#very sleep token esque if you ask me

[anaphorathe]

Something useful maybe: TMBTE has the angel (of death presumably) with wings made of feathers, while Euclid has a little dude (maybe Vessel’s Id) holding a knife.

Maybe TMBTE is one outcome and Euclid is another and our protagonist Vessel has to choose — there’s a conflict here.

[starry19]

Not-Quite Silver Linings

AN: For my beloved Garcy Tumblr fandom, who, after screaming wildly, put on their deerstalker hats and went full-on Sherlock Holmes about who was sleeping where the night Jessica stole the Lifeboat. Conclusion: Lucy was with Flynn. We have evidence.

And then there was absolutely no way I couldn’t write this. So, here we are. Also on ao3

—

It was a full three days after they returned from San Francisco that Lucy realized how very close she had been to dying.

But not on that last, terrible mission.

It took three days for the insanity of the visit from their future selves to decrease to a level she could cope with. Three days for them to catch hold of a shred of hope when it came to how, precisely, they were going to try their highly inadvisable trip back to save Rufus. Three days for it to not hurt when she smiled.

Not that she smiled very much.

When Jiya had taken a short break from staring at computer screens, and only at Mason’s insistence that she eat real food for a change, Lucy had come to sit beside her on one of the hard metal chairs.

There were any number of conversations they could have been having, ranging from the other woman’s three years- three years- in the past to their strategies to what the current Rittenhouse headquarters looked like.

Instead, they were mostly quiet. There was a little solace in proximity, however, a sense of unity. She had meant what she said in that saloon - they were all each other had.

Jiya looked up at her once, dark eyes haunted, exhausted. “I killed a guy,” she said abruptly.

Lucy froze, cup of tea halfway to her mouth.

“When Jessica first took me,” the other woman said. “And I escaped. I killed a guy to do it.”

She nodded, because she did understand. “I killed a guy because of Rittenhouse, too,” she said.

It was a sign of how dark their lives had become, that this was a conversation they were having, with absolutely no judgement rendered on either side. They had both done what they had needed to.

Jiya took a breath and wrapped her fingers around her own mug. “I heard them talking a little bit, your mom and Jessica. Nice family you’ve got, by the way.” There was no bitterness, just a bleak touch of humor. “Jessica was supposed to kill you, that night she left. But she couldn’t find you and I guess she didn’t think she had all the time in the world to play hide and seek.”

She blinked several times in quick succession. That night seemed like it was in an entirely different lifetime. Where had she been that Jessica couldn’t find…oh.

Connor suddenly yelled for Jiya, and the other woman stood with an apologetic shrug. Lucy smiled blankly back, or at least she hoped that was the expression she was making.

The only reason she hadn’t been shot by Wyatt’s wife was that she hadn’t been able to sleep. She’d tried, made some token attempt. Had stared at the ceiling from her place on the deeply uncomfortable couch cushions. There were about a million things she could have been thinking about, but none of the subjects would stick. Instead, they had been whirling through her mind like windmills, never stopping.

She’d given up, gathered up her blanket, and knocked on a door that was now very familiar.

Garcia Flynn let her in, sleepy-eyed and amused, and she’d spent the rest of the night in between him and the wall, the regular thrum of his heartbeat beneath her ear. He was warm, steady. This was…peaceful.

At least until all hell broke loose outside the door.

But she’d had no way of knowing what was coming.

All she knew was that he felt like safety and sanity, broad shoulders and strong chest. It was no different that night than it had been the handful of times she had done this before.

He never asked any questions. Never turned her away. Never brought it up in the daytime.

Just held her, let her sleep against his chest, or talked to her until the world made a little more sense than it had.

She knew what he looked like when he was dreaming, what he smelled like, what the muscles of his stomach felt like under her palms.

She consciously tried to not think about what any of it meant. Was this about comfort or love or lust or something else entirely? Did it matter?

He was open arms.

He was safety.

Apparently literally.

There were orders out to kill her. And there had been an operative in the bunker. She must’ve walked by the door to Flynn’s room, but only an idiot would have tried it.

The mental imagery that conjured up was enough to make her shudder, goosebumps rising on her arms.

Lost in her waking nightmares, she failed to notice when Flynn appeared in the kitchen, jumping slightly when he sat across from her in Jiya’s vacated chair.

He took a single look at her expression and sat down his coffee cup. “What?” he asked, but softly, long legs stretching out beside hers under the table.

She tried to smile, to look nonchalant.

He raised an eyebrow. You’re full of shit, it said. And I know it.

Yes, that was a problem, too, how well he did actually know her. That was mostly her fault. He’d asked, once, on a dark road in the 1930s. And she’d told him, had let him in. It made it very difficult to keep secrets from him.

She shrugged. “I’ll tell you,” she said, since there really was no point in keeping it from him. “Just maybe not here?”

He glanced around pointedly, silently reminding there that there were very few people currently present, but conceded to her request with an eye roll.

They were very good at having conversations without speaking.

Safely shut away in his room again, she tried to quietly and emotionlessly repeat what Jiya had told her. His eyes got darker, and she was very glad he did not use that expression when he looked at her, ever.

When she finished, he swore very fluently in Croatian for a full minute. She could pick out a few phrases - he’d laughingly taught her a couple of curse words when she’d asked one night - but for the most part, thought it was better that she only had a vague idea of what he was saying.

“We’re going to have to move locations,” he finally said, switching back to English, though his accent was slightly stronger than it normally was. He was ferociously angry.

“Move locations?” she echoed. “Like…get a new bunker?”

He nodded. “Or safehouse, or whatever. Jessica knows how to get here, thanks to Wyatt. The last damn thing we need to worry about it them raiding us in the middle of the night.” He swore again, but quietly. “I should have thought about this the second we got back.”

“To be fair,” she said, “we all sort of had a lot on our minds.”

Like Rufus. And coming to face to face with the Rambo-esque versions of themselves. And just sheer grief. They’d all been reduced to focusing on small-term goals. Get up. Get dressed. Eat. It had been just about all they could deal with.

He spared her a glance that did not look amused, and she realized he was angry with himself, too.

She stepped forward, sliding her arms around his waist. After a slightly surprised second, he pulled her in, cheek on top of her head.

It was the first time she’d held him this way, in day time, without any sort of emergency or traumatic event in the works. At night, in the dark, it was easier to ignore the implications of what was happening between them.

But maybe she didn’t want to ignore them anymore.

The tension in him relaxed a bit, but she could still feel it - the need to move, the call to action. Garcia Flynn had been a solider since he was fifteen, and a spy after that. He didn’t take well to sitting around.

Gently, he pressed a kiss to her hair, the first time he’d done such a thing. “You are, of course, going to be staying here at night until things are more secure.” It was not a question.

She had not actually been sleeping anywhere else since they’d returned from Chinatown, battered and bruised and so far beyond heartbroken. She’d needed him then, needed him badly, and he’d been there with arms open. Well, she amended, arm open, at least until he’d gotten sick of his sling.

“Okay,” she said, quietly, and he let out a breath, one hand tracing down her spine. She closed her eyes, face in his chest, and relaxed a little herself.

The clanging of doors outside told them someone else had arrived in the bunker. Since no alarms were currently screaming, it was, by default, Agent Christopher.

Flynn stepped back, but slowly. “I need to go,” he said. “This needs to happen fast. Before we even make a play for Rufus.”

She blinked.

He was probably right, but the abruptness of it was startling.

He took in her expression, then gently touched her face. “For logistical reasons,” he told her, “you’re not going with us to save Rufus. That fourth seat has to remain open. We need a pilot, and likely all the firepower Wyatt and I can carry.” He paused for a moment, making sure she was with him. “I cannot disappear into the past for God knows how long, worried about what’s waiting for me when I get back. I’m not inclined to take risks with your safety, Lucy. Not when they can be avoided.”

Her eyes widened. God, what if…

What if the second the Lifeboat vanished, the alarms went off? Emma appeared, guns blaring?

Well, she would be dead. One more body for Flynn to find.

She turned her face up to see his, saw the very same thoughts crossing his mind. But behind the horror, and the fear, she saw an immense and terrifying blackness. She had brought him back, the last time, had believed in him until he had found his humanity again.

If she died, however…

She didn’t think there would be any coming back for him.

Garcia Flynn was darkness incarnate, and brokenness, and…hers.

Maybe, maybe he always had been, from the very first time she’d seen him, looming out of the fiery wreckage of the Hindenburg like Lucifer himself. When he’d pulled her in front of him, gun aimed at Wyatt, she’d gotten a sense of overwhelming strength. At the time, it had been terrifying.

She had the same sense now, but an entirely different reaction. He was there to protect her.

She could protect herself, and had. But it was just so very nice to know that he would do it for her.

“Okay,” she finally whispered. It was perhaps the one small source of comfort she could offer. She would promise to not take risks with her safety, beyond the ones they always took when they disappeared into nowhere, would promise to abide by the rules he set.

He nodded in acknowledgement, then gathered her in his arms again, but briefly.

With one last look backwards, he stepped out of his room. She heard him calling for Agent Christopher, and wondered if she should go lend herself to his side of the argument. Decided against it. What could she say that he wouldn’t have already thought of?

In the end, Agent Christopher had agreed wholeheartedly, as had everyone else. No one had really liked the idea of putting the search for Rufus on hold, but then again, it wasn’t like the 1800s were going anywhere.

She slept next to Flynn that night, facing him in the darkness as they both laid on their sides.

There were a few notable difference from the other times she had done this. Firstly, he’d moved the pillow to the other end of the bed, so he could face the door. When she’d figured it out, she was actually touched that he’d felt safe enough, that he trusted the team enough, to have not done it in the first place. She was sad that was all gone now.

The second major difference was that before he’d joined her on the narrow mattress, he’d methodically loaded his gun and left it in easy reach.

She’d eyed it warily from against the wall as he climbed in, taking up almost all of the available space.

He’d rolled his eyes. “You do know guns aren’t in the habit of sporadically going off, yes?”

“Yes,” she said, slowly.

He ignored her lingering trepidation, sliding one arm under her head, the other resting across her waist. It was perhaps the best thing he could have done to ease her mind. What on earth could touch her here?

With a deep sigh, she closed her eyes, burrowing as close as she could get to him.

She was mildly surprised she had managed to fall asleep, given everything that was being set in motion. Then again, perhaps she shouldn’t have been. She was in the safest place she could be, wrapped in the arms of a very armed and very vigilant Garcia Flynn.

In the morning, she kissed him for the first time, and she loved his shaking exhalation of breath as her lips moved over his, loved the spirals of pleasure that circled around her even more.

There was a part of her that always remembered that he was a dangerous man. But not to her, never.

When she raised her head, he smiled brilliantly, looking…well, awestruck, and it was difficult to not be in wonder at the effect she had on him.

Around them, she could hear the sounds of the bunker coming to life. There was a great deal to do - their meager possessions needed to be packed, computer equipment to be disassembled, and all of the general chaos that attended a sudden move.

With reluctance, she untangled herself from him. This time, she deliberately slid herself over his prone body on her way out of bed, and was delighted with what that did to his expression.

An hour later, the bunker was humming with activity. She was surrounded by boxes and cables and packing tape, and trying to not be run over by anyone rolling something large and electronic by her.

She didn’t think she was terribly regretful about leaving this place. Yes, it had been her home and some weird semblance of safety during what was probably her darkest time. But when it came down to it, it was still an old army bunker with about ten minutes worth of hot water and World War II-issue everything.

Their new place, wherever and whatever it was, probably couldn’t be worse.

Maybe it even had queen sized beds.

With that happy thought playing in her mind, she cheerfully wrote her name on the side of a box. Stacked it next to Flynn’s small pile of things.

Wherever they were going, she was sure they were going together, and that was better than nothing.

By a long shot.

[homo-pink]

Hi Ms. Pink. I hope you're doing well. I was recently scrolling through your serial killer Jensen tag, and I am so entralled. What is the Jared Padalecki like that in the world that your serial killer Jensen exists? Jared just, he holds such a strong place in my heart because I feel like you make it so easy to see through his eyes.

oh what a tender and thoughtful ask, thank you.

well to start, my serial killer jensen tag exists in the broadest of terms: sometimes a pile of fingernail clippings is serial killer jensen, other times it’s a moody broody poem about seeing a nimble boy’s ribs through his skin. and i have about five different versions of him going at all times. there’s angel of death nurse!jensen that i wrote a full pint-sized story for here, and i also have BTK-esque jensen who shares a cement cell with cannibal baby jared. they’re a bit romantically hideous together, murder-suicide death row pact included. i’ve dabbled with them from time to time here. 

but the one i’m usually referencing (especially if it’s also tagged #love notes to baby jarpad) is the young serial killer jensen that stemmed from an old post of someone’s that said ‘one time we got a new kid in fifth grade and he walks right in and sticks his hand under the stapler and staples his hand and just looks at the teacher and goes “I’m going to the nurse” and leaves’ and he sort of grew from there. he mostly tries to woo jared in the only lumpish way he knows – with what he thinks are tokens of intense affection but seem to be misconstrued horribly. jared is a young thing, probably 13 to jensen’s 16 or 17 and he doesn’t know that the little box of bunny bones he discovers in his locker after lunch are a very careful hello, or that the time he found eight drops of dried (wtf?!) blood exactly on his bedroom window sill – spaced out mindfully by one, by four, by three – were saying something special and unspoken before by the one who left them. jared’s sick of the dead fly collections and the warped-eyed dolls and the whatever the fuck else this nutter is trying to threaten him with. because that’s what he thinks they are. his sleep suffers and he can’t keep from looking over his pinched up shoulder wherever he goes, once or twice, heart chittering in his chest. secret admirer and stalker sound a lot alike on paper anyway.

i really enjoy this piece, too. it’s a nice quick look inside young serial killer jen.

“I killed a spiderNot a murderous brown recluse Nor even a black widowAnd if the truth were told thisWas only a smallSort of papery spiderWho should have runWhen I picked up the bookBut she didn’t And she scared meAnd I smashed herI don’t thinkI’m allowed To kill something Because I amFrightened”

so it’s usually that jensen and that jared that i’m on about but it’s all pretty circular really. ♡

[3one3]

The Sequel - 887

An Hour And Two Halves

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

“Show you what I can do, and you know it’s true, when I dance with you,” Christina sang along quietly with the song on the radio while she chopped carrots for her stew. It was a Joe Jonas song she didn’t even particularly like, but it was upbeat and bouncy and she was in a great mood. The vibe got bigger and louder as the chorus approached, and she was so ready for it. The rider dropped her knife on the plastic cutting board and dramatically flung her hand out at her sous chef, who was cutting green beans. “”Oh-oh-oh-oh, give me your haaaaand,” she sang loud and proud and with a silly face. “Oh-oh-oh-oh, I’ll be who I aaaaam. Oh-oh-oh-oh I ain’t no...Michael Jackson, but give me one chance, one chance to daaaance. Give me, one chance, one chance, to daaaance.” Juan didn’t offer his hand, so she just hopped around him in her energetic, extremely-non-Michael-Jackson-esque way. Her stew-making process was riddled with work interruptions for dancing and animated singing. Despite the midfielder’s disinterest in letting her drag him around his kitchen dancing to Top 40, he found her behavior amusing, and hilarious even at times. Her dramatic and extremely relevant interpretation of Justin Bieber’s “Friends” had him doubled over laughing. When it was over, they agreed that they were evidence for broken up couples everywhere that they can’t still be friends. Christina stopped singing and dancing to make out with him after the third “But we had something so good” line, so it really was pretty self-evident.

“What’s next, cariña?” Juan asked when her dancing took her back to her knife work and he was finished with his.

“Nada. Everything is finished. We put the potatoes in in an hour, and then the rest of the veggies half an hour after that, and then half an hour after that, we eat.” The beef was already simmering away in a big pot of stock, wine, herbs, and onions. He laughed at the chef when her eyes had the typically bad reaction to chopping all the onions too. Their whole cooking project was mostly Juan laughing at Christina, and Christina loving it.

“What do you want to do for an hour and two halves?”

“I’m not really sure, but I know I want to go for a walk after dinner. I miss the smell of London on a fall night sooooooo bad.” She turned her bottom lip over in an exaggerated pout and used her big knife to slide the carrots into the bowl with the beans. “Do you have any ideas?” The Spaniard took both the knife and the small cutting board to rinse in the sink with the ones he used.

“One.”

“Your penis is never going to be in my colon.”

“I want to read a poem to you, from the book.”

“Oh jesus,” the Olympic medalist groaned at the Olympic failure whose token of failure she kept in her book as a reminder of his belief in her ability to avoid failure. There was an unrealized connection between all of those things. The two athletes borrowed a variety of types of strength from each other, and they cultivated that borrowable strength in their own ways- alike, but different. The rider collected takeaways from her history books, and fed her imagination with her mysteries. The footballer collected food for thought from more abstract texts, like the collection of poems she gave him. Books and mutual intellectual stimulus would always bind them.

“It’s very good and you’ll really...relate to it.”

“Is it going to take an hour and two halves?” Christina asked, reluctantly consenting with her body language if not her actual language.

“No.”

“Fiiiiine. I want to hear the end of this Mikky Ekko song though.” She turned around and backed herself up to the small island counter, preparing to hoist herself up on it. Sometimes she was too lazy or tired to do it all on her own, and opened up a big bottom cabinet to step into for a boost. Then she could use her foot to close it again once seated. Juan always complimented her creativity in the matter. She intended to do it on her own on Sunday, and clamped her hands on the counter. He noticed as he was drying his hands, and dropped the towel to lend some help. His hands grasped her waist and lifted her the extra couple of inches she needed on top of her little hop, and he kept them there even after her butt landed safely. He held onto her to keep her from sliding back, so that she had to spread her legs to make space for him in between, and so that she was right up close to his body.

“I lied before.”

“Bout what?”

“I have two ideas for the hour and two halves.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I hope the second idea involves dragons,” the girl in leggings deadpanned to the boy between her legs. She also casually hung her wrists over his shoulders and passively kicked the backs of his thighs with her heels.

“I can’t wait for your birthday. I’m going to give you the biggest dragon-themed party anyone has ever seen,” the Spanish player laughed, with the same delight in the glint in his eye that had been there all through her dance-cooking. “Every little boy will be jealous.”

“Can it be a costume party? Will you be dressed as a knight? Or is this a Thrones-type dragon party? You would totally be a Stark.”

“We’ll have to see. I have some time to plan.”

“What’s your other idea for an hour and two halves?”

“I want to photograph you- exactly like this,” Juan hastened to add the second Christina’s face turned disapproving. “Exactly the way you’ve been here all afternoon. Just for myself, not the walls, or your Instagram, or a magazine.”

“Aww.” Spanish Teddy Bear is the sweetest, she cooed to herself. I thought he meant naked, and that he was going to try to say he wanted to do a “tasteful” thing instead of something pornographic, which is just what dudes say when they want you to feel classy and glamorous about being pornographic. It’s nice of him too to acknowledge that he recognizes how done I am with being photographed for other people right now, and even for my own social media. I haven’t posed anything with myself in a couple of weeks, because I’m sick of looking at myself, to be honest. I’m sick of hearing about myself too. One of the nice things about weeks and weeks without horse shows is not having to hear about me. I’m so fucking sick of me. Last night was too much about me. I want to crawl back under my rock until Doha. But I can be photographed for him, because that’s adorable. Especially since I don’t even look cute right now, I don’t think.

“Hopefully you don’t think too hard after I read the poem,” he snorted. “That would ruin the picture.”

“Ugh, do we have to?”

“Yes. I’ll go get the book.”

Juan didn’t have far to go. Much to Christina’s surprise, her gift to him was right on the footstool-table next to the chaise by the window. That meant he was actively reading it, at least part-time. That was where he kept the current book when it wasn’t traveling with him for a match, or when he wasn’t reading it in bed. She figured he was reading a novel that he would have taken to Chelsea Harbour with him on Friday night since she didn’t notice him put the Frank Bidart poems in his reading nook after the game on Saturday. On occasion, she had a “travel” read and a “home” read going on at the same time too- a practice she learned from the player. He said it helped him get his head into the right lane. The “travel” read, regardless of type, was for shifting focus away from everyday life to the match. He told Christina that it was especially helpful during the busy parts of the season when the team played every 3 or 4 days. The “home” read signaled the shutoff of football and the time to relax and recharge. The first kind tended to be more inspirational, like an autobiography, and the second variety was most often a work of fiction.

They met in the middle. Christina sat sideways on the sofa, Indian-style, and then collapsed backward to enjoy the stretching that position provided and also the offered focal point- the ceiling. Looking at the matte white ceiling was definitely preferable to making her expression available for his purposes during or after the reading of the poem. He sat by her legs and put his socked feet up on the coffee table. Without preamble, he began the poem.

“Advice to the Players. There is something missing in our definition, vision of a human being: the need to make. We are creatures who need to make. Because existence is willy-nilly thrust into our hands, our fate is to make something- if nothing else, the shape cut by the arc of our lives. My parents saw corrosively the arc of their lives. Making is the mirror in which we see ourselves. But being is making: not only large things, a family, a book, a business: but the shape we give this afternoon, a conversation between two friends, a meal. Or mis-shape. Without clarity about what we make, and the choices that underlie it, the need to make is a curse, a misfortune. The culture in which we live honors specific kinds of making (shaping or mis-shaping a business, a family) but does not understand how central making itself is as manifestation and mirror of the self, fundamental as eating or sleeping. In the images with which our culture incessantly teaches us, the cessation of labor is the beginning of pleasure; the goal of work is to cease working, an endless paradise of unending diversion. In the United States at the end of the twentieth century, the greatest luxury is to live a life in which the work that one does to earn a living, and what one has the appetite to make, coincide- by a kind of grace are the same, one. Without clarity, a curse, a misfortune. My intuition about what is of course un-provable comes, I’m sure, from observing, absorbing as a child the lives of my parents: the dilemmas, contradictions, chaos as they lived out their own often unacknowledged, barely examined desires to makes. They saw corrosively the shape cut by the arc of their lives. My parents never made something commensurate to their will to make, which I take to be, in varying degrees, the general human condition- as it is my own. Making is the mirror in which we see ourselves. Without clarity, a curse, a misfortune. Horrible the fate of the advice-giver in our culture: to repeat oneself in a thousand contexts until death, or irrelevance. I abjure advice-giver. Go make you ready.”

“It’s remarkable how you managed to conjure a poem that hits on me missing my family at the same time as my need to figure out what’s next in my life and then also the way you’re “making” with the mirror, with Common Goal,” the very impressed rider commented after giving all the words a moment to land. Every stanza felt immediately relevant to her, and she wanted to make sure Juan understood that she got it all. “My parents were the work to not work people, and they tried to make a business and a family, and never made their own likeness, or what they truky wanted to make. Like, I think my mom would rather have owned her own knitting store than been who she was. You and I are the lucky ones who get paid to make the thing we want to make, or our likeness, mirror image, whatever. But then we kind of grow out of that and we realize what we need to make is actually bigger than football and riding. For you, it’s Common Goal. And the weirdness and equilibrium I experience on and off right now is me trying to figure out what exactly it is I want to make next. And at the same time, I think you and I are kind of making our combined mirror reflection together too...” It all came out so quickly as her mind linked the ideas for the second time, and as she got more excited about them. “Did you think of those things when you first read it, or did it stay with you for a little while and the relevance came later?”

“Right away. From the title, I thought, “This is an important thing for me to read. This is about me, in some ways,” and then I read on and I thought, “This is Chris’ parents, and this is why their relationship was how it was, and why her mum resents her so much. Chris makes the thing she needs to make from inside. Mrs. Martin made the thing she thought she was supposed to.” And I liked the repetitive lines. “Without clarity, a curse, a misfortune.” I try now to have clarity when I make decisions. No lies, no confusion. You’re right,” he smiled as his friend peeked over at him from the flat of her back. “I do feel like I’m making the right thing now, besides football. I like this poem very much.”

“Thank you for sharing it,” she smiled back. “Sorry I objected. I should know to trust you by now,” she chuckled. He grabbed her wrist when she lifted it for help, and pulled her back up and forward so that she could reward him with a sweet kiss in the middle of his lips. They could have dissected the poem together, quite happily, for the two hours before dinner. It just wasn’t necessary. They didn’t need to talk each other into believing their take, or dissect it. Knowing that was sort of novel. Christina appreciated it.

“I have enjoyed the book a lot. It was a good choice, cariña.”

“I enjoy your face a lot.” She put her hands around the back of the player’s neck, paused to watch for the flattery’s impact to arrive in his beautiful blues, and then pulled on him until he got the message that she wanted him to lie beside her, not just be annoying and hang on his neck. He went pretty willingly, and she got more of her arms around his head when they found a comfortable spot together, and she rubbed her right leg on his bare ones until it pushed her leggings up her calf a little. “I know you want to take pictures of me acting like I live here,” she teased knowingly. “But I’d rather be a lazy bum on the couch.” Juan’s nose was captured playfully between her teeth until he kissed her chin. He found an unexpectedly ticklish spot, and took advantage when Christina’s shiver-like reaction brought her midsection even closer to him. He hugged her waist tight with one arm.

“We’re getting closer to the part of the season when I’m a lazy bum on the couch a lot,” he told her while she played absently with the hair at the back of his head, well below the thinning spot. “I hope you’re joining often.”

“I want to stay here for most of the week of the horse show. Schü and Lukas are coming for the Sunday and Monday, and Tuesday, after, so we’ll stay at a hotel, but I’ll be here for 6 days before that. I don’t know if you want an extra bum on your couch for that long.”

“It’s a sexy bum, so I want,” the Chelsea man smiled, squeezing her butt.

“I might want to come for New Year’s too, but I dunno yet. I have no idea, really.” I also kind of want some magical night with Schü. I owe him that, and I want it anyway. I want special with him. We never have that anymore. We have nice nights ended early because of dead goldfish, and then two nights of crying until midnight because of the dead goldfish. How dare the goldfish go and die when it knew Lukas liked to watch him in the light from his nightlight when he wakes up in the night and can’t sleep? How dare he leave him with no soothing thing to watch. IIIIII didn’t know he did that, but surely the goldfish knew.

“You’re always welcome with me, baby girl.” Juan rubbed his nose on the rider’s and then kissed her, long and low-energy, and perfect for the moment. He was finally able to shed the longstanding feeling that their time together was limited, so he was no longer hastening to get his fill of her, and get “through” everything he wanted with her before her next departure. There was a new calmness- a change in behavior dictated by the realization that the clock wasn’t running anymore. Christina was always coming back to him. They didn’t need to have sex in 6 different positions on the first night, or hurry to get from couch-cuddle-flirting to more serious foreplay to actual sex. “Hurry” was relative, of course, because the player’s imperative was subtle, but it was noteworthy by its absence. She watched him for a second, the side of her thumb resting lightly on his cheek, and reflected on that change. I wish I had his ability to settle down in something and believe it’s going the way I want even when I know it will probably change. Thinking too hard about anything was unpalatable in that moment of closeness, and shared breath, and soft pads of fingers on highly personal skin. The equestrian star took her turn to kiss her favorite Blue, mostly on just one side of his mouth because getting to the whole thing would have required her to move her head a little and that was too much. The exact position she was in- literally and figuratively, physically and emotionally- was too perfect to alter either by movement or consideration. His lips were perfect- warm, unblemished by dryness or cracking or even a wrinkle, tense just enough to hold the kiss together, still enough not to interrupt the transfer of love and comfort through that most import line of communication. A kiss like that was practically nothing and almost everything simultaneously. And it was, afterward, symbolic of a cornerstone in recent memory.

“I think I want to tell you something,” Christina whispered after her smooch. Her regular conversational voice was small enough to fit in the very small space between them without even breathing too much air in Juan’s face- something she often took into consideration when snuggling close with anyone- but that voice came with full conviction and confidence and those weren’t the preconditions for what she wanted to say, so all that came out when she opened her mouth was a sweet whisper.

“What?” the Spaniard whispered back teasingly, with a grin, almost like stage-whispering.

“I used to really hate the person I was with you- like because you made me want to do things that hurt Schü, and our relationship has, at times, made it very difficult for me to look after my responsibilities and ride my best, and do the right thing. I loved being with you, but I hated who I was for that,” she explained with a bit more surety. “Now I feel like I’m actually growing and improving myself- I don’t want to say because of you- but with you, together. I’m making decisions that feel good, and I’m finding it easier to be happy and content wherever I am, physically and in a moment. I don’t know- Maybe it’s because the Olympic hurdle is in the rearview now. Maybe that was the big difference. I just don’t think it was. I think it’s you. I’ve said in the past that we are the worst thing for each other. I don’t think so anymore. I think you’re the best thing for me right now.” I didn’t really mean to get so into this, the rider realized, pointer finger on Juan’s chin, which she was staring at instead of the receptive blues she looked into while she talked. I wasn’t going to say that much. I hate when I start trying to tell someone a small thing, or a short thing, and it gets me thinking, and then I can’t stop talking. Now I’m rambling to myself because...who knows. Anyway. “I’m glad you’re coming to Doha too,” she finished after reaching for some kind of period for the declaration, or something to take up some more airtime since Juan wasn’t saying anything.

“I told you we could be happy together and that we can do more than be miserable together. Not miserable together because we’re together, but be together because one or both is miserable about other things. You know what I mean,” the footballer laughed. He was recalling a conversation they fought through years back, right after Lukas was born. Christina didn’t think they could ever be a couple because all of their experience together was when one or both of them was in bad shape because of their other relationships. They were always closest when their lives were the most tumultuous and generally unhappy. “And now you understand how I feel with you,” he added, more sincerely. “I feel good about myself, and happy with myself, with you. I always have, more or less.”

“I think it’s more for you now though. Ever since we stopped lying.”

“That could be.”

“Okay I feel too grown up and in touch with my feelings now. Give me something stupid and immature to talk about.”

“Can I tickle you?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Can I go get the camera and take pictures of you?”

“Can I do goofy poses?”

“Yes.”

“K. I need another kiss first though.”