again if you’re stress-cleaning,” he ventures. “Want to talk about it?”
“No,” Mads snaps, before stomping off to the kitchen again. About two more minutes of vicious scrubbing later, he emerges again, this time sans gloves, and plops down next to Jonas. He nudges Jonas to make some space, and Jonas, still lying down, shifts ever so slightly.
“Why do I tutor, hm? Why would I do that to myself?” he asks, running a weary hand over his face.
“Well,” Jonas says, “You told me that if you ever asked me that, I should tell you it’s because you’re ‘fucking good at it, and anyone receiving your help should be grateful’. I take it Mattias still isn’t? Grateful, I mean.”
Mads sighs, looking genuinely discomfited – as discomfited as Jonas has ever seen him, at least.
“I don’t understand it,” he murmurs. “He isn’t dumb, he just…refuses to do the work. Half the time I don’t know why he bothers with turning up, we just end up going over the same stuff.”
Mads is a licensed physiotherapist who still tutors at the school he got his accreditation at. His speciality are evening courses for apprentices who have fallen behind in their studies. His students generally love him, from what Jonas has gathered. He’s charming, but a hardass, in that special way that makes people appreciate him – he won’t give gifts to anyone, but he won’t give up on them, either. Not that he talks about anyone but Mattias Skjelmose anymore, a former medicine student who seems to have a knack for pressing Mads’ buttons.
“Maybe you give him too much credit?” Jonas tries, but he feels dumb for saying it the second it leaves his mouth. Mads purses his lips at him.
“Granted, he’s not a genius,” he says, “But he can do it. He just…won’t.”
“Invite him over,” Jonas says. “Try a change of scenery. I know you don’t like having students over, but maybe showing him you trust him will help.”
Mads crosses his arms and looks away, clearly battling with the idea. Jonas gives him a light nudge.
“Come on,” he says, “I’ll bake.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
**
“I shouldn’t have asked after him,” Tadej groans, hiding his face in his hands and dramatically moving this way and that while Marc watches him, unimpressed. Next to him, Ayuso orders two kebabs and a large coke.
“Well, you did that,” he says when all three of them have settled down with their food in one of the booths. Tadej looks out the window – it’ll rain later. He curses himself for not taking his bike to school, but you can’t take a Colnago racing bike to school unless you’re looking to buy a new Colnago racing bike by the end of the day.
Just when Tadej and Marc were about to go home for the day, Ayuso had called to suggest fast food, simply because he didn’t feel like cooking. With the amounts he eats, Tadej can see how cooking would be strenuous sometimes, but he burns it off, too – Juan Ayuso is as tall and as thin as a reed.
“I did that,” Tadej sighs.
“So your type is quiet and taciturn?” Ayuso grins, pointing his thumb at Marc and nearly splattering him with tzatziki.
“No, it’s different,” Tadej says, shooting Marc an apologetic glance. “Marc is simple. He was just born tired of people. But Jonas…” he pauses to eat some of his shawarma. “Can’t read him at all,” he finishes, mouth still half-full. Marc raises an eyebrow at him that sufficiently conveys his disgust. Tadej doubles his efforts at chewing and swallows noisily.
“I wanna know what he wants.”
Ayuso looks at him quizzically. “What he wants?”
“Yeah! I think we all have that one thing we want that we can describe in one sentence. I want to help people who weren’t as lucky as I am to lead better lives. You want to dance. Marc wants to make tons of money and retire early, I don’t know.”
“Ay,” Marc grumbles, but there’s no heat to it – he’s grinning. Tadej thinks he’s probably right.
“But Jonas… I just feel like his answer could be interesting.”
“Huh.” Ayuso shrugs, then dedicates himself to polishing off his first kebab, all the while stealing fries from Marc’s plate.
“Speaking of dancing,” Marc says, trying to swat Ayuso’s hand away, “How are the rehearsals going?”
“Good. I asked Rui if he wanted to come with us earlier, but he’s afraid of gaining weight before then.”
“I still can’t believe he’s going to be the White Swan in Swan Lake…and that you’re going to pick him up and spin him!” Tadej exclaims. “It’s so cool.”
“Well,” Ayuso says, flushing with pride, “It’s a job.”
Juan Ayuso, young, graceful Juan, is a rising star of the local ballet company. Marc met him before he joined the Coffee Ride Club, using an app for meetups and making friends. Tadej would never have thought that Marc could get lonely, but he had been the typical timid exchange student – not too sure of his English, yet devoid of Spanish-speaking friends, in a new city.
Tadej knows Marc would rather eat one of his legs than say it out loud, but he, just like all of them, owes a lot to that single moment that Sepp Kuss crossed his path. Sepp’s kindness hadn’t stopped at explaining the university library self-service to Marc, he also showed him the app that let Marc meet Ayuso and his fellow dancers Rui Oliveira and Juan Molano. He also showed Marc where to get proper Spanish food and helped him move out of the dorm and into a shared house with Tadej.
Marc doesn’t talk about Sepp, doesn’t respond to even the most persistent interrogation, but as his housemate, Tadej had to learn to read Marc, and by now, he knows what Marc’s soft, lopsided smiles mean, and how he allows himself to sling an arm around Sepp’s shoulders, always ready to pass it off as a gesture of camaraderie. It makes Tadej impatient to look at them.
And Jonas? Oh boy, well done, Tadej, he tells himself, you’ve probably scared him off. But Jonas is cute in a way that makes Tadej want to turn into the worst clown just to see him smile, and he’s a puzzle of a human being, altogether irresistible. Tadej needs to fight for those opportunities to get him to open up, and he has tried to make the most of every single coffee ride, but he has other friends there he wants to spend time with, and… he really just wants one evening where he can have Jonas’ full focus on him. He wants to spend time with Jonas, but he knows just outright asking him would have been too forward. It meant using Sepp Kuss as a messenger, a method that proved to be just as unsubtle, but… well, you can’t fault Tadej for trying.
**
It's just Jonas’ luck that he runs into Wout at the supermarket, where he shops both for dinner and the scones he ended up promising Mads. Wout is in shorts, definitely unsuitable for late November, and his hair is still glistening with sweat – he’s just come from the gym, then. When he catches Jonas’ eyes, a large smile breaks across his face and he raises his hand to wave. Jonas’ has to grit his teeth to fight a blush. Why does Wout have to be a goof in the body of a man this gorgeous?
“Hey,” Wout says softly, looking down his huge hazel eyes at Jonas.
“Have you eaten yet?” Jonas asks. Mads will laugh at him for turning up with Wout, but inviting Wout into their home and feeding him is as close to confessing as Jonas can get. Cooking is what he does – to soothe, to show love, to help. It’s just his mode of expression in a friend group consisting of perpetually hungry students.
“Oh, I wouldn’t want to put you out, it’s late and some takeout will do,” Wout says, predictably, but Jonas shakes his head. “Stuffed omelettes,” he says. “I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t cooking anyway. I grabbed the big carton of eggs, see?” He points over to his cart haphazardly. Wout’s answering smile is making his eyes crinkle and Jonas’ heart squeeze.
It would be like that, if they were together. Jonas would push his cart and glance at his list, and Wout would walk next to him and tell him about his day, telling him stories from his morning of courses that Jonas honestly can’t make heads nor tails of.
They’d eat together, at the kitchen table that’s really too small for three people and a random assortment of sports tape and nutrients that has made its home there since Mads broke out one of the kitchen drawers by pulling on it too hard.
They’d watch an episode of some stupid panel show together and…well, the only difference would be that afterwards, Wout wouldn’t leave. He’d come upstairs with Jonas, and he’d be a warm weight next to him under the covers. But Jonas takes what he can get, pressing close to him on the small sofa, close enough to feel Wout’s silly laugh in his own side, feeding him vegetables on a fork to see if they’re cooked through. It’s good. If Mads catches Jonas hugging Wout at the door for a little longer than would be proper, they don’t have to talk about it.
**
Thymen hasn’t moved from his spot by the pool in an hour. Geraint can hear him reading every time his head breaks the surface of the water, and so can all the other people at the pool. Thymen persisted through their staring, and he persisted through Geraint’s indifference.
“My father watches: O sir, fly this place;
Intelligence is given where you are hid—”
Down, push your arms through the water.
“--He's coming hither: now, i' the night, i' the haste—”
Hold your breath. There’s the pool wall. Turn, push yourself off.
“--I hear my father coming: pardon me—”
Geraint reaches the end of the rope.
“Why in the bloody hell are you here?” he shouts, tearing his swimming goggles off his face.
Thymen stops reading, but he only peers at Geraint, his face neutral.
“Are you done?” he asks.
“That depends,” Geraint snaps at him, “Are you?”
Thymen makes a show of glancing at the book. “about halfway, I’d say.”
There’s a sharp glint in his eye when he says: “Don’t worry about me, I’ve got nowhere else to be.”
Geraint tries to flee from him into the changing rooms, but Thymen accosts him in the stall as he’s trying to peel his wet speedos off.
“What the hell, I’m changing,” he squeaks, but Thymen just gestures for him to go on.
“Just making sure you won’t run off again,” Thymen says, his voice steely.
Geraint sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose with two fingers.
“Okay,” he says, still half wet, “Let us have it.”
“No,” Thymen says, and his expression turns soft, apologetic, “Let’s go for a coffee.”
**
If Geraint thought sitting across from Thymen in the busy branch of a coffee chain would make this easier on him, he was wrong.
“What the absolute fuck,” Thymen says while both of them are still busy telepathically willing their drinks to cool down.
“So Pippo Ganna, mutual friend of ours, you might remember him, heard some interesting news the other day. Apparently, Sepp Kuss is organising a party, and he called Luke to see if he was still in town. Sepp, being the nice guy he is, asks whether Luke’s heard anything from you after graduation, you know, which took place in summer, roughly four months ago. Luke goes ‘whatever do you mean, if anyone should know, it’s you, after all, G didn’t graduate.’”
Geraint grimaces, but stays silent.
“You hid from us!! For four months!! You can be happy I chose to come and not Laurens, he’s still too angry to even try and talk to you.”
“I was embarrassed about deferring graduation,” G tries, “Surely you can understand that?”
“Who gives a fuck about graduation? What’s there to be embarrassed about? You should be embarrassed that you snuck around for four months rather than trust us to help you. What happened?”
Geraint doesn’t know where to start. In the end, it all comes down to one thing – he hadn’t been ready to leave. The thought of telling Thymen about it, all of it, still paralyses him now, to try to explain to him that once he graduates that’s it, he will have to leave and find a job and stop swimming at the university team, and he just has no plans. Not a single one. He doesn’t know how to tackle life on his own. He already misses Kwiato and Luke pottering around the kitchen in the mornings so much, a reminder that people do and will move on without him, the guy who started university late and now can’t seem to get himself to finish it. How is he supposed to go into an office and sit down at a desk every day when all he understands about life are the signals his body gives him, the elation and pain of running, swimming, riding his bike and--- seeing De Pluske, even though these last few months all he saw of him were glances, stolen from afar.
“Maybe it’s better this way,” he mumbles. Laurens is right to be mad at him, but how mad would he be to find an old loser like Geraint completely gone on him?
When he looks up at Thymen, the younger man is frowning.
“Please come back to us, G. You know we’re riding for as long as the weather holds, and Sepp told me to tell you that any CRC member is invited to the party. You don’t have to tell me what happened. I just miss you. Laurens won’t be that easy, but we all just want you back.”
Geraint gives a shaky nod. The jig is up. He’ll have to face Laurens at some point.