They say money can't buy happiness. But it can buy you food, water, and shelter, the three most essential ingredients to survival. Once the physical needs are met, the body can focus on emotional needs: feelings of safety, of belonging, of worth, of love. When money becomes the value of a person's physical and psychological needs, it can lead a person to be quite bitter.

So was the case of Levi Ackerman, living alone in his one bedroom apartment—barely livable by law. But despite the leaks, the peeling wallpaper, and the drafts in the poorly insulated walls, it was his home, and he kept it as tidy as he could under the circumstances. It wasn't much, but it was what he could afford. At twenty six, dishwashing at even a high-end pub wasn't enough to pay the rent on time; he was two months behind already, and his landlady was getting restless.

Four years ago, he'd tried going back to school—but having nowhere to stay but on his own and rooming with friends, he could never attend the classes he was paying so much for, because he'd been working. Eventually he'd had to withdraw, before the school board kicked him out for nonattendance. It was go to classes and have nowhere to live, or go to work and have a roof over his head; it wasn't as if he had any family to stay with, and he and his friends were poor as dirt.

Money was something Levi had never had much of, and something that he had come to the conclusion very early in live was the currency for happiness. Whether that was true or not, he only had evidence to support it.

Every morning, he had the same routine. He woke up at 5:57, just before his alarm went off, and laid in silence until it did; he'd look up at the cracked ceiling, wondering when it would inevitably start leaking above his mattress that still laid on the floor. When he'd first started renting there, he'd told himself he'd buy a bed frame with his next paycheck; that was three years ago. After his alarm finally went off, he'd drag himself out of bed, and head toward his shower. Then he would get dressed, have breakfast (usually just coffee), and head out with a cigarette to quell both hunger and his nicotine addiction.

"Hey, you wanna try this?" had been what started it: a friend, at sixteen, had offered him out a cigarette at a party.

Levi had shrugged, reaching out to take it; he'd coughed and choked at first, but that had been the start. It wasn't as if it was difficult to steal cigarettes from his uncle, whom he'd lived with at the time.

Shivering in the chill of the morning air, Levi sucked the toxins into his lungs without question. He always walked to work, huddled in an old hoodie with holes in the pockets. It was getting colder as the months went on, and he could've seen his breath even without the smoke. Ten years of smoking had left its mark upon him, and he knew the potentially more dangerous side effects, but he had never found it in himself to care, not once in ten years. If it killed him, then that was how he went. It wasn't as if he was doing much with his life anyway—as far as he saw it, he was stuck in this rut of poverty. Not to say he wanted to die—he didn't—but the nicotine addiction was stronger than his will to quit.

After a ten minute walk to work (he was lucky on that regard), it didn't take long for Levi to have clocked in and thrown an apron on over his plain black shirt and jeans. With one earbud in to play music—another small perk he appreciated—the day began, scrubbing dishes until his hands were red and cracked underneath his gloves. Plates of half eaten food came in from those who could afford to not eat or save every bit that they paid for, and Levi dumped the food into the trash, stomach sinking. But no matter how hungry he was, he would never eat after someone.

Then came the times when he had to go out and get the bus tubs from behind the bar, and he had to go out and face the bastards he was cleaning up after. They were always well off men and women in designer clothing, sipping at glasses of mimosas or whiskey (depending on the time of day), and Levi hated them for it. He hated that they had money to spend on needlessly expensive fashion, and drinks they had no business drinking—if anything, he thought, it was men like him who needed a drink the most. But he would simply collect his tub of dishes, scowling all the way back to the kitchen. If he didn't think about it, sometimes he could even forget the ache of tension in his shoulders.

That day, however, as he glared over the bar at those paying to drink their seemingly nonexistent problems away, he locked eyes with someone. A tall, blond man with cheekbones worthy of a statue, and piercing blue eyes that felt as though they could see right through him. Strange, as most customers avoid his gaze. It was clear he didn't belong in this environment—small, pinched faced, and hollow cheeks, he made a point to seem unapproachable. But this man just watched him, as if watching an interesting television show; Levi shot a glare back, and the man's lips twitched up. So the man wasn't a statue.

"Ackerman, what're you doing?"

Starting when the voice of the bartender interrupted his thoughts, Levi broke the blond man's gaze and just shook his head at the bartender. "Nothing," he muttered back. He grabbed the bus tub more roughly than was really necessary, trudging back through to the dish pit.

Why had he let his attention be taken like that? He'd known he was gay since he was a teenager, and yes, perhaps tall blonds were his type, but it was more than that. The man had seemed familiar, like he'd seen him before. Dismissing him as a return customer he'd never taken notice of before, Levi tried to focus on his job again, shoving the earbud back in. It was nothing he should be bothered with, he told himself. All that mattered was that he did his job, and earned his money. At the end of the day, what mattered was the hours he'd made and the cigarette he'd light on his walk home.

When a person is in the same room every day, silently bitter and dreading every moment he's there, it creates a negativity in the room that is almost tangible; most of the servers and chefs who dropped off dishes there kept their distance. They said nothing, and left the plates for him before they hurried out. That was how Levi liked it—he didn't exactly want to get chummy with any of his coworkers. There was one girl, a server, who occasionally tried to strike up conversation, however.

"Hey Levi," she chirped as she came in that day, a stack of plates in her arms. "You busy?"

Levi sent her a sarcastic smile, turning out more like a grimace. "No, never," he said, before sighing, and continuing to scrub at a particularly stubborn bit of gravy on a plate. Her plates were added to his pile, but she hadn't left. "What do you need, Petra?"

"I—I just wanted to see if you wanted to come out with us tomorrow night," she said, always a bit put off by his sour disposition. Still, her cheer was unshakeable that day. "Aorou invited me to go have drinks at the bar down the road, and uh…" She lowered her voice to continue. "I think he thinks it's a date…if you want to come along, invite friends, whatever—I'd appreciate it."

"You're inviting me out so you don't have to deal with him?" Levi said, glancing up at her with one thin, raised brow. Then he shrugged. He needed a night to relax occasionally, or he'd go completely insane. "Yeah sure. If I can think of anyone, I'll invite them too…" He trailed off, frowning down at the dish he'd been scrubbing since she'd come in; it was pretty damn clean by then, but he couldn't bring himself to stop.

Knowing his signs of anxiety, Petra offered a gentle smile. "I've been meaning to ask…how are you doing?" she asked softly. She paused, and when Levi didn't answer, she added, "I know you were close to—"

"I feel like I killed my best friends, Petra," Levi snapped, gaze coming up to glare at her. "Don't you have tables to get to?

"I uh—I'm sorry—sorry," Petra stammered, taking a step back. Seeming unable to think of anything else, she just said, "See you tomorrow," and hurried to leave.

Levi turned back to his work, trying to muster up enough energy to feel bad for snapping at her. But it had only been a year—the car crash that had killed his two best friends. They had been a better family to him than anyone else in his life, and he had killed them. He almost wanted Petra to come back, to tell her about the sleepless nights and—when he did fall asleep—how he saw their corpses behind his eyelids, mangled and bloody in the wreckage. He shouldn't have survived—especially so unharmed. The most he'd gotten was a concussion from the airbag, but in his half-broken car, the driver's side airbag was the only one that had deployed. Now there were two more graves in a yard of forgotten souls, marked Isabel Magnolia and Farlan Church, aged twenty and twenty four. He still hadn't visited the cemetery since the service, to which he was one of few attendants.

He, Isabel, and Farlan were all part of the same group: they had grown up on the bad side of town, on their own since they were teenagers for various reasons. Lacking a supportive, loving family, they had become their own. They had been like siblings, working together toward a better life. A car, even a shitty, rusted car like it was, had been a big occasion. Now Levi regretted every day that he had bought that junk pile, and not gotten it fixed up properly. Not that there had been the money for that…

What snapped Levi out of his thoughts was realizing that he'd been scrubbing the same plate for about five minutes straight: any more and he might snap it in half. Sighing, he put it down to dry, and moved on to the next one. One day, he'd have the life Isabel and Farlan had dreamed of. That much, he had silently promised them. Though he couldn't figure out why for the life of him, he had a feeling the blond man in the bar would be there too.