He bent over him, smiling. "Well, let's get something straight, Olav Olsen." His voice sounded very different from the one he had heard just a few days ago, when he had aggressively told him not to let himself go. Today, it sounded almost sexy, enjoying the current situation with pleasure.

Olav's temple began to throb like mad. The pain came so suddenly as if someone had struck him with a baseball bat. He felt dizzy.

"I'd love not to have to do this to you, but the risk of you remembering everything under the influence of this scum is just too high." He caressed his cheek. A disgusting feeling.

"He is not scum!" Olav turned his head away, but the other‘s hand gripped his chin firmly and forced him to look at him.

"Yes, he is, because this piece of shit wanted to cheat on me - with you."

Olav thought he had misheard, but before he could say a word, the other man had put his tongue in his mouth.

"Mph! Hnngh!"

He wanted to bite him, but he pushed two fingers into his mouth and forced him to open it further. He could barely breathe and tried to fight back, but the straps securing his wrists did not give way at all. They painfully cut into his flesh, leaving red welts.

Finally he ended the kiss and looked deep into his eyes.

Olav spat at him. "Try that again and I'll bite off your tongue, so you can never speak ill of him again!"

The other one wiped his cheek and raised a warning finger. "Tse, tse, tse! Don't get me started. I'm just going to tell you a nice story. Do you interrupt someone who's telling you nothing but the truth? I thought you wanted to know so badly what happened a year ago."

Olav pressed his lips together. A deep frown wrinkle appeared between his eyebrows.

What else could he do but lie here and listen? Oh, how much he hated all of this!

***

***

Bananas had the best taste when they were yellow. Not green or brown or deep yellow. They were best after just turning yellow, so you could feel a little resistance while you sink your teeth into them and gently surround them with your lips.

Bananas, as Olav knew, were way better than giant melons or crunchy apples which made you bite your teeth and gave you a stomach ache. Bananas were best as part of a well-balanced breakfast, which also included soft-boiled eggs.

And a well-balanced breakfast was by no means something impure, but a whole table full of bread rolls, bacon, waffles, smoothies and noodles, which had to find their way into your stomach within a very short time, before being joined by two cups of coffee, fruits and several protein bars afterwards.

All because Olav was slightly special... Olav was a pro cyclist.

And not just anybody. After his spectacular withdrawal from the Tour de France last summer, anyone who more or less watched professional cycling remembered Olav's name.

Olav, the great hope from Denmark. Olav, the sprint star of Team Viking Spades. Olav, the all-rounder who could conquer the highest mountain without even raising an eyebrow. An earnest strategist - and yet a down-to-earth young man who was born in a village near the German border and who loved nothing more than his mother's cinnamon rolls.

At least newspapers and social media channels said so. But nobody knew the truth: there was something in Olav's life he loved even more than cinnamon rolls. Something way more delicious. Something that brought him into sheer ecstasy just by watching it. The one and only real reason why he put on extreme effort to achieve top performances in cycling for years:

Male booties.

Well-trained bottoms rising from the saddle, ready to squeeze the last bit of juice out of their owners pedalling insanely, struggling, panting, fighting for every inch that separated them from their rivals. Sweat was running down the cyclists' bright red faces and dripped from their chins. And then, finally, cheers of victory at the finish line, a choir made of a thousand voices, blowing away all the effort and putting every rider into a post-coital state of deep satisfaction.

Yes, cycling was pure sex.

Well, If you ignore the fact that after hundreds of kilometres in the saddle your ass was so sore that you won't be able to have sex anyway. And no, Olav couldn't confirm the rumour that all cyclists were impotent.

At least with his body everything seemed to be fine. His little friend had never let him down during the recovery phase after a race.

Especially last summer, when he had to take a break for a long time. As unfortunately as it was, Olav got involved in a crash in the bunch. Staying at the hospital with a multifragmentary fracture of his right elbow, he was only able to use his left hand for a few months.

During this time Olav's mental state was as incomplete as his sex life. He was able to remember how he had fought against the wind in Normandy and how he still was one of the first to cross the finish line.

He also remembered how he survived the first hilly stage with his friends Haakon and Morten, who were also under contract with Team Viking Spades for a couple of years.

But anything beyond the rough circumstances of the last Tour de France was as dull as the headache occasionally pounding behind his left temple. He wasn't able to say what he had done in the evening after the race, which interview he gave at which time with which TV station - and above all: what was happening on the day of the accident.

Haakon had explained it to him many times: it was the king stage that took place in the Pyrenees. At first it was hot, brutally hot. Sweating as hell, Team Viking Spades gave their best to climb one hill after another, while being part of the bunch of cyclists, the peloton. Morten and Ebbe, the famous climber duo, were part of the breakaway aiming to be the first at the summit.

All of a sudden it started hailing. The summer weather turned into a dark and dangerous hailstorm. The road almost swam away. Raindrops on the safety glasses blocked everyone's view and crept into the thin cycling jerseys and shorts.
Hailstones hurting like needles took away even the hardcore spectators' desire to watch the stage.

And even the cameramen on their motorcycles and support vehicles looked like they would have preferred to take pictures of a boring billiard tournament than of soaking wet men in tight clothes.

And suddenly... Suddenly everything started to slip away. Brakes were screeching. The first road racer slipped into a dangerous sideways position. The man behind braked abruptly and his bicycle also started to swerve.

A loud crash.

Man and bike were flying through the air. An unstoppable chain reaction had begun.

The apocalypse on bicycles.

The lucky ones were able to swerve to the left, the unlucky ones crashed into another cyclist. And Olav, who had kept his head down for the whole time, made, for the first time since elementary school, the experience of how it felt to fly upside down over the handlebars.

At least, that's what Haakon always said, while Olav was just wondering and scratching his head, hoping this would help with recovering his memory.

But nothing came back. The photos in the sports magazines remained without meaning or context for him, and whenever he was asked on TV about what happened, he could only give the ready-made answer the team's press spokesman had advised him to give: "The change in the weather took us all by surprise and my accident was really tragic. Fortunately I have fully recovered and will continue to give my best for Team Viking Spades!"

If only one could get rid of everything else as easily as curious reporters! Consuming thoughts, for example. Recurring images haunting him. Strange feelings robbing Olav of sleep at night.

There was something inside of him saying: "You have forgotten something important! Something very important! You've forgotten about me."

In these moments a picture kept popping up in his head: an ass. A well-shaped bottom, rising from the saddle and dancing away at the speed of light. Olav knew that he had chased this butt not only once, but many times.