Do your characters misbehave?

I keep going back to my serial story, trying to get the story moving again. I have a few ideas of where it's going, ready to attempt getting them onto the page. And what happens.

The characters decide they want to do something else. Usually nothing productive. All my little ideas that have been floating around get shunted to the side in exchange for scenes like this:

(Rory's POV)

I love lazy Saturdays. The scent of baked apple pancakes still lingered as I immersed myself into my guilty pleasure reading. Totally stuffed, cocooned in the best blanket ever, on my favorite couch, lemon ginger tea steaming on the table next to me, James playing jazz on the piano a few rooms over. Heaven could not be so sweet.

And for that blasphemous thought? Hell gets dropped upon me, in the form of Alex.

"Hey, Ro, know what sounds like fun?"Alex fidgeted to get comfortable, grinding me into the cushions.

"Beating you senseless and leaving you for dead?"

Alex licked the side of my face in retaliation. In the attempt to push him off me, my book got ripped, the tea is all over the room, the table is trashed, I'm not sure where the blanket went, and James is in the doorway making that Spock face - you know the one. Eyebrow up, and completely nonplussed.

Pointing at each other, "I didn't start it."

*end scene*

It's a lot of that. They want to play. They make me laugh. And in the meantime, back in my story, there's this guy in the foyer - been there for weeks at this point. Anytime I point him out, try to get them to deal with him...I get the story about this time, y'know the one, where Toby set the house on fire, or Tara ballgagged Alex and made him army crawl across the living room. It's like hanging out at a family party, rehashing all the old family stories. Lots of fun and kind of pointless.

 *sigh*

I will get them to be serious, I will. But right now Rory and Alex are redecorating James' room. They came in with a few bags of magazines and are debating if porn is worse than Justin Bieber. This is going to get ugly. I wish I could just take pictures of what they do.