13

Bewitched

Some people would wake up, rubbing the sleep from their bleary eyes, and scan the room with a dumbstruck expression etching itself onto their faces. Their minds would absorb all that surrounded them, slowly processing the details of the environment as they began to remember where they were and how they came to be there. But that never happened to Cath. She always remembered falling asleep. So it didn't surprise her when the glare of the rising sun peeking out from the horizon stung her eyes at the crack of dawn. And when the cry of a rooster piercing the silence in the lingering morning fog just outside her window replaced the blare of her alarm clock.

"Oh Cath... Cather... Time to rise and shine, the world awaits the magnificently magically mystical duo!" Levi's voice bellowed into her dreams. Her skin tingled at the touch of all ten of his fingers as he pried the covers away from her shoulder. She brushed his hand away, unable to keep the groan from slipping out of reach of her lips, and flipped onto her other side so her back was facing him.

"Come on Cather," Her coaxed softly, threading his fingers through the knot her hair was tied in. "I brought you breakfast."

"Too early." She moaned, her lips barely parting as the words oozed out of her mouth. But she found herself propping herself on her elbows anyway, wiping the gunk out of her eyes.

"I present you with burnt eggs and soggy french toast." He announced with a sheepish grin, which trickled of ten times more the adorable than all his thousands of other grins. Levi and his smiles. Like his lips were more flexible and purposeful than everyone else's. Like they were his superpower. Capable of bending into different shapes on a whim for the right occasions and at the right times, when the moment needed the right mood the most.

"Yum, my favorite." Cath replied, pursing the smirk tugging at the corners of her mouth into a thin line of pink. But when that failed, she shoveled a forkful of eggs into her mouth, avoiding the charred sections.

"Yeah, sorry. I guess I just don't have the talent for frying eggs like you do." He bestowed another one of his magical grins upon her, and Cath felt like he had tossed her a gift that she caught without fail because she had good hands. Levi and his smiles. Cath and Levi's smiles.

"At least the protein bar is still blissfully blueberry though. Tell you what, you stick to latte making, and I'll stick to egg frying." She sank her teeth into the bar, and tasted the blueberry filling as it trickled onto her tongue.

He laughed in spite of himself, (well, a little less than a laugh. He giggled? Can guys giggle? Cath despised the word 'chuckle'. The very sound of it could actually set her teeth on edge. So in the end, she settled for a laugh), and broke a chunk of the protein bar off before popping it into his mouth. And, tasting the bliss of blueberries, he spoke around his tongue, "Deal."

The sun's sweltering glare streamed in through the open doors and could be felt in the heat rising in her pale skin in the large blotches of red dotting her freckles. In the sweat dribbling from her forehead and dipping onto the nape of her neck. It soaked through her shirt and made her skin shine with slick. Cath couldn't remember the last time she had perspired so much. She didn't even know it was possible to perspire so much. That the body could produce this much sweat without constantly replacing the water it was losing. And, just as if Levi had read her hot and sticky thoughts, he tossed her a clear bottle of water.

She held the bottle against her forehead, letting the drops that had collected on the plastic and were still cold from the refrigerator trickle down her skin, to which she responded with a smile of relief. Levi. Always making her smile. He was dangerously contagious. He made Cath feel like a grenade, constructed to leave destruction wherever she walked in her path. More so than she already did anyway. She was a hazard to even herself. And she was scared. Not because she didn't like it, but because she did. And she was afraid of what she might do when her pin was pulled.

She twisted the cap off with a crack and chugged down a few sips, her parched throat desperate for its thirst to be quenched. So she wasn't too surprised when she emptied the bottle all in one breath.

"How do you live like this?"

"Like what?" Levi's brow quirked up his forehead adorably, and once again, Cath felt the constant tug of him in her gut.

"Like this." She waved her hand through the air as a gesture toward their surroundings. Everything from the dirt and dust that collected at their feet to the black and white splattering the cattle as they munched away on their mouthfuls of hay in their respective stalls, to the dim glow of ember the single bulb blinked of as it hung from the lowest point of the ceiling.

"Well, for starters, I don't sleep in the barn with the cows if that's what you're asking. Now come on, these beauties aren't going to milk themselves."

Cath stifled a laugh under the blush that tinted her cheeks before wandering over to join Levi, who knelt at the cattle's side. She sat in front of him, trying to fold her limbs as tightly as possible as she fit herself snugly against his lanky frame. He delicately caressed her hands in his, as if he were afraid of touching her wrong, and Cath had to suppress the grimace itching in her face when her palms came into contact with the pink flesh coating the cattle's nipple.

"So what did you mean by, 'how do you live like this?'" He breathed against her temple in attempts of soothing the tremors in her hands.

She shrugged against him, feeling her shoulder blades dig into his chest. God, his chest was large. And yet it still seemed to somehow manage to expand with his every breath. It was glorious. That there was so much of him. So many limbs. So many lines. So many crinkles in his forehead. So many smiles. So much Levi to go around. It was good for Cath. It meant she never had to stock up on him. Nor would she ever run out of him.

"All this outside work I guess," She elaborated. "All the hands-on stuff. I'm just not familiar with it."

She could feel the smirk before it even found its way to his lips. "Right, because you're all mouth."

"Shut up." She elbowed him in the ribs, attempting to hide the smile in the frown she was trying to pull off.
Damn him. Even frustrated she still caught his smiles.

"Are we having a fight? I can play angry if you want me to."

"No. Never mind." She muttered with a leftover grin still plastered to her lips. She tried to smooth it out as she focused her concentration on her task at hand.

"Don't make me angry-kiss you."
And she, Cath laughed in spite of herself.

"Cather?" He whispered when her laughter had been reduced to a dull ache in her stomach. "I want to touch you."

"You are touching me." She breathed back. But she knew what he meant, and she could feel the flush heating her cheeks. And suddenly, it was all too hot to handle. Like he was too hot to handle. They were the flame of fire with no rain pouring down to extinguish them.

"No. I want to touch you. Really touch you. I want to hold you and be yours. You make me want to touch you."

"I don't really see how that's even possible..." She didn't see how her mouth actually cooperating was even a possibility at the moment. Let alone how the words managed to find her lips.

"Neither can I. I just know that it's got as much to do with the way you hide your blue eyes behind the purple frame of your glasses. Or the way you brush stray strands of hair behind your ear when they come loose. Or the way you bite your lips and your hands start shaking when your nervous. Or when you wear all your Simon Snow T-shirts and are sitting in front of your laptop just typing away your magic, I can just tell from the sight of you that it's your comfort zone and that only a handful of people are permitted to cross the boundaries you've built around yourself. You get this glassy look in your eye when you're inspired with a new idea of yours. You get a twitch in your smile when you get excited about writing action scenes. Your forehead starts to crinkle and crease with frustration when you're stuck at a blank page. Your hands and fingers get jittery when you've gone a few days without anything to spike your muse, like their high on writer's block. When your eyes get red and start bulging, that's when I know you were up all night writing the good story. And when I know to steer clear of you so I don't irritate the sleep-deprived beast you hide under all that cuteness. But most of all, I think it's got to do with the fact that you don't smile. So when you do smile Cather," He reached for the strand of brown that had escaped her bun and tucked it behind her ear. And in it he whispered, "I choose you over everyone."

She wanted those words to be the last thing she ever heard.
She wanted to fall asleep with Levi's voice whispering in her ear.
She wanted to lose herself to the trail of kisses he planted along the nape of her neck.
She wanted to feel the ghost of his lips everywhere.

Her nose flared at the stench. I was a combination of fertilizer mixed with manure, all coming together to create a fowl odor wafting through the property and insistent on hovering there, directly over their heads. Cath was pretty confident her clothes were permanently tainted. That she would go home reeking like this and no amount of soap or strawberry-scented shampoo was capable of cleansing the stench out of her. Much less masking it.

"You get used to the smell after awhile." Levi said. (Reading her mind as always).
He probably knew what her thoughts were before she did by now.

"I thought it was Wren's job to read my mind." She flashed him a smirk, to which he retaliated with a dazzling smile that absorbed what was scrawled in her lips and replaced it with what was scribbled on his.

"Well as I recall, you informed me that you guys actually lack the shared super-powered ability of telepathy as twins. So ergo, I am now the designated mind-reader."

She tried to hide her laugh in a scoff, but failed miserably. So she instead, proceeded to switch on the hose and prepared to spray the pigs clean of the dirt and muck they were smeared with. The hose came to life as the water came spraying out in a fan. It spurted all over the ground, moistening the dirt into mud under their shoes. The hogs trotted wildly in their pen, tripping and tumbling over one another as they leapt out of reach of the cold water with a series of snorts and squeals escaping their muzzles. Levi swooped in to the rescue at Cath's shrieks as she attempted to apprehend the spout of the garden hose, which danced and thrashed wildly through the air, splattering everything in its wake. It wasn't until Levi and Cath were soaked to the skin and their shoes and clothes were sopping wet that Levi managed to switch the water off.

In the struggle, Cath had slipped in the mudslide they had created at their feet and fallen over her feet into the pile of hay stacked outside the hog pen. It took a moment for Levi to determine whether she was laughing or fuming or crying or just downright delirious of all three emotions at the moment. But in the end, when the incoherent jumble of mess spouting from her lips resulted in laughter, he found himself laughing right along with her as he sprawled his back and limbs across the straw beside her. And from there, he admired the state she lay in.

Her mane of brown had fallen loose from its bun and it now lay out in a fan across the earth, shaping her head and neck perfectly. Her blue eyes were shining and bewildered, and they stared up at him, stripped of the glasses that they wore like armor. Her breaths came in gasps, and he felt their warmth on his skin as he listened to her chest rise and fall to the tune of his. And what he said next only resulted in her entire face being devoured into a smile. And it was this smile that sent his head spinning and thoughts scattered. She made him crazy.

"You know I have fallen completely under your spell Cather."

A thank you goes out to riversong for the review! hope to see more of you soon:)
I really hope you all enjoyed this chapter and please please please leave a review because they make me smile:)
Also, I have recently posted a Frozen Christmas special about the relationship of Elsa and Anna and a Hunger Games fanfiction about Haymitch's games. So please please please try those out and let me know what you think because I would really very much appreciate it!

Thanks for reading and there's more to come so stay tuned!:)
-birdywings