Chapter Text
————
How can you miss someone you’ve never met?
————
Christen is fairly sure she’s never going to find her soulmate.
But the thing is—she’s fine with it. Yes, it took her years of meditation and longing and watching as the people she grew up with found their soulmates. But really—she has soccer now, which takes up basically all her time anyway. Between classes, and Kelley’s antics, and practicing, she doesn’t have enough time to worry about what the rest of her life will look like without a soulmate.
Christen is the exception to everything. She’s learned to accept that, because otherwise—with “good game” scrawled across her upper arm, the first words her likely non-existent soulmate will say to her—she would never find peace. She’s accepted that no matter how many people she plays (and she’s played a lot, been across the country and hopes to go around the world), it’s more likely than not that none of them will be the one.
(The truth is, she nearly destroyed herself over it in high school, agonized over which opponent had her words inked on their body. She was always the last one on the field, always hoping that someone would come back and tell her they were soulmates. Nobody did, and Christen came to realize that maybe nobody ever will.)
Even now, two years into her college career and leading the cardinals to win after win, not a single person has come back for her. Her only consolation is that Kelley, one of her best friends and another Stanford leader, hasn’t found her soulmate either—then again, “God, I miss Waffle House” isn’t exactly a common conversation starter.
“At least your soulmate could be anywhere,” Kelley complains one night as they get ready for a game against UNC, one that’s sure to be a tough match-up. “Obsessed with breakfast food is a weirdly specific trait. Like, seriously, Chris, how many fucking people talk about Waffle House the minute they meet someone?”
The green-eyed woman just laughs, pulling socks over cleats and trying to get in the zone. “But you’ll know when you meet your soulmate,” she says quietly. “Mine could be literally anyone on that field.”
“Maybe it’s Tobin Heath, I seem to remember someone calling her ‘hot’,” Kelley taunts with her tongue sticking out.
“Shut up, O’Hara,” Christen mutters in response. “We have a game to focus on.”
They tie the game, 1-1.
Despite herself, Christen waits on the field. She stands there until people start leaving, filtering out of the stands. She stands there until it’s almost too cold, then stays a little bit longer. The only thing that keeps her from staying until the sun drops completely is Kelley walking out of the locker room, sent to collect her so the team’s bus can leave. “You’ll find her eventually,” the shorter woman whispers with a hand on the small of Christen’s back, guiding her aching legs into the warmth of the locker room. Because somehow Kelley seems to know—knows why she stayed on the field, why she still makes sure to greet every one of their opponents.
“What if she never comes, Kel?”
“Trust me, that woman would be fucking insane to leave you,” Kelley snorts. “Pressy, you’re a catch. Besides, I’ll always be here. You’re stuck with me, after all.” Christen can’t help but laugh as the freckled woman jabs a finger into her rib cage, tickling her until a smile stays on her face. “Seriously, though—if I didn’t know my Waffle House warrior was out there somewhere, I might just pretend to be your soulmate.”
Christen rolls her eyes at that. And in the blink of an eye, she’s managed to convince herself once again that she’s fine.
She leaves the stadium that night and convinces herself that nothing will come of it.
Despite Kelley’s encouragements, nothing does.
————
Tobin doesn’t know what to do.
She should probably be happy about it. The thought occurs in the back of her mind as she pulls up her jersey in the locker room, checking that the words wrapped around her ribcage haven’t changed. She doesn’t know how to feel when they haven’t, “that was a great nutmeg” still inked permanently in her skin.
Because—really, how many people compliment her on nutmegs? How many people except for the green-eyed Stanford player even notice that type of thing?
Tobin knows she has to do something. That going back out to the field, talking to the player is realistically the only option. But her hands are shaking, and she’s all sweaty and she just played a full 90 minutes, so instead she makes her way to the showers and tries to stop herself from having a panic attack.
Besides, even if she did try to seek out the player (Press, she faintly remembers), what would she do? How do you just go up to someone and say “I think we might be soulmates?”
(The answer is she doesn’t. She pushes down the image of number 23 and tries her hardest to focus on not face-planting as she leaves the stadium. She lies in bed that night and tries to stop the regret pooling in her stomach, tries to forget she even heard the words and stops herself from tracing over those very same words tattooed on her body.)
It’s pretty safe to say that the next day Tobin feels like shit. She spent the entire night dreaming of green eyes and cardinal red, her brain conjuring up thousands of different scenarios in which she didn’t chicken out. When she’s awake it’s not much better; she can’t seem to think about anything other than soulmates and nutmegs, going through her day in a daze.
When nothing else works, she turns to her teammates. “I—um, I need your help,” she announces one day to Ashlyn, who she managed to drag out for coffee.
“If this has anything to do with you being all spacey, I’ll try my best. What’s been up with you, dude?”
Tobin just grimaces, fidgeting with a napkin as she tries to figure out how to explain what happened. “So—well, actually… um…” the younger woman trails off when she realizes that she has no fucking idea how to phrase what she needs to say. (“I think I left my soulmate behind” might be even worse than “I think we might be soulmates”.)
Ashlyn just sits there, waiting for Tobin to spit it out, and somehow it makes her feel worse. Tobin must spend ten minutes trying to stutter her way through a single sentence before the blonde finally takes pity on her. “How about to start I just ask you questions and you say yes or no?” Tobin nods gratefully, and Ash takes a second before asking “Does it have something to do with school?”
“Well—kind of?”
“Yes or no, Toby.”
“No,” Tobin replies after a minute of trying to puzzle through the mess in her head. Ashlyn just hums, looking her up and down and clearly trying to think of another question.
“Okay then. Is it soccer-related?”
“Yes,” she answers without missing a beat this time.
Ash looks intrigued, leaning forward as she takes a slow sip of coffee. Tobin feels like she’s under a microscope, but for once she’s not completely spaced out thinking about Press so she doesn’t mind. “Let’s see… we played Stanford last, is it something to do with that?”
“Yes.” Tobin moves her hands under the table to hide the fact that they’re shaking, because Ashlyn is still staring intently at her and she doesn’t quite know how to feel about the fact that the other woman is getting closer to the source of her problems.
“Hmm. Is it because you think you didn’t play well? Because we tied? Or is it about that player… number 23, I think, from Stanford? Christen Press?”
“No, no, and—” Tobin answers the rapid-fire questions with ease, until she registers the last one and stops herself. Because finally— Christen . She might finally know her soulmate’s name, and it steals the air from her lungs (it turns out that this isn’t helping at all, because suddenly Tobin is right back where she started, preoccupied with green eyes and 23 and Christen ).
Of course, the blonde doesn’t miss her hesitation. “So it’s about Christen,” she states, and all Tobin can seem to do is nod slowly. “What about her?” Ashlyn asks softly.
Instead of answering, because she still doesn’t seem to be able to breathe properly, Tobin gets up and pulls Ashlyn to the coffee shop’s small bathroom. She ignores the jokes Ash makes, the way the other woman wiggles her eyebrows and wolf-whistles when Tobin starts to pull up her shirt. And then—
Then Ashlyn’s eyes go wide as she takes in the words over Tobin’s ribs. The other woman falls silent as she stares at the tattoo, then up at Tobin, then back down. Over and over, until finally she asks “Do you think it might be her?”
All Tobin can do is nod.
“Shit,” Ashlyn breathes. Tobin lets her shirt fall back down and sinks to the floor, staring up at the blonde and waiting for her to say something else. “Well—I mean, did you talk to her or something?”
“That’s why I need your help,” Tobin grimaces from the floor. She’s tempted to let her head fall into her hands, but that seems a little dramatic and besides, bathroom floors are disgusting. “Um, I didn’t know how to talk to her—to tell her. And I know I should have, but I left and I panicked and please just tell me what to do.”
“How about this,” the blonde starts as she joins Tobin on the floor. “At least to start, why don’t you write her a letter or something. And then you can either send it or wait until you play her again.”
Tobin takes a minute to consider the idea, and it’s actually pretty good. “I think I will. Thanks, Ash.” They pull each other up from the floor, go back out into the shop and pack up their stuff.
“I have a soulmate,” Tobin whispers at one point as she hugs Ashlyn goodbye.
“You have a soulmate!” Ashlyn is grinning when they part. “Go get your girl, Toby.”
After the talk, Tobin continues on with her life. The temptation to drop everything and fly to California is certainly there, but instead she writes and rewrites her letter to Christen. She spends her summer in New Jersey, catching up with family and working with the national team.
Something about it seems different, though. She has to hold herself back from blurting out to her family that she’s found her soulmate, gets caught rewatching old Stanford games just so she can see Christen. It’s strange—even though the green-eyed woman (her soulmate ) is on the other side of the country, Tobin feels like she already knows this woman she’s never properly met. It’s quite possible that she’s never been so excited to play a soccer game in her life.
But then the season starts. And Tobin keeps up with Stanford, watches as number 23 has a phenomenal season, leading her team to the playoffs.
Unfortunately, that means they’ll have to play each other for the championship.
Tobin finalizes her letter to Christen, has multiple people read it over to make sure it’s not too stalker-y. She goes over film with the team that turns out to be useless to her, because all she can focus on is Christen. She practices harder than ever leading up to the game, puts all her nervous energy over finally meeting her soulmate into soccer.
And it all pays off, because they win.
Out of the corner of her eye, though, Tobin sees Christen sitting on the bench, head in her hands, uniform grass-stained. She thinks about the letter that Kelley has, with instructions to give it to Christen. They win, but all Tobin can think about that night is green eyes watery with tears.
For the first time in her life, Tobin wants something more than winning.
————
When Tobin calls her the night before the NCAA final, asking to meet at a nearby diner, Kelley can’t hide her surprise. There’s no reason for her opponent to be calling her, but Kelley agrees to meet the minute Tobin tells her that it’s about Christen.
Kelley doesn’t quite know what to expect. They’re friends, sure, after being youth national teammates; it’s just that they’ve never really talked at all outside of soccer. Tobin never really showed an interest in anything outside of soccer. So being asked out of the blue to meet at a random diner—well, Kelley can’t figure out what Tobin could possibly want, doesn’t know what to make of the fact that they’re meeting.
“I need you to do something for me,” Tobin says the minute Kelley sits down across from her in a booth. The other woman looks nervous, playing with her hands. There’s an envelope sitting on the table in front of her, but Tobin just clears her throat and pushes it forward slightly when Kelley shoots her a questioning look. “So—look, this is gonna sound really weird.”
“However weird it sounds, I’ve probably done or said something weirder,” Kelley promises, and Tobin laughs slightly, relaxes her shoulders the slightest bit.
“Um, well. The thing is—” the UNC player sighs and looks into the distance for a second, seemingly trying to collect her thoughts. “I need you to give this to Christen,” she says after a beat as she pushes the envelope further toward Kelley.
They sit in silence for a second before Kelley breaks, her curiosity getting the best of her. “Do I get to ask questions about this?”
“You get two questions.”
“What’s in it?”
Tobin avoids her eyes while Kelley waits for an answer, back to being just as nervous as when the Stanford player walked in. “It’s a letter.”
“And why should I give this to Christen right before the final?” Kelley can’t hide her suspicion, because as much as she loves Tobin, Christen is her best friend; Kelley has put herself in charge of “protecting” the green-eyed woman over the years and she sure as hell isn’t going to stop now.
“I never said to do it right before the final,” Tobin replies anxiously. “I just—please, it’s really important. I just need you to give it to her.”
Kelley finally concedes after that, because something about the look in Tobin’s eyes and the way she’s fidgeting with the hem of her shirt makes the Stanford player take pity on her. “I will.”
And Kelley really does intend to give Christen the letter. The thing is—
The thing is they lose. They weren’t supposed to lose. Kelley feels like a complete asshole when she gets sent off the field, and Christen is destroyed when she finally joins Kelley in the locker room. Neither of them can watch a soccer match voluntarily for nearly a month after that, and at first Christen can’t even make herself practice.
So the letter sits untouched at the bottom of Kelley’s suitcase. She almost forgets about it, until one day she’s clearing her bag out before a preseason game. And there it is—white paper glaring up at Kelley, still containing whatever was so important to Tobin. She feels like a terrible friend when she sees it (and maybe she is), but she also knows that Christen probably doesn’t really want anything to do with Tobin for a while.
Still, she promised.
The letter makes its way to its rightful owner soon after Kelley finds it. She tries to give Christen an explanation, tells her it’s from Tobin Heath, but the green-eyed woman only stays silent and Kelley knows that the letter will most likely remain unread. They don’t talk about it after it changes hands, and Kelley never presses her for details. Because Christen is still hurting, as much as she tries to hide it, and Tobin couldn’t possibly do anything to fix that.
They get wrapped back up in soccer when the season starts. Kelley watches Christen go on to have an amazing season, even though every time she sees Tobin at a national team camp or other commitment she has to shrug apologetically. She sees the hope in Tobin’s eyes die every single time, and every time she feels terrible.
All of it makes her wonder what was in the letter, if Christen ever read it.
Then she catches the words on Tobin’s ribs one day after a national team practice, words that she overheard after that very first game they played against UNC. And maybe—
Maybe Kelley knows what was in the letter. Maybe it was more important than she could have ever imagined.
————
Christen has a strange feeling when she sees Tobin Heath again in the NCAA final. She can’t seem to take her eyes off of the UNC player, blushing profusely when Tobin catches her staring and smiles shyly. She pushes the feeling down, though, because she has a match to focus on.
That match might be the hardest 90 minutes of Christen’s life until that point.
North Carolina gets ahead early, something their coach had specifically warned against. And even though Christen takes shot after shot, doing everything she can to even the score, nothing is connecting.
In the 72nd minute Kelley gets a red card.
It’s then that Christen knows—
They’re done.
In the 89th minute she scores, lets herself hope for just a minute. But it’s ruled offside, and just like that they’ve lost.
Everything she’s worked for over her college career, all of it seems to fall apart over the span of 90 minutes.
She blocks out the rest of the night, except for one moment that she remembers vividly—she’s sitting on the bench, trying not to break down, when she feels someone’s eyes on her. Across the field is Tobin, standing still while the rest of her teammates celebrate. Christen can’t bring herself to return the sympathetic nod that Tobin sends her way, though. Instead she gets up and walks off the field, eager to scrub all her shame off in the shower.
For once in her life, Christen doesn’t wait on the field.
Stanford never plays UNC again in the time Christen has left at the college. And Christen is fine with that, because it means she doesn’t have to be reminded of her failure. Despite the loss, she goes on to have an incredible senior year, winning the Hermann trophy and making her way to the finals once again, bringing back the win this time.
Tobin doesn’t cross her mind again after late summer that year, just before her final season with Stanford, when Kelley gives her an envelope with Tobin’s signature scrawled messily across it. The only thing Kelley says is that Christen should probably read it, but for some reason Christen can never bring herself to. Instead it stays in a drawer in her childhood bedroom, all but forgotten.
Christen manages to keep Tobin out of her head until 2011, when the magicJack plays the Sky Blue for the first time. It’s been nearly two years since they’ve seen each other, but the second Christen steps onto the pitch she gets that same strange feeling she had at the final. Tobin isn’t even playing, out with a hurt ankle, but still Christen is aware of her presence on the bench.
They tie 2-2.
She doesn’t stay on the field for longer than she has to after the game. That tradition (if you can call it that) stopped after their loss to UNC. Now she tends to hang back a bit if people want her autograph, otherwise heading straight back to the locker room.
This time, though, someone stops Christen before she can reach the locker room. It’s Tobin, shifting awkwardly and looking nervous. “Hey,” she says after a too-long silence.
“Um, hi,” Tobin replies quietly. “Sorry, I just wanted to say—you looked really good out there.”
At first Christen is taken aback at the compliment, but then she’s smiling for the first time since the game ended. “Thanks. I would have liked a rematch, though. It’s a shame about your ankle.”
Tobin just smiles shyly, rubbing the back of her neck. “Yeah, I would have liked that too. No hard feelings about the final, right?” And Christen can’t imagine a universe in which someone could stay mad at the endearingly awkward woman standing before her, so she steps forward to wrap Tobin in a quick hug.
“No hard feelings,” she agrees as they separate. Tobin looks like she wants to say something more, but nothing else comes out, so Christen assumes they’re done and with a friendly wave turns to head into the locker room.
“Wait.” The other woman’s voice is a little shaky, and maybe that’s what makes Christen turn around once more. “Did you—did you ever read that letter I gave to Kelley?”
“Um, no, sorry,” Christen admits. Tobin looks crestfallen, but she forces a smile and shrugs stiffly. “What was in it, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Oh, nothing. Just congratulating you on making it to the finals.” She must catch Christen’s guilty look, because she waves a hand dismissively even as the sadness in her eyes gives her away. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. I’ll see you later.”
Christen is left watching as Tobin walks away, hunched over in a way that reminds her of herself after losing the final. “Yeah, see you later,” she finally says quietly after Tobin has turned a corner.
Her hand instinctively rubs the words curled around the top of her arm as she makes her way into the locker room, words from a soulmate she’d given up on years ago. She tries not to think about the way Tobin’s eyes found the words, stared at them as they separated from the hug. She tries not to let herself wonder if the glance means anything.
Later that night she calls Kelley. The two Stanford alums have kept steady contact since they graduated, even as Kelley gets call-ups from the national team and Christen gets nothing, not even acknowledgement.
“She was just being so weird, Kel,” Christen says at one point after their conversation moves to Tobin.
“I wouldn’t read too much into it, Pressy. Tobin is Tobin, and she’s not exactly the most eloquent person to begin with,” Kelley says easily from the other side of the line, but something about her voice makes Christen feel like everyone knows something she doesn’t. “Anyway, I heard you had a good game today.”
“We tied,” Christen mutters, and just like that they’re back to safety, away from Tobin.
magicJack plays the Sky Blue twice more after that, and each time Christen does the best she can to stay away from Tobin.
Over the 2011 season, Christen starts getting that feeling—that everyone is in on a secret but her—more and more, particularly from the national team players. It drives her insane, makes her second-guess herself constantly. She turns to soccer to get her frustrations out, and by the end of the season she’s become the first rookie to get a hat-trick, been named the Federation’s Rookie of the Year.
But she still doesn’t get a call-up to the national team. And that makes it easy to sign with a team in Sweden when the WPS folds.
In Sweden, she can breath. She’s away from Tobin, away from the letter, away from everything that’s been stressing her out for the last few months. She’s not constantly worried about being called-up, not worrying about whatever secret every other player knows. And, maybe the best part—she doesn’t have to worry about soulmates.
Whoever her soulmate turns out to be, they’re not here (the words on her arm are in English, so realistically they’re likely back in the US).
Christen finds that she’s strangely fine with it.
————
Tobin knows she’s fucking this up.
It’s just—
Well, it’s just that Christen didn’t read the letter. She didn’t open it, never cared enough to look at it. And maybe that’s worse than reading it and then not saying anything.
What makes it even worse is that somehow Kelley found out about everything, about the fact that Tobin has known who her soulmate is for years and never done anything (which, okay, is admittedly very stupid, but when Tobin can’t be around Christen without panicking it’s kind of hard to fess up). But now Tobin has to deal with Kelley, which will inevitably only add to her own anxieties.
(Not to mention that once Kelley knows a secret, it’s not long until Alex knows, and then by the time next camp rolls around the entire national team will know.)
Unfortunately, the spreading of her secret happens sooner than she anticipates. Soon after the Sky Blue’s game against magicJack, Tobin gets a call from Lauren and Amy. “Tobin, what’s going on with the stanford player?”
“I, um… what have you heard is going on?” She cringes at how stupid she must sound, but at the other end of the line her friends barrel on without mentioning it.
“Well, we heard that you might know who your soulmate is and that you’ve done nothing about it. For nearly three years?” Amy is indignant, and Tobin can picture the way she would be scowling if they had met in person.
“It’s not—”
“Don’t you dare tell us it’s not like that,” Lauren chimes in. “Sit down. We’re gonna figure out how to tell this poor girl she’s not going to be alone forever.”
And they do just that. By the time her friends hang up nearly three hours later, Tobin has a list of what she needs to do in order to tell Christen ( be in person, actually talk to her, just fucking do it ). For the first time since they met, Tobin feels like she might be prepared enough to go through with it.
But after all her preparation, in a turn of events nobody expected, Christen becomes the problem.
Tobin can’t figure it out. They were friendly, the last time they talked. As far as she can tell, she wasn’t too weird, didn’t give anything away. Except she plays Christen twice more, and the younger woman doesn’t seem to want to be around her either time. Tobin feels like she’s right back where she started, as she sits in the locker room after their third game against the magicJack, staring down at her ribs.
Just like that—she doesn’t know what to do.
It goes downhill quickly from there. In January the league folds, and for a solid month Tobin feels like the world is closing in on her. Because where would she go? She doesn’t have anything except soccer, not even her soulmate because she’s been too afraid to do anything. The hardest part, though, might be Christen; Tobin knows that the other woman is probably just as scared and lost, and it kills her that she can’t do anything about it.
Slowly, everything comes back together. She signs with the New York Fury, and with a job she feels a little more steady on her feet. Steady enough even to ask Kelley for Christen’s number one night, because if there’s anything the league folding taught her it’s that nothing is certain.
Instead Kelley calls her. “You haven’t heard, huh?”
Tobin can’t hide her confusion as she tries to figure out what Kelley could possibly be talking about. “What would I have heard?”
“Christen’s in Sweden.”
She needs to sit down. It feels like the news nearly knocks her off her feet. A country was bad enough, but this—
This makes Tobin feel like something was physically ripped from her chest. Sweden . Even if she managed to confess, even if Christen took the news well, how the fuck would they cross an ocean? That same feeling she had when the league died is back— where does she go from here?
Kelley’s voice snaps Tobin back to reality. “Tobin, you gotta breathe. I’m too young to be charged with manslaughter.”
“I’m pretty sure it would be murder,” Tobin laughs weakly even as she realizes that tears are starting to pool in the corners of her eyes. “What… how do I do this?”
She feels so defeated, sitting with her head in her hands, that at first she doesn’t even register that she’s voiced her thoughts aloud. “Honestly, I don’t know,” Kelley sighs. “Look, I’ve known you both for a long time. And yeah, you probably should have done this whole thing sooner. But Pressy—she’s lasted a long time without a soulmate. She can make it another year until they get a league running. You, on the other hand, are a different story. Tobin, this is about you. I think it always has been. What do you have to be afraid of, really? If you ask me, this is going to keep eating you up until you do something. Look at it this way—don’t do it for Christen. Do it for yourself.”
Something seems to click, then. All this time she’s been thinking about Christen, Tobin is the one who knows who her soulmate is and has been living without her. She’s the one who’s fallen a little bit more in love with Christen every time they see each other. And Kelley is right—Christen hasn’t even discovered the possibility that she might need Tobin. But for Tobin, being an ocean apart from her soulmate makes it harder to breathe.
She’s made up her mind. “I’m going to need a favor.”
After Tobin puts a plan into action, waiting for the result is torture. She should’ve known that it wouldn’t be easy, but she never anticipated it being this hard. Kelley gets in the routine of sending her daily reminders so she doesn’t freak out: it’ll be okay .
Then, finally, Christen gets her first call-up.
And when she shows up at the hotel, envelope in hand, Tobin feels like she’s meeting her soulmate all over again (because in a way, she is). Christen looks around, searching for Tobin, and smiles softly when their eyes meet.
“Hey,” Christen says as she walks over. “I got your letter.”
Tobin knows that she’ll never get a fourth (fifth? She’s lost count) chance at this again. So she pats the seat next to her, returning Christen’s timid smile. “We should talk.”