Chapter Text
Shane knew he shouldn’t be here, mere hours before the comp would start. But he couldn’t help it – between his anxiety and the time difference between Ottawa and Dallas, Texas, he’d woken up at 5am and tossed and turned for over an hour before deciding sleep was a lost cause. He knew wouldn’t be allowed into the building where the championship was being held until early afternoon, so he had pulled up Google Maps (why was everything separated by miles of highway in this godforsaken country?), texted his mom, called an Uber, and…here he was.
He pulled open the front door and the air that rushed out immediately brought his shoulders down from where they’d been clenched. He took a deep breath in, inhaling the familiar notes…sweaty shoes, chalk, and aerosol cleaning products. The climbing gym.
Climbing gyms all looked about the same, at least in Shane’s experience. And he had a good amount of it, having climbed throughout North America, even traveling as far as Europe and Asia for the past couple IFSC youth comps. This year, technically, he was no longer a youth; at 18 you became a “Junior”. His mind immediately started on a spiral — in another year, he wouldn’t be attending youth competitions at all; he’d be competing against Olympians like Toby Roberts and even greats like Adam Ondra. Mustering all the skills he’d worked on with his therapist, he pushed these thoughts aside as he paid at the front desk and made his way back to the bouldering area.
The gym was quiet, which made sense for 7 in the morning in a city not particularly known for its climbing culture. A woman in a matching athleisure set ran on a treadmill, music blasting loud enough from her Airpods that Shane could pick up the Sabrina Carpenter song as he passed by, and an older man with tanned, wrinkled skin was pulling on his climbing shoes by the cubbies. Shane spotted a collection of hangboards and headed over briskly. He had a usual routine, and while he’d need to take it easy on his fingers (a pulley injury had been flaring on and off for the past 6 months), he knew it would help him get centered to move through his usual warmups. He tossed his gym bag toward a rack of weights, but as he turned to begin his routine, a figure caught his eye.
There, in an overhung area that had been initially blocked from view, was what could only be described as a Greek god in Adidas track pants and La Sportiva Solutions. The god was hanging off a purple sloper with his left arm, shaking out and chalking up casually with his right. Shane barely noticed himself taking a few steps forward as he squinted at the grade. V9. Shane watched as the climber matched his hands and then carefully rotated on his toe to dip his left hand back into the chalk bag swinging at his hips. A little puff of chalk exploded out onto the man’s bare lower back, an area Shane had been trying to ignore, as he always tried to ignore the muscled backs of the bros who tore off their shirt as soon as they got in the gym. His eyes drifted upward, taking in the impressive lats, flexing and glistening with a sheen of sweat, and all the way up to the tousled blonde hair. Instinctively, and perhaps to distract himself from the chiseled torso, Shane began to analyze the remaining moves of the problem. The climber was currently laid back with a toe hold on the left and his right foot flagged; once he’d finished shaking out he would need to do a pretty strengthy move out to a pinch on the right, probably cut feet and heel hook out on the right, and then muscle up to the juggy hold at the top emblazoned with the word FINISH. Shane was just starting to smile to himself, satisfied with his efficient beta, when the climber suddenly pushed off of his left foot and exploded upward, grabbing the finish hold with his left hand and then the top of the climbing wall with his right. The climber let out a jarringly loud “Whoo!” in the silent gym and dropped down to the mat gracefully, rotating in the air so that he landed facing outward.
What the fuck. Was that…? Shane blanched as he realized that he recognized the climber. He wasn’t a Greek god at all. He was Russian. And not a god either, but that was beside the point. It was Ilya Rozanov, the top male youth boulderer from Russia, winner of last year’s IFSC Youth World Championship, where Shane had gotten 4th place, barely missing the podium. Last year Rozanov’s blonde hair had been cropped close to his head, but it was now a mess of waves and curls, falling into his eyes. It looked like he had grown about 6 inches and put on 20 pounds of muscle. He looked…really good. Shane realized that he was staring at Rozanov’s abs, practically salivating, and jolted his eyes upward. Was Shane imagining it, or was Rozanov smirking at him?
Regardless, Rozanov had definitely seen him, so Shane tossed his phone and headphones over onto his gym bag and approached, putting out a hand for a handshake. Rozanov’s smirk broadened into an amused smile, and he closed the distance and shook Shane’s hand.
“I may not be from here, but I thought American climbers do the fist bump,” he said teasingly, his eyes meeting Shane’s with a sparkling intensity that made Shane’s mind go momentarily blank. Rozanov waited a moment for an answer, then filled in the silence himself. “I would think maybe you are climber from Asian team, Japan or maybe Korea, but you dress just like other boring Americans.”
Shane’s outrage broke through his speechlessness. He looked down at his perfectly normal gym outfit - black shorts, gray Underarmor hoodie, clean Reebok sneakers - and spluttered out “I’m Canadian!”
“Ah, so like America but with more snow and...what are they called…mooses? Da?”
“Moose” said Shane, pedantically.
“Yes, one moose, many mooses. I said this.”
“No,” Shane said, exasperated, “it’s the singular and the plural. Ugh, never mind. What are you even doing here?”
Rozanov shrugged. “Stretching out” he said simply, reaching one lanky arm across his body in a move that put his defined bicep right at the height of Shane’s face. “But yes, I should be going now. Need to save my energy if I am going to get the gold again.” He winked, and Shane felt a strange sensation in his gut that caused him to blush and avert his eyes to the floor. Rozanov strode nonchalantly back onto the mat and retrieved the T-shirt he had shed before Shane arrived, pulling it over his head and unclipping his chalk bag in smooth, practiced motions.
As he walked by Shane again, he looked him right in the eyes again and, with another devilish smirk, said, “Hope to see you on the podium, Hollander.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ilya sat hunched forward on a plastic chair, headphones in, watching a YouTube video of a Russian influencer showing off his collection of sports cars. He wasn’t really paying attention, but having his headphones in blocked out the polite English chit chat his fellow youth climbers were exchanging all around him, as well as the anxiety-inducing memory of his father’s lecture 24 hours ago, telling him that if he wasn’t on the podium at this competition, it was time to be done with this embarrassing excuse for a sport. His father would have preferred he play hockey, or even football — sports that were masculine and respected in Russia. But Ilya had always loved to climb, ever since he was a child scrambling up trees during walks with his mother on the бульвары in Moscow, watching her from above, waiting for her to put up her arms for him to jump safely into. And then, in his teen years, after… well, he’d needed little doses of recklessness to not go completely insane. He’d found the climbing gym, and soon he was spending every free hour there, lifting weights until his muscles screamed louder than his mind, fighting his way through problems that had actual, physical solutions.
He wasn’t that worried about today. He would take the gold, like he had last year, and his father could go to hell. Ilya ripped the headphones out of his ears and stuffed his phone into the duffel bag at his feet, suddenly sickened by the Youtuber’s grating voice. Keeping his head hung so that he was looking out through his shaggy blonde bangs, he glanced around at the other kids, sizing them up. He was taller than just about all of them, but that wasn’t always an asset in bouldering. Shane Hollander was there, no longer wearing his giant, ugly American sneakers, talking amiably with a Slovenian guy.
Ilya had watched some competition videos of Hollander from the past year, sizing him up since he was supposedly the top climber from Canada in their age bracket. Hollander was a fantastic static climber, seeming gracefully in control of every minor movement, something Ilya’s coaches always nagged him to improve. Ilya had possibly watched some of those videos of Hollander multiple times — had maybe focused a little too intently on those toned calves and careful fingers. The close up shots showed that the Canadian had a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose that Ilya found intriguing.
A competition staffer in a polo blustered back through a curtain with a clipboard in hand.
“You’ll have five minutes out there to look over the boulder problems. You can confer with one another, but not your coaches. After that, you’ll come back here and we’ll get started one by one. Follow me.”
Ilya stood and headed for the curtain, rolling his right shoulder which he had tweaked a few weeks ago and still felt stiff and achy from the long, cramped plane ride. He strode out confidently into the lights and noise, briefly scanning the crowd until he locked eyes with his coach in the front row. The stern Russian man gave him a nod, unsmiling, and Ilya turned his attention to the four boulder problems.
Блять! Two of the problems were immediately clear as balance-y, technical climbs. Ilya knew he shouldn’t write these off; he had been practicing these competition-style boulders plenty at his training gym in Moscow. Still, it was extremely unlikely that he would flash them, and that’s what he wanted to do on a majority of the boulders to secure the gold. He stood behind the other climbers who were miming the sequence of moves they would make, twos and threes from the same country speaking rapidly in their own languages. Ilya had no other Russians to talk to, and he had never been great at reading routes without being able to touch them. He was a tactile person in general, preferring feeling to seeing, doing to thinking, fucking to talking...
He stared at the first technical climb, imagining how he might match his thumbs on a tiny vertical crimp at the center of the problem, then maybe sink into his right hip to shift over… Ugh. He wouldn’t really have a plan until he got on it and felt his body respond. He turned his attention to the other boulders, an overhung problem with lots of dual-tex that should be no issue for him, a coordination problem that would take focus and committing to the moves but should also be well within his skill, and another slabby, technical climb that Ilya thought ruefully would be just Hollander’s type. The five minutes was almost up already, so he rubbed his shoulder and waited.
A few minutes later they were all back behind the curtain and the competition began. They’d each have five minutes to attempt the boulders, going in reverse order of their rankings. This meant Ilya would be the last one to try each boulder, and he would be able to get a sense of their difficulty levels by how fast the other competitors came back. It also meant, in Ilya’s estimation, that the crowd would be expecting him to do better than every other climber there today. A tiny, nervous-seeming Chinese kid was already out there, and Ilya could faintly hear the crowd reacting. He jammed his headphones back in his ears, this time putting on his favorite Russian rapper.
His turn came, and Ilya surprised himself by only needing three attempts to top the first boulder, the crimpy balance problem. Ilya really hit his stride on second and third problems, which he flashed easily. He showboated for the cheering crowd at the top of the third problem, hanging from the wall with one arm and pumping his fist in the air with a yell of success. He didn’t know his competitors’ scores, but most of them had been using their full five minutes, meaning they had likely only gotten the zone or no points at all.
Pushing back through the curtain, adrenaline making him impulsive, he crashed down in the folding chair next to Hollander. Hollander seemed to have been deep in thought, staring at nothing while massaging his fingers, and jerked his eyes up to meet Ilya’s with a start. He had big, brown eyes, and looked a bit like a startled deer. Ilya sat back and smiled at him confidently, spreading his knees so that one almost touched Hollander’s thigh. “How’s it going out there, mister Canada? You like that coordination move?”
“It was okay.” Hollander replied, seeming a bit wary of Ilya’s sudden friendliness. “They’ve been setting that type of problem a lot, so I guess I felt pretty prepared?” He ended his sentence with an upward inflection, like he wasn’t quite sure he was answering correctly.
“Yes.” Said Ilya, holding his gaze. Those freckles were even more mesmerizing up close. With all the endorphins shooting through his body, it was hard to hold himself back from reaching out and touching one. “Well, maybe prepared enough to get on the podium this time. We will see. Good luck, Hollander.”
Soon after, Hollander’s name was called, and he headed out to the final boulder. Ilya checked the digital clock on the wall. 3:05pm. At 3:08, Hollander burst back through the curtain, a roar from the crowd following him. He looked exhilarated and immediately exchanged a high five and hug with the Slovenian he’d been talking to earlier. “You flashed it?” the Slovenian asked incredulously, holding him by the shoulders. Hollander nodded bashfully, and Ilya noticed him push his hair back from his sweaty forehead with his wrist, careful not to get chalk on his face. Ilya didn’t have more time to ogle his competitor. If Hollander flashed the last problem, Ilya would just have to do the same. He refastened his climbing shoes and shook out his forearms as he headed for the mat.
It was a terrible problem. From the first move, you had to keep your entire body in tension to not pop off the wall, and the holds were incredibly slick, worse than they had been for the first climber because now they were coated with chalk and smeared with shoe rubber. Ilya stuck the first move, then lost his hand hold as soon as he attempted to move a foot. He cursed under his breath. He was being sloppy, overconfident from his previous successes. He tried again, with greater focus, pulling on, keeping the tension, and got his left foot to just barely touch the next hold. As he applied pressure to the toe, his right foot slipped off abruptly, sending him straight down, almost grating his face on the rough wall. He signaled angrily for the staff to brush the holds, wiping the toes of his shoes on a towel and re-chalking his hands. He glanced back at his coach, whose face was pinched in displeasure. Ilya’s mind was starting to race a bit. He hadn’t been paying much attention to how Hollander had done on the previous climbs, or any of the other climbers for that matter. The Slovenian who had gotten silver last year — had he flashed anything today?
The staff had already stepped back from the wall; Ilya needed to get back on. He stepped back up, pulled himself up into tension, and his right foot slipped off again almost immediately. “Ебать!” He yelled, loud now, feeling the back of his neck prickle at the crowd’s quiet embarrassment. He took a deep breath and released it, then felt for the cross necklace tucked under his T-shirt. Closing his eyes momentarily, he imagined his mother laughing as he scrambled up a tree. Giving his arms a final, aggressive shake out, he got back on the wall. Pulling on for a fourth time, he felt the ache in his fingers, a good feeling, a sense of being in his body. He moved his toe out, confidently, and stuck it in place, moved his left arm with purpose, then switched his right hand into a push and slid upward, hips tucked in, shirt scraping against the wall’s mottled surface. He took control of the zone hold, which earned a cheer from the audience, and reached back into his chalk bag, glancing at the time clock. Less than a minute left.
He sized up the rest of the problem — a series of slick pinches with a large sloper to end the problem. It would certainly take him over a minute to do statically, and his grip strength was depleting fast. He imagined how it would feel to get some momentum and dyno past the pinches, straight to the final hold. It was a crazy plan, but if he stuck it, the crowd would fucking eat it up. It would probably be clipped into a hundred YouTube compilations by the end of the week. There was no more time to think. He tensed his calves, pulled back on his fingers, and sprang like a wild animal.
His aim was dead on, but the velocity was too great. His right hand slapped against the final hold, but his body kept moving. His palm scraped off and he was plummeting downward, landing sloppily and rolling to his back instinctively so that his ankle didn’t snap beneath him. The time clock read 20 seconds. Not even enough time to get back to the zone. Ilya scrambled to his feet and unclipped his chalk bag, whipping it away from him toward the wall like a hockey player breaking a stick over their knee, trying to cover his shaking with bravado. Then, because there was no place for tantrums in climbing, he stomped over, scooped his chalk bag back up, and retreated back toward the curtain, the crowd’s pitying applause making his eyes sting.
He didn’t meet anyone’s eyes behind the curtain, tearing off his shoes and stuffing all of his gear aggressively into his bag. He was already imagining the names his father and older brother would call him — долбоёб, пидор. He felt claustrophobic all of a sudden, tasting in the chalk particles floating in the humid air, and he wished he could run out of the building and hide in the hotel until his flight back the next morning. He forced himself to sit down, the plastic chair cold against the backs of his overheated thighs. He would wait for the results, smile for photos, and when he was back in his coach’s rented car he would let himself have one of the airplane-size vodka shooters he had packed.
They were led out by the same clip-board toting staff member, and the results were announced. Taking the bronze was the Slovenian, Hotimir Pike, beaming and waving energetically at the crowd as he stepped forward and received his medal. Embarrassing, thought Ilya, being that proud of third place. Then, Ilya’s name was called. Silver. He stepped forward robotically, eyes unfocused, mouth set in a grimace, as he leaned his head forward for the medal to be looped around his neck. As he straightened, he felt the medal clink against the gold cross under his shirt. He stepped back, and they were already calling out the gold medalist.
“Shane Hollander!”
Ilya’s eyes focused now, seeing the crowd on its feet cheering, as Hollander stepped forward beside him, a Red Bull baseball cap pushing his dark hair down into his eyes, face flushed pink as he smiled out at the crowd, putting one hand up in a shy wave. He accepted his medal, and the clicks and flashes from the event photographers became deafening. As soon as they were released, Hollander hurried right to the front row and was swept up in the arms of a woman and man. The woman, striking with her Japanese features and dark, straight hair, put her hand tenderly on Hollander’s cheek and then used her other to straighten his branded cap. They must be his parents. Ilya watched as Hollander looked back and scanned the milling groups of climbers, coaches, and families. Ilya’s breath caught. Was he going to come congratulate him? Would it be said with pity, or would he think a silver medal in an international competition was good enough? Hollander’s eyes passed over Ilya as if he wasn’t even there, and he broke into a wider smile as he spotted the Slovenian, shouting his name and waving him and his coach over to meet his picture-perfect family.
Ilya hoisted his bag up on his shoulder and trudged over to his coach, barely listening to his lecture on sportsmanship as they headed out of the building.
Back at the hotel, Ilya turned on the TV and ignored his phone buzzing with texts and calls from his father and brother. Ilya downed one vodka shooter, then a second. He had brought 6, planning to invite some other climbers to his hotel room to celebrate. He wasn’t feeling very social now, so maybe he would drink them all himself. While he had better alcohol tolerance than many 18 year olds, the vodka on top of his body’s fatigue gave him a pleasant, loose feeling. He let his mind drift, and a figure took shape in his mind. Hollander, looking over his shoulder, searching the crowded room for someone. In Ilya’s mind, Hollander’s eyes found his, and he walked over slowly. Ilya reached down his shorts, lightly gripping his dick. Imaginary Hollander pulled his shirt off, revealing a tanned and muscled torso, and then got on his knees as the crowd looked on. Ilya started to stroke himself, imagining the noises Hollander might make taking his dick deep to the back of his throat, the way the photographers’ flashes would pop as they fought to capture the best image of the gold medal winner submitting to Ilya’s sexual desires. Ilya’s breath sped, thinking of gazing down at those freckles, pushing back the tidy hair, meeting those big, shining brown eyes. He came hard, not even having bothered to take his shorts off. The TV was still on, a commercial for a local restaurant blaring, the Southern-twanged English incomprehensible as Ilya’s ears rang.
What the fuck was that… He pulled his hand out of his waistband and wiped it on the leg of his shorts. He needed a shower anyway, still sweaty and covered in a fine layer of chalk from the day. Some celebration, he thought ruefully, and headed to the bathroom to clean up.