Work Text:
Lace dress. Expensive ring. Blinding smile.
Your eyes instinctively spot grey, white, yellow, and you try to move them to the left, try to focus on the lace dress again.
Munich is too far.
Everything is too far.
Your breath is unsteady, your pulse is dying somewhere in your hollow chest. Lisa is calmly sleeping in the bed that seems so distant to you now.
Fucking yellow, you whisper and slam the laptop with a barely heard thud. Lisa murmurs something in her sleep. You run your shaking fingers through your (not-so-thin-now) hair and close your eyes and try to breathe and-...
‘This would end one day, Matsi,’ you remember yourself saying. It’s his fingers in your hair, it’s his chocolate-caramel-hazelnut-everything brown eyes on your eyes, it’s his breath on your lips. He smiles and you roll your eyes at his never-ending confidence.
‘Nope,’ his lips peck yours, ‘Never ever.’
Never ever, you breathe out sarcastically as you spot the sparkling diamond on Lisa’s finger. Heck, he beat you even with the rings. He beat you with everything. Always one step ahead.
‘Anything you do, I can do better, Höwedes,’ Mats smirks and you roll your eyes while chewing the Nutella-covered bread-slice, ‘That’s the charm of Borussia Dortmund. Always better than you Sch-... nah, can’t even say it.’
‘Fuck you,’ you murmur and Mats beams at you.
‘I know you wish to.’
You smile subconsciously and yawn at the same time. It’s dawn already, it’s a new day, you say to yourself and want to believe it would be a ‘new life’ as well. But something stings. And hurts. And when Lisa puffs, turning around and tossing her bedsheet on the floor, it hurts even more.
You pick the bedsheet up and wrap her with it. Kiss her forehead and nuzzle your nose in her cheek with closed eyes. Yours fingers through her blonde hair. Not black. Not curly. But with your surname in just months time.
You look at the electronic alarm-clock which hits 5:30 am and you chuckle to yourself a bit too loudly, almost missing the persistent buzz of the phone on the night-stand. Another forehead kiss. Out of the room. Swiping the display, silence.
Half past five, he says in your ear and you want to tell your heart to stop imagining all the things you two used to do together at half past five in the morning, but it just doesn’t listen.
You should be with your wife at half past five in the first Mr and Mrs Hummels’ morning.
And you should be sleeping next to your wife-to-be at half past five in the morning.
Pause. Unequal breaths.
After all, I was right, see? It ended.
He sighs and then there’s this dreadful silence again and you want him to apologise but don’t want him to, and you realise you just don’t know what you want now. Only who. Always who.
Good night, Mats, you whisper, Have a wonderful honeymoon.
You cut it off without giving him a chance to respond. Tuck yourself under the tiny piece of bedsheet left from Lisa. Force yourself to sleep.
‘You know what you are right now?’ you can almost feel his curls burning your chest, ‘Mine.’
‘I am always yours, Matsi.’
He shakes his head, ‘No, you are not. You are Lisa’s, Schalke’s, everyone else’s. But at half past five in the morning, naked and panting, you are mine. That’s the only time I’d ever call you mine. That’s our time.’
You snap your eyes wide open.
Your phone buzzes with a message.
Never ever, remember? Till 5:30, Benni.
Lisa says a sleepy ‘lieb’ dich’ and messily kisses your shoulder before snuggling closer to you. You smile at her, even though she can’t see you.
You won’t write a response.
You won’t think about it.
You won’t care.
You won’t.
(Till half past five.)