Chapter Text
Some Saturdays it was just fucking impossible to get out of bed. Not because it was nearly the weekend. Not because you had exciting plans or anything. You were people’s plans. The bar was up and running and gaining a group of faithful regulars - the menu was working out well, good word of mouth was making it around Fort Bragg - but the weekends still required a special level of determination.
Last night you’d had a big group of guys in who were freshly stateside, and they had closed the place down before taking home your two best waitresses. You could only pray they wouldn’t be too hungover to work tonight.
Dragging yourself out of bed, you decide the best course of action is to throw yourself directly into the shower to wash off the sweat of the kitchen from the night before. After closing you’d just collapsed, barely stripping off your clothes to fall into bed naked without any fucks given. You wouldn’t have given a shit if your roommate saw you drag your naked ass into your shared bathroom - she’d seen worse when you were roommates in culinary school - but the loud pop music playing from the kitchen told you she was making breakfast.
Turning on the spray, you shove your head under it and sigh at the warm water. Water which quickly turned ice cold.
“CHRISTA!” You come screaming out of the bathroom, wrapped in your bathrobe with half a head of shampoo. “You used all the fucking hot water?!” You groan when she shrugs her shoulders and offers you a cup of coffee in her characteristically chipper voice. Fucking Saturdays, you grumble.
——
Frankie groans, the insistent beeping of his alarm making his eyes pop open, reaching over to the right side of him and fumbling for the alarm and prompting the groans of the four other men in the tent with him.
“Jesus Fish, did you have to set it so Goddamn early?” Benny mumbles, rolling to his side on the single cot he had called home for the past 8 months.
“Turn the fucking thing off, Catfish.” He huffs and throws up an arm, blocking the pillow that comes down from up above him. Pope’s rack.
“Hijo de puta.” Frankie, aka Francisco “Catfish” Morales, Captain US Army Special Forces, hisses and swats at the makeshift nightstand beside the lower bunk until his hand finally connects with his alarm, slamming the snooze button to stop the screeching before he flips the switch to the off position. “Happy?” He shoots back at Pope, lifting his leg and kicking the ass shaped lump that had settled between the bars of the upper rack.
“Fuck off.” Pope moans, and Benny and Will laugh from their own bunk. The other man of their team, their leader, Tom “Redfly” Davis, still snored away with his headphones over his ears.
Groaning, he rolls out of the bed, careful not to slam his head on the bunk above him. Sometimes he wondered why the military hated them so much, making grown ass men sleep in such shitty beds. He got it, to a point. They were Delta, trained and battle-hardened operators, but would it fucking kill Uncle Sam to buy some decent fucking beds for the men and women who fought the wars for him? Frankie didn’t think so, but that was just him and his aching back talking.
“I’m heading to the latrine.” He slides his feet into his shower shoes and grabs his toiletry kit. Need to shave and brush his teeth, among other things. His PT shorts and shirt would look no different from thousands of other military members starting their day.
Benny snorts. “Enjoy rubbing one out!” He calls out and Frankie flips him the bird before opening the door of the trailer that the Army had turned into a bunk house for their team. He blinks at the bright light, squinting before shutting the door behind him and sighing as he starts his last full day in Afghanistan. God willing and the creek doesn’t rise, he’ll be on a plane bound for home by tonight.
——
Christa had had the decency to make french toast as an apology for using all the hot water, and once you had finished toweling off from your freezing cold shower, you’d thumped down at the kitchen counter to eat with her and go over the schedule for the day. Shoving the last bite of custardy bread around your plate as your roommate finishes going over the employee schedule for the day, you shriek and grimace, grabbing your left arm as the feeling of something white hot slicing through your flesh washes over you – sharp and blinding at first before it slowly starts to ebb.
“Fucking hell!” You groan, inspecting your arm. “Clumsy ass fucking soulmate.” One more scar to add to the list of accidental body modifications that your soulmate’s skin had transferred to you, along with all the tattoos. It was a screwy system, in your opinion, that you had to share a major part of your body and appearance with a person you’d never met who was supposed to be your perfect match.
Soulmates were great for other people. For Christa even, despite having lost her soulmate in a car accident last year. People signed up for soulmate app services to help them track down their universe-approved mate via a giant catalog of injuries, body modifications, and other information that people willingly gave up into the world to find someone they believed would make their life complete.
You had never subscribed to all the hype. Your parents had been soulmates but somehow still ended up divorced, and your sister had dedicated her entire adult life to finding the woman the world told her she was supposed to be with - only for that woman to be halfway across the world. You hadn’t heard from her since.
Whoever your “perfect match” was, he was prone to getting weird tattoos and had so many scars you had to imagine he was the most accident-prone person on the planet. Goody.
——
Frankie stares at the mirror, feeling a bit better since he had jerked off in the port-a-john. It was fucking sad sometimes. 35 years old and already over halfway done with his 20 years and he hadn’t even found his soulmate. He had started to think that the universe was fucking with him, and he didn’t have one. Or, knowing his luck, something had happened, and they had died. Fuck knows he had almost died plenty of times. He looks at the pink and puckered skin of his newest scar. Gunshot wound while evac-ing wounded soldiers when they had been pinned down by the enemy. He hadn’t felt it at the time, but when he’d gotten the bird back to base, his left arm had been covered in blood.
No, he didn’t think he had a soulmate. Because in 35 years, he had never had a scar or a tattoo transfer over to him. He shook his head, trying to push away the depressing thought as he opened his kit to grab his razor and toothbrush. He had looked for his scars and tattoos on the soulmate app with no luck and had honestly given up hope. Maybe it just wasn’t in the cards for him. It was rare to not have a soulmate, but it happened. Maybe he was just unlucky.
——
Prepping in the bar’s kitchen gave you a clear head. People hated the monotony of culinary school lessons on knife skills and mise en place, but it gave you a sense of calm. You could get your work done and listen in on the buzz of the world around you - Christa clanging away behind the bar in the dining room, your newest bartender chattering at her about how she’d gotten a hit on her soulmate app that morning and excitedly showing Christa his picture. You shook your head. As far as you were concerned, this bar was your soulmate. You had moved halfway down the east coast from Rhode Island to start it in exactly the right place with exactly the right person, and you loved it with every bit of you.
You needed the rest of this weekend to go smoothly. Scuttlebutt was that another group of soldiers was supposed to be coming home soon and you needed the base to be buzzing about your place to get this new group in. Every unit that decided they loved your bacon jalapeño mac and cheese, chicken and waffles, or homemade ice cream was another group of regulars you gained. The Alewife was only six months old. You needed this.
——
Frankie sighs in relief as soon as the doors closed on the transport. He looks over at the rest of the guys, bags at their feet and each one of them leaning their heads back against the headrest. It had been a hard deployment. Their team had been stretched thin by the number of ops they had run, and they were all looking forward to leave when they got back to Bragg.
Will had already said that Jenny would be waiting for them. His soulmate that the lucky bastard had found when he was 12 years old. They had grown up high school sweethearts and Frankie couldn’t help but be envious of that. Tom was married to Molly, his soulmate, but their relationship showed that all soulmates weren’t meant to be. Their relationship was tenuous, but he also had to admit that could just be because Tom was an asshole a lot of the time. He never seemed to know when to turn off the things that made him a good soldier. It didn’t always make for a good husband, or even a good man.
Pope had just found his soulmate before their last deployment, and he was eager to get back to her. Funny how a lewd and strategically placed tattoo would be the reason that a one-night stand would turn out to be his soulmate. But for the man who had been the whore of the team, it was fitting. Benny was the in same boat Frankie was, still not having found that one that the universe had deemed perfect for him. Not that it seemed to bother the good-natured younger Miller brother. He had his pick-up line picked out for years, just waiting for the right person to use it on.
Looking forward again, Frankie sighs and closes his eyes. Maybe when he got back, he would have to look in the dating sight for people without soulmates. He was tired of one-night stands and being told they were just waiting for their soulmate to show up. He just wanted to connect with someone.
——
It’s a night of slinging drinks for you, as Christa has her shift in the kitchen tonight. You typically don’t get as many tips as your perky business partner, in part because you’re a certified ball of sarcasm, but also from your goddamn soulmate’s tattoo. Back when The Alewife opened, you had had a few weeks of rowdy customers thinking they could turn your place into a dive and throwing punches to prove it. On one particularly reckless weekend you had had to roll up your sleeves and break up the fight yourself. The man you pulled away had turned to say something biting and no doubt sexist to you but had stood up straight when he saw the ink on the top of your right arm - what you had figured was from a video game you’d never heard of or something similar. “Your soulmate is Delta Force?” The man had asked, his eyebrows up in surprise. “Sorry, ma'am. You won’t have any more trouble from us.”
It had helped. You had started rolling up the sleeves of your t-shirts or simply wearing tank tops to work. Sundresses sometimes, if it was hot out and you were front of house that night. With no more bar fights since that weekend, you had looked up Delta Force and found out their reputation as seriously elite soldiers. For an elite soldier, your soulmate certainly seemed clumsy as fuck. But it also affected your tips. Nobody wanted to flirt with the universe-approved mate of a soldier who could kick their ass.
The rowdy group from last night is back (thank God your waitresses made it to work on time) and they’ve brought friends this time. Taking up a full three booths, at least they’re stuffing their obnoxious mouths with food and drink while they shout at each other and disrupt your other paying customers. Ugh. Fucking Saturdays.
——
Frankie groans, opening his eyes when the plane’s wheels hit the ground. He had slept practically the entire way back to the states, stiff from the seats but relieved that he was back in North Carolina. Even if everyone in the Army considered Fayetteville a shithole, it was home. He wondered how it had changed over the past eight months. It would be nice to eat something besides MREs and fucking chow hall food.
“Wooh! We’re home baby!” Benny hollers out and the rest of the plane erupts into cheers, men and women all thankful they had made it home. “Fuck yes, beer!”
Frankie chuckles. It had been a long, dry eight months. The entire team could use a drink. Hopefully his favourite bar was still there and hadn’t been shut down on put on the black out list.
——
You groan when you see the beginnings of a fight brewing. You had tended bar enough years to see the signs and the guys in culinary school had all had fragile fucking masculinity for the most part, starting fights over absolutely nothing just to be the big man on campus. Sometimes you were surprised you had survived that place without knocking anyone out.
One of the bigger guys in the group has decided that your newest, youngest employee is his target for the night. The girl is barely of age and pretty green, but you liked her in her interview, and she was a hard worker so here she was. Except right now she was being crowded against the back of one of the booths while Big Boy Beer Breath tried to put the moves on her. Too bad for him that she was gay, but that was beside the point.
“Come on, buddy,” you approach slowly, towel sticking out of your jean shorts pocket and tank top showing off your soulmate’s ink (at least it was good for something). “I think it’s time to settle up and head out for the night.” The lumbering oaf looks over at you, sizes you up, and decides to ignore you, going back to practically licking his lips at your waitress.
“Tara, they need you in the kitchen,” you lie, slipping under the guy’s arm lightning fast to extract the poor girl from his blockade. She looks terrified and grateful, running toward the back to the false emergency. You’d give her whatever tips you made tonight as an apology for taking so long to free her.
Beer Breath didn’t take that well. It was getting late, and you didn’t care about losing out on another round on the group’s tab by kicking them out now, so you squared up and leveled your best ‘Fuck off’ glare at the guy. “Time to settle up and get the hell out of my bar.” You tell him definitively. “And for the record? Come in here again and harass my staff? And you won’t be welcome back at all.”
——
“Home sweet home.” Benny hoots, watching Will drop his bag and hurry towards Jenny. His gorgeous girl drops the sign she was holding and sprints towards her soulmate. Frankie watches the reunion with bittersweet yearning.
“Yeah.“ He shuffles his bag higher on his shoulder and reaches down to scoop up Will’s pack. It was the least he could do. Jenny was giving him a ride, and she had been driving his truck for him every few weeks. He owed the Miller couple.
Benny, Pope and Frankie walk up and give Jenny a smile. "Where’s Gabriella?” Frankie asks, looking around in surprise at not seeing the women that Pope would not shut the fuck up about.
“She couldn’t get off work since we couldn’t give her a definite date.” Pope shrugs and grins. “Gives me time to shower and be waiting on the bed naked.”
Frankie huffs a curse under his breath and Benny shakes his head. “Dude we just spend eight months seeing your dick, I don’t want to think about that.” He grumbles.
——
A bar fight in a movie is raucous and action packed and full of adrenaline. A bar fight in real life is usually a bunch of morons too full of piss and vinegar to do anything more intricate than throw punches. Tonight? Tonight, is somewhere in between. Tonight, Big Boy Beer Breath and his Band of Cronies are inventive, smashing a chair and breaking some beer bottles as a group of soldiers on the other side of the bar come to your defense and try to help you bounce the Cronies out. In the end, between the two groups of men, everybody is loud and rowdy enough that most of your good customers pay their tabs as soon as they can, and Christa lets them out the side door if they want to go. In the end, Christa is calling the cops and an ambulance because Beer Breath has come at you with a broken beer bottle.
One of the helpful soldiers knocks him before he can do real damage, but you end up with a sliced-open cut from the top of your shoulder down your shoulder blade, even slicing the back of your tank top which pisses you off more than being cut. In the back of the ambulance, the paramedics check you out long enough to determine that you need stitches, while Christa, Tara, and the other girls promised to have the place pristine when they close up. Apparently, the Cronies had opened a few tabs between them so most of their bills could still be charged, so the night wasn’t a total loss.
As the paramedics load you into the back of the ambulance to sweep you off to the hospital for proper stitches, you roll your eyes to yourself at the stinging, aching pain. Maybe you’d finally give your fucking soulmate a new scar from something other than their own bullshit. They’d deserve it.
——
“You look like you just attended a funeral instead of going on a date.” Benny jerks his chin up as Frankie walks up to the table and yanks out an empty chair and plops down in it with a sigh, lifting his hand and nodding when the waitress walks over to them.
“Hey, Fish, your usual?” She asks with a grin, winking at the Spec Ops soldier.
“Thanks Tracy.” He nods with a half-smile before he turns to the other men at the table. “That’s because a funeral would have been way more fun that the bullshit I just had to sit through.”
Benny chuckles and knocks shoulders with his teammate. “Come on, it couldn’t have been that bad-”
“CATS! I had to meet all of her cats!” He huffs indignantly. “And I told her that I was fucking allergic.” Benny starts to giggle, and Pope’s eyes widen as Frankie starts describing the date from hell. Two weeks back and he has had zero luck after signing up for one of the soulmate-less dating apps. Tonight, was the final straw. After shoving Benadryl down his throat so his eyes would stop watering and his throat would open back up, he had decided to just say fuck it.
“I’m done.” He sits back and offers the waitress a nod when she sets his beer down and walks away. “It’s just not in the cards. I guess I’m just sticking with one-night stands.”
“Don’t be done, Fishy.” Gabriella reaches over to squeeze her soulmate’s best friend’s shoulder, sitting contentedly in Santi’s lap. “I’m sure she’s out there. She has to be.”
“Yeah, Fishy,” Santi snickers. To him, Gabriella is adorable. But he knows Frankie is still rolling his eyes about the cutesy nickname in private. “Maybe Tracy is single?”
Form nowhere, Frankie hisses; a line of fire running down his back, like a hot blade has just been dragged down it. “Son of a bitch!” His shoulder jerks reflexively and he grabs for it.
“What the hell?” Benny asks, sitting up straight and looking at Frankie with wide eyes.
“I don’t know— fuck, it burns!” He growls, ripping off his jacket and trying to reach the area that felt like it was on fire.
“Stay the fuck still.” Will orders, hopping out of his chair to drag his teammate’s jacket off his shoulders. He’s grinning despite being worried. There’s a pretty solid chance Will Miller knows what just happened, and there’s a pretty solid chance this is about to be a very big deal. “Shirt.” He gives Frankie a warning before he tugs the collar of Frankie’s t-shirt down to inspect the angry, slightly jagged red line that has just appeared on his back. “Any chance one of these demon cats scratched you while you were at that girl’s place?” He asks.
“Fuck no.” Frankie shakes his head and his shoulder twitches under the sensation. “She shoved them in my fucking face, but they didn’t scratch me. Why?” The pain is starting to lessen, calming down to a dull ache and he sighs in relief.
Will grins, nearly giddy. “I think you just got your first soulmate scar, bud.”
Frankie can’t believe it, actually shakes his head in disbelief. “No, shit— there’s a scar back there?” He asks, dumbfounded. He never thought he would be so fucking happy to have some pain and another disfigurement. He looks over at Pope, knowing that he won’t lie to him, but the dopey grin on his face tells Frankie that he sees the scar, too. One that definitely hadn’t been there this morning.
“Hell yeah!” Benny stands up and hops up on his chair, calling out across the bar. “Drinks on me! My man Fish got his first soulmate scar!” The entire bar goes up in cheers and yells. Half of them for the free drinks, but most of them understood the importance of what that meant to someone who hasn’t had it before.
“You’re going to regret that when you get your tab.” Will is still grinning, even as he shakes his head at his impetuous little brother and claps Frankie on the back. “She exists man,” he tells Frankie excitedly. “Now we just have to the figure out where in the world Frankie’s soulmate is.”
“It’s about time,” Gabriella picks up her neon pink cocktail and takes a sip, gleeful and grinning for Santi’s brother-in-arms. She likes Frankie. He’s sweet and cute and doesn’t realize how great he is - he’ll make a great soulmate when he finally finds her. Now that it’s finally going to happen, she feels like it’s okay to tease. “Since she’s had to live with all your close calls and weird tattoos.”
“Alright!” Benny pulls out his phone, logging in to Mate Marks - the app that he checks every once in a while to see if any girls have updated their profiles with scars or ink that match his. “Let’s see who’s got back scars.” He’s tapping away on his phone in an instant.
“Wait a minute.” Gabriella hauls herself out of Santi’s lap, batting his hands away when he tries to pull her back, and leans over Frankie’s back to take a closer look at his new mark. “Holy shit,” she breathes, clapping her hands. “Papi, gimme my phone,” she makes grabby hands at Santi like she’s in a rush to have her electronic handed over.
Frankie frowns as he wonders exactly what the hell is going on. Surely Gabriella doesn’t know—
“I don’t know why I didn’t put it together. I’m so stupid!” Gabriella snatches her phone from Pope after he pulls it out of her purse that’s set on the other chair. “Oh my God, so listen.” She presses the code and opens up her phone, flicking through apps and selecting the photo album. “You know I got a job at the Alewife, right?”
Frankie nods and frowns, not sure where she is going with this. “Yeah.”
“Baby, what—”
"Found it!” She is beaming at them as she turns the phone around and shows Frankie a picture of two women, obviously at the opening of the pub she works at. Both of them are attractive, but he is drawn to the one on the right, especially. “Christa the one on the left, she lost her soulmate. A year ago. Car accident.”
Everyone at the table gives a sad sigh. Hating that someone went through that pain, even if they had never met the woman. “So, what does that have to do with Fish?” Benny asks, leaning over Frankie’s shoulder and squinting at the picture.
“Look at her left hand!” Gabriella squeals, zooming in on the picture. “The one on the right!”
“Holy fuck.” Frankie breathes. There’s a bull’s eye tattoo on the left had that is wrapped around the other woman’s shoulder.
”Dude.“ Benny is craned over the table, inspecting the picture of Gabriella’s new employer. "Please tell me she has a back scar?” He has never wanted a woman to have gotten hurt this bad in his entire life.
“Bar fight. Two weeks ago.” Gabriella swipes a few pictures over on her phone, finding a photo of the same two women behind the bar. The same woman is on the right of the photo again, looking over her shoulder with her tank top exposing a healing scar as she reaches up for a bottle, a laughing smile painted on her face. “Christa said she got a broken bottle to the shoulder kicking a guy out. But she’s fucking tough. I’ve never heard her bitch about it or anything.” She looks at Frankie with a soft smile. “Fishy, you’re going to love her.”
“Take a picture of my back.” Frankie insists, not tearing his eyes away from your picture.
“Wha—”
"Take a picture of my back, damnit!” He spits out, finally looking away from the picture to glare at Benny. While he knows he should be dancing for joy, he wouldn’t be a good operator if he didn’t at least check for himself to see if the scars match. Even with the tattoo, he needed that reassurance. After all, she could have just gotten the tattoo on a drunken spring break weekend and pissed off her Wall Street soulmate.
Benny carefully snaps the photo with his own phone, putting it next to Gabriella’s zoomed in picture of you on the table.
“They’re exact!” Will slams his fist on the table excitedly, sending the phones rattling. He leans in along with everyone else, staring at the identical marks. “Goddamn, Fish. She’s gorgeous.”
You are. He can’t even begin to describe how gorgeous you are. His eyes go back to your photo, and he tries to absorb every single detail. It’s terrifying as hell to realize he has finally found you. Hell, he didn’t even find you, it was a complete happenstance.
“Well, what the hell are we doing here?” Benny asks, lifting his hand up and motioning for the waitress. “Let’s go meet your girl!”
"No.” Frankie feels like a bucket of ice water has been pour over his head. Every single one of his friends and Gabriella is staring at him like he’s lost his mind. “Not—not tonight.” His normally cool and collected head is swimming and he can barely think straight. “I need to shower, fuck, I need a haircut.” He rubs his hand on the back of his neck, feeling the effects of two weeks without a barber. Normally one to get a haircut ever week because of regulations, he suddenly feels sloppy.
“Not tonight, I—I need to make a plan. Be presentable.” He had spilled half his soda on his shirt trying to swallow the meds after the cat lady’s house. Turning his eyes to his friends, he pleads with them to understand.
“Alright man,” Will slaps the tabletop again. He is nodding and rubbing his hands together like some kind of matchmaking supervillain. “Shower. Haircut. Do you want to get a good shave, too?” It’s an honest question, he knows Fish bitches about his patchy beard. “Shit, you want me and Jenny to take you clothes shopping tomorrow? We can go all out if you want to.”
He sighs, overwhelmed by the need to impress you. “Yeah.” He isn’t normally one for 'nice’ clothes, more of a jeans and t-shirt or flannel type of guy when he wasn’t in uniform. “Yeah, I think I could use a shave and a new outfit before I tell that gorgeous woman she’s stuck with me for her soulmate.” He jokes. He knows he’s attractive, he’s taken plenty of women home with him, even if he wasn’t their soulmates. Normally a lot more confident, but your opinion matters. Hell, it was the only one that mattered according to the universe.
Looking over at Gabriella, he bites his lip. “Could you cover my tattoo?” He asks, motioning to his left hand. “I want to talk to her without her knowing I’m her soulmate. Make sure she actually wants one.”
Gabriella’s hand goes to her heart, her other reaches out to take Frankie’s inked hand. “I’ll get some of the stuff they make specifically for covering tattoos.” She promises. Fishy is such a sweet guy, and honestly, you’re an amazing person as far as she knows you so far. She’s just excited to be a part of this.
He nods, grateful that Gabriella seems to understand why Frankie wants to cover up the most obvious sign of him being your soulmate. “Thanks.” He sits back and picks up his beer, unable to believe that tomorrow he was going to meet you, his soulmate.