For the past half hour or so, she had been sitting at one of her tables, only bothering to pretend to look busy and industrious when people passed by the windows at the front of her shop. For the most part she had been daydreaming over a tarnished tin mug of ale, so it was little wonder that Mrs. Lovett thought she must be hallucinating when she heard her name being called.

Still, she sat up a bit straighter, frowning up at the cracks in the ceiling. Of course she hadn't really heard that, because it had sounded like Mr. Todd; and since he featured so prominently in her latest daydream, she assumed quite logically that the sound of his voice had only been something conjured up by her mind.

So she succeeded in spilling ale all over the table when she heard him calling again, more loudly, and much less patiently this time. She sprang to her feet, hurriedly righting the mug and dousing the front of her dress with the brown liquid in the process.

"Mrs. Lovett. Now."

His voice was icy, and a bit frightening in the way he'd managed to pitch it just loud enough for her to hear downstairs—not enough of a yell for anyone in the neighboring buildings to hear, but enough of a shout for her to head for the stairs without first wiping up the ale. With a shout like that, she thought to herself, it's best not to keep 'im waiting. 'E's certainly not getting any 'appier up there.

Curiosity about what he was after—Mr. Todd summoning her like that, rather than him storming down to the shop himself, was highly unusual—overpowered any concern she might have had about his temper or what he was going to do to her if she didn't arrive before his patience ran out. She even warmed to the idea of actually going up to see him in his attic room without facing the prospect of him snarling at her to get out the moment she stepped inside.

By the time she reached his door she was, in fact, quite looking forward to the idea of going inside. The room itself wasn't terribly appealing, but he would be inside it, and she welcomed any opportunity to steal glances at him, or to absently touch his arm as she stood near him and make it seem like an accident… The possibilities were endless.

"Were you needin' somethin', Mr. T?" she asked brightly, entering the dingy room.

That Chair, to her surprise, was occupied. Before the chair stood Sweeney Todd, his face ashen and stricken—and peppered with a few drops of blood.

Mrs. Lovett smiled to herself to see him looking so handsome and well, but gave herself a little mental shake and turned her attention to That Chair. In it was a man, dead. That was a mundane sight by now, at the very least. He appeared to have been there for some time, as his neck—and chest now, too, as it had had time to ooze gradually downwards—was covered in blood and shaving lather. The foamy red mixture was also sprinkled all over the floor at the chair's base. She clicked her tongue in quiet reproach; that never made the blood any easier to clean up.

But she was sure that this was not what was troubling Mr. Todd. He was staring emptily at the body, his arms hanging limply at his sides. He made no sound or gave any indication that he was even aware of her presence.

"Mr. T?" Hands on her hips, she strode over to his silent form. "Are you going to be tellin' me wot it was you were needin', Mr. T?"

She sighed, resigned to the fact that it was going to be a challenge to get Mr. Todd to listen to her. Mrs. Lovett was used to that. It still bothered her a bit, though, that he never deemed her quite worthy of attention.

"Y'going to pay any attention t' me this time?" She cleared her throat loudly. "And, if y'don't mind my saying so, Mr. T., you'd best be disposin' of that body before another one of your customers waltzes right in 'ere and sees 'im lying there, plain as day, and gets it into their 'ead to run to the law about it."

That seemed to get a bit of a rise out of him, as intended. His eyes flicked towards her at last. "That is precisely the problem, Mrs. Lovett," he growled, his voice practically inaudible, but no less threatening than it had been when he was calling to her moments before.

Mr. Todd circled the chair and slammed his hobnailed boot down onto the switch. Mrs. Lovett braced herself for the sound of bones splintering against the stone floor of the bakehouse, but to her surprise the chair did not tilt back and the jaws of the trapdoor did not fall open.

"Are you quite satisfied, Mrs. Lovett?" he hissed. "I would very much like to dispose of the body, as you so cleverly suggested, but surely you are able to see that this is not an option."

His tone was rather mocking, she thought indignantly, but she merely frowned and joined him at the side of That Chair. "Well, that's odd," she remarked. "The blasted thing's gone and broken, has it?"

She tried the switch a few times herself, experimentally, while he eyed her with disgust. She supposed she understood his reaction; after all, she probably didn't have half his strength (and although he didn't at all look it, he'd shown himself to be quite strong when the situation called for it), so she oughtn't be wasting her time experimenting with it if he couldn't get it working properly. Still, Mrs. Lovett was slightly resentful of the fact that he didn't treat her a little more kindly, especially when all she was doing was trying to help, and since she had shown him such friendship over the past few weeks.

Perhaps now, she thought, would be an opportune time to try one of those surreptitious arm-strokes… As they stared at the chair together she carefully reached up and touched his arm, doing so without looking at him, so it would appear to be a careless, friendly gesture; for some reason, she supposed he was that easy to fool.

His arm stiffened under her touch and he backed away from her.

"We can't 'ave anyone else poking around up 'ere, or down there for that matter, so I s'pose the two of us will 'ave to fix it on our own," she said quickly, hoping to distract him so that she could perhaps try again… When he failed to respond even to that, she whirled around on him huffily. "Mr. Todd, you pay attention t' me!"

He blinked slowly, actually eyeing her for, likely, the first time that day. "Pay attention to you?" he repeated dully, incredulous at her remark.

Folding her arms across her chest, she forced herself to stare at him levelly, willed herself not to waver no matter how dark and ominous his eyes became. He held her gaze, and something in his manner made her hackles rise, the way he rotated slowly and smoothly around to face her, the way his fingers brushed against the leather sheath on his belt.

"Yes," she affirmed, trying not to give voice to the uncertainty she felt.

"Mrs. Lovett…" He sounded deadly serious now, and she hung onto his every breath, his words seeming to come out as languid and smooth as each movement, as each brush of his fingers against leather. "I want…"

She realized she had been holding her own breath, and the sound of blood rushing in her ears drowned out the last of his words.

…Mrs. Lovett closed her eyes…

She felt his hands come down on her upper arms, seizing them ruthlessly and pushing her backwards. She stumbled over her own feet for an instant before tripping over the dead man's shoes, his legs jutting out from his stout frame and onto the floor directly behind her. Instinctively she grabbed at Mr. Todd's vest to keep herself from falling, but he pushed her arms away, not relinquishing his grip on them, and with one last shove he plowed her straight into the wall.

As she struggled to get a bit of breath back and to stay on her feet, he took two steps and closed the distance between them. He leaned into her face, fuming, and edged closer and closer until she found that his body was pressed up against the length of her. He had cornered her before, on occasion, but this was entirely different from anything else he'd done when he was angry; he usually refrained from touching her at all, yet he could hardly make more contact with her than he was now….

"Mr. T!" She couldn't pretend to understand his reaction, but was torn between astonishment and a sort of lightheaded giddiness that was gradually creeping up on her, as it did any time he deigned to touch her, whether it was to lead her to the window or shove her out the door. But this time… Of course, she thought, suddenly realizing; it's me he wants. He wants me. At last, she had gotten through.

"But the chair," she gibbered incoherently, not caring at all about the bloody chair and scarcely believing what was occurring.

"Clearly you require more attention than the chair," he growled into her face. But why did he sound so incredibly hostile, she wondered? "You've made that quite evident."

"Mr. T…"

He grinned down at her humorlessly. "And so you shall receive the careful…" The razor slashed past her face as he drew it out of the sheath at his hip; "…attention…" She swore she could hear it slicing the air as, with one deft movement, he brought it to her neck; "…that you deserve."

She feared to move with that thing at her throat (it had been there before, but he'd always gotten distracted by something then, usually memories, and ended up slinking dejectedly away to brood about his wife, which didn't seem quite as likely this time), but she was undeniably intrigued because he was, after all, paying attention to her at last. And truthfully, she felt she most certainly did deserve it.

Pushing the flat of the blade against her chin, he tilted her face up roughly and caught her lower lip between his teeth. The fingernails of the hand that still held her arm began to dig into her skin through her ruffled sleeve; with her own free arm she could not resist reaching up and touching the side of his face—how often she'd fantasized about touching him like that—and raked her fingers back over his sideburn and into his hair. Mr. Todd knocked her wrist away with his own wrist, narrowly avoiding hitting hers with the blade in his hand, before returning the razor to its old position at her neck.

"Be still," he rumbled, as a warning not to try touching him again—just as stiffening and backing away from her had been a warning not to stroke his arm again, she now realized. But she hardly even minded; him touching her, that was enough. Even standing flat against the wall was just fine by her, as there was nothing in the room to fall down onto; no bed, just a table, and a dead man in a chair….

She tasted the dead man's blood; it was flecked over Mr. Todd's face. He bit down on her lip again and she thought that he tasted of copper and dust and, faintly, gin. Without moving the blade from where it hovered just above her collarbone, with one hand he pushed her dress up to her thighs, and she was dimly aware of the sound of clothing lightly splashing all over the floor around them—jacket and vest and trousers, even that leather sheath hit the floor by her foot, though the razor remained, of course. Hardly able to endure the wait, she no longer felt even the faintest fear of that razor at her neck; as long as it stayed next to her skin, so would he; he would continue lavishing attention on her, and she would take it in any form that he might choose to give it.

Everything began in a flash of heat and motion and she gasped when he thrust into her, unable to keep still and arching her back, unintentionally jutting her chest forward into the immobile razor. She gave a ragged cry at both the joy of having him use her and the sharp pain of the blade slicing into her flesh. Each time his hips crashed into hers it forced her harder up against the wall; her knees felt shaky and it was impossible to keep her back flush with it. Her shoulders would roll back and her chest heaved with each breath, every time pressing into the razor's edge. And each time it cut into her, it landed in a slightly different place, until her chest was covered with tiny little red cuts, all leaking blood down over her breasts and into the bodice of her dress. She whimpered despite the fact that she didn't mind the pain, but she wondered if he perhaps wasn't still awarding that razor more attention than it deserved.

"D'you…think that the…razor is really necessary?" she panted, seeing, through blurred vision, the handle held snugly in his fist and the white of his knuckles around it.

Teeth gritted, lip curled back, eyebrows arched, his white shock of hair plastered over his forehead by sweat, he looked up and faltered for an infinitesimal moment at the sight of blood trickling down her chest.

And the moment was gone; he swung the hand with the razor over her and plunged it into the loose fabric of her dress somewhere to the side of her hip. The blade stuck fast in the wood of the wall, pinning the rumpled mass of her skirts there. "Yes," he snarled into her ear.

Apparently there was more than one way of keeping her there, keeping her still.

Her normally sallow face was flushed as she looked indignantly at that razor; he couldn't be without it, that thing, that "friend," even now. Well, that was to be expected, she supposed, and this was more than she could ever hope for, could ever dream of—he was always attending to that thing, sharpening it, polishing it, watching it, but now he was using it to pay attention to her.

And that was enough, really. How maddeningly often she had longed for this, craved this, imagined how he would feel—and this was just as she had dreamed those countless times to be. She hadn't really expected him to smile down at her or gently caress her skin, not that she wouldn't have enjoyed that something fierce; but yes, she thought to herself, on some level she had pictured him to be sort of pushy and bloody like this, like the way he was when he was going at it with his razor at a customer's exposed throat—that was the only time he ever seemed truly alive—so of course being with her would have to spur him on, make him equally alive, send him fairly humming with energy and power. Yes, he would have to be a little rough, she supposed, because that's just how he was when he was at his most lively. It was good to be realistic about things; she couldn't be expecting any tender kisses from her Mr. Todd.

But seeing as it was Mr. T, after all, who was thrusting into her and making her moan and bleed—and she would rather be bruised and jarred by Mr. Todd than affectionately kissed and stroked by any lesser man who she didn't love—she reveled in every bit of it.

When the height of it crashed over both of them she positively howled with ecstasy, and his eyelids slammed shut and he threw his head back and managed to snarl without making a sound; her legs gave out and she slid down the wall, her dress ripping and tearing around the blade, her hands full of his sweaty, bloodied white shirt, dragging him down with her, and she thought of how she wanted to bask in the feeling of his skin blazing against hers, to feel that forever, until she realized that she hadn't been breathing—she had been holding her breath for heaven knew how long—

—she heard the sound of blood rushing in her ears—he seemed to be speaking, speaking her name—

—and she exhaled at last, letting out a tightly held breath—

…Mrs. Lovett opened her eyes…

"And… Mrs. Lovett?" He was there, both sounding and looking highly exasperated, standing by the chair, the dead man's blood freshly sprinkled over his vest and jacket, his thumb lightly brushing over the leather sheath at his hip.

She blinked. The room came back into focus. She was flushed and unsteady on her feet, but as the room sharpened around her the sound of blood rushing in her ears subsided and she could finally make out the last of his words:

"Mrs. Lovett…I want…," he was saying seriously, "…I want this chair fixed by nightfall."

She blinked again, her breathing erratic. Mr. Todd frowned at her, at where she stood a few feet away from him, this time with more confusion than exasperation; she looked fit to pass out at any moment.

"Eh? Mrs. Lovett, what is the matter?" he demanded, out of confusion rather than concern. "Are you ill?"

Shaking her head, she returned to the present, snapping out of the last vestiges of her reverie, her beautiful daydream.

The…chair? Her big eyes looked glassy, thinking, remembering; the blood, the razor, him cold and threatening; even all that would be exquisite. "…That's all? That's all y'wanted, Mr. T…?"

He stared at her uncomprehendingly. "Yes…"

Her skin felt clammy, and she absentmindedly rubbed her arms. "Yes… O' course that's all." Mr. Todd was giving her a curious look, and she gazed right back at him, thinking, remembering; that was precisely how it would have happened. Yes, she told herself; she simply knew. The pleasure, the pain, it all would be worth it.

She knew; she knew him. She ached for him to love her, seize her shoulders, throw her against the wall, kiss her coldly and hold a razor to her skin. She knew that it, how she always dreamed it, was exactly how it would be—she was right, she fervently told herself. Mr. Todd, cold and bitter and blazing and beautiful—she was so very practical about it, not expecting him to treat her gently—he would be just the way she dreamed. Just because he was eyeing her so blandly, so dispassionately now, was no reason to think he didn't, deep within him, want her if—when, she corrected herself—it would finally happen. It was probably just lingering faithfulness to his lost wife that kept him from grabbing her right now, that kept him from saying what it was he truly wanted from her.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Sweeney Todd stared at her vaguely, perplexed by her erratic behavior—not that it was any more erratic than usual—and longed for her to be gone so that he could begin attending to his razors.

With a small shiver of delight at the memory of her daydreams, Mrs. Lovett stepped up to him and gingerly, almost as if she was testing him to make sure he was real and corporeal and solid, brushed his shoulder; with a slight smile, one that was faintly teasing, but with an odd edge of desperation, she looked up at him before turning and walking to the door.

"You don't know what you're missing, love."