Chapter Eleven
The Gucci jumpsuit was a masterpiece in Lex’s eyes.
It was black. It was velvet. It had the interlocking double-G monogram printed across every square inch of fabric from collar to cuff to ankle.
Lex had paid four thousand pounds for it at the Knightsbridge flagship store three days before flying to Tokyo.
The sales assistant had called it “a statement.” It was exactly what he needed for today, Team GB Media Day, where looking phenomenal was the entire brief.
He made it fourteen steps down the corridor before Barnaby intercepted him.
Barnaby was leaning against the wall outside the lift in navy chinos and a white Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow.
His hair was combed back. His boots were polished.
He looked good. Neat, put together, and effortlessly handsome.
But a logo wouldn’t have killed him. A bit of colour.
Something that said I’m here instead of I’m trying not to be noticed.
He looked Lex up and down. The journey took three full seconds.
“No,” Barnaby said.
“What d’you mean, no?”
“I mean no. Absolutely not. You look like a sofa in a Dubai hotel lobby.”
“This is Gucci, Barnaby.”
“I can see that. Everyone within a two-hundred-metre radius can see that. There are nine hundred Gs on your body. I’ve counted. It looks like the letter G has developed a skin condition and spread all over you.”
Lex looked down at himself. The monogram did cover a lot of surface area.
In the shop, surrounded by mirrors and a sales assistant who was being paid on commission, this had felt luxurious.
Under Barnaby’s gaze, in the fluorescent corridor light of the Olympic Village, it felt like he was wearing wallpaper.
“It’s designer,” Lex said, but his conviction had already left the building.
“It’s an atrocity. Go and change.”
“Into what? I haven’t got anything else that’s—”
Barnaby took him by the elbow, turned him around, and walked him back down the corridor like a horse being led in from the paddock.
Lex let himself be steered, because protesting would have required him to defend the jumpsuit, and that was becoming harder with every step and judgemental squint from Barnaby.
Barnaby pushed open the door to Lex’s room, guided him through it, and surveyed the wardrobe.
It was a generous term for what was, in reality, a plywood alcove with a hanging rail and a single shelf.
In it were three tracksuits with varying degrees of branding intensity, two pairs of jeans, and a pile of gym vests.
Barnaby was already pulling hangers aside before Lex had finished stepping out of the jumpsuit. Lex stood there in his boxer briefs and didn’t bother reaching for a towel, because they’d seen each other naked, and that particular door didn’t close just because the sex had stopped.
The conversation had happened two nights ago, during snack roulette. Lex had been halfway through a packet of something that tasted like pickled ginger had been crossbred with a marshmallow when Barnaby had said, without looking at him, “I think we should just be friends.”
The word had landed with the weight of a door closing. Not slamming. Just clicking shut, the latch catching with a quiet, final sound that left no room for ambiguity.
“Yeah,” Lex had said. “Friends. Definitely.”
Barnaby had nodded. He’d eaten a sakura Kit Kat in three precise bites, folded the wrapper, and set it on the arm of the sofa. Neither of them had spoken for a full ninety seconds, which was the longest Lex had ever gone without filling a silence in his adult life.
The thing was, he liked Barnaby. He proper liked him.
So much so that he bought sakura things in bulk and memorised which snacks scored above four chews and below ten.
He’d gotten in the habit of scanning the dining hall at breakfast until he found the blond head among the equestrians.
He liked Barnaby’s ridiculous palate, and the way his ears went pink when he was caught off guard.
Most of all, he liked the elegance of Barnaby’s insults, which were meanly specific in the way that only someone who really liked you bothered to be.
He just couldn’t get his cock in him, and Barnaby couldn’t let him. They’d tried twice. The trying had been tender and patient and a complete fucking disaster. Now they were friends, and that was fine. That was good. Lex knew how to do friends.
“This is all branded,” Barnaby said in disgust.
“I like brands.”
“You like logos. There’s a difference.” Barnaby held up a tracksuit jacket with a swoosh across the chest and set it aside. “My father’s rule: never buy anything you’ve seen on a billboard. If they need to advertise it, it isn’t good enough.”
“That’s the poshest thing you’ve ever said to me, and the bar was already very high.”
Barnaby’s mouth twitched. “I winter in Courchevel and summer in Cardona.”
Lex made a slow, deliberate wanking gesture at him. Barnaby laughed and went back to the hangers.
He pulled a plain white T-shirt from the shelf, held it up.
Then he pulled out a pair of dark jeans.
“Put these on,” Barnaby said, tossing them onto the bed.
He went back to the rail and extracted a navy blazer that Lex’s stylist had packed for exactly this kind of occasion and that Lex had ignored in favour of the Gucci.
Barnaby held it by the shoulders, turned it, checked the lining, and nodded. “And this.”
“A blazer? I’m not going to a christening.”
“You’re going to a media day where you will be photographed representing your country. Put the jeans on.”
Lex stepped into the jeans. They were slim-fit, dark indigo, and sat properly on his waist. He pulled the white T-shirt over his head.
Barnaby circled him, adjusting the collar where it sat against his neck, tugging the hem so it fell straight across his hips.
Lex held still and let him fiddle with his clothing, landing the occasional snippy comment, because the alternative was acknowledging that Barnaby’s hands on him still made his pulse kick up.
“Blazer,” Barnaby said, holding it open.
Lex shrugged into it. The lining was cool against his arms, and the shoulders sat square across his frame without pulling. Barnaby stepped back, assessed him from three angles, and reached forward to fold the cuffs of the blazer twice, exposing the white lining against the dark fabric.
“Sleeves up?”
“It’s called pushing the cuffs. It stops you looking like you’re on your way to a job interview.” Barnaby straightened the lapel, his thumb running along the edge of the fabric. “You’ve got trainers that aren’t covered in logos?”
“White Air Force 1s.”
“Those will do.”
Lex sat on the bed to lace them up. When he stood, Barnaby’s gaze tracked from Lex’s shoulders down to the cuffed blazer sleeves, across his chest, and settled somewhere around his jaw before snapping back to his eyes.
“Better,” Barnaby said.
“I look fit, don’t I.”
“You look presentable. Which is a significant upgrade from looking like a DFS clearance sale.”
The common room had been transformed. The sofas had been pushed against the walls to make space for a camera setup, two ring lights, and a backdrop printed with the Team GB logo and the Olympic rings.
A production crew was running cables across the floor, and a woman with a clipboard and a headset was arranging athletes into pairs and trios for the first round of interviews.
The British contingent milled about in various states of camera-readiness, clutching water bottles and checking their reflections in their mobile screens.
Lex spotted the interviewer first. She was mid-thirties, sharp-eyed, with the easy warmth of someone whose job required her to make strangers feel interesting on camera. She was working through a stack of prompt cards while her cameraman adjusted the height of a tripod.
“Right,” said the clipboard woman, consulting her sheet. “Murphy, Fitznorman-Bicester, Lee, and Obi. You’re group three. Sofa on the left.”
Lee was a diver. Lex recognised her from the dining hall, compact and quiet.
Obi was a four-hundred-metre runner who’d taken gold the day before and was still walking around the Village like a man who’d been handed the keys to a city.
They filed onto the sofa. Lex dropped into the far end.
Barnaby sat beside him, crossed one ankle over the other, and folded his hands on his knee.
The interviewer settled into her chair opposite them and glanced at her cards. “Four gold medallists on one sofa, here! How does it feel to be packing a gold medal into your carry-ons?”
“Unreal,” Obi said, which was the correct answer.
He went on to say something about the journey and the sacrifice and what it meant to represent his country, and all of it was true, but largely un-interesting.
Lex had given the same answer a hundred times himself.
It was the verbal equivalent of a screensaver: perfectly functional, pleasant, and designed to prevent anything unexpected from playing out on screen.
Lee nodded along. She added something about her coach, and her family back in Sheffield, and the long-term development pathway that had brought her here.
The interviewer smiled and made all the right noises, but Lex could see the light in her eyes dimming by degrees, the way it did when someone in a room knew they were getting content that would be cut in the edit.
The interviewer worked through a few more questions before landing on the one that was clearly meant to loosen them up. “So, what do Team GB athletes actually get up to in their downtime? What does a night off look like in the Olympic Village?”
Lex leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Barns and I do Snack Roulette.”
The interviewer’s eyebrows rose. Beside him, Barnaby went very still, even as Lex’s hand clamped down on his shoulder and shook him a bit.