When Erwin Smith wakes up he still tries to wipe his eyes with his right hand.

He also rolls over expecting his husband to be there.

The fact that neither of these things happen is very unfair. Every morning he rolls over and doesn't feel Levi's familiar warmth, he spends several minutes with his eyes squeezed shut, praying that Levi is just in the bathroom. That it will be pre-cancer Levi, with a head full of dark hair and a bad attitude, getting ready for work and grumbling because Erwin forgot to turn the heating on last night.

Instead he opens his eyes to an empty bed and a cold flat because he did forget to turn the heating on. He allows himself to stare at Levi's empty pillow for a few seconds before getting up and getting dressed, pointedly ignoring the right side of the wardrobe and the glass with Levi's toothbrush and razor in. He can't even look at anything that his husband owned, or he'll break down and he can't break down because people need him, especially today of all days.

The funeral is at two o'clock and Mike, the deputy head, told him to take the day if he needed to, but he doesn't need to, he is perfectly composed.

The mantra falters a bit when, in taking his black suit jacket out of the wardrobe, he pulls Levi's 'sick sweater' out as well. Aside from backing against the wardrobe door and staring at the innocent jumper like it's a scorpion, he has no idea what to do, because while a large part of him wants to do exactly that, an even larger part of him wants to grab the jumper and bury his face in it, breathe in the fading scent of his beloved and allow himself to feel sad.

But he doesn't.

He shakes himself, clumsily pins up the right sleeve of his suit jacket, ties his shoes and sprints out of the door without doing a thousand and one things he considered essential before Levi.

...

School has become a grey, meaningless blur.

He rarely even leaves his office any more, and his co-workers pick up his slack, Mike takes assembly more often than not and Ms Hange, the school's NUT representative, drags him out of his chair and into important meetings.

Most of the time, Erwin sits at his desk, signing and reading and filing and running the business side of the school as best he can with his back firmly to the picture of his ex-husband on the desk top. Nobody bothers him, nobody talks to him, nobody knows what to say.

...

When he arrives today, Mike and Mr Arlert are standing in the entrance hall.

'Erwin, go home.' Mike says, in his deputy head no nonsense tone.

'And good morning to you too, Mr Zacharias.' Erwin replies politely, smiling the best he can. He knows he's a mess. He hasn't been able to shave for a week, remembering Levi in his last week running a gentle hand over his stubble and telling him to shave it off if he ever wanted to be kissed again. As he's never going to be kissed again, he thinks it's fitting not to shave. Nevertheless, he begins to make his way to his office, only to find Mike following close behind.

'Erwin, this is ridiculous! Why do you insist on keep coming in when you'd clearly be better off at home?'

Erwin is moving unsteadily around the room, gathering supplies to make coffee and occasionally forgetting he only has one arm, as he reaches to get something with his right hand. 'Would you like a drink, Mike?' He asks vaguely over his shoulder.

'Are you going home, Erwin?' Mike asks stubbornly

Erwin sighs delicately 'No, I'm not going home.'

'And why not?'

'I really don't feel I need to Mike, now about Tiffany Walker-'

Mike suddenly bangs a fist down onto Erwin's desk. 'Erwin! For God's sake! Stop pretending to cope when we all know you can't!'

Mike is unsurprised to see that Erwin has not turned a hair at this sudden outburst. 'I think I am coping perfectly well, thank you, deputy headmaster.' He says quietly, but the ice in the sentence nearly freezes Mike solid.

'Really? Because I've never once seen you try to use your right arm in the six months it's been gone, but suddenly today, the day of Levi's funeral-'

Mike stops abruptly because Erwin has sagged against the desk, his head in his hand.

'God, Erwin are you-'

'Please don't say his name.' He hears the whispered request. Mike stays silent, a hand on Erwin's shoulder to steady him. They stay like that for a few seconds until Erwin straightens up and pushed his hair out of his face.

'I'm not going home Mike. Now, is there anything else I can do for you?

...

It's quarter to two. The shakes in Erwin's hand have become progressively worse over the past three hours, getting to the stage that he can barely hold a pen still and he can't drink anything without throwing it down his front.

Hange and Mike barge in at ten to, both in black, and Hange throws his jacket at him.

'Time to go, sir.'

Erwin's arm hangs loose by his side, he didn't even try to catch the jacket. When he looks up, Hange draws in a breath sharply at his grey pallor and the blood on his bitten lip.

'I can't.' He whispers.

She looks at Mike, throws him the car keys and manhandles Erwin from his chair.

'You have to.' She says firmly, pushing him through the office door.

...

Mike has to physically restrain Hange from her efforts to make Erwin look presentable when they get to the chapel.

He then has to return to the car to drag a wide eyed and shaking Erwin from the backseat and follows a step behind him to make sure that the man doesn't bolt. He needn't have bothered, Erwin is so shaky he has to hold onto his elbow to even get him to walk in a straight line.

...

Erwin sits in silence all the way through the funeral, staring at his feet.

He sits in silence while his husband's ex-boyfriend tells the congregation about Levi's last moments, as if it was he and not Erwin that shared them.

He sits in silence while his mother- and sister-in-law scream at him that it's his fault Levi is dead, that he should have gotten him to a hospital sooner.

The first time Erwin raises his eyes is when his sister-in-law grabs the stump of his arm and tells him that she hopes he burns in hell for what he did to her brother.

Mike hurries over, ready to rescue his friend, but all he hears is Erwin politely agreeing before excusing himself from the chapel and from the funeral altogether. Mike and Hange find him in the graveyard, staring at his shoes again.

They don't stay for the burial.

...

Mike drops Erwin back at school, acquiescing to his request without a fight this time, because they've all had a trying day and the last thing he wants to do is embroil Erwin in another argument no one needs to have.

It's five o'clock in the evening, no-one's at school and all the lights will be off, but Erwin has keys, and, as Mike suspects, Erwin can't face going home that night. Erwin distantly thinks that Mike is probably going to shout at him when he finds him asleep at his desk in last night's clothes, but he can't go home. He can't bury Levi and then return to a house full of his things.

Mechanically, he unlocks the main door, turns off the alarm and walks to his office. Then he realises that the alarm didn't go off, so someone must still be in school. Well, he doesn't give a shit, as long as they don't bother him.

Speaking of which...

'Oh! Good evening Mr Smith, I didn't expect you to come back.'

Damn.

Erwin turns.

'Good evening Mr Arlert.'

Arlert fidgets nervously 'A-are you alright sir?'

'I just buried my husband, Mr Arlert.'

The boy turns bright red and Erwin's mind reels back to a time when that would have turned him on, but the memory makes him want to vomit.

'Would you like a cup of tea, sir?' Arlert asks. Erwin considers him for a moment.

'Yes, thank you, Mr Arlert.'

...

Ten minutes later find them sitting side by side in the staff kitchen, drinking PG tips in silence.

'Feeling any better sir?' Arlert asks, nervously jovial.

'Not noticeably, but thank you for asking.' Erwin replies. He hasn't touched his tea and he absently wonders when he last ate something.

'Would you – would you like to talk about it sir?' Arlert asks.

'Talk about what? That I buried my thirty two year old husband at thirty six? That I spent his funeral being reminded by his family that he married the wrong man? That it's my fault he married a man at all?'

Erwin slams his mug into the counter top, suddenly. 'Sorry, I'm sorry...'

'Armin.'

Erwin looks up confused 'What?'

'It's my name.'

'Oh. Armin.' Erwin wonders why the boy thinks he might want to know that.

'What do you mean Mr Smith married the wrong man?'

Erwin gives a bitter grimace 'Mr Smith's family weren't ecstatic about him marrying a man at all. But if he had to, it shouldn't have been me. Levi came from a very close knit community, he was supposed to go home and marry a local, but he came to university here with me. He moved in, we got married and he contracted cancer.' He sighs, trying to hold back the tears prickling his eyes. 'Life's a bitch, Arlert, anyone who says differently is selling something.'

'I'm sorry. He was very young.'

'Too young.'

Something in the back of Erwin's head registers the noise of Arlert getting closer. However, the rest of his head, drowning in self pity, ignored it.

'I can't imagine how painful that must be, sir.' He hears Arlert say, before feeling a hand on his thigh. 'But I might be able to help.'

Erwin blinks in surprise at the hand and then at the scared and slightly hopeful face of the young man who put it there.

Without a word, he stands, knocks the hand away and leaves the school.

Erwin almost sprints through the front door and slides to a halt in front of the cupboard where they keep the alcohol.

He ignores the twinge of sadness and the memory pushing at his skull as his hand closes around the bottle of Teacher's that Levi gave him on his last birthday, in favour of sloshing an over-generous measure into the glass he has placed on the counter. Turning away, tumbler in hand, he sees the one picture of Levi he can't bare to take down. It sits in pride of place, a simple headshot of Levi scowling at the camera with a wall in the background. Erwin took it the day he proposed.

Slowly, he raises the tumbler in the direction of the picture. 'Your good health.' He says and downs the glass.

Eight whiskies later and Erwin realises that Levi would not have wanted it to come to this.

He would never have wanted Erwin to end up sloshed on the living room carpet, but he can't help himself, because everything hurts and it's been hurting for a week, since he rolled over in bed and put his arm around something cool instead of the usual warmth. He slams his hand into his forehead to try and rid himself of the memory. However much he drinks, the memories don't go away, they just increase in poignancy.

His head lolls back against the table he's leaning against, a memory of Levi on their wedding day, growling in his ear that he has dust on his collar, then wriggling away from him on their wedding night because he claimed that Erwin smelt of drink. He grimaces and picks up the tumbler again because he really can't dwell on what his ex-husband would say if he found him in this state.

For the moment, the memories are pleasant, Levi marching into a lecture on the day Erwin had met him and telling him to piss off because he was in his seat, blurting out a proposal on the day he graduated because he couldn't bare to never see Levi again, Levi arriving at the small flat he is now sitting in with one box of clothes, another of books and tears drying on his face because his parents had thrown him out. He smiles drunkenly, within an hour Levi had completely reorganised the kitchen and was shouting at him for the state of his bedroom.

Unfortunately, just as the good times did, the pleasant memories must end. Levi had been twenty six when Erwin came home to him lying wide eyed on the floor, whispering that he didn't know what had just happened. The day, nearly four years later, when Erwin, tired of the constant headaches and terrifying seizures, had finally just picked him up off the floor after a seizure, dropped him in the back of the car and driven to A and E.

The diagnosis had come a week later.

'No…' He mumbles, eyes still shut as the memory of Levi after his first chemotherapy appointment, pale and sick, lying in the back of Erwin's car. Then slapping Erwin's arms away when he tried to pick him up, only to fall onto the concrete the second he stepped out of the car. Three years of getting more and more tired, watching Levi waste away. Three years of retaining the composure.

Erwin sobs as the night that he'd given up on Levi flashes across his inner vision. Their seventh anniversary. The night he'd walked into the bathroom to see what was taking Levi so long to get ready to go out. His husband had been standing in front of the mirror, blood dripping slowly from one hand. Erwin had been so shocked he'd just stood in the doorway.

'Baby?'

Levi had turned to look at him blankly and offered him the bleeding hand. Gently, Erwin had peeled the fingers back to find a razor blade clutched tight in Levi's hand, so tight it had sliced his palm. In a daze, Erwin had pulled him through to the kitchen and bandaged him up, all the while stammering questions about why Levi had sliced his own hand open with a razor blade and then seemed perfectly unconcerned about it. Levi hadn't answered any of them, instead watching Erwin bandage his hand and then saying

'Thanks. Who are you again?'

He'd nearly walked out then and there. For good. He'd nearly packed a bag, jumped in the car and just driven until he needed to fill the petrol tank, because no matter how strong people think he is, Erwin has always been a coward when it comes to Levi.

He's always hidden behind something to stop people noticing how much he's hurting, his not-quite-affair, his ruthless efficiency and his apparent detached boredom with his marriage. He laughs through another mouthful of whisky. He probably deserves this.

Levi died thinking that Erwin had stopped loving him.

Erwin will carry on living, knowing that he never will.

...

Erwin wakes the following morning to a surprisingly clear head and an, equally surprisingly, tidy living/bedroom. He smiles at the thought that Levi had even imprinted his house rules on to drunk-Erwin. Levi...

Last night's memories hit him and he curls into a ball of self loathing and bad breath. Finally he surfaces and comes face to face with Levi's pillow.

For nearly a week now, he's been preserving the pillowcase, catching the faint scent of his beloved every time he rolls over and willing it never to disappear. Gently, he runs a hand over it. Before yanking the pillowcase off and throwing it into the laundry.

He calls in sick and spends a good hour walking around the flat and collecting up photograph albums. He knows all the photos will be him and Levi, his parents were never at home to take pictures and Levi burned all his family photos the day his mother had turned up with a policeman and some divorce papers claiming that Erwin had forced Levi to marry him.

For one wild moment, he considers doing the same, but soon he is back to his original plan. By the time he is finished, he has twelve photograph albums stacked up by his chair. He sits, takes a deep breath and opens the first one.

It takes him all day to look through all the photos. There are some he laughs at, a great deal he cries at and some that he just plain can't get over. Pictures from before they were married, before they started going out even, pictures of their wedding day, pictures of other people's wedding days, pictures of parties, holidays, proposals and one particular album that Erwin had received for his twenty-fifth birthday that he keeps very carefully hidden at the back of his sock drawer.

Evening finds Erwin covered in dust, curled up on the sofa with Levi's sick jumper in his arms. He has wounds that will never heal, wounds that will leave scars. He's not over Levi, he never will be. But it hurts less.