There was a boy in her bed.
Or, rather, his own bed. But by this point, his bed felt like hers. She probably spent more time in it anyway- sleeping in after typing for hours into the night. Laying there after Levi left ridiculously early for work. Breathing in the smell of his pillows. Paralyzed with how much she loved him… Still.
She used to think about that a lot. About love, or at least romantic love, and how long it lasts. Was it really forever? How is that even possible? She's seen countless examples that prove that "endless love" is a myth. Her parents, Wren's past relationships, almost every couple in the world who eventually decide to cut ties. The only silver lining in this very, very dark storm of broken hearts was Baz and Simon.
Baz and Simon, who lived in a fictional world, a doubly fictional world, because they were Cath's creation of someone else's creation, so they probably didn't even count.
And yet, there she was. A few weeks into her sophomore year, and worried about loving him too much, rather than not enough. No, it was never a matter of too little with Levi. She felt like the Grinch, heart grown three sizes. There almost wasn't room for it in her ribcage. She worried it would burst, and the aftermath would leave both her and Levi wrecked by her own core.
She wasn't sure how much he loved her- if it was even a measure of how much or if all love was on the same level, just formulated differently. But the look in his eyes when he smiled at her, the shape of his mouth, the way he would lean into her. It was something she never thought she'd see and still be able to breathe afterwards. It was enough to shut off her brain completely, all questions and doubt and worries gone to the wind.
He was looking at her like that now.
They were on top of his blankets, still dressed even though it was after midnight, having just gotten back from dinner. It had cooled off significantly, but Levi's room was still subject to the elements, and you could feel the summer night air hovering around them.
She couldn't take her eyes off of him. He was tan again, like when she first met him. His hair was paler than she thought possible, and if you looked closely enough, he had freckles across the bridge of his nose and chin. His chin. She had missed all of him this past summer, but his chin was what she thought about late into the night, when it took all of her strength not to cry at the distance between them.
And there you have it. She was the girl who couldn't live without her boyfriend.
Her boyfriend. Her beau. Her farmer. Her sun-kissed, smiling, charming-
"What are you thinking about?" He was smiling at her like he already knew.
She blinked at him. "Corned beef hash."
He laughed, then, loud and carefree, and she quickly leaned forward and kissed his chin.
"And here I thought it was my naked body."
She blushed, then, because this was something he liked to tease her with, but probably didn't know just how accurate he was.
It wasn't as if the physical part of their relationship hadn't progressed over the summer and into the following school year. Being apart from each other for so long had been literal torture, and coming together again for the few visits they had always left her desperately unwilling to stop touching him for even a minute.
She had seen parts of him naked, and, well, that was something she didn't have words for.
But she couldn't even think about his whole body without going catatonic. And right now- well, she was honestly having trouble thinking about anything.
His hand, big and strong, was rubbing her low on her side, riding up her dress.
Levi.
Her hands reached toward his t shirt- simple, white cotton- and clutched it tightly in her fists. It was all she could do.
Her eyes closed as he moved close to her, his mouth falling to her neck.
"Cather."
She would have moaned, if she could do it without sounding unhinged, like she knew she would.
His arm closed around her, pulling her the rest of the way into him, and she let him support her weight. Her hair was down already, but he pulled her glasses off and tossed them to the side.
"I love you."
She smiled at his words, her face hidden in his neck, and she pressed her cheek against his chin, rough against her smooth face, breathing him in.
Better than the pillow. Definitely better.
And then her hands were under his shirt, along his skin, warm and soft, and all she could think was Levi, Levi, and forever love and distance and summertime.
And naked bodies.
And then his shirt was off, because she wanted her face on every part of his skin. As she did just that, her face pressed along his sternum, his hand holding her there, she felt what she had started to feel more and more of these days start to build up.
A beautiful sense of rightness, a lack of fear, and an attraction to Levi that was only getting stronger.
He felt it too, she thought, or something like it, because he had thrown his head back against his pillow, eyes closed, and his hands had started to hike up the skirt of her dress, fingers trailing the back of her thighs.
She had to pause on top of him, then, because she wasn't good at functioning when he was touching her. It was like she needed her relationship with Levi to be relay. Either she gets the baton, metaphorically speaking, or he does. But they both couldn't run the race at the same time. It was like sensory overload.
Right now, her senses were definitely overloading. And his hands had gone higher, just having reached her underwear, and her face was still buried against him. Her hands started to grip him tighter.
"Unzip my dress, Levi." Cath almost started at the sound of her own voice, breathless and throaty.
Levi made a sound deep in his throat, hands pushing against her, and rolled her over so that he was on top of her. He looked down at her flushed face, and she thought, this look- this look is even better than the other one.
It was the look you're given right before you're devoured whole.
And instead of pushing him off of her out of fear of herself, like she would've done before, she placed her hand on the back of his neck and pulled him down to her.
This was forever love. This was Levi. The way he was kissing her was making her breathless, and she arched against him. His stomach lowered onto hers, and she basked in the way it felt to have his weight on her. The skin of his back was so soft, she wanted to feel it against her own skin.
"My dress-" she said when he pulled his mouth back before jutting his chin against her. "Levi." He was unrelenting with his kisses, though, and it seemed like she found the dress situation more pressing than he did. So just as she thought she was going to have to try and take off her dress herself, she felt one last pull from his mouth, his tongue sliding against hers. He pulled away, looking into her eyes as his hands moved to the back of her dress.
A small smile on his face, a sweet one that had her feeling the telltale prickling in the back of her eyes.
She lifted her back, giving him access, and he slowly pulled the zipper down. They worked the straps off of her shoulders, helped each other pull the dress down her body instead of over her head. He leaned back, off of her and onto his knees, helping her unravel the dress from her feet. Then his eyes darted back to hers, warm still, and his smile stopped in its tracks.
She would've been confounded at the look on his face, but she knew its cause.
It wasn't like Levi hadn't seen her without a shirt on. Or pants on. Or a bra on. But those were all at different times, more or less with her sitting on his lap.
But this time she knew what she looked like. Wearing nothing but underwear. Lying in front of him on the bed, elbows propping her up. She could only imagine what the expression on her face was. She didn't even have it in her to feel embarrassed, or concerned about her behavior. All of the feelings inside of her were reserved for Levi, and the way his chest was moving up and down, and how a small breath of air had just left his open mouth that sounded a lot like "Cath."
This time was different. She could feel it. She could feel him feeling it. The prickling in her eyes intensified, and she reached out to him at the same time as he quickly moved over her.
She watched him watching his own hand trail from the hollow of her neck down to her navel. The way he was looking at her- she didn't how to explain it. How is it that she was given something she didn't know even existed? And how had it become her whole life?
This was what she was waiting for. Or this was the beginning of what she was waiting for. She didn't wait for him to stop staring at her like she was the sun, and not he; she pulled his body down onto hers.
This. Right here.
He wrapped his arms tightly around her- she could tell they were a little bigger than before summer started- and pulled her onto him.
He wove his fingers into her hair and pulled her mouth onto his this time, his other hand heavy and moving all over her back. She got lost in the feel of it; the only thing breaking through the fog of her brain was her name being repeated over and over again.
It wasn't long before the greediness set in, and she wanted even more, and she could feel Levi wanting even more, too. He kept adjusting his lower half against hers, his fingers playing with the hem of her underwear, fingers slipping just below the surface…
She leaned back then, crouching over Levi's thighs, him still lying on his back. Looking at her. Gazing at her, more like.
Her hands went right to his belt, and she decided to ignore his looking at her, because his eyes were as powerful as his lips, or his hands.
Now- her hands. Right. Focus. But she noticed, as she started to undo the belt, that her hands were shaking a little.
Levi noticed too; of course he noticed. He probably knew they were going to shake before they even started to. Levi.
"Cath." His voice was hoarse. She stopped. Looked at him. "If you don't want-"
"No," she said back, and cursed herself again for having such sensitive tear ducts. "Levi, I want. I more than want. I want more than-" And she got choked up then, and he was right in front of her before she even opened her eyes back up. "Levi."
His hands gripped either side of her face, and his lips covered hers softly, fully. "Cather. I love you, Cather." And he held her face, watching her, and she sat in front of him, watching his belt loop, until her tears dried and her fingers itched to move to his pants.
He started to undo his belt loop himself, and she helped, wanting it off desperately. But when he started to undo the button of his jeans, it was all she could do to watch, her hands lightly resting on his wrists.
He looked in her eyes after that, making sure she was still good and sane, or at least not too crazy, and they pulled off his jeans together. It was just as intimate as taking off her dress, and then just his boxers were left.
Pale blue. And suddenly she felt like she really would burst. Quickly, so quickly, she ducked her head and kissed Levi's stomach, shoving him back onto the bed with her other hand. He lurched, falling back, letting out a soft gasp.
She continued to kiss along his stomach. She couldn't help it. He was lying there, equal to her, almost every part of him exposed before her, and she would burst any minute.
And her tears were back.
It was her turn to mumble his name over and over again. Her hands traced over every part of him- his stomach, his chest, his sides, the tops of his thighs, the backs of his knees. Her lips followed. And then her hands were slipping below his boxers, just slightly, and he lurched again.
"Wait- Cath- sweetheart-"
But she was too far lost in him. Her hands slowly pulled down his boxers, and his eyes were glued to her, she could feel them. And her hands and mouth itched to explore this territory that she had only glimpsed before on him, but never really focused on. Out of fear. Of herself, and him even. There was no fear now.
But she refrained from taking him into her hands, and instead let him slide her own underwear off, and watched him gazing at her this time.
They embraced again, desperately, strongly, fully. He held her, hands all over her, rubbing her, kissing her, and she let herself get lost in his touches and his looks.
And then they were whispering sentiments, more names and I love yous and promises and declarations. She said them back and he told her to say it all again, over and over. She did. Levi.
He put on a condom, something that she always expected to be awkward, but in reality wasn't, not at all, because she knew what it would lead to, and she didn't feel awkward around him, not now, not ever.
They came together, then, and she wasn't nervous, and there was no sharp pain she was promised by Wren and society and every sex education class. It was foreign, and maybe a little uncomfortable, but she embraced it, because it was Levi.
And then he moved on top of her, and it built, and became more, and more, and more, and she felt his name rip out of her, and then she felt her own name come from him, she felt like she was no longer just herself, but him too, and everything they would be, together.
"I love you."
She closed her eyes, floating in the feeling of the boy's arms around her. In their bed.