This fanfic takes place around the start of season 4. Some events that take place will be canon, but most will not be since that is the point of a fanfiction after all ]. This is NOT Wilkercest. I thought about it but I decided that it wouldn't go well with the subject matter. English is not my native language so I apologize if my grammar is bad. No flames please!

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Reese can't sleep, or rather, he's awaken at 3:45 A.M to faint sniffling sounds echoing throughout the shared bedroom. Except that can't be it because the sounds were so soft he reckons he probably wouldn't be able to hear it the room wasn't dead with silence.

He assumes that it must be Dewey at first. after all he cries all the time, usually over something trivial like a lot of kids his age did or to get what he wants, not realizing that old trick doesn't work as well as it did when he was a toddler. He might've been almost 10, but that didn't stop him from behaving more like a 5-year-old sometimes.

However when Reese took a glance at the bed at the other side of the room, he notices that Dewey's fast asleep, which is actually a rarity for him. That meant that the feeble sobbing and whimpering that resembled that of a wounded dog had to be coming from Malcolm. Huh.

It's not that Reese is surprised at Malcolm crying. Quite the opposite. His entire first week of high school was quite the living hell, with embarrasment after embarrassment that Reese himself took time to laugh at and taunt his younger brother about whenever he got a chance, but he knows that if he had a week that was anywhere close to as bad as Malcolm's he would've snapped too. He was bound to let it out eventually.

If anything, he was surprised that he hadn't overheard him crying himself to sleep long before tonight. He spent the entire summer leading up to his freshman year wallowing in a bottomless pit of self-pity. (Or at least, that's what it looked like to the other Wilkersons.) He barely ate. He didn't shower (until Lois had enough of his stench and forced him into a bleach bath and made him stay in it for an hour.) Most days, he didn't even care to leave his bed. Something was definitely going on with him, but it was chalked up to the early stages of puberty and teenage melodrama. No one actually considered that there could be something more serious than what it appeared to be

Hearing him sobbing, tucked underneath his covers beyond midnight clearly hoping no one would hear him made a twinge of guilt surge inside of Reese. He knew that the reason that he was crying had to be bigger than being called "stain" and having him taunt him about it. Malcolm might've been more thin-skinned than he cared to let on, but he wouldn't cry over that. Still, Reese thinks that it couldn't have made matters better.

Today was a particularly bad day for Malcolm. Not only did he have the previous humiliation still stuck in the forefront of his mind and everyone else's, but that same humiliation was what lead him to pull that stunt earlier where he had such a bright and foolproof idea to crash their father's car into their mother's car, and as such before he could even go through with it, he received one hell of a chewing out from a furious Lois.

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"You were about to crash my car so that i would send you to millitary school? You're lucky i don't send you to an early grave!" Malcolm immediately regretted explaining himself. It sounded a lot better in his head than it did explained out loud. Especially when he was explaining it to his mother.

Lois had been on the warpath ever since they left the school, and now that they were home, things were about to get worse.

The rest of the family could sense it too, since no one wanted to be within 50 feet of her when she inevitably exploded on Malcolm. That's why Reese and Dewey were outside occupying themselves with burning insects with magnifying glasses (while still being able to hear the entire argument) and Hal, while also just as angry with Malcolm as Lois was, paced throughout the kitchen and only spoke to co-sign his wife. No one wanted to make the situation any worse than it already was.

"My god, you're as dumb as Reese sometimes! What were you thinking? I'll tell you what, you weren't thinking!"

"You know what, maybe if you hadn't done this stupid volunteer thing and embarrased me every chance you got I wouldn't have even thought about doing that!" Malcolm shouts back, the need to defend himself after being endlessly berated for hours upon hours coming to a boil.

"Oh, I embarrased you? So that gives you the right to do what you did?" Lois scoffs and folds her arms.

"High school was the first chance I had to prove that I can be normal. That I'm not the weird little freak everyone treated me like in middle school. You ruined it! You ruined my chances of anyone even daring to take me seriously. Now all everyone is going to see is that I'm a socially awkward creep with an overbearing mother and it's all thanks to you."

Lois rolls her eyes. "Yep, you got it. I ruin everything. The reason why those kids who didn't like you in the first place still don't like you is because of me. Never mind the fact that I do everything for you, feed you, clothe you, house you, bathe you even though you act like you're allergic to soap and water, take care of you when you're sick, buy you things that end up broken in a week because you're too reckless to take care of a goddamn dust mite for longer than an hour, and go above and beyond in my duty as a mother. Me embarrassing you in front of a bunch of shallow jerks who you don't even like anyway clearly makes me an unfit mother, isn't that right?"

As she continued to list off the things that she did that the boys took for granted, sarcasm dripping from her lips with every sentence, Malcolm just wanted to be put out of his misery. He hated when his mother pulled the "look at everything I do for you!" card. Especially when most of the things she lists are her legal duty as a parent. Kind of hard to care about her feeding and clothing him when she'd be hauled off to prison if she didn't.

Amongst that, one particular part of her rant stood out like a sore thumb to him.

" Kids that didn't like me in the first place?" He parrots. "You don't know that. I could've made plenty of friends."

Lois almost laughs at this, as if she was trying to be cruel. "Well, let's face it Malcolm, you're not really that much of a catch. You're arrogant, selfish, self-obsessed and pretentious. Also, you barely appreciate the friends you do have. Those kids were going to feel the exact same way about you that they do now regardless of what I did because you're just not that pleasant of a person to be around."

Her words felt like a punch to the chest. It's not as if he hadn't been asking for it, yet and still, it stung to hear the cold hard truth (from your mother!) and wanting to despute it so badly and not being able to crushed what little fighting spirit he had left.

"Whatever, can you just ground me and get this over with? what is it, three months?" he shrugs, no longer having any energy to argue.

"It's until I feel like lifting your grounding. Could be a week from now, could be two years from now. Until I say you're no longer grounded, you are not allowed to go outside other than to go to school. You are not allowed to use the phone. No TV, No desserts, No comics, No reading at all unless it's for school. You will only leave your room if you need to leave the house, use the bathroom, do chores, or eat. Do I make myself clear?"

Malcolm nodded before trudging off to the bedroom in shame. The punishment didn't even phase him. Being told he couldn't leave his room, much less the house was more like a reward. He isolated himself anyway.

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As Reese recalled the argument from earlier (or rather, what he could make out from it while he was eavesdropping) Malcolm's tears made a little more sense to him. He was already not in the best of mindsets, and having his mother point out how unlikable he was, which seemed a bit unnecessary among the deserved scolding hurt his feelings.

At the same time, it's nowhere close to the worst thing Lois has said to him, or any of the boys. Hell, if she had said the same thing to Francis it'd be considered a pleasant conversation. The boys themselves said worse things to each other on a daily basis.

Reese decided to stop thinking about it. After all, he hated to think, and he was doing it willingly this time!

Malcolm was just weird. He's been weird ever since the start of the summer, and he was most likely going to continue to be weird. Whatever emotional, hormonal crap was happening with his younger brother was none of his business, and he wasn't going to involve himself. The little ingrate wouldn't even want him to.

So he wasn't.

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So this is the prologue chapter for MELODRAMA. I feel like this is horribly OOC [ But then again only 5 people still read MITM fic anyway so I hope you guys enjoy it. I just wanted to say once again that if my English is bad please let me know, and let me know what I can do to improve my characterization.

~JuulingLoser