30 Kisses #30: Kiss; Fanfic50 #29: Defend
Title: Seven Reasons
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Pairing: Sweeney Todd/Nellie Lovett
Prompt: 30 Kisses #30: kiss; fanfic50 #29: defend
Word Count: 2,523
Rating: T
Summary: Sweeney Todd has seven reasons why he will not marry Nellie Lovett.
Disclaimer: All I own is a computer.
I.
". . . and it'll be so lovely to have a little cottage by the sea all to ourselves, don't you think? Well, I mean - "
"Do you ever stop talking?" Sweeney grunts.
"Do you ever stop being such a grump?" she returns, then flashes him a smile, leaning her head against his window nonchalantly, as though she too has a claim to it. "I'm only trying to inform you of our future, love. Surely it's not a bad thing, to know where you're headed."
Our future.
He grits his teeth. How dare she make such assumptions? How dare she dictate his future for him? How dare she entwine her future with his?
". . . anyhow, as I was saying, we won't always be by ourselves - Toby'll be coming along, first off . . ."
Has he ever declared - hell, has he ever even suggested - that they are to have a future together?
". . . and we'll have guests come in and out, a nice little bed and breakfast, y'know . . . we've got to have some source of income, after all . . ."
No. No, of course he has not.
". . . though I do have quite a bit stashed away at the mo', business's been so good lately . . ."
He always ceases to listen when she talks about their wedded life by the seaside, he never shows her any sort of tender affection, he ensures to
softly tuck a lock of hair behind her ear as she sleeps, loiter his eyes in her direction a little longer than necessary, achingly touch her indent upon his mattress after he demands that she leave the room
at all times keep his distance. And yet she dares to still talk of their future?
". . . and it'll still leave plenty of time for days of leisure - strolling on the pier - walking by the ocean - lazing all day away inside . . . don't really matter what we do to relax. All the choices'll be there, each and every day, for us to do as we wish. And - " her voice breaks for a moment in desperate, craving hope " - and it'll just be us - together - you and me . . ."
No.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She talks too much.
II.
"G'morning, love!" she tweets as she bursts through his shop door, as shrill and annoying and goddamn happy as the birds that fled London long ago.
He does not turn acknowledge her; he remains standing before the window, face pressed to the panes. He watches her reflection set a tray, laden with breakfast, upon his bureau. Why does she continue to cook him three meals a day when he hardly eats even half of one?
"Made some porridge for you this morning before we go out today. Y'don't mind going out today, d'you? It's Sunday and so nice outside, for once, so I figured we should take advantage of it, have a picnic in the park . . ."
Her voice remains shrill and annoying as she continues yammering - and remains happy. Through his window he watches the sun rise in a sky that turns from granite to steel to charcoal and then back again, watches smog hover like a permanent disease over the buildings, watches people in the streets spitting and clawing and demolishing each other without a backwards glance -
And she is happy.
How dare she be happy?
And how does she remain so?
Her fingers settle against his shoulders and spin him around. Her face beams up at him, ashen skin glowing, muddied eyes alive, wearied mouth curved into an upside-down rainbow.
"C'mon, love," she chirps. "What d'you think? You might think I'm able to read your mind - and sometimes it isn't that hard, really" - she raps his forehead - "what with you usually dwelling on the judge . . . but other times, you do need to actually open your mouth. So - will you come have a picnic with Toby and me?"
"No," he says, but an hour later he's sitting outside on a blanket, a basket bursting with food set before him, the sky the color of pale charcoal, the sun's rays and Nellie's smile both radiating upon his skin and creating angry red burns.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She is too brilliantly happy in a world that is crafted of only shades of gray.
III.
The boy is always watching him.
When he enters the pie shop, the boy spins from the sink or the counter and watches him. When he prowls onto the little deck that hovers over the outdoor eatery to examine the crowds, the boy turns his head up from among the customers and watches him. When he rummages through the cupboards for a much-needed drink, the boy peers his head from around the corner and watches him. When he snaps at some passerby while on an errand that she has forced him to run, the boy always seems to be near and watches him. When late at night his hand on her waist begins to wander lower, the boy cracks open his eyes from his drunken doze and watches him.
The boy is always watching him. The boy is always watching him, glaring at him, judging him.
The boy knows too much.
Were the boy not dumb as a doorknob, he would have already connected all the pieces, pieces that he holds but just cannot assemble.
Were Sweeney Todd not bound by the unfortunate necessity of needing a place to live and store victims and extract revenge, and thus needing Nellie's favor, he would have already killed the boy.
How the dare the boy watch him in so overt a manner? How dare the boy judge him so? Young though he is, he isn't innocent either. No one living in 186 Fleet Street could possibly claim that label anymore. And yet the boy seems to think he has the right to watch and judge, to peer through doorways and drink gin by the bottle as though this is his home, to distract Nellie from her purpose, to silently try and make the puzzle pieces fit despite his complete incompetence at the task.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She and the boy are a package deal.
IV.
He never experiences the bliss of solitude.
She is there when he wakes up and when he fights against allowing himself to fall asleep. She is there when he chokes down something to eat and when he dresses himself for the day. She is there when he stares out the window and stares at Lucy's picture and stares at his grotesquely cracked image in the mirror while never seeing a damn thing.
Even when he is alone, she is there.
She is there in her shop below him, cooking and chattering loudly to whatever poor sap has just wandered inside. She is there on the bakehouse stairs below him, stomping up and down, too quiet to wake the dead but too forceful to ever let him forget her presence. She is there in the outdoor eatery area below him, watching him. Smirking at him. Waiting for him and still believing he will come.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She never leaves him alone and she never stops thinking that one day neither of them will live in solitude.
V.
". . . and poor Mrs. Mooney's business has just up and dried ever since you and me started - "
"Please stop talking, Mrs. Lovett."
She leans herself against his supine body upon his mattress, bare torso against bare torso, lips budded in a pout. "Now, you know that's not something I'm fond of, Mr. T. Why on Earth should I stop talking? Just so's to make you happy?"
"Yes."
"Nothing makes you happy, love," she laughs out loud, head dropping onto his chest as she convulses with giggles.
He scowls even though her face is pressed into his skin and she thus cannot see the scowl. "Stop moving and be quiet. I can't finish your hair with you flopping around like a fish on land."
She ceases her laughter and holds still. His hands resume their former place amongst her mass of hair and begin again to braid the strands, fingers weaving deftly and comfortably through the curls.
Nellie's vow of silence lasts all of ten seconds: "There's really no point trying to finish that braid up, love. I've got a sorry excuse for hair and I'm quite aware of it. I gave up decades ago trying to make it look presentable. Between the tangles, the frizz, and just how damn obstinate the curls are, it's really just a pointless - "
"Shut up," Sweeney growls, and she lets out another giggle that jars her head and jars his fingers and makes him grit his teeth, but after that she quiets.
She is not lying about her hair being a disaster: the curls fight him every step of the way, refusing to position or stay still as he desires, and his hands constantly find themselves caught in massive snarls. But his fingers continue on, unknotting snarls, coaxing the locks in place, braiding the strands . . .
Until, at last, his work is complete.
Satisfied, Sweeney withdraws his hands. Noticing the removal of his fingers from her scalp, Nellie sits up, and the long braid - curls tidied and neat, not a single strand out of place and not a tangle still present - swings from her face and down her back. "It's done? You actually got it to co-operate with you?
He looks at her, admiring against his will both his handiwork and her complete ease with her nude body. "Yes."
She springs up from her bed and bounds over to his cracked mirror, the braid whipping against her bare shoulders as she tosses her head forward to let it fall across her chest and be visible in the mirror. She stares at her reflection and he stares at her reflection and for a moment neither of them move.
Then her reflected mouth breaks into a grin wider than the break in the mirror.
Her fingers reach up to touch the braid, in wonder at his ability to remove all the tangles, at how every strand is captured in the braid - at how at last she feels beautiful, and how he wanted her to look beautiful. . . .
As she admires her hair and he admires her admiring it, he who sees nothing suddenly sees too clearly - sees a woman standing in front of that mirror before it cracked, admiring her braided blonde locks - and his admiration molds with ferocious suddenness into hatred, fury . . .
"It looks beautiful, love," is all that Nellie says, for once satisfied by as few words as possible. She turns back to him, fingers playing lovingly over the braid, face beaming - but her smile falls the moment she glimpses his expression.
He rolls over onto his stomach and presses his face into the pillow so she cannot see, enraged with her - loathing her - loathing himself -
Sweeney Todd will never marry Nellie Lovett. He despises her sorry excuse for hair even more than she does.
VI.
". . . and all those fifteen years that you were gone and I was here . . ."
Why does she persistently bring up the fact that she survived fifteen years without him around?
Does she believe he thinks her incapable? Because he doesn't know how she could believe he thinks her that: she's more than proven by now that she can pull her own weight, and then some . . . that she can endure far more than most men or women could.
Does she believe he does not recognize that she committed to stay on Earth even when Lucy didn't?
Because he does recognize that. Oh, he doesn't want to recognize it, and he won't ever tell Nellie that he recognizes it, but he does. He doesn't want to recognize the fact that Lucy broke under her own weight, that she did not wait for his return, that she did not believe him when he promised that he would return -
He doesn't want to recognize that Nellie didn't break. That she did wait. That she did believe him and still does, even when he doesn't.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She refuses to break in the world that broke his wife, and he cannot allow that.
VII.
"Why're you so opposed to marriage, Mr. Todd?"
Startled by her frankness, his gaze turns from the unlit fireplace to her eyes. Not that Nellie isn't normally frank . . . simply that she's usually not frank about anything important, about anything related to his past. She knows better than that - or so he thought.
"I mean," she says, trying to strike a relaxed pose by leaning back in her chair, ruining the effect by anxiously rubbing her dress between her fingertips, "we're very nearly living like a married couple already, what with sharing a home, revenues, a bed - "
Her easy bluntness on this subject always astounds him; not even a whore could speak about sharing a bed with a man with that same simple cadence, with not a modest blush nor a seductive grin, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
" - and the gin, of course. So actually getting wed really wouldn't change all that much in our day-to-day lives."
He does not answer.
She abandons the pretense of relaxation and leans forward, hands gripping her knees, lips pressed so tightly together the blood flees and turns them white, expression searching, hoping, adoring, yearning for him to see her and want her too.
"Lucy's gone, love," she whispers. "Nothing's going to change that - not killing all these men, not getting your hands on Turpin, not staring into your photos and willing her to come back. . . . she's not here and never will be, and I - " she swallows hard before forcing out the syllables she's only ever allowed her eyes to say " - I love you."
He looks at her but does not reply. Whether she is aware of it or not, she has just given herself the answer:
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett because she loves him.
Because she wants to marry him and he hates giving her what she wants. Because he still wants to be married to Lucy and to wed another would be a lie, a final betrayal he cannot commit. Because it scares him and angers him all at once that she can love the monster he's become, because he doesn't know how she can.
She is still leaning forward upon the armchair. Her body is as taut and tense and vibrant as wires; her eyes are upon him, alight with all the flames that the fireplace cannot hold tonight.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett because he's running out of reasons not to.
Fandom: Sweeney Todd
Pairing: Sweeney Todd/Nellie Lovett
Prompt: 30 Kisses #30: kiss; fanfic50 #29: defend
Word Count: 2,523
Rating: T
Summary: Sweeney Todd has seven reasons why he will not marry Nellie Lovett.
Disclaimer: All I own is a computer.
I.
". . . and it'll be so lovely to have a little cottage by the sea all to ourselves, don't you think? Well, I mean - "
"Do you ever stop talking?" Sweeney grunts.
"Do you ever stop being such a grump?" she returns, then flashes him a smile, leaning her head against his window nonchalantly, as though she too has a claim to it. "I'm only trying to inform you of our future, love. Surely it's not a bad thing, to know where you're headed."
Our future.
He grits his teeth. How dare she make such assumptions? How dare she dictate his future for him? How dare she entwine her future with his?
". . . anyhow, as I was saying, we won't always be by ourselves - Toby'll be coming along, first off . . ."
Has he ever declared - hell, has he ever even suggested - that they are to have a future together?
". . . and we'll have guests come in and out, a nice little bed and breakfast, y'know . . . we've got to have some source of income, after all . . ."
No. No, of course he has not.
". . . though I do have quite a bit stashed away at the mo', business's been so good lately . . ."
He always ceases to listen when she talks about their wedded life by the seaside, he never shows her any sort of tender affection, he ensures to
softly tuck a lock of hair behind her ear as she sleeps, loiter his eyes in her direction a little longer than necessary, achingly touch her indent upon his mattress after he demands that she leave the room
at all times keep his distance. And yet she dares to still talk of their future?
". . . and it'll still leave plenty of time for days of leisure - strolling on the pier - walking by the ocean - lazing all day away inside . . . don't really matter what we do to relax. All the choices'll be there, each and every day, for us to do as we wish. And - " her voice breaks for a moment in desperate, craving hope " - and it'll just be us - together - you and me . . ."
No.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She talks too much.
II.
"G'morning, love!" she tweets as she bursts through his shop door, as shrill and annoying and goddamn happy as the birds that fled London long ago.
He does not turn acknowledge her; he remains standing before the window, face pressed to the panes. He watches her reflection set a tray, laden with breakfast, upon his bureau. Why does she continue to cook him three meals a day when he hardly eats even half of one?
"Made some porridge for you this morning before we go out today. Y'don't mind going out today, d'you? It's Sunday and so nice outside, for once, so I figured we should take advantage of it, have a picnic in the park . . ."
Her voice remains shrill and annoying as she continues yammering - and remains happy. Through his window he watches the sun rise in a sky that turns from granite to steel to charcoal and then back again, watches smog hover like a permanent disease over the buildings, watches people in the streets spitting and clawing and demolishing each other without a backwards glance -
And she is happy.
How dare she be happy?
And how does she remain so?
Her fingers settle against his shoulders and spin him around. Her face beams up at him, ashen skin glowing, muddied eyes alive, wearied mouth curved into an upside-down rainbow.
"C'mon, love," she chirps. "What d'you think? You might think I'm able to read your mind - and sometimes it isn't that hard, really" - she raps his forehead - "what with you usually dwelling on the judge . . . but other times, you do need to actually open your mouth. So - will you come have a picnic with Toby and me?"
"No," he says, but an hour later he's sitting outside on a blanket, a basket bursting with food set before him, the sky the color of pale charcoal, the sun's rays and Nellie's smile both radiating upon his skin and creating angry red burns.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She is too brilliantly happy in a world that is crafted of only shades of gray.
III.
The boy is always watching him.
When he enters the pie shop, the boy spins from the sink or the counter and watches him. When he prowls onto the little deck that hovers over the outdoor eatery to examine the crowds, the boy turns his head up from among the customers and watches him. When he rummages through the cupboards for a much-needed drink, the boy peers his head from around the corner and watches him. When he snaps at some passerby while on an errand that she has forced him to run, the boy always seems to be near and watches him. When late at night his hand on her waist begins to wander lower, the boy cracks open his eyes from his drunken doze and watches him.
The boy is always watching him. The boy is always watching him, glaring at him, judging him.
The boy knows too much.
Were the boy not dumb as a doorknob, he would have already connected all the pieces, pieces that he holds but just cannot assemble.
Were Sweeney Todd not bound by the unfortunate necessity of needing a place to live and store victims and extract revenge, and thus needing Nellie's favor, he would have already killed the boy.
How the dare the boy watch him in so overt a manner? How dare the boy judge him so? Young though he is, he isn't innocent either. No one living in 186 Fleet Street could possibly claim that label anymore. And yet the boy seems to think he has the right to watch and judge, to peer through doorways and drink gin by the bottle as though this is his home, to distract Nellie from her purpose, to silently try and make the puzzle pieces fit despite his complete incompetence at the task.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She and the boy are a package deal.
IV.
He never experiences the bliss of solitude.
She is there when he wakes up and when he fights against allowing himself to fall asleep. She is there when he chokes down something to eat and when he dresses himself for the day. She is there when he stares out the window and stares at Lucy's picture and stares at his grotesquely cracked image in the mirror while never seeing a damn thing.
Even when he is alone, she is there.
She is there in her shop below him, cooking and chattering loudly to whatever poor sap has just wandered inside. She is there on the bakehouse stairs below him, stomping up and down, too quiet to wake the dead but too forceful to ever let him forget her presence. She is there in the outdoor eatery area below him, watching him. Smirking at him. Waiting for him and still believing he will come.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She never leaves him alone and she never stops thinking that one day neither of them will live in solitude.
V.
". . . and poor Mrs. Mooney's business has just up and dried ever since you and me started - "
"Please stop talking, Mrs. Lovett."
She leans herself against his supine body upon his mattress, bare torso against bare torso, lips budded in a pout. "Now, you know that's not something I'm fond of, Mr. T. Why on Earth should I stop talking? Just so's to make you happy?"
"Yes."
"Nothing makes you happy, love," she laughs out loud, head dropping onto his chest as she convulses with giggles.
He scowls even though her face is pressed into his skin and she thus cannot see the scowl. "Stop moving and be quiet. I can't finish your hair with you flopping around like a fish on land."
She ceases her laughter and holds still. His hands resume their former place amongst her mass of hair and begin again to braid the strands, fingers weaving deftly and comfortably through the curls.
Nellie's vow of silence lasts all of ten seconds: "There's really no point trying to finish that braid up, love. I've got a sorry excuse for hair and I'm quite aware of it. I gave up decades ago trying to make it look presentable. Between the tangles, the frizz, and just how damn obstinate the curls are, it's really just a pointless - "
"Shut up," Sweeney growls, and she lets out another giggle that jars her head and jars his fingers and makes him grit his teeth, but after that she quiets.
She is not lying about her hair being a disaster: the curls fight him every step of the way, refusing to position or stay still as he desires, and his hands constantly find themselves caught in massive snarls. But his fingers continue on, unknotting snarls, coaxing the locks in place, braiding the strands . . .
Until, at last, his work is complete.
Satisfied, Sweeney withdraws his hands. Noticing the removal of his fingers from her scalp, Nellie sits up, and the long braid - curls tidied and neat, not a single strand out of place and not a tangle still present - swings from her face and down her back. "It's done? You actually got it to co-operate with you?
He looks at her, admiring against his will both his handiwork and her complete ease with her nude body. "Yes."
She springs up from her bed and bounds over to his cracked mirror, the braid whipping against her bare shoulders as she tosses her head forward to let it fall across her chest and be visible in the mirror. She stares at her reflection and he stares at her reflection and for a moment neither of them move.
Then her reflected mouth breaks into a grin wider than the break in the mirror.
Her fingers reach up to touch the braid, in wonder at his ability to remove all the tangles, at how every strand is captured in the braid - at how at last she feels beautiful, and how he wanted her to look beautiful. . . .
As she admires her hair and he admires her admiring it, he who sees nothing suddenly sees too clearly - sees a woman standing in front of that mirror before it cracked, admiring her braided blonde locks - and his admiration molds with ferocious suddenness into hatred, fury . . .
"It looks beautiful, love," is all that Nellie says, for once satisfied by as few words as possible. She turns back to him, fingers playing lovingly over the braid, face beaming - but her smile falls the moment she glimpses his expression.
He rolls over onto his stomach and presses his face into the pillow so she cannot see, enraged with her - loathing her - loathing himself -
Sweeney Todd will never marry Nellie Lovett. He despises her sorry excuse for hair even more than she does.
VI.
". . . and all those fifteen years that you were gone and I was here . . ."
Why does she persistently bring up the fact that she survived fifteen years without him around?
Does she believe he thinks her incapable? Because he doesn't know how she could believe he thinks her that: she's more than proven by now that she can pull her own weight, and then some . . . that she can endure far more than most men or women could.
Does she believe he does not recognize that she committed to stay on Earth even when Lucy didn't?
Because he does recognize that. Oh, he doesn't want to recognize it, and he won't ever tell Nellie that he recognizes it, but he does. He doesn't want to recognize the fact that Lucy broke under her own weight, that she did not wait for his return, that she did not believe him when he promised that he would return -
He doesn't want to recognize that Nellie didn't break. That she did wait. That she did believe him and still does, even when he doesn't.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett. She refuses to break in the world that broke his wife, and he cannot allow that.
VII.
"Why're you so opposed to marriage, Mr. Todd?"
Startled by her frankness, his gaze turns from the unlit fireplace to her eyes. Not that Nellie isn't normally frank . . . simply that she's usually not frank about anything important, about anything related to his past. She knows better than that - or so he thought.
"I mean," she says, trying to strike a relaxed pose by leaning back in her chair, ruining the effect by anxiously rubbing her dress between her fingertips, "we're very nearly living like a married couple already, what with sharing a home, revenues, a bed - "
Her easy bluntness on this subject always astounds him; not even a whore could speak about sharing a bed with a man with that same simple cadence, with not a modest blush nor a seductive grin, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
" - and the gin, of course. So actually getting wed really wouldn't change all that much in our day-to-day lives."
He does not answer.
She abandons the pretense of relaxation and leans forward, hands gripping her knees, lips pressed so tightly together the blood flees and turns them white, expression searching, hoping, adoring, yearning for him to see her and want her too.
"Lucy's gone, love," she whispers. "Nothing's going to change that - not killing all these men, not getting your hands on Turpin, not staring into your photos and willing her to come back. . . . she's not here and never will be, and I - " she swallows hard before forcing out the syllables she's only ever allowed her eyes to say " - I love you."
He looks at her but does not reply. Whether she is aware of it or not, she has just given herself the answer:
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett because she loves him.
Because she wants to marry him and he hates giving her what she wants. Because he still wants to be married to Lucy and to wed another would be a lie, a final betrayal he cannot commit. Because it scares him and angers him all at once that she can love the monster he's become, because he doesn't know how she can.
She is still leaning forward upon the armchair. Her body is as taut and tense and vibrant as wires; her eyes are upon him, alight with all the flames that the fireplace cannot hold tonight.
Sweeney Todd will not marry Nellie Lovett because he's running out of reasons not to.