Disclaimerrrrr: I don't own the PJO series or all their wonderful ships.
Travis Stoll. Older brother of Connor Stoll. Son of Hermes and whoever the heck his mother was. Co-head counselor of the Hermes cabin. Trickster, prankster, jokester, pickpocket, thief, and conman. Also known as the bane of Katie Gardner's existence.
"STOLL!" she yelled as she made her way back from the strawberry fields. She had been tending to the strawberries and other crops with her sister on the warm June morning. Though children of Demeter could naturally stimulate and manipulate the growth of plants and other aspects of nature, Katie preferred doing it the old fashioned way, which water and sunshine and all that. She and her sister had almost picked a full basket, when one of her brothers ran over in a panic, saying that there were stink bombs set on the roof of the Demeter cabin. And thus, it was only eight o' clock in the morning and Travis Stoll had managed to ruin her day. If only she that it was going to get much, MUCH worse.
By the time Katie reached her cabin, there was already a crowd forming by the place, keeping a good ten feet away from the source of the dark green fumes emitting from the grass roof. Everyone knew how bad the Stoll's infamous stink bombs were and how they left you with a smell that no amount of Febreeze could cure. Luckily, Katie's friend from the Hecate cabin had provided her with an anti-odor potion since she was main victim of the Stoll's pranks to begin with. If only her friend could conjure up an anti-Stoll potion. Unfortunately, the potion only kept her odor-free, and didn't make any attempt to prevent her from smelling what was probably the nastiest thing since she had to clean up after the harpies. Katie pinched her nose in disgust, before searching in the cabin for the ladder they kept to retrieve random pranks the Stolls left them on the roof. As she trudged outside, lugging the ladder under one arm, she heard the voice she had least wanted to hear.
"Morning Katie-Kat. What are you doing on this fine, beautiful day?" Travis bounded up to her, completely unaffected by the god awful odor around them. Come to think of it, he had a truce and some friends in the Hecate cabin as well. Damn him.
"You must have really wanted to be sent to the hospital to come at this moment Stoll. Those bombs are going to make the cabin reek for weeks!"
"Aw, I'm touched." Travis put a hand over his heart, "Guess I'll be the last thing on your mind when you go to bed and the first thing when you wake up."
"In your dreams," she muttered angrily and she set the ladder against the cabin. As she began climbing up she turned around to warn the son of Hermes, "You better have a five page apology or a good head start by the time I get back down if you don't want those stink bombs shoved down your throat."
"Now now Katie," Travis sent her a coy look that she wanted to slap off his face, "You know Mr. Chiron doesn't approve of that type of violence in camp."
"Oh, you don't have to worry about that, Stoll," Katie replied sweetly as she turned back around and continued climbing up the ladder, "Chiron won't have any evidence by the time I'm done with you."
"If I didn't know better, I'd say that was a threat, sweetheart."
"Don't call me sweetheart, you no good little..."
By the time Katie reached the roof, she could barely see, the dark green fumes looming around her and muddling her vision.
"It's no use Katie Kat!" she heard Travis's voice call from below, "You'd need the entire Manhattan police bomb squad to detonate those babies."
"Screw you Stoll!"
"You know you want to."
"Ugh," she wrinkled her nose in disgust, part of it the awful smell burning her nostrils and the other part of it at his previous statement, "Go to Tarturus you pervert."
"Only if you go with me, like Percy and Annabeth."
"What are you doing, testing a bunch of crappy pick-up lines for some Aphrodite girl on me?"
There was no reply, and she assumed that he had left out of boredom with talking to her or something. She climbed onto the grass roof, pretty much blind from the gas emitting from the stink bombs. She crawled around on her hands and knees, feeling around the area to a) make sure she didn't fall off the roof and kill herself, and b) find the source of the stink so she could save her cabin weeks of daily showers and shove the horrendous Stoll creation so far down Travis Stoll's throat he couldn't even utter the stupid pick-up lines to whichever Aphrodite girl he was planning to hit on this time. After what seemed like an eternity, her hand finally bumped into something that felt like a metal can of some sort.
"I hope you've said your goodbyes Stoll," she muttered, "because you're taking a permanent trip to the infirmary." She pulled at the can, but it wouldn't budge.
"I forgot to mention Katie Kat," Travis's faint voice called from below, "we used our wonderful friends the Hephaestus cabin's latest prototype of super-glue. It'd take the power of at least one of the gods to rip our bombs off your roof."
"I swear by the time I get down there what I'm going to do to you will be more terrifying than sending you to Tarturus!"
"Don't make promises you can't keep."
She growled, before pulling at the can with both hands. It didn't budge. She tried a few more times, but just as Travis had said, the can had no signs of moving in the next ten years. She finally decided to try one more time, and if she couldn't rip it off, she would go back down and castrate Travis Stoll and his brother. With the last of her energy and all her strength, she pulled at the can as hard as she could, so hard in fact, that her fingers slipped off the can and Katie suddenly felt herself falling. She hadn't realized it until now, but she had crawled to the edge of the rooftop where the cans had been pasted, and she was now currently falling off the cabin roof, toward the not-so-soft ground. Crap. Her last thoughts were of the multiple ways she would murder Travis Stoll, and then everything went black.
Most people would probably wake up after being knocked unconscious thinking, "Where am I?" or "What happened?" Katie Gardner woke up with a detailed and intricate plan on how she was going to murder a certain son of Hermes and get away with it. In hopes of having a few more minutes of peace before she had to return to the usual routine of chasing after the Stolls with her brother's battle ax, which wasn't very ideal for someone that had just fallen off the building, she kept her eyes closed, faking a comatose state and just relaxing on the bed, listening to the sounds of people walking around what she believed to be the infirmary.
As she let the rest of her senses return to her slowly Katie was suddenly aware of someone holding one of her hands. The hand was warm and slightly calloused, but its grip was loose. Was it one of her siblings? Finally giving in to the temptation, she tilted her head to the right slightly and cracked one of her eyes open.
"Hades!" she yelled in surprised, so shocked that her arms flew up, hitting the wall, before she fell off the bed. She grunted in pain as her entire body ached from her previous fall. The person that had been sitting by her, shocked by having their arm suddenly flung up as well, ran around to the other side of the bed, where she was currently trying to find a way to get up without being in pain. "Are you okay?"
"Don't you dare touch me Stoll," she snarled, her body still planted on the floor, as she had finally decided that moving in general hurt.
"Oh yeah, because you're doing such a fine job getting up yourself," the last person she wanted to see on the planet retorted sarcastically.
"You're the one who put me here in the first place!" she snapped, some of her words muffled by the floor, but the point got across and Katie saw what almost seemed like guilt cross Travis Stoll's face. Almost.
That crazy assumption was soon shot to pieces when he raised an eyebrow at her, a smirk ghosting over his lips. "Who, innocent 'ole me?"
"I will hurt you."
"You shouldn't hurt the ones you love Katie Kat."
"Oh bite me."
"I do recall you saying just a minute or two ago to, and I quote, 'not touch you'."
"Help me back onto the bed and if you try anything I swear on River Styx I will kick you so hard between your legs that your ancestors will feel it."
"Geez," Travis murmured as he bent by her side, pulling her arm over his shoulders and hooking an arm under her legs, "someone fell off the wrong side of the hospital bed."
Katie didn't snap back at him like she usually did. Instead, as he lifted her back onto the bed, one of her hands found its way into Travis's hair, gripping on his mop of hair and yanking. Hard.
The son of Hermes dropped her on the bed abruptly in shock and she landed on white hospital sheets with an oomph. "Ow! What was that for?"
"Looks like someone had their hair pulled on the wrong side of their head," she replied drily, filled with satisfaction at the sight of him massaging the back of his head. She snorted when he looked into the mirror, trying to fix his hair when there hadn't really been a problem with it in the first place. "You're such a girl, it's not like I chopped half of your hair off."
"I wouldn't be surprised if you did," he muttered half under his breath.
"Hey I'm not like you, dying people's hair freaking purple and whatnot."
"That is in a totally different category than chopping off people's hair. Dying people's hair is only on like level 3 or 4. Hair chopping is at least a level 7." Travis stated in a matter-of-factly tone.
"Of course, there are levels to pranking," Katie sighed as she readjusted her position on the bed, the soft cotton sheets rustling under her body. "I have no idea what could have possessed me to think otherwise."
"Besides," Travis plopped back into his seat by her bed, cheeks a light shade of pink, but she just assumed that he was out of breath from carrying her back to the bed, "you looked perwidacourhair."
Katie blinked at him. "I'm sorry, what?"
Travis repeated his previous sentence, his word even more slurred and incoherent than the first time and she blew her hair out of her face in exasperation. "Travis, I don't speak idiot."
"I said you look pretty with that color hair!" he suddenly exclaimed, before clamping his mouth shut in realization at what he said and burying his head in his hands, groaning. "Crap."
Katie froze, her brain unable to comprehend what it just heard. "What?"
Travis was silent, hands still covering his face. "I… might have been playing all these pranks on you so you would notice me…"
"… What?"
Travis let out a sigh. "I've liked you for a while now, but you never really noticed me unless you were yelling at us for the pranks so I thought, you know, why not continue pranking?"
"You're telling me…" Katie started, "that all of this was because you like me?"
He nervously nodded his head, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.
Katie smacked him. "Ow! What was that for?!"
"You fool," she hissed. "Carry me to my cabin."
"But-"
"No buts, get going." Travis slowly lifted her up bridal style and carried her out of the infirmary. As they passed the climbing wall and training arena, they received meaningful looks, catcalls, and shouts that all pretty much yelled, "About time!"
By the time they reached Cabin 4, which was no longer covered in a stink bomb haze, both demigod's cheeks where a fiery red. Travis gently placed her down on the porch in front of the door and let out an awkward cough. "Listen, I'm really sorry about the pranks and everything and I understand if yo-"
Katie shut his babbling up with a kiss. It was short, and their noses had bumped, teeth knocking into each other, but it was enough to surprise Travis still for a good seconds before he came out of his shock. "Uh.."
"Friday night, pick me up at 6:30 pm, don't be late. I'm sure you can find something fun for us to do, being a son of Hermes and all." Katie ruffled his hair, before opening the door and stepping inside. Just as she shut the door, she smiled. "Night Stoll."
Travis Stoll. Older brother of Connor Stoll. Son of Hermes and whoever the heck his mother was. Co-head counselor of the Hermes cabin. Trickster, prankster, jokester, pickpocket, thief, and conman. Also known as Katie Gardener's date this Friday night.
Yo! I'm back with another Tratie oneshot! Because I have too many Tratie feels that cannot be contained. I thought of this like last year but was too focused on His First Love and all that jazz to really finish it but here it is!
If you too have inexplicable Tratie feels please go check out a few other oneshots I have for Tratie and well as my chaptered Tratie fic. I also have a Valentine's Caleo oneshot in there as well~
Hope you enjoyed reading and please favorite and review! ^_^
Happy Wednesday!
Less than three,
PalmerPie