#oh kid who definitely stayed up on the night before a big fieldtrip

[ratatatastic]

little miss excitedable

[3one3]

The Sequel - 782

NYE in LDN

André Schürrle, Juan Mata, other Chelsea 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

Christina’s New Year’s kiss left so much burgundy lipstick on André’s face that he actually had to go to the bathroom to wipe it off. Her makeup was usually pretty secure. Her kiss was just overzealous, sloppy, and aggressive, at least in part as a consequence of the amount of champagne and other swill consumed during the dinner party high up in the Heron Tower. The group of about 12 couples enjoyed a fabulous tasting menu, good swing tunes, and then a wonderful view of the fireworks. The moments after the fireworks finale and raucous celebrations provided a natural sort of recovery period for everyone after all the buildup to midnight. André wasn’t the only one in the bathroom, all the Hazards took a fieldtrip to the restaurant’s bar area to check out the DJ who took over from the electro-swing band in the other room, and a couple of people were getting in their drunken selfies by the windows in the private corner of the dining room. Christina and Juan were among the only partygoers left at the tables. The rider was looking at friends’ photos on her phone from places where the New Year began earlier than in London. The footballer slid all the way around the semicircle booth to sit next to her, since she was on an end.

“No dancing?” he asked her once close enough to rub elbows. They dined at the same table, so they had plenty of time to converse over the course of the night. Taylor was there too, just not in that moment.

“I hurt my thigh again.” Christina daringly lifted her right leg up in the air next to the table. Her navy blue asymmetrical tiered fringe shift dress was minutely proportioned. It barely concealed the necessary parts of her chest and barely covered her butt, and to stick her leg up that way was to definitely show off her underwear. Fortunately there weren’t many people around to see the reflection of said underwear in the wall of windows opposite her.

“Not too much to do that, apparently.” Juan pointed at her stiletto sandal in the air just as she went to put it back on the floor.

“This time I hurt whatever the muscle is right above my knee, kind of the inside.” She pointed at the muscle in question, and pinched at it a little. “It kind of just hurts constantly and only gets worse if I squat or do stairs. I could probably dance but I don’t want to make it worse.” Her heavily contoured nose wrinkled up in disappointment and she put her phone down to lift her faux fur stole from where it had sunk down behind her. Getting dressed for the Prohibition Era theme was really her highlight of the event. In addition to her flapper dress and the stole, she painstakingly crafted finger waves in her hair around her face, sported a headband with a tall feather, and gave herself a particularly plump in the middle and tapered at the corners pout. A whole mess of beads, triple-wrapped around her neck, hung between the spaghetti straps of her dress just in case enough attention wouldn’t be focused on her cleavage, and she rounded out the accessorizing with the cigarette holder used primarily for photos. “Where’s Tay Tay?”

“One of her girlfriends is having a guy problem and requires a therapy session on the phone.” Her friend thumbed behind him somewhere but she didn’t look to see where. “Are you wearing a new perfume?”

“Yeah. Christmas present. Like it?” Christina offered her wrist for him to sniff and smiled when he smelled her and made an analytical face like a pretentious wine taster.

“Not bad.”

“Are you tired? I’m so tired. I don’t think I’m good at partying anymore.”

“As you would say, I literally cannot wait to go home and go to bed,” he chuckled.

“Schü is all full of energy tonight, and laughing at everything, and talking a mile a minute, and I’m like...getting dressed for this sapped at least half of my energy for the night. It’s so not fair that he has all this time off. He works out a little every morning and then has nothing to do all day but play with Lukas and take naps.”

“You working a lot? Getting ready to compete again?”

“Stef is back and Nat’s kids are off school and have more time for lessons so I’ve done like 12 lessons in the last two days, and riding all of mine. I have three World Cup qualifiers back to back towards the end of the month so I need them all ready to go,” the flapper girl explained without much readable inflection. Juan’s slightly narrowed eyes reflected his uncertainty about how she felt about the work and the horse showing.

“Are you looking forward to that or not so much?”

His ex, the #1 ranked jumper in the world for at least a couple of days more, actually had to think about her answer, and that alone made her feel unhappy. She played with some of the fringe on her dress by her waist, and looked down at it. If she were going to be entirely truthful, she would have had to say that she wasn’t looking forward to qualifiers at Leipzig, Zurich, and Bordeaux. But she knew she had to fix her attitude and try to be positive. She had to at least pretend to want to go to those places and bank some points, get good performances from her horses, and find a way to enjoy the process. Each time she rode on Thursday, Friday, and earlier Saturday, ever since her big heart to heart with André, she tried to think about what she was doing on the micro level. She tried to think about each workout on its own, and then each phase of it separately, and each moment of each phase as only what it literally was- a moment of bum in saddle and hands on reins. Cutting out all the consequences and implications of her work was the only way she could think of to get back to simply enjoying doing the work. Even the minutes had to be broken down into the feeling of the horse moving beneath her, his reactions to what she asked for, and the success or failure of their communications. By Saturday afternoon it felt good again to simply ride- to do lead changes, to practice the counter canter, to school turns and gymnastics, to trot for huge periods of time outside up and down the hill for stamina and muscle maintenance.

Christina was still working on how to translate taking pleasure from riding into hunger and then preparedness for competition. And it disappointed her a lot that she needed to work on that. Her whole life was about that for a while, and she used to be proud of her drive. She felt weakened while she tried to re-summon it, and in an unfamiliar way. Plenty of actual weaknesses plagued her career and never made her feel the same. Spraining her wrist never made her feel weakened as a competitor. Her never-ending ankle ailments hardly felt like a serious handicap. The back problems, the knee issue, being out of shape from pregnancy- none of those things ever affected how prepared she felt to go out and do her best, or certainty that her best was enough to win. It was very unfamiliar to Germany’s brightest star to look ahead and feel something was going to hold her back. It was even stranger to have to figure out how to explain that to someone.

“I’ll take that as a “no”,” the someone who was asking for the explanation supplied for her.

“I’m not not looking forward to it. I’m not dreading it or anything. I’m just...nothing about it,” Christina shrugged before looking up again and making eye contact. She couldn’t help but let it show that she wished things were different. She knew her eyes were saying “please help”, even if she wasn’t consciously asking for Juan’s assistance. It just happened anyway.

“These times are tough on you, I know, but I think you’re doing a good job, cariña,” he told her. “I think you’re doing your best to make things better for yourself, and that is really difficult, I know. It’s so much better than what you’ve done before though. It’s better than just letting things happen to you.”

“Yeah. I’m trying. It’s just confusing and weird to have so many things be so wrong at one time. I don’t know if what I do to fix one thing is actually making another worse, and...well, I don’t even want to get into it, but, I dunno.” She shrugged again and reached for her second glass of champagne to finish the two sips left.

“I think you’re going to really enjoy going to Spain to see the kids,” Juan smiled.

“That is something I am definitely looking forward to. Are we spending the night, or no? I have to give Espen some notice.”

“I can’t. I only have time to make it a day trip. You should spend Wednesday night with me though. Our flight is 8 in the morning and I do not trust you to get yourself to the airport that early.” The footballer scratched as his furry chin and moved her napkin out of the way on the table as she moved to put her glass back down.

“Chyea you just want me to sleepover because I haven’t in a while.”

“Not nearly as much as I wish you were sleeping over with me tonight.”

“What happened to “I literally cannot wait to go home and go to bed”? Ehh?”

“I could stay up a few hours for you, cariña. For that dress.”

“Oh shut up,” Christina scoffed. There is a difference between thirsty-flirty Juan and cheesy-flirty Juan, and only the first one is worth indulging, and that is not this one, she reasoned.

“I’ve been rooting for your right breast to fall out every time I see you laugh hysterically at Eden,” her friend insisted.

“Just the right one?”

“It’s bigger. Harder to keep it under control.”

“Well I have news for you. There is tape in here to prevent that from happening.” The rider pointed into her cleavage and wiggled about to demonstrate that nothing was falling out. For one quick second, something terrible occurred to her as a possibility. I really shouldn’t do this! The tape is attached to the stick-on bra thingy, and the stick-on bra thingy could let go of my boob at any second and then there would be boob coming out of the side of the dress but also fake boob still in the dress, and it would be like I have three. “Do you not even feel a little bit bad that you sat next to your girlfriend all night thinking about my boobs, or boob?”

“No. I didn’t spend all night thinking about it. I spent some of it thinking about Adriana’s,” the Spaniard explained, deadpan.

“What do you have against the many Hazard women?”

“Nothing. None of them are wearing low cut dresses.”

“I see. Do you know what time it is?”

Juan checked his watch and reported that it was a little after 1. Christina really was tired. She had a full day of work before a marathon hair and makeup session, and there was a pre-party gathering at Eden’s house before the lengthy dinner and celebrations. Having fun was exhausting. What is taking Schü so long? I have to start winding him down from go-crazy-with-his-boys mode so we can go home soon, she thought, covering up a yawn with her napkin. I wonder if he detoured to the bar? I could take Juanin with me to go find out, she considered, glancing to her left at the Chelsea man who was doing something with one of his two phones. I think he’s bored too. When should I tell him I’m officially allowed to do whatever I want with him now? I should probably wait until I actually want to do something, otherwise he’s going to harass me about it all the time. The rider thought forward to the Three Kings Day trip to Oviedo to deliver the toys and pondered whether that would be the occasion when she “felt like doing something”. She didn’t want to think about André’s permission like something she couldn’t wait to take advantage of, or something she wanted to plan an occasion to use. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. It did make her feel kind of powerful though, knowing that someday things would get intense between her and her friend and he would assume he was in for more teasing and ultimately disappointment, but she would get to surprise him. Maybe. I haven’t even decided if I want to do that or not, Christina reminded herself as she reflected on that sense of power. I haven’t decided if that’s good for me or good for us, she added, meaning she and André. This time I’m not going to worry about whether or not it’s good for Juan. He’s made it clear he knows what he’s doing, so...

“Bought a cocktail for my Prinzessin,” a slightly tipsy German footballer announced as he appeared in her periphery. He had a Collins glass with ice and clear, carbonated liquid, and two lime wedges. He pulled out the chair next to her spot and relocated his wallet from his back pocket into the medium blue suit coat hanging on the back of it before sitting down.

“What is it?” His wife picked up the drink to sniff it.

“Pellegrino, rocks. Lime twist.” André winked and reached over under the table to rest his hand on her thigh.

“Thankssss.” Christina smiled back sweetly, appreciative of his thoughtfulness and endeavor in preventing a hangover. They had a driver to take them home so he didn’t get her some water just to sober her up to drive or anything. It was to help with hydration.      

“Would you like to hang out with everyone at the bar or- Oh! Almost forgot. Taylor said to tell you she’ll be at the bar,” he interrupted himself to tell Juan, who then thanked him too and excused himself to go find his girlfriend. “As I was saying,” André continued once he’d inched his chair over enough to put his arm around his girl’s waist. “Would you like to go hang out with everybody else in the bar, or would you like to get ready to go home, or would you like to sit here alone with me and think about how good this year is going to be for us?”

“I would like to do a little of all three. Can we sit here for a few minutes while I drink this, and then go say bye to everyone over there, and go home? I can survive if you’re not ready to go yet but I’m pretty over New Year’s at this point.”

“Sounds good to me.” He smiled down at the glamorous girl beside him and blew on her feather. It was a very good night for him. He thought he had the hottest date in the room, and socializing with his Chelsea friends as just friends, instead of friends and teammates, was somehow more enjoyable. There was no subtle worrying that his words and interactions had dressing room consequences, and he brought no dressing room context with him into his conversations. Christina was really the best part of the night though. He felt she had a habit of sucking up all the air in a group allotted to them as a couple. She commanded more attention than he did a lot of the time. But it wasn’t like that anymore. She sat next to Natasha and the two of them talked to one another a lot, or took their turns in the table-wide conversations and joking around. She talked to Juan a little but there was no veiled flirting across the table, or making of uncomfortable conversation with Taylor.

Most importantly, she talked to him a lot. They had plenty of their own side chats, about the food, about the others, about small New Year’s inspired thoughts for the future. For once André felt about a night out with Christina the way he always assumed her nights out as Juan’s date went. He got the best of her twice in three days. He got to take her out for that dinner, and see her all dressed up just for him, and with him at the table, and he got all of her attention, all of her smiles and laughs, and to hear all the things on her mind, from how Kimi was that day to what an inability of so many people to think critically was doing to the world. Then he got to be the one with her when she put on her character for a big event, and he got the credit for being attached to the impressive character. His long-standing insecurity and jealousy about Juan usually being the guy who got credit for bringing the beautiful and witty, intelligent girl to the party was beaten down a great deal. Plus, his wife was fun with him specifically, not just fun for the whole table. He could have gone for another round with his boys at the bar, but he thought Christina deserved to get to go home. She was entitled to be spent, and had done a great job of concealing it all night.

“Watch out for your feather, pretty girl. You’re going to ruin it,” André advised when they got in the backseat of the car to go home. She leaned against the window as soon as she was done sliding over.

“Does it tickle your face if I lean on you instead?” she asked, tipping over in the other direction to borrow his shoulder. The burgundy feather on the side of her head was just short enough not to reach his cheek.

“No. You’re good. But can you put the fur thing between your face and my sleeve? I don’t want makeup stains. This is my favorite suit right now.”

Christina fixed herself a fur pillow and fell asleep before they were even out of central London. She was sleeping better in recent days, despite the quantity of sleep being less than she wanted. The partition she learned over months of separate living arrangements dissolved some. It had translated into a sort of barrier of discomfort. For the first few days André was home, and indeed during most of the time they spent together in Dortmund before that, the rider felt like a sovereign entity in all things but particularly in bed at night. Her husband was no longer like another branch of herself in the bed. He was another sovereign person in it, and that made bed less relaxing and comfortable. It took a week and a few days of his presence in the bed to be normal again, and for it to be okay for her. He had been a thing she needed insulation from, not because he was bad or harmful to her but because he was not part of her, and anything outside had to stay on the outside. She couldn’t let the outside in or let the inside out. It took that much time for him to be inside again. It took that much time, or it took all the conversations they had, for Christina to automatically feel like her thoughts and all of herself could be freely shared with him, and the most literal consequence of that was that she no longer had to think about anything when she was ready to sleep next to him. It was a subconscious distinction that made a world of difference to her ability to get worthwhile rest.

“Did you look in on the baby?” she asked when she joined him in bed. He had plenty of time to warm up the blanket for her since it took a while to remove her makeup, wash her face, and try to comb out her Elnett-immobilized hair. The player was looking through the pictures he took over the course of the night.

“No. I don’t want to wake him up. My mom’s note said they want to do brunch tomorrow before they leave. Can you do that or no? Are you teaching tomorrow?” He turned on his side and wiggled down the bed to use her chest as a pillow as soon as she got settled on an actual pillow, and he pushed her stretchy t-shirt all the way up so he could rub her tummy, for no particular reason.

“I have to ride. Brunch is fine though. I could do that. I bet all the good places are going to be crazy busy.”

“I’m sure we can find you waffles somewhere, Prinzessin,” André sighed, calm, tired. “How does you thigh feel?” he inquired. Both of her legs were squished between his, and he reached down to knead her trouble spot a little.

“It’s just sore. I’m sure it’ll be fine tomorrow.”

“You need your own physio to take care of you after you train.” Familiar with exactly what kind of pain she had, he pushed his thumb into the aggravated muscle and moved it in clockwise circles. “Nutrition and ice aren’t enough for anyone who does as much as you do.”

“Yeah, that’s gonna happen,” Christina laughed. She lifted her arms and wriggled about to stretch her whole spine, forcing her ribcage to protrude even more noticeably from her skin, and drawing the player’s attention. He moved his hand there to feel first, and then kissed a spot near her raven. The tininess of her frame and the way it moved were things he found perversely captivating. Her skin was great to touch and all but to feel what happened beneath it was better, be it the beating of her heart, the inhale and exhale from her lungs, a flexion of a muscle, a reactive twitch, or whatever else her body could do. There was no one else in his life, past or present, with whose body he was more intimately acquainted or fascinated. He had a relationship with that body which was almost separate from the one with the person living in it. Christina could never disconnect the two things that way. Her relationship with his physical form was one and the same as her relationship with his mind and personality. That was precisely why it took time to be comfortable enough next to him to sleep well. André’s independent relationship with her body was the most private one he had, and even Christina herself was excluded from it. She didn’t understand or know about it, and that was why she was so upset by his willingness to loan her out, and couldn’t understand why that didn’t bother him. To him the relationship was above reproach. Nothing could alter it. It was infallible and it was just for him. Sometimes the relationship and the body gave him comfort and a sense of calm, and sometimes he wished he could somehow consume it and make it part of his own body just to experience it more completely. That was the hardest compulsion to understand, and harder still to satisfy.

I need to do something with this body, André thought as his girl then twisted to snuggle herself against him on her side, forcing him to uncurl a little to accommodate her. Not like the other night. That was fantastic though. She must have been saving up a lot of need for a long time, he laughed to himself, thinking back to when they got home from their dinner-date at Sketch. Christina used his body for her pleasure. He had very little to do and still ended up sweaty and exhausted. Christina, on the other hand, probably sweated out a couple of pounds. She had to take a shower and, unbeknownst to her partner, couldn’t even summon the energy to stand in it. She sat down in there after about a minute under the refreshing rainfall. He thought she had demons to excise or something, and had to tell her to be quiet numerous times. It was wonderfully satisfying to watch her body do everything it could that night to make itself feel good. The BVB man wanted something different at the start of the New Year, but he wasn’t quite sure what.

She’s much too tired to abuse me like that again. That’s like a once a season kind of fuck. And I want to...I don’t know. I don’t know what it is I want. I don’t just want to feel what happens inside her in that way. I want to touch her whole body and feel EVERYTHING that happens to her, not just what happens in there, he reasoned as he squeezed her in his arms and got a good whiff of the cupcake-scented dry shampoo she used to try to get rid of some of the hairspray buildup. I want to make her feel as good as she did that night but without her doing anything. It’s too hard to hang onto her when she’s all up and down and back and forth and side to side and balancing on my chest and using my limbs for leverage. I felt like gym equipment. Never in my life did it take more effort to outlast her. I think she would have actually killed me if I came before she got all of that out of her system. Double Michelin starred French food is dangerous.

“Are you gonna turn off the light?” Christina yawned, ready to sleep.

“No. I want...to love you,” her partner answered after he moved her hair up on the pillow so he could press his forehead into the nape of her neck and let his lips skim her shirt when he spoke. “Slowly, and carefully...Gentle. Comprehensively,” he finished with a kiss on her spine.

“Awyou couldn’t have gotten all horny a little bit earlier? Before I was half asleep?”

“I’m not horny.”

“Then what are you?”

“Obsessed with your skin, and your flesh.”

“’Cause that doesn’t sound creepy and gross.”

“In a biblical sense, Prinzessin,” André quietly groaned. “Not in a serial killer sense. You have to stop watching Criminal Minds.”

“Still sounds gross.”

“It’s not.” He recognized that it would take more than words to make his tired and sleepy wife understand what he meant, and what he craved, and what he wanted to do for her. He slid his left hand down her still exposed torso and cupped between her legs for a moment before seeking the extra warm stripe in the center of her underwear with his finger. “I want to love you the way you’ve been wanting me to.” Christina twisted her neck to try to see him, and her face was shockingly stricken with sadness. “What’s wrong baby?”

“You know?”

“Of course I know,” he assured her.

“Then why make me wait?”

“I have to feel how you want me to. You’d know if I pretended.”

“Now you do? Out of nowhere?”

“Not out of nowhere. Out of right here. Out of being with you.”