He focused on his breathing, determined not to let the panic he could feel gripping his heart overtake him. Not here. Not now. It hadn’t been this bad in years. The room spun, but he stayed standing, gripping the corner of the nearby table so hard he almost expected to see divots in it where his fingers had been when he came back to himself.
“So, you’ll set out this evening, and if you don’t find a way to work together, that’s it.”
“Come on,” Jennings whinged. “We’re grown adults, you can’t make us do this. It’ll be freezing.”
“You want to be an Olympian, you play by my rules, Jennings.”
Elliot knew that tone. You didn’t fuck around when Anders used that tone.
“It's fine,” he interjected. “We’ll sort it.”
The incredulous look Jennings gave him made him wonder what crucial bit of information he’d missed while he’d been trying to stave off his impending anxiety attack.
“Good choice. I’ll get the gear set up, and you can head off in a couple of hours,” Anders replied. “In the meantime, play fucking nice.”
Elliot had indeed missed a crucial bit of information. As he sat gingerly next to Jackson on the gondola, ascending into the thin, crisp mountain air, he felt the chill seep through his jacket despite the sun glaring off the snow. “At least there's less snow than last year,” Elliot muttered to himself. Last year, there’d still been a solid layer of snow along the tree-line, he was sure of it.
Jennings looked up but didn’t say a word.
The cabin swayed slightly in the wind, and he wondered if he’d have responded differently had he actually known what he was agreeing to.
Camping. In thewilderness.
Up here, above the tree-line, the air would be thinner and sharper, and the snowdrifts might still linger in shaded patches. Elliot may not have camped before, but he could tell you with absolute certainty that he hated it. There was not a single thing about the activity that appealed. And sure, they weren’t being sent far. It was a pretty common thing in altitude camps for athletes to head up higher into the mountains for a night or two, to try to gain that extra edge in red blood cell production from the higher altitude. He’d always avoided it…because Elliot Owens didn’t do tents.The sheer vulnerability of sleeping outside in the elements made his skin crawl. He’d seen plenty of accounts online of people’s expeditions up into the mountains around St. Moritz. It was just that when he’d watched those, he’d instantly discounted the idea, planning to stay safe and comfortable in his nice hotel in the town, with its central heating, running water, clean sheets, and room service.
Elliot’s calf and ankle throbbed with every step, the uneven trail partly frozen and muddy from melting snow. Each footfall made him slip slightly on icy patches, sending little jolts up his legs. To top it all off, Jennings wasn’t speaking to him. It was like he’d gone back in time to after Copenhagen, when Jennings had avoided him like it was his damn job. He’d barely spoken a word to him since they’d met in the lobby with their packs and collected the additional gear Anders had organised with the hotel. The silence was almost worse than the harsh words had been earlier; it gave Elliot far too much time to think.
“I’m sorry, okay,” Elliot grumbled.
Jennings stopped, and Elliot found himself crashing into the massive backpack he carried. Elliot’s calf twinged at the sudden movement.
“Oh, you're sorry, are you? For what? Getting us stuck up here together because you can’t accept help? Or for repeatedly reminding me that I didn’t earn my place? Or for every shitty thing you’ve said to the press about me for the past two years?
“All of it, none of it. Fuck. I’m under a lot of pressure. You wouldn’t understand.”
Jennings snorted. “Sure, I have no idea what kind of pressure you’re under. Not at all.”
“What pressure? You’re running around like this is your personal playground. With your skinny dipping and threesomes and indecent swimwear.”
“First of all, there was no threesome, as you are well aware,” Jennings deadpanned. “And also, fuck you. You don’t know anything about my life.”
“Don’t I?”
“No, you don’t,” Jennings replied. “But you’ve made it pretty clear you don’t want to be friends, so fuck if I’m talking.”
Elliot narrowed his eyes. “You think it wasn’t obvious you were just going to follow them up after I left the other night? You have zero subtlety, Jennings. It was exactly like watching you and Hewitt sneak into each other's rooms, thinking nobody had clocked it.”
Green eyes sharpened, and Elliot knew he’d hit a nerve. It wasn’t that he wanted to hurt him, but anything was better than the stony silence of earlier. “How did it feel? When he cast you aside for a better model?”
The barb didn’t have the desired effect at all. Jennings snorted, then he started laughing; full-on guffaws as Elliot stood there staring at him like he’d lost the plot.
Glaring, Elliot hiked his pack up on his shoulder.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous, Princess.”
The nickname tipped him over the edge. There was no way Elliot could have held back if he tried. Jennings was still fucking laughing. So, he exploded.
“Of course I’m fucking jealous!” He kicked at a loose stone, which skidded over a patch of frozen moss, sending a tiny spray of grit across the snow-dusted trail. “You get everything, and it’s like you don’t even have to try. You get to be thisout and proudathlete, treat everything like a game, and somehow you’re still winning. Meanwhile, I’m… I can’t step a single toe outside the perfect fucking media persona I’ve crafted, to the point where I don’t know even how much of it’s real.”
