A Fight We've Had Before

[masterofmidgets]

Crossposted to boostle : this was my fiction exercise from last week. We were working on dialogue - how to make it believable and natural, and how to add subtext so you can reveal plot with exposition-dumping. Premise was: write about two characters who are arguing about chores, but actually breaking up. I'm the only comics geek in the class, so I figured I could get away with writing Booster/Ted hijinks. Set sometime suring the JLI - I guess around when Booster left to form the Conglomerate?

 

“Booster, have you done the dishes yet?” Ted asks as soon as he walks into the apartment, arms full of groceries.

“I’m busy with Skeets, I’ll do it later,” Booster calls back from the couch in the middle of the living room.

Ted dumps the grocery bags on the kitchen counter and walks back into the living room, snatches the sheet of paper Booster has been scribbling on out of his hands.

“Plotting ways to turn Guy into a girl does not count as busy,” Ted says. “C’mon, the kitchen is starting to smell worse than my lab.”

Booster rolls his eyes and makes a grab for the paper, pouting when Ted evades him. “That is a ridiculous lie. Your lab has layers of pizza boxes that go back to when you were a grad student. I’ll do the dishes later, I promise.”

“You’ll do the dishes now.”

“But Teeeeeeed,” he moans, sprawling back on the couch, trying to look limp and pathetic and like he’d just gone three rounds with a supervillain.

“Now, Michael.” Ted’s voice is sharp, and losing patience.

“And what’ll you give me if I do it? Do I get a cookie? How about a new toy?” He flutters his eyelashes, flirting outrageously as always. “Or hey, if I’m good, will you let me try that new trick Bea told me about, with the rope?”

“I…I really cannot believe you sometimes,” Ted says. He rubs at his eyes with one hand, feeling the bruises where one of the bank robbers from that afternoon had got in a lucky punch.

“Look, if you didn’t want to try the thing with the rope, you can just say so. You don’t have to be weird about it.”

“That’s not what I meant, Booster! It’s just – why does there always have to be a payoff for you? You know, you could just clean the dishes out of the goodness of your heart, because you know that I had a rough day and bank robbers punched me and J’onn yelled at me and I don’t think it’s so much to ask to want to come home and have one plate in the entire place I can eat off. But no, that’s not the way Booster Gold does things – he only lifts a finger if there’s something in it for him.”

“Right,” Booster spat, crossing his arms over his chest. “Let’s start this again, please. I really want to hear about how opportunistic and selfish and attention-grubbing I am.”

“Well, you haven’t listened to it from J’onn, or Superman, or Bats, or Max, or the reporters back in Metropolis – maybe I can finally get it through your thick skull.”

“And maybe I just want you to appreciate what I do around here for once. You think this is easy for me, sitting around here on forced leave, playing computer games on Skeets and waiting for them to fix my suit? But just because I can’t be out there with you stopping villains from blowing us all up or, or turning us into squid-people doesn’t mean I’m useless. A guy goes too long without any recognition, he could just snap, you know.”

“Oh yeah, I’m sure you’re right on the verge of dying your hair black, growing a goatee, and calling yourself Black Gold because I don’t thank you enough for vacuuming the carpet and doing the dishes. You’re useless! Why do I even bother?” He throws up his hands.

“So now I’m not even worth the effort?” Booster shouts. “Fine! If bossing me around is such a hardship for you, I’ll just leave, and spare you the work!”

Ted doesn’t believe Booster actually means it until he’s standing in the doorway with his keys and his duffel bag and his robot, and then he doesn’t know what to say.

“Booster –“ he starts.

“I’ll see you at the next League meeting,” Booster says stiffly. “Try not to do anything stupid.”

 

I choose to assume this ends with make-up sex :D

For our writing exercise today I wrote a very messy but hopefully interesting story about the first time I visited my father in jail. Will maybe post in a few days, I don't know, it needs a lot of work. Am now going back to not doing what I should be doing, which is any number of th