She was almost done. So very, incredibly almost done.

The words had been flowing out of her for days now, her fingers hitting her laptop's keys like raindrops pelting tarmac during a brutal storm. She'd never written like this before in her life, not even on days when hundreds of lines of dialog between Simon and Baz had been put to paper before she'd had a chance to have breakfast. She'd written in frenzies before, written until cramp had forced her fingers to stop moving, or until Wren had finally slammed her laptop shut after hours of Cath promising "just one last chapter, Wren, I think this is where Simon finally realises his feelings for Baz are true", but this was something else; this time round, there was a deadline to meet, a deadline so crucial, Cath hadn't had time to think about anything else.

Well, almost anything else. It was hard not to think about Levi sometimes, especially when the ending of Simon Snow (or, more specifically, her ending) had been written mostly from underneath the covers of his king-sized bed in his room. Six months ago, she never would have imagined that Carry On, Simon would be finished anywhere but her own room at home in Omaha, or, at a push, in her shared dorm room, Reagan making snarky remarks about her being Nebraska's biggest recluse. Here she was, though, swaddled in Levi's duvet, typing away like her life depended on it. She was wearing one of his sweatshirts, and although it was faint, she could still detect the scent of coffee mixed with something slightly spicy – a smell she'd come to recognise as Levi's favourite cologne, and, by extension, as Levi himself.

In the fleeting moments when Cath's mind wasn't submerged in a world full of magic and Mages, like in the infrequent breaks she took to go to the bathroom or to devour an energy bar, she marvelled at the fact that Levi was dealing with this so well. Cath would be the first to admit: she was acting more than slightly crazy. She doubted Gemma T. Leslie had locked herself away and had had zero regard for her own personal wellbeing during the writing of Simon Snow and the Eighth Dance, and somewhere far in the back of her mind, Cath knew that she shouldn't be doing that, either. But Cath had also never felt the burn of a deadline so badly. The drive and desire to finish not just some silly little personal project, but a journey that was shared by thousands of people across the globe, was far too large.

Levi was handling Cath's writing escapade less well than Cath realised, though. The closer his girlfriend got to her self-established cut-off day, a day he jokingly called "Simon's Death Day" (even though he wasn't sure Simon actually died in Cath's story; she refused to read anything to him until the last word had been decided upon), the more worried Levi got about her. Her writing schedules weren't healthy at all, and it was all Levi could do to remind her to eat and sleep and take a goddamn break from time to time. He silently thanked the gods again and again for the fact that Cath at least wasn't falling behind of coursework – he'd made sure of that as soon as he'd realised that Cath had Simon Snow on the brain, and would have until April 30th.

"Cath? Sweetheart?" He'd said after coming home from a late night Starbucks shift six days ago. "Earth to Cather?"

"Mmmhm?" Cath had murmered, glancing up from the unnatural light her laptop screen was emitting. Her eyes looked dim and unfocussed, like she hadn't been blinking much. If it wasn't for the endless amount of mugs surrounding her on his bed, Levi would have sworn she hadn't moved an inch since he'd left six hours ago.

He had moved over to her, a paper cup in his hands. "Hey, Mr Snow," he had said, having slipped under the covers next to her, aiming his words at the screen that transfixed his girlfriend. "Can I borrow Cath for a second? I know you want her attention, but I have a perfectly blended Gingerbread Latte here, and it'd be a shame for it me to drink it all myself..."

Cath had looked up at him, glasses askew, and had smiled a tiny smile. "You're too good to me. You know that, right?" she had said, and had shut her laptop after having smashed Ctrl + s several times first. Levi had put his arm around her, and she was already melting into him. She'd missed this – they hadn't had any proper alone time for days.

Levi had pressed the Latte into her hands and had kissed her forehead. "Cath, you can't write forever, you know."

"I just have to finish this, there are so many loose ends to tie up, and-"

"Did you finish your Fiction class story?"

Cath had frowned. "No, I just, I needed Simon to-"

"You didn't finish it?"

Cath looked at her hands, abashed. "No. I just...no."

Levi had swallowed and had had to close his eyes for a moment. He would have killed to have had an extra opportunity to redo any of his assignments for any of his classes. The fact that Cath was continuously throwing away this one-off chance had grated at him in a way nothing ever had before.

"Cather...You promised me. You promised me you'd work on it."

Cath hadn't been able to look him in the eye. Fatigue and stress and worry had made her lose her ability to think up any kind of excuse or apology.

Levi had turned towards her, removing his arm from around her. "Cath, I'm forbidding you from doing this any longer. This...this isn't good, this isn't good for you. You've been holed up for days, you've got college you're neglecting, and if you don't hand in that story, college won't even be a thing you can neglect, Cather."

Cath had dared glance up at him, expecting to see anger, frustration, maybe even disappointment in his eyes. Instead, his face had been a mask of worry. It had made Cath feel a whole range of emotions and she couldn't distinguish any of them. Not knowing what she could say and feeling slightly broken somehow on the inside, she had leant against Levi's shoulder and had started to cry, spilling almost all of her Gingerbread Latte onto Levi's cream-coloured mattress protector.

They had talked for hours after that, Levi's shirt soaked with Cath's tears and his bed with her coffee. They had talked about anything, about everything, about tiny trivial things, but mostly about Cath's unhealthy relationship with that Simon Snow fanfiction. Levi had tried to understand where Cath was coming from, the fact that she needed to finish that story on time, if only for herself. Cath, in turn, had tried desperately to let Levi's pep talks and infectious smiles finally fill her with the motivation she had always lacked for that particular fiction assignment.

A few days later, with Levi's constant encouragement, Cath had finished and submitted her short story 38 minutes before her professor's deadline. A massive weight felt like it had been lifted from her shoulders. She could concentrate on her own deadline now, and Levi had agreed to let her pour her heart and soul into the world of Simon Snow for a little while longer at her own alarmingly rapid pace, as long as she let him keep an eye on her. She agreed – of course she agreed.

And that was how Cath ended up in Levi's bed at one o'clock in the morning on Monday the 30th of April, having typed the final sentence to two year and 356,213 word long chapter of her life.