RPFic: palindromes
rpfic: palindromes
fandom: The Social Network
disclaimer: I own nothing.
summary: a collection of rpf drabbles.
a/n: Bless me Gorlack for I have sinned. I've written innocent, public persons into sad, dehumanizing situations for the sole purpose of my amusement. It has been zero days since my last confession. Though I walk through the valley of crudeness and shame I feel no fear because thou art with me.
nether-verse
♣
Michael thinks the other boy looks familiar.
As the night progresses it becomes apparent that not only is this not a figment of his imagination, but the other boy feels and tastes familiar too. As though stranger is a eupehimism for "sudden and ideal contact clumsily executed in the recreation room of a mutual friend." Or they're starring in the sequel to events shaped in a parallel universe.
As the other boy (his name clotting stubbornly in Michael's throat) draws a hesitant thumb across the expanse of Michael's cheek the particulars seem awfully irrelevant.
In the ten or fifteen different versions that play themselves out in the span of any given year, Jesse is in Toronto/New York shooting, Michael is at home/visiting friends and they spend the day just missing each other. (Thing One goes to library only to find the last copy of The Invisible Man has already been checked out. On the other side of the city Thing Two timidly inquires about the state of his dry cleaning and is being told he was "just here" by the surly-looking woman at the counter.) At the climax of any one of these Meg Ryan-flavored afternoons, they finally grab opposite sleeves of the same hoodie, discover the only guy in Brooklyn who replaces guitar strings in exchange for hummus actually has other clients, or casually reach for the same Ween album and the spell is broken. Each boy realizes he is staring into the eyes of his doppelganger, the man who has both minor-ly inconvenienced him and made larger, more irritating contributions to his life as a whole.
Since neither party has the constitution strong enough to make destroying the other feasible, and restoring balance to the universe seems like a lot of effort to exert for a Tuesday, there is only one-borderline regrettable-option.
Jesse's last coherent thought is always that there are narcissistic acts and then there's this.
Michael remains intensely invested in the saga of the Path of the Other Boy's Thumb, and wonders how it will go about resolving itself in a way that is not a disappointing cliff hanger.
As they stumble into Ellen's bathroom, each boy will briefly consider committing the episode to paper, changing certain names and selling it to The New Yorker.
♣
In the off season, Michael thinks about unconsciously corresponding facial hair.
The politely parted fuzz silently growing it's own agenda on his upper lip waits an entire year to move oddly against the triangular patch Jesse harvests while doing press for that pizza delivery movie Michael doesn't see five times in five different theaters. (During a moment of readjustment, his premature baby rushes forward eager to humiliate him, taps the
other boy's soul patch in a way that suggests some intangible form of solidarity is slowly being established.)
♣
(In the first version-his favorite-he's standing with his back against the sink while Jesse traces all the bruises from the summer before, when all of Michael's friends receive handsome sums of money for beating his ass into the ground on camera.)