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3one3 · 6 years

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The Sequel - 896

Separate Christmases

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

“Can I have some tea?”

“There’s a whole pot and another cup.”

“I just want a sip though.”

“You’re so annoying.”

“What, are you afraid of my cooties? As soon as this show is over you’re gonna literally swap saliva with me.”

“So annoying,” Juan muttered as he reluctantly passed his lemon balm herbal tea over from the nightstand to the girl who turned to him with first begging and then narrowed eyes. He was playing around and she was too, mostly. Deep, deep inside, in a place she hated to indulge, Christina wondered if he was really cut out for the kind of close partnership they seemed very close to and which he always said he wanted. To her that was the aforementioned anal fissures but also sharing tea. It was sharing everything. Nothing could be truly personal or separate anymore. “Finish it if you want,” the player suggested, relenting. His reversal made her want to shake apart the image of the thing she was thinking about in that undesirable part of her conscience.

“No thanks. I’m good.” She took one sip and handed the plain white cup back. “I was just trying it for the morning.”

“You’re not trying to give up coffee again are you?” Juan asked, dubious.

“No. I would have told you.”

“Are you going to tell me why you’re so aware of what you did and didn’t tell me?” he laughed. They were both completely checked out of the television program by then. They’d been watching an old BBC version of Murder On The Orient Express. It seemed every channel with an available take on the classic was airing it in honor of the upcoming release of a new production with a star-studded cast, which the Londoner and the ex-Londoner already planned to see together.

“Wha?”

“You keep reminding me that I forgot things you said to me, and now you point out that I should know you would have told me about something. It sounds like you’re annoyed,” the bigger of the two Christie fans explained, without the chuckling. He combed a huge section of her hair back against the part with four of his fingers while she bit her upper lip contemplatively. There was a lot of hairspray on her head for her magazine photo spray, so the chunk he moved stood up, resistant. A couple of pieces immediately fell back down into place. Juan loved when she played with her hair best, but enjoyed playing with it himself, and she liked that he liked it.

“I don’t know. Maybe I am? I hate when people forget stuff. But I don’t feel annoyed. I mean, I didn’t notice, if I am. Sorry, I guess, if I sounded...annoyed.”

“This isn’t my usual play but I have the impulse to try-“

“Wha?” Is he talking to me or himself, Christina wondered. His whole line of questioning came out of nowhere as far as she was concerned.

“Come here. Sit up.”

“Why?”

“Just- Up,” the Spaniard ordered impatiently. She squeezed her still nicely filled in brows and sat up from the pillow on her elbow. It took her by surprise that he leaned over, held her face with one hand, and landed a rather aggressive smacker on her. It started out kind of hard, like one that should only last a couple of seconds, but then his hand slid down her neck, over her shoulder, and around to her back, which he put pressure on to try to draw her nearer while the kiss lessened in intensity and grew in emotion. It continued a little while longer after she leaned over closer to make it easier, and then Juan let go with both his hand and his lips, and tried to comb her hair straight back. “I always try to make you think and talk your way to feeling better or understanding. This time I felt like trying to kiss it better. Did it work?” he asked softly, quietly.

“It really is opposite day,” Christina muttered under her breath, eyes on his scruffy chin.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing. I- I don’t know that I needed anything kissed better, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.”

“Job done, then.”

“You’re falling in love with love, Juanin.” A grin of equal parts mischief and adoration spread across the previously stunned rider’s face after the facts of Opposite Day clicked together for her. She knew her friend had both loved her and been in love with her for a very long time. His love for love was new. There was a new kind of affection. There was jealously, and a desire to be more to her than the person who helped her sort her head out with critical thinking and perspective. Her heart swelled in response.

“Your face is falling in love with love.” Juan wasn’t ready to acknowledge any newfound love. He pushed a flat pillow into her face in slow, persistent motion. The under attack rider pretended to struggle, give up, and suffocate, and then just hugged the pillow when the game was over. It was a little too cold in the room because she set the thermostat in the afternoon, when it was still really hot outside and she was sweating under the open bulbs at the bathroom mirror and stressing about being on time for her meeting. The bedspread was the heavy, stiff cotton kind. Christina hated that. It wasn’t cozy. The Four Seasons certainly offered better than a run of the mill Marriott, for sure, but she had incredibly specific tastes when it came to bedding, so she was lying on top of the comforter instead of tucked under it, out of the cold. Perhaps that sip of warm tea served to highlight the chill for her, or she was just getting colder because it was getting late and she was getting tired. Hugging the pillow felt nice. It made her want to burrow in a blanket and get cozy. She just wished there were better blanketing options, or that she still bothered to bring her own cotton throw.

“Do you wanna make a nest wiff me?” she asked. “I’m cold now.”

“Do I have to move?”

“A little, yes.”

There was a big shuffle. The Chelsea midfielder ended up on his back and between his girlfriend’s legs. She was on her side next to him, with her left knee on his waist and her other one kind of stuck under one of his legs and atop the other. She’d made a fluffy pillow pyramid to lean on and generously reserved a single pillow for his head. Her original intention was to pick an arrangement conducive to TV viewing, but Juan was more interested in idle chatter anyway, so it didn’t matter that he couldn’t see the screen anymore. They were both thoroughly embedded in the comforter, and only their toes were yet to be fully thawed. Christina’s were better off. Juan’s were mostly down in the still fresh part of the bed.

“Is it weird for you that you’re rooting for Arsenal to win?” he laughed at her as their chatter moved to football. His first fixture back after the international break was away to West Brom, who were struggling and stale and not that worrisome. The hot fixture of the weekend was the North London derby at the Emirates, and the equal opportunity Arsenal and Spurs hater brought up how she hoped the home side would crush the visitors because they’d visit the Westfalenstadion just a few days later. Borussia Dortmund needed a Champions League win. They needed the points, and the momentum, and the good feeling, even if none of those things would likely be enough to keep them in the competition. Christina hoped a battered and demoralized Tottenham, on the road, would be ripe for the taking. The professional player under her nose suggested that an overconfident, complacent Tottenham might be even more desirable, though for his own purposes an Arsenal win in the derby would have been good.

“I don’t know. I almost don’t even care. I almost just want Schü to play and do well and fuck whatever else happens,” the rider replied with an eye-roll.

“Have you even had a chance to see him play in person yet this season?”

“A couple of minutes. And Jan asked me to go to Montevideo as part of his envoy for the- Well, let me back up and explain.” She rolled her eyes again, scrunched up her nose while she sniffled, and then readjusted her position on her elbow, all of which foreshadowed a long story. “The FEI keeps doing their annual meeting thing and their awards gala in stupid places. They had one reasonable year in London, surrounded by bizarre ones like Puerto Rico and China, and now Uruguay. You know who doesn’t field international equestrian teams? All of those places. Okay, Puerto Rico is part of the US, but there are no Puerto Rican riders involved and there are no events there. Anyway,” she huffed, exposing her disdain for the choices of the organizing and regulatory body for equestrian sport. “Jan wants me to go literally as a guest to the awards gala, but figuratively as a political asset. He’s part of a big group of show organizers and sponsors that have been lobbying the FEI to be more accommodating and supportive of private enterprises like the Global Champions Tour- things that aren’t part of a national championship, or a World Cup, or Nations Cup, and so on. He wants his privately produced events to matter more, and he wants more freedom in the schedule to fit them in. You can’t have two 5* events on one continent at the same time, and you don’t get the glamorous riders and horses without the 5* rating. So he goes with his pals to the annual meeting to advance his agenda. The more support from big riders, the more pressure there is on the FEI to give him more of what he wants. But, I don’t feel like flying to South America, and I don’t think I want to be involved in the politics.”

“Why not?” Juan interjected immediately. He was rubbing her thigh under the blanket but stopped to free his hand so that he could gesticulate with it. “I thought you wanted to change how the sport is run, and make it more favorable for talented people over wealthy people?”

“I do, but that’s more of an industry problem than a governing body one. And believe me, Jan and his goals are not befitting with that idea.”

“You could be passing up the next big thing in your career...”

“If the next big thing in my career is changing horse world to make it as easy to get to an Olympic team for a broke kid as the child of a rockstar, I’m gonna need a much longer vacation.” A dramatic and exaggerated groan made the Blues creator laugh with delight, but it didn’t sway him. “This wouldn’t be how to go about it anyway,” Christina assured him when he reiterated that he was serious and cautioned her against being so dismissive of opportunity.

“You need to be more open to new things, cariña. Horse politics, different directions in your career, anal sex...”

“First of all, no. Second of all, still no. And third, I don’t think I even need a next big thing in my career. I think I want to just...do the same thing I’ve always done: ride, show, repeat.” She shrugged her free shoulder and then used one pointer to trace his beard across his left cheek. “I don’t know,” she shrugged again without looking away from the border between scruff and clean skin. “Nobody else changes everything because they won a gold medal. They just look forward to the next medal. I love to train, and I love to go to most shows. I love to win. Why do I need to make it more complicated than that,” the decorated equestrian mumbled. He has a way of prodding me indirectly into things. He prods and prods and then I figure out that the answer to the question is that there’s no need for a question. Wouldn’t be the first time.

“The only thing better than a couple of Olympic medals is a few more, yes?” The blue-eyed brunette watching the wheels turn behind her empty gaze wet his lips and resumed massaging the outside of her thigh.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I ride for a nation with 56 medals- more than any other. I think more medals must be a good thing. Ludger has 4 golds and he’s a pretty happy guy. Isabel Werth has 10! That’s two medals per Games for her. Six gold and 4 silver. She’s still competing. And dominating. Dressage royalty. She’s never just been like “ehh cabinet is full now, time to move on”, “time to stop doing this thing I love and live for”. Why should I?”

“I haven’t heard you say you love competing in a while. A long while.”

“Sometimes I don’t love it. I want to though. It’s like Schü. I don’t always want to be with him anymore, but I want to want to...”

“The lift has passed the ground floor. It’s burrowing into the ground now. Touch the button for an upper floor before you end up stuck down there, cariña,” Juan advised sympathetically as he heard his friend allow the conversation to plummet much, much too deep. He squeezed above her knee- a most ticklish spot- and winked at her growing eyes.

“Nooooo,” she whined, trying to move her leg away. He switched to just rubbing and patting by her knee, so she stopped trying to move out of her comfortable position.

“You should try wanting to love anal sex. Or at least try it because you love me. I can’t think of something I wouldn’t try for you.” The Spanish star turned his bottom lip over and did a Blue Steel-like face that was meant to evoke compassion. It just got giggles.

“You’re a bad lover,” Christina scolded. “You’re not supposed to pressure your partner into things.”

“Do we need to review the list of things I had to pressure you for that you now ask me for specifically?”

“No.”

“Come over.” Juan gestured with his head to invite her closer. There was nowhere else left to go other than on top of, him so that’s where she went. She stretched out down his body and put her cheek on one side of his chest, allowing him to close up and shrink their nest. It was time for legitimate snuggles, and that was a better thing than getting into conversations about her marriage or any of the sexual flavors for which the player had helped cultivate her taste. It would also be better, she assumed, than talking about how she hoped his presence there at the show with her would help her love competing as she once did. The tough part of that project was that she wasn’t exactly sure when it was that she last truly loved showing. It wasn’t the Olympics, which was much too stressful. It wasn’t as far back as her life in New York either. In fact, she had nothing but ambivalence for showing, say, when she met André. It had to be sometime in between those two things, and it could have been multiple periods in there. It wasn’t when her ankle was terrible, when she was being stalked, when she was separated from André, when Dirk was hurt, or when she won her own FEI awards. Christina hesitated to examine it further than that because on first glance it seemed as if she had the most fun and enjoyed her career most between the highlights- during the stuff that happened between Nations Cup titles or World Cup wins, WEG medals, and Tour finals.

“Is your cheeseburger shirt your favorite now?” the often self-burdened equestrian inquired, since she suddenly found herself looking at the cheeseburger motif on the opposite side of Juan’s chest. He wears this more than I wear my favorite leggings.

“Could be. Are you warm enough now, cariña?” He touched her hair and still had a hand on the thigh he’d been rubbing for a while. Her knee was hanging over his side, on the mattress. His question was patronizing, or teasing, but his touch wasn’t. His petit and considered fingertips never teased that way. They always conveyed something nice, even when teasing in a different way. If Christina were a cat, she would have purred for his fingers in her hair.

“Perfect.”

“We’re already getting to the time in the season when I want to live on the couch like this, or in bed,” Juan yawned. He didn’t bother covering his mouth.

“I hope you’re taking good care of yourself. Eleven games in 36 days is nuts.”

“I would rather you take care of me. I wish you were spending more time in London this month and next.”

“I know. I wish I could be in two places at once.” He’s not supposed to make me feel guilty, the ex-Londoner complained. Not fair. It’s not fair to him either, I know but still. Grr. “I’ll be with you for 5 days right before Christmas.”

“You’ll be with me in your sleep.”

“And in the mornings, and a couple of afternoons, and at night when you come to watch. And all of Tuesday! I don’t have anything on Tuesday and my flight is in the morning so I have the whole day with you.”

“I’ll be in Huddersfield.”

“Oh. Damn you, December Premier League schedule relentlessness.”

“Yeah.”

“Where is Huddersfield? Do you get back at a decent hour? I could make you dinner still.” Christina cycled through being defensive, being sympathetic, hopefulness and positivity, realization and disappointment, and then back to optimism. London Olympia was like the holiday football schedule of horse shows. It was 15 classes, including a Puissance, a World Cup qualifier, and a major grand prix. It was three classes per day, except Thursday, which had 4, and Sunday, which had two. Some days began with a class at noon, with the next in the middle of the afternoon, and the last in the evening. Others started at 3 and went late into the night. At least one competition day had a big window of free time in the early afternoon, which was basically useless in terms of trying to link up with a football player who would be 40 minutes away at training. Having until at least 10 every morning, and sometimes a couple of hours later than that before she needed to be at the venue did nothing for them either. Juan wasn’t going to wake up early to spend time with her before going to Cobham, and she would need the sleep anyway. After the “I don’t mind not traveling since I’m going to be so tired and I’ll want to just chill on the sofa with you” discussion with André, his wife couldn’t look up from the cheeseburger graphic and see what it meant to the Spaniard that she was choosing to look after the other player instead of him. She couldn’t be on two couches at once.

“It’s a Tuesday. The kickoff will be 8 at night. It’s north of Manchester. You’ll be sleeping when I get in.” He was resigned and she was right to avoid his expression, difficult as it would be to take in in all its dejected and slightly begrudging glory from her position under his chin. There was enough of those things in his voice to carry the message.

“That sucks,” his girl replied in a quieter and more timid, almost guilty tone. “C’I have your hand?” she asked after a silent pause. She lifted her fingers from the cheeseburger embroidery and wiggled them. Juan stilled each one between his own. He pushed gently against her hand until she slid the heel of her palm down a comfortable distance for his arm. Christina watched his left thumb stroke her right one. He used the inside part, before the fingertip. I don’t know why I noticed that, she remarked to herself upon realizing that seemingly unimportant distinction. He pulls on one thumb with the other when he’s talking to someone and can’t put his hands in his pockets, like almost a nervous thing or something. I’ve noticed that. I freely admit I’ve noticed that because it made me think of him pulling on something else of his. And because I always stare at his hands. I love his wrists. It’s so weird. I think the sexiest Juanin thing ever is when he wears a black shirt or sweater and pulls the sleeves up a little. Why am I so weird? It’s like how I’m obsessed with the inside of Schü’s elbows, or the part right before that, really. It’s like bizarrely large, and I like when I use his bicep as a pillow and I have that part of his arm on the side of my face, or when he puts his arm around my neck and that part goes under my chin.

“The Christmas decorations are going to be up when I get home. It’ll be strange to go from the warmth and the sun here to Winter Wonderland,” the absent sounding Spanish footballer commented. Christina surmised that he had followed some thread of thought to some random place the same as she had done. On second consideration, she wondered if he wasn’t deliberately trying to evoke longing in her. He knew she loved London at Christmas. It was her favorite London. He kept talking, and did nothing to disprove that revised take. “Do you want to do my Christmas tree? Should I wait to get one when you’re around?”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled inaudibly.

“Hm?”

“I don’t know. I’ll decorate your tree with you if you want, but I’m not gonna be mad or something if you do it without me...”

“Okay.”

“This is when my double life sucks.”

“I’m sorry, angel.”

Kids who had two Christmases when I was little totally loved getting to put up two trees, doing Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with their mom and siblings and then going to the other grandparents’ house with their dad- It all sounded great, really. This is not that, the rider concluded. She was still watching the interaction of two hands, which seemed largely autonomous from their owners. How long before he gives me a wedding band type ring and asks me to wear it on top of or below my engagement ring? Would he be one of those guys who goes for the right hand when he has his own wedding band to wear, or stick with the left? Lots of European guys go right.

“I really just asked because I thought you were going to want creative control, not because I care about it,” Juan added when the awkward silence lingered too long for his liking. “I thought you were going to turn up for the horse show and go “oh my god, Juanin, how could you do the tree without me!” or something like this.”

“I would love to still live in a world where I have the mental and emotional energy and capacity to give a shit about decorating Christmas trees.”

“Why are you so sour and cynical all of a sudden? What did I say?” He evidently didn’t like the shortness and contriteness that infused her responses and lived in the air of the awkward quiet in between.

“Nothing.”

“Chri-“

“Nothing! I’m just...I’m hung up on the process story rather than the policy tonight for some reason.”

“The what?”

“I can’t think past the structure of my life and relationships to actively be in my life and relationships,” she sighed back instead of explaining her process vs. policy metaphor, a wonkish political concept that would take too long. “I hate the scaffolding. I hate the double life thing. I hate the zero-sum nature of dividing time. I hate thinking about all of that crap- the logistics. I’d rather just enjoy that I’m in a cozy nest with you tonight and I get to ride my horses in a cool stadium tomorrow. I wish it was easier to do that.”

“That’s my fault,” the Chelsea man willingly conceded. “I brought up the schedules. I knew as soon as the words were out of my mouth that it would land on you like pressure. I didn’t mean it to be. I wanted you to feel good, actually, because you’re what I want when I’m tired and hurting and need to relax and recharge.”

“I know, and I understand that, but when someone I love is like “hey, guess what, what I want is you here with me and then everything is great” and I know I can’t do that, what I actually feel is guilt. And it’s not like when Lukas says he wants French fries with hot fudge for dinner and I have to say no. It’s like when he says he wants Thomas Müller to come back to life because Thomas Müller was his friend and helped him sleep at night when he woke up from a bad dream and Flounder isn’t nice to him.”

“Who is Flounder?”

“His new fish.”

“I thought you bought a bunch of them?”

“We did.” He’s missing the point. “He picked out Flounder, who is a special, yellow Comet Goldfish, because he thinks yellow is Daddy’s favorite color now and he likes to be like Daddy. The guy in the pet store said Comet Goldfish, which are almost exactly the same as the Common Goldfish we had before but kinda narrower and with longer, prettier fins, are very social and need friends. So I was like, our bowl is 16 gallons and filtered, tell us what to get. Because I don’t want any fighting, I don’t want the bottom feeder guy to eat a new neighbor, and I don’t want to have to clean the damn thing more often because we filled it with fish, which also need to not die! What?” Christina lifted and turned her head to eye her laughing body pillow.

“I feel for the guy in the pet store! Imagine someone coming to you to buy a horse and giving a list of absolute conditions like you just did,” he chuckled. He also stopped combing her hair long enough to grab a pillow for his head, since they were talking at each other instead of just to each other. She could use his chest as a chinrest and be comfortable. He had to hold his head up to be able to see her instead of the ceiling.

“Oh that happens all the time, babe. When I was in the sales business, trainers and parents would call or email me with a ridiculous list of qualities and then an even more ridiculous price limit.” Want to buy: 17-hand, 10 year-old, imported warmblood, chestnut gelding with lots of white, must pack around 3’ and be ready to do 3’6” with timid kid moving up from Children’s Ponies, completely sound, bombproof, easy keeper, tons of “A” show experience. Hack winner. Under $25k. Pffffffft!

“So how many fish did you get?”

“Three. The other two are..Shu-something. I forget how to say it. They’re like white and red and black. All three of them are really small. The guy was aghast about our 16-gallon bowl. He said we should have 30 gallons for the initial fish and 12 more per additional fish. Who does that? No one does that. Have you ever seen a 54 gallon tank with three fish in it?”

“No.” Juan was still laughing, but at her incredulity and her storytelling. The head petting resumed. “Isn’t Lukas friends with the other two? And how does he know Flounder isn’t nice to him?”

“Dude, he’s two and a half. I have no idea how he processes what is friendly and what is mean about a goldfish. They’re One Fish and Two Fish but nobody knows which is which, and I guess Lukas doesn’t care if they’re nice to him or not. Only Flounder matters. My point was that I can’t do anything to give him what he wants in that situation, and it’s a thing that matters to him. It’s more important than a French fry sundae. I feel so bad,” the still-learning mom lamented sadly.

“Well I am more than 10 times his years and I think I have learned by now that I can’t always have what I want, and that I don’t absolutely need what I want. I’ll be fine, cariña. You don’t have to feel guilty.” Juan was consoling and making fun of her at the same time, and that was fine. It was correct. She stretched to give him a quick smooch for it.

“At least you won’t have to put me in a pond one day.”

“What?”

“If by some miracle Flounder, One Fish, and Two Fish live to maturity, they’re going to be like 4” long and need to move into a pond. Which- We have a pond, of course, but it’s not for fish. We’d have to aerate and heat it, or build a dedicated fish pond somewhere.”

“I’m sure André will step on them before then.”

“He told Luke he’s going to eat them if they ever get that big, and Luke started to cry, so he panicked and stopped at a gas station to buy him cookies. I don’t know what’s worse- that we’re raising a wimpy kid who can’t take a joke, or that his dad apologizes with junk food.”

“I don’t think he’s a wimp. If someone tried to replace Seven the day after he died, and then made a joke about turning the new horse into glue, how would you feel?”

“Fine.”

“I’m going to do the tree without you, but I’ll wait to go to Harrod’s and the Winter Wonderland with you.”

“K.”

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