Chapter Text
Lewy could read minds. He never asked for the ability, didn’t know where it had come from, and didn’t know who to ask to take it back. He made peace with using it instead.
He tried not to read people’s minds immediately. He tried to give them the grace of a few weeks or months – at least – before he looked. His patience didn’t falter, mostly.
Lewy kidded himself that he waited out of a sense of morality, but he knew that it was because he could learn interesting things from the delay. He would give people a chance to leave an impression on him, allow himself to perceive them as they wanted to be perceived. Then he would read their minds, compare who they were with who they tried to be, and reach his own conclusions. Sometimes he was pleasantly surprised by the difference between the two, or the lack of it. Most of the time, he wasn’t.
People often opened up to him anyway, quickly and with ease, even though he never asked them to do so.
Lewy had been an awkward child once, but he had eventually mastered the art of the first approach – the uninhibited hello, the unassuming smile, the ability to start a conversation with anyone about anything and to keep it going, no matter how stiff the other person might be. He had a knack for remembering things too, recalling an aside that someone had mentioned to him a dozen conversations ago. He would offer it back to them later and slowly reel them in with it, and they would open up to him because they thought he was genuine, and thoughtful.
His grandmother – who didn’t know what he was capable of doing – said that Lewy was lucky, that people trusted him because of his eyes and his smile. Lewy disagreed. He always figured that people trusted him because they wanted someone to trust. He simply made himself available.
But he knew that it wasn’t right, what he could do.
Lewy told himself that it wasn’t a power but merely an ability. He was just a neutral bystander with a slightly better view of the game than most, and he told himself that it was all okay as long as he just looked, and nothing else.
He told himself all these things and for the most part, he believed them. It was only sometimes, when he read the mind of someone close to him or stumbled along something particularly personal, that he saw the cracks in his own arguments. Those occasions left a bitter taste in his mouth, a guilt that he knew well, that he had lived with for as long as he had lived with his ability. He tolerated guilt like a chain around his neck, burdensome but familiar, the weight of it now as much a part of him as anything else.
They were used to changing faces at Dortmund, but knowing that didn’t make him feel any better.
When he left, he spent as much time in the minds of his team-mates as he did in his own. He did it as penance because everyone was gracious about his decision, even though they didn’t truly feel that way, and he knew it. So he read their minds and subjected himself to every thought that they had kindly spared him – Kloppo’s resigned disappointment, and Kevin’s sadness, and the particular acid of Marco’s fury. Then he accepted their congratulations and their goodbyes, knowing that they were offered with only half a heart.
But during his first few weeks in Munich, Lewy let his new team-mates keep their thoughts to themselves. He tried to get to know them the honest, old-fashioned way at first.
Mario had been particularly pleased to see him, and Lewy didn’t have to read his mind to know it. Philipp stuck close to him too, like a good captain should do. Most of the others eventually approached him to introduce themselves in their own time, in their own way. With a few others, Lewy had to make the first approach. He didn’t mind.
But then there was Jerome, and Lewy wasn’t quite sure what to make of him.
At first, Lewy thought to himself that Jerome was polite enough, if a little distant. He stuck close to his little circle of Fips and Basti and Arjen and put space between himself and everyone else, but no one seemed to mind. Lewy figured that maybe this was how he was, that it was something to which they had all grown accustomed.
But after a while, Lewy began thinking that Jerome wasn’t just distant, but cold, and towards him in particular. He kept his feelings to himself because no looks had been given and no words had been exchanged between them, but he couldn’t shake off the feeling.
It wasn’t for lack of effort on Lewy’s part. He tried breaking through to Jerome like he did the others. Lewy waited for him to approach, and when he didn’t, he tried striking up the conversations himself. But if they were alone, Jerome said as little as needed to be said to keep up the image of a conversation. And when they were in a group, Lewy got the impression that Jerome was somehow talking to everyone else except him.
It bothered Lewy, this business. He waited for Jerome to cool down, for his hostility to mellow into indifference, but it didn’t.
Lewy began thinking that maybe, it was time to take to look.
An opportunity finally presented itself a month later, on a Thursday afternoon. Lewy took it.
Pep had sent the team to the lockers after a hard day of work, and Jerome and Lewy were the last two still on the pitch. Jerome collected the cones they had been using and and Lewy lugged around a mesh bag, picking up balls, but they worked slowly. Both of them were spent and their muscles protested with every step.
They worked in awkward silence, Jerome with his back to Lewy. Lewy thought for a moment about saying something small, like asking about Jerome’s plans for the weekend, but then he decided against it. Small-talk had failed him a hundred times before. Why have faith in the hundred and first? Lewy decided to read Jerome’s mind instead.
He took a moment to look around them, to make sure that no one else was on the pitch or in the stands. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, even if someone was, but the habit of checking had started when Lewy was a kid. He had never been able to shake it off. It was a little easier to do without anyone watching. Sometimes the quiet helped him concentrate.
Lewy focused Jerome in both his line of vision and in his mind’s eye. He took a deep breath, stilled the world around him, and he read.
As he did, pain immediately seared through his skull.
It left him reeling, a white light from nowhere blinding him as though he was staring at the sun. The pain coiled around his skull and squeezed, and Lewy gasped out as it almost doubled him over to the ground. The mesh net slipped from his hands as he struggled to remain upright, and a high ringing noise sounded harshly in his ear. The pitch spun around him. He couldn’t breathe.
Lewy somehow thought to pull his mind away from Jerome’s, and when he did, it was like pulling a cord on the pain. He remained where he stood, and waited. It receded almost as quickly as it had come.
In the middle of the grass, there was nothing Lewy could hold onto for balance. He wanted to give in to gravity, to lie down, to feel solid earth underneath him. Lewy rested his hands on his knees instead, tried to keep himself steady, but he barely managed. His legs were already exhausted as they were, and they shook heavily as they bore the added weight of his frame. Nausea rose in his chest and lingered at the back of his throat. Dizzied, he tried to breathe and keep it at bay.
Eventually, his vision returned. It took a little while longer for the ringing in his ear to dull to a mild hum. And then, only when he looked up, did he realize with a jolt that Jerome was in the same state.
Jerome was on his knees, hunched to the earth and breathing heavily. One hand was flat on the ground to steady himself and the other vigorously rubbed at his temple, as though he could iron out the pain. His eyes were clenched shut and Lewy could make out a slight tremor in his body as he struggled to regain his balance.
Nothing happened for a few long moments. Jerome nursed his pain and Lewy stared at him, bewildered. He had been reading for a lifetime. Nothing remotely close to this had ever happened before.
Lewy stood up straight with some difficulty, nausea still lurking at the back of his throat.
“Jerome?”
A few feet away, Jerome finally gathered enough strength to stand up. He turned around slowly, like the very act of moving was hard, but his eyes were bright with anger when they finally met Lewy’s.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jerome demanded.
And just like that, Lewy’s concern became caution.
They eyed each other for a little while.
Lewy hoped that the question was rhetorical because he didn’t know how to answer. In the end, he didn’t have to. After a final scathing look in Lewy’s direction, Jerome stormed off.
--
After that, Lewy’s nights became a repetitive cycle of too much thought and too little sleep. He never slept much anyway, but even the little slumber he managed became worse. Fragments of the incident spliced themselves into his dreams, and it bothered him to the point where he actively avoided bed. When he finally got there, sleep took its merry time.
Sometimes, he would haul himself out of bed at two or three, looking for something to do that wasn’t tossing and turning his sheets into a mess. He would make a cup of tea and nurse the hot mug in the kitchen, thinking.
He thought about the fact that he hadn’t been able to read a single one of Jerome’s thoughts. He had tried, and then the pain had come, and he just couldn’t. He hadn’t even felt like he was properly in Jerome’s mind. All he could remember was the peculiar feeling of a barrier, like a force was repelling him. It was as though he had tried to scale a wall that was actively trying to throw him off.
That had never happened before
He thought about the white, searing pain too – that fact that it had happened at all, which baffled him, but that it had affected Jerome as well, which baffled him even more. In a lifetime’s worth of reading, Lewy had never once disturbed the minds he entered. He likened what he could do to a perfect crime; he would read without leaving a trace or memory of his presence behind, and the mind on which he had intruded would be none the wiser, like he hadn’t touched it. In a way, he hadn’t.
But what troubled him more than anything – what really kept him up at night – was the fact that Jerome had blamed him for whatever had happened, whatever it was. Even though Lewy hadn’t touched him, even though he had been standing metres away, even though Lewy’s first reaction had been to express concern for his welfare.
Like he had sensed the string between his pain and Lewy’s.
As though he had known that –-
No.
That ridiculous thought – that Jerome knew – came to Lewy as well. It came often and it came unbidden. But there was no way – no way – that Jerome could have known, so Lewy dismissed it. It came back to him and he dismissed it again, but it returned, and again, till getting rid of it was no longer easy to do. Till he began to see strange things in the theory. Merits.
It didn’t help that Jerome fed Lewy’s suspicion, if inadvertently.
Before the incident, Lewy had thought Jerome was hostile. Lewy now learned that he hadn’t seen a thing. Jerome wore his anger like full-body armour for Lewy to see, and for everyone else to see as well. The tension between them was enough for Philipp and Basti to separately pull Lewy aside and ask if something had happened. He hadn’t known what to tell them.
Lewy avoided Jerome’s eye but Jerome found ways to meet it anyway, and then he would hold Lewy’s gaze until Lewy, cowed, looked away first. Lewy wasn’t sure why he put up with it. Maybe he felt bad for trying to read Jerome’s mind, and this was his way of making amends. Maybe he was trying to find an answer in Jerome’s gaze. He wasn’t sure.
But the fact that Jerome continued to rage against him, still, weeks after the incident had occurred, left Lewy with the distinct impression that something more was going on. The theory he had dismissed as ridiculous began to seem strangely sensible. He decided, in his kitchen at 2 am on a Tuesday night, that he would somehow have to test it.
And maybe it was a bad idea, but he wasn’t good with remaining in the dark. A lifetime of helping himself to people’s thoughts had spoiled him with access, with knowledge, with having all the information he wanted at the fire of a neuron.
He couldn’t read Jerome’s mind again, of course. Whatever had happened on that pitch between them, that particular option was off the table and Lewy knew it.
Lewy decided that he would just have to ask, even if Jerome wouldn’t speak to him, and whether Jerome had an answer for him or not.
Making the decision to speak to Jerome was hard, but the decision on how to actually do it was easy. He would have to corner him into it.
He decided to do it after training one day because Jerome was always the last to get to the lockers, and the last to leave. It was a fact of life at Bayern that Lewy had come to learn, like Pep’s aggressive affection or Basti’s practical jokes. Often, Jerome took so long that by the time he emerged from the showers, most people would have gone home. Lewy figured that this was a good thing for what he needed to do. No one else needed to be around for this conversation.
He picked a nondescript Tuesday afternoon after training. Everyone else talked, laughed, showered, got changed, and Lewy loitered. He started twenty different conversations with as many people as he could, and he delayed and delayed and delayed.
After almost everyone was done, Jerome finally turned up after a chat with Pep and went straight into the showers. On his way, his eyes scanned the room and paused icily on Lewy for a few moments before looking away. Lewy’s pulse quickened. He tried to ignore it. Philipp caught them at it too, but he ignored that as well.
Lewy loitered some more, packing things slowly into his training bag. Till Basti was the only other person in the room with him. He eventually gave Lewy a clap on the back and and left.
Lewy stayed back on his own, with nothing but his thoughts and the distant sound of Jerome’s running shower for company. He leaned back against the thin wooden barrier that separated his compartment from Mario’s, feet tapping out an irregular rhythm on the cold grey floor, and he waited.
Lewy waited until finally, the sound of running water stopped.
As soon as it did, he was struck with cold feet. It occurred to him that the locker room, after a day of heavy training, maybe wasn’t the subtlest way to have this conversation. He wondered what the right way would have been. Perhaps there was no right way. The conversation needed to be had, sooner rather than later, and the planets would have to align at their leisure.
It was too late now, anyway. He heard the approach of wet footsteps.
Jerome eventually emerged from the showers with a red towel folded neatly around his waist. It was balanced low, where his waist dipped into the sharp V of his hips, and when he noticed Lewy, he paused. He eyed him for a moment, expression unreadable, and then he looked away. Jerome had a particular gift for dismissive looks, for seeing you without acknowledging you. Lewy knew those looks well. He had been on the receiving end of them for weeks, and should have been used to them by now. A twinge of irritation flared through him anyway.
Jerome proceeded to his compartment as though nothing was wrong, as though Lewy wasn’t even there. He began drying himself off and getting changed. Lewy looked away and waited, till he had at least put his pants on, before opening the conversation.
“Jerome.”
As Lewy had expected, there was no response.
“We need to talk.” He continued, voice firm.
And Lewy didn’t have to read Jerome’s mind to notice how his body flared immediately at his insistence, how the line between his shoulders tensed, how the muscles in his back tightened. Jerome put on his shirt and began buttoning it up, and Lewy waited.
Eventually, Jerome delivered a response in a tone so forcefully calm that it sent a small chill down Lewy’s spine.
“I have absolutely nothing to say to you.”
Lewy asked the next question anyway.
“We need to talk about the other day, on the pitch.”
Jerome sat down on the bench-seat in front of his compartment, and began putting on his socks.
“Come on, say something. What happened out there?”
Jerome slipped his feet into a pair of electric blue sneakers that were bold, even by his own standards. He leaned forward to lace them up. He was silent all the way.
But by now, Lewy was reading things into his silence. The longer that Jerome maintained it, the more sure Lewy felt that it existed for a reason, and probably a good one.
He thought to himself, with a shaky breath, fine. Tell him.
It struck him, before he spoke, that he had never said anything out loud about what he could do before. He had kept his ability to himself, nurturing it on his own. The thought of finally sharing it, of what he could do – with Jerome, of all people – didn’t sit comfortably in his stomach, but the thought of not figuring out what Jerome knew somehow felt worse.
But then, Jerome spoke before he did.
“I knew what you were trying to do.” He said shortly.
“What?"
“Out there, on the pitch. I knew what you were trying to do.”
Lewy waited for him to continue, but Jerome lapsed back into silence instead. He couldn’t tell whether Jerome was thinking about what to say next, or whether it was now his turn to speak.
“What did you think I was trying to do?” He asked cautiously.
Jerome began folding his training gear and packing it away in his bag. He moved quietly, methodically, no element of his face betraying a single emotion or thought. The silence lasted an age.
“You were trying to read my mind.” Jerome said finally.
All the air rushed out of Lewy’s lungs.He was glad he was sitting down.
“So why couldn’t I?” He eventually asked.
“Because I stopped you.”
“How?”
Another long pause, and now – more than any other time in his entire life – Lewy would have killed just to read the mind in front of him.
“I can do it too.”
Lewy stopped breathing altogether.
He stared at Jerome, cold and numb, like his blood had frozen in his veins.He tried to wrap his mind around what he had just heard, and couldn’t.
But before he could say anything – before he could acknowledge this grenade that Jerome had casually detonated between them – Jerome slung his bag over his back, stood up, and fixed him with a frosted look.
“There. You have your answer. We’re never speaking about this again.” He spat. “And let me tell you something else.”
“What?”
“If you ever try to read my mind again, I’m going to break your ankles with the studs of my boots.”
He paused for a moment after that, allowing his words to sink in, but he didn’t wait for an answer. He walked out of the room instead, the threat suspended in the air behind him.
Lewy watched him leave, speechless. He stayed seated for a long while afterwards, waiting for his heart to slow down because shit, he thought to himself. He can do it too.
Jerome can do it too.
Eventually, a cleaner came in and found Lewy still there. The double-take and look of genuine alarm she gave him were enough to send him home. He left his car at the stadium and walked back to his apartment instead, knowing better than to trust himself to drive.
Lewy went to bed that night thinking about the fact that his secret was no longer a secret. And Jerome, for all his anger and his ice and his low, calm threats, had shared a secret of his own. Lewy fell asleep thinking that they would have to talk about it again at some point.
They would have to.
Because -- well -- how could they not?