“Yeah, somewhere. Hope it holds up. His coach has mass disapproval for me.”
“You’re a bad influence,” Chelsea said with a smirk. “We all knew that. We just thought it was Mika you were hoping to influence badly.”
“She’s a friend.”
Mika was on the other side of their enclave, watching Janco on the slackline that’d been strung between two trees. Janco looked comfortable up there, doing hops to impress the crowd. He was big and blond to Mika’s small and dark, but it wasn’t the first time Flynn had noticed the two of them next to each other.
“Pysched for the preliminaries?” he asked Chelsea, turning his attention away from the pairing.
“I’m so jealous you guys get to go first. Waiting is torture. It’s like being on this weird holiday that’s actually the most important job of your life except there’s no way to get started on it.”
“You could be watching videos of yourself speed climbing like Spencer is.”
“Seriously? It’d probably just fuck me up. If I’m thinking about what I’m doing, I can’t do it.”
“Exactly what I told him.” He felt vindicated by Chelsea’s agreement, but then Chelsea’s climbing style wasn’t dissimilar from his own. She had a reputation for going big too.
“If I thought there was something useful I could be doing, I’d do it,” she said, stretching languorously as if to belie her point. “The best thing you can do today is relax and recover. Eat well, get a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow’s going to be a long day for you.”
“No worse than any comp.” It was always like that for combined medals—three events, one right after another. Usually they qualified in the morning and were expected to climb in the finals that same afternoon. At least here they were getting a rest day between rounds.
“Except it’s the Olympics.”
“I sort of wish everyone would stop saying that. It’s another comp, another day.”
“Jaded.” She jogged him with her elbow. “Some of us are excited.”
“I’m excited.” And scared and reluctant and uncertain about what would happen next and worried Spencer would disappear if he didn’t make it into the finals, leaving him too heartbroken to care about competing for a medal. “I just don’t think being worked up about it will make me climb any better. Don’t you ever get tired of the pressure?”
“All the fucking time. Climbing should be Zen, you know. One with the rock, a compromise between you and possibility. Part courage, part flow, all nature. Comps are entirely the wrong energy.”
“That’s all I’m saying,” he said.
“But still. It’s the Olympics.”
Argh.
13. Spencer
The mood without Flynn was even darker than it’d been with him. Flynn’s presence had required Pierre to be polite to an extent that was no longer in play when it was just the two of them. In addition to getting a lecture about all the ways in which he’d deviated from his training plan over the last week, Spencer had to listen to Pierre blame all those deviations on Flynn. Even when he explained how Flynn had found a way for him to practice lead climbing yesterday, it didn’t change Pierre’s mind. He considered their trip “foolhardy,” “dangerous,” and “sure to throw off your biorhythms.”
“There was nothing unsafe about it,” Spencer mumbled to the napkin dispenser, leaving out the part about the dodgy bolts. “We did laps and practiced clipping. It was a nice day. I slept great last night.”
After Roddy had departed and Spencer had jerked off to the memory of Flynn’s mouth on his cock, he had indeed slept very well. He’d woken up with a bounce, hyper aware of the potential in the air. A day without training, a day with Flynn, a day where they could be two lovers discovering each other instead of two climbers poised on the edge of the most momentous moment of their careers.
Then he’d gotten Pierre’s volley of texts and now he was sitting in a dark bar on a nice morning with a glass of tap water and a grudge.
Pierre was right. Of course he was. The two of them had spent years choreographing the perfect speed climbing sequence, drilling it into his head so he could execute it flawlessly. Monkeying around with a random sequence composed on the fly hadn’t been a smart choice.
As for the rest of the ways in which he’d failed to adhere exactly to his training regimen, he was in a foreign country with limited access to training facilities. He’d done the best he could, including finishing his run the day Flynn had sprained his ankle. Going to Tsuzura-iwa hadn’t been wrong. It just hadn’t. And Pierre wasn’t going to get him to say it had been.
“That young man is talented,” Pierre said. “But undisciplined. You’ve told me so yourself.”
So he had, probably more than once. Because ranting about Flynn’s lack of discipline was easier than admitting to either his jealousy or his crush.
“I’ve gotten to know him better on this trip. He was only a kid when I first met him. I might’ve misjudged.”
“Or maybe something else is going on, hmm?”
“What if it is?” Spencer challenged.
“Do you think now is the best time? You’re here for a reason—”
“To win, I know.”
“I was going to say to show your sponsors your value to them, but sure.” Pierre shrugged. “You have a brand, a reputation. And it’s for providing full value with uniform steadiness, not for dramatic flair. Mad gallops up the speed wall, romantic rivalries. Flynn is leading you down the wrong path. For him, it’s on-brand. For you, it’s not.”
“He’s not my rival. None of them are.” Excepting Ashley, perhaps, but even there. Ashley’s snarky jabs aside, they were more on the same team than not. If Spencer traveled to England, Ashley would show him around, give him all the best info on where to climb, what routes to do, lend him gear and drive him places. Just like Spencer would do for Ashley or Liv or Shino or any climber who visited his neck of the woods.
“You know what I mean,” Pierre said. “Never mind the medals. All climbers are competing for the same sponsorship dollars. You’re at the top of your game right now, Spencer. Don’t blow it over a blowjob. Flynn’s not the one you need to impress.”
But he liked impressing Flynn. He could remember how Flynn had looked at him with worshipful eyes that weekend long ago in Joshua Tree, the same eyes Flynn had looked at him with yesterday. Sometimes it seemed like Flynn thought more highly of his climbing than Pierre did.
Pierre stifled a yawn, and Spencer jumped on it. “You should take a nap.”
“I’ll be fine. Where’s that waiter? I’ll order some coffee.”
“No, really. Go lie down. There’s nothing we can do today that’ll change what’s going to happen tomorrow.” Whatever they did today would be the same as they’d been doing for a lot of years now.
“Maybe,” Pierre relented. “Just for an hour.” He looked at the time on his phone, then pocketed it. “Go get some lunch, and I’ll catch up with you after.”