“How late were you out last night?” He’d woken up when Roddy had come crashing in but hadn’t picked up his phone to check the time.
“Ugh, I don’t even know. I was so fucking wasted.”
Shame that Roddy wasn’t Flynn’s roommate. They’d be better suited. Flynn had managed to end up rooming with Chelsea after they’d both—according to Flynn—requested that placement. It was common enough for climbers to share a tent regardless of gender, so Spencer wasn’t surprised by them being okay with it so much as by its being allowed. Americans could be so weirdly puritanical. But if Chelsea and Flynn wanted to get it on, they’d find a way, roommates or not.
Did Chelsea and Flynn want to get it on? Or could Flynn be…. Despite having spent most of the last two hours thinking about that question, Spencer hadn’t arrived at an answer.
“My event’s not for another few days,” Roddy said, apparently giving up on sleeping. He sat up and tugged a t-shirt on over his bare chest. “Gotta do something with my time. Speaking of which, I need your phone number. I coulda brought a girl back here last night.”
“You’re not disrupting my sleep schedule so you can get laid.” Barging in during the wee hours of the morning was bad enough. “Find an alternative.”
“Dude, I would so do the same back, though. You have no idea how easy it is to get pussy around here.”
Spencer laughed. “You don’t know who I am, do you?”
“Why, because you’re more famous than the rest of us?”
“Because there’ve been a lot of articles about me. About me, one woman rugby player, three women soccer players, and Shawnacy Barber.” Our gay athletes. “Ring any bells?”
Roddy frowned in deep concentration until understanding dawned. “Oooh.” He grabbed his sweat pants off the floor and tugged them on under the covers.
Spencer prepared to fend off a hostile mountain of wrestler-man. Or at least to be assigned a new roommate.
“Same difference, though,” Roddy said. He threw the covers off but remained reclined with his arms behind his head. “I mean, if there’s a lot of pussy, there’s gotta be at least as much dick.”
Spencer let his breath out. They weren’t going to have a problem, apparently. “There’s plenty of dick, but most of it is straight dick.”
“Yeah, but dude, you’ve got a list, right? Like, those articles they wrote about you—they’ve got those for every country. You don’t even have to ask. And Shawnacy? I’ve seen that guy. Hot ginger, right?”
Yes, there were other gay men around, even beyond the ones listed in the articles. Spencer knew because he’d logged into Grindr to check. But that wasn’t what he’d come here for. “What happened to the rule about no sex before a competition?”
“That’s bogus. You can thank my Greco-Roman forerunners for that myth. See, they had this theory that splooge is vitality, right? If you squirt it out, you lose it.”
Spencer laughed at the hand gestures accompanying Roddy’s explanation.
“But,” Roddy went on, “they totally did a study on it—asked athletes whether they’d gotten laid or not and compared it to how they did the next day, and this is what they found out: for guys, there was no difference, but—get this—women were more likely to win if they’d gotten laid. So that might be true for gay guys too.”
“How do you figure?”
“Splooge is vitality, right? Those chicks who got laid, they took in some guy’s vitality. Could work the same for you. Go get some splooge, my man. Add to your vitality.”
“It’s an interesting theory,” Spencer said, trying to keep himself from losing it entirely. “But I’m not sure I’ve got the time to test it.”
“And yet, here you are. At the Olympics, in Tokyo. If you aren’t coming away with a medal, you can at least get your rocks off. There ought to be some reward for making it all the way here.”
Once again, it occurred to Spencer that Roddy and Flynn would get along pretty well. He could totally imagine Flynn using his badge to pick up chicks, not that he would need a badge. He probably picked up chicks just walking down the street. The man had arranged what was likely the only co-ed roommate situation at the Olympics. That was prime getting-laid technique there. Roddy would be proud.
Spencer, on the other hand, preferred not to think about whether or not Flynn was getting laid. He’d rather think about that moment when Flynn had maybe been about to kiss him. But it was probably best not to think about that either.
6. Flynn
Flynn waited until Spencer dropped him at the door to his residence before giving in to the pain and allowing his limp to show. A handful of ibuprofen, and it would all be fine in a day or two. He’d been living with a trick ankle for two years now and would probably be living with it the rest of his life. Every climber had their Achilles heel. His Achilles heel just happened to be very closely involved with his Achilles tendon.
Chelsea was cross-legged on top of her bed when he got up to the room. Not normal cross-legged, but that thing flexible people did where each foot was propped up on the opposing thigh. It made Flynn’s ankle hurt just looking at it. She had on furry pajama bottoms and a tank Flynn could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra under, with her bright pink hair swept back in a loose ponytail.
He went straight for the mega-bottle of ibuprofen. It was already sitting out on his nightstand, because his ankle wasn’t the only thing that hurt. Twenty-three and already falling apart with knuckles bigger than his grandfather’s, a knee that suffered from the effects of an ankle that was never at full-strength, a tweaked elbow, and something going on in his lower back probably caused by taking big falls in a lightweight harness.
“That bad already, huh?”
“Reaggravated my ankle,” he said as he swallowed the handful of pills. “That’s what I get for running.”
“Ibuprofen isn’t going to cure what ails you.”
“Ibuprofen cures everything.” That was the conventional climbing wisdom.
“It won’t change your mood. You look sad.”
“Oh. I didn’t realize it showed.” He collapsed on his bed, giving up on even pretending to be okay, either physically or mentally.
“I’m an empath. I pick up on auras.” She bracketed her head with her hands, indicating where an aura went. Flynn didn’t believe in auras, but she wasn’t wrong about how he felt.
“I just had an argument with Spencer.”
“And you like him.”
“Sure, he’s a climber. A good guy. Why wouldn’t I like him?”
“Yeah, but you like him.”
“What are you, a witch?” He’d never discussed his sexuality with another climber, let alone with her. He didn’t pretend to be attracted to women, but he reserved his attraction to men for non-climbing situations. Even when he and Chelsea had been emailing back and forth about sharing a room, he hadn’t played the “don’t worry, I’m gay” card. Whatever his sexuality, he wouldn’t jump an unwilling person.
“Told you I’m an empath. I see people. Specifically, I saw you with Spencer yesterday at lunch.”