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He knew what they thought about Ted.
Ted was average.
He was smart, but not the smartest. Brave, but not the bravest. Strong and quick and well-trained, but only human, after all.
He wasn't particularly charming, certainly wasn't smooth. Most of all, he was plain – fluffy, even. Utterly forgettable.
Except that he wasn't.
Booster seemed to have trouble forgetting him for even a few minutes. He'd tried to tell himself it was normal, best friends thought about each other all the time. He hadn't really had a best friend before coming to the past, so what would he know? But even he had to admit that there was a line between "You make me happy" and "I can't go ten minutes without wondering what you're doing."
And that was the crazy thing. It was common knowledge that Michael was the pretty one. He knew he was gifted in that department — hell, he was gorgeous. And stud that he was, he could have his choice of equally attractive women. So why his squishy, awkward, so-straight-it-hurts best friend?
It was all in the details. Michael had never been the most patient or observant person in the past, but Ted was, apparently, the exception.
It was in the way Ted smiled, that real smile of his that lit up his whole face, his eyes flashing mischief. It was in the way his body relaxed when he laughed, and it was like you could see right into every part of him. It was in that little wrinkle between his brows when whatever he was tinkering with wouldn't cooperate — a wrinkle that was sure to stick one of these days and make him look like the old man he acted like half the time.
It was in the sure movements of blunt, calloused fingers as they re-wired this or soldered that. It was in the funny little swoop of hair he could never quite tame. It was even in that affronted, annoying pout he got when he was trying to be a grown up, dammit Michael!
Ted may have been plain. But that didn't mean he wasn't beautiful.
"Booster. Hey, earth to Booster!" Ted called, waving a grease-smeared hand in front of his face. Michael blinked back to reality with a start.
"I know the lab can get boring, but you've been staring for like twenty minutes," Ted jibed, hands on his hips, before his smile turned wicked. "Were you thinking about that girl from last night?"
There was a jarring moment in the pit of Michael's stomach, like slipping gears, before the cocky smirk worked its way out of his conflicted brain. "Candy? Oh, she just couldn't get enough of me."
"Man, she was NOT into you!" Ted argued, for the tenth time, as he piled tools back on the shelves.
"What are you talking about? Of course she was!" Booster blustered back, coming around to stand right behind his friend and insist, "She couldn't keep her hands off me."
"Yeah, because she was trying to push you away," Ted sniped back blithely, without looking up.
"Oh yeah, then what was all the smiling and giggling about, huh?"
Ted turned back to Booster and deadpanned, "Maybe she was just being nice to the long-suffering scientist and his mentally handicapped best friend."
Booster glared at him from a few inches away, until they both burst into laughter. "You're just jealous because they always go for the blond," he teased, slinging an arm around Ted and guiding him out the door.
"Yeah," Ted shot back, sarcasm leaking through the remains of his laughter. "I'm heartbroken over all the attention you get from skeezy bar flies and their myriad diseases. Whatever will I do if I don't get Chlamydia before I turn 40?"
Ted flipped the lights off on their way out, and matching laughter echoed for a long moment through the empty lab.