CHAPTER FOUR TIED AT THE WAISTS
The challenge beacon began flashing at noon.
It led them to a basalt tower rising from the jungle like a black tooth. A steel case gleamed at the summit. Beside the starting flag lay one coil of climbing rope and a laminated card.
Cody read aloud. “Retrieve the case. Both participants must remain connected to the same safety system from base to summit. Disconnection forfeits the prize.” He lifted the rope. “Forty meters. They hate us.”
“They want contact.” Grant studied the rock. “They'll get safety.”
The supplied rope was too short for independent harnesses. Grant folded it into a shared system, looping one section around his waist and another around Cody's. Without fabric, every knot had to be placed with care.
“Hold still.” Grant drew the rope between Cody's thighs.
Cody inhaled sharply. “You cannot say that while doing this.”
“I can if you keep moving.”
Grant flattened the knot against Cody's hip and pulled it tight. Cody tested Grant's harness in return, sliding both hands around his waist, following the rope low across his body, then giving the line a hard tug.
Grant's reaction was immediate.
Cody looked down, then back up. “Safety first.”
“Climb.”
The first twenty feet were easy. The next forty required cooperation so intimate it became absurd.
Cody stood on Grant's locked hands, then his shoulders.
Grant lifted him by the hips to a narrow ledge.
When Grant climbed after him, Cody braced a bare foot against Grant's thigh and hauled on the shared rope.
Grant expected Cody's television technique: dramatic reaches, easy grades, a camera-ready smile. Instead Cody climbed economically, testing stone before trusting it and keeping three points of contact whenever possible. He read the basalt's fractures faster than Grant did.
“You have done this rock before,” Grant said.
“Not this formation. Similar towers in Java.”
“For the show?”
“Before the show. I guided for six years.”
“You never mention that.”
“My first network said viewers prefer their hosts naturally gifted.”
“Meaning untrained.”
“Meaning magical.” Cody shifted onto a hold and extended his hand. “Come be enchanted.”
Grant took it.
Halfway up, they rested on a ledge barely wide enough for Grant's boots. Cody stood between his knees, back against Grant's chest, while Grant reset the rope. Both men looked over miles of jungle to the ocean.
“If we fall,” Cody said, “the camera angle will be excellent.”
“We are not falling.”
“Because of the knots?”
Grant tightened an arm around his waist. “Because I have you.”
Cody went quiet. Then he leaned back, placing his full weight against Grant for one deliberate breath before climbing again.
Rock heated beneath the sun. Sweat made grips uncertain. Their bodies brushed at every cramped stance.
“Left hand higher,” Cody called.
“No hold.”
“Use my hip.”
“That is not a hold.”
“It has worked so far.”
Grant used it.
Near the top, Cody reached for a shallow crack. The edge broke. He dropped.
The shared system snapped tight. Grant slammed into the wall, locked one arm around the rope, and caught Cody with both legs wrapped around his waist.
For a moment, they hung suspended above the jungle.
Cody's arms circled Grant's shoulders. Their faces were inches apart. The rope pulled them hard together, and every attempt to stabilize created friction neither could ignore.
“You're affected,” Cody said, breathing fast.
“We're eighty feet up.”
“That isn't a denial.”
“You're affected too.”
“I have never claimed otherwise.”
Grant kissed him.
It was reckless enough to steal Cody's grin. They remained locked together while the rope creaked, trading one hot, impossible kiss above an ocean of leaves. Then Grant wedged his foot into a seam and pushed Cody back toward the ledge.
“Move,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
“Say that again and I'll leave you hanging.”
“Promise?”
They reached the summit ten minutes later.
The case contained a compact fishing kit and a tightly rolled two-person hammock. Cody held both prizes above his head while the aerial camera circled.
From the summit, the island revealed its geography. Grant marked the northern reef, a darker swath of jungle inland, and the low roof of the production emergency station beyond the ridge. Cody pointed out a cloud bank forming southeast and the silver thread of another waterfall.
“We should scout that drainage tomorrow,” Grant said.
“We should eat something that did not grow on a palm.”
“Fishing kit solves both.”
“The hammock solves morale.”
“Shelter first.”
“Morale is survival.”
Grant looked at him standing sunlit and naked on the black stone, rope around his hips and delight in his eyes. “Your morale seems stable.”
“It requires frequent maintenance.”
The drone dipped closer as if in agreement.
“Tell them who did the technical climbing,” he said.
“Tell them who caught you.”
Cody turned to the lens, pointed at Grant, and announced, “This man cannot keep his hands off me.”
Grant lifted Cody clear off the ground.
Cody laughed and wrapped his legs around Grant's waist. The camera darted closer. Grant carried him behind a shoulder of rock, out of sight, and set him down only long enough to kiss the laugh from his mouth.
“You keep doing that,” Cody said when they separated.
“Doing what?”
“Choosing me when the camera is gone.”
Grant retightened the rope instead of answering.
They installed the hammock between two palms beside the beach. Cody pulled on one suspension line. “Needs testing.”
“With weight.”
“We are weight.”
The hammock swallowed them. Its curved fabric rolled Grant toward the center and Cody directly on top of him. They shifted. It swung. Their bodies slid together again.
Cody propped himself on Grant's chest. “I wager you cannot stay in control for five minutes.”
“What do I win?”
“Control.”
“Circular prize.”
“Coward.”
Grant caught Cody's wrists and rolled. The hammock rotated beneath them, reversing the reversal and spilling them halfway out. Cody hooked one leg over the edge and dragged Grant back in by the rope around his waist.
Their laughter turned to kissing.
The game lasted much longer than five minutes. Cody used the hammock's instability to shift above Grant, only for Grant to anchor a foot against the palm trunk and change their angle. They competed in whispers, each warning the other about the microphones and then making less effort to stay quiet.
Curved fabric hid the most intimate details, but the suspension ropes narrated everything: creak, pause, creak faster, Cody's broken laugh, Grant's low oath, silence, then movement again.
When desire finally eclipsed the contest, Grant slowed.
“Still yes?”
Cody touched his face. “Always ask me. Never doubt the answer.”
They came together beneath the stars, trading control in the narrow sling until winning stopped mattering. At the end, Cody lay along Grant's body, both of them breathless while the hammock swayed gently toward stillness.
The nearest camera watched from thirty feet away.
Grant raised one hand and covered Cody's face from its view.
Cody kissed his palm.
At sunrise, they woke on the sand. One support knot had pulled halfway free during the night.
Cody examined it. “Your knots are usually better.”
“Unusual load conditions.”
“We should reproduce the failure.”
“For science?”
“Quality control.”
Grant dragged him back into the hammock.
They did not actually begin again.
The weakened line groaned, and Grant dumped them both onto the sand before it could break. Cody landed laughing on top of him.
“Safety finally defeated lust,” Cody said.
“Temporary retreat.”
They rebuilt the suspension together, this time with load-sharing wraps around both palm trunks. Cody insisted on a redundant backup. Grant did not point out that the redundancy would also prevent the hammock from spilling them onto a camera-friendly beach.
By then, ordinary labor had become intimate in its own right. They passed rope hand to hand. Cody leaned against Grant to reach the upper wrap. Grant steadied him by the hips. When the work was done, they shared a grilled fish from one palm-leaf plate.
Grant found himself imagining mornings beyond the island: Cody barefoot in a kitchen, arguing about knots; Cody in Grant's bed after sunrise, still present.
The image frightened him more than the climb.