Chapter 3

It's half-past ten on a Tuesday night and Sasha's sneaking through a hotel in Belgium, carrying two bags of ice in his backpack. Normally he wouldn't resort to such extremes, but for this trip he was assigned a room with Ilya, who is physically incapable of shutting up for more than two seconds at a time. After today's disaster, all Sasha wants is some peace and quiet—and he's noticed that the makeshift therapy room in the hotel is rarely, if ever, locked.

Sure enough, the door swings open when he tries it, and he's able to slip inside the conference room that the hotel has set aside for athletes participating in this year's world championships. Instead of tables and chairs, there are foam rollers, physio balls, and massage stations, plus a row of small tubs at the far end of the room.

Sasha heads straight to the first tub and gets the cold water going. While he waits for the tub to fill, he shucks off his sweatpants and removes his socks, exchanging them for a pair of toe warmers. He keeps his shirt and underwear—they'll help him stay in for longer, and he's going to need a while to think about everything that went wrong during qualifications today.

Out of the six-person team the Russians sent to Belgium, most of whom were at the Olympics just over a year ago, Ilya's the only one who'll be advancing to the all-around final. Everyone else made far too many mistakes, Sasha included—he botched his pommel horse dismount and fell on a fucking Tkatchev on the high bar. A Tkatchev! He's been doing those since he was ten.

It was another abysmal showing for the Russian men, and despite qualifying for the all-around, Ilya's not likely to earn them any redemption. With both a foot and an elbow injury, he's being held together by cortisone shots, tape, and prayers—he'll be lucky if he can make it through the final without hurting himself even more, never mind a medal.

Their coaches are furious with them, especially because their own jobs are on the line. The failures in London had caused a massive reshuffling at Round Lake last year, with several prominent coaches being demoted or simply disappearing from the roster (Grigori among them—Good riddance, Sasha thinks). Those who kept their positions are under heavy scrutiny, and today's results aren't going to help their cases.

But it's not just the coaches who need to be worried.

The Russian national teams are decided in December, based on that year's performances; the men have a main team and a reserve team, with the main team receiving most of the international assignments and funding. Sasha knows his spot on the main team isn't as secure as Kirill's—another performance like today could drop him down to the reserves, and he can't afford to spend a year clawing his way back.

Turning off the tap, he empties the bags of ice into the tub, then takes a deep breath and climbs in. It's freezing, of course, but the worst part is always when he sits down. As the water sends a shock through his groin to his waist, he wonders why he keeps doing this to himself.

After the first minute, however, the lower half of his body goes numb, and if it's not exactly pleasant, it's at least bearable. Sasha leans his head back against the rim of the tub and closes his eyes, trying to relax. The qualifications were just the beginning of a long day—afterwards, they all had to face the Russian media, who barely congratulated Ilya before zeroing in on the others. "Why do you think all of you did so badly today?" "Aleksandr, what happened on high bar?" "Where's Kirill Kazakov? Wouldn't he have done better?"

And then the phone calls. His mother had been nice about it, but she was clearly worried about his chances of staying on the main team ("You'll have to work very hard now, Sasha, you can't give them any excuses to replace you"). Then she'd passed the phone around the room to his aunts, uncles, and grandparents, all of whom had to have their say as well, even though half of them didn't know the first thing about gymnastics.

Kirill, at least, had understood. He was at home with a broken wrist, but he'd watched the qualifications and had called Sasha to cheer him up. "Forget it, worlds after the Olympics are always a mess," he'd said bracingly. "No one gives a shit. Half of these people won't even be competing in two years. But you will. You work harder than everyone else—even me, sometimes."

But now, Sasha's phone is at the bottom of his bag, and he's finally alone, with no one around to demand or expect anything from him.

As if on cue, the door to the conference room opens.

Sasha can't believe it. What rotten luck! Who on Earth would be here at this hour? (Never mind the fact that he's here at this hour.) Hoping whoever it is just came in to grab something, he keeps his eyes closed, praying for them to leave.

Instead, the intruder walks across the room, heading towards the tubs. Sasha silently screams in frustration—either he's about to get kicked out by one of the hotel employees, or some asshole is going to ruin the only moment of solitude he's had this entire trip.

"Oh, hey, man!"

Even before he opens his eyes, Sasha knows who it is. And sure enough, there's Daniel Hartman, grinning down at him like they're best friends.

Fuck.

Sasha was aware the American had come to Antwerp—in fact, during qualifications it had seemed like every time he looked around the arena, he spotted Hartman on one of the apparatuses, working through his routines with that toothpaste-commercial smile. It was impossible to ignore him, thanks to the fans screaming his name whenever he stepped onto the mat. Their cheers had gotten louder and louder as he'd posted two impressive scores on parallel bars and high bar, moving him into second overall.

Which means that, unlike Sasha, he'll be competing in the final on Wednesday.

Sasha realizes he's been staring at Hartman for a few seconds too long, and he quickly clears his throat. "Hello."

He hopes that'll be the end of it, but of course it's not. "I saw you today," Hartman says, not seeming to notice that the ice bags he's holding are dripping onto the floor. "That pommel horse routine was so close! Honestly, I thought you were way underscored, even with the dismount. Those spindles were a thing of beauty, man." He waves his hands for emphasis, and several droplets of ice-cold water spatter onto Sasha's chest.

Sasha fumes, imagining himself grabbing a fistful of ice cubes and hurling them at the American. "Thank you," he replies stiffly.

Hartman doesn't speak for a few seconds, as if expecting Sasha to return the favor and compliment him on his own performance, but Sasha refuses to give him the satisfaction. Apparently the American can't handle any sort of silence at all, because he starts talking again.

"So, cold tubbing it for you, too, huh?" he asks. "Same. Gotta ice those quads, baby!"

And then—Sasha knew this was going to happen—Hartman drops his ice bags in front of the tub right next to Sasha, even though there are three others available. As the sound of running water echoes in the room, Sasha squeezes his eyes shut, wishing he could have dealt with Ilya for half an hour longer.

He senses movement near him, and he opens his eyes again—just in time to see Hartman reach his arms over his head and pull off his shirt, revealing row after row of perfectly tanned abs. Something happens in Sasha's stomach, a flicker of heat despite the frigid water, and he quickly looks away, hoping Hartman didn't notice.

He's been trying to ignore the fact that he's attracted to other men for over a year now, and it's not working. At all. For a long time, he'd hoped that maybe he was bisexual, and he could just shove the gay half of him away somewhere, but the truth is that not even a tiny part of him is interested in women.

Out of desperation, he'd asked Kirill to set him up with someone after the Olympics, and Kirill had delivered—both a blonde and a brunette, a double date for the four of them at an amusement park. Kirill and the blonde hadn't been able to keep their hands off of each other, but even though the brunette was clearly beautiful (to the point where Sasha wondered how the hell Kirill had convinced her to go out with him), he'd felt nothing when they kissed.

And now he's in this weird limbo where he knows he prefers men, but he doesn't want to acknowledge it, because being gay is just… not a thing he's ready to handle. Every time he hears about another pride parade being broken up by the Moscow police, or a young man being beaten for "homosexual activity," the knot in his chest gets tighter and tighter, and panic flutters against his ribcage like a moth trapped in a window.

Even if his safety weren't at risk, it goes without saying that his gymnastics career would be over if anyone on the national team found out. They might not escort him from Round Lake, but the coaches would ignore him at practice, the locker room would be hell, and the following year he'd be moved down to the reserve team, with the implication that he should resign before he was dropped off that, too.

And that's not nearly as terrifying to think about as how his family and Kirill would react.

A stuttering electronic noise jerks him back to the present, and he sees Hartman—now completely naked except for a pair of black boxers, so tight they might as well be briefs—accepting a video call on his phone.

"Hi, Mom!" he says, dipping a toe into the tub and wincing at the water temperature. "No, I'm fine, just getting into an ice bath… oh, hey, Buddy!" A dog barks over the speakers, and Hartman raises his voice into an obnoxiously high pitch. "There's a good boy, yes, yes you are—did you eat any of my shoes today?"

Sasha slides further into the water, wondering if he should just drown himself so he never has to hear Hartman again. Christ, even Ilya's less annoying than this. Why is Hartman always so happy? What will it take to wipe that stupid grin off his stupidly symmetrical face?

After what feels like an eternity, the dog stops barking, and Hartman goes back to talking with his mother. "Aw, thanks, yeah—well, it's just prelims, you know—"

"You're right behind Kohei!" his mother exclaims.

Sasha barely manages not to snort. Right behind the legendary Kohei Uchimura, who won three straight world all-around titles before waltzing to a gold medal in London last year? That Kohei? Hartman wishes.

"More like two points behind Kohei." Hartman looks over the phone at Sasha and raises his eyebrows, as if to say, Parents, right? "He got fifteens on everything, there's no way—oh, shit, this is so cold!" he yelps as he lowers himself into the water.

"Danny, honey, why don't you just get a massage?" his mother asks in what sounds like fond exasperation.

"No pain, no gain, Mom," Hartman replies, somehow managing to smile through his shivers. "Hey, did you see my Cassina? On high bar? I think I got dinged a little on the execution…"

Sasha knows he should just go back upstairs. His ice bath is ruined—with Hartman chattering like a monkey less than ten feet away from him, he'll never be able to work through his high bar routine, figuring out where it went wrong and what he needs to focus on when he returns to Moscow. But for some reason, he can't bring himself to accept defeat, and he stubbornly remains in the water, gritting his teeth as he listens to Hartman.

On and on the American goes, recapping his routines, recapping Kohei's routines, then recapping random other routines that he happened to see and like. Everything is "awesome," "amazing," or "sick," with only the occasional mild critique reserved for one of his own performances. The whole thing is nauseatingly upbeat, and Sasha wants to throttle him.

He must have been glaring at Hartman without realizing it, because after about three minutes of this, Hartman makes eye contact with him and immediately looks embarrassed. "Sorry, Mom, I better go," he says into the phone. "I think I'm annoying Aleksandr."

"Who?" his mother asks.

"Aleksandr Zakaryan. He's from Russia." And then, because the American apparently has no sense of boundaries, he flips the phone around so that Sasha finds himself staring at a blond, athletic-looking woman who seems just as startled as he is.

They wave awkwardly at each other, and then Hartman turns the phone back around. "I'll call when I get back to my room, okay?"

"Oh, don't worry about it, honey, I'm glad you're making friends."

Friends?Sasha thinks indignantly, but Hartman doesn't correct his mother. "That's what it's all about," he replies, flashing a peace sign. "Bye, Mom, love you." He tosses his phone onto his gym bag, grinning sheepishly at Sasha. "Sorry. That was rude."

"You know I understand everything, yes?" Sasha asks, in case Hartman thought his conversation had fallen on deaf ears. He may not be fluent in English, but he's grown up taking classes at school, and he's better at it than most of his teammates—including Kirill, who barely has the patience for it.

"What? Oh, yeah, no, I wasn't assuming or anything," Hartman says quickly. It could be Sasha's imagination, but he thinks the American might be blushing. "But, hey, I'm not giving away any training secrets, right?"

Sasha snorts. As if they want the Americans' training secrets—well, maybe the women's, since they're the ones actually winning.

"So." Hartman settles into his bath, propping both arms up on the rim of the tub, and Sasha forces himself not to stare at all those golden muscles on display. "Are you injured? What's the ice for?"

"No injuries. Not now." Sasha crosses his fingers, although with gymnastics it's only a matter of time. "I always take bath after competition." After a pause, he asks, "You?"

Water and ice slosh against the sides of Hartman's tub as he lifts up his legs, resting his heels on the rim. "Sprained my ankle last year right before the Olympic trials, I think I told you that," he says, pointing to his right foot. "Broke both of them a few years ago, that sucked."

Sasha winces. "Both? At same time?"

"Yup, landed way short on a vault." Hartman shrugs, like it's water under the bridge, though it must have cost him months of training. "Oh, and I tore some ligaments here," he adds as an afterthought, gesturing to his thigh. "But whatever, I just take a shitload of Advil. My buddy Matt was like, ‘Dude, you gotta try an ice bath, it's so good,' so I was like, okay, and I tried it, and like, I hated it, but then I felt so much better. My dad's a doctor and he told me…"

And Sasha has no one to blame but himself, because he should have known that putting an early end to Hartman's video call would just make the American find someone else to blabber on to—him.

"You talk too much," he says when Hartman finally comes up for air.

For a moment, Hartman looks like someone just walked in on him naked—and then he bursts into laughter, his legs slipping back into the tub with a splash. "Sorry, man," he says, his shoulders shaking. "Is that, like, a Russian thing? Are you guys always this blunt?"

Sasha doesn't know what the word "blunt" means, but he thinks he can guess. "I don't know," he replies, shrugging. "Is that, like, American thing? You never shut up?"

Hartman shakes his head, but he's still grinning. "Touché, man. Yeah, I guess I do talk a lot. Sorry. I don't even notice. My parents thought I had ADD when I was little, they got me tested but nope, totally normal—well, not that ADD's not normal—actually, I think it's, like, ADHD now or something—" Sasha raises an eyebrow, and Hartman groans. "Fuck. Sorry."

"Can you please be quiet for one minute," Sasha requests.

"Sorry. Yeah, okay. Sure. Wait, are we timing this?" Hartman asks, and Sasha just stares at him. "Sorry, dumb question. Okay, one minute. Go."

Not even ten seconds later, he starts fidgeting.

"Okay, wait, you can't look at me."

"Are you joking?"

"No, you're throwing me off!" Hartman is definitely blushing now. "Okay, both of us are gonna close our eyes, and then you tell me when a minute's up, okay?"

At this point, Sasha is willing to agree to anything if it will make the American close his mouth as well. "Fine."

Thirty seconds of beautiful, blissful silence. And then—

"Humming is not quiet," Sasha points out.

"Shit, sorry! Forgot."

Five more seconds.

"Wait, are we restarting the clock?"

"Da! Yes!" Sasha opens his eyes and looks at Hartman. The American seems so flustered, the opposite of how he behaves on the podium. "Is there ever time when you not talking?"

"Uh…" Hartman's gaze darts around the conference room, as if he expects to find an answer on one of the massage tables. "Oh, wait—when I'm doing gymnastics." He shoots a relieved grin at Sasha. "Like, when I'm on high bar, or p-bars, or whatever, I don't talk. I mean, I talk to myself in my head, but that doesn't count, right?"

Sasha can only shake his head in amazement. "Okay. So pretend you are doing routine. High bar routine."

"Oh." Hartman's eyes light up—and Sasha doesn't know why, because everything about this is ridiculous, but for some reason it's becoming increasingly hard not to smile. "Visualizing! I got you, man. Okay, we can start the clock again."

The conference room goes quiet, and Sasha finds himself watching Hartman, whose arms and shoulders twitch with short, quick movements as he performs an imaginary high bar routine. Sasha can tell the exact second when he lets go of the bar for his Cassina, then his Kolman, shifting into a pirouette sequence as his arms cross over each other above the water. His forehead is scrunched up in concentration, his lips moving wordlessly—it's kind of cute, actually.

Wait. What?

Sasha realizes his minute has come and gone when Hartman opens his eyes again, grinning proudly at him. "Stuck the landing," he reports, fist-pumping the air. "Absolutely crushed it."

There's such childish delight in his face that Sasha can't help it: he laughs, the corners of his mouth tugging into the teeniest, tiniest smile. "Now you have to do that for final."

"Yeah, right?" Hartman shakes his head, then leans over the edge of the tub and checks his phone. "Shit, I gotta bounce, I'm up early tomorrow for practice."

He stands up, stretching his arms over his head, and a "see you later" dies on Sasha's tongue. Every inch of Hartman's body is glistening with water, from the veins mapped across his arms to the bronzed thighs jutting from his boxers; he looks like one of those Roman sculptures, a chiseled god rising from the sea to demand tribute.

And that's before he climbs out of the tub, turns around, and bends over to grab a towel from his bag.

If Sasha had had any lingering doubts about his sexuality, Hartman's ass would have put a definitive end to that question. Despite the shortcomings of their men's program, the Americans are clearly not skimping on conditioning; Sasha has never been more grateful to be sitting in an ice bath, the lower half of his body completely numb and incapable of betraying him.

Still, he's mortified by his reaction. Does it have to be an American? Especially this American? Hartman may be two years older than him, with all the extra muscle to show for it, but he's not that special—ripped bodies are a dime a dozen in gymnastics, whether it's the rings specialists with their insane arms or the vaulters with thighs of steel. But Sasha's never felt anything like this watching his teammates, or the great Kohei Uchimura.

Just Daniel Hartman, who can't stop talking, who doesn't care about winning because of some strange reason involving his country's sorry excuse for football, and who probably has a girlfriend at home.

"Hey." Hartman stops by Sasha's tub. He's pulled on one of the hotel bathrobes, his feet are shoved into an old pair of sandals, and he somehow has the audacity to look good in this ensemble. "I'll see you around. Are you in any of the event finals?"

Sasha shakes his head, distracted by the way Hartman's hand is resting on the rim of his tub. This close, he can smell whatever bodywash the American uses—something that reminds him of the outdoors. Trying not to breathe it in, he says, "Good luck on Wednesday."

"Thanks." For a moment, it seems like Hartman wants to linger, but then he hitches his bag over his shoulder. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Sasha says, and then he's alone again, the door to the conference room closing behind Hartman. Considering how late it is, he should also be heading back to his room—but his mind has other ideas, starting with a slow-motion replay of Hartman getting out of the tub.

On second thought, he probably needs to stay in the ice bath for at least a few more minutes.