1. Spencer
He’d made it. He was actually here.
Here right at this moment was a cafeteria-cum-food-court crowded with people speaking in a babble of languages, but more generally here was Athletes Village. Tokyo. The Olympics.
Spencer felt like he hadn’t taken a full breath in three years, not since he’d learned rock climbing would be a debut sport in the 2020 Olympics. But he couldn’t relax yet. He’d made it to Athletes Village, yes, but Athletes Village was only one more step toward where he really wanted to be, which was on the podium.
His chances at ending up on the podium weren’t very good, as too many news articles reminded him, but he’d never limited himself to what came easy before. Hard work. Dedication. Determination. Vision. That was how you got to places like this.
Or you could be born with natural talent and squander it, like certain people he knew. People who were probably eating at McDonald’s right now.
In contrast to the those certain people, he loaded his tray with the right balance of macros—protein to promote muscle growth, fat to keep his joints lubricated, carbs to provide sufficient calories while maintaining an ideal weight, because gravity was a cruel mistress. Balancing his perfectly-balanced meal, he surveyed the crowded room until he spotted a table full of people dressed like him in clothes festooned with the Canadian maple leaf. Swimmers, gymnasts, basketball players—the latter being easy to pick out because they towered over the people around them. He wouldn’t find any rock climbers at that table, though. Only forty climbers in the whole world had qualified. Twenty men, twenty women, and a single Canadian. Him.
He headed for Canadian table anyway. He might not know anyone there, but they competed under the same flag. He was sure they’d be friendly. But he hadn’t taken more than a few steps before a burst of raucous laughter caught his attention. He knew that laugh. Flynn Loren, the only American male to qualify and Spencer’s personal antithesis—a showboating, lackadaisical hotshot who also happened to be one of the sexiest climbers on the circuit.
He pivoted in the direction of the laughter and spotted the table full of climbers with Flynn at its center, looking right at home with a typical grin splitting his adorably impish face. It wasn’t fair that the one man who irritated Spencer most in the world was also the one he was most attracted to. Even in a sport where every competitor had a drool-worthy physique, Flynn stood out—taller than the average climber, lean the way they all were, toned in repose and stunning in action with lats like wings and forearms that popped with tendons, every inch of his upper body defined and honed to a level of perfection that made Spencer want to…
He didn’t know to what. Fuck him or fight him or just be him. If he’d been born with half of Flynn’s talent, he wouldn’t be a longshot to medal. Talent plus effort equaled gold. Too bad Flynn had all the talent while he had all the effort. But Flynn would probably medal anyway. Everyone expected him to, even though he wasn’t ranked in the top three internationally. Because everything always fell into place for Flynn.
Look where he was now—surrounded by laughing climbers. Spencer could put names to most of the faces at the table. Shino Nagasaki and Mika Yamamoto—two of the four climbers representing Japan. Kurt Fehrmann and Klara Zdarsky from Germany. The French contingent, all three of them sitting next to each other. The table was a hodgepodge of nationalities, but climbers were their own country. They had a language, a culture, and they knew each other.
Spencer hesitated, torn between the two options—his country or his sport?—then headed for the world he knew best. Flags aside, these were his people.
A chorus of hellos greeted him, Flynn’s loudest of all. The bright American-blue of his shirt brought out the green in his eyes and the pink in his cheeks. His hair was down—an unbrushed and disorganized mess of curls tumbling halfway to his shoulders, dark brown in the artificial lighting, though it could be almost red when exposed to sunlight.
Impractical. Spencer’s much more conservative haircut kept his hair out of his eyes and off his neck and didn’t look like he’d forgotten to comb it. But of course on Flynn the mess was appealing.
“Hey!” Flynn called with a wave. “Scooch in, we’ll make room.” He slid along the bench seat, opening a space between him and Chelsea, the American woman who’d qualified. Spencer shook his head. Even his slim hips wouldn’t fit in that narrow gap, and besides, he didn’t want to sit next to Flynn. Flynn had a way of attracting attention, including his.
Instead, he veered over to the French climbers who always appreciated his attempt to use his Canadian public school French with them. English was the international climbing language, but not everyone spoke it fluently enough to keep up with the conversation in a melee like this. Spencer’s Quebecois French was bare bones and badly accented, but he figured it was only fair to take his turn stumbling.
“How was your trip?” Liv asked in French when he sat down next to her.
“Awful.” If he could’ve flown direct from Vancouver, the flight to Tokyo would’ve been just under ten hours, but he’d had a layover in Seattle that was only supposed to have been an hour but which ended up being four, and since the sixteen hour time difference meant it’d already been tomorrow in Tokyo before he’d even started, it felt like two whole days had disappeared.
It was a good thing he had a week before the qualifying round to adjust, because he was a creature of habit, and all of this was… non-habitual. He’d crashed as soon as he got to his room yesterday afternoon and hadn’t made it up in time for breakfast this morning, so he was both hungry and completely at sea.
“Where are you staying?” His building seemed to be mostly Canadians.
He listened to her explain where the French delegation had been housed with his face turned pointedly in her direction, ignoring the louder conversation going on at his back and the way Flynn kept trying to draw him into it. As if Flynn didn’t have enough people paying court to him. The golden boy of climbing who made it seem like so much fun and who looked so pretty doing it was a media darling in addition to being the life of the party. Flyin’ Flynn, they called him.
But try as he might, Spencer couldn’t help hearing Flynn’s voice—that California surfer drawl laced with humor, easy to pick out over the clamor because it spoke in a language he understood but also because it was Flynn. And his crush on Flynn ran six years deep.
Flynn had only been seventeen the first time they met—a complete newbie who could barely get up a V4. Spencer, a relatively mature nineteen at the time, had been attracted by his enthusiasm and the determination with which he threw himself at climbs that were obviously too hard for him. He’d spent the weekend showing Flynn all his best tricks and had walked away hoping Flynn would grow up fast so his dirty thoughts wouldn’t be so inappropriate.
Six months later, he’d heard that Flynn had climbed a classic V10 and had texted his congratulations. Not many amateurs made it up to double digits. Flynn should be pleased with himself. Plus, he was almost eighteen by then, and Spencer had imagined running into him again someday and giving him more pointers. Maybe some very specific pointers.
As the only climber on the international comp circuit who was publicly out, Spencer did his best not to give the impression of lusting after his fellow climbers. Too bad they were all so fucking hot. God had made him gay and a climber, then gone and made climbers the hottest men on earth. Then thrown Flynn into the mix to really fuck with him.