Spencer nodded.
“That’s, um, really interesting.” They were being watched—by Mika with curious eyes and by Ashley with sarcastic ones. “About leaving the village when you’re finished competing, I mean. But you’re not finished competing.” He shot Ashley a glare, basically daring him to make another comment, but the chime of Spencer’s phone interrupted their face-off.
“You really want to watch videos? Because I need to get over there.”
“Of course I want to. Is it okay with Pierre?”
“Um, more or less.” Spencer shoved his phone in his pocket and stood up. “I’m the client, after all.”
“You’re not getting yourself in trouble, are you?” Part of him wouldn’t be at all sad if Spencer told him not to come—there was sun and sand and surf calling his name—but Spencer insisted it was good, so Flynn followed him like a puppy out to Pierre’s hotel on the spectator side of Olympic Village. Being in a hotel lobby made him think about bedrooms and the fact that Spencer didn’t have a roommate anymore, until a tall man with a French Canadian accent appeared to shake his hand with a politeness Flynn could tell was forced.
In his youngers years, Pierre had been a formidable lead climber, but these days he was better known for his alpine ascents, and his physique had relaxed from prime fitness into one with enough weight to sustain him through days of low nutrition at high altitudes. Spencer shared Pierre’s near-legendary preciseness and balletic aptitude for stillness. And they apparently shared a dedication to charts and checklists too, because once the three of them had seated themselves at a padded booth at the back of the empty bar, Pierre and Spencer began a tedious process of reviewing Spencer’s training activities, right down to how many reps he’d done on the weight machines and the pace of his runs.
A waiter came over, and Flynn ordered a Coke. The scowl he got from Pierre made him wish he’d ordered a beer, even if it was nine in the morning. Spencer and Pierre might have some things in common, but Spencer was fun while Pierre was just bossy. Weren’t alpinists supposed to have a sense of humor so they could entertain each other through long days trapped in snow-covered tents? If Flynn were going to be trapped in a tent with someone, he’d sure rather it was Spencer.
“Are we boring you?” Pierre asked.
“Not at all,” he lied. They were talking about how many servings of fiber Spencer had eaten for fuck’s sake. In a minute they’d be reviewing his bowel movements.
“Why don’t we watch videos,” Spencer suggested. “You and I can go over the rest of this later.”
“All right, let’s start with your own climbing. Cue up the footage from your speed training the other day.”
Spencer set his phone against the napkin holder so all three of them could see it. He was sitting on the same side of the table as his coach, leaving Flynn alone on the other side, but at least that gave him the option of watching Spencer instead of the video. Real life Spencer was handsomer than tiny Spencer, plus Flynn had seen all this in person.
“Right, left, left, jump, right, bump, high step,” Spencer chanted as the video played, reciting the moves his on-screen version executed. “It’s all muscle memory,” he explained to Flynn when tiny-Spencer hit the buzzer at the top of the wall. “There’s a specific sequence, and saying the moves out loud helps cement it.”
Spencer’s next run started on screen and he narrated it again, shooting Flynn an occasional embarrassed look because, hey, it was weird.
“Oh,” Spencer said the next time tiny-Spencer stepped up to the wall. “This one is different. We should probably skip it.” He reached for his phone, but Pierre stopped him.
“No, I want to see it.”
“You saw it when I emailed it, right?”
“I want you to talk me through it. Go on. Play the video, tell me the moves.”
“Uh, left, dyno, right, no wait, left, um, bump.” Spencer gave up, and they all three watched in silence as tiny-Spencer scrambled and slid his way to the top, jumping for the buzzer in a flail of limbs.
“You can’t talk me through what you were doing there, because you didn’t know what you were doing there.”
“It was an experiment.” Spencer stopped the playback just before tiny-Spencer got enveloped in a hug by tiny-Flynn.
“And the Olympics felt like an appropriate place to experiment?”
“Dude,” Flynn interrupted. “It was one run. How the fuck did it hurt anything?”
“It’s okay,” Spencer said.
“No, it’s not. He’s shaming you for having a little fun, never mind that it was your best time of the day. The best time of your career, if I’m not mistaken.” Which he knew he wasn’t. He paid more attention to Spencer’s career than his own. He might even know how many servings of fiber Spencer had had.
“Then I’m correct in assuming you had something to do with this.” Pierre turned his steely blue gaze from Spencer to him.
“It was my idea, yes. Speed is his weakest event.”
“You think I don’t know this?”
“I’m right here, guys.”
“Sorry.” Flynn didn’t want to be one more voice ordering Spencer around. He wanted to be Spencer’s boyfriend, not his coach. But fuck, there was nothing wrong with sharing advice or screwing around now and then. “I should probably take off.”
It hurt when Spencer looked relieved at the idea. “I’ll catch up with you later.”
“I’m afraid we have a lot of ground to cover today,” Pierre said in contradiction to his promise.
“If you can.” Flynn took a gamble and reached across the table to grab Spencer’s hand—not like a handshake but like a squeeze. Pierre looked at their joined hands pointedly until Flynn retracted his and slid out of the booth. He left the bar area slowly, hoping to hear footsteps behind him, but there weren’t any.
Well, fine. Spencer had been with his coach a lot of years, longer than he’d known Flynn even, their relationship well-established. Whereas his and Spencer’s relationship—whatever that might be—was new and uncertain. And this was the Olympics, as everyone kept reminding him. A time for serious endeavor, not for fucking around.
But after a quick stop in his room to pick up his sunglasses and change into board shorts, he went down to the beach to fuck around. There wasn’t much of a swell today, but surfers dotted the waves, and from the diversity of body types around him, Flynn could guess climbers weren’t the only people having a beach day.
Chelsea waved him over to the hammock she was lounging in with a lazy wave. His gang had staked out a section of ground just off the sand, where the trees served as both shade and attachment points.
“Did you seriously pack a hammock?”
“Never leave home without one.” She scooted over to give him room to climb in next to her. He tilted his sunglasses up onto his forehead and pulled his t-shirt off to scrunch it into a pillow. Pretty much perfect.
“Been in the water?”
“Nah, I’m more of a mountain babe.”
“I hear that.”
She reached over and gave his shoulder a shove. “That’s for running off to the mountains without us. Did it get you anywhere?”