Chapter Text
Nobody gives him a second glance, and he’s long since stopped trying to get many people’s attention. Occasionally, he would put himself out there; go up to someone, ask for spare change, etcetera, but today is not one of those days. The cold and growing hunger and exhaustion has sapped all the motivation from him, and so he resigns himself to sitting just in an alley, his head against a wall, cardboard under him, and a cup one-eighth full of pennies in front of him. His hood is pulled up over his head and slightly blocks the headlights and streetlights from his tired eyes.
When footsteps get too close to him, suspiciously close, he’ll peek up from his hood and his hair, just in case, but it’s never someone giving him a second of their time.
Never.
Levi, with a sigh, takes his cup and turns his back to the world as if it hadn’t already done that to him, and he pours the pennies out and begins to count them.
Six dollars and seventy-two cents. If he wanted to get fancy and festive, he could afford one of those Christmas latte’s or hot chocolates in any coffee shop, but that would be the biggest waste of his money. But god, he wanted something warm in his stomach, rather than more cold water and tasteless food.
Levi puts the money in his coat pocket and zips it up, as if someone would care to try and mug him for all the six dollars to his name.
He leaves the plastic cup there while he heaves himself to his feet, his cold, weak limbs moaning in pathetic protest. He has to balance himself against the dirty brick wall next to him for a moment before he can walk out steadily. Some people give him odd looks when he leaves the entrance of the alley, but that’s okay. He’d give himself weird looks too.
It’s December and it’s absolutely freezing – his clothes do nothing to help from the cold, and his shoes do nothing for his feet, either.
It’s been seven months since he got a divorce, six months since he got fired, and around four months or so since he’d been evicted with nowhere to go. He’d shoved all his stuff into a bag which he carried everywhere, and those, along with the change from people on the street, were all he had to his name. The money he had brought with him at the beginning had dwindled to virtually nothing, being spent on travel fees, cleaning ends with bills, loans, fees, etcetera, along with the necessities of food, water, occasional shelter when the weather got too bad. He’d also picked up smoking during his divorce and was in no good place to stop it now, and that was costly. Then, of course, the laundromat and the gym (the gym was the cheapest place to have a shower, and he enjoyed a workout while he was there – it gave him something to do other than get sucked into the daily depression he faced.)
It’s getting dark – it gets dark so early now that it’s winter – but the streets are still bustling – up until midnight, they usually are – and he melts into the moving crowds on the street, in amongst the Christmas shoppers, the lovesick couples, the tourists, the rowdy teenagers.
School let out a couple of hours ago, so the streets and the shopping centre he ducks into are still full of them in packs, gaggles of girls running from Primark to Topshop to Urban Outfitters quickly, all with a Starbucks in hand, gushing about Christmas presents and school. None paid any attention to him, of course, other than perhaps a sorry and a laugh when they almost bumped into him.
Levi wraps his arms around his torso tighter and hurries his legs on until he reaches the cheap grocery store in the shopping centre.
Six dollars and seventy-two cents.
He ends up buying a bread roll and going into a coffee shop nearby. His hands were still shaking and he could still feel the frost coating his bones. He sits in the corner of the place, slouched and shoulders hunched, clutching the tea and breathing in the steam it gives off.
He has ninety-seven cents to his name.
He nurses his tea slowly, spending as much time inside the warm, heated, comfortable coffee shop as he can possibly drag out, but he has nothing to do and is picking hesitantly at his plain roll. He’s been studying the lines in the wooden table in front of him intently for god knows how long, and when the chair opposite him scrapes suddenly across the floor, he almost drops his tea with how harsh he jumps.
It’s a blonde man, standing with one hand on the half-pulled out chair and a sheepish smile. He has a suit jacket over one arm, that same hand holding a briefcase.
“Sorry,” he says, “I thought you saw me. Can I borrow this seat?” He asks, and Levi’s mouth works silently for a moment before he lazily gestures with one hand.
“Go for it,” he replies, and the blonde smiles gratefully, nods his thanks, and takes the chair to the table next to him where there are a few people sitting. A brunette with thick glasses slaps the blonde mans shoulder and gives a loud, shrill laugh that grates Levi’s ears.
He returns his attention to his cooling tea, but occasionally looks up again at the blonde man. He doesn’t look back at him.
When he’s drained his tea and long outstayed his welcome in the shop, he drags himself to his feet and returns the empty cup of tea, and leaves. There’s still plenty of people in the shopping centre with hands full of shopping bags and gift bags, but the crowds are thinning out, people leaving before it can really get too late. On his way out, a teenager asks him to buy him and his group of friends a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of vodka. He keeps walking.
He still has half a roll left, a still fairly empty stomach, and a new amount of regret and self-loathing from spending so much money on one drink, but he feels warmer, even if it’s only for a short amount of time. He pulls the hood of his jacket up and zips it back up as he heads outside. The cold hits him and he pulls out his pack of cigarettes and his lighter, and shields the cigarette from the wind with his hand as he lights it and takes a long drag of it, feels it claw into his lungs and the tension in his wiry muscles are pushed out in a cloud of cancerous smoke.
It’s cold outside, badly so, but it’s not raining or snowing, and he can hide from the wind in certain places, so it’s not too bad tonight. He’s slept out in worse since it began to get colder.
He finds what’s become his usual sleeping spot, accepted by the homeless ‘community’ around – there’s so much more to sleeping in an alley than he had first thought, because other homeless people claim their spots and that’s theirs. He doesn’t want to have to fight some addict to sleep behind a dumpster, either, or get in the middle of a local drug trading spot or a prostitutes’ field. Don’t interfere with them, and more often than not, they won’t interfere with you, either.
It’s untouched, the dumpster that’s been tipped on its’ side still with the lid closed and when he opens it, all the cardboard for insulation and the plastic from a bag poking out from the corner of a piece of cardboard. Levi crawls into it, pulls the thin blanket from his backpack and then set the backpack at the top end, and then falls back onto it, balancing his cigarette between his lips as he pulls the lid closed with a grunt, and fixes his blanket.
It’s cold, and he finishes his cigarette quickly, flicking it out in a small gap by the lid of the dumpster that is now his home, and then he curls up into a tightly ball, tucking all his limps under his blanket and pulls it up to his nose.
He listens to the cars driving by and the people walking around, the loud laughter from people and happy yells, and he tries not to think about the fact that he’s sleeping in a dumpster in a dirty alleyway – has been for months now – and tries not to think about other people. She’s probably living with her parents now, or a friends, or maybe she’s got her own apartment again. It’s been months, maybe she’s even moved on already and has found another man. He tries not to wonder if she thinks about him, but knowing her, she probably is. Or, at least, she probably has at least once. She was never a cruel woman, but they were cruel to each other at the end. He remembers when she would complain about thinks she had previously loved about him, remembers when she accused him of things he never would have done, for whatever reason.
He remembers when she went to sleep earlier to avoid him, when she made a point of keeping blankets on her side, of making breakfast like usual but only ever for herself, and when he began to sleep on the couch, and when she yelled at him for sleeping with other girls, for whoring himself out to other men at clubs after snorting a perfect white line. He hardly even drank alcohol, let alone do drugs, and had such a problem with intimacy he doubted he’d cheat even if he wanted to. He still doesn't understand why she thought that, but it's okay, because he's still alive and she's probably at a new home (he's not had one for a while, now) with someone she feels happy with (did she not feel happy with him anymore? Is that all it was?)
Levi fell asleep with shaking hands and a heavy heart.