The Phantom's opera

Christmas

"Merry Christmas Erik!" I exclaimed giddily as I walked into the kitchen around 8 am. Erik repeated my greeting with about half the enthusiasm I had and didn't even bother to turn around and face me.
"I am surprised that you are even up this early after how later you startled out last night." He commented.
"Erik your not bringing this up again." I groaned "we spoke about it enough last night."
"I don't think we did. I remember distinctly that when you returned from midnight mass at 4 am that you said you were to tired to talk about and that we would talk about it in the morning." He recounted.
"I told you, it was a midnight mass that went for almost 3 hours and then I talked with a few people after. I don't see why your so upset, there was no damage done." I argued.
"No damage done?" He retorted "I was worried sick that you hadn't returned after 4 hours. You have no idea what kind of people are out on the street at that time."
"I asked you if you wanted to come with me." I defended "You chose to stay here."
"You know why I can't go!" He thundered back, letting me know that I clearly touched a nerve. Usually I let Erik have the 'but my face' card, but today I wasn't going to today.
"Stop blaming your face for your own mistakes!" I reprimanded "if you were normal about your face and explained to people about why you wear the mask then people will understand. No one cares if your ugly on the outside if your beautiful on the inside."
"No one cares if your ugly on the outside if your beautiful on the inside." He repeated mockingly "it's easy for you to say, you have a full face. I know from experience that everybody looks at my face assumes my soul is no different." At this point the argument was very heated. Erik was a master of intimidation and I knew if he was in such a heated with anyone else, they would be cowering in fear. Unluckily for him, I wasn't about to back away from the argument.
"Am I nobody now?" I accused. I wait for a bit to give Erik the chance to speak again but when he didn't, I continued on "do I not count because I come from a different time? Is that it? What about Madame Giry or does she not count too?" Erik still didn't respond. I realised that maybe we had taken the fight a little to far and said things that we probably shouldn't have said.
"We shouldn't be fighting like this on Christmas." I sighed "we can talk about it tomorrow if you really feel the need to."

So far, my Christmas had been going lousily. The breakfast Erik and I had was delicious however it was eaten in an awkward silence due to the underlying bitterness from the argument before it. After breakfast, Erik went away without a word and went into the music room. I decided to have a break from the house and went to drop off Christine's present at her house. I had talked to Christine and Mama Val for a bit but not to long since we had already caught up after the midnight mass. Christine adored her present, which was good since I had actually spent a lot of time and fabric on it. My mood was slightly improve when I returned to the lair but it immediately returned to a sour when I found out that Erik was still in his music room sulking and still very much upset with me. I convinced myself to be the better person and to reach to Erik and offer him forgiveness rather than waiting for him to do it, because I knew that if I did wait for him to do it, it would never happen. I decided that I would give him his Christmas present now rather than at tonight, like I had planed to. I hoped that in giving him by giving him a present, his mood would improve, like mine does.

"Hey Erik-" I began as I walked into the music room.
"Knock." He interrupted. I almost flew into a rage. Here I was trying to the better person and Erik was here telling me off for literally the only time I haven't knocked.  I managed to kept my cool and just knocked to the music room's door to satisfy Erik.
"Come in." He said in response to my knock.
"What I was trying to say before you cut me off," I began, not being able to hide my annoyance from my voice. I tried to calm myself by taking a deep breathe before continuing "I was going to give you a Christmas present later but I was thinking maybe it would be better if I have it to you now." I held out the present, which was covered neatly in brown paper. Truth be told, I was a little upset that they didn't have the festive patterned wrapping paper in this time but the present still looked good. Despite me having the present outstretched before him, Erik seemed confused.
"A present?" He asked, almost in disbelief.
"Yeah, people get each other presents for Christmas. It's a tradition." I explained.
"I didn't get you anything." He told me. It seemed as though he thought I would take away his present when he said that, which to me, seemed really cute.
"Erik, you've done so much for me in the last 6 months, you don't need to get me." I assured him. After hearing me say that, he slowly took the present and opened it. He opened the Christmas Carol music books first.
"I got these for you because I know you've never celebrated Christmas before. These are songs that are for Christmas" I explained "I know they might be a bit easy for you but I was thinking maybe you could play them today."
Next he opened the present I was most proud of. Despite my plan to not sew anything for Erik this year, I came up with a brilliant plan to steal one of Erik's capes and bedazzle it like Erik had in the musical version.
"It's my missing cloak." He observed, raising an eyebrow at me.
"Well I may have taken it when you left it in on the couch." I revealed, smiling at him.
"You ruined it." He said, his face deadpan. The smile immediately dropped from my face but when Erik saw this, he let out a laugh.
"I'm just joking Alina, it's great." He assured me, clearly still finding his joke hilarious.
"You'll be lucky if you'll be getting anything next year after that joke." I told him, which resulted in him laughing again.
"When did you get the music books?" Erik asked, seeming genuinely interested.
"I went shopping in my lunch break with Madame Giry when I went back to work." I told him "you should be also thanking Madame Giry, she really helped me pick a Christmas present for you."
"Your friendship with Madame Giry is something I never expected." He commented.
"I didn't expect it either," I laughed "but she's actually a good friend."
"Wait, there' Christmas tradition I know of that we haven't done yet." He hesitated. I was confused wen Erik said this as I hadn't really thought of a tradition that could really be applied to right now except for maybe a Christmas tree and I wasn't sure those things haven't come around yet. I went to ask him what, but before I could ask him what he was talking about, he pushed his lips against mine. I was so shocked that I pulled back almost immediately.
"What tradition was that?" I demanded. I couldn't help but let the strange mixture of confusion and anger that I was feeling seep into my voice.
"I don't really know what it's called, but I saw some people doing it in the opera house." He replied sheepishly, seeming to be regretting his action very much. I realised what he was talking about as soon as he said that because I was aware that someone had put mistletoe up in certain areas of the Opera house.
"For this tradition, two people need to stop underneath mistletoe in order to kiss." I explained, which resulted in Erik seeming even more embarrassed. I could tell that Erik was doing some intense internal cringing at the moment and I kind of felt bad for him, so I decided to give a quick kiss on the check.
"Next time, give me a little warning if your going to kiss me." I teased him.

After Erik recovered a little from his embarrassment, he went and played the Christmas Carols on the organ while I sang along. We were both having a really good, fun time as we forgot the earlier fight. I eventually stole the sheet music I got for him as pay back for when he took my costume designs. Erik chased me to get it back, both of us laughing uncontrollably. Erik eventually caught up to me and instead of taking the sheet music back, he ended up picking me up. I tried to yell at him to put me down but it was almost impossible to say while I was laughing. Erik had cooked up a turkey and it was around 6pm that it finished cooking, so we decided to stop mucking around and have dinner. I was shocked that Erik even served himself up some turkey, which was shocking since he almost never had a meal with me, and when he did eat, it was a small fruit or slice of bread around 3. Although he only served himself up a very small portion, I was glad that he was at least having something. We didn't continue out childish antics after dinner and instead I convinced Erik to read out one of his books that were in French to me. I had tried my hardest to stay awake but my exhaustion paired with the soothing, melodic voice of Erik while he was reading meant that I was soon fell asleep on Erik's shoulder.