tratie one shots, vol. i

[ say it ]

this shot's kinda stupid but I thought it was cute so I'm putting it up.

edit: uhhhh this shot was inspired by my ex and now i feel gross reading it. i'll leave it up since y'all seem to like it though lol.

words: 1125

. . . 

Katie wasn't ready to say it.

I love you. Just a small utterance could cause such drastic changes in someone's life. Mind you, Travis had professed his undying love for her on their third week of their dating - quite dramatically, in fact. And she didn't expect anything less of him. A romantic picnic on the dock, classical piano playing from his Bluetooth speaker, and a bouquet of various flowers that didn't go together whatsoever. It was so him. 

However, she couldn't bring herself to say it back.

It wasn't at all that she didn't have feelings for him, that was the opposite of true. She deeply cared for him, and she fully enjoyed being with him. But she couldn't shake off the scars of the past, the memories of the people who manipulated her emotions, the toxic relationships of the years prior. They were glued to her head, and they weren't anywhere near peeling off. She'd been stuck with them for much longer than she'd been with Travis, so they were hard to scrape away. 

She told him so.

She explained that she hadn't felt happier than when she was with him, but she had emotional walls she had to get over before she said "I love you". That made things real, it made things vulnerable. She wasn't ready for that step yet mentally. She was so scared of things ending up like everything else had, because she didn't want to lose what was important - him. So she couldn't bring herself to verbally announce her feelings, and it wasn't that she didn't trust him, it was that she didn't trust herself. She was fine with him saying it, of course, because that was his choice to open up his soul to her. But she couldn't.

Do you know what his response was?

"Okay."

That was it. 

When she pushed farther, he endeavored that he was willing to wait for her. She didn't have to say it aloud it she didn't feel like it. It didn't matter to him - he knew that she cared in the way she spoke to him, in the way she acted around him. He was alright with her taking her time in coming to terms with herself and him. 

In your own time, babe.

Over the course of the next year, he told her he loved her every chance he got. In the morning at breakfast, he'd trounce over to the Demeter table and yell that his heart only beat for her. During Capture the Flag, his battle cry was, "For Katie, the love of my life!". At 3 AM, he shot her a text reading, I can't physically fathom how much I love you. 

She never said it back.

He never expected it.

Winter break came. They both went to their respective mortal families, and FaceTimed every waking second they could. He said that he loved her. The words hadn't lost their meaning in any sense, and Katie still found herself blushing furiously and brushing it off to the best of her abilities. She never said it back. She'd been finding it harder and harder not to, however. The more time she talked with him, the more she wanted to shout it at the top of her lungs. But she held herself away from it, again being terrified of what would happen.

But, in the middle of the night, whilst being under the sheets of her creaky twin-sized bed in the dark of her family's spare room, her heart was scheming something her brain was unaware of entirely. His laugh, his eyes in the flickering candlelight on his end of the phone, his "I miss you so much"s... they got to her. 

And the most infuriating part was that he didn't know. He wasn't even trying, and he made her heart skip a beat with every breath he took.

It would've made her feel weak, feel stupid and immature, but at this point, she didn't really care.

"...I mean, Connor said he didn't wanna ride it, but it was necessary for him to prove his manliness, so I made him ride it. It's only Splash Mountain, come on! But he ended up puking all over this kid's Mickey Mouse ears in front of us even before we dropped, so I guess it wasn't the best idea after all."

Katie laughed, shaking her head and adjusting her laptop. "You're so stupid. Why would you  have made him go after he said he was gonna throw up if he went?"

"He had to show his masculinity!" 

She rolled her eyes. "You were an idiot Junior year."

He turned up his nose. "I was not."

"You were. You were the dumbest guy in camp. Only an idiot sixteen year old would make his brother ride a coaster he said he'd vomit on."

"Hey, it was an experiment!"

"Yeah, yeah. You were stupid, but I loved you anyway, even back then."

"...Wait, what?"

Katie froze, her doubts clawing at the walls of her skull. Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh

"Uh, I..." She couldn't force any sort of wording to come out to mend her mistake. It sat in the open, hanging in midair and awaiting an explanation. There was nothing she could do to take it back, and her brain was trying hard not to go into freak-out mode. Her hand went over her mouth, covering it from saying anything else dumb and impulsive. For once, her fiery mind failed to come up with a witty comeback to ease her mind and the situation.

Travis' face, on the other hand, conveyed the opposite of what was going through Katie's head. A grin broke across his cheeks, cracking open his giddy emotions. He could hardly believe his ears; she'd finally said it. She was reciprocating the feelings he'd been telling her for ages, and it was so worth the wait. 

"Say it again."

She wanted to drive across the five states separating them and slap the childish grin off his face, but she had the same expression on hers so it was useless. A weight that had been pressing her endlessly was demolished and an inner peace was its resolve. The last thing she thought would happen when she said it was her fear of it utterly vanishing. In the very least, she suspected it'd dangle in the back of her head, always threatening to reappear. But through her giddy emotions, the logical portion of her mind told her that was the right thing to do - say it again. Her rationality agreed with Travis. It was perfectly reasonable to do. 

So that's what she did.

"I love you."

And from that moment on, she never stopped saying it.