Chapter Text
They had known of each other of course, although they’d never made the proper introductions to be officially acquainted. Both captains of teams that competed in the same leagues, they had assessed each other as threats and rivals but still held the baseline respect players usually had for each other.
For Thomas, recently being promoted to official captain of his team this season and not only the unofficial coach on the pitch, meant no longer being just their ‘Radio Muller’ who directed his team on the pitch. Now he was to lead, not be lead anymore, and pave the way for his teammates to victory.
And boy did he need to today more than any match day. Today was their long awaited re-match against Schalke 04, after suffering an unexpected yet humiliating defeat of 4-0 against the away team.
Getting ready for the game the past few days had been rigorous to say the least; Schalke had been doing well this season and Bayern definitely wasn’t looking forward to a second loss against them. The first one had been more humiliating in how unexpected it was, how much it took them by storm the first half and left them drowning in the second. Today ,therefore, was redemption day.
Tensions were high in Bayern’s locker room; the over arching need to do well this game left absolutely no room for any miscalculations or mistakes on their part. And Thomas understood the necessity to motivate his team and hype them up enough for the game, giving them the push they needed to win this game and even the score.
Thomas cleared his throat loudly to bring everyone’s attention to himself, and put on a determined face to address the team, “Alright, guys, this game is important for our standing in the league, but more importantly for the club image. Bayern can’t be seen losing twice to the same club; once is a fluke but twice is failure. So lets it bring it this time boys!”
Several shouts and whoops were heard throughout the crowd, and Thomas continued, “Let’s give them a taste of their own medicine by decimating them in their home stadium lads. I’m expecting no less than three goals that will leave those bastard speechless. ” Even more cheers were produced by the team, and here and now they were ready. Locked and loaded to get this victory under their belt.
They moved to the tunnels, minutes counting down until they would be out in the pitch. The anticipation was thick and palpable in the air, both teams knowing they would be bringing their absolute best.
Standing at the very front of his team, Thomas adjusted the still foreign armband around his bicep. Its weight felt both daunting and compelling at the same time. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw his same movements mirrored by the person right next to him. The other captain of course; Manuel Neuer.
He cut a daunting silhouette right next to Thomas. Taller than his already six foot frame, all muscles where Thomas was lanky and a serious expression contorting his features. Fiddling with his armband, he hadn’t noticed Thomas looking at him but was looking straight ahead to the pitch with an intensity that almost took Thomas aback.
Intrigued, he turned his head to get a better view of the man next to him. He was clad in his neon green goalkeeper’s uniform that covered him from head to toe, leaving only his face and neck exposed. His blond hair was gelled back in a casual fashion, and his face was clean shaven with reddened cheeks from the cold.
With the clearer view he had now, he saw that Neuer was biting his lip in accordance with his focused expression. It was almost aggressive the way he worried them, his efforts turning his lips a deep pink shade.
With this picture the captain beside him made, Thomas’s brain could only supply one thought before this vital game. He’s really pretty. Wait a minute. Where had that come from? It was so sudden a thought that Thomas thought it must’ve come out straight of his unconscious mind, before it had any chance to be filtered into anything appropriate for this moment.
He shook his head and cleared it; this was not the time nor place for these kinds of thoughts. They needed to win, and they sure weren’t going to do it by thinking the other team’s captain had really nice hair that looked very flattering against his green uniform. He had clearly been single too long.
Thankfully, the referee and his assistants started walking out of the tunnel and onto the pitch and both teams soon followed. As soon as their red kits appeared, the fans let out a roar so deafening Thomas couldn’t help but feel pride and duty to give them a beautiful victory.
After both teams lining up, it was time for the captains to flip a coin to determine who got kick off. Thomas approached the referee the same time Neuer did, and met cool blue eyes that made him thoughtlessly blurt “Tails”. Neuer looked mildly surprised, but mostly amused as he said, “Good evening to you too, head for me.” And god, that combination of words shouldn’t have stirred something in Thomas the way it did.
Trying to recover from that strange thought, Thomas realized how unfriendly and aloof he must have seemed, so he tried to remedy that by going along with the joke and gave a sheepish smile and a shrug as a response. The ref looked at them with a strange look, but flipped the coin nevertheless. “And it’s head; kick off for Schalke.”, the ref announced.
Neuer looked pleased at that; it showed on his face as a self satisfied smile and a re-instated look of determination inside his eyes. “Good luck with the game, red.” Neuer said with a smile in his voice, and Thomas chuckled at that. “Keep it to yourself, you’ll need all the luck you can get.” And Thomas didn’t know where the wink he gave came from.
Neuer laughed at that as he turned his attention to fist bump the referees and his assistants, and Thomas snapped out of it to do the same thing. Finally, they faced each other and leaned it to bump each other on the back and Thomas couldn’t help but notice how many scars the other man sported on the backs of his hands. Almost as many as Thomas had on his own.
…
The game was going well, but not well enough for Bayern to be in the safe yet. They were in a tie with Schalke, 0-0 already through the second half, and the need for a goal for Bayern was palpable in the air. They’d made some very neat attempts, some that would definitely get by any other goalkeeper. But they weren’t playing against any old goalkeeper; this was Manuel Neuer, the wall, who was so good at maintaining a clean sheet it got most of Bayern frustrated with their fruitless attempts at a goal.
Thomas could feel the desperation brewing in his teammates; it was ten minutes left on the clock and with nothing to show for it. He saw it in how they became more physical with the other team, much more shoving and hitting going on than they usually did, but nothing that needed for a cards to be shown yet.
At this moment, they were progressing with the ball fast towards Schalke’s goal. They were about to score, he could feel it; they had the momentum down and all the players were in perfect position to score that one little goal. The pressure and expectation kept climbing and climbing, almost ready to explode as if it were trapped in a glass bottle. And there it was, the final moment where a boot only had to kick the ball just so to get it on target and into the net.
But then something happened. Just as the striker’s boot was about to connect in incredible force with the ball, Neuer dived for it at the same moment and held the ball with arms outstretched directly in front of his face. And God, if someone had only seen it in slow motion, they would surely predict exactly what would happen next. They was no two ways about it. No other possible outcome.
The boot connected with the ball so hard it pushed it out of Neuer’s hands and connected straight to his head without the shield of the material in between the two. Before anyone could register anything, there was that loud whistle that cut through the cold air that signified that something was wrong. And it was the only sound heard for a few seconds; almost as if the whole stadium had been shocked into silence by what had manifested right in front of their eyes.
As the referee rushed to Neuer, the man himself produced a loud groan of pain. How he wasn’t outright screaming in pain, Thomas didn’t know. It looked particularly bloody from where he was standing. He moved closer to assess the situation and try to deflect the red card that was surely on its way to their striker.
Neuer was still on the floor clutching his head by the time Thomas made it, and he was rolling around in pain from side to side. Thomas had no idea what he was supposed to do while the medics arrived; he clearly couldn’t help the goalkeeper up and he couldn’t check his injury out for himself.
The referee chose that moment to show the red card to Bayern player who had effectively kicked Neuer in the face and caused him to bleed out. To be honest, Thomas felt that red card was well deserved and earned but he still had to fight for his team in front of every body else, if only for show.
“Ref, please this clearly wasn’t intentional, they just happened to be in the way of each other. Come on, now.” Thomas said among at least four other voices from his teammates trying to dissuade the referee. It was a clear lost cause, he decided. No one in their right mind could look at this situation and give it any less than a red card.
In his periphery, Thomas saw Neuer finally sitting up off the floor looking like the pain had diminished at least, but he still had his hand against the wound that was bleeding quite a bit by now. Thomas went to him, questioning where the medics were by now, and tried to see if he could do anything to help.
He balled up his sleeve and tried to lift Neuer’s hand away from the wound so that he could try and stop the bleeding, but the other man was reluctant to do so. “Just let me see,” Thomas said calmly through Neuer’s teammates trying to shove him away from their captain, “I’m not going to hurt you, I’m just trying to make it better.”
Neuer was still grimacing in pain by the time he had told off his teammates and slowly took his bloody hand away from his wound. Thomas met his slightly hazy eyes and tried to look reassuring as he started dabbing gently at the open wound. Neuer hissed in pain at the first contact of Thomas’s sleeve to his head, and almost pulled away before Thomas steadied him with a gentle hand on his shoulder as he started applying light pressure to the wound. For some reason, that hand alone was enough to perceivably calm him down.
Thomas was concentrated on the wound on the blonde’s head, but Neuer had his unfocused eyes fixed on Thomas’s face and just kept looking. It was that way for a couple of seconds, until Neuer’s mind seemed to catch up with him and he let out a gasp. Thomas didn’t know what it was about, and before he could ask the medics had arrived to take over.
The medics started fussing and talking around Neuer, but he paid them no mind even as they started getting him to his feet. He still had his wide eyes on Thomas, and Thomas couldn’t for the life of him understand what he had done to evoke that sort of response.
His answer came to him in the form of a Neuer walking slightly off-balance towards him, returned to clutching his head, and looked positively terrified as he whispered to him, “M-Muller, what happened to your head?” And he sounded every bit as delirious as he looked.
Thomas had no way to look at his head right now, and didn’t know what he nonsense the other man was rambling about as he clearly seemed to be out of it from the pain he was in. Maybe he had developed a sharp headache that he couldn’t think clearly through; that would explain it at least.
Thomas started to walk away after he saw the medics had everything under control, but Neuer caught his hand in between his bloody fingers and sounded frantic again as he said, “your head, your head, it has a scar now. now, but not before, not when the game started, why?” He mumbled words so fast, almost as fast as he processed them, and Thomas only pitied his confused eyes and demeanor and thought that a lot of rest would be good for the goalkeeper.
Neuer still looked back at him as he was lead away from the pitch until he couldn’t look back anymore and Thomas was left staring at his back only. Weird, really strange what just happened. He took a real hard hit that one, Thomas’s brain supplied. But Thomas wasn’t too worried, he’d seen much worse injuries on the pitch that left players in much worse conditions than Neuer was left in. At least Neuer was still awake and coherent; well mostly coherent.
After Schalke’s captain was taken off the pitch, along with their striker who took the red, there was only the ten minutes left to play and nothing now could change the score much. Thomas still tried to keep his team in it, but he himself was still perplexed by his interaction with Neuer just now. It weighed on his mind heavily; he simply needed to know what he’d meant.
The game ended in the disappointing tie that left Bayern feeling perplexed.Thomas felt disappointed in himself and the team; they weren’t supposed to perform so amateur-like during this game. Making reckless passes and so many missed shots, even fouling the other players out of frustration and anger at their inability to bring it this game. It was better than a second loss, but it was still no win which meant Schalke was still on top of them. And that left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
As they walked into the changing rooms and Thomas threw open his locker, he heard his name being called by Joshua who was just behind him. He gave a hum to indicate he was paying attention and turned his face towards the midfielder, inquiring what it was he wanted.
“Captain, coach wants to see you after you cha— woah, what is that on your head, Thomas?” Surprise rang in Joshua’s voice and Thomas started feeling somewhat annoyed by now. What the hell was up with his face now that got pointed out to him twice? “What? What’s wrong with my face?” Thomas slightly raised his voice.
Joshua looked taken aback at his restless manner, “Well, it’s just that you got a scar right there on the right half of your forehead. Brand spanking new, I think. It’s big enough to be noticeable if you’d had it from before right? But I just noticed it now.” Oh lord, what? A new scar? Right now?
Thomas quickly checked the mirror on the inside of his locker and lifted his sweaty hair off his forehead, and zeroed his eyes on the right side of it. And sure enough, there it was. A long, wide scar that ran from his hairline obliquely that definitely, definitely, wasn’t there this morning when he’d last looked in the mirror. And it definitely, definitely, matched the scar he’d just tended to on the pitch. Oh God, oh god, oh god, his brain repeated as a mantra. Had he possibly, maybe, just discovered his soulmate? On the pitch? Another footballer? Another male footballer?
Was that what Neuer was babbling about? Had he noticed it in his state and that’s what had freaked him out? All the evidence pointed towards yes, and Thomas needed at least another hour to process this. Or maybe another day.
“Soulmate’s getting reckless, is she?” Joshua wagged his eyebrows in a joking manner, but Thomas was nowhere close to the mental state required for joking. And his soulmate most definitely was not a she, that was for certain.
He needed to go to him.
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To be continued…