Best Served With A Side Of Mouthwash

Captain Haddock had tasted humiliation, and it tasted an awful lot like hot sauce. Tintin had crossed a line: a man's toothpaste was his own, thundering typhoons, and a man should be free to brush his teeth how and when he liked, without fear of sabotage and burnt taste buds, which made everything he ate for a week afterwards taste like old socks.

It had taken the better part of the afternoon, but he had done it. He was about to take his revenge.

"Toothpaste, is it, lad?" he muttered to himself. "Well, you shall have all you want of it."

Down the way from Cutts the Butcher, just off Main Street in Mulinsart village, there was a small bakery called Buns-A-Poppin'. It had been there for years – since the sixties at least – but before it became Buns-A-Poppin' it had been another bakery. Not a week went by without someone from Marlinspike Manor, either the Captain or Nestor or Tintin, popping into Buns-A-Poppin' for a treat.

Oh, and what treats they were! Eclairs and cream cakes and jam tarts and sponge cakes… The bread was baked daily and was always fresh. And such an assortment! Bread from all over the world: barrel rolls and crusty loaves and naan bread… bread with herbs in, organic bread, and even bread suitable for coeliacs. They did a gluten-free line that shipped all over Belgium.

But Tintin's favourite was a Buns-A-Poppin' original recipe: the Ginger Pie. It wasn't a large cake – about twice the size of a Jaffa Cake – but it was unique and very tasty. Fresh, buttery cream between two soft ginger cakes. They came in a pack of six, and the Captain had once seen Tintin eat an entire pack in one sitting (although he'd sorely regretted it about an hour later).

It had been easy, the Captain discovered, to separate the two ginger cakes. The cream was very, very fresh and very soft. He'd bought them as soon as they came out of the oven and got to them before they'd had time to settle and harden.

It was also easy to scrape the cream off the ginger cakes. The Cat had helped him with that part by greedily destroying the creamy evidence. She'd even stuck around for a while afterwards, displaying the most amount of loyalty she had ever shown for her owner thus far. Mind you, once she'd realised there was no more cream coming her way she'd buggered off and Nestor had taken her place.

The Captain had chosen to do this in the kitchen because it would be the last place Tintin would ever look for him. Granted, Tintin wasn't at home at the moment, but if he were to come back early and catch the Captain, all would have been in vain. Plus, it was cosy in the kitchen beside the large range. Nestor took a seat and stared at the Captain.

"Er, sir?" he asked cautiously.

"Yes, Nestor?" The Captain didn't bother looking up.

"May I ask… Sir, what are you doing?"

It was here that the Captain ran into some trouble: the toothpaste was too hard to spread and he broke one of the delicate, still-warm cakes. "Damn and blast!" he shouted, slamming the cake down on to the table and scattering crumbs and chunks of ginger sponge everywhere. "What the blazes d'ya think I'm doing?"

"Well, it looks like you're trying to put toothpaste onto cakes," Nestor said delicately. The Captain had to admire the man's formal, polite demeanour in the face of such strangeness.

"There's your answer then," the Captain said, staring at the tube of toothpaste and willing it to melt a bit.

"I… Hmmm." Nestor closed his eyes and counted to ten. He'd learnt that things were rarely boring around here because of how weird the Captain was. "It seems to me, sir," he said at last as he stood up to make his tactical withdrawal from the odd situation, "that if you put the toothpaste – tube and all – into a pot of boiling water, you may achieve the desired affect."

The Captain waited until the butler was gone before trying it.

He was only bloody right.

x

Tintin came home about an hour later, dragging his feet in exhaustion. He collapsed gratefully onto a soft chair and put his feet up on the ottoman. "You wouldn't believe the day I've had," he said wearily.

The Captain put his newspaper down and gave his young friend his full attention. "What happened?"

"That car broke down. Again. I had to get it towed. The shocks have gone. By the time I'd managed to get into Brussels I'd missed my first appointment – I had to reschedule it for two weeks time, which of course will be too late."

"Of course."

"My second appointment was late, which made me late for my third appointment. And I spent the rest of the day chasing down a bad lead that went nowhere."

"You poor thing," the Captain said sympathetically. He went to the sideboard and poured himself a drink. The plate of Ginger Pies stared at him accusingly. Steeling his resolve, he picked them up. "Here," he said soothingly as he held out the toothpaste-filled cakes, "cheer yourself up with a Ginger Pie."

"Aw, thanks Captain!" Tintin looked pleased as he picked up a cake and took a huge bite.

Revenge, the Captain thought, tasted sweet.

Author's Note: This also works with Oreos and Butterfly buns. Also, I really enjoy writing for Captain Haddock. What a gem of a character.