Fall Into The Sky
(a hundred moments, a single love)
2: middles
It is noon when he stumbles out of bed, bleary-eyed and cursing mildly. He has missed two classes, but at least he had finished his term paper last night - well, this morning. Showering wakes him up a little bit more, but it is not until he steps into the kitchen that he is fully awake.
There is an angel in his kitchen.
She's in the middle making coffee.
He thinks he might love this angel, and he tells her so.
She raises an eyebrow at him, and says, "Seaweed Brain, if that's all it takes to get you to love someone I'd better watch you pretty carefully."
...Annabeth.
He smiles and nuzzles her neck, feeling her golden curly hair tickle the skin on his nose. He wraps his arms around her, pulling her closer until he can smell her skin, the Dove soap she used, her peaches-and-cream Herbal Essences shampoo. No perfume or makeup. Never. She doesn't need them, either. Which is good, because he likes natural.
Her small hands are resting, one in the small of his back and the other at the nape of his neck. Her nose is pressed into his shoulder, and he can feel her smile through his undershirt. He hums contentedly and wraps his arms around her middle, rocking her gently. She sighs, short and soft, happy, and draws circles in the middle of his shoulder blades.
This is a moment that he thinks should be a middle moment.
Well, that's what his mother calls them - those little moments in everyday life that you just wish would go on forever and a day. A moment in the middle of things that is absolute perfection, like a cool breeze and a sweet smell during the hottest, balmiest days of summer. Like your first kiss. Like right now, he thinks, when he is holding the only woman he's ever really loved so close to him, when he can feel her eyelashes flutter against his shoulder and her breath splash across his chest and her smile as she pulls herself closer to him.
It is almost as intimate as sex, but on a different sort of level, because Annabeth will never, ever let herself be seen like this. Her mother has trained her to be strong and independant, and this kind of embrace, where she leans on him, would be seen as a weakness by her brothers and sisters and mother. So he knows that she is forgoing what she has learned all of her life, and he knows that she loves him that much.
He knows that he loves her that much.
This will always be a middle moment.