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MY SURLY SOLDIER

Marco:Life is pretty good...for the most part anyway. A solid career in IT, a good home, and great friends who care about me. It’s a bit lonely. But I’m okay with that. I certainly wasn’t expecting to stumble across a bruised and battered stranger on a dirty street or to discover there was so much more to him than meets the eye. And I definitely didn’t expect to find that Carter, the grumpy, sharp-tongued stranger was the last piece of the puzzle that is my life…But that’s life, right?

Carter:Nothing in my life has been easy. The only way out of my crappy childhood was to enlist. That wasn’t any easier. The military hasn’t exactly been kind to me, even if it did give me a purpose. None of that mattered for shit when they put me on ice, threw me to the wolves and left me out to dry…at Fort Dale. But that’s life, right? At least that’s what I told myself until I met Marco, who honestly doesn’t play by the rules. I thought I knew how the world worked, and everything I thought I knew? Well, Marcus turned it on its head.

MARCO

Stepping from the shadowy lobby of the office building, Marco tilted his face upward. It was evening, but the sun was still high enough to peek over the edge of the nearby buildings. The air was rich with the smell of nearby traffic, but it was warm. He breathed deep, letting the tension in his shoulders ease as he stood on the sidewalk, bathed in sunlight.

Right up until someone bumped into him, hissing that he needed to watch where he was standing. The moment ruined, Marco hitched his bag further up his shoulder before joining the people on the sidewalk.

“Good ol’ Port Dale,” he murmured, unsure if it was out of exasperation or affection.

Probably both.

He was a small-town boy who’d moved far away from home a long time ago. After spending years in a college town, he’d moved a few hundred miles to Port Dale. If he’d thought living in a Greenford had been a massive change from the small town where he’d spent his childhood, then moving to the city had been an even bigger upheaval.

The inner city was a sprawling example of urban growth, with sparkling skyscrapers at its core, surrounded byrestaurants, bars, clubs, and shops. After living in Port Dale for a few years, the northern end was his favorite, where the city dwindled, and the beach melted into dense forest.

It reminded him of home.

Buzzing in his pocket pulled him from his thoughts, and he dug for his phone. There weren’t many people he talked to, and he guessed it might be his parents. However, when he saw his friend’s name on the screen, he smiled as he accepted the call.

“Hey, Dean,” he began, grunting as his foot caught a crack in the sidewalk, almost sending him sprawling. Thankfully, no one was around to slam into. “Sorry, hey, Dean.”

Dean chuckled, though Marco could imagine his raised brow just from his tone. “Doing alright over there, Marco?”

“Oh, you know me, I can dance with the best of them, but walking is still challenging,” Marco told him wryly.

“Ah, yes. I’ll never forget you falling over to ask me out,” Dean said.

Marco snorted. “That isn’t quite how it happened.”

When he and Dean had dated briefly, it started because Marco had seen Dean at the edge of the crowd in a club. Marco immediately felt drawn to him. Of course, any smooth opening had been ruined when Marco’s feet caught on the carpet, sending him sprawling. A thump on the head later, he found himself having his small wound treated by an amused Dean.

“I remember it that way.”

“Being with Sloane has not done good things to your ego, Dean,” Marco teased.

Dean laughed. “I’ll tell him that whenever he emerges from The Pile.”

The stack of boxes in Dean and Sloane’s new dining room was what Dean referred to as The Pile. Marco’s brief stint dating Dean hadn’t worked out, but Dean's relationship with Sloane had been going strong for nearly three years. After sitting on awaitlist for what felt like ages to the two men, they were finally allowed to move out of their apartment and into a house on base together. That had been a week ago, and they were still unpacking.

“I did tell you to throw some of that stuff out,” Marco told him as he stepped around a few people talking on the sidewalk.

“And I agreed,” Dean said in an amused voice. “Someonedisagreed.”

“And it didn’t need to be pulled out of storage.”

“I remember telling him the same thing, but you know how Sloane is.”

“Stubborn?”

“Hardheaded, more like,” Dean said, though Marco didn’t miss the affection in his friend’s voice.

Although it had once stung like hell to step away from Dean, who had been so sweet yet equally determined, Marco had never regretted it. Back then, he’d seen the potential between Dean and Sloane, and although Sloane might have been slow to realize it, Marco had noticed how much the two of them wanted it. When they’d finally taken the step toward being together, their relationship had become something Marco rarely saw.

It reminded him of his parents when his mom was alive—two people who operated together intuitively. While his parents had been no fairy tale romance, they’d always found a way to make it work. Losing her had been hard on both him and his dad, and Marco had never heard of another woman in his father’s life since.