Love was… kind of early to say. But they’d just had some mind-blowing sex, and anyone who worked up the courage to say I love you deserved a better response than hmm. But he couldn’t find the courage to say the words back, not when he wasn’t sure he’d heard them right. Or that they meant anything even if he had.
18. Flynn
Way to make it awkward, Flynn.
After he said those magic—and apparently undesirable—words, there was a noticeable shift in the atmosphere of the room. All the plans they’d been throwing around for the rest of the evening dried up and flew away like dandelion fluff. No reciprocal chance to fuck Spencer. No snuggles. No falling asleep in each other’s arms, though admittedly the bed was pretty narrow for two adults. Instead, Flynn found himself rather summarily bundled back into his clothes and out into the hallway to the accompaniment of some grumbling about early morning miles and getting a good night’s sleep.
So Spencer didn’t love him back. Yet. A week and a half ago, Spencer was barely speaking to him and now Spencer was sucking his dick. With time, Flynn would move the needle the rest of the way from dick sucking to total devotion. Spencer thought he didn’t have a work ethic, but he’d see. What he had was persistence. And charm. Even if he did say so himself.
So despite having been turned out, he didn’t feel too down as he strolled across campus in the pleasantly warm darkness, nodding at everyone wearing Team USA colors passing by in the other direction. His mind played back snippets from what’d just happened as he walked, and his dick perked back up, ready for that round two it’d been expecting. Sex with Spencer had been exactly as good as he’d always imagined. Like coming home. If home was the most exciting place on earth.
Despite his overall good mood, he was a little shy about letting himself back into his room. He’d run out of there pumping his fists, and now he was slinking back in an hour later, clearly dismissed. Chelsea raised her eyebrows at him when he came in. She’d spent the evening applying a coat of purple to her hair so that it sizzled like grape soda.
“Sorry.” He’d sort of promised her the room to herself tonight.
“No skin off my nose. Sorry things didn’t work out.”
“Things worked out. I got—you know.”
“Laid?”
“Lucky,” he said with a laugh, because the time with Spencer had been an unexpected windfall. “But then I opened my mouth and said the big I love you and suddenly he had somewhere better to be.”
Chelsea gaped at him. “Dude, you’re in, like, first date territory.”
“I know, I know.” He flopped down on his bed. “What can I say? I’ve had it bad for him for a long time. He gave me a little, and I took it all the way to the moon.” He made a darting motion with his hand.
“No one would ever expect you to be the romantic type. You probably shocked the hell out of him. Doesn’t mean he won’t get there.”
“Oh, he’ll get there. I just gotta impress him a little more, and climbing isn’t going to do it. I need a grand romantic gesture.”
“More grand than betting your career on his performance?”
“I didn’t tell him about that.” He could guess Spencer wasn’t going to be impressed by his bet with Ashley. In fact, maybe a grand romantic gesture wasn’t the right strategy at all. A block of tofu and a daily planner—that was the way to Spencer’s heart.
So, okay. What was the tofu equivalent of telling someone you loved them? Maybe it was sitting down and getting his life in order, taking charge of his future the way Spencer had always taken charge of his. No more waiting for something external to push him in one direction or another. No more whining about how much he hated being a professional climber while carrying on being one. Time to work toward his own vision of the perfect life instead of floating along, taking it as it came.
What he wanted wasn’t exactly a mystery. His ideal life would include climbing—lots of it—but climbing on his own terms. And it would include a relationship that was true to his sexuality and that he wasn’t trying to hide. Preferably with Spencer, and also preferably without it being a major media talking point. Those last two items were probably contradictory, but he figured he could live with his love life being in the media as long as he wasn’t the one who had to do the interviews about it. Let Spencer be the poster child for gay climbers. Flynn just wanted to fuck and climb. As himself. Not as a representative of anything, whether it was the queer community or North Face.
No, it wasn’t uncertainty about what he wanted that had kept him from responding to his acceptance from USC. It was the work involved—the kind of work Spencer excelled at and he didn’t. Like talking to his sponsors about how to terminate the contracts he had with them, holding press conferences to announce his decision and working through all the interviews he’d have to give about it, applying for student loans and drawing up a budget that was going to be pretty tight. Climbing paid poorly, but it paid. School worked the other way around.
Flyin’ Flynn was good at big moves, like dramatic, career-ending bets, not slow steady slogs through the details. But if Flyin’ Flynn was going to become Spencer’s Flynn, then he had work to do.
So he pulled out his tablet and got to it.
The next morning, he sent Spencer a good-morning text and stared at his phone for five minutes until he got one back. Spencer was probably halfway through his morning already, with a few miles under his belt and a healthy breakfast in his stomach, huddling with Pierre somewhere dark and miserable, but Flynn was in no hurry. He and the rest of the guys heading out to Mitake had agreed it didn’t make sense to try to wrestle bouldering pads onto the train during the morning commute, so they were planning a late start, giving him all the time in the world to lounge around on his bed and watch Chelsea get ready for her big day.
She was a bundle of nerves, all her hippie cool gone now that it came to it. She was starving, she felt sick to her stomach. She should eat now so she’d have plenty of time to digest before the comp started, she should eat later so she’d still have energy by the end. She should put on her uniform before breakfast so she didn’t have to walk all the way back to the room after, except what the hell else was she going to do? Why didn’t the comp start until noon? Why was it so hot again? Why did these stupid shorts make her ass look like she was fucking Betsy Ross? Who wanted the Stars and Stripes running across their backside?
Flynn met all her dithering with the sort of friendly teasing he would throw at his sister, who wasn’t an athlete but who could make a school dance into her own personal Olympics.
“Don’t you compete all the time?” he asked Chelsea as she debated how to do up her hair.
“Yes.”
“So you should be used to it.” He wasn’t Spencer, but he had a routine. Eat two hours before—lots of fat and protein because they burned longest—pull up his hair into a messy bun which he would undo and redo every time he felt bored or nervous, like his hair was a built-in fidget spinner, and ignore his ass completely. His ass was unremarkable, even when broadsided by the U.S. flag.
“This is how I do it,” Chelsea said, scowling at him in the mirror over their dresser. “This is my routine. I freak out. Speaking my nerves helps settle them.”