“You did what?” He ignored the troublemaker to ask Flynn directly.
“I might have been goaded into saying something a little rash. But I don’t regret it. As far as I’m concerned, you’re on that podium already.”
“You’d better not be planning to throw this.” God, now he was angry again. If Flynn didn’t want to be a professional climber, he should quit honorably, not take a dive in the Olympics so his boyfriend could win.
“Spencer.” Flynn took him by the elbow and tugged him a few feet away from the group of climbers. “We literally just talked about this. When I’m on that wall, I’m going to be giving it everything I have. I’m not capable of doing less than that. If anything, you’ll be yelling at me for going too hard.”
“You do go too hard,” he said, working himself up to deliver a lecture on the subject of conserving strength.
“See?”
Spencer brushed his fingers across the apple of Flynn’s cheek, admiring the rosy blush there and the tangle of curls swirling around it. “Promise you’ll try to win? Even if it means I don’t.”
“Promise.” Flynn tapped their foreheads together.
“Just remember what that means,” Ashley taunted.
“Fuck off, Ashley,” Shino said.
“I taught him that,” Flynn said proudly.
“I know fuck off long time,” Shino corrected. “All you, fuck off. Time now for rest, not fight.”
“Thank you!” Kurt exclaimed. He was first up for lead climbing and was obviously trying to get into the right head space. Relationship drama could wait.
A bell rang to summon them to group preview, and they filed out of the tunnel together to stand in a row on the edge of the stage facing the crowd. This time, when Spencer spotted the Canadian flags in the audience, he knew it was his family. He waved extra hard in their direction before turning with the bell to face the last challenge.
The holds rose up and to the right, arcing across the wall all the way from one edge to the other until they took a sharp left turn about halfway up that was obviously some sort of jump move. From there, the route climbed steadily to the top, apparently straightforward but undoubtedly growing harder as it went.
Shino and Dai talked to each other in Japanese while he and Flynn and Kurt kibitzed in English.
“You want to be careful through there,” he told Flynn, pointing out a spot just after the jump that he could tell would require precise body positioning. “No racing through it to get it over with.”
“Yes, sir.” Flynn gave him a sassy hip check.
“Is right hand sidepull?” Kurt asked, mimicking the motion of pulling his right hand into his chest.
“I’d left hand gaston it,” Spencer said, demonstrating the opposite motion with his other hand. “But you never know until you get up there.” He didn’t want to dictate how anyone else climbed the route, but he’d seen sequences like that in other routes this setter had put up. He felt pretty confident about his reading, and he churlishly hoped Ashley was over there by himself reading it wrong. This was supposed to be a collaborative period, and it was Ashley’s own fault if he’d pissed everyone off so bad they didn’t want to collaborate with him.
The preview period ended, and everyone except Kurt headed back to the isolation area. Spencer went through his shoe wardrobe and picked out his best edgers. The footwork up top would be precise. He warmed up a bit on the practice wall while he waited for his summons. It didn’t take long, which meant Kurt had fallen low enough on the wall to put himself out of contention for a medal.
Spencer trotted on stage to thunderous applause. The lights on the lead wall had been turned up so high he had a hard time picking out the Canadian flags, but he knew where they were, so he saluted in that direction. He and his belayer went through their safety check, and then he positioned himself at the base of the wall and launched up to start the clock.
He made his way upward, one hold at a time, injecting a little Flynn into his style by moving faster through the starting sequence than he normally would, but going back to Spencer mode as he got higher. The spot where the route suddenly veered left was a jump, as they’d all anticipated. There was no recovering from a jump gone bad, so he mentally measured twice before going for it.
The crowd cheered when he stuck the destination hold, then cheered even louder when he got both his feet safely back on the wall and took a second to shake out. Based on their reaction, he could guess this was where Kurt had fallen, but beating Kurt wasn’t enough to win a medal. He needed to get high enough to beat Ashley and Flynn.
This was his jam though, his kind of climbing. He’d picked the right shoes, had read the sequences right. All that homework, all that training—it hadn’t been for nothing, and he mentally gave Pierre credit where credit was due as he ticked off one hold after another, his arms tired but functional, his feet taking as much of the burden as the holds allowed.
He was so close to the top he could almost touch it. His forearms were on fire, his fingers protesting every move. The next hold looked really good, but he knew it couldn’t be. Not this high up. He was missing something, and even though his body was screaming at him to move, he paused to consider. There was something here he needed to figure out, and then—ah.
That hold he was eyeing was good all right, but it didn’t lead anywhere. It was a sucker hold, designed to lure him right when the sequence went left, past that much-less-good hold that would position his body correctly. The bad hold was bad. The baddest. Small and lacking in texture, angled to minimize surface contact. His fingers screamed as he adjusted his feet, his other hand coming up to close around the next hold which was just as bad, just as painful. Another micro-adjustment of his feet, another breath-holdingly delicate shift of body position, and he was on the finishing hold.
With shaky spaghetti arms, he pulled up the rope and clipped it through the top carabiner, then let go and dropped with a whoop. The crowd roared behind him, matching the pounding of his heart and the thrum of blood rushing through his ears. He’d hit the fucking top. In the Olympic finals.
He touched down on the sponginess of the mat, not quite steady—wrung-out and proud and overwhelmed by the lights and the noise and the ache that ran from shoulder to fingertips on both sides of his body. He caught himself before he toppled over and gave the crowd a final wave before staggering off stage.
It was over. He’d done his best, and his best had been really fucking good.
Flynn was up next. He climbed with a determination Spencer knew wasn’t faked, a half smile of concentration on his face the whole time, making it about halfway up the headwall above the jump move before coming off. It was a good performance, nothing to suggest his ankle had been bothering him, but he limped badly on his way over to the folding chairs.
He dropped into the chair next to Spencer, then looked up at the scoreboard. “Holy fuck, did you hit the top?”
Spencer nodded, unable to suppress a proud smile.
“Dude.” Flynn held up a fist, and Spencer bumped it. “Mad respect. That was brutal up there.”
Ashley came out before they could get too deep into rehashing the climb. They both turned to watch, a thrum of nervous stillness going up between them. Flynn reached for his hand, and Spencer let him take it. Flynn’s was dry with chalk, slightly tremulous from his recent exertion, and Spencer wanted to bring it to his mouth and kiss it better, knowing every ache and twinge Flynn must be feeling, because he’d been there himself ten minutes ago.