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The evening unfolded like bruised fruit - slow, soft, sun-warmed. A courtyard cracked with age stretched wide beneath the hanging string lights, their glow wavering like tired stars too stubborn to blink out.
Laughter floated, light and shallow, rising from where the others had gathered around the dartboard nailed into the stucco wall. Plastic darts thudded dull against cork. Someone cheered for a score that didn’t matter. Wout’s voice carried - low and teasing, accented with joy that barely needed a reason. Remco grinned like a boy too young for his own legend. Rafal leaned back in a chair, legs kicked out, sipping from a glass he hadn’t offered to share.
It was the kind of night that tried very hard to be nothing at all. A held breath before the real season began.
Jonas sat at the edge of it, elbows on his knees, thumb pressed against the inside of his wrist, tracking the steady beat. He watched the way the light caught on Sepp’s hair as he threw - watched the arc, the follow-through, the way his shoulders relaxed before the dart even hit. A soft laugh fell out of Jonas before he meant it to.
And still-
Something itched at the edges.
Not a sound. Not a movement. Just the quiet, inexplicable wrongness of one missing piece.
“Where's Tadej?” he said, not quite loud enough to cut through the game, but enough.
Rafal glanced over, blinking like he’d forgotten the name. “Said he wasn’t feeling great,” he offered, offhand, with a shrug that was too practiced to be concern. “Tired. Maybe sick. Or maybe just hates losing at darts.”
There was a ripple of polite laughter. Then nothing.
No one looked toward the villa. No one paused. No one wondered.
But Jonas did.
He sat still a beat longer, like maybe he was imagining it - that hollow, echoing note that hummed just beneath the night. Then, without a word, he stood. Sepp caught the motion, but didn’t stop him. Just a brief flick of the eyes, a quiet understanding passed between men who’d shared too many long climbs in silence.
Jonas walked away from the lights.
Past the circle of noise and into the dark edges of the villa, where moonlight dripped off balconies and the smell of rosemary clung to the stones. The path crunched under his shoes. His pulse settled into the rhythm of his steps.
He didn’t know where Tadej had gone. Only that no one else cared to find out.
And that, somehow, was enough.
Jonas moved like a question mark through the villa.
The halls were dim, carved in soft amber light and lined with framed photographs of races long faded - sepia-toned victories, arms raised and mouths open mid-yell. Footsteps echoed too easily here. The air was cool, touched with the ghost of chlorine from the distant pool, lavender from some automatic diffuser, and the faint iron scent of someone’s knee still healing.
He walked past rooms with cracked-open doors: one flickering with TV light, another full of breathy sleep sounds and discarded jerseys on the floor.
Tadej’s door was closed.
Jonas knocked once - gentle, a heartbeat. No reply. He waited, tilted his head against the wood like it might tell him something. Nothing.
He tried the handle. It opened without resistance.
The bed was made. The room smelled untouched. A pair of shoes, neatly placed. A half-empty water bottle. But no Tadej.
Jonas stood in the doorway for a moment longer than he should’ve, staring like maybe the boy would reappear from the closet or the thin spill of balcony moonlight. Like maybe he’d left something behind. Something important.
He closed the door quietly behind him.
Outside again, the villa shifted into darker corners - cypress shadows and long hedge walls, quiet stone paths that threaded between sunburnt gardens. He followed instinct more than logic, footsteps softer now. The laughter from the courtyard was distant, a dream fading on the edge of waking.
He found him by the tennis court. Off to the side, beyond the crumbling fence, where the floodlights no longer reached.
Tadej sat on the low wall that edged the property, shoulders hunched, knees drawn up. His hoodie was too thin. His skin looked pale under the cold spill of moonlight. Not like sickness, not like injury - just that particular kind of undone that comes from too many days in the sun, smiling with your teeth clenched.
Jonas almost turned back.
But then Tadej looked up.
And he looked awful.
Eyes rimmed red, like he hadn’t slept in days, or like he had but woke up tired anyway. His mouth twitched once, as if considering a smile and deciding against it.
Jonas cleared his throat. “You’re not great at hiding.”
Tadej let out something between a snort and a breath. “Didn’t know I was trying.”
A pause.
The wind lifted a curl of Tadej’s hair and dropped it again.
Jonas shifted his weight, hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “You look like shit.”
“That’s because I feel like it,” Tadej said, voice dry but not sharp. He pulled his sleeves over his hands, looked down at them. “But thank you.”
Silence, again. Heavy. Jonas didn’t move.
“I can go,” he offered finally. “If you want to be alone.”
He hated how uncertain it sounded. Like he was twelve again. Like he didn’t know if he was allowed to care. Didn’t know the rules for this - not rivalry, not friendship, not quite anything.
Tadej didn’t answer right away. Just looked at him.
And then - softly, with a kind of tired that wasn’t just physical - he said, “You can stay.”
He didn’t say for how long.
So Jonas didn’t ask.
Jonas sat with his hands curled loosely between his knees, close but not too close. The night was quiet here, broken only by the occasional rustle of leaves and the hollow thump of a dart still hitting its mark somewhere back at the villa.
He could feel the warmth of Tadej’s presence beside him, but only just - like sitting next to a candle that was about to burn out.
Neither of them spoke.
Jonas glanced over once, caught the edge of Tadej’s profile: the way his mouth was slightly open, as if on the verge of saying something, but too tired to begin. He looked like he’d collapsed inward somehow. Like the season, the cameras, the gold and green and confetti - all of it - had crushed him into something small and quiet.
Jonas didn’t ask what was wrong.
And Tadej didn’t offer.
So they sat there in that half-lit stillness, the space between them tender and uncertain.
Jonas picked at the hem of his sleeve. “Did you see Wout try to hit the bullseye from five meters out?”
Tadej blinked. “No.”
“He missed the board entirely. Almost took out Remco’s beer.”
A puff of breath. Not quite a laugh, but not nothing.
“Remco’s fault for holding it like a trophy,” Tadej murmured.
There was a moment. A ripple in the quiet.
Jonas looked down at his shoes. “I don’t get darts.”
“You’re not supposed to,” Tadej said. “It’s just an excuse to stand around and pretend we’re not all scared shitless of the season starting.”
That landed harder than either of them expected.
Tadej stiffened, almost like he wanted to take it back, but Jonas didn’t flinch. Just nodded, slow.
“Yeah,” he said, softly. “I guess.
They went quiet again.
The sky above them was bleeding out its stars slowly, one by one. The moon hung crooked and pale. Somewhere in the distance, a cicada made a half-hearted noise and stopped.
“Your French still sucks?” Tadej asked, after a while.
Jonas gave him a sideways look. “Worse than ever.”
Tadej smiled, barely. “You should work on that.”
“I should,” Jonas agreed. “But I won’t.”
That earned a tiny sound from Tadej - a single breath through the nose, amused in spite of everything. His fingers brushed over the stone beside him, and for one brief, quiet second, Jonas thought he might reach across the space between them.
He didn’t.
Jonas didn’t push.
He just stayed.
And for now, that felt like the only thing he was sure he could offer.
They kept talking, quietly, like skipping stones over a lake - never deep, never direct. Just weightless things. The kind of talk that fills space without ever truly touching it.
Jonas told a story about missing the team bus once, standing outside a Carrefour in his kit with two baguettes and no phone reception. Tadej said something about a fan who gave him a live chicken once, and how he tried to name it but the soigneur made it disappear before he could.
They laughed, low and tired.
Then Tadej went quiet again. Slipped under the surface.
Jonas didn’t know what made him say it.
Maybe it was the way Tadej’s mouth curled slightly downward when he wasn’t trying to hold it straight. Maybe it was how his hands trembled, barely, even now - so slight no one else would have seen. Or maybe it was just the weight of not knowing what else to do.
But he said it.
“You don’t have to be perfect, you know.”
It was soft, meant kindly.
But it hit like a slap.
Tadej flinched.
His head turned, just slightly. Not fast, but sharp enough for Jonas to feel it in his chest. That oh moment. That I shouldn’t have moment.
Jonas opened his mouth, then closed it. “I didn’t mean-”
“I know,” Tadej said.
The words were clipped. Not angry. But tight. Like he’d heard them before - too many times, from too many people who didn’t understand what it meant to be expected to win, and win, and win again.
Jonas looked down at his hands. “Sorry.”
Tadej didn’t answer right away. Just stared at the cracked court in front of them, scuffed white lines fading into dust. He exhaled through his nose.
Then, without looking at him, he said, quietly, “I’m scared I already was.”
Jonas turned to him. “What?”
Tadej’s voice was flat. No flourish, no metaphor. Just truth.
“I’m scared I already was perfect. That last year - Tour, Giro, Worlds - that was it. That was the best I’ll ever be. And now they’re all waiting for me to do it again. Or do more. And I don’t think I can.”
The words didn’t stumble. They landed with precision, dull and clean like thrown stones. He wasn’t crying. He looked like he wanted to be, but the tears were stuck somewhere too far down.
Jonas didn’t move. Didn’t speak. The weight of the moment pressed against his ribs like altitude.
Tadej turned toward him then, slowly, like he’d only just remembered Jonas was still there.
“But you - you’re not like them,” he said. “You never looked at me like they do.”
Jonas’s throat tightened.
“You don’t want anything from me.”
The quiet between them stretched again. But now it was different. Not empty. Not aching.
Just open.
Jonas nodded. “No. I don’t.”
Tadej looked down at his own hands, like he was surprised they hadn’t started shaking again.
“I needed to hear that,” he said.
And Jonas - still uncertain, still unsure what it meant to be needed this way - just said, “Okay.”
And he stayed.
They didn’t speak for a while after that. The night shifted around them - cooler now, the breeze sharper. Crickets filled the silence, a low static that made the world feel softer. Jonas thought about saying something, but the words in his throat all felt too small.
Tadej’s arms were wrapped around his knees. His hoodie bunched awkwardly at the wrists. He looked like someone halfway through a fall - paused midair, waiting for the ground.
Then, without looking over, he asked:
“Why did you come and find me?”
The words were quiet. Unloaded. But they sat heavy in the space between them.
Jonas blinked. Looked over at him, studied the profile carved in moonlight. Tadej still hadn’t turned his head.
“I don’t know,” Jonas said, at first. Then he frowned, shook his head slightly. “No. That’s not true.”
He ran a hand through his hair, eyes on the gravel below. “I noticed you weren’t there. That was all at first. Just… noticed.”
Tadej hummed. Not agreement. Not dismissal. Just waiting.
“And then Rafał said you weren’t feeling great,” Jonas continued. “But no one looked worried. No one even looked twice. And I just-”
He stopped.
“I didn’t like that,” he said. “That they didn’t care.”
A pause.
Tadej shifted. Slowly. His head tilted just enough to finally meet Jonas’s eyes.
“You care?” he asked, not in disbelief - but in quiet wonder.
Jonas nodded once. “I don’t know when I started. Maybe sometime last year. Maybe before. But yeah.”
Tadej looked down at his hands. His voice, when it came, was barely audible.
“I think I started hoping you did,” he said. “Somewhere between the Giro and the Tour. Or maybe after Worlds.”
That admission hung there, trembling on the edge of something too big to name.
“I kept thinking… if I win everything, maybe I won’t feel it anymore,” Tadej continued. “The pressure. The noise. The emptiness when the cameras shut off. I thought if I just won enough, it would quiet down.”
Jonas didn’t speak.
“I thought that was the deal,” Tadej said. “You give everything, and in return, you feel… full. But it didn’t work. I keep winning and it’s still there. This knot in my chest like I forgot something. Like I left someone behind and can’t remember who.”
He looked up, eyes clear, wide, shining but dry.
“I’m surrounded all the time. People want pictures, quotes, autographs. But I swear, Jonas, I’ve never felt more alone.”
Jonas’s voice was low. “So you disappeared.”
Tadej nodded. “I wanted to be invisible. Just for a little while.”
Jonas breathed in, slow. “Then I’m sorry for finding you.”
But Tadej shook his head.
“No,” he said. “You’re the only person I wanted to find me.”
Jonas didn’t reply right away.
He just looked at Tadej - really looked - and saw not the golden boy in yellow jerseys or the champion with champagne on his hands. He saw someone small and real, lit by moonlight and unraveling at the edges, trying so hard to hold it all in without knowing how.
And he wanted to say a thousand things.
That it was okay.
That he understood.
That Tadej wasn’t broken for feeling this way.
That being alone and being lonely weren’t the same, and that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t have to be either anymore.
But none of those words felt right in his mouth. They felt too loud. Too sharp for this softness.
So he didn’t say anything.
He just shifted a little closer, not enough to touch, but enough that their shoulders nearly brushed. Enough that if Tadej wanted to lean, he could.
Tadej didn’t.
Not yet.
But he let out a breath he’d been holding since the courtyard - long, shaking, half a sigh and half a release.
Jonas watched the breath leave him like a ghost.
Tadej tilted his head back to look at the sky. His voice was different now, smaller.
“Do you ever think about quitting?” he asked.
Jonas blinked. “Cycling?”
Tadej nodded, still looking at the stars. “Just… letting it go. All of it. The races. The people. The expectation. Going somewhere no one knows your name.”
Jonas didn’t answer right away.
Then, quietly: “Sometimes.”
A long pause.
“I think about opening a bakery,” Jonas said, so deadpan it took Tadej a second.
He turned, brow furrowed. “A bakery?”
“Yeah,” Jonas said. “In Denmark. Near the coast. No press. Just bread.”
Tadej blinked. Then - sudden and soft - a real laugh. Brief, startled, but real.
“You’d be terrible at customer service.”
“Exactly.”
Another laugh, quiet and raw. Then, softer: “I’d visit.”
Jonas turned his head. “You’d have to pay.”
Tadej looked at him sideways, a corner of his mouth lifting. “Only if you bake.”
And there it was.
Not a fix. Not a solution. But something like lightness - like a crack in the sky just wide enough for morning to slip through.
For now, it was enough.
They sat in the hush of that moment, together, not saying anything more.
— · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · · — · —
Morning came like it always did - slow and bright and entirely too soon.
The light spilled in through the thin curtains, golden and unkind. Birds chirped somewhere beyond the villa walls like they had nothing better to do. A cicada buzzed once and gave up. The world didn’t care what had been said the night before.
But Tadej did.
He laid in bed a moment longer than usual, eyes on the ceiling, listening to the muffled noise of the others already awake. Someone laughed down the hall. Someone else knocked something over. The sound of zippers and cycling shoes and the low hum of early morning conversation swirled beyond his door.
And through all of it - soft and certain - was the knowledge that Jonas was somewhere out there, awake too.
He found him by the coffee machine.
Jonas stood with both hands wrapped around a cup, eyes distant but focused, like he was waiting for the caffeine to reach something deep in his bones. He didn’t look up when Tadej walked in. Didn’t turn. Just held out the second cup he’d already poured.
Tadej took it without a word.
Their fingers brushed.
He didn’t mean to smile. But he did.
“Didn’t know you were a morning person,” he said, sipping. The coffee was terrible. Burnt and watery. It might’ve been yesterday’s.
“Absolutely not,” Jonas said.
And that was that.
The day unfolded like a quiet breath.
Training rides. Photo ops. A group lunch on the terrace, too warm, too loud. Tadej sat between Rafał and Wout, nodded at the jokes, pushed pasta around his plate. No one mentioned the night before. No one noticed that he didn’t laugh as easily. No one noticed that every time he reached for his water bottle, he glanced up - like checking for someone just beyond his peripheral vision.
But Jonas noticed.
He didn’t hover. Didn’t insert himself. But when Tadej returned from the ride a little later than the others, Jonas was the one who handed him a towel without being asked. When the team staff passed around protein bars, Jonas slid an extra one toward Tadej with a tilt of his head.
When the noise got too much - half the group trying to recreate some dumb TikTok video, Wout yelling about angles - Jonas looked up, met Tadej’s eyes from across the room, and raised one brow.
You good?
And Tadej, startled at first, realized - he didn’t have to pretend anymore.
He nodded, just once.
I’m good.
And maybe, for the first time in months, he meant it.
That evening, as the sun slanted gold across the stones, they found themselves outside again. Not hiding. Not escaping. Just… there.
Side by side on the same old wall, their legs dusted in dry grass and light.
“You checking in on me?” Tadej asked, voice soft, no accusation in it.
Jonas sipped from a bottle of water like it was the most natural thing in the world. “No.”
Tadej looked at him.
Jonas looked back. “Just making sure you’re not alone.”
And this time, Tadej didn’t argue.
Because he wasn’t.
— · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · · — · —
The buzz of his phone woke Jonas like a whisper in the dark.
4:27 AM.
At first, he thought it was the alarm - he always set it stupid early when training solo - but no. It was a message. One single notification, glowing against the dark.
Tadej: what’s the purpose of life?
Jonas blinked.
Squinted.
Read it again.
He sat up, hair sticking in too many directions, the room still steeped in cold and quiet. His heart tripped a little - not out of fear exactly, but that old, familiar ache. The one that lived in his chest anytime something didn’t feel quite right with Tadej.
He didn’t waste time typing.
Jonas: are you okay?
Jonas: are you safe?
Jonas: tadej??
A minute passed. Then two. Then the typing dots appeared.
Tadej: jesus sorry yes i’m fine. not like that
Jonas let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding and collapsed backward into the pillow.
The typing dots again.
Tadej: was talking to michael. he says the purpose of life is finding out if you’re a cat or a dog person and then building your whole personality around it
Jonas stared at the ceiling, then at the glowing screen.
Jonas: …you woke me up at four in the morning for that?
Tadej: oh.. i thought you have your notifications off?
Jonas: i do. for others.
Jonas rubbed a hand over his face.
Jonas: wanna call?
Tadej: you should sleep. sorry for waking you up
Jonas: i have to be on my bike in two hours. we can talk while i get ready. keep me awake
The call rang two seconds later.
He answered on the first tone.
“Hey,” Jonas said, voice low, gravel-rough with sleep.
“Hey,” Tadej replied, almost a whisper.
A long pause.
“You’re really not mad?” Tadej asked.
“I thought you were dying,” Jonas muttered, swinging his legs out of bed. “Now I just think you’re annoying.”
“You like that about me,” Tadej said, and Jonas could hear the smile in his voice. It softened something in him.
He padded into the kitchen, set the kettle on, phone balanced between cheek and shoulder.
“So,” Jonas said. “Cat or dog?”
“You’re not going to fight me on the idea that this is the purpose of life?
“I’ve got worse philosophies at four a.m.”
Tadej hummed. “Michael thinks I’m a cat.”
“You’re a dog,” Jonas said immediately.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re all sunshine and chaos and you want to be around people all the time. That’s pure dog energy.”
“Dogs don’t climb like I do,” Tadej countered.
“Dogs also don’t text their friends existential questions in the middle of the night.”
“You’re calling me clingy."
“I’m not not calling you clingy.”
Tadej laughed softly, and the sound made Jonas’s chest pull a little too tight.
He poured boiling water into a mug, tossed in some instant coffee, stirred with the back of a spoon.
Tadej went quiet for a few seconds.
Then, softer: “I just didn’t want to feel alone.”
Jonas leaned against the counter, sipping, phone still warm in his hand. “You’re not.”
“I keep waiting for it to go away,” Tadej said. “This...whatever this is. You caring. Being there. I’m still scared it’ll vanish.”
“It won’t, Tadej.”
Silence again. Not heavy. Just... suspended.
“I like your voice in the morning,” Tadej said suddenly.
Jonas blinked. “You’ve never heard it in the morning.”
“I have now.”
Jonas ran a hand through his hair, completely failing to find a reply.
The clock ticked. Somewhere, a truck rolled past on the street. The world was starting up again.
Jonas poured coffee. The smell filled the small space. His body felt heavy, not quite awake, but his mind was clear in a way it hadn’t been all week.
“You do this often?” he asked, gently. “Stay up thinking about stuff like that?”
Tadej’s voice dipped lower. “Only when I feel like I might disappear if I don’t say something.”
Jonas’s hand froze mid-pour.
He let the coffee settle in the cup, then brought it to his lips. “Then say something.”
Another pause. Tadej didn’t say anything.
Jonas sat at the kitchen table, phone still pressed between shoulder and ear. “You want me to distract you?”
“Yeah.”
So Jonas told him about a dream he once had where he missed a race because he’d forgotten how to pedal. He told him about how his dog back home chewed through a pair of white bib shorts. He told him about a bakery near his training route that finally got his name right after a year of calling him “the other one.”
Tadej laughed, quietly. Then talked too - about his garden, about a bad hair dye job he’d almost done as a joke, about how he sometimes forgot to buy toothpaste and had to steal Mikkel's.
They talked like that until the sky began to lighten behind the blinds. Until Jonas had to stand and stretch and pull on kit, and Tadej’s voice had gone soft and warm with the edge of sleep.
“Go ride,” Tadej said, voice thick.
“Get some sleep,” Jonas replied.
“You’ll text after?”
“If I can still feel my legs.”
“Okay.”
A pause.
Then: “Thank you.”
“For picking up?”
“For staying.”
Jonas smiled, soft and tired. “Always.”
The call ended. The silence returned.
But this time, it didn’t feel lonely at all.
— · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · — · · — · —
The city was still soft with early summer - birds chirping as if it's a competition, the river thick and slow like honey poured from a high place. The air smelled faintly of hot pavement and something sweet from a bakery too far away to matter.
Jonas stood by the hotel window, towel slung around his shoulders, hair still wet from the shower. He spotted Nils first, then João, walking past the courtyard gate in relaxed, unhurried conversation. Laughing. In no real rush.
Which meant UAE had arrived.
He reached for his phone almost without thinking.
Jonas
are you busy?
The reply came quickly.
Tadej
i can be not busy
do you want to be not busy with me?
Jonas snorted, thumb already moving.
Jonas
downstairs in ten?
Tadej
seven. overachiever.
They met by the back entrance of the hotel, where no press lingered, and the light hit low and warm over the cobblestones. Tadej wore a hoodie that might’ve been inside out and socks that looked like he’d forgotten what “matching” meant, but his smile was sunlit and real.
Jonas didn’t say anything at first. Just let the shape of the moment settle between them. Familiar. Easy.
They walked side by side down the narrow street, their steps falling into rhythm without discussion. A dog barked somewhere behind a fence. A cyclist whizzed past, unbothered.
“You look well,” Jonas said eventually, nodding at Tadej’s flushed cheeks and clear eyes.
Tadej made a face. “You mean I don’t look like I’m texting you about the meaning of life at 4am?”
“That too.”
They passed a street artist sketching a crooked cathedral in chalk. Tadej slowed to look. Jonas waited without needing to be asked.
“I think I’m a river person,” Tadej said suddenly, squinting toward the water.
Jonas blinked. “That wasn’t the question.”
“It’s the answer anyway.”
Jonas hummed. “So I’m the dog.”
Tadej grinned, teeth flashing. “You do kind of follow me around.”
Jonas bumped his shoulder gently. “Says the one who called me three mornings in a row before Tirreno.”
“You said it helped you get through breakfast!”
“It did,” Jonas admitted, and the smile he gave Tadej then was crooked, unguarded. “Still does.”
Tadej looked down, then back up. “It’s weird, right?” he asked, voice lighter than his words. “We’ve only been… whatever this is… for a month. But it feels like longer.”
Jonas kicked a pebble into the gutter. “Feels like we skipped the awkward phase.”
“Maybe we’re still in it and just don’t care.”
“Maybe.”
A breeze picked up, pulling at Tadej’s hair. He didn’t fix it. Jonas didn’t mind.
They reached the edge of the river, leaned against the stone railing. Ducks floated past like they owned the place.
“I keep waiting for it to get complicated,” Tadej said.
Jonas turned to look at him. “Is it?”
Tadej shrugged. “Not with you.”
There was nothing else to say, really. Not right then.
They stood in the quiet for a while, the kind of silence that didn’t mean nothing. It meant everything. It meant: you found me in the dark and stayed. It meant: I’d pick up again if you called at 4am. It meant: you don’t have to win to be worthy. Not here. Not with me.
“Hey,” Jonas said after a while. “Don’t crash tomorrow.”
Tadej laughed. “You’re only saying that so you can beat me fair.”
Jonas grinned. “Exactly.”
And when they walked back through the streets - slow and side by side, sleeves brushing, laughter spilling between them - it didn’t feel like something new.
It felt like something they’d always been moving toward.
And nothing hurt.