Haunted

Chapter Eight

A/N: Thank you to everyone who continues to support and review this story; it is much appreciated! :)

I now expect this fanfiction will be twelve chapters long unless something weird happens in chapter twelve that causes me to add a thirteenth chapter. Once I finish Haunted, I've got several smaller ideas to entertain which may be short multi-chapter fics, or I could build a series of one-shots. We'll see once we get that far. :)

As a side note, this is also probably going to be the longest chapter in the story. It wasn't quite long enough to divide into two. This is also the last super fluffy chapter; if you were anticipating more build in the plot, you'll find that in chapter nine. 

I hope you continue to read my work, and again, thank you for the continued support.

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"Mrs. Lovett? Mr. Todd?" Toby rapped at the wooden door. Sweeney groaned, his voice barely audible from the massive mound across his mouth. Nellie's arm smashed across his mouth and nose. Her long hair tickled his cheeks. Her head rested beside his on the pillow, her body warmly strewn across his. "It's nearly noon. Is everything alright?" The concern in the boy's voice drove Sweeney to struggle upward from his position, though his lip curled in displeasure at having to move at all from the warmth of the room.

Mrs. Lovett stirred. "Huh? Love?" she mumbled, peering up at him. Her face had drained of its feverish flush, and she grinned up at him through her tousled locks of frizzy hair. "What's wrong?"

"Toby needs us. Lie back down, I'll brew us some tea."

"Do you know how?"

"I'm not an idiot." He patted her hand. "Lie back down," he repeated, voice urgent. "You need to rest. Tomorrow's Christmas." His stomach knotted at the thought. The first Christmas he would spend back in London, the first he would celebrate as a free man, the first he would know without his beloved by his side. "I'll send Toby to the grocer to get rid of him, then you can sleep as you like." Perhaps with a different form of beloved.

Mrs. Lovett drew the covers up over her head. "Fine."

Sweeney buttoned up his dirty shirt and found his boots as he shuffled out of the room. "Coming, Toby." He tried not to sound too aggravated with the boy, but his face found a scowl perhaps more characteristic of his old self, and he had to work to soften the look for the boy's eyes. Pushing out of the bedroom, he nodded curtly to Toby. "I'll brew us some tea. Now, we need you to run to the grocer before they close. We still need to eat over the holidays."

"Right now, sir?" asked Toby; Sweeney might have anticipated a dubious reply, but the lad looked willing and eager as ever. Any hint of fear with which he may have regarded the barber the night before had dissipated into warm brown eyes, a mellower shade than Mrs. Lovett's but still enough for a striking resemblance to burble between them.

He shook his head, one hand moving to rub his slightly stubbled jaw line. "After you've eaten something." What he would feed Toby, he wasn't sure; Mrs. Lovett had taken to waiting on the both of them like a bloody maid. "How about I run downstairs and get you a pie?" He internalized his smirk and tried to hold a genuine kind look.

The boy brightened. "Yessir! I love Mrs. Lovett's pies!"

"I'm sure you do," muttered Sweeney under his breath as he headed for the door to the bakehouse. The pies had probably burnt beyond recognition, but he didn't suppose Toby would care; the former chimney sweep had strong teeth and a stronger stomach for anything placed before him on a plate. Behind himself, he slammed the cellar door so that Toby couldn't peek inside at the strewn bodies. Have to get to butchering later, he reminded himself in a growl. He and Nellie had both marked their establishments as closing on Christmas' Eve in accordance with the lie he had told about them spending the holidays on the coast; he hoped that word of her sickness didn't spread too quickly so they could take advantage of the element of surprise when they attended the ball.