Chapter Text
There’s something about him. Something that draws the eye. Makes you look, until you can’t stop looking. He likes being looked at, too, you can tell. Everyone can. All that chest thumping at the finish line, the unfiltered interviews – Remco Evenepoel wants to be seen, he wants to be heard, and he wants to be remembered. And it’s working for him, too, isn’t it? World Champion. Belgian Champion. Vuelta Winner. It’s not like Remco is all talk.
There’s something about you. There must be, because when you look at him, he knows. Turns away from the sea of people waiting for him to grace them with his attention, just to look at you. And look, and look. You’re always the first to look away, prickling from head to toe.
It started, as expected with Remco Evenepoel, somewhat explosively. Calling it a thing would probably be too much at this point. Is there something like “what happens at the Vuelta stays at the Vuelta”? That's maybe what it is, a momentary lapse in sanity, induced by one Remco Evenepoel. The first race day of the 2023 Vuelta a España had been cloudy all day, in a humid, vaguely foreboding way. The clouds, heaving, swollen, would unleash on the beach of Bilbao at some point, and everyone was just praying to be off the roads by then, done with the time trial. No one would be that lucky. Sepp, dear Sepp, always trying hard to make the best of it, made various noises every time the thunder rumbled and lightning lit up the stage during their warmup – A litany of “woah''s and “wahoo”s, until the worry overtook his childish glee at a good thunderstorm. By the time Jumbo-Visma made it to the stage, Vuelta staff had given up mopping water off the ramp, the rain just pooling up on the slick surface. Yet, things seemed to be going well, right until Jonas felt it, the sudden, unmistakable bump of one of his tires losing pressure. “There’s something on the road, I have a puncture,” he screamed, the group in front of him turning their heads. Acknowledgement from the team car, and then, waiting, waiting. Knowing without a doubt that at least for this stage, he had to admit defeat.
Remco had been livid at the weather, the storm hitting his team worst of all, but what surprised Jonas was how angry Remco got on the behalf of his fellow riders. “No one was kept safe by the race organisers today,” he’d growled in one of the interviews, “Idiots with tacks on the road, weather like this, it affects all of us. Riders deserve better.” For some reason, he had seemed to Jonas like someone who would be preoccupied with himself, maybe someone who would gloat. To see him like this, actively trying to be useful even in a brash way, made Jonas pay attention. It made Jonas look at him, quietly reevaluating Remco Evenepoel.
They watched Remco's interviews from the bus.
“He says what he thinks,” Dylan mumbled, prying his wet socks off his feet toe by toe. He made it sound like a bad thing, in the way only Dylan could, voice and facial expression distinctly displeased.
“He’s right though,” Jonas said in a small voice. “What you said earlier wasn’t so different.” Dylan didn't even dignify the comment with a response.
“I think Dyland just means to say that it would…serve Remco in the long run to not always be this…combative?” Robert said. “Sooner or later he’s going to run in with someone who doesn’t agree with him.”
Jonas couldn’t help but think the only person a run-in like that could end badly for would be anyone dumb enough to disagree with Remco Evenepoel.
“Jonas likes them combative, ah,” Primož had said, grinning widely. Jonas had flushed scarlet instantly. Primož definitely wasn't one to talk in that regard.
Unwilling to disagree further, Jonas peeled out of his skinsuit, shivering from the cold and vague embarrassment. It would never stop feeling weird to change clothes on the bus, the smell of wet feet, the windows fogging up with condensation. Sepp had laughed at him for his shyness once, in an oddly kind way. “We’re all just a bunch of pale chickens on tour,” he’d said, his eyes drifting over Primož’s thighs in a way that made Jonas feel indecent for witnessing it.
Jonas turned his eyes back to Remco on the screen, pointing to the sky and gesticulating wildly, and it made Jonas imagine himself opening the door to their bus to pull him out of the rain.
“Come inside,” he’d say, “You’ll catch your death out there.” He’d pull Remco inside by the wrist, swaddle him in a big towel and tousle his hair dry until it would stick up in all directions.
“Better now?” he’d ask, unearthing Remco’s face from beneath the towel to find him stunned into blessed silence…
Remco had actually come over to Jonas to ask if he was okay, when no one of Jumbo had been around, almost as if a moment of tenderness of his shouldn’t be witnessed.
“You didn’t get hurt?” he’d asked, gruffly, his voice low enough against the rain and the general commotion that Jonas had to ask him to repeat himself. Remco had put a hand on his shoulder, digging in, facing him directly. “You’re okay, yeah?” he’d asked, and Jonas had felt the unexpected urge to blush.
“Sure,” he’d mumbled, and had been rewarded with a slap on the back hard enough to turn his pale skin red beneath the jersey. “You take care now,” Remco had told him, and that had been that.
Except it kept raining, and Remco kept raging, talking about the conditions with the kind of righteous anger the rest of the peloton usually restrained themselves from, wary of their directors and sponsors. Jonas kept looking, fascinated by Remco’s evident fearlessness.
By the next day, the atmosphere between the two had changed by unspoken accord. It was raining again, and Jonas watched Remco wipe water off his brow for several minutes. Eventually, Remco caught him at it. “Jonas,” he said, raising a hand in greeting and jogging over. He stopped in front of Jumbo’s tent, out in the rain, as if he needed an invitation to come any closer.
“I need you for a thing,” he said. Puddles were forming where the gravel had given way beneath his feet.
Jonas frowned at him in askance, motioning for him to go on.
“Look, you’re like, the main guy here right now,” Remco said.
“Oh no—” Jonas started immediately, out of habit as much as embarrassment, but the sharp look Remco gave him shut him up.
“I’m not saying this as a compliment,” he said, his eyebrows raised, his lip curled. Sharp enough to cut yourself on, as if he simply had no time for Jonas’ bullshit.
“I’m saying people like you. That quiet, smiley thing works for you, yeah?” Then he repeated,, his voice more quiet, lower, “It works.” A pause, oddly charged in the wake of Jonas catching his meaning. “If we ride today the way the organisers intend for us to, it’s going to end badly, so I need someone to speak up on everyone’s behalf. Someone who can get everyone together. You just need to ask everyone to slow, to not actively duke it out for points. One stalemate isn’t going to hurt anyone.”
Jonas stared at him, watched Remco, completely undisturbed by the droplets running down his nose, make no move to join Jonas underneath the trap of the Jumbo tent. He had his arms crossed, and he looked properly impatient with Jonas’ baffled behaviour. Still, Jonas had to ask.
“Out of all the people here, you thought of me to do this?”
Remco groaned, actually groaned.
“Jonas, come on, don’t play dumb,” he said. “You didn’t make Jumbo co-captain for nothing. You know everyone is looking at you.”
Jonas didn't know what possessed him to say it, but the words left his mouth without any conscious effort on his part.
“Everyone?” he asked. Remco frowned at him. Stared him down until he reached some kind of decision.
“Everyone,” he said, his voice rough. “’Allies in a grand tour’, wasn’t it?”
Jonas’ eyes widened in recognition of his own words. Words he had used nearly a year ago, a throwaway comment he had made when a reporter asked him if he wanted to race against Evenepoel. “I’ve never raced against him in a three-week race before, but we’re both suited for it,” he’d said. “I think we could be allies in a grand tour until we have to battle each other.”
Looking back, he didn't know why he'd put it like that. He had wanted to say something nice about Remco, especially because journalists were comparing him to Wout and asking dull questions about who Jonas’ favourite Belgian was, but the allies comment had raised eyebrows among even his coaches.
Privately, Jonas found all the talk of rivalry a little silly. Racing was what he wanted to do, what he was being paid to do, and if he could race against someone when Tadej wasn't around---
“Hey, eyes on me, Vingegaard,” Remco growled. “You in or what?” Jonas hesitated. Then, to his endless astonishment, Remco slowly looked him up and down. The drag of his eyes across Jonas’ body made the other man curl his toes in his shoes.
“I’d be… very grateful,” Remco said, his voice husky again, a mere whisper against the rain. He was doing it on purpose. But…what was he doing, exactly? What was it about Remco Evenepoel that made Jonas so desperate to find out?
Jonas agreed, even though he had to face the endless embarrassment of every team captain somehow knowing he didn’t come up with the idea of a slowdown.
“Sent you to do his bidding, did he,” Enric Mas said. “We’ll see.”
"Running errands for the little bastard, are you now," Geraint Thomas said in his perpetually mildly amused way, "That was quick."
In the end, it worked, and Jonas' help noticeably warmed Remco towards him. When the sun comes out the next day, his mood improves and, knowing it’s a stage he can excel at, Remco becomes downright chatty, telling Jonas about his experience of winning the Vuelta the year prior.
“You know that’s not going to work out for you this year,” Jonas says in an unguarded moment, “I’m also here.”
“Oho, cocky,” Remco says, laughing. His eyes glitter with something dangerous, intoxicating. He leans in, his face inches away from Jonas’. “Listen,” he says, his voice low, staring at Jonas through half-lidded eyes, “You’ve got my attention, but you’re not cashing in. Are you sure you know what you’re putting down?”
Of course Remco would just call him on it. Jonas hesitates. Suddenly, Remco pulls him away by the hand, ushering him out of the sunshine and into the shadow behind the tents. Jonas doesn’t know who kisses whom first, only that he moans before Remco even has his hands on him. He barrels Remco into a nearby car, the thumping noise of his body hitting it and Remco’s subsequent exhale of breath loud enough Jonas fears someone might hear them, but he’s too busy sucking on Remco’s bottom lip to care. Remco slides both hands down his ass and then squeezes, drawing Jonas closer to him, surprising a desperate gasp out of the Dane, before swallowing it up with eager lips.
“What do you say, hm?” he asks, smearing kisses down Jonas’ neck while the other man hangs on for dear life. “We’ll have ourselves a nice ride and you’ll come see me later, let me fuck you so hard you’ll be seeing stars days, how’s that sound? You can just let go with me, just let me make you feel good. That’s what you need, isn’t it? You like it when someone takes control.”
“Stop talking,” Jonas gasps, pressing them together in another bruising kiss. Remco shoves him away after a while, their lips disconnecting with a wet sound.
“Enough now,” he rasps, “Still got a race to win.”
“What if I win it?” Jonas pants, still out of breath. Remco bites his lip. His wide grin issues a challenge.
“You won’t, but I like a boy with confidence.”