We Could Get By

xiv.

The sky had cracked open, spilling speckles of stars along night's almost-black canvas. Nellie was in her own private world, a bubble of post-coital bliss and pleasant perplexity that had bloomed deep in the pit of her stomach. Sweeney seemed to have picked up on this and had the sense not to speak to her just yet. She was grateful for that, for him. She did not dare turn her face to the man lying at her side for fear that she would wake up in London, swathed in the gloom and grime of their crumbling Fleet Street house. She could not bear the thought of this being some carefully constructed fantasy, an elaborate dream she had been having. Everything seemed too vivid, too fresh and clean and wonderful. Even the wallpaper, illuminated in the soft halo of yellow from the lamp, looked new. In London, a lifetime ago, he had never left the lamp on.

Nellie liked to think that when he had kissed her this time, he could not taste the loneliness that lingered sourly in the crevices of her mouth all her life. Something monumental had shifted within the earth, something bigger than the both of them that had her seeing everything with brand new eyes. She could see the two of them, reflected in the mirror across the room, two dark and angular shapes dropped side by side in splendid juxtaposition onto the rumpled cloud of sheets.

Sweeney shifted beside her, stretched out his sinewy arms and wrapped them around her body. She pressed herself against him, feeling for the first time that he was there. His wandering mind was not trudging through some far away memories; his heart thudded softly against her own. It was warm and wild. Nellie maneuvered one of her arms out of his grip, bringing her hand up to tangle her fingers in the soft hair at the nape of his neck. He buried his face in the top of her wild, spiraling curls. His hands were a welcome weight against the silk of her skin, rough thumbs rubbing gently over her weary bones. She was growing old. She was old, in that instant, and so was he, and they would only ever be older from then on.

And yet they clung to each other.

It was this, miracle of miracles, that grounded her. Perhaps, Nellie thought, it grounded him, too. He would not float away, or disappear, or be swept easily from her by some light breeze. She found herself missing her aunt suddenly, wishing for the chance to show Nettie her husband and her life and her shop and her son so she could say “Look what I've made of myself.”

But Nettie was not there. She had not been for a very long time. Sweeney was, though, the gentle rise and fall of his chest against her bringing with it a hazy warmth that filled every space in her mind. They were dying, slowly as every living person was, and the earth was spinning through the endlessness of the universe beneath them, but it was only his breathing and the quiet and their legs in a haphazard tangled heap.

Nellie wondered, not for the first time, if he was merely trying to appease her, to give her what she so desperately wanted just to keep her around, and immediately after the thought occurred to her, she hated herself for it. This was different. There was nothing between them now but skin and bone and tired muscle. Nellie finally lifted her head from Sweeney’s chest and chanced a look at his face.

Fatigue had given them both such a strange shape, all sharp angles and hard lines that held a contradictory sag some place below the surface. He was still himself, his real self, and that little flicker of life glowed beneath his skin. The years had peeled back a bit, like old wallpaper. Even if they had not and the shadows of his life remained glued to him forever, which Nellie suspected in some way they always would, she knew he would always be the most wonderful man in the universe. She had loved Benjamin Barker first, that much was true, but she loved Sweeney Todd just as much, if not even more. Benjamin Barker had been married, he’d had a daughter and a rose-tinted life that Nellie had only been some fleeting, barely-there piece of. Sweeney Todd was a man all her own, some odd, disjointed thing that had crawled out of prison and into her life, and she adored him.

He tightened his grip on her ever so slightly, just enough that it sent a thrill through her veins. Sweeney had said, earlier that evening as he'd tucked a wild curl behind the soft shell of her ear, that she was lovely. Lovely.

It was a phrase that had fallen from his mouth so softly that she thought perhaps she had misheard him. When Nellie looked at his face, searched his eyes for some hint that he had only misspoke, she found nothing but uncharacteristic openness. There, in the oranges and yellows and pinks of the lamp that he did not turn out, Sweeney told her that she was lovely.

When he had realized the woman in his arms was, for once in her life, at a loss for words, he had taken to repeating it like a mantra, a lusty prayer that floated up into the ceiling and stuck there for God himself to find.

They had not started out the way they ought to, had not been a particularly healthy pair, but the roots of their hearts had twisted and grown together all the same. That had to count for something.

It was this that she had been considering, quietly, all night as the time ticked steadily by. No matter how she ran circles around it in her head, Nellie was not yet sure how best to comprehend the new gravity their situation held. Would her photograph now stand proudly in a frame up in his shop? Perhaps this holiday, the Christmas cards she sent out would read “Best Wishes, The Todds”. Would he say “My Wife, Nellie” when he introduced her to people? She did not know, but god, she certainly could dream. Maybe now they would go places, have people to introduce themselves to. The future was blooming magnificently before them, unfolding its petals at last. Sweeney had left the proverbial door open, ever so slightly ajar for possibilities to invite themselves in.

A small part of her wanted Toby to come to her with a question or a story or anything that would give him cause to open the door and see with his own eyes that Sweeney Todd loved her, that there was nothing to fear.

“Did ya mean it, Mr. T?” She worried for a moment that he might release her, jump back and realize that he had made some monumental mistake. He did not pull away from her. Sweeney was gaunt, terribly bony in her arms, but a certain strength beat on bravely beneath his skin and she loved him all the more for it. He had been a scrawny thing since his return from Australia, and the way he picked at every meal she brought him had done nothing to make him look any healthier.

Sweeney leaned away from her, just enough to showcase the sincerity his expression held but not enough to let the cool air of the room pass between their tired bodies. The corner of his mouth pulled upwards into a smile, muted and subtle, no longer the threatening knife it had once seemed.

“I did.”