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A gentle touch caressed Levi’s cheek as he slept. The first of the candles on the nightstand had burned down to a puddle of wax in the bottom of its holder. The second remained a barely lit nub, throwing off only enough light for his mother to read the label on the bottle of his medication. The expiration date had passed by months, but expired medicine she could afford did her more good than a fresh bottle she couldn’t leave the stall with.
There were two doses left. Levi wasn’t improving. His fever had not reduced in nearly a week. She had made sure her baby boy drank plenty of fresh water and tea, but food was the sacrifice she had to make for medicine. They both cut down to one meal a day, if whatever tinned rations she could find for cheap could be considered a meal. She knew that medicine would not be enough. Her son needed the energy to fight off whatever ailed him, but she couldn’t have it both ways. He could eat, or he could have the medication.
She had already decided she would put her money aside for food next. If she were lucky, the medicine would stay in his system long enough that an increase of nutrients would help him to fight it off. She had to believe it. She had no choice, because giving up was not an option.
She was happy to see him resting. He was so peaceful when he was sleeping, a stark contrast to the boy who struggled to breathe as tears cut down his face in streams of agony. Levi’s waking hours hurt her heart unlike anything she had experienced before as a mother. He was too young to know such pain, too pure. She wished more than anything in the world that she could take it from him, but the cruel reality was that she could not. Not without medicine; not without money.
There was a knock at her door. She placed the antibiotics on the table by the expended candle and slowly, softly slid her arms under her sleeping son.
He should have been hard to carry at eight years old. He should have strained her arms. Twenty-eight pounds was nothing to a mother who carried the weight every day that her son was not lucky enough to be born to someone rich to watch over him.
She carried Levi over to the closet. A nest of cloth sprawled on the floor, hollowed out in the middle just wide enough for his little body to curl up in. She slowly descended to her knees and deposited her son right in the middle.
He rolled over in his sleep, conforming to the space as he had so often before. Kuchel didn’t know whether to smile at how cute her little son was, or cry at the muscle memory he had developed over the years because of her.
Another gentle caress graced his face, tucking a loose strand of hair behind his ear. Per usual, Kuchel chose to smile.
The knocking came louder. She cringed, hoping it hadn’t awoken her boy. “Hey, Bitch!” The voice on the other side shouted. “I didn’t pay good money to stand outside your door! You better open up soon, or I swear to God I’ll ruin you for leading me on like this!”
She leaned down on her knees and left a kiss on her son’s burning forehead. She slid the closet door shut and went to greet her client.
Levi had mastered the art of being unheard and unseen. His eyes slowly opened after the door closed. From his first inhale of fire in his lungs, he wished he had remained asleep. The candle’s light filtered in from the cracks in the closet door. He made out the door he had seen a thousand times before, and he knew that any little sound he made would ruin his mom’s paycheck.
Kuchel had never screamed at him. She had never reprimanded him or screamed for the times he’d sneeze, or yawn, or make any other mistake of the sort. Something in her seemed relieved. Levi had made the mistake of realizing that early on. There was a brief moment in his early childhood where he used to sabotage her meetings with clients on purpose, since it seemed to bring her so much joy to stop midway through them, but the memory of both of them starving for a week remained with him. The repercussions weren’t worth it. He decided it was easier to see his mother’s eyes dull with every knock on the door than it was to watch her cheeks hollow out.
He didn’t feel hungry, despite reaching forty hours without a meal. The only thing he felt was pain, cold. His body had no room for anything else.
Tears began to run down the side of his face again as he struggled with every breath in and every breath out. He kept quiet, as quiet as he could with every one of his breaths feeling like razor blades slicing up his lungs.
He closed his eyes as the sounds from the room grew louder. He heard his mother groan in pain, a man’s voice whispering to her words he couldn’t quite catch. He tried his hardest to go back to sleep, to pass into a state of nothingness again. It would be better for both of them if he would just disappear, where there was no pain and no sounds to be made.
The sounds became louder. His mother’s moans grew louder, rhythmic, as the man began to raise his voice. The noise should have kept him awake, but his illness drowned it out. As he slipped once again to the void, he remembered how warm it was to be surrounded by his mother’s dresses.
* * *
Levi clutched onto his mother’s clothing as he slept. His breathing had become stronger, robust. The medicine had done its job, and the food Kuchel had bought over the last week had been enough to help him overcome it.
She kept her arm around his back, rubbing his skin through the thin fabric with slender fingers. She smiled as he snuggled closer to her in his sleep.
She turned her head away from him as she coughed into her elbow.
* * *
He remembered his mother now of all times as he laid on the street. Ten years after she passed, as if this had been a reminder of the anniversary of her passing. A decade ago, he had nearly passed away from the infection that later killed his mother. Now, he lay alone in the same state, with no mother to dry his tears or sell herself for medicine to fix his ailments.
Levi was alone. He suffered in silence and agony, in the cold that took everyone from the Underground sooner or later.
His arm laid outstretched under his head as he remained motionless on the sidewalk. People went about their day as if nothing had been out of the ordinary. Nothing was. The streets were littered with remains. A poor, dying man was not news to anybody. It certainly wasn’t news to him.
He told himself that maybe he deserved it. He served his sentence. Four years with Kenny, and six on his own had forced him to become a man long before he was finished being a boy. He had done unforgivable things to stay alive, to feed himself and make sure he didn’t meet the same fate as his late mother.
But here, lying on the street with pins filling his chest and the sound of gravel with every exhale, Levi wondered if this was his punishment for all the bad things he had done. He wondered if he deserved this for stealing from people just as bad off as himself. He wondered if this was his karma for killing those just as scared and starving as he was.
He wondered if this is what he got for infecting his mother, for being the reason she was taken away from him. He wondered if this is what he got for killing her too.
Tears sprang to his eyes. Levi had been out of the habit of crying for many years. It solved nothing and made him look weak, like prey. After he grew old enough that tears no longer drew pity from the hearts of strangers, he had stored them away for what he thought would be forever. He tried to hold them back, but the first slid over the bridge of his nose and into the eyelashes of his other eye before he knew it.
In the moment, he swore he felt coddled again by his mother’s dresses. He felt her embrace, her warmth, as tears slid from his eyes and an infection tore through him like a ravenous beast. He closed his eyes, just as he had back then. He let the warmth overtake him, until the pain stopped and nothingness returned.
His body startled him awake when he heard something clatter to the ground by his head. He didn’t have the strength to raise his head, to raise his body, but he opened his tearful eyes to see what he could.
He turned his eyes up to see a small, burlap bag. The cloth was tied together on the top by a string. Someone had dropped something they must have been carrying home from the market.
If he had been in any other condition, he would have stuffed the bag into his sleeve and booked it to the alleyway before anybody could realize they had dropped it or come back to claim it for themselves. His neck felt leaden as he lifted it off of his numb arm, and his body protested with every small movement he made. He placed his head on the broken concrete as his clumsy fingers pulled at the string to open it up.
After a few moments of struggling, it gave way. The corners of the cloth unfolded to reveal a small bottle of medicine and a fresh bread roll. He thought he was dreaming, hallucinating, anything other than believing that he had been so lucky. It was easier to believe than exactly what he needed falling from the Topside like some sort of God heard his prayer. The smell immediately hit his nose and made his stomach knot up worse, the pain throughout him standing as his only assurance that he was not dreaming.
He shifted his focus then to the street in front of him. Through his tears, the only thing he could make out was a figure wearing a hat, and the brown end of a trench coat billowing in the wind as he walked away.
* * *
Sunlight streamed in alongside the breeze. The first sounds Levi registered when he woke up were of the leaves and shrubs blowing in the wind and thenchildren playing outside of his window. Their laughter and cheers were probably what startled him from a less than restful sleep.
He didn’t know where he was. He wasn’t quite so sure he cared. All he knew upon opening his eyes to rejoin the world again was that he wished they had remained closed.
Twenty years ago, his mother caressed his cheek. Twenty years later, he found himself in a bed again, with sheets pulled up over his shoulders and soft pillows to elevate his head. His hair and skin were clean, as dirty as his illness made him feel. The next breeze through the window brushed against the sweat beading his forehead, cooling him off from the immense heat he felt under the covers. He was sweating. His fever must have broken, finally.
He turned his head on the pillow to see a half full cup of water. His head pounded at such a simple act. He thought about taking a drink of it to soothe his sore throat, but it remained nothing but a thought. His eyes slowly fluttered closed, his body went limp once more, and he slowly drifted back off to sleep again.
He wasn’t sweating when he awoke at sunset. The dark orange of evening whose beauty he had never adjusted to flooded over the room. The loudness of outside had calmed down to the sound of crickets waking for the night shift and tree frogs happy with the rain the day before had brought them.
His eyes settled on the cup of water first, now filled to nearly three quarters full, and the small table that had been brought to his bedside. On it rested a bowl of what he assumed was water with a damp cloth hanging over the side of it. His skin felt clean of sweat, but he didn’t remember ever waking up to gather these supplies to give himself a makeshift bath. He had hardly remembered falling asleep, let alone anything else.
Beside the bowl rested a familiar bottle of medication like the one his mother had given him. The breeze blew again, this time warmly against his skin. When he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine being back in that closet, but he couldn’t quite conjure it. It had been far too long ago, and this was far too different. The bed was far too soft, and the air smelled too fresh.
He wasn’t in his mother’s dresses, crying in silence for the pain to stop. It already had.
The door slowly creaked open. Levi’s heart leapt into his throat for a moment before his eyes settled on a calming figure. His mind and body knew it wasn’t time to run. He had the energy, he felt well enough again, but he didn’t need to fight. He would be just fine right where he lay in the sunset.
He could afford to be ill, and he could afford to be loud. He could afford any kind of mistake his body could make.
Levi rolled back onto his back with a hefty grunt just as Erwin closed the door behind him. His husband inhaled a sharp breath as it startled him, but it quickly shifted to a loud sigh of relief. “Oh, thank goodness.” A smile grew on his face, scrunching up his nose. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to wake up for me again.” He hurried to his bedside, hardly believing his eyes and ears.
His chest was still sore, but he was no longer bound to silence from it. His voice left his throat scratchy and hoarse. “For you?” He asked.
Erwin chuckled from deep in his chest as he took a seat on the edge of the bed, sitting ever so slowly so he didn’t rock Levi’s sensitive body too much. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt the man he loved. Levi took in the sight before him, of the gentleness in his actions. He stopped when their eyes locked. The sunset reflected in his sapphire eyes, creating a color so breathtaking that Levi nearly forgot how to keep his chest rising and falling. He wasn’t just safe here in his presence, he was the safest person within the walls.
He was close to being the happiest, but one glance into Erwin’s eyes was enough to show him he took home silver.
“Yes, for me,” he laid his hand on his leg from atop the covers. “You and I both know you aren’t the fondest of waking for yourself.”
It was true. Mornings were the stuff of nightmares, especially if he hadn’t slept enough the night before. The only one who ever heard him complain about them, and had done so very often, was sitting at the edge of the bed rubbing his leg.
They remained that way in silence. Levi didn’t close his eyes. He looked on as his heart pounded rapidly in his chest. He felt warm.
“You have a bit of color back,” Erwin told him as he rose to his feet again. Levi turned his head to watch as he slid open the nightstand drawer and pulled out two candle holders that he placed side by side. “I noticed your fever had broken when I visited you earlier. I washed off the sweat from your skin. I hope that helped you to feel a bit better too.” He then took two long, new candle sticks from the drawer and placed them upright on the holders. Lastly, he drew a box of matches. “I take it you feel some improvement?”
Erwin opened the box and pulled out a single match. Levi watched as he struck it against the side and the fire bloomed to life. He held the match to the first candle's wick until it gave birth to a flame all its own. Erwin tossed the match into the water basin he had used to wash his husband and lifted up the first candle to bring life to the second.
Levi’s eyes shifted up to see Erwin’s face, now brighter in the candles’ light. “Ye-” the word caught in his throat as he began to cough again. He covered his mouth with his elbow the way his mother had taught him.
Erwin’s eyebrows knitted together with concern as his smile dropped. “You poor dear,” he sat the candle back down to give Levi his full attention. As soon as he was resting back again, Erwin picked up the covers and pulled them back up to his neck. “Let me bring dinner up for you. It will be time for your medicine again soon, and we can’t have you on an empty stomach for it.”
Erwin knelt down and placed his lips gingerly against Levi’s forehead. Levi closed his eyes and savored the feeling of a loving touch. Erwin slowly left a kiss before lifting his head and replacing the void it leaves with his knuckles softly brushing against Levi’s cheekbone. Levi doesn’t open his eyes.
That chuckle returns. The deep, relieved chuckle of pure happiness from his husband that he has heard so many times before. He doesn’t need to open his eyes to picture the crooked half smile that accompanies it. “Don’t go back to sleep on me. I need you awake if you’re to eat.”
“I hear ya.” Levi’s voice answered weakly.
Erwin’s skin lost contact with his own. Silence followed for a moment. Just as Levi thought he left the room, he felt both of his hands cup his cheeks as he leaned to place their noses and foreheads together. “I am so happy,” Erwin whispered to him. “You had me worried, Levi.”
Levi took in a breath of fresh air. He lifted his painful arms to gently hold onto Erwin’s wrists. He had never been sure of much, but he had never been more sure of the fact that he was glad he was healing. He was sure that he wanted to live. He wanted to see that smile, hear that laugh, for as many years as he could. He didn’t want any illness to take him away anymore.
He didn’t care if he deserved to feel the aches of fever as his life drained away. He didn’t care. He just wanted this, forever.
Erwin’s thumbs gently rubbed his cheekbones as the lovers remained glued in place. Levi knew better than to try to kiss him. He would rather die than transfer his contagion on to Erwin.
As cautious as he wanted to be, there was nothing he could do to stop his husband when he acted less than so. Erwin rubbed his nose ever so softly against Levi’s before lifting his head again. He kept his face in his hands as Levi’s eyes opened to the world once again.
Erwin smiled down at him, eyes brimming with tears of happiness. They have had many close calls with Levi’s health since he came to the surface only to be exposed to all sorts of new ailments he had never come in contact with before. Each time was just as scary and brutal as the last, but Erwin was evermore relenting. He would pay any price to make sure Levi’s eyes would always open once again.
“I’ll be back in a moment. Don’t doze off, Sleepyhead.” Erwin swiped his thumbs over his cheekbones one last time before slowly releasing his head back into the pillow. Levi felt like a part of his soul left with them. He simply nodded, saving his strength.
Erwin slowly walked to the door, the light from the window hardly being enough to see him from the bed anymore. Levi heard the door open, but could barely make out Erwin turning once more to check on him before feeling confident enough to close the door behind him as he left.
Levi relaxed his head back against the pillow again. His skin was alive with the memory of Erwin’s hands against his cheeks, his lips against his forehead, his nose nuzzling his own. He felt so warm inside, warmer than the illness could ever make him. He closed his eyes to relish in the feeling. His eyes grew heavy once more as his heart grew fuller.
Levi fell back asleep with a smile gracing his lips.