Travis hated Mondays. After spending the better part of Sunday cuddled up in bed with the only girl who had ever been able to tolerate him for longer than a couple of months, it seemed grossly unfair. Technically, he had only risen three times to cater to his human needs like nourishment and using the bathroom so, from a technical standpoint, Sunday could not be considered an actual day. If Travis was the one making the rules, things would go much differently. Granted, that did not necessarily mean that things would take a turn for the better but on a positive note, there would no longer be such a thing as Monday.
He sat at the kitchen table, bent over his coffee and reading the New York Times. A few years earlier, he would have laughed at the domestic nature of the task. For many half-bloods, reaching domestic was a feat often likened to miracles: no one ever reached domestic. But that was before the war and before Katie.
The sun was just beginning to rear its head over the Hudson River, signaling that it was day break once again and begrudgingly, Monday. In his own silent protest, Travis had refused to change out of his plaid pajama pants and stained New York Yankees t-shirt. He would get dressed later, he had a view to admire and it was just arriving. The early rays of sunlight shone through the living room window that overlooked the river and cast the entire apartment in a warm, yellow glow.
"Travis, can you come here for a second, please?"
He sighed, finishing off his cup of coffee and placing his mug in the sink. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and ventured into the bathroom to see just what it was that she needed so early in the morning. When he stepped into their tiny washroom, he saw Katie standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom, staring at her reflection. She wore her hair in loose, golden waves that fell just past her shoulders and though she was tired, her eyes were consistently lively and her irises seemed to dance with excitement. She moved the corners of her mouth up and down, forming a small smile and then a large one. She finally settled on one and turned around to show him.
"What do you think of this one?" she flashed a small smile, ensuring to keep her teeth covered by her soft pink lips. While he thought that she looked beautiful, he knew about her intimate insecurities regarding her teeth and more specifically, her smile.
"I think it's nice," he offered. This smile was nice, but he knew that nice wasn't exactly the word that she was going for. Evident in her expression, she turned back toward the mirror and pursed her lips. She sighed audibly and he could see her own inner disappointment written across her face. Pulling her hair back and clasping her fist around it as though her hand were a human hair elastic, Katie groaned.
"How about this?" This time, she opted for a more demure smile but it was no use – none of these fake and put-on smiles were ever going to do her justice as a person.
"I shouldn't care about my smile; I don't know why I'm even worried about it. God, I should be worrying about my qualifications, for the love of the Gods!" That got her back on track quite quickly as the realization set in. "My Gods, my qualifications! What am I thinking! I'm completely under-qualified to run this business. What am I even thinking? Travis, I'm going back to bed." She was a complete basket case when it came to her job and today she had an interview for a higher-up position in management that meant all of her brilliant landscape designs would finally get the credit they deserved. She was a shoe-in for the job and they both knew it, though Katie had a nasty habit of underestimating herself. And her smile, for that matter.
She was about to leave when she felt something pull her back, spinning her slightly where she stood. If he could have taken only one photograph in his entire life and kept it to look at forever, it would have been of that moment there. Very rarely did Katie let her guard down and when she did she reminded Travis of a child. As she spun around to face him, the soft lighting above the mirror in the bathroom softened the golden waves in her hair and alleviated the tension from her eyes. He could sense the jungle within her and see the beauty splayed across her face but for a moment, he just saw her. For a second he just stood there, his hand on her wrist, staring at her and trying to keep his jaw from detaching and hitting the floor. With her messy hair, pyjamas and forehead creases, Travis had never seen anyone so beautiful in all of his life. He felt his heart swell and if he had by some strange string of events fallen dead at precisely that moment, he would have died a happy man.
She gave him a quizzical look and her cheeks flushed red from his gaze. "What, Travis?" she asked, shrugging off his loose grip and folding her arms neatly across her chest. Still rendered speechless by her, Travis momentarily struggled to find words; a foreign struggle for the charismatic and extroverted son of Hermes.
"Uh," he stammered, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. She had taken him completely by surprise and his recovery had not been as swift or as suave, as it could and should have been. "It's nothing, you just look, uh…really beautiful today."
"Really beautiful?" she asked, raising her eyebrows. "Are you kidding me?" It was a question made in jest as she threw her hair back and laughed. "I'm asking you about my smile and then you go and say that!" She motioned in the air for effect before looking at him and shaking her head, all the while trying to disguise the grin that illuminated her face and made her eyes dance.
"Well, uh yeah…" Travis shrugged, offering back a smile of his own. "I don't know, you're just Katie and I love it. All of it. All of you." He groaned this time and ran a hand through his hair, messing up the curls further. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his pyjama pants, he attempted to continue. "What I'm trying and failing to say is that I love you. And if your boss and the review panel see even just that smile that you're giving me right now, they'd be crazy not to feel the same way as I do. You are breathtaking, Katie Gardner. "
"You are aware that you sound nothing like yourself right now, right?" she asked, "Are you feeling alright?" She put a hand to his forehead as if checking for a fever but he pushed her hand away playfully.
"Leave me alone, Gardner."
"Never."
Unlike in that moment, Travis couldn't always put his finger on what it was that he loved about her, whether it was her smile, the little crinkle in her nose when she was focusing really intently on a project or her no-nonsense way of dealing with him and his somewhat admittedly crazy antics. While he might hate Mondays and dread the idea of going into the office, she was always there to take the edge off. And she didn't even have to try.
There was no firework show or grand official declaration that told him that he had made the right choice in settling down with Katie. There was just a gut instinct, impossible to turn away from and incredibly prevalent that solidified it for him. Because sometimes, you just know.