Disclaimer: Don't own POTO.
(gleefully rubs hands together and chuckles manically to self) Ve are approaching 1,000 reviews, precious. Yes, ve are. MWAHAHA!
The Gerry: Misty darling, are you okay?
Perfectly fine, my love…why?
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A SPOONFUL OF SUGAR
Anna bounced into the sitting room and announced with peppy enthusiasm, "I'm going to bake chocolate chip cookies."
Brooke jumped up from her chair by the fire, "Oh, fun!" They bounded into the kitchen. Erik blinked and returned to the sheet music in his hands. Christine was due for a visit later that evening and he would have to have her lesson prepared. However, he was not allowed to proceed in peace and quiet.
In the kitchen, Anna's computer sat on an overturned basket, blasting the girls' characteristically odd assortment of music. Right now an especially irritating little tune was grating on Erik's nerves.
The cousins sang at the top of their lungs:
Toot sweets! Toot sweets!
A bon-bon to blow on,
At last has been found.
Toot sweets! Toot sweets!
With tweetable, eatable sound!
Erik had to admit that the improved quality of their voices was much less noxious than their old, unembarrassed shriekings. The musical maestro noted that though the girls' tone and range left much to be desired, the happy confidence with which they used their new talent lent their voices an almost irresistible charm.
Though licorice is chewy,
And gumdrops are gooey,
And chocolate is charming to crunch,
That savory fife,
The sweet of your life,
Is really the best of the bunch!
But charm had its limits. Erik stormed into the kitchen. He found his little friends with their sleeves rolled to their elbows as they measured out the dry ingredients.
"Must you torment me so?" he cried.
"Aw, are we that cute?" Anna snarked. She grinned at him, her nose smudged with flour. Erik's mouth twitched in a slight smile.
"I mean the music!"
"What's wrong with it?" Brooke asked as she dumped a teaspoon of salt into a large wooden bowl on the old oak table.
"It's annoyingly happy."
"It's good to be annoyingly happy sometimes," Anna reasoned. "Don't you think a little annoying happiness might do you some good, Erik? Get you to wind down before the bug-ey…I mean, Christine shows up."
Erik glared balefully at her before whirling on his heel and clicking the skip button on iTunes. Unfortunately, the next song was worse than the first as it turned out to be "A Spoonful of Sugar." Anna and Brooke watched with unabashed amusement as the Phantom's shoulders tensed with mounting irritability. Snarling and swearing, he simply quit the program altogether.
A unified and indignant protest rose from the girls, "HEY!"
"It is my home, my kingdom. And as king in this underworld, I make the rules. And the rules say thou shall not play annoyingly happy songs in my presence," Erik said. His voice threatening and low. He didn't frighten the girls though; it was just that time of the week for him. Every time Christine came to visit, Erik was on edge, as crabby as an old tabby cat.
"Well, your royal PMSiness, may I, your humble servant, inquire if these rules include any right of the people to protest such barbaric tyranny?" Brooke asked. Fortunately, Erik still had no idea what PMS meant (we'll leave him happy in his ignorance…for now).
Erik considered snapping at the precocious brunette for her sarcasm, but as he found her amusing he decided to indulge her with an affirmative answer. He instantly regretted it.
Brooke and Anna immediately dusted him with four fistfuls of unbleached whole-wheat flour. Spluttering, stammering, and snorting Erik shook his head violently, sending clouds of the baking ingredient into the air. His thin hair hung about his hideous face, now coated in snowy powder, his blue eyes ringed in white instead of black. He appeared so startled and confused that Anna nearly lost her self-control and almost kissed away the flour.
As the dynamic duo shared a hearty laugh at the expense of their dear ghost, Erik recollected himself. With eerie calm, he glided across the room, circling the huge table, apparently inspecting the gathered cookie ingredients. He was already standing behind them when Anna and Brooke choked on their laughter, glancing nervously over their shoulders. Only when it was too late did they realize two eggs were missing from the carton.
CRACK!
The Angel of Music firmly smashed an egg on each female head, even drying his hands on their blouse sleeves. The girls stood frozen in place as rivulets of yoke snaked down their foreheads, around their noses, and over their cheeks.
"You were right, Anna, being annoyingly happy is strangely relieving," Erik quipped. She glared at him.
"You'd better get on with your baking, ladies," he added, kindly pointing them back to their task. He meant to leave, but a sweet invitation stopped him.
"Stay with us," Anna asked. Erik turned to stare at her. She gave him a shy grin, cracking the dried egg and flour on her cheeks. Brooke's smile reinforced the offer. Shrugging elegantly, Erik came to stand by the table and watched the proceedings.
The dry ingredients were set aside and two tubs of sugar were brought forward, one filled with white, the other with brown.
"Do you want some brown sugar," Brooke asked, holding a spoonful of the crumbling brown sweetness out to Erik.
"You mean you eat it…um, raw?"
"Heck, yes!"
Warily, he took the spoon. He hesitated a moment, observing as Anna tilted her head back to dump a pinch of the stuff into her own mouth. Judging from her giddy pleasure, the sugar tasted good. Erik stuck the spoon in his mouth. A heavenly taste flooded his senses, the sugar melting onto his tongue, coating it with its delightful syrupiness. He swallowed.
"That was amazing!"
Brooke shoved the brown sugar bowl to him, "Have some more, but take care you don't get a stomachache."
"Try this, too!" Anna said, offering Erik a spoonful of vegetable shortening. He stared at the suspiciously vague white glop, then at her, indicating by his eyes that he thought she was crazy.
"What is that?"
"Vegetable shortening."
Brooke hissed and recoiled, "Don't eat it, Erik!"
"Why not?"
"'Cause it's evil!"
Pushing at Brooke's shoulder, Anna argued, "It is not evil. Try it, Erik."
"No! It's like zit puss."
"This zit puss is going into your cookies," Anna waved the shortening spoon at her best friend. Brooke snatched up an empty spoon and held it defensively.
"Oh, yeah…well, I'll cut your heart out with a spoon!"
"Why a spoon, cousin, why not an ax or a…"
"Because it's dull, you twit, it'll hurt more!"
"SHUT UP!" Erik roared. "Give me that." He grabbed the shortening spoon and—much to Brooke's horror—ate the shortening.
Erik frowned, "It doesn't taste like…anything."
"See! I told you!" the cousins cried in unison.
Then came the debate about milk or dark chocolate chips. Erik thought the milk chocolate best, but the girls were adamant in their protests.
"Dark chocolate is better for you anyways," Anna said.
"Then why did you even bother pulling this out of the Poppins Bag?" Erik asked, holding up a bag of his preferred chips.
"Good question."
"Do you have a good answer?"
"No."
"You know, Erik," Brooke put in, "You should have an affinity for dark chocolate considering that some of your phans think you taste like it."
Cold blue eyes gazed at her with contempt, "That does nothing to help your argument. In fact, it frightens me…Besides, I taste like flour right now."
"Here…let's do it this way." Erik reached over to the largest bowl, which now held the creamy dough, and divided the dough into two equal halves with his bare hands, placing the lumps into separate bowls. "There. One for milk chocolate. One for dark chocolate."
Brooke and Anna gaped in horror.
"Ew! You touched it with your hands!" the brunette squealed.
"So what?"
"So, that's unsanitary."
"You just stuck your grubby fingers into the brown sugar and shortening! And you've been eating the raw dough anyway."
It was in the middle of this latest argument that Christine walked through the door to the Rue Scribe entrance. Her bulging eyes met with the oddest of sights: Erik sitting at a kitchen table, covered in flour, and the cousins smeared with egg, the shells still stuck in their hair, all arguing over a batch of cookie dough. It took a double take for her to realize that Erik was not wearing his mask.
She let out a small shriek, "Erik, your mask!"
Immediately, Erik's flour stained visage took on a sickly hue. Shamefaced and angry, he fled from the kitchen to find his mask, unwittingly leaving Christine at the mercy of the cousins.
Anna was so hopping mad the egg on her head nearly began to fry. Seizing the last of the eggs, she marched up to Christine.
"What the heck did you have to embarrass him like that for?" she snarled.
"I can't help it if he's uglier than sin!"
"But he's your teacher and a human being."
"Don't get righteous with me. You only put up with him because you've nowhere else to go. I think you're envious of the influence I have over him," Christine sneered.
Anna slammed the egg carton on her frizzy brown head. Brooke was not far behind with the rest of the flour. When Erik returned to the kitchen, clean and masked, to claim his student, he found her tarred and feathered and, for some reason, he didn't care.
"Want some cookie dough?" Anna asked. Erik took the offered blob, munching on it as he led a miserable Christine to the Louis-Phillipe room.
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A/N: Huzzah for quick updates. This was just one of those random pieces. I hope you all enjoyed it. "Toot Sweets" was from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and "A Spoonful of Sugar" is from Mary Poppins. I don't own either one, but I do adore those movies, I just don't think Erik would have the same appreciation for them as I do.