Work Text:
Kevin walks into it. He has walked heads-on into a lot of things in his life. One could even say he has become somewhat of an expert of walking into things, so in theory this one shouldn't be much different.
It’s a day like any other, the team on the way to their match in Sandhausen. Kevin’s in a grouchy mood for no specific reason, and he gets a frown from Daniel when he impatiently pushes him forward so they can board the team bus faster.
Inside, Kevin is about to slide into the row of the seat he’s inofficially reserved for himself like he’s done often before. This time however, he is setting a foot into the row, and when he looks up, it’s--
He’s missing the words to properly describe what happens. He hasn’t changed place exactly: First Kevin was there, in the team bus, and now he’s here, where ever the fuck that might be, with seemingly as much justification.
Kevin knows logically he should be in the bus with Felix next to him chewing his ear off, but suddenly, Kevin’s standing in an office.
The room itself is as dryly and professionally generic as it can be, certainly not a place where Kevin in his Darmstadt team clothes fits in. Kevin is facing a grey desk with a grey monitor on it - cluttered but not messy - and white cabinets with filing folders lining the back wall.
There’s a man behind the desk, wearing a baby blue shirt, a dark blue lanyard and a very, very familiar face. He looks up from his computer in the same moment Kevin takes note of him.
“Neuer?” Kevin asks, glad that he manages to get a word out at all. Years have passed since the last time he still called Manu by his last name (weird how things change), but this person couldn’t possibly be Manu, because - how the fuck?
Manuel takes his hands off the keyboard he had apparently been typing on. “Can I help you?”
“What are you-- Where-- Why am I--” Kevin stutters and finally settles on a precise, “What the fuck?!”
“Excuse me, can I help you?” Manuel repeats with a blank face, sizing Kevin up like he’s seeing him for the first time. “If this is about the support hotline, I can refer you to one of my colleagues.”
The support hotline. His colleagues. Kevin is certain he’s about to have a break-down of epic proportions.
“Neuer!” Kevin calls desperately and slams a hand down on the desk. “Are you fucking kidding me? Is this some joke?”
“Do we know each other?”
“Do we kn- Oh fuck.” Kevin’s knees feel less and less steady. “Can I sit down?”
Manuel squints. Kevin can see his eyes flicking towards the phone on his desk and the door, but then he slowly nods at the chair opposite from him. “Sure.”
It’s a dream. It has to be a bad dream. Kevin is probably lying passed out drunk in his bed at home and his brain is pulling this shit about him switching from bus to office out of his subconcious or whatever. It must be one of these Freudian things, Manuel showing up and all.
Kevin drops down in the chair and buries his head in his hands. “It’s just a dream,” he tells himself.
Manuel clears his throat. “I hate to disappoint you, but this is my life. And until a couple of minutes ago, it didn’t include some person in football garb disturbing my office.” He pauses. “It was a blissful state that I admit I didn’t appreciate enough when I was still in it.”
“Smartass,” Kevin spits, because it’s his reflex when facing Manuel, even if this might not actually be him.
Manuel frowns and leans forward in his chair. “This is all fun and everything, but seriously. Who are you? What do you want? I’m guessing you’re not here because you want me to check your code.”
“Kevin. I’m Kevin Großkreutz,” Kevin replies and waits, but Manuel doesn’t seem to recognise the name at all. It probably should be no surprise at this point. “I’m Kevin Großkreutz, I play for Darmstadt, I- I have a match today. I need to get back!”
In horror, Kevin reaches into his pocket and is relieved to still find his phone there. He unlocks it, pulls up Frings’ number and waits for the dialing tone. For a long time, there’s silence, then a static sound. Kevin tries another number and another one, and it never reaches anyone. Text messages vanish as soon as Kevin sends them. Fucking hell.
“You can try my phone, if you want to,” Manuel says, and to Kevin it almost sounds like he’s intrigued now.
Without a word, Kevin grabs it, dials the number and -- slams the phone down again when somebody from a cleaning service answers instead of his coach.
“Not successful?” Manuel asks. Kevin’s fallen face must be enough of a reply.
“What day is it?”
“Ah, Thursday.”
“Today is Thursday?”
“Yeah.” Manuel shrugs and points at a calender on the wall. The red marker is pointing towards a Thursday indeed. Kevin pulls out his phone again, checks the calender there. Monday.
At least the month fits, Kevin thinks, light-headed.
If it was just a dream, it would at least seem less real. This here, however, seems pretty damn real, even if it shouldn’t. Manuel - or a version of Manuel, Kevin has realised that much - is sitting in his office chair, playing with a pen and watching Kevin with a strange sort of fascination.
Kevin’s brain is forming knots when he tries to think about it more deeply. He was in the bus, and now he is in the office.
It’s just the process in between that’s missing, the leaving and arriving instead of suddenly being. Maybe, if Kevin had picked up a book or two about quantum physics in training breaks, he’d be able to make some sense of it. This way, he mostly feels betrayed, because a working space-time continuum should fucking prevent this, right? But of course even the most basic rules of nature would come up to work against Kevin. Typical.
“Okay, look,” Kevin says, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “I came here out of nowhere so I obviously just have to wait, and at some point I’ll be gone again. I’ll be with my team, and you can get back to whatever shit you’re doing all day. Okay? Okay.”
“Seems like a bright idea,” Manuel says sourly. He stares at Kevin for a moment, but then he turns to his computer to type.
Kevin leans back in his chair, closes his eyes and tries to think himself back home with force. He waits and waits, opens one eye occasionally to check how much time has passed. He’s always met with the white walls of the office and Manuel’s shitty face. After a good twenty minutes of silence only interrupted by the typing noises, nothing has changed and Kevin is beginning to sweat through his clothes.
“Well, this is working extremely well so far,” Manuel speaks up sarcastically, and Kevin wants to punch him so hard.
“Your name is Manuel Neuer,” he says instead. He meant for it to be a question, but it only sounds angry. He was in a bad mood this morning, and all this shit hasn’t improved anything. It just had to be Manuel with whom he’d be stuck.
“If I tell you, can I ask you a couple of questions? I’m not that mad about the distraction anymore,” Manuel says and gestures at this desk, at his computer, at his useless nerd work probably.
“Whatever.”
Manuel rolls his eyes and hands Kevin a small white piece of paper out of a drawer - a business card. It says Manuel Neuer in the first line, then the name of some IT company, an e-mail address and phone numbers.
Kevin looks from Manuel to the card and back to Manuel.
Now that he’s paying attention to it, he can tell that this Manuel is less muscular than the one he knows. The loose shirt hides a lot of it, and Manuel is by no means lanky, but it’s not the looks of a professional athlete either.
“You work here,” Kevin says and, oh boy, he might as well start building a glass cabinet for his Idiot of the Year award.
Manuel raises his eyebrows and swivels left and right in his chair a little. “Yes. For three years. And you look surprised.”
“I know you, we know each other. Where I’m from, you--” Kevin hesitates, doesn’t know how to phrase this without sounding like he was whacked over the head by Kloppo one time too often. What does that even sound like, ‘where I’m from’? Like Kevin’s a fucking alien. “You’re Bayern München’s goalkeeper. You’re the national goalkeeper of Germany. You won the World Cup in 2014.”
Manuel blinks a couple of times, otherwise completely motionless, then he breaks out into laughter. He presses his hand on his chest and laughs loudly, familiarly.
“And you play for Dortmund or what, holy shit,” he wheezes, “this is too good. You’re being real about your Darmstadt outfit? Wow, you’re making my day, dude.”
Of course, this makes Kevin angry. Of course. He can handle a lot, but for somebody to doubt that he was good enough for Dortmund is a fucking bold line to cross.
He pulls out his phone again (it hasn’t changed, Kevin found) and furiously scrolls through his photos until he finds what he’s looking for. Kevin pushes the phone at Manuel who is barely recovering from his fit of laughter. As soon as he sees the photo, he shuts up, though. Kevin grins.
“It’s you and me,” Kevin says helpfully, and Manuel nods silently, angling the phone back and forth as if that could change anything about the screen.
It’s a photo that Kevin remembers being taken very well. Manuel is on the left, sweat-soaked and grinning, his gloves stuck under the waistband of his shorts and his arm around Kevin. Kevin’s on the right, grinning just as stupidly, the polyester Germany flag wrapped around his shoulders, and between them, obviously, the shiny World Cup trophy. It almost seems like a different world, too.
Without asking, Manuel swipes left a couple of times and Kevin knows he’s finding more blurry versions of the same photo, when Sami was too happy to keep the camera still. And when Kevin didn’t have the heart to delete them.
Manuel still looks very composed - even if the lanyard alone makes up about seventy percent of that - for somebody who just realised that the crazy guy telling him about an alternative universe is being for real.
Alternative Universe. Yeah, that’s probably what this mess is.
Manuel gingerly hands the phone back to Kevin. “Kevin, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I play for Bayern München. I’m the goalkeeper for Bayern?”
Kevin nods. “You watch football, yeah?”
Manuel snorts and turns his monitor around just enough so Kevin can see the Schalke wallpaper on it. He’s not entirely sure but he thinks he can recognise Goretzka in the split second, which raises a million new questions, but mostly Kevin is torn between being relieved that this Manuel still supports Schalke - or being disgusted that he still does.
“You used to play for,” Kevin makes a face and waves his hand in direction of the monitor, “them, but it’s a long story that I don’t usually tell before the third date.”
Like the phone calls, the internet on Kevin’s phone obviously doesn’t work either, but maybe he has a couple of or a lot of photos saved of Manuel that he can show him.
Manuel looks at three or four of them, then he pinches his nose and shakes his head. He gets the laughable frown that Kevin knows from the other Manuel, the other other Manuel, the actual Manuel, when he’s trying to be smart.
“We’re going to go get a coffee, and you are going to make me believe that this is real and I’m not going crazy,” Manuel says and doesn’t let Kevin get a word in for this obviously final decision. It’s not like there’s much else Kevin can do though, so he doesn’t even try to object as Manuel turns off his computer and throws over a jacket.
Manuel shoos Kevin towards the door of the office. and the second Kevin walks through the it, he falls into his seat on the Darmstadt bus.
Kevin jerks up and slams his knee against the seat in front of him. A couple of his teammates’ heads turn, and Kevin feels a wave of nausea that passes as quickly as it comes.
“Chill,” Felix says and laughs at the confused look Kevin throws him.
For a cold second, it was all just a dream, but then Kevin brushes against the small paper card in his pocket and he doesn’t have to pull it out to know what it is.
“Shut up,” Kevin replies, too late for it to still be a good comeback, and ignores Felix for the rest of the trip.
Frings lets him play a halftime against Sandhausen and then subs him out for tactical reasons. Kevin doesn’t even have the right to complain, because his mind is admittedly elsewhere.
Kevin tries googling his situation, because that’s kind of what one do nowadays for everything from legal to medical advice.
Kevin struggles to phrase his question as anything but OTHER UNIVERSE???? ALTERNATE CLONE??? HELP??? or symptoms of severe traumatic brain injury - neither of those options brings up anything helpful. The name of the IT company and the phone numbers from Manuel’s business card are dead ends as well, and at some point, Kevin just gives up. He has the card as proof for himself, everything past that is pointless and a waste of time.
At least that’s what Kevin thinks until about a week later.
The next time he switches over happens when he opens the door to his balcony and, walking through it, inexplicably ends up in what appears to be the other Manuel’s kitchen.
“Oh fuck,” Manuel says and clutches the glass of water he almost dropped. “So this is what you meant by ‘coming out of nowhere’. Hold this.”
Manuel shoves the glass into Kevin’s hands. He’s eerily relaxed about it as he wipes up the water he spilled on the floor - while Kevin is dumbfounded.
“I didn’t know you would come back,” Manuel continues. “You disappeared and I was like, if that’s it, I’m going to be mad.”
Kevin shrugs, looks around the kitchen. It’s less plain than the office, and there are some personal items like framed photographs as well. “I didn’t know either,” he says slowly, then more rushed, “What the fuck is happening?”
“I was going to ask the same thing.”
“Well, it’s obviously linked to you! So! It has to have something to do with you.”
“How would I know? You’re the one appearing out of thing air! Showing me creepy pictures of us together.”
Manuel holds out his hand for the glass. Kevin downs the water that’s still in it and hands the empty glass back to him.
“Why can’t you be some expert on relativity theory or a professor or some shit?” Kevin complains. “Instead you, what, write useless nerd shit.”
“It’s called software reviewer,” Manuel says. “I can’t say I chose my career based on the possibility of some wannabe football player from another world showing up in my office!”
They stare each other down, but the longer Kevin looks, the weirder it becomes facing Manuel, who is not quite Manuel.
“This is so fucked up,” Kevin says as he breaks eye contact. “If this is my life now, I swear to god--”
“Two times is hardly a pattern yet,” Manuel supplies, which is right up there with all the useless help he’s given. “How about you use your time to tell me about where you’re from, because you bailed on me last time.”
There’s that phrase again, ‘where you’re from’, and Kevin wants to bang his head against a wall. He doesn’t get the chance though, because Manuel half guides, half manhandles him out of the kitchen into his apparent living room.
Any other day Manuel would be lucky if he survived grabbing Kevin like that with just a black eye, but these days are everything but ordinary.
They sit down at Manuel’s dinner table and Manuel turns on his TV on some random reality tv show on low volume. Kevin’s grateful for the background noise even if he’s not about to say that out loud.
“When was last time?” Kevin asks.
“Last time?”
“Last time we met. Thursday or whatever. When was that for you?”
Manuel squints at him. “Two days ago. It’s Saturday.”
Kevin kind of wants to laugh, but he’s afraid he might throw up if he does.
“Did you win your match?” Manuel asks, but Kevin can’t tell whether he’s really interested or faking it. “You said you had a match on Thursday. Or whatever day that was for you?”
“The one against Sandhausen, no, the next one yes, but-- Sorry, Can we talk about how you’re an IT consultant?!”
“Uhm, can we talk about how I’m a worldclass goalkeeper in your world?”
“Worldclass,” Kevin repeats mockingly, but Manuel ignores him, of course.
“Tell me about me. Your Manuel, whatever. You know what I mean. I look fit over there,” Manuel says, and Kevin sneers. He could give a speech about Manuel Neuer, World’s Best Goalkeeper, now and probably feel Manuel gloat even from another world and a couple of kilometres away. Or he could tell his own truth.
“You were at Schalke, you were blond and chubby and I hated you and you hated me and it was the goddamn way of life. Then you went corrupt, Bayern bought you, everyone hated you and I prefer to think that included you yourself. Then half of them started loving you, you won the league, the Champions League, the World Cup, god knows where you shove all your stupid trophies. And now Bayern is like a cockroach that just won’t die. The End.”
“Hold up, hold up,” Manuel says after the rant, holding up one hand. His hands still look like goalkeeper hands, Kevin finds, then scolds himself for even thinking about it.
“What?”
“Track back to the part where I won the world cup.”
“Did you even listen to anything I just said?”
“You said I won the World Cup.”
“We won the World Cup.”
“I won the World Cup!” Manuel exclaims. “That must have been the best day of my life and I haven’t even experienced it!”
“We won the World Cup,” Kevin stresses again through grating teeth. “What did you think that photo was from? Theme party?”
“But-- what was it like? Was I good?” Manuel asks. It doesn’t sound like he’s fishing for compliments at all, more like an excited boy. Kevin almost feels bad, because this Manuel doesn’t know. He has no clue what it’s like.
“A lot of people called you a hero.”
Manuel leans back in his chair, a look on his face that’s half wonder and half disbelief. “What about you?”
“I didn’t play,” Kevin says, and he can see a bit of pity in Manuel’s eyes now. Quite quickly, Kevin’s sympathy about Manuel not knowing is gone. He’s not about to be judged by someone who never even played Bundesliga.
“I meant, what about you and me? You and him? We’re friends?”
“No.”
Manuel looks at him like he expects him to expand on that, same stupid quirk of his mouth as the other Manuel.
“No? The photograph--”
“No,” Kevin repeats. “I hate you. You’re an idiot and a traitor, and you always will be.”
Manuel snorts. “Why do I have the feeling he’d say something like that about you, too?”
“Because apparently being a smartass is genetic, huh.”
“Yet he’s the reason you’re here,” Manuel says.
“What do you mean?” Kevin narrows his eyes and leans in closer across the table. Obviously it crossed his mind, but he doesn’t know what to do with any part of that information. He hasn’t seen Manuel face to face for… since that misguided party Mats threw in summer probably.
“I know nothing,” Manuel tracks back, “it only seems like the obvious thing. But, hey, I don’t know your life.”
Kevin rubs a hand across his face.
“I don’t even know when I’ll switch back,” he says, but nobody responds, and when he lifts his hand from his eyes, Kevin realises it’s because there’s nobody else on his balcony with him.
Kevin turns left and right, like he’d still be able to spot Manuel’s living room somewhere out of the corner of his eye. But he doesn’t and only finds that he gets goosebumps because he left his jacket in the other world.
Goddamn it.
Manuel’s words made him think, though, and Kevin pulls out his phone and opens a text window for his Manuel. ‘His’ Manuel. Also such a smarmy bullshit. Both Manuels are equally stupid after all.
Kevin keeps it short and sends, how are you? because he doesn’t even know whether this number is still active, and he wouldn’t put it past Manuel to ignore texts from him.
He curses himself for not taking a photo with the other Manuel, because then he’d at least have some sort of proof. But there’s always next time. Kevin is painfully sure there will be one.
Manuel doesn’t immediately answer the text, which - obvious if you’re Mr Head&Shoulders Ad Face and get a trillion messages per minute. Still annoying, but Kevin bravely decides to soldier on and live his life despite these harsh conditions.
Training next day takes place as usual, even if Frings takes Kevin aside because of course he noticed him brooding about something.
“Kevin, everything okay? You seem a little out it.”
No, really?
Kevin sells him some shit about the weather, the moon cycle and whatever else, and thankfully Frings pretends to buy it.
Kevin’s in his car, thinking about which CD to put on, and then he’s on a city centre sidewalk, trying to keep up with Manuel’s longer legs. He bumps into an old lady as he catches up, but nobody here seems weirded out by Kevin appearing out of thin air.
“Hi,” Manuel says, not blinking an eye. They have some sort of routine going on now, after the third, fourth, fifth time that Kevin switched. Manuel’s wearing a black coat and a scarf looped around his neck, his cheeks are a little red and his hair is mussed from the wind.“You left your jacket here again, but I don’t have it with me.”
“Keep it, I know you sleep with it under your pillow now,” Kevin shoots back, at which Manuel rolls his eyes. “Where are you going?”
“Throwing a letter for my insurance into a public letter box. Probably a wild concept for rich football players, I know.”
“Says the Bayern player.”
“That’s him, not me.” Manuel waves it off. “You’re world champion! I would literally kill a man for a that. Perhaps a child even, if it’s not a cute one.”
Kevin smirks, but he doesn’t get a chance to answer anyway, because Manuel turns to him like he’s suddenly remembering something important.
“Has Schalke, uhm, been Deutscher Meister lately over there?” he asks. It’s what they mostly talk about, football, because Kevin’s not one to get sentimental about personal things, and Manuel seems to gladly follow the direction.
“Out of all the questions you could ask-- Wait.” Kevin stares at Manuel, grin spreading across his face to the edge of the anatomically possible. “You mean they haven’t won it here either? I fucking knew it! Trash club everywhere.”
Whatever this whole thing has to do with Manuel, if Kevin was sent here to experience this: Worth it all the way.
“Oh, fuck you,” Manuel says and starts walking more quickly so Kevin almost has to jog to keep up. “Who even asked you?”
Good
?
That’s all Manuel texts back. Two words, well, more like one word and a miserable excuse for one. Somehow Kevin expected something more substantial than that.
anything weird happen to you lately
Manu seems to have warmed up, because Kevin has to wait less than a day for an answer.
Excluding this conversation? No
Hm.
It’s not like Kevin expected Manuel to say, “Yes, sorry, I found a way to contact my alternate nerd self and figured I could send you to him occasionally for laughs and/or blowjobs,” but this is arguably less than nothing. Log 354, The space-time continuum continues to be an unreliable asshat.
Are you in trouble??? Manuel sends, which Kevin is offended at to be quite honest, especially the multiple question marks. Probably because Manuel can’t hit the keys properly with his inhumanly huge hands.
Usually when Kevin gets himself into another big mess, Manuel texts him first (one-worded, but quicker than half of the people Kevin sees on a daily basis), not the other way around.
Kevin starts to type a reply when the phone suddenly starts to ring and vibrate, and the screen shows a stupid photo of Manuel that Kevin added to his phone number in a weak moment.
Kevin almost throws his phone across the room in surprise, then he scrambles to decline the call.
If there’s one thing he doesn’t want, it’s Manu laughing at him all high and mighty while Kevin tries to explain what’s happening in sane words. Not without a photo to back it up, no way in hell.
Manuel tries calling once again, Kevin immediately declines again.
Manuel sends, ????? Idiot. and goes offline.
Actually, Kevin doesn’t want to whine about it anymore, but actually actually he still ends up in a bar with a couple of drinks to his name and Neven, wearing a leather jacket over a BVB shirt, sitting next to him.
“I think I’m, like. Glitching.”
“Cheers,” Neven says and raises his beer bottle at Kevin.
“No, I mean, for real. I walk into another world sometimes.”
Kevin takes a swig and then he starts talking, slurred probably, but Neven listens and nods understandingly. He used to be paired with Mats on the pitch so he’s 100% heard stupider and less believable shit than what Kevin is telling him right now.
“What the fuck is this, Neven?” Kevin finishes eloquently. “What and why is it?”
Neven only slightly tilts his head. He sounds more sober than he should. “You’re good at walking into stupid shit. And you’re not exactly good at staying in one place, so. That’s what, I think.”
“Fuck off, that makes no sense.”
“No,” Neven says sadly. “Just go fuck Neuer, it doesn’t have to make sense.”
“Yes.” Kevin raises the bottle to his lips, then he’s processed Neven’s sentence completely. “What?”
“It’s a sign.”
“A sign. For what?”
“That you should fuck Neuer,” Neven says, rolling his eyes. “Pay attention, Kevin! Isn’t that how this magic shit works?”
Kevin is feeling a bit dizzy from the combination of alcohol and, well, Neven. “I was thinking more in the lines of, what’s it called. Quantum physics.”
“Now there’s a sentence nobody ever thought you’d say,” Neven says and laughs. “Keep it quiet or people might start thinking you’re smart.”
“You think the glitching will stop if I fuck Neuer?”
“To be honest, I thought you already had, but Bene said you haven’t, so what the fuck do I know? Worst case, you’ll have fucked jock Neuer and have to keep nerd Neuer around.” Neven grimaces as if he took a hearty bite out of a lemon. “Can we stop talking about this?”
“You started it!”
The thing is, Kevin knows for certain now that his problem has to do with Manuel and Manuel only.
Not Kevin himself, is the point. If he was - that’s his logic - there’d be another Kevin somewhere along with the other Manuel.
But when Kevin googled himself when he was in the other world, the search brought up a couple of Kevin Großkreutz, but nobody who obviously appeared to be the other version of him. The other Manuel never heard his name either.
So, for fucking once, it has to be Manuel’s and not Kevin’s fault.
The guy who’s goalkeeper for Germany’s national team over there is someone Kevin’s never heard of before, called Alexander Ahmad. Ter Stegen’s still just number two. The jerseys look all wrong, three stars. A fucking joke.
Kevin starts keeping the World Cup medal in his pocket, because he figures that it’s something that the other Manuel deserves to see. It’s not a gesture of friendship, but denying it to him would probably count as violation of the dignity of man.
Kevin’s glad when he switches again (from the lift on his way to the team’s newest VAR education to Manuel’s living room), because it gets kind of awkward, carrying the medal around.
Manuel’s sitting on his couch, feet propped up on the coffee table and reading a thriller book with a knife on the cover.
“Hello,” Kevin says, “Do you have a football pitch anywhere around here?”
Manuel knits his brows. “I think there’s one down the street, behind the junction. There are kids playing there sometimes. Why?”
“Great. Let’s go.”
Manuel rolls his eyes, but he goes to change into sports clothes with a slight smile on his face. Perhaps that last part has to do with him emerging in a Schalke jersey a couple of minutes later.
“Ew,” Kevin says, at which Manuel pats the badge and draws it up to kiss it demonstratively. What would his Manuel think about that?
“You have no room to complain anyway,” Manuel points out. “You’re in full team clothes which, uh, cool when you’re a pro player, but here you just look like a wanker.”
Kevin gladly flips him off.
The pitch Manuel mentioned is an asphalt field with a fence of metal bars around it. There are a couple of teens hanging out, some juggling a ball, others standing alongside smoking.
As the two of them approach them, Manuel seems uncomfortable at first, which is amusingly unlike him. Then again, in the other world, the teenagers would be all over Manuel if he decided to randomly show up on a public football field.
The teenagers eye Manuel and Kevin when they arrive at the pitch, as teenagers do, but Kevin simply walks up to them and asks like a bulldozer, and they get invited into a five-a-side match by a girl with a buzzcut who’s wearing a Real Madrid jersey.
It’s a funny thing. The football part, of course, playing just for the heck of it, but also watching Manuel try.
He’s not bad, and Kevin knows that this Manuel played as a boy, that he visits the gym and everything, but holy shit, is it still hilarious to see him get nutmegged by a kid half his size.
It takes a bit of persuading to get Manuel into goal, because apparently he’s decided to play coy about it. However, since this was Kevin’s aim from the start, he doesn’t give up until Manuel is standing on the white line, awkwardly clapping together the too small gloves he borrowed.
“I’m more into bowling,” Manuel says apologetically when they walk home after the match, even though he caught quite a few shots. Kevin still put one past him, he’d just like to mention that.
“You’re not bad,” Kevin says and wipes the sweat off his face with the inside of his shirt. “Gives me literal physical pain to say that, but you’re really not bad. Why’d you stop?”
“Playing football?”
“Yeah.”
Manuel laughs and draws a hand through his hair. “It’s a fantasy, going pro, isn’t it? I’m not too bad with maths, and the chances? Slim, my friend. Slim.”
“You made it though.”
“He did.” In front of the door to his house, Manuel takes out his key and sticks it into the keyhole, but hesitates. “He didn’t kiss one of his U17 teammates in front of half the team either, I’m guessing.” Manuel shrugs, then he opens the door and climbs the stairs to his flat in long strides.
Kevin shakes off his surprise and hurries to follow Manuel, who only fled so far as to lean against a wall in the hallway of his flat.
“Don’t ask,” Manuel says, and Kevin doesn’t. If there’s something he could do at an equally professional level as football, it’d be denial of feelings, so he understands.
“Can we take a photo together?” Kevin asks instead. “I want to show it to him. You. The other you.”
Manuel nods, but keeps a frown, and the frown shows up in the photo as well. So does the Schalke jersey of course. Oh well.
When Kevin puts his phone back into his pocket, it slips against metal and Kevin remembers what else he wanted to do.
“Hey, Manu, before I glitch back,” he says and pulls out the World Cup medal to let it dangle in front of Manuel’s face.
“Oh,” Manuel says softly, eyes wide, and carefully slides the medal into his palm, like he’s afraid it might break. “Wow. This is the real--?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
Manuel strokes his thumb over the bold relief on the metal, then he turns it around and holds it up to his chest as an idea of what it would look like hanging around his neck. He keeps it there for a couple of seconds, then he hastily hands it back to Kevin.
“Thank you. Really. Just kind of hard to,” Manuel does an undirected gesture that encompasses everything from Kevin to himself to half his flat, “hard to grasp.”
Kevin nods. The two of them stand opposite from each other like that in silence for a moment, Kevin’s hand tightly closed around the medal in his pocket.
“I jerked him off once,” Kevin says then out of the blue - because fuck it, if they’re at the point of sharing things, just fuck it all. Manuel looks up with a curious look on his face. “Perfect son-in-law Manuel Neuer and I jerked him off in some Brazilian broom cupboard.”
Manuel scrunches up his nose in a way that’s so Manuel in any world that Kevin wants to punch something.
“That… puts a couple of a things into perspective,” Manuel says slowly, eyes somehow looking through Kevin. “And then?”
“What, ‘and then’?” Kevin ask irritatedly. “What do you think happened? I didn’t fucking marry him, did I?”
Manuel nods knowingly, and it’s so insufferable that Kevin regrets telling him anything. “He acted like it didn’t happen,” Manuel says. A statement, not a question.
“It was the World Cup, dude, and we weren’t like Mats and Benedikt. Manu owes me jack shit.”
“I think you owe yourself something.”
Manuel pushes himself away from the wall closer to Kevin. The room is not particularly wide, so it only takes two steps for him to be right up in Kevin’s personal bubble.
Manuel’s gaze is intense and his eyes look grey in the evening light, as he puts a hand on Kevin’s chest. It’s a gentle touch, but Kevin automatically presses himself against the wall behind him, head falling back to look up at Manuel.
Manuel leans forward, tilts his head and firmly kisses Kevin.
For a second, Kevin thinks about kissing back and considers the alternate universe where he does, or a universe where he’s just the electrician coming to fix a light bulb in Manuel’s office. A universe where he’s a football player that used to play for Dortmund and Manuel’s a goalkeeper that used to play for Schalke.
Fuck.
How fucking predictable. Congratulations, Kevin Großkreutz, you continue to play yourself.
Kevin turns his head to break the kiss and half-heartedly pushes Manuel away, who doesn’t seem too surprised.
“Manuel,” Kevin says, “I--”
“I’m not him, is that why?”
“Maybe if you’d lose the jersey,” Kevin says, focusing on the ugly badge over Manuel’s heart to avoid looking at his face. His voice is far less steady than he’d like.
Manuel sighs. “Kevin? You’re a fucking idiot.”
Kevin shrugs helplessly, and is suddenly facing is own reflection in the wall of the mirrored lift.
He needs a solid minute to remember that he’s here for the VAR lecture. Non-linear time’s a bitch.
we have to talk, Kevin texts Manu and attaches the photo he took with the other Manuel to the message.
Whatsapp is a snitch, so Kevin knows for certain that Manuel saw the picture, but he doesn’t reply until two days later. Kevin hopes those two days were sufficiently filled with panic, just so the two of them are even.
I swear I didn’t know, Manuel’s short reply reads. Need to explain in person.
Sat 20:30 changing room
Please
Kevin stumbles over his answers. They confirm three things: One, that Manuel can’t text properly to save his life. Second, that he thinks a normal meet-up location is at a stadium after a league match between Dortmund and Bayern. Third, if Manuel needs to explain something, then… he’s at fault somehow and the problem makes sense to him, even if he didn’t know about Kevin glitching around at first.
Kevin’s tense waiting for Saturday, although he obviously plays it cool in training. He doesn’t switch back to the other Manuel, and he’s not sure whether he expected that or not.
At some point, Neven calls him just to ask whether he’s fucked Neuer yet, to which Kevin replies that he doesn’t think Neven’s organised his threesome with Schmelle and Nuri yet so who’s he to talk, and Neven hangs up on him.
It’s Neven who scores the winning goal against Bayern with an improbable volley though, so Kevin gives himself a bit of credit that he can jog down to the home changing room with a smug smile on his face.
He high-fives a couple of his old teammates who are coming from the pitch happy and sweaty, but he doesn’t find a lot of time to talk, because next to the entrance to the changing room there is Mats leaning against the wall, looking like a kind sculptor planted him there.
“Manu wants to talk to you,” he says. It’s almost endearing that Manuel sent Mats to find him - if Kevin didn’t find the word endearing nausea-inducing.
Kevin follows Mats into his uncertain future to the away team changing room.
“What do you know about, uh, this?” Kevin casually asks, really hoping that number one gossip Mats wasn’t the first to hear the story from Manuel.
Mats opens his mouth, and obviously Kevin expects to hear an answer, but suddenly he’s looking through Mats at white cabinets.
Manuel looks up from where he’s sitting behind his desk leafing through a filing folder.
Kevin is about to complain about the bad timing of the glitch, when the office around him turns weirdly blurry and for the first time, he feels something physically dragging him between the two worlds.
Kevin’s vision gets shaky and he’s seeing two images at once, overlapping and merging uncontrollably. Manuel in a Bayern jacket, hair wet from the shower, interfers with Manuel in a blue dress shirt and a lanyard around his neck.
“Großkreutz? Kevin?” Manuel asks, or maybe the other Manuel does, it sounds like Kevin’s hearing it through a tin can, and reaches his hand towards Kevin.
Kevin grabs the hand, then he’s suddenly only grabbing air and he sees the wrong Manuel walk towards him, then there’s a steady hand around his wrist and another supporting his back. Large hands, goalkeeper hands.
Kevin blinks, trying to get rid of the fog and double images in his vision.
Manuel, the right Manuel, drags him into one of the storage rooms that branch off from the main way, and Mats, the nosy asshole he is, follows right after them.
When Manuel is sure than Kevin is able to stand on his own feet again, he carefully lets go and takes a step back.
Kevin is catching his breath and watches Manuel hunch his shoulders. It’s a hard feat, trying to make yourself disappear when you’re six feet four.
“I think I fucked up,” Manu says, jumbling the words together quickly like he doesn’t actually want to admit it.
“No shit,” Kevin says.
Mats coughs.
“I might have done something Thomas said was not a good idea.”
Mats coughs again. Manuel throws him an angry look.
“Something that Philipp told me to definitely refrain from doing,” Manuel confesses. “To be fair, Xabi said it was fine.”
“Was that before or after he wistfully stared at the portrait of Gerrard in his locket?”
“Shut up, Mats,” Manuel and Kevin say at the same time. Kevin continues, “What on Earth did you do, Manu?”
“Uh, okay. So we won the Bundesliga last season, right? The bowl.”
“I swear to god, this better be linked to our problem, and fucking directly,” Kevin hisses. “You do realise that I have literally been glitching into a whole other world without control?! You know that, right?!”
“After you sent me the picture, Philipp gave me an idea of what could have happened, the other me and the other world, yeah. I’m -- You don’t want to hear that, but I’m sorry.”
“What the fuck did you do, is what I’m asking.”
“And I’m telling the fucking story!” Manuel replies, but then he’s back to hunching his shoulders, scratching his head. “I made a wish on the trophy when we held it up. Don’t even say a word, Kevin. I, uh. I wished for it to be easier.”
“Easier? Easier what?”
Manuel pulls a face and glances from Mats, who’s doing his best to look innocent, to Kevin.
“Us,” Manuel says.
“This is your idea of easier?!” Kevin asks, voice jolting. “Easy was when you said thanks, bye, and walked off the handjob orgasm without a word.”
Mats softly gasps, and Kevin sees a vivid image of himself roundhouse kicking him through three walls straight.
“You can’t order something from the trophy, it gives you its own idea. I also don’t know why it only started now,” Manuel explains, gesturing helplessly. His ears have turned decidedly pink. “So the guy in the photo, the guy you met was the less complicated version of me. I guess.”
“Jesus Christ, and you really believe that self-pitying crap? I thought I was stuck in a space-time paradox, and meanwhile you were crying over a magic piece of metal. If there’s something you want, you know there’s this great thing called opening your mouth and talking.”
“Like you’re one to talk! You can’t take a single call because you’re too busy acting tough about your hard life in Darmstadt and won’t even--”
Kevin pulls Manuel forward into a kiss by the collar of his jacket. Manuel’s wet hair brushes against Kevin’s skin, and Manuel freezes, eyes open and wide. He makes a surprised noise that’s muffled into a hum by Kevin’s mouth.
It’s weird how sometimes you don’t realise you’re missing something until you get it.
Kevin swipes his tongue across Manu’s lips and touches the fingers of one hand under the hem of the Bayern jacket. Manuel collects himself enough to respond to the kiss, but just as that happends, Kevin moves back an inch.
“Screw you. You better fix this now,” Kevin says against Manu’s mouth, their breath hot between them, then he lets go off Manuel’s collar. “The other Manuel was fine, but that’s not my world.”
“Who was he?” Manuel asks, rubbing his neck where his collar probably cut into his skin a bit. Behind him, Mats is trying to become one with the wallpaper, which would honestly serve him right.
“He wasn’t half as insufferable, half as arrogant, half as stupid as you are.” Kevin shrugs and stuffs his hands into his pockets. “He wasn’t you.”
Manuel tries hard to bite his lips into a thin line, but Kevin can still see the hint of an embarrassed gloating grin break out behind it.
“Don’t you dare think you’re on my good side until you’ve made this stop,” Kevin says.
“I don’t know how.”
“Excuse me.”
“Would you ever relax for a second? I don’t know how, there’s no manual for it, but I did wish for the trophy to take it back as soon as you told me the other day.”
“I’m putting my fate in the non-existent hands of a trophy,” Kevin shakes his head. “It didn’t work. I switched just earlier when I walked here. You pulled me back.”
Mats clears his throat. “I’d just like to repeat that Philipp explicitly told you not do to it back then.”
“Mats?” Manuel asks with a fake smile. “Go write some tweets, would you?”
Mats, the passionate voyeur, reluctantly does as he’s told, and as Manu turns back with another stupid ‘Sorry’ on his lips, Kevin realises what he just said.
“You pulled me back,” Kevin repeats. “Manu, listen, you pulled me back.”
That’s what the dragging had been that he had never felt during the glitch before. An anchor, as impossible and cheesy as that sounds.
“From- from the other world? So the trophy…”
Kevin groans and slaps his hand against Manuel’s arm. “I wish you’d shut up about trophies for once in your life. You’re the one who fixed it. Hell, you’re the one who wished for it. Stop walking away from shit!”
“Says you.”
“Yes, says me. I hate you, Manu, but are we fucking over pretending, we mean that? I know, ridiculous sob story about how I learnt from the shitty glitch thing, but what if I did and I’m fed up with waiting for you to own up?”
“Oh.” Manuel looks shocked about the sudden rant, and now Kevin’s embarrassed about it, too.
“Is that all?” he asks.
Manuel draws a hand through his hair that is starting to dry fluffily. “No, it’s-- I’m over it, too. Pretending, whatever. I’m sorry about the wish. And Brazil, sort of. And Mats’ party. Although that was your fault, too.”
“What happened at Mats’ party, stays at Mats’ party. But I’m glad we’re on the same page and I’m so, so glad you’re not some geek software author or whatever the fuck.” Kevin pauses, squints, then asks, “Did you ever want to kiss any of your teammates when you played in the U17 team?”
“What?” Manuel asks, eyebrows raised at the sudden change of topic, but he blushes a shade of pink that betrays him.
“Never mind. There’s a lot I need to tell you about you. Are you busy today?”
Manuel shrugs. “Uh, the team is gonna go back, but not really. I need to tell Philipp you’re not dead and that you didn’t kill me, but other than that, not really. ”
“Good,” Kevin says, throwing an arm around Manu’s shoulders as well as he can with the height difference. He doesn’t even try to fight the stupid smirk that grows on his face.
“There’s something Neven and the other Manuel told me to do and I really, really wouldn’t like to disappoint them.”