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3one3 · 7 years ago

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The Sequel - 865

A Joint Thing

André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea/BVB players, and random awesome OC’s (okay they’re less random now but they’re still pretty awesome)

original epic tale

all chapters of The Sequel

“Stop. You don’t even have to give the speech. I don’t want to talk about it. Tomorrow, yes. Not now.”

“Okay. Whatever you want.”

“What are you doing?”

“Figuring out how to send hay and grain for the horses and livestock affected by the hurricane in Texas. The flooding is so bad. Did you eat? I had a strip steak because I was starving. I got one for you too though. If you want it. It only takes a few minutes on the grill.”

I want 20 things and none are a strip steak, no matter how superbly she could probably cook it, André rued after Christina nodded at the mostly empty plate beside her Macbook in the study. There was one piece of broccoli left on it alongside some discarded fat. It was Saturday night, and he just got home from the match, and he pretty much hated everything until that very moment. How sweet is she. Does her two hours at the stadium to see me play like the Invisible Man for 55 minutes and then makes herself dinner for one, to eat while she works on helping abandoned or homeless animals. And she has that face like her mind is going hundreds of kilometers a minute to figure out what to do or say to me to erase that I am currently useless on the football pitch and hurt all the time.

“I had dinner in the ice bath. Who are we helping? One organization or a bunch of little ones?” The player walked the rest of the way into the cozy study decorated primarily with books, and pushed the back of his chair from one side of the partners’ desk to the other so that he could sit beside his girl and see what was on her screen. She slid over a bit to her left, and then leaned back over to the right to kiss his cheek. If not for the distraction of the coverage of the hurricane drowning greater Houston under an unprecedented tonnage of water, Christina would have been totally consumed by her sympathy for her partner and his frustrating struggle to show his quality and worth at the Westfalenstadion. He was simply a body to bounce the ball off now and then during his minutes that evening. The whole team was rather slow on the ball, and one-dimensional. André couldn’t make or take any chances, and he seldom even had the opportunity for nice interplay with his black and yellow teammates. The three points were secured for the home side, and their #21 didn’t do anything costly or embarrassing, so it wasn’t a complete loss, but he looked and felt irrelevant and disappointing. His girl wished she knew how to help him turn it on again, or even just how to get on the right path to it. Injuries and good form by others meant it had been nearly a year since he enjoyed an uninterrupted spell in which to build and flourish. His struggle was breaking her heart, and demolishing his spirit. Her instinct was to make him talk about it instead of brush it off for “tomorrow”, but she knew what it was like to be in his shoes too, and knew he needed a cool-down period before it was worth encouraging him to share his burden with her.

“That’s what I’m trying to decide. The ASPCA is doing a lot but I’m not sure if they’re doing livestock or just pets. USEF has a fund going just for horses. I’m looking for, like, if some group is taking in otherwise homeless horses and caring for them while their owners can’t. I’d like to send supplies. I don’t like just giving money to those big groups because I don’t know how much of it actually helps the animals, or how long it takes.” The horsewoman moved her dinner plate aside so that she could lean on her elbow on the desk and sigh while André scrolled through the pictures she found on Twitter.

“Why don’t you make a post saying that you’d like to help, and see who responds? It shouldn’t be too hard to verify and not get scammed. Your Twitter has a big reach,” he reminded her. “I’m sure people will tell you who is doing what.”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m going to need someone who knows what’s going on and where I can even get hay and grain sent from, and how to get it to whoever needs it. I emailed someone I know at USEF to find out what they can tell me. I’ll wait to post until I hear back from her. Hey, are you sure you don’t want anything?” Christina watched him watch a rescue video on the screen, and reached for his fuzzy cheek with the back of her hand. He turned and offered a small but reassuring smile.

“We had pasta and chicken. I’m not hungry, Prinzessin.”

“Do you want anything else? Couch? Bed? Fire pit? Movie downstairs?”

“Didn’t you want to begin your Game of Thrones education tonight?” the footballer yawned.

“Yes but actually I want to save that for tomorrow because it’s supposed to rain aaaaalllllllll day and Lukas has a playdate at Nuri’s- all the kids do- I think it’s someone’s birthday but I forget- and so it’s the perfect afternoon for us to get embedded on the couch and watch a bunch of episodes at once. I even made watermelon salsa for the whole grain tortilla chips.” Christina blinked at him with big, round, welcoming blue eyes, and just that little hint of hopefulness in them- her hope for him to be into her plans- was enough to help him feel just that little bit better about everything. Instead of expressing excitement about her Sunday agenda, he decided to tease her.

“You’re sending him to a birthday without a gift?” he asked with mock incredulity.

“Tugba only just told me about it at the game!”

“Did you get to tuck him in?”

“No,” she frowned. “Espen said he watched most of the match though. He made you something today,” Lukas’ mom smiled back. “It’s upstairs. Want to see?”

His dad nodded and followed her to the master bath, to check out the little platinum blonde’s art project. It all started when Espen arrived for work with a tie-dye kit and some cheap t-shirts. She was joining some new friends from her apartment block on a sort of bar crawl/drinking scavenger hunt that would stretch from brunch into the evening. It was a team competition, and her team was all going to wear tie-dye shirts. The others were getting together on Saturday to make theirs but since she had to work she just got her own supplies and made it into a fun activity to do with Lukas. Christina couldn’t resist joining in. They filled horse buckets with the water and dye and taught Lukas how to bunch up the shirt and add the rubber bands. After he saw the results on a his-size shirt, he wanted to make one for Daddy. It had to be yellow, because his “Daddy shirt” was yellow. Espen showed him how to draw on the adult-size white tee with fabric markers before they prepped it for the dye. He attempted a dinosaur and several humans of varying sizes and proportions. They weren’t all entirely recognizable as people. The finished product looked like a terrible children’s doodle made into a shirt instead of refrigerator art. He wanted to put it in the dye twice to deepen the yellow hue per Espen’s recommendation, so Christina hung it in her shower to dry because the dark tiles wouldn’t get stained.

“I think you should let him give it to you in the morning,” she explained to the lucky recipient of the haute couture piece. “He’ll be so proud and happy.”

“You think? Wouldn’t he like it if I just wear it?” André loved his ugly shirt. He loved that his son thought of him when he wasn’t around, and wanted to make him something.

“You can wear it after he gives it to you. I think you’ll look sexy in it, babe.”

“For some reason yellow doesn’t do for my eyes what it does for yours.” He pointed a cheeky smirk at his girl while holding the shirt up to his body.

“It’s really not your color.” She wrinkled one side of her nose and shook her head, and inadvertently reminded him of the things he didn’t want to talk about. I never look good in yellow. That’s the truth, he huffed inside. BVB shirt on, all talent, composure, and intelligence, gone. I just look like a jackass. “We tried to make it a darker, more flattering shade for you.”

“Mhm. Should I put it back in the shower? It seems dry.”

“I think it’s fine. Why don’t you put your bag away and stay awhile?” The rider winked at the dejected player and then wandered out of the bathroom and onto their bed. It was freshly made in clean linens, and too inviting to simply be walked past. There was nothing else to do in the house besides hover around André anyway.

“Where is your tie-dye shirt?” he asked her from his closet.

“In a drawer. It’s rainbow colored. I’m like a tie-dye pro.”

“Are we going downstairs, or outside, or bed, or what? What should I put on right now?”

“I dunno I don’t care.” Hola Juanin, Christina thought as her sweatpants pocket vibrated. It wouldn’t have been anyone other than the Spaniard. He played 74 minutes and assisted the match-winning goal, and she was waiting for him to respond to her congratulations text.

“Thanks. We played well. Who is it going to be with this time?” he wrote back. Her message also mentioned her desire to do another Dirk video, with a new artist, whose music she discovered only that afternoon, sort of.

“You know the song I played for you that sounds like its straight out of 1983 and I said I thought it might actually be brand new and not from Miami Vice? The featured artist on it is two guys called Oliver, because they’re both Olivers, and they’re DJ’s and producers and I heard their album that just came out and it’s AMAZING. You’ll prob love it. Add it on Apple. “Electrify” is my fave,” the rider told him with several dancing girl emojis.

“Why can’t you pick someone I already know personally and have a relationship with? Don’t you like any Kygo songs?” Juan’s feigned exasperation was audible in his digital words.

“Who says I want you to produce the video again?”

“Your mom.”

“We’re invited to a nightclub party in Milan on Saturday night with Rafa people. It’s not all night tho. Do you wanna?”

“I don’t know. That’s a week from now.”

“What are you doing tonight?”

“I had dinner with Paula. I’m home now. Bedtime for Juan.”

“Are you still hanging out with Taylor tomorrow?”

“I put sweatpants on because you have sweatpants on,” André shrugged on his way over to join his girl on the nicely made bed. She was upside down and tapping away on her phone. “Watcha doin?”

“Nothing.” Christina barely got the word out before the other player’s next message arrived.

“Yes.”

“Coming in hot.” The BVB midfielder crawled over her and literally just collapsed on her body, trapping the phone and her hand under his shoulder. “Ahh, yeah. Comfy.”

“Ugh, you weigh a ton. Why are your bones so heavy? There’s no fat on you to weigh this much.”

“Stop complaining,” he ordered before reluctantly scooting down some so that their parts lined up slightly better. He took the phone from her hand and set it on the bed, and then put both of her hands down at her side, out of the way of his elbows. Then he dropped his head down for a quick smooch. “Thanks for coming to the match.”

“Why do you still thank me?” Christina laughed. “I will never get that. I’ve been going to your games for almost 7 years. I was going to them even before that too. You just didn’t know it.”

“Because I’m still thankful that you support me. And that you support me at home too even after I play like crap.”

“You’re a hero to me and your son whether you score a hat trick, an own goal, or an award for doing absolutely nothing of note for an hour.” She couldn’t help but tease a little. It was totally fine with him because her teasing smile was very nice to look at. He bent down to kiss her again, a little slower, and then petted her forehead and some of her hair.

“I guess you weren’t paying attention when I gave the ball away and we almost lost a goal.”

“No I was, but you didn’t even do that well enough for them to actually score, so...doesn’t count.”

“Nice.”

“In all seriousness, was something hurting? You weren’t moving so good.” Christina held onto his waist and enjoyed his freshly showered smell. It was clean and manly and evoked all of the things inside a female that tell her to notice a male.

“Not really, but you’re right. By the end I wasn’t moving well.”

“Do you need a butt massage?” She slid her hands down over his behind and gave it a demonstrative double squeeze.

“You mean you have time for an ass that isn’t Jon Snow’s? You’ve found a way to include it in every other conversation for two days. Who is that?” His attention was diverted before he could list all the times she managed to work Kit Harington’s perfect ass into conversations. Her phone vibrated again, and lit up.

“How should I know? I can’t see it. Duuhhhhh.”

“Duhhhhhhh.”

“You’re crushing my liver or something. So you’re lucky you smell good.” And...meh. As the Olympic medalist inhaled some more eau du manly man, several threads converged in her head and dampened her mood. She spent much of the pre-match festivities with Zoe, and Nuri’s wife Tugba, talking about her new interest in Game of Thrones, and how it spawned from “that love scene” everybody was on about. The girls had so much to say and not just about Jon Snow’s wonderful, Fibonacci sequence-aligned bum. The other two knew more than the rider about the series, so they had more perspective on the significance of the love scene, but she could still testify to the powerful and meaningful emotions that were fueling it. It was obvious. The scene was about love, not sex. Zoe told her it was one of the few sex scenes in the whole story that portrayed the act as something loving instead of brutal and animalistic.

She also got wistful and fanciful and longing in talking about “that kind of love”. Marco’s girl asked, rhetorically, how amazing it is to have sex like that- to be so enamored, and so deeply in love, and so “so”. It was a struggle for her to even put a label on it. Tugba was all about it too. Nuri’s wife knew exactly what Zoe meant, and so did Christina. Unfortunately, thinking about the “oh my god, star-crossed lovers finally together, they need each other, they need to make love to fully experience it” sort of love just made her realize that she never had that with André anymore.

As Juan’s texts piled up on the phone next to her head, she felt uneasy inside. He was the one with whom she experienced that sort of love. He was the one she longed to be with that way. The girls also talked about other kinds of love, which they deemed good but not as singularly rewarding, satisfying, and special. André ticked the boxes for her for “when he’s so hot or handsome and you just need him” love and “casual, flirty” love, and “when you wake up Sunday morning and love each other” love. The player’s wives called the rarity of the other sort of love bittersweet, because they wanted to experience that encounter more often but recognized that it would be diminished with greater frequency. Zoe even said it was a “two handful” life experience, meaning one would only experience it maybe 10 times in a lifetime. So Christina logically shouldn’t have been that alarmed by the realization that she and her partner hadn’t had a night like that in some time, or that she wasn’t feeling that way about him. But she wasn’t sure that Zoe was right. It seemed like she thought of Juan that way all the time, and they had “Jonerys-level” sex multiple times just that summer. Sniffing her husband and feeling attracted to him on that most basic level of desire was disappointing for her, because it just reinforced everything she thought of in hospitality with the girls.

“Do you want me to move?” André offered when he noticed that her expression went flat for too long for her just to be kidding when she said he was lucky to smell good. It was like she frowned to go along with the banter but then just never smiled again or re-engaged.

“No. But...do you still...do you ever feel like you love me so much that you need to love me, like, physically? I mean- Not- Like- Like when you want to literally make love. You want to be together because of just...love. Not because you want to get off, or because I look good or whatever, or even like when you’re obsessed with being with my body for a while. I mean make love like the night before you went to Brazil, and our wedding night, and the first time we were together post-separation when it wasn’t weird anymore. When you look at me and I actually look back.” Christina regretted opening her mouth with every additional word she piled on to try to make herself clear. Her face was pink by the end, and she was hoping to disappear into the mattress somehow.

“How many times did you watch the scene with his butt? You are so obsessed. Let it go, Prinzessin,” André chuckled. “You get so hung up on films and shows. Life doesn’t have to be that dramatic!”

“Never mind the show. Do you know what I’m talking about? Don’t you-“

“I wanted to be with you like that yesterday and you didn’t feel the same.” Why is she asking me this, he wondered. Why does she fool around when I want to be serious, and get serious when I’m just whatever. Why does she watch and read love stories and then have to live them the same?

“No that’s not the same, babe.” The rider shook her head and peered up at him with almost something like urgency. “I’m talking about when we’re both feeling exactly the same way. It’s a joint thing. It can’t happen to just one.”

“Well wouldn’t you know then? If it has to be both of us then you know all the times,” the player sighed. He just didn’t want to be having that conversation. He wanted to go back to enjoying her face and her casual conversation. She sighed too, but inaudibly, and nodded. His answer illustrated a good point. There was no point in asking him if he experienced something recently that she didn’t when the experience was dependent on them both. So it wasn’t just Christina that wasn’t feeling it. It wasn’t just that she had Juan as an alternative. The other half of the equation was messed up too. She wanted to know why, but didn’t know how to find out. He lifted his head to look at nothing across the room- an inadvertent but indicative gesture that put more space between their faces. His girl didn’t know how to even go about finding out her answer without aggravating him further.

“Okay.”

“Has anyone told you the guy with the ass and the girl with the braids are brother and sister? And that he’s a bitch? He would be the guy who listens to Drake and cries over girls. It’s just a TV show, Chris. Real life isn’t supposed to be comparable.” He was still aggravated anyway.

“Can you get off me if you’re going to talk to me like I’m an idiot?” So was she. He flipped over onto his back next to her for a second and then did a sit up and shifted around to lean against the headboard. She rolled onto her stomach and picked up her mobile.

“Goodnight baby girl.” He says with a red heart. Honestly, why do I fight to be in love with a man I love dearly when it’s no struggle at all to be in love with the other man I love? Seriously. Why? Why do I do this? Schü and I treat our relationship like it’s a project we’re working on, or like a patient with a whole bunch of problems and we don’t even know if he’s going to make it. I just love Juan. That’s it. That’s all there is to say. I don’t have to try. He doesn’t talk about us like we’re a work in progress. He realistically COULD do that, because I know he sees us being together in the future and it must seem like we take steps toward and away from that at times, but he doesn’t. Why do we do this? I don’t even know anymore. The old answer was that I wanted us to be together, and I wanted to keep our family together. I used to say that just because something is hard doesn’t make it not worth it. I need a drink before I get upset.

“Where you going?”

“Water.”

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