Chapter 24: Altitude Training
The bathroom was a claustrophobic metal tube, vibrating with the deep roar of the engines. Every bump of turbulence slammed Finn harder into the wall, into Damon. The heat was unbelievable.
Damon’s mouth was a brand on his throat, not kissing, but claiming, his teeth a blunt pressure that made Finn’s knees liquefy. The hand on his cock through the slick fabric of his warmups was ruthless, knowing.
“You’ll take my cock the same way you took first place,” Damon murmured, the words vibrating into Finn’s skin. He said it like it was simple fact, like he was commenting on the weather. His other hand was busy, the unbuckling of his belt a series of sharp, precise clicks that cut through the bathroom’s white noise.
First place. The words echoed in the hollow, screaming part of Finn’s brain. The qualifying race was a blur of pain and noise and Damon’s voice from the sidelines, a constant, driving force. He’d won his heat. Not just completed it. Won. By a margin. The trophy was a cheap piece of metal in his duffel bag in the overhead. It felt less real than the press of Damon’s thigh between his legs.
“Look at me.”
Finn’s eyes, which had been squeezed shut, flew open. Damon’s face was inches away, his brooding eyes black in the harsh LED light. There was no softness there. Only a feverish intensity, a hunger reflected back from the mirror behind him. Finn saw himself pinned, hair wild, lips swollen from where Damon had kissed him in their first-class seats the moment the seatbelt sign went off.
“You earned this,” Damon said, and it didn’t sound like a reward. It sounded like a consequence.
The plane dropped suddenly, a sickening lurch. Finn gasped, his stomach climbing into his throat. Damon used the momentum, his bodyweight driving Finn back, one strong arm wrapping around his waist to keep them both upright. He didn’t stop. He spit into his own palm, a crude, efficient sound, and then his hand was back, this time under the waistband of Finn’s warmups and briefs, shoving them down.
The cold of the metal wall seared his bare back. The heat of Damon’s hand on his ass was a contrast so stark it stole his breath.
“Breathe out,” Damon ordered, his voice a gravelly command.
Finn exhaled in a shaky rush. Damon pushed in.
The pain was a white-hot spear, tearing, unbelievable. A raw sound was ripped from Finn’s throat, swallowed by the engine’s roar. He scrabbled at Damon’s shoulders, his fingers biting into the hard muscle of his delts. His eyes watered, blurring the stark light.
Damon didn’t move. He held himself there, buried, his own breath coming in harsh gusts against Finn’s temple. He was shaking, Finn realized. A fine, powerful tremor ran through the entire massive frame pressed against him.
“Again,” Damon gritted out. “Breathe.”
Finn tried. The air hitched, caught on the sob stuck in his chest. He focused on the feeling of Damon’s heart hammering against his own. On the smell of him—sweat, expensive aftershave, and something uniquely, fundamentally Diesel. He let his head fall back against the wall with a dull thud and forced another breath.
The pain didn’t vanish. It mutated. It became a brutal, stretching fullness, a sense of being invaded and completed in the same catastrophic instant. Damon began to move, slow, inexorable pistons of his hips. Each stroke was a lesson in surrender.
“That’s it,” Damon muttered, his mouth back at Finn’s ear, his voice raw. “Take it. You know how to carry a load.”
The words unlocked something. They transported him from the vibrating bathroom to the predawn loft, the sled rope burning his palms, the weight refusing to budge until he made it. This was just another weight. A feeling to be metabolized. He stopped fighting it. He let the sensation—the pain, the pressure, the shocking intimacy—wash through him. His grip on Damon’s shoulders changed from panic to purchase.
Damon felt it. A guttural sound escaped him. His pace increased, turning punishing, the slapping of skin lost in the ambient noise of the flight. He fucked with the same focused, brutal efficiency with which he did everything. There was no romance. It was a claiming. An affirmation of the new hierarchy the podium had declared.
Finn was unraveling. The pain had spiraled into a dizzying, incandescent pleasure that seemed to originate in his spine and radiate outwards, short-circuiting every nerve ending. He was hard again, trapped between their stomachs, leaking. He was babbling, fragmented words he’d never say in the light. Please. More. Diesel. Damon.
Damon’s hand slid between them, wrapped around Finn, his grip calloused and perfect. Three strokes was all it took. Finn came with a silent, shuddering violence, his vision whiting out, his body seizing around Damon’s, which triggered Damon’s own finish, a deep, choked groan buried in the junction of Finn’s neck and shoulder.
For a long minute, there was only the roar of the plane and the sound of their ragged breathing syncing, slowing. The sticky heat between them. The profound, aching throb.
Damon pulled back first. He didn’t look triumphant or tender. He looked spent, and utterly focused. He reached for a wad of paper towels, cleaned himself with a few practical movements, then did the same for Finn, his touch surprisingly clinical. He helped Finn pull his clothes back into place, straightening the Team USA logo on his chest.
He cupped Finn’s face, forced his gaze up. Finn’s eyes were glazed, overwhelmed.
“Listen to me,” Damon said, his thumb brushing over Finn’s cheekbone. “What happens in the dark, stays in the dark. This doesn’t make you special. It makes you ready. You understand?”
Finn nodded, unable to speak. He understood. The trophy, the sex—they were just data points. Evidence of capacity.
Damon unlocked the door, peered out into the empty galley. “Go back to your seat. Drink the water I left you. Sleep.”
Finn stumbled out, his legs barely cooperating. The first-class cabin was quiet, most passengers drowsing under blankets. He collapsed into his window seat. His body felt completely foreign, a used and reconfigured thing. On the tray table was a bottle of water and two ibuprofen. He took them, swallowing past the dry ache in his throat.
Across the aisle, Damon had already reclaimed his seat. He had his laptop open, reviewing footage of the qualifier, his expression one of detached analysis. As if the last fifteen minutes had been a necessary system reset and now the work resumed.
Finn pressed his forehead to the cool window. The world below was a tapestry of scattered lights in an infinite black. He was above everything. Untethered. The boy who’d nervously walked into a Hyrox gym months ago was gone, left behind on the tarmac. What was left was sore, empty, and terrifyingly capable.
He slept.
The airport lounge in the connecting city was a bubble of sterile calm. Finn sat, stiff and sore, watching Damon from across a low table. Damon was on his feet, dynamic even at rest, adjusting the straps of a weight vest he’d pulled from his carry-on. He rotated his shoulders, the capped delts and thick triceps flexing under his sleeveless shirt. A ritual.
A businessman nearby glanced over, did a double-take at the sheer physicality of the man, then quickly returned to his phone.
Finn sipped his water. Every slight movement sent a reminder flaring from his core. It wasn’t unpleasant. It was a fact. A mileage marker.
“You’re quiet,” Damon said, not looking at him.
“Thinking,” Finn replied. His voice was hoarse.
“About?”
“The sled. The one I pull in the mornings. It felt heavier today. Before we left.”
Damon finally looked at him, a flicker of interest in his dark eyes. “It was the same weight.”
“I know.”
A slow nod. “Perception changed. You carried a different load. Your baseline for ‘heavy’ recalibrated.” He sat down, the leather chair groaning under him. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “The qualifier was a baseline, too. The field was soft. Regional talent. The real event… it’s a different universe of pain.”
“You think I can’t handle it?” The question came out flat, not defensive.
“I know you can handle it,” Damon corrected. “The question is, can you win it? Not your heat. The whole fucking thing.” He picked up a travel magazine, flicked it open without seeing it. “What you did in that bathroom… that was a threshold. You don’t go back. You only go forward into harder things. The training changes tomorrow.”
“How?”
“Less teaching. More forging. You’re not clay anymore. You’re steel in the tempering phase. We hit it with heat, we beat on it, we see if it holds an edge.” He closed the magazine. “It will hurt.”
Finn held his gaze. “I know.”
The ghost of something—not a smile, but an acknowledgment—touched Damon’s mouth. “Good.”
Their flight was called. As they stood to gather their things, Damon paused, his hand landing on the back of Finn’s neck. It was a proprietary grip, firm and warm. He leaned in, his voice for Finn alone. “And for the record… you took it better than first place.”
He walked off toward the gate, leaving Finn standing there, the words searing a path down his spine, hotter than any touch. Finn shouldered his bag, the cheap trophy inside clinking against his shaker bottle, and followed.
He followed him down the jetway, onto the smaller plane, to their seats. He watched as Damon stored his bag, his movements economical and sure. The world had narrowed to this path, this man, this painful, glorious forging. He was ready for the heat. He was ready to be beaten.
He looked out the window as the plane taxied, his reflection a pale ghost over the tarmac lights. The eyes that looked back were still green, still wide, but the fear in them was gone. Replaced by a watchful, earned calm.
Damon passed him a bottle of water and two more pills. “Sleep,” he said again, as if it were an instruction for the rest of his life.
Finn took them. He closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids, he didn’t see the bathroom, or the podium. He saw the dark loft before dawn, the scrape of the sled, the steady rhythm of a new day being built, rep by grueling rep. He slept.
He slept, but his body didn’t. It conducted a throbbing inventory in the dark. The pleasant burn in his glutes from the sled work. The deeper, more personal ache from the airplane bathroom. The phantom pressure of a trophy in his hands. When he woke as they began their descent, the aches had settled into a single, unified broadcast: used, but not broken.
Damon was already awake, typing on his phone. “Your protein levels will be low. We’ll correct that within an hour of landing.”
“Do you ever think about anything that isn’t a physiological metric?” Finn asked, his voice rough with sleep. It was the first thing approaching a joke he’d attempted since before the qualifier.
Damon glanced at him. A muscle twitched near his eye. “Sure. Fluid dynamics. The tensile strength of nylon webbing. The structural integrity of your psyche under maximal load.” He put his phone away. “That last one is especially interesting today.”
The city that came into view was bigger, meaner-looking. A concrete grid stretching to a hazy horizon. This was where the regional qualifier would be held in sixteen days. Finn felt it before he saw the arena. The air in the cabin seemed to press inward.
A black SUV was waiting for them at baggage claim. The driver, a massive silhouette, nodded at Damon and loaded their bags without a word. “Teammate,” Damon said simply, sliding into the back seat. “From my competing days.”
The teammate, introduced only as Harlow, had a neck wider than his head and hands that looked like they could crush brick. He drove with a predatory silence. Finn caught Harlow’s eyes in the rearview, a swift, assessing sweep that felt like being X-rayed. “So you’re the project,” Harlow said, his voice a low rumble.
“I’m not a project,” Finn said, the words out before he could stop them.
Harlow’s chuckle sounded like gravel in a dryer. “Kid, we’re all projects. Diesel just picks the interesting raw material.” He looked at Damon. “He looks like he’ll snap in the third functional movement.”
“He won’t,” Damon said, staring out the window. “He’s already held together with better glue than you are.”
The dig was casual, but it landed. Harlow grunted, a sound of concession. Finn sat a little straighter, the soreness in his body momentarily forgotten. Damon’s defense, unasked for, was a bolt of pure caffeine to his nervous system.
They didn’t go to a hotel. The SUV pulled into the loading bay of a brutalist warehouse in an industrial district. A banner hung over a steel door: KAGE PERFORMANCE – BY INVITATION ONLY. “Home for the next two weeks,” Damon said, popping the door. “No distractions. Just the work.”
The space inside was a cathedral of suffering. Three times the size of the loft, it echoed with the distant clang of weights from a far corner where two other athletes trained. The air was cold, smelling of industrial cleaner, rust, and effort. In the center sat a behemoth of a rig: ski-ergs, sled tracks, plyo boxes, and a sinister-looking structure of monkey bars over a pit of foam mats. The regional qualifier course, replicated in punishing detail.
“Oh,” Finn said, the sound small in the vast space.
“Yeah,” Damon replied, a note of grim satisfaction in his voice. “ ‘Oh.’ The local qualifier was a playground. This,” he gestured at the rig, “is the real world. The standards are higher. The pain is smarter. The competition will be people who look like Harlow, but twenty years younger and with nothing to lose.”
Harlow dumped their bags by a wall lined with dorm-style bunks. “I’ll leave you to the orientation. Try not to break him before the merch order comes in, D. The shirts are non-refundable.” He left, the steel door clanging shut like a vault.
Silence, except for the drip of a distant water pipe. Damon walked to the center of the course, his footsteps echoing. Finn followed, the immensity of the space making him feel like a speck.
“The event profile is online,” Damon said, not looking at him. “Three kilometer run, then a circuit: sled push, box jump burpees, kettlebell farmers carry, wall balls, rowing, lunges, sled pull, and finishing with another three kilometer run. All for time.” He finally turned. “You will know every centimeter of this replica. You will dream about the grain of the wood on these boxes. The drag coefficient of that sled will be a more intimate fact to you than your own birthday.”
He moved closer, invading Finn’s space. The memory of the plane was instantly vivid between them, a live wire. “What happened on the flight,” Damon said, his voice dropping, “that was a release valve. A one-time adjustment. You understand? There is no intimacy here. There is only the work. The regional qualifier looms. It’s all that exists now.”
Finn held his gaze. The ache between his legs was a reminder, not an anchor. “I didn’t come here for intimacy.”
“I know.” Damon’s hand came up, but it didn’t touch him. It hovered near Finn’s chest, over his heart. “You came here to see what you’re made of. Congratulations. Now you get to find out under lights, with a thousand people watching, against thirty men who want to obliterate you.” He dropped his hand. “We start with the sled push. Your technique was sloppy at the qualifier. You lost half a second on each drive. Over the course of the event, that’s catastrophic.”
The next two hours were a deconstruction. Damon filmed him, played it back in slow motion, pointed out microscopic flaws in ankle flexion, hip extension, breath timing. They didn’t do full pushes. They did three-foot increments, over and over, until the movement was stripped of thought and burned into pure, inefficient muscle memory.
Finn’s shirt was soaked through, clinging to his lean frame. His arms shook. “It feels worse here,” he gasped after a rep.
“The sled is the same weight. The floor is the same surface,” Damon said, arms crossed. “The difference is the scale. The room makes the task feel infinite. That’s the point. You have to shrink the world down to the six inches in front of the sled. Nothing else.”
After the sled, they moved to nutrition. Damon had a commercial kitchen installed in an alcove. He taught Finn to weigh chicken breast, measure sweet potato, blend the precise concoction of electrolytes and branched-chain amino acids that would fuel the specific glycolytic demands of the event. It was boring, meticulous science.
“The body is a machine. You are the engineer,” Damon said, watching Finn log the meal in an app. “Romanticize the effort, not the fuel. The fuel is math.”
That night, in his narrow bunk, Finn listened to the unfamiliar sounds of the warehouse. The groan of pipes. The scuttle of something in the walls. The deep, even sound of Damon’s breathing from the bunk across the aisle. He was sore in places he didn’t know could get sore. His mind replayed the sled push, the exact angle Damon had corrected.
He thought of the woman from the crash. My son has piano. He wondered if she was out of the hospital. If her leg had saved. The memory was clean now, a crystal of adrenaline and purpose, not fear.
A voice cut through the dark. “You’re thinking too loud.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Direct it. What are you thinking about?”
Finn stared at the corrugated steel ceiling. “The difference between wanting to finish and needing to win.”
The bunk across from him creaked as Damon turned. Finn could just make out his profile in the emergency exit light’s green glow. “And?”
“I need to win.”
A long silence. Then, “Finally.” Damon’s voice was a soft, approving rasp in the dark. “Now sleep. Tomorrow, we break down your run. Your gait is still a student’s gait. It needs to be a weapon.”
Finn closed his eyes. The regional qualifier loomed in the darkness behind his eyelids, not as a shadow, but as a finish line drawn in fire. He moved toward it, one visualized sled push at a time.
The whistle sliced the warehouse air, a deafening shriek that bypassed thought and went straight to Finn’s nerves. His body launched forward before his mind processed the sound, sneakers slapping the cold concrete in a frantic, opening sprint. The first three-kilometer run was a blur of fire in his lungs and the echo of Damon’s last words: “Control your decay.”
He hit the first station, the sled, its cold steel frame waiting. He dropped his shoulders, drove his legs. The push was ugly, a grunting, stumbling fight for five meters before rhythm found him. His world shrank to the six inches of floor in front of the sled, just as Damon had said. The memory of the predawn pulls in the loft was a ghost in his muscles, a familiar, stubborn weight.
“Eyes down! Your neck isn’t a sightseeing tool!” Damon’s voice boomed from somewhere, detached, a god observing an experiment.
Box jump burpees came next. The plywood box was a towering, hostile thing. Up, down, push-up, jump. The cycle became a mechanical prayer. His sweat dripped onto the floor, creating dark constellations on the concrete. He lost count. The numbers didn’t matter; only the next rep did.
The kettlebell farmers carry was a different hell. The brutal weight tried to rip his shoulders from their sockets, his grip screaming in protest. He focused on the feel of the knurled handle, the same way he’d focused on the plastic tourniquet rod. A simple point of contact. A task. Left, right, left. His forearms were bundles of live wires.
Halfway through the wall balls, his vision tunneled. The twenty-pound ball felt like a cannonball. Each squat and throw was a seismic event in his knees. The ball slammed the target ten feet up with a hollow thud that vibrated in his teeth.
“Your legs are fresh, O’Malley! That’s self-pity burning, not lactate!” Damon was closer now, circling him like a hawk. “The woman in the car didn’t get to feel sorry for herself. You don’t either.”
The words were a spark in the fog. The crash. The pulse of blood. The weight of a life in his hands. This was just weight. He snarled, caught the rebounding ball, and sank into another squat, deeper this time.
The rower was a welcome sit, a lie. A thousand-meter curse disguised as recovery. He pulled, the chain shrieking, the fan roaring a gale of fake wind in his face. His lungs were shredded paper.
Sled pull. Backwards now, facing the carnage he’d just created. His hamstrings felt like over-tuned guitar strings, ready to snap. The rope burned through his palms, a friction he welcomed. It was a feeling he could map, a clean pain.
The final three-kilometer run was a out-of-body experience. His form was a wreck, a stumbling, gasping parody of running. The warehouse walls seemed to warp and bend. He passed the other athletes, blurred figures also locked in their private wars. No one spoke. The only language was the sound of suffering.
He crossed the imaginary finish line and collapsed onto his back, staring up at the distant, rust-stained ceiling. The world was a roaring silence in his ears. He couldn’t feel his legs.
Damon’s shadow fell over him, blocking the fluorescent light. He didn’t offer a hand up. He held a stopwatch. “Twenty-seven minutes, forty-eight seconds.” He let that number hang in the acidic air. “The current regional leader’s time is twenty-six flat.”
Finn just stared, his chest heaving. A minute and forty-eight seconds was a canyon.
“You died on the second run. You lost thirty seconds there alone.” Damon crouched, his knees popping. He wasn’t smiling. His eyes were analytical, scanning Finn’s broken form. “Your pacing was emotional. You spent your rage too early, on the wall balls. The back half needs icy calculation, and you had nothing left but sentiment.”
“I beat… my qualifier time,” Finn gasped, the words raw.
“This isn’t about beating your time. It’s about beating theirs.” Damon stood. “Get up. Cool down. Then we eat. You need six hundred grams of carbohydrates today. You’re in a deficit.”
The next week was a cycle of exquisite violence. Dawn to dusk, the circuit. Damon adjusted variables like a mad scientist. He made Finn run after drinking a gallon of water, sloshing and nauseous, to simulate racing with faulty hydration. He blasted erratic, pounding music to drown out his own cues, forcing Finn to rely on internal rhythm. He had Harlow come in and race alongside him, the larger man’s presence a psychological wall of muscle to chase.
One afternoon, deep into a set of lunges, Finn’s legs simply buckled. He went down hard on one knee, a sharp crack echoing. He stayed there, head bowed, sweat and maybe something else dripping onto the floor.
Damon called a halt. The warehouse fell silent. He walked over, his footsteps slow. He didn’t yell. “What’s in your head right now?”
“The plane,” Finn said, the admission ripped from him. “The bathroom. I keep… I can’t separate it. The pain here, the pain there. It all mixes.”
Damon was quiet for a long moment. He finally sat on the floor beside him, a rare gesture. He didn’t touch him. “That’s the point,” he said, his voice low. “It’s all just sensation. Data. The trick isn’t to separate it. It’s to use it. That feeling on the plane—the overwhelm, the limit—that’s a benchmark. You know what’s on the other side of that now. This,” he gestured to the grueling course, “is just another path to the other side. It’s not different. It’s the same mountain, a different face.”
He stood, offering a hand this time. Finn took it, his grip weak. Damon pulled him up, holding onto his forearm for a beat too long, a solid anchor. “Now, the other side of this mountain is a podium. Let’s go find it.”
Two days before the event, Damon changed the routine. “No heavy work. We walk the course.” The actual arena was a vast convention center, now transformed into a dystopian playground of artificial turf and branding. They went at dawn, just the two of them in the empty space.
It was surreal. The sleds were here, real, official. The rigs were brightly colored, the logos glaring. It felt like a movie set. Finn’s stomach churned.
“Touch it,” Damon said, nodding toward the ski-erg.
Finn walked over, placed a hand on the handle. It was just plastic and metal. Cold.
“It’s not special,” Damon said, coming up behind him. “It’s the same mechanical disadvantage you’ve fought for weeks. The only thing that’s different is the crowd. They’re noise. They’re air moving. Ignore them.”
They walked the exact path he would run. Damon pointed out subtle inclines in the floor he’d need to account for, patches of turf that were slightly slower. He showed him where the spectators would be thickest, a wall of sound he’d have to run through. “It’s just geography,” Damon concluded. “You’ve already mapped it in your head. Now your feet just need to confirm.”
The night before, in a sterile hotel room this time, Finn laid out his kit. The same Team USA warmups. He ran his fingers over the logo. Damon was across the room, reviewing athlete bios on his tablet. “This guy, Kovac, likes to go out suicidal fast. He’ll bait you. Don’t take it. This one, Greene, fades on the sled pull. If you’re close there, you break him.”
It was clinical, a tactical briefing. There was no pep talk. No inspiration.
Finn finally asked the question that had been gnawing at him. “Why? Why are you doing all this? For me?”
Damon put the tablet down. He looked tired, a weariness deeper than physical fatigue. “I told you. You’re interesting raw material.”
“That’s not it.” Finn’s voice was quiet but firm. “Harlow was interesting raw material. The others. You didn’t… you didn’t watch them sleep.”
The room went very still. Damon’s gaze was unreadable, locked on him from across the dim space. The hum of the mini-fridge was suddenly loud.
“I see it,” Damon said finally, each word measured. “The thing you could be. The thing almost no one gets to be. Untapped. Unbroken. It’s… rare.” He looked away, out the window at the city lights. “And I was there when you first touched it. In the park, with the blood on your hands. You didn’t flinch. You leaned in. That’s a singularity. You don’t walk away from that. You nurture it. You see how far it can go.”
He stood, ending the conversation. “Now go to sleep. Your body has work tomorrow. Your questions can wait.”
Finn lay in the dark, Damon’s words turning over in his mind. A singularity. It felt less like a compliment and more like a diagnosis. A point of no return.
Morning came, brittle and sharp. The athlete’s holding area was a cacophony of nervous energy, smelling of deep heat spray, caffeine, and adrenaline. Men twice Finn’s width rocked on their heels, slapped their own faces, stared into the middle distance. Finn found a quiet corner and began his mobilization routine, his movements slow, deliberate. He shut out the noise. He thought of the warehouse silence. The scrape of the sled. Damon’s shadow on the wall.
Damon found him there, cutting through the chaos. He wore a simple black coach’s polo, tight across his chest. He didn’t offer advice. He just put his hands on Finn’s shoulders, his thumbs pressing into the tight muscles near his collarbone. A brief, fierce massage. “Geography,” he said, his voice a low rumble only for Finn. “It’s just geography. Go map it.”
He turned and left for the coach’s corral without another word.
Finn was called to the start line. He peeled off his warmups. His slender, lean frame stood out among the slabs of muscle. He ignored the glances, the murmured dismissals. He bounced lightly on his toes, feeling the spring in the fresh legs Damon had preserved.
He took his position on the synthetic turf. The crowd was a distant roar. The clock loomed large. His heart was a calm, steady drum in his chest.
The horn blared.
And Finn O’Malley, the twink from the university, the boy who’d trembled at the sight of his own reflection in a Hyrox rig, exploded forward. Not with panic, but with a cold, geographic certainty. He had a mountain to cross. He knew every stone on its face. He began to climb.