AN: Waaah, I'm so so so so sorry for not updating in forever! I went on vacation over spring break to New York, visiting relatives, which is obviously not the best place to write a romance fanfic, especially considering my two teenaged boy cousins. So I apologize.

This chapter is dedicated to xlawa, who was so amazingly wonderful to dedicate a extremely awesome chapter of her one-shot collection to me. Thank you! In the spirit of that particular chapter, here's something a little more mature than what I've written in this category before...

Also, this takes place pretty much directly after the ending of "The History of The World" a.k.a they kiss, happy ending, etc. so here's what happened next.

o4. rose

He is the first to pull away, seeming to stagger slightly as he does so, eyes wide as if woken from sleep, a quick smile playing across his swollen lips. His hands immediately wrap back around her waist, and he's moving fast, a shuffle of shoes and the sound of fabrics rubbing together as he presses her to the wallpaper, between Johanna's wedding portrait, and the doorway, lips now going to her neck, pausing only to give her a hungry look.

She sighs into his hair, hands gripping his shoulders, feeling drunk, but knowing it has nothing to do with alcohol, rather this feeling of obtaining something she has wanted for as long as she can remember, having placed him into her very being oh so long ago, her very existence depending upon the constant prescience of Sweeney Todd in her thoughts, and it's only now, as he kisses her again, that she's realizing this, a dependency on him. In fact, thinking now, she's sure it's the thought of him that saved her, when she was in the well in Italy, desperate and struggling. To think she'd never see him again, if she died, she knows she couldn't bear it.

Of course, they've only just resolved their differences, their betrayals, and this is something they shouldn't do, not now, much like picking at a fresh wound, but there is a frenzied need in their touches, the way he runs his hands down her spine, the way she holds tight to him, like a castaway lost at sea that tells them both to ignore rational thought.

In some ways, they both need this anyway.

And then, he lets go, stepping backward, breathing heavily, running a hand nervously through his hair.

"I..." He begins, trying to form a sentence, breathless.

She too is panting, finally slumping against the wall, feeling a lot like jelly, and sure she's red in the face. Wiping away a wisp of hair, she smirks despite herself, trying (needing) to tempt him back as best she could, given she's just nearly struck dumb by the last half hour's events.

He comes back to her, tenderly taking her hands in his own, touching his forehead to hers in a way that makes her heart melt. Looking at him up close now, she sees his eyes are really a deep brown, and she recalls that Benjamin Barker once looked at her with such endearing eyes as this man's, that his smile, so easy and perfect, now fills Sweeney Todd's own face.

"Eleanor," he tells her quite seriously, still panting, "If you don't want this now..."

She opens her mouth to speak, but stops when notices he's looking at her, almost mournfully.

"I don't want..." He begins, biting his lip tentatively. "...I don't want to hurt you in any way, do you understand? If this is too much..."

Nellie nods, bringing their clasped hands to her lips, and kissing his hands.

"I don't know about you," she tells him in a half-whisper, "But I 'ave been waiting much too long to have to wait anymore, 'specially after all this mess. And to be quite honest with you (we're tryin' to tell each other th' truth, right?) I must admit..."

She leans near his ear, and murmurs:

"I've been dreamin' of this for so long, you couldn't stop me if you tried."

He laughs. "You? Overpower me? Somehow I can't quite doubt it...I suppose I have no choice then, do I?"

"No," she replies, smiling now, "I don't think you do."

"Hmmm," he says, sweeping her up into his arms so he can carry her. "Well then...You may do whatever you like, since I am helpless to stop you."

Burying her face in his neck, she breathes in deeply his scent; it's a mixture of fresh ocean breeze and his own shaving lather, which almost suprises her, considering he had a stock of colgnes, at his room on Fleet Street. Perhaps he never used them, or never bothered to think of them. Looping arms about his neck, she watches his face, fascinated, as he carries her upstairs as if she weighed nothing at all.

This is probably a result of the work he was put through in Botany Bay. Thinking suddenly of his own scars (she's sure he has some), she carefully unbuttons the top two clasps on his shirt, exposing his neck to the open air. Thin bands of scar tissue clutch at the edge of his shoulders, continuing past down his back. Seeming to sense a question, he answers:

"Whip marks."

Ever the eloquent one, Mr. Todd.

Nellie rolls her eyes, but understands his bluntness to a certain extent. It's obvious he doesn't talk about his life as a felon (even a false felon) often.

His room is as bare as the barber's shop, with scarcely anything for decorations, save a small wooden box on the dresser that contains (as she'd be told later) all of Johanna's letters since her leaving London on her honeymoon.

Back on solid ground, she's feeling more light-headed than before, a sort of "I can't believe this is happening" feeling that causes her to sit down upon the bed, eyes locked on him.

There is a perfect moment now, as she sits on the downy covers, as he looks at her, not knowing she's looking at him, and she watches as his face fills with a lucid expression. Awake again at last, like a man who had stumbled blindly through the dark, only to find an open window, light shining in like a beacon. Feeling forgiven for the first time in a long time.

It is this, and nothing else, that makes her face suddenly redden considerably, feeling flushed at the thought that it's her that's bringing such enlightenment to him. She too feels clean, now that she's got nothing to hide from him, no guilt knotting her stomach or naive notions filling her head, blinding her in a different way, yet...They are so much the same. Gaze flickering to the mirror, Mrs. Lovett realizes her cheeks are a bright, rosy pink.

Then he catches her eye, and straightens, black hair falling in his eyes. As if to say, look at me.

He smiles a secretive smile, and locks the door behind him.