The boy was cruel.
That's all there was to it.
The boy had cornered him on the way up to his shop, and in that incessant way that he had probably learned from Mrs. Lovett, feigned helpfulness by wrenching the bag from Sweeney's arms and "offering" to help him by carrying it.
But the boy was a bloody... bloodhound when it came to spirits and he had no sooner touched the sack around the glass bottles than he had declared the rum to be a gift from God and was running off, bottle in hand, to fetch tumblers.
Sweeney sharply turned, already mourning the loss of his rum bottle. The only way he could ever sleep in this hell hole was by drinking himself into a room-spinning stupor in his barber chair before falling into a black and body0numbing oblivion until the morning came. Of course, the resulting hangover was so debilitating that he could only afford to sleep in this way once or twice a month. It would hardly do to slice himself open instead of a customer in a disgruntled sickness.
But still, Sweeney Todd rarely left his room of his own accord. Not counting Mrs. Lovett's occasional kidnappings to parks or the market Sweeney could easily go weeks without stepping foot outside of the building.
This night Sweeney had planned on indulging in a little rum as opposed to the burning oil in his intestines that was gin. It was more expensive than he typically cared to purchase, but the captain of one of the ships he had boarded during his long journey home had a strange fondness for the drink that Sweeney had somehow rubbed off on Sweeney himself. But he had to go get the drink himself. The last time he had had such a craving, he had asked Mrs. Lovett to pick some up for him and the results were...scarring.
As a traumatic incident, he could remember it like it had happened yesterday.
He had spent the weekend trying guzzle his way into a living death with gin, and finally broke down and decided to enlist Mrs. Lovett so that he could continue his streak of not leaving the house.
He had made it 37 days so far. It was a new record.
Once he eventually found his accomplice in her shop, Sweeney got so far as "Mrs. Lovett, I need you-" before she had transformed herself into a tiny projectile aimed at his person.
He had barely managed a clumsy leap away from her charging form, and caught up in the momentum and terror respectively Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney had both landed on the ground a few feet away from each other.
"-to purchase a bottle of rum for me."
Mrs. Lovett thankfully rose, and smoothing her dress replied, "'Course Mr. T. 'S an awful...exotic drink, it is. Any reason?"
Her raised eyebrow and desperately suggestive tone frightened Sweeney.
No. There would be no involving his land lady this time. Too dangerous. Sweeney would just have to put on his coat and acquire his sleep-juice himself, before glorying in his conquest and making the world disappear in a drunken haze.
There was an inherent flaw with this plan though as Toby had just run off with his rum, surely to down the thing within an hour like the little vacuum of all things good that he was, and leaving only the empty corpse of a bottle as a reminder of the sleep that almost was.
"Mistah T! I got the tumblers ready, and some cards too! We'll have a proper night a' cards 'n drink, we will! Shame to waste a drink so fancy all by yourself it is! 'S just like Mrs. Lovett always says..." and Sweeney stopped listening. He already heard enough of what Mrs. Lovett had to say about every bloody thing under the bloody sun from her own mouth, he didn't need to boy to add to her rambling.
The same boy that was currently holding his drink hostage.
But of course Toby only looked at him with large pleading puppy eyes, hiding his sinister plot deeply behind them, another trick obviously learned from Mrs. Lovett.
If that was how the boy was going to play, then Sweeney would play too, and he would win both the drinking and the cards because he was Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was apparently rubbish at card games, because a twelve year old street urchin was currently wiping the floor with him, and was still in possession of Sweeney's rum. It was no longer just Sweeney's all-encompassing exhaustion that was hurting him, but also the burning hole in his pride that he needed to fill, now.
"Get the chess set!"
"Sir?"
"The. chess. set." Sweeney growled.
Sweeney Todd was after all born for revenge, and he would have it from this boy. And he vaguely remembered winning a chess game once.
Four games and three hours later, half the bottle of rum had disappeared, as had half the chess pieces when Sweeney had finally lost his temper and leapt across the table, flinging the board aside, and raising the boy off the bench by the collar of his shirt.
The Demon Barber as it turned out, wasn't terribly good at chess either, his mind was far too preoccupied with thoughts of the judge to pay close enough attention to the game before him. The boy though still had to pay for his insolence at some point before Sweeney successfully blacked out on what was left of his rum.
"SWEENEY TODD!" Oh no. No,no,no,nononon,no.
"WHAT THE BLOODY 'LL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOIN'!"
Not that high pitched never ending sharpening stone of a voice. He hated that voice on the best of occasions.
And he particularly hated it when it was chastising him.
"'S okay, mum!" The boy said far too happily, stupidly really, in Sweeney's opinion. "Mr. Todd's just a sore I been beatin' him in these games is all!" The boy beamed pridefully up at Mrs. Lovett, and though her mouth smiled at Toby, her eyes burned straight through Sweeney's skull.
The message was clear enough: should Sweeney take a razor to so much as a hair on Toby's head, Sweeney would find himself in a pie.
She stared at him then, lips pursed and eyes dark for a beat longer than she really had to, but just long enough that Sweeny felt a chill travel through his very being.
Her expression didn't change as she spoke again.
"Well, you boys have fun. I'm just going to clean the bake house then it's off to bed with me."
Toby was still smiling. "'Night, Mum!"
"Night, love." She said as the gave the still suspended boy a kiss on the forehead, before turning to Sweeney.
She dug her nails into his arm, disguising the digging of her claws with a "friendly" pat on the shoulder. Sweeney got the message.
So then, as she left, Sweeney set to his new quest.
How to destroy the boy without physically hurting him.
The booze.
Sweeney needs to cut the boy off, and in doing so, he could only secure what was left in the bottle for himself and his beloved night of sleep.
As slowly as he could, Sweeney sat the boy down on the bench. He even took the care to very carefully pat down the boys shirt, smoothing the wrinkles he had created
Satisfied that the boy was as he should be, Sweeney took a deep breath.
He adjusted his own cravat, and drug his fingers through his hair, doing the best he could to straighten his own appearance.
After one more calming breath, with his hands clasped on the table before him,
Sweeney lunged.
His entire being focused on the bottle as his hands reached and his body lurched.
He was in the air, he was flying like an arrow, or a bullet.
Every fiber of his being was one with the bottle of rum that grew exponentially closer to him by the second.
Sweeney's bones were older, and somewhat weary from a lack of sleep and fifteen years of hard labor (to say nothing of the journey back to London) and were nowhere near as fast as the twelve-year-old street-urchin-turned-waiter's, and as penalty for his weary life, the boy had already wrapped his filthy little hand around the neck of Sweeney's rum before Sweeney himself was fully over the table.
Landing sorely on the edge, Sweeney huffed, and puffed a little too as he thought of how to get the bottle from the boy's hands.
"Careful Mr. T. Be a shame to waste the bottle by knocking it over, it would."
Then the boy wrapped his disgusting lips around the mouth of the bottle, and took a drink that was far too long.
Was there any candy in the house? Children liked candy, right? Maybe that would lure the boy away from the drink. It had admittedly been a long time since even Benjamin Barker could have been considered a child, but Sweeney felt confident that candy would still be a...thing.
Fuck it.
Taking advantage of the boy's distraction, Sweeney continued forward, and wrapped his hands around the body of the bottle.
It would be his!
But it wasn't.
The bottle was refusing to take its rightful place in his arms and the the liquid in hit gut.
The boy was still attached.
Then came the tugging. The two gave up all pretense and quickly resorted to a battle of sheer strength and tugging power over the table for the bottle.
It was close now. So close Sweeney could smell it. The mouth of the bottle was so near to his own. He didn't care that the grubby urchin was still attached and still tugging. Sweeney needed that rum. He never knew how elastic his lips could be as they joined every muscle in his body in his quest for spicy wet goodness.
Finally, his mouth was graced with the smooth low burn of alcohol. But so was his eye, and his nose and cheek for that matter as the liquid splashed across his face. The boy had stood from his seat at the booth and was trying to pry the bottle from the older man by changing the direction of his pulls, and using his whole body to add to the force.
Sweeney would have none of that.
He allowed to boy and his momentum to turn him around in his seat, with his legs raised awkwardly to accommodate the motion as he was soon facing the back of the booth. Then, once he was satisfied with his position, he dug the heel of each boot into the spongy cushion along the seat, and used the muscles of his leg to push himself as far away from the boy as possible.
This wasn't as far as Sweeney would like though, as the weight of Toby's entire little body was pulling against him. Sweeney stopped gritting his teeth long enough to look at the boy, and realized, that should he feel like it, he could easily just let the bottle go and send Toby sprawling across the floor, so dependent on the bottle the boy was for his current battle against gravity. That would teach the boy to try and take something that belonged to Sweeney Todd. But it would also require Sweeney letting go of the bottle, and more than likely it would send the precious inner liquid across the floor. Neither of which was an option for Sweeney.
He was proud of his current state of inebriation though (acquired from what little he could talk the boy into pouring for him throughout the night) as he seriously considered the prospect of licking the fluid from the floor like a dog after letting the boy fall.
He was disappointingly though, still not quite drunk enough for that (and therefore for his blackout sleep) and only tightened his grip on the bottle.
So it was an extra surprise when Toby let go.
Sweeney had been pushing hard enough against the back of the seat that he soon found his own back slammed painfully into the edge of the table, and fell to the side in pain only to further find himself falling onto his head out of the booth.
The world was spinning more than he could really comprehend. The pain, and the drink, and the dizziness caused by his fall were near blinding him with spinning, but not enough that he could see Toby swoop in over his injured self and take a long drink out of Sweeney's bottle.
The boy was cruel. Absolutely cruel.
Sweeney could very well be dying on the floor and the boy was too busy drinking his stolen rum in long greedy gulps.
Why bother? Sweeney just wanted to lay there and wallow. He wanted to wallow in his pain, and his misery, his still stinging eye, his dead wife and stolen daughter, his entire wretched existence, even the rum that should have been his. Maybe Sweeney Todd wasn't meant for revenge. Maybe he was just meant for wallowing. Wallowing he could do right here with half of his body still on the bench and the other half on the floor, and he didn't have to move, he didn't have to think or sleep or eat or anything. He just had to be. He just had to lay there and be miserable.
He could do that.
Sweeney was broken out of his blissful state of miserable nothingness by a cold tap on his head. He focused his eyes (which was much more difficult to do than he was expecting) on the boy, who had leant over and tapped the bottle against Sweeney's skull to catch his attention. Sweeney watched as the boy used the back of his other hand to sloppily wipe some rum away from his mouth before reaching the hand out to Sweeney.
Sweeney stared at it for a long while.
He knew he should take the hand and stand up and get on with life and his revenge and everything else. But he didn't really want to. Life as a miserable limp body was looking more appealing by the second.
The boy was getting inpatient though, and that's when Sweeney saw it. Toby raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips expectantly.
Like Mrs. Lovett.
Yet another of the many terrible little...things the boy had picked up from her and it drove nails into Sweeney's very skin.
What would Mrs. Lovett do were she to find him sprawled out across the floor like this? She might just drag him out of the way and let him wallow while she got on with her never ending work, which wouldn't be so bad. Or she might ignore him and step on him. Or worse, she might care and try talking to him and consoling him, and then she would never shut up and never leave him alone or even leave his side until he was up and moving again and - NO! Sweeney would not have it.
Reluctantly Sweeney took the boys hand and allowed him to help him back up.
Toby guided him back into his seat on the booth, and did something that absolutely shocked Sweeney.
Toby passed him the bottle.
Sweeney took it, slowly, sliding it across the surface of the table and close to him, before wrapping his arms around it.
The boys eyes were heavy and his head drooping. Sweeney wondered what had happened to the boy.
"Don't s'pose there's much need for bottles, eh, Mr. T? We...we...we're civilized men, we are. We can take turns. Yeah?"
Sweeney sat stunned for a long moment, contemplating the boy and the prospect of sharing his rum. He took a long drink, as long as he could before the burn down his throat and into his belly finally made him take a breath.
He looked at the ceiling for a minute, then back at the boy. As he saw the boy's head wobbling ominously with sleep he couldn't help but feel the wave exhaustion that was spreading over himself like a warm blanket.
"Mist...mister...Mr. T, you...you gotta share."
Sweeney tried to find the wobbling slur in his own sleepy voice and he pulled the bottle closer, cradling it lovingly as one would a small child.
"No..." He couldn't stifle his own long yawn. "'S mine. 'S my rum. I don't...don't have to...share."
The sleepiness was warm, and welcoming and dark, and all the more blissful as Sweeney finally saw Toby's sleepy head hit the table and emit a loud snore.
"All mine..."
There was maybe a sip or two actually left inside the bottle. But the existence of that sip or two made Sweeney finally drift off to sleep satisfied that he had won...something.