Luke's Diner, Sunday

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

Vala didn't want to be at stupid work. She wanted to be outside, playing and not at all getting into trouble, really. Not at all like she had yesterday. Firefighters, she'd learned, were very nice and good at getting you out of places that maybe you shouldn't have hidden even if they were really sneaky hiding places, meaning that you maybe should have hidden there after all.

Plus she'd gotten a lollipop. Cherry.

She'd written out the specials and was wondering if anyone would come in to play with her.

SPECIALS:

Chicken noodle soup
Grilled cheese sandwich with no crusts
Ice cream

Comments

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

Mohinder was hungry. He'd stayed up ever so late on Saturday, just to see how long he could be awake. The morning's experiment with the kitchen hadn't gone well - no food anywhere! - and so he'd gone out hunting out for food.

This looked like a good place to start. Mohinder pushed the door open, and an unruly mop of hair appeared in the gap. "Good morning," he said politely. "Do you have-" He noticed something. "You have a lolly!"

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"My lollipop," she said self-importantly.

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

He trotted further into the diner and let the door swing shut. Mohinder looked around but couldn't see any other lollies about. "How did you get your lollipop?"

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"The firefighters gave it to me. It's cherry." She considered him, then the lollipop, which she'd pulled out of her mouth with a pop. Then she stuck her very red tongue out at him. "See?"

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

"Were you on fire?" Mohinder asked, awed. It was what firemen did, after all. He could stick his tongue out, and did. Saying, "Your lolly looks nice. I'm hungry," at the same time was just a bit more garbled.

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"Huh uh," she shook her head, pigtails flying. "Got stuck. Wanna sammich? The cook's really good at cutting the crusts off."

Vala eyed her lollipop again, sighed heavily, and offered it to Mohinder. "You can have two licks, if you want. But only two, or you'll use it up."

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

Standing by the counter, Mohinder nodded enthusiastically. "Can we have one with lots of kinds of cheese?"

Mohinder's, "Thank you," was a bit distracted by her lolly. "'t's very sweet," he told Vala, as, mouth and hands sticky, he held it out.

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"Uh huh." She yelled the order back to the cook, then smiled broadly at Mohinder. "You're all sticky. Want some juice, too?"

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

He rubbed ineffectively at his mouth, and said, considering, "What kinda juice is there?"

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"Orange and apple." She thought for a second. "Plus something red?"

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

"Red and orange and apple all together," Mohinder said decidedly. "And ice. I've got proper actual money," he told Vala, rooting in his backpack for the wallet he'd found this morning.

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"Okay," she hopped down off the stool and climbed up on the counter to get a glass, then poured ice and all the different kinds of juice into one glass (slopping more than a little of each all over the counter and herself as she did so), then jumping down.

She carried the glass very carefully in both hands and placed it in front of Mohinder. It was very, very full. "Juice."

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

Mohinder made big eyes at the glass. That was a lot of juice. "An'a straw?" he asked hopefully, pushing a handful of loose change at Vala.

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

She pulled the change off the counter towards her then dumped it into the register. "Bendy or unbendy?"

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

He scrambled up onto a stool and took an experimental slurp at the glass, before looking up. "A curly straw," Mohinder said, waving an arm. There was something missing. "Please."

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

Another hop off the counter, then some rummaging under the coffee tank. She presented Mohinder with about five straws, impressed with his politeness. "Welcome."

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

If he stuck all the straws in a row then it would be like a super-straw. Mohinder set to work, fitting two straws together before he decided that was enough. He inhaled until he ran out of breath.

"Is this diner your job?"

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"Yup. 'cept for when I'm doing other stuff."

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

Mohinder cocked his head. "Is other stuff more fun?" he asked, looking at the diner furniture. "Like making stuff?"

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

Now that she thought about it, maybe getting in trouble wasn't a real job. "More like finding stuff. Finders keepers is my favorite game. What about you?"

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

"I like seeing how things work," said Mohinder. "Sometimes they're really little or you have to take them apart to see all the insides." Putting them back together was harder, and less fun.

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"Oooh, that sounds fun. What kind of things do you take apart?"

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

On Monday Mohinder would be glad he hadn't found his laptop. "A tape recorder and a broken microwave, but you can't take live things apart, they wouldn't like it." The last more recited than said.

"Must use this instead." He showed Vala an oversized magnifying glass.

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"How do you use that?" She looked at the magnifying glass with interest. "Do they eat it and then you look at them from the inside?"

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

"I don't think so," said Mohinder, "You put them in a jar and this makes them look really big and have lots of legs."

He held the glass over the menu and the words sprang out. "Look!"

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"It makes live things have lots of legs?" She leaned over. "Oooooh, neat. What else does it do?"

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

"It does," Mohinder agreed. "An' sometimes things look upside-down," he said, offering the magnifying glass to Vala. "You can look, but be careful, or it might burn things with the sun."

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"Thank you," she said, carefully taking the magnifying glass in both hands and promptly using it to look at the hairs on Mohinder's arm. "You can light things on fire?"

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

"I'm not supposed to," Mohinder said. But no-one had said Vala couldn't, or that he couldn't help. "You hold it so the sun comes in on one side and fire comes out the other. But not my arm."

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

Vala just grinned at him. "How come?" She asked, figuring that worked for both answers.

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

"'cause I got caught, and my dad's papers are important," said Mohinder a bit awkwardly.

"It makes the sun hotter and bigger like it does other stuff you look at," Mohinder was almost sure of it. He have a mock-frown, "And my arm would hurt, silly," he giggled.

[spacepiratevala.livejournal.com]

"What kind of important?" Vala asked, always nosy. She giggled with Mohinder. "I wouldn't use it on your arm."

[offthelisthero.livejournal.com]

"Lots of numbers and hardly any pictures at all," said Mohinder, shaking his head at the dubiousness of that. "Good, cause you're nice and I don't want to get cooked."