“You’re in Japan,” Chelsea said. “Maybe you could learn to like it.”
“Very fresh,” Mika agreed. “But we go place have many choices.”
Alternatively, Ashley didn’t have to come. That would be fine too. Unfortunately, he came.
At the gym, they had to wade through autographs and pictures again, but once the initial fuss died down, they blended in, dressed in climbing clothes and doing what climbers went to a gym to do. Every gym was different, and every gym was the same, even in Japan. Music blasted, people gave each other advice at the top of their lungs, and an occasional shriek of triumph pierced the general clamor.
The walls rose up at every angle, all of them brightly painted and covered in even brighter plastic holds. Some of the holds had been molded to mimic real rock, others didn’t even pretend. Kids loved grabbing onto the jaws of a T-Rex or stepping on a frog’s face.
Chalk hung in the air, visible where light streamed in though the few windows that hadn’t been boarded over to form another climbing surface. The ceilings weren’t high enough for lead climbing, but there were plenty of bouldering walls to choose from. Naturally Flynn’s group gravitated to the wall that overhung the most. This was his domain—unroped climbing on walls that were short but steep. Jumps, reaches, implausible body positions, devious contortions, unlikely sequences. The best boulder problems looked impossible and felt even harder.
Competition climbing, with its point system and ticking timer, didn’t leave much room for learning. Speed climbing was rote memorization. Lead climbing a one-and-done push for the top. But in the bouldering event, you got more than one try. The fewer attempts it took to reach the top, the better, but you could keep trying until time ran out.
That was why bouldering was Flynn’s favorite event. It was his favorite kind of climbing outside because it was low maintenance and high energy, and it was the closest thing to real climbing inside. Sure, the holds were made of plastic and bolted onto a wall instead of being natural features carved into the rock by icebergs and erosion, but the moves and the attitude were the same. Try, fail, try again.
Plus, he had to admit that he liked the falls. Every failure came with a free whee at the end, a quick trip back down to the padded mats where you’d started—leaving you tired and breathless and determined to do better next time.
They played a game of add-on to warm up, each climber adding a move to a sequence they made up as they went. When Flynn’s turn came, he did a funky heel hook just for the fun of it, then Spencer used a tiny crimp that had the rest of the men groaning. Fingertip holds were Spencer’s specialty, but the women with their smaller hands liked them too.
In retaliation, Shino made the next move to a sloper—a big round thing that had to be palmed like a basketball. Shino was average height, about the same size as Spencer, but he had big hands and the grip strength of someone with even bigger ones.
It was all in good fun, everyone playing to their strengths but being respectful about it, until Ashley leaned sideways and used his wingspan to grab for a huge hold at the edge of his reach.
“Oh, come on,” Chelsea protested. “You know most of us can’t reach that.”
“You’re a pro,” Ashley said. “Figure it out.”
Yeah, sometimes you had to figure out how to get from here to there when you couldn’t reach from here to there, but this game was supposed to be a warm-up. Either you could reach the hold and the move was easy, or you couldn’t, and the move was… not impossible, but in a completely different league of difficulty. Both Mika and Spencer did find a way to make the move, but their enthusiasm for the game had been lost. The group split up, with the women going in one direction—the far-from-Ashley direction—and the men in several others.
Spencer walked down to the other end of the room where the walls didn’t overhang at all. Flynn followed because he went where Spencer went. But that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to give him grief about it.
“Slab.” He twisted his face into an expression of mock disgust at the less-than-vertical wall Spencer had led them to. Every comp had at least one slab problem, but no one liked them.
“Why are you making that face? You rule at slab.”
“Yeah, but not because it’s fun.” He made the face again, pursing his lips like he was disgusted but thinking more about how he’d like to run them all over Spencer’s body. Spencer had a light sheen of sweat from the warm-up, and his muscles were in the perfect state—bulging from use but not so pumped up they looked painful.
“Well, I could use some work in this area,” Spencer said, his own face set in a typical expression of determination. “You can do whatever.”
“You’re supposed to be training me.”
“When it comes to slab, you could train me.”
“All right.” Flynn threw himself down on the mat and laid back to peer up at the wall. “Show me what you've got.” He didn’t mind watching Spencer climb. Not at all.
Spencer put his right foot onto a huge hold at knee level and shifted his weight onto it. He needed to stand all the way up in order to reach the next hold in a typical slab move—like stepping onto a coffee table to grab something hanging from the ceiling, except not like that at all. Having a wall in your face made it a challenge to keep your center of gravity over your feet and Spencer didn’t actually go anywhere, just hovered in place, making micro adjustments and looking up at the next hold like he wished it would come down to meet him.
“You've too much booty dragging you down,” Flynn offered. “Maybe that’s why I’m so good at slab. I’ve got no booty at all.”
He demonstrated how to do the move. His extra height helped, as did the pancake flatness of his butt, but the main thing was smoothness and balance. Flow. “And you’re doing that thing where you don’t want to fall off again,” he said as he dropped to the mat, hiding a wince when he landed on an ankle that was definitely not a hundred percent.
“Did you take your ibuprofen after lunch?”
Yeah, maybe he hadn’t hid it that well.
“Never mind my ankle. It’s fine. We were talking about how you climb like you’re trying to avoid falling.”
“I don’t think I can talk my body into believing I’m not going to fall off this.”
“Bouldering’s not a won’t-fall discipline like speed climbing is. More of an it’s-okay-to-fall discipline. That’s why we have mats. Falling is part of the process.”
“I’ve bouldered before, Flynn. I once taught you everything you didn’t know.” Spencer was kind of hot when he was angry, his brown eyes flashing like he had a little Teen Wolf in him. Flynn wanted to grab him and kiss him, but he settled for smirking at him in a way that suggested what he wanted. They hadn’t had any time alone today, and he was anxious to get to it.
“You just spent a solid minute in one place trying to figure out how not to fall. Bouldering’s not that. Just try the move.”
Spencer tried the move and immediately landed on his ass.
“Exactly. Now do that ten more times.”
With a glare, Spencer got up and did it two more times before snagging the next hold on his third attempt.