FicWad

It was the middle of the night, and Molly was glaring at the microwave, which was resolutely doing nothing in spite of her attempts to get it going, when she was surprised to hear Chase's voice behind her. "You even old enough to use one of those on your own, Bruiser?"

She whirled around and transferred her glare to him. "I'm /eleven/, Chase," she said, rolling her eyes. "Mommy and Daddy've been letting my use the microwave for /years/. I mean... they did. Um, before. You know."

Though Chase would usually never spare a single good word for their parents, or even a single word that wasn't an insult, even he wouldn't take that as an opening to bash them them when Molly was obviously on her way to making herself upset. Instead he stepped forward, resting his hand briefly on top of Molly's bandanna'd head as he stepped past her, and started fiddling with the microwave himself. "Dunno why mom and my old man had to mess with everything in this place," he said, banging on a few buttons. "You'd think a microwave would work fine without them doing their mad scientist crap on it. How long'd you want it in, Bruiser?"

"Um... three minutes!" He pushed a few more buttons, and then the microwave started humming with activity. Molly grinned broadly. "You did it! I thought I was gonna have to make it on the stove, 'cause I couldn't make it go no matter what I did, but you figured it out!"

"Yeah, well, I've had lots of time to figure out how the junk they made works since we left home," he said, trying to ignore how she was making him feel a tiny bit disconcerted. It wasn't often that people looked at him like he was awesome because of his /brain/. He quickly changed the subject. "What're you making anyway?"

"Hot cocoa!" she said happily. "I couldn't sleep, an' I remembered I saw some in the cabinet, so I decided I wanted some."

"Wait, dude, we have cocoa here? Why didn't anybody tell me about that?"

"I dunno. You never asked?" she replied, keeping her eyes fixed on the timer counting down to when her drink would be done.

"I should'nt've have to /ask/. You have something good, you share it with your pals, capisce?"

She wrinkled her nose at him. "Were you watching The Godfather?"

"Nah, Simpsons. Fat Tony was on."

"Oh. Well, you sound kinda--" He didn't get to find out what she thought he sounded like, because just then she was distracted by the microwave's beeping. "Yay! Cocoa!"

"Dude, Bruiser," he said, amused, when she opened the door and he saw the size of her cup. "Why didn't you just use a bowl?"

"'Cause a bowl doesn't have a handle! Duh!" Instead of starting to drink it right away, like he'd expected, she headed over to their cup cabinet and dug out a smaller mug. Before he could ask her what she was doing, she poured part of her cocoa into the mug, splashing quite a bit of it onto the counter as she did so. "There! You can have some too!" She frowned at the spills. "I didn't mean to do that, though."

She started to go get a sponge and paper towels, but Chase stopped her. "You go back to bed with your cocoa, Mol. I'll take care of it."

"Really?" She beamed. "Thanks Chase!"

"Sure thing, Mol." He gave her a quick noogie and grinned at the way it made her grimace, then grabbed the cleaning supplies. "Thanks for the cocoa."

"You're welcome!" She headed off towards her bedroom, practically skipping as much as she could with a cup half-full of cocoa, and left him to clean up her mess.