Work Text:
▲ : ✦
In those years, everyone carried their marks openly.
No one really believed they meant much anymore.
The ones who still did kept that belief quiet - like water held in their hands, close and careful, knowing they couldn’t keep it for long.
You could go weeks without noticing anyone’s mark.
Sit across from someone you loved and never ask where theirs was.
Grow old with someone and have the mark be nothing but a small fact of the body - like a mole, a scar, the thin white line under a chin from some forgotten fall.
The Tour hotel woke early because it had to.
Corridor lights hummed. Doors closed soft. The coffee machine coughed itself awake.
Trays appeared - bowls, bananas, eggs steaming in the cool air.
Voices stayed low, a truce before the noise of the day began.
Jonas woke into that hum.
Not happy, not unhappy.
Just present. A body rehearsing the same gestures it had rehearsed a thousand times.
He dressed without turning on the light. Habit.
The zip rasped in the dark. The bibs came up tight.
The jersey waited on the chair.
Under the elastic, under the skin that always felt too alive, the mark sat where it always sat.
Small. Dark. Unarguable.
A triangle, two dots, a star.
It shouldn’t mean anything.
But it did.
He didn’t touch it. He rarely did anymore.
That part of him had become something like a scar - always there, never healed, too private to look at for long.
He checked his pockets. Touched the sachet of gel like a talisman.
The room felt half-real until he put the jersey on, and then it was just a room again: four walls, a bed with a dent, a chair that belonged to no one.
There was time for the mirror if he wanted it. He didn’t.
He took his bottles from the windowsill, cold from the night air, and left.
The hallway was full of quiet men doing quiet things.
Someone whispered morning.
Someone else opened his palm to show a row of salt tablets, dull and white like pearls.
Another’s phone screen glowed with a message from home, or maybe just a weather app.
Jonas nodded because nodding cost less than words.
He turned toward the breakfast room, where the light was sharper and flatter.
The smell of toast and disinfectant lived side by side.
People ate the way they always did.
Some piled plates. Some counted bites.
Someone stirred coffee until it stopped steaming.
There were marks here and there if you let your eyes soften -
a loop above a wrist bone where a watch wouldn’t hide it,
a pale half-circle under a jaw,
a faded sigil on a calf.
Nobody looked.
If something showed, it was treated like a scar: you saw, you didn’t react, you went on.
He sat in his usual spot. People liked it when he kept the routine.
Matteo dropped into the chair opposite him, eyes bright with sleeplessness, a banana in one hand and his phone in the other.
He said something soft - you good? maybe, or they moved sign-on by ten minutes.
Jonas nodded. Either answer would fit.
Wout came and went.
A soigneur passed, resting a steady hand on someone’s shoulder.
A mechanic talked about the wind, about the trees leaning indecisively.
No one spoke about belief. Not out of politeness - it just didn’t occur to anyone.
If a man had a cross tattooed above his heart, or a mark under his jaw, or the Lexicon’s script around his wrist, it was his business.
The world had learned to leave people alone.
Jonas ate what he was told to eat, drank what he was told to drink.
Across the room, a familiar laugh broke through the noise.
Not loud - just clear.
A bell struck once and left to ring.
He didn’t look, but his body noticed.
The small involuntary tilt of his head, the breath that came too shallow.
The sound hurt in the same way it always did - the ache of something you’ve tried to outgrow and couldn’t.
He fixed his gaze on the table instead, on a carved initial that might have been a J, or might have been nothing.
When he stood, the room moved with him - chairs scraping, coffee swallowed, bottles packed into crates.
Someone showed a phone screen: a wedding photo.
Two people laughing, long sleeves rolled up, the mark on display like a badge.
The caption read, found, chosen, kept.
Someone said cute. Someone else said too cute.
And then the moment folded away again.
The bus was waiting. He liked the bus.
You could make a small room inside a bigger one if you sat by the window and let the landscape take the talking.
The coach went over the day: numbers, corners, wind.
The physio passed down the aisle with a basket of gels, handing them out like cards.
Jonas took one. Same as yesterday? - Yeah.
Outside, a child ran beside the bus for a few seconds and waved.
Jonas waved back. A small movement, automatic, older than thought.
Under the waistband, the skin was warm. He didn’t touch it.
He didn’t need to. The shape existed whether he acknowledged it or not - a small stubborn truth that had learned silence.
He’d read the old Lexicon years ago, late one night when he was young and still curious.
He who mirrors your ascent.
He’d tried to turn it into something logical. Physics, not fate. Rivalry, not love.
He’d told himself it only meant you will be made better by the one who refuses to let you be less.
Then morning came again.
And the bus. And the gels. And the hum.
And the sentence didn’t change.
They arrived at the start.
Sun already hot, sunscreen burning in the throat.
The day began like every other: signatures, cameras, small talk.
He went through the motions, each one precise, familiar -
a prayer performed by habit, not faith.
Somewhere ahead, Tadej’s jersey moved the way it always moved.
He didn’t look at it.
He didn’t have to.
The peloton gathered. Radios clicked alive.
The neutral roll started.
Jonas breathed into the tightness around his stomach, the place where the waistband met the mark.
The breath passed through it, steady.
He carried himself forward like a man carrying something breakable and unremarkable -
a cup half full, a word he could say and never would.
No one asked what he believed.
No one needed to.
The start was noise wrapped in order.
Every team standing in its small rectangle of shade, every mechanic crouched by a wheel pretending not to count minutes. The announcer said names into the warm air and the names dissolved as quickly as they came. People clapped because clapping was what you did when you didn’t know what else to do.
Jonas stood with his hands on the bars, eyes half-closed against the brightness. The morning light had gone sharp already, biting at the edge of everything. Sunscreen on his cheeks, salt still on his lips. He could taste the night’s bad sleep in his mouth, the bitter trace of nerves sitting under it all.
Someone said good legs today?
He said we’ll see.
Someone else laughed - a short, kind sound.
The start was always anticlimax. No fire, no spark. Just motion, everyone unclipping and clipping again, a long accordion of bodies moving toward the line, through the line, past the line.
And then the world changed shape.
The peloton became one long animal, dozens of hearts sharing the same pulse.
He found his place inside it without thinking - the familiar pocket of wind, the soft sound of tires on tarmac, the radio voice crackling small words that meant more than they sounded.
For the first hour there was no thought.
Only rhythm.
Only the body doing what it had trained itself to do.
A bottle every thirty minutes, a gel when the stomach began to ask questions, a glance at the numbers because that was easier than glancing at faces.
The countryside passed like a dream - villages painted in old colours, children holding flags, an old man with a folding chair watching as if it were mass.
He rode behind Matteo for a while, letting the young one cut the wind, the line of his back clean and sure. Matteo’s mark sat visible above the glove, two faint arcs of colour that caught the sun when he lifted his hand to signal. Nobody looked. Nobody cared.
That was the world now - people carried their faith quietly.
Jonas tried to keep the cadence even. Ninety-three, steady.
He felt good, not great. Good was enough.
There was a comfort in the repetition, the predictable ache in the legs, the shoulders that would start to burn after two hours and then go quiet again.
The radio voice came: crosswind, next five.
He moved up. The others did the same. The peloton shifted shape like a school of fish turning all at once.
For a moment he saw him - a few wheels ahead, pale jersey, that familiar shape on the bike, that ease that was half gift, half cruelty.
Tadej.
Even from that distance, even through the noise and the shimmer of heat, Jonas felt the strange twin pull - not attraction exactly, not rivalry exactly, but something that lived between them, sharp as glass and as old as the road.
He who mirrors your ascent.
He looked away quickly.
The eyes always wanted to linger. He didn’t let them.
They hit the first climb.
The peloton thinned. Sweat ran down the backs of legs and arms, leaving pale tracks through the dust.
The sound changed - fewer gears, more breathing.
Jonas focused on the rhythm of his breath, on the small point of pain in his stomach where the waistband pressed.
It was the same every time: that strange awareness of the mark beneath layers of fabric, the feeling of something alive under his skin. He’d convinced himself it was just friction, sweat, nerves. But sometimes - like now - it felt like the skin itself was listening, waiting for something to happen.
The climb was long, slow, too hot.
He heard Matteo behind him mutter a song under his breath, something in French.
It made him smile without meaning to.
They crested the top, descended. The air cooled enough to sting. The road curved, dipped, opened.
In the valley, the group stretched and snapped back together again.
Jonas checked his numbers. Fine.
Checked the sky. Empty.
Checked himself. Still holding.
At the feed zone he took the musette, the motion clean, practiced. A hand reached out - familiar wristbands, familiar rings. The soigneur smiled, said eat, drink, survive.
He smiled back because that’s what you did.
He ate half a rice cake, left the rest.
Tucked the empty wrapper under the jersey and thought, briefly, about what the day meant. Not the stage, not the race, just the fact of it. Another day of being alive in a machine designed to exhaust you.
When he finally saw Tadej again, it was near the front, on a flat stretch with a side wind cutting through the fields. Tadej was talking to one of his teammates, laughing.
Jonas couldn’t hear what he said, but he knew the rhythm of his voice. He’d known it for years. It was the rhythm that had made the mark burn the first time he saw him - that voice, careless and bright, something in it that sounded like home and warning at once.
He moved up a little, close enough to catch the shape of his shoulders, the small flick of his elbow as he pointed out debris on the road.
And just for a second - nothing more - Tadej turned. Their eyes met.
Not long enough to count.
Long enough to feel everything tighten and let go at once.
Jonas dropped back.
Matteo said something in the radio - tactical, harmless - and he answered automatically.
Mid-afternoon.
The heat sat low and heavy, pressing against the asphalt, the kind that turns sweat into salt maps.
They were running on autopilot now, bodies moving by instinct. Someone’s chain clinked, someone’s back wheel hissed, a small puncture drama that resolved itself before it mattered.
Jonas drank. Checked the time gap. Listened to the radio again.
The road tilted upward, not a real climb, just one of those false flats that make your legs wonder if you’re imagining it.
He passed a spectator holding a cardboard sign that read Lexicon 3:17 in thick marker.
He almost smiled. It was one of those verses people still quoted: the bond endures though belief does not.
Someone behind him joked, wonder if it’s about watts or souls.
He didn’t answer.
By the last thirty kilometres, the day had narrowed to noise.
His head hurt. His stomach burned where the waistband sat.
The mark itched under the salt and movement, a dull heat that refused to settle.
He finished the bottle, threw it to the side, and thought about nothing. That was the trick - you think about nothing, and the nothing carries you home.
When they finally reached the finish, there was no glory, just routine.
He crossed the line, sat up, breathed.
Looked for a teammate, found Sepp.
They exchanged a look - tired, wordless, human.
Tadej finished a few seconds ahead. He was already surrounded by cameras, microphones, reporters who wanted numbers, seconds, watts. Not meaning. Never meaning.
Jonas unclipped, rolled through the crowd, nodded at the staff.
Someone said good job.
He said thanks.
The words meant almost nothing, but they were a way of staying in the world.
Back at the bus the air-conditioning was too cold.
He stripped off his jersey, wiped the salt away with a towel.
The mark stung faintly when the cloth brushed it - just another small pain among hundreds.
Around him the talk was light, loose.
Someone mentioned another rider’s mark showing in a photo.
Someone laughed about it - “Guess his wife’s thrilled.”
Matteo said leave it, softly, and they did.
The driver turned on the radio. Pop song, cheerful, forgettable.
The kind of song that sounds like nothing when you’re tired.
Jonas leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes.
The motion of the bus blurred into the motion of the race, into the motion of every day before it.
He felt the mark pulsing under the fabric, a heartbeat that wasn’t his, or maybe was.
He thought about how belief had become a private thing.
How no one asked anymore.
How easy it was to pretend.
When the bus pulled into the next hotel, the world felt the same as it had that morning - same corridors, same smell, same half-light.
But his body was heavier, as if every kilometre had been written straight into the skin beneath his jersey.
He showered quickly, head bent under the spray, water cold enough to hurt.
For a second, just before he turned the tap off, he thought of the Lexicon again - the small, careful handwriting of its scholars, the way they’d tried to describe something no one could prove.
He who mirrors your ascent.
A sentence that could mean rivalry.
Or love.
Or both.
He toweled off. Pulled on the plain cotton shirt the team provided.
Stood for a moment in the mirror light, looking but not looking.
The mark was invisible now, hidden under the fabric.
He pressed his hand against it through the shirt, just once.
Outside, someone laughed.
Dinner was soon.
The day would end the way it always did - with noise, with laughter, with exhaustion.
He wasn’t ready for tomorrow.
But he would be.
The hotel always smelled the same after a stage - detergent, wet concrete, the faint trace of chain oil that followed them no matter how many showers they took. The walls held the heat. Even with the curtains half-closed, the room was bright in that washed-out way that made everything look already forgotten.
Jonas lay on top of the bedspread, hair still damp, phone in his hand and nothing on it that needed looking at. The TV was on mute. On the screen, men who looked like him rode bikes that looked like his through the same French fields he’d already crossed. He watched the captions scroll - average speed, final gap, best young rider - as if they belonged to someone else’s life.
Outside in the corridor, someone laughed. The sound was too loud, too sudden. Then the door next to his closed, and the building went quiet again.
He checked the time. Four hours until dinner.
That empty stretch of day he hated most - too early to sleep, too late to do anything that mattered.
He opened a message from Wout:
you alive?
He typed back: barely.
A minute later came the reply: good. same here.
He smiled a little, then let the phone fall on the pillow beside him.
The mark still felt raw from the shower. He could feel it when he breathed deeply - a small pull beneath the waistband, like the echo of a bruise. Sometimes he thought the pain was real, physical. Sometimes he knew it wasn’t.
On the TV, the replay showed the finish again. Tadej crossing the line. Cameras catching that clean smile, the way he always seemed to know where to look. For a second, Jonas thought he saw it - the same exhaustion, the same quiet emptiness. Then the shot cut to commercials.
He turned the screen off.
In the hallway, air-conditioning hummed. A soigneur’s trolley squeaked past - towels, water bottles, the endless debris of the day. Someone had left a door open, and Jonas saw a flash of a mark on a lower back as one of the riders bent over to stretch. Two circles, a line. Faded ink. No one cared.
He went downstairs because sitting still felt wrong. The lift took too long, so he took the stairs, legs heavy, each step a reminder that the day wasn’t done just because the race was.
In the lobby, the staff had arranged cold drinks for whoever wanted them. Bottled water, cans of Coke, small paper cups of espresso. The room smelled of fruit, of people trying to be cheerful.
Two riders from another team sat on the couch, talking too loudly.
“…said his mark’s on his neck. Must be a nightmare with helmets.”
“Better than mine. Mine’s on my knee. Looks like mould.”
They laughed, harmless, thoughtless.
Jonas opened a bottle, took a sip, and left before they noticed him.
Outside, the afternoon was thick and slow. Sunlight hit the asphalt in broad, silent waves. Across the parking lot, buses were lined up like resting animals, their engines ticking softly as they cooled. A mechanic was hosing mud off a frame, water running in pale streaks toward the gutter. The sound was steady, almost kind.
He stood there a moment, eyes half-closed, feeling the warmth settle back into his skin.
Sometimes, after a stage like this, it felt like the whole world had gone slightly out of focus - the body still vibrating, the mind too quiet.
Someone called his name.
He turned.
It was Matteo, barefoot, holding two plastic cups of orange juice.
“Can’t sit still either?” Matteo asked.
Jonas shook his head. “Feels wrong.”
Matteo handed him a cup. “Cheers to that.”
They stood side by side, watching the hose water spread thin across the asphalt.
Matteo sipped, then said, “You ever wonder if we’d all still ride if there were no crowds? No cameras, just the road.”
Jonas thought about it. “Probably.”
“Yeah.” Matteo smiled, tired. “We’re stupid like that.”
They drank in silence. Somewhere a door slammed, and a bird took off from the roof.
Later, back upstairs, the hallway felt warmer.
Someone had opened their window, letting the smell of shampoo and damp kit seep through. Jonas passed a few open doors - music, chatter, the sound of ice cubes in a glass. Normal things. Life continuing without him.
He paused outside his room before opening the door. Inside, the light had changed. Late sun, dust floating in the beam. His towel still on the chair, half-dry. The bed untouched since he left.
He lay down again, eyes closed, and listened. The air-conditioning. Footsteps in the next room. Voices muffled through the wall.
A laugh he could recognise anywhere.
He pressed his palm against his stomach, through the fabric of his shirt, to where the mark was. Not hard - just enough to feel its shape against the skin.
He whispered, without meaning to, “why did you have to.”
The air didn’t answer.
By the time the knock came, the light was gone.
He opened the door to a staff member holding a clipboard. “Dinner in twenty.”
“Okay.”
She nodded and left.
He changed slowly, pulling the team polo over his head, smoothing it down. Checked himself in the mirror, even though there was nothing to check. The face that looked back was tired, unremarkable. The mark hidden, quiet.
Downstairs, the dining room buzzed. Plates, forks, small talk. Someone’s phone on loudspeaker playing a song. It was almost comforting - the ordinariness of it.
Tadej was there, at another table, surrounded by his team. Laughing again, the easy kind of laughter that came from habit.
Jonas looked once, long enough to see the light hit the side of his face, the small cut on his cheek from shaving. Then he looked away.
He ate.
He drank water.
He answered questions when spoken to.
At one point, Matteo nudged him and whispered, “You’re staring again.”
He blinked. “No, I’m not.”
Matteo smiled, not unkind. “Okay.”
The evening stretched. The room loosened as people finished eating. Someone opened a beer, someone else turned on music. It became that soft, half-drunk calm that came after exhaustion - the feeling that maybe nothing in the world could surprise you anymore.
Until, of course, something did.
▲ : ✦
Dinner had run too long.
Not that anyone cared - tomorrow’s stage was short, and someone had opened a second bottle before the first one was empty, and that was all it took. The air in the dining room had gone warm and loose, filled with half-finished jokes and the smell of detergent coming off clean shirts.
Tadej sat near the end of the table, half-listening, head tilted back against the wall. He’d eaten just enough to quiet the hunger but not enough to feel heavy. The skin on his neck still stung from shaving too quickly earlier. He’d left a small red line just below the jaw, barely visible now.
Across from him, Isaac was retelling something about a car nearly hitting the bus that morning, adding hand gestures big enough to make the story funnier than it had been. Someone laughed so hard they snorted. Someone else started clapping.
Nils lifted his phone to film it, then pointed it at Tadej instead.
“Say something to the fans, champion.”
Tadej grinned. “They already know everything.”
The table booed in mock disappointment.
It felt good - this kind of harmless noise.
He didn’t think about marks. He didn’t think about anything at all, which was how he liked it.
After dinner, the group drifted into the hallway, slower now, heavy with food and wine. Someone suggested a haircut - Moho’s bet from earlier, half-forgotten until now. “A bet’s a bet,” someone said, and that was enough.
Matej’s room was the biggest, so they crowded in there.
Bedsheets pulled back, chairs dragged closer, clippers found from a staff bag. The window was open, letting in the thick, warm air from the parking lot.
Music played low from a phone - some pop song that had followed them across three countries.
“Come on, Tadej,” Isaac said. “You said it yourself - Moho wins, you shave.”
“I said maybe.”
Matej grinned. “You said yes.”
“Did I?”
“You did.”
He sighed theatrically. “Fine. But if I look like a monk, I’ll sleep in your room so you have to look at me.”
Laughter. Applause. Someone turned on the clippers; the hum filled the room immediately.
He sat down on the chair. The sound vibrated through his skull before the first strand even fell. It wasn’t the first time he’d shaved his head - years ago, training camp heatwave, same idea, same noise, same laughter.
He looked up at the mirror on the wall and met his own eyes. The sight didn’t bother him. He liked seeing himself look different. He liked the control in it.
Hair fell onto his shoulders, down his back. Someone swept it away with a towel.
“Looks good,” someone said.
“Yeah?”
“You could do a commercial like this.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Tell my agent.”
Another round of laughter.
He smiled for the camera, because of course there was a camera. There was always a camera.
The buzz grew softer as the clippers moved higher.
He felt the air on his scalp for the first time, cool and clean.
The room still hummed with voices, the kind of background sound that told him he was safe.
Then the clippers stopped.
Not off - just paused.
The sound of the motor still running, but not moving.
A silence that spread faster than it should have.
He looked up.
Matej’s face had changed.
Not shock exactly. Something smaller. Something like confusion.
“What?” Tadej asked.
No one answered.
The camera lowered.
The song kept playing, but too quietly now, tinny and absurd.
He reached up, hand finding the spot where the hair was gone - the crown of his head, smooth and strange.
His fingers found texture. Raised skin.
A pattern.
He rubbed it once, thinking it was a scratch. Then again, slower.
The shape was small. Precise.
The room tilted.
Someone whispered something that might have been no way.
Someone else said holy shit.
He stood too quickly, chair scraping hard against the floor.
His hand was still on his head. His skin felt too thin.
“Hey-” Joao started.
But Tadej was already moving.
Out the door, down the hall, away from the music and the noise.
He didn’t hear what anyone said after that.
Didn’t wait for someone to follow.
He found the nearest bathroom, closed the door, locked it, turned the light on.
The mirror was harsh, the kind of mirror that didn’t let you look away.
He leaned close.
There it was.
Faint under the light, but real.
A triangle. Two dots. A star.
For a moment, his brain refused the shape. It wanted to make it something else - a scar, a birthmark, anything. But the symmetry was too clean. The lines too deliberate.
He felt his stomach twist.
The air in the room was thin, the smell of shaving cream still clinging to his skin.
It couldn’t be.
He pressed his hand flat against the sink, gripping the cold porcelain until his knuckles whitened.
Everything inside him was suddenly too loud - his heartbeat, his breathing, the electric hum of the light.
The only clear thought left was that he was the last person in the world who should have one.
And that if this mark was what he thought it was, it already belonged to someone.
He turned off the light.
The mirror went dark.
He sat down on the edge of the bathtub before his knees gave out.
The light hummed above him. The tile was too cold. His head felt hollow, lighter than it should, like something had been taken out of it.
He tried breathing slow. It didn’t help. Every inhale hit a wall halfway down his chest.
He’d thought about this moment before - not seriously, not like this - just the way you sometimes think about flying or dying, as a story that belongs to other people. Everyone had a mark. Everyone except him. He’d been proud of that once. Made it a joke. God forgot about me, he’d said. Good for him.
Now there it was, burned into the skin he’d never been able to see.
He ran his thumb over it again. The shape didn’t change. The skin was slightly raised, smooth around the edges. It didn’t hurt, but it might as well have.
The room spun in small circles.
He reached for his phone with hands that wouldn’t stay still. Typed triangle two dots star Lexicon into the search bar.
The first result was a scanned page from some archive, yellowed and over-zoomed. He had to blink a few times before the words made sense.
“He who mirrors your ascent.”
A bond of opposition.
Two forces bound in balance.
Not to love, not to destroy, but to define each other.
He scrolled further. Old commentary, simplified for idiots like him:
The greatest rival mark.
The twin flame mark.
Rare. Dangerous. Unfair.
He stopped reading.
His stomach turned.
He closed the phone, dropped it into the sink, and bent forward until his forehead touched his knees. The sound that came out of him wasn’t a sob. More like the air being pushed out of something too full.
Rival.
That word clung to him.
He’d hated the idea of marks his whole life. The stupidity of thinking skin could tell you who to love, who to belong to.
He’d watched others trace their marks with pride and thought, you’re pretending.
And now-
Now the universe had decided to play its joke a decade too late.
On him.
And worse - he knew whose it was.
He didn’t need to check the pictures, didn’t need to ask. Everyone knew the Lexicon entry. It was almost folklore by now. He who mirrors your ascent.
There was only one man who’d ever mirrored him that way.
He pressed his fingers into his scalp until it hurt, as if pain could wake him up.
“Fuck,” he said out loud, soft, to no one. The sound felt wrong in the small room.
He stood, opened the tap, let cold water run over his hands. Splashed his face. It didn’t help.
When he looked up again, the mirror showed the mark clearly. Not faint anymore. Darker now, edges drying clean.
It looked permanent.
He thought of Jonas then - of the way he always looked too calm, too careful, too distant.
Of how he never talked about marks. How he’d always gone a little quiet whenever someone else mentioned theirs.
The memory hit like static: a stage two years ago, rain, both of them laughing at something stupid, and the way Jonas’ jersey had ridden up for half a second when he leaned over his bars. A shape under the elastic, small, dark, geometric-
He felt sick again.
The mark had been there all along.
Jonas had known.
Jonas had known and said nothing.
He sat down on the cold tile again, back against the wall, head between his knees.
It wasn’t anger yet - not really. More like shame wearing anger’s voice.
The same old shame he’d carried for years for not having a mark, only heavier now, reversed.
He wanted to laugh and throw up at the same time.
He wanted to tear the skin off and find it empty again.
But beneath all of that - under the noise, under the disbelief - was a quieter thing. Something he couldn’t name.
Relief.
The kind that hurt.
Because if it was true - if this was what it was - then at least the ache made sense.
All those years of not knowing why he couldn’t stay away from a man he kept calling his rival.
All those stupid interviews, those half-mean jokes, the warmth he kept trying to swallow.
The mark didn’t create it.
It only proved it had been real all along.
He stayed there until the water stopped dripping from the tap.
Then he stood.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand, left the light on, and walked out.
The hallway was empty.
He didn’t think about what he was doing. He just moved.
Room numbers blurred past. The air smelled like detergent and leftover dinner.
By the time he reached the door he hadn’t even decided what to say.
He knocked once.
The door opened after a few seconds.
Jonas looked exactly as he always did - tired, composed, careful.
Only his eyes gave him away. They looked like someone who’d been waiting for this without realising it.
For a second neither of them spoke.
The hallway light buzzed above them, steady, yellow.
Jonas looked at him - at the raw scalp, at the faint tremor in Tadej’s hands - and stepped back.
“Come in,” he said.
Tadej did.
The room smelled like soap and dust. The TV was on but muted, the screen caught on an image of a mountain they’d already climbed that morning. Jonas picked up the remote, turned it off.
Tadej stood near the door, unsure what to do with his hands. They were still shaking, the skin under his nails still white from pressing too hard.
Jonas waited. Not patient - just still.
Finally Tadej said, “I-” and stopped. His voice sounded wrong, higher, scraped out.
He tried again. “I didn’t know.”
Jonas nodded once. “I know.”
The words landed too gently to hurt.
Tadej laughed - a small, broken sound. “Everyone always said it would happen, you know? Like- like you wake up one day and it’s there. I thought they were all full of shit.”
“I thought so too,” Jonas said.
Silence stretched between them. Not cold - just fragile.
Tadej’s throat tightened. “It’s you,” he said, barely above a whisper.
Jonas didn’t flinch. “Yeah.”
It should have been simple, that word. It wasn’t. It was heavy, final, strange.
Tadej moved closer, slow enough to give Jonas time to stop him. He didn’t.
When they were close enough to touch, Tadej’s voice cracked again. “I’m sorry.”
Jonas frowned softly. “For what?”
“For hating it. For hating- all of this. For thinking you-” He stopped, exhaled shakily. “You must have known.”
Jonas looked at the floor. “A long time.”
“How did you stand it?”
“I didn’t.” A small smile. “I just learned to hide it well.”
Tadej felt his eyes sting. “I feel sick.”
“I know,” Jonas said again. And he did - it showed in the way his own shoulders eased, the way he stepped forward until there was no more space to step into.
He reached up, very carefully, and rested a hand on the back of Tadej’s head. Not on the mark - underneath it.
The skin there was warm, damp from sweat and fear.
Tadej closed his eyes. The touch was light, protective in a way that didn’t ask for anything.
“I kept thinking,” Jonas said quietly, “that you didn’t want it. That you didn’t want me.”
“I didn’t think I could have anyone,” Tadej whispered.
Jonas let out a breath that sounded like release. “You can. You always could.”
The silence after that wasn’t empty anymore. It hummed, low and steady, like the world had finally remembered how to breathe.
Jonas pulled him closer - slow, cautious, both hands now at the base of Tadej’s neck.
Tadej leaned forward until his forehead found Jonas’ shoulder. Stayed there.
Neither of them spoke. There was nothing left to explain.
Jonas felt the tremor in him fade, replaced by something quieter, almost peace.
He whispered, “It doesn’t have to mean anything we don’t want it to mean.”
Tadej nodded against him. “I know.”
He smiled then - small, tired, true. “But it can mean mercy, right?”
Jonas’ hand tightened once. “Yeah. Mercy sounds good.”
They stayed like that - two bodies in a too-small room, the hum of the air conditioner, the muffled noise of laughter somewhere down the hall.
Outside, the night air was warm and soft against the windows.
Inside, the light flickered once and steadied.
If the marks were just stories, if faith had turned to myth, it didn’t matter.
For tonight, it meant forgiveness.
Jonas whispered something Tadej didn’t quite catch.
He didn’t ask him to repeat it. He didn’t need to.
They just stood there, breathing the same slow air.
And if the marks never meant anything at all,
tonight, they meant mercy.