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When Erik gets home, he finds Lorna in the living room, something incredibly awful blaring from the speakers. She's jumping around, doing something that vaguely looks like dancing, or maybe dusting – she's carrying a duster, anyway, so it might be a hybrid of the two. What she definitely is doing is enjoying having the house to herself – sturmfrei. Erik finds that word especially ironic in the context of this scene.
"What in the heavens-" he starts just as that terrible noise comes to an end, but there's already a new song coming up. Incredibly, it's even worse than the first.
Before he can do something drastic like melt the wires, Lorna thankfully turns the music – not that it deserves to be called that – down to a level during which they can communicate without needing to yell. He appreciates that for only a moment before he realizes he would have much preferred if she had turned it off completely; never has he heard such asinine lyrics in all his life, not to mention everything else about it.
"What the hell," he says. Lorna raises an eyebrow at him, making Erik take a deep breath. "What is this."
"Music," Lorna claims. It's clearly a lie; this is an embarrassment to all the good music in the world. Also to the bad music. It's an atrocity is what it is.
His sister clearly sees his thoughts plain on his face, for she smiles angelically. "We gotta stay in touch with our country of origin, Erik." It might even really be her reason for listening to that; she does tend towards German music. With Erik it's less a matter of principle (he doesn't actually care which language his music is in) and more one of taste and habit – and he doesn't listen to German music exclusively.
"If this is what passes for music there, I'm glad we left," Erik tells her most sincerely. He does know better, of course; this must be some of the fruits of her continuous search for obscure and consequently often bad music. Some of it certainly deserves to be obscure and really should remain so. "Also, I am incredibly shocked that not everybody else fled as soon as this happened to them."
Lorna rolls her eyes. "Stop being so dramatic, as if Rammstein or Subway to Sally were the height of culture."
"There at least is a point to their music," Erik replies sharply. "Not this…" He flaps his hand at the stereo, "Crap." As if on a cue, another song comes up. Erik starts to seriously consider destroying the stereo, and also any means for Lorna to get this insult to the ears.
"You're such a baby." Lorna protrudes her tongue at him.
"Please make it go away," Erik says flatly. He doesn't think he needs to add "or I will, and you will not like it".
Unfortunately, Lorna is nearly fourteen and the days where she listened to him… never happened, actually. "Go away if you don't like it," she replies with a shrug. "I have to dust the living room, and I'm doing it with musical accompaniment."
She moves as if to turn the music up again, and Erik decides he'd do anything not to be subjected to this ever again. This is worse than her Schlager phase, when she had listened to the same song over and over again. It had delighted their mama and embarrassed their papa (mostly because Edie kept saying "this is our song" and sighing and telling embarrassing moments of their youth, such as every time Jakob failed at dancing, or how he had managed to alienate both her parents within five minutes of meeting them). It had also made Erik want to kill somebody. Mostly those responsible for that kind of music.
He clearly has no other choice. "I'll do it," he intercepts her quickly. She blinks in confusion, so he elaborates, "I'll dust if you promise to never do this again."
Lorna narrows her eyes. "Listen to music?", she asks, voice dangerous.
"Listen to it so loudly," Erik emphasizes. "They invented earphones for a reason. This is it."
Eyes remaining narrowed, Lorna stares at him assessing for a moment. "So you'll dust for me if I promise to listen to music with headphones," she reiterates.
Right, Erik isn't that stupid. "I will dust for you this one time," he clarifies, narrowing his eyes as well. They stare at each other for a moment until she nods, turns that horrific stuff off and leaves, but not without sending him one last smug glance. He'll have to watch out she doesn't start using this against him if she wants something from him.
With a sigh, Erik picks up the duster and gets to work, but not without making a point: he gets his own music and turns on one of his favorite songs really loud. He also makes a mental note to subject her more to some quality music in the future.