SuperWhoLock.

That's the short version of why I didn't update. Long story? I'm a fandom whore and nothing more. I did my best to write this story and keep you guys happy and the quality up... and it was going so well! I loved writing this so much! Then- kaboom- Supernatural happened.

And god-motherfucking-damnit did I fall in love. Slowly and then all at once.

For some seriously messed up reason I am incapable of writing for more than one fandom at a time, though. You tell me why that is, 'cause I got not the faintest idea. And that's when the plot bunnies started hopping over to the other side, because the grass seemed greener there. Also, the fandom is more active since the series is still running and that's kinda nice.

Don't get me wrong, I love you all, really I do. Your support has been amazing and I'm sorry I left you guys hanging.
I also still love the movie, the music and the actors of Sweeney Todd... it's just... different now. Gah, this feels so much like goodbye... (It's roughly 4 a.m. and I'm being emotional okay, sheesh)

Anyway, pointless rambling is pointless.

I hereby promise you that I'll finish this story in the next chapter, I'm on summer holidays, I got enough time. And I think I still owe the characters some relief of the sexual tension, don't you think? So far, as a writer, I'm a merciless cocktease.

Disclaimer: Alas, it's still not mine and has never been. I only borrow Sweens and Nellie and have them do dirty stuff.

Thank you for all your reviews so far!


BLACK HEARTS

chapter four- Sweeney's POV


As he descended the stairs first down into the pie shop and then further into the bake house below he noticed that his landlady was not right behind him. While he was not exactly bothered by that fact it still made him shake his head and mutter 'bloody woman' under his breath because he simply did not understand the baker at all most of the time. In one moment she was smitten and swooning over his every movement, in the next she thirsted for blood in a way that rivalled even his own craze. And he begrudgingly admitted to himself that it drove him insane, in a quite positive way. He wanted her. Wanted her like he'd never craved another being before.

It wasn't like the bittersweet love between Benjamin and Lucy, far from it. This other life had been ruled by soft caresses and chaste kisses. Now, with Eleanor, there was raw animalistic lust and it was dark and messy and utterly exciting. He heard his shop door open and the muffled voices of the baker and someone else and stopped to listen more closely in curiosity. When he heard nothing further, the barber smiled to himself, a crooked grimace on his pale features, as he opened the heavy door, briefly acknowledging the fact that the tiny woman seemed to do this so easily while it required actual strength and effort. He ought to give the thing some credit for her work.

Even more so, he realised, as he regarded the pile of meat and dirty clothes that had once been the scum walking London's streets. A feeling akin to pride welled in his cold chest as he admired their work. The throats had been cleanly cut, even in the haste of their last kill, so driven by desire and the thrill that both of them got from the streaks of rubies on flesh. The baker had quite grown on him, the one constant tangent in his pitiful existence, the sole companion he allowed himself to have.

Mentioned companion came waltzing into the bake house, breathing slightly harder than she should be if one considered she walked up all these steps a multiplicity of times a day without exhausting herself and even running down them couldn't cause such laboured panting in comparison. It made the barber suspicious and he narrowed his eyes once she joined him by the bodies. "Who was it?" he asked, referring to the intruder upstairs. Mrs Lovett smiled just a tad too brightly and shrugged her slender shoulders as she assured him that it had merely been some lad who'd lost his way. He knew she could plainly read on his face that she was far from selling the story to him but his features softened somewhat when she quietly mentioned Toby.

This once he let her have the lie but decided to keep an eye on her.

They began their task of separating the clothing from the lifeless bodies before they could start the work on the meat. He took a great dislike on the labour. The corpses were grimy, their pockets lacked possessions, especially the man they had killed the night before emitted a smell that was mercilessly assaulting his nostrils made infinitely worse by the sticky unmoving air in the basement. After only a few minutes he growled and threw the pair of disgusting undergarments from him- how did the baker do all this on her own?

"What next?" he demanded gruffly, resting calloused hands on his hips. His companion started at his voice and spun to face him with a look of shock as if just now remembering his presence. The barber raised an inquisitive eyebrow. She stared at him with her doe-eyes, swallowed once, then another time and then shook out of her stupor, seemingly back to her old self, chatting away in a rambled mess of sentences he didn't even attempt to understand. He tried to mirror her motions as best as he could, chopping up a body while she took care of the other. Sweat formed on both their foreheads and soon he felt the need to shed a few of his clothes. The barber shrugged out of his suspenders so they hung loosely by his sides and unbuttoned his shirt as far as it would go, the buttons stopping halfway down his chest. His sleeves, already previously bloodied by their kill, were rolled up. It was the furthest state of undress he'd allow himself, yet it was far from being enough. The suffocating heat crept into his lungs, filling them not with oxygen but with the heavy odour in the air. Mrs Lovett appeared to be unaffected, though that was likely to be traced back to the fact that this was a daily routine for the baker. What gave away her discomfort, however, was the fact that she kept tugging at her corkscrew curls in failing attempts of keeping them at the back of her head instead of her face. He recoiled from reaching out to brush the hair away when he realised his hands were covered in guts, blood and muscle tissue. His apologetic shrug as his hand dropped back to its place was answered with a half-smile from the baker. She ran the back of her hand across her forehead to swipe away stray droplets of sweat but the action caused reddish-brown blood to smear on her skin.

A good hour later the pair stood side by side with two piles of meat at their feet. "Jus' put it in the grinder, love. It'll do the rest o' the damn work," the baker told him, already grabbing two arms full of human flesh and body parts before throwing it into the oversized meat grinder in the room. Mirroring her actions he gathered half a pile in his arms and did as he was told. In a matter of minutes the only thing reminding of the two victims was the dark stain on the floor below the trap door leading down from his shop.

"Now," he murmured as he crossed the distance between them, encircling the baker's hips from behind, "I believe we have something to get back to." The barber stroked down her sides, one hand creeping below her apron and causing something she kept in her pocket to rustle.

To his grand surprise and irritation Mrs Lovett went rigid in his arms and yanked herself free from his grip. He stared blankly at the woman who protectively raised a hand to cover said pocket as if she was protecting or possibly hiding something from him. "Mr T, we're awfully dirty," she almost stuttered the words out, eyes darting nervously about the place. "An' I don't know 'bout you but I woul'n't mind a bath, y'see..."

"A bath?" he cocked a suggestive eyebrow, rather liking the idea of the two of them in her spacious iron tub. His pinstriped pants grew quite a bit tighter at the imagery his devilish mind provided. "Sounds agreeable."

"Very well!" her exclamation sounded somewhat shrill in his ears and caused him to flinch away slightly. "So I go and get myself cleaned up an' then the tub's all yours." Her behaviour was already beyond raising his suspicion, he was absolutely certain the baker was keeping something from him. And something of import, too, considering how uncharacteristically the damn woman acted. In a rush of motion she went past the barber and disappeared up the stairs.

Wondering what in the name of Hell itself had just bloody happened Sweeney Todd glared at the heavy door through which the baker had gone and blinked a fair number of times to regain his composure. She really wanted him to beg, didn't she? The whore truly wished for him to plead for her to come to bed with him... or his chair, or the damn floor for all he cared as long as he got to have her, goddamnit.

As he finally gathered himself enough to ascend the stairs in a much calmer manner than the baker had before him he still couldn't do anything but shake his head the woman's sudden irritability and overall oddness. He positioned himself in front of the door leading to her washroom and more or less patiently awaited her emerging from there. Inside he heard the water splash against the iron of the tub, again thinking of all the things he could be doing if he were on the other side of that door and in the water with the baker. Licking his lips he already somewhat desperately willed the scenes playing out in his head away and knocked forcefully against the worn wood of the door.

"Be out in just a moment, dear," called Mrs Lovett from within. And really, only an instant later she swung open her door and stood face to face with him. Or rather face to chest, as they collided with a slight oomph.

"My apologies," he said roughly, though he allowed his voice to hold an almost affectionate tinge. The woman in his arms seemed a lot less out of the ordinary than she had during her scene in the bake house. "May I?" he asked, brushing past her into the small washroom, almost completely filled out by the iron tub, before she could respond in any way. Although he remained uncomfortably hard in his pants he had lost the desire to bed the little baker, too annoyed by her mood swings.

The irony that she, ever since his return, had had to put up with his mood swings and never so much as whispered a single complaint was lost on him.

"'S all yours," she assured him as she straightened her gown and walked down the corridor, if one wanted to call the narrow hallway that, and retreated to her bedroom. It made him glance to the nearest window and grunt in surprise. Outside the sun was already setting, which meant they had spent almost the entire day downstairs working off their arses... and there had been two of them and no shops to take care of. Usually the woman did all of the bloody work on her own and still managed her booming pie business on the side.

She truly was a wonder, this one. His bloody wonder.

With that thought he rolled his shoulders, shrugged off the funny little almost forgotten feeling of fluttery warmth he had secretly come to associate with the baker as of late and went to have his admittedly much needed bath. He went to bed a lot less satisfied and in consequence a lot more frustrated than he had thought he would that morning.

.

The next day the barber awoke in his chair at a later hour than he usually did. He could tell by the angle the sunlight came in through the windows to paint the walls in its light. That was... odd, to say the least. Normally the he would rise long before the sun and use the early hours of the morning to plot his half-hearted revenge until the baker would appear with the food he almost never consumed.

No baker was anywhere in sight and of course his damnable stomach chose this day precisely to growl in hunger. Begrudgingly Sweeney stood and stretched his aching limbs, sore from the labour in the bake house. He dressed himself hastily and rushed down into the pie shop to inquire the whereabouts of his morning nourishment.

"Mrs. Lovett?" he called out, "Eleanor?"

His landlady sat at her shabby kitchen table and jumped- quite literally- at her name, hiding something from his sight the moment he rounded the corner. It made him stop in his tracks and frown at the woman across the room. "Oh dear, forgot all about your breakfast, I did!" She said breathlessly and went quickly to prepare something. He huffed and walked over to her, stopping the baker by grabbing one of her wrists.

"Do you really believe me to be stupid?" he asked coldly, staring her down with a glare he knew perfectly well the threatening effect of. Mrs Lovett shook her head ever so slightly, red curls flying about her head wildly. "Then please explain to me, why you think I'd be oblivious to the fact that you're so obviously hiding something from me."

His landlady laughed nervously, not meeting his eyes. "I'm not hidin' a single thing from you, love, 'ow could I?"

He regarded her with a stop-fooling-around look and tightened the grip around her wrist, surely leaving bruises on the pale flesh. The woman better not forgot who he bloody well was. "You've always been a terrible liar, Eleanor." His tone was informing above anything else. "Now, the question is, my love, do you hand over whatever it is you store away in your pocket or... would you prefer me taking it by force?"

The woman was clearly panicking now and he already believed to have won, apparently having the upper hand as he so often did. What he did not at all expect was the tiny baker suddenly throwing herself at him with all the strength she could so spontaneously muster and crashing their mouths together rather painfully.

At the unforeseen contact his mind went blank and he, in his astonishment, let go of Mrs Lovett's wrist in order to hold onto her waist, immediately deepening the kiss as all the unsatisfied arousal came crashing down upon him once more. He pried her lips open with his tongue demandingly and licked into her mouth with more greed than when he cut a throat and watched the blood spill. The baker mewled and fought back with her own tongue, gasping into the kiss as if in surprise though she had been the one to initiate it.

With little effort he lifted the baker off the ground and onto one of the flour-powdered countertops, their bodies pressing further together when her legs wrapped around his hips and the friction eliciting an involuntary moan from the barber.

The only thought his preoccupied mind could form was good God, finally.

Petite fingers worked themselves into his hair, deliciously massaging his scalp, slightly tugging at the black mess, while they were still kissing with so much passion and freely flowing want- he was at that moment more than grateful for the support offered by the kitchen counter.

"Mr T," his landlady half-hummed as they were attempting to catch their breath while still not quite moving their mouths away. "Sween- ah- Sweeney," her words became a mumbled gasp as he latched his mouth onto her neck, sucking hard to make sure he would mark her. "W-we can't- customers!"

He ignored the bakers warning, faintly aware of the fact that her shop was open and any soul could just wander in on them locked in their passionate embrace. Limbs untangled themselves from around him and his partner resolutely pushed at his chest. Why he complied, albeit reluctantly, was somewhat of a mystery to him in retrospect but at that moment he stepped back.

"You will be the death of me," he told her honestly, running a hand through his hair before he admired the quickly forming bruise on the baker's neck. "Not Turpin, not the labour in fucking Australia but you, Eleanor Lovett, you will surely kill me one of these days."

At the mention of the judge the baker visibly paled and cringed vaguely, which was no wonder considering what the man had taken from her so very recently but soon her features softened and the colour returned to her complexion. She reached out and stroked his cheek, mumbling with a slightly teasing voice, "Ah, we wouldn't want that now, would we?" A wink eased the tension further and he couldn't, primarily did not want to, resist another kiss.

"I might go out to the market square-"

"That's a wonderful idea, Mr T!" The baker sounded strangely enthusiastic after the simple declaration and hopped off the counter, shoving him toward the door. "You go an' get yerself somethin' ta eat, must be quite peckish by now, I'd think. Meanwhile I'll fix up me next batch o' pies and when you return..." He effectively shut out her pointless, and further endless, rambling. The little redhead pushed him from her shop out into the street where she told him to take his time and rewarded his endurance with a lingering kiss which he melted into like his pathetic past-self would have done.

After the kiss the baker pulled away and swirled around in one smooth movement that had him suddenly holding onto thin air. His eyes followed her back into the shop where she went rushing about as restlessly as she always did until he noticed a crumpled piece of paper on the damp cobblestones. On a gut feeling he decided it might be something worth reading so he picked it up. In a way he knew was practiced and inconspicuous he slipped the flying paper into his pocket and wandered into the general direction of the fruit stalls at the market nearby.

In the background the clock at St. Dunstan's struck noon.

The barber, indecisive as he was, bought nothing but a single apple when he couldn't settle on another fruit when faced with the assortment of products. He strolled casually along the streets, moving seemingly unseen through the crowd and eyeing the scum he was surrounded by with blatant disgust. At a corner he stopped and slouched against a dirty house wall in a side-alley to inspect the paper he had pocketed back in Fleet Street.

As he read through the lines the half-eaten fruit in his hand dropped into a puddle of piss. This had to be some kind of fraud. Surely the handwriting was forged, surely the baker, if coming into the possession of such a letter- obviously addressed to him and meant for his eyes only- would have handed it to him.

Except that she would not.

Of course not. Abruptly it all fell into place now because everything that had seemed so odd about the baker made bloody sense all of a sudden. The way she had seemingly stopped her pained mourning and returned to her controlled self- it hadn't been all that different when Benjamin had begun to plot his revenge- and then her open desire to kill with him. Certainly, he had seen his own pleasure reflected in her eyes... but for her it had also been a means of practice.

The letter, his goddamn latter for the sake of Christ, joined the apple in the stinking puddle and the barber, remembering he'd already heard the church bell ring, broke into a sprint toward Mrs Lovett's Meat Pie Emporium, his movements spurned on by a toxic mixture of blind rage, a strange sense of anticipation and- though he would swallow his own tongue rather than admitting this even to himself- a heavy load of concern for the baker who was quite clearly out of her mind.

When he rushed up the stairs to his own shop his lungs felt like they were about to burst yet he took two steps at a time, a deep predatory growl breaking from deep within his throat as he yanked at the door so hard it broke off its hinges and fell into Todd's Tonsorial Parlour.

Inside he saw the familiar figure of Judge Turpin slumped on the wooden floorboards, the baker standing above him in the centre of the room, one arm raised high up in the air and holding one of his friends, dripping his rubies. She had taken his revenge.

Sweeney Todd broke the silence with a broken yell as he leapt at the woman.

Mrs Lovett stood perfectly still.


Cliffhanger-ish, I know, I'm an asshole like that.

Stay tuned!