A/N: Okiedokie, this is a plot bunny that has been hopping around my head for quite a while. It's somewhat crackfic-ish but I just had to do it. Credit to missxflawless, who has written a story with a similar premise and whos work is pretty darn coolio, dudes (yes, I am a dork). Check her out.
"Got any threes?"
"Go fish," Angel said, grinning at Mark. He rolled his eyes and picked up a card from the pile in the center.
"I have this suspicious feeling you have a hidden plethora of threes that you're just forgetting to mention," he said, eyes narrowed. Angel raised her eyebrows.
"Marky, would I lie to you?...Got any tens?"
"Go fish."
"Darn you…hey, look, another three, I just need one more!" Angel exclaimed happily as she picked up a card. Mark's mouth dropped open.
"You cheating little—"
"Careful, Mark," Collins said, looking up from his book. Mark shot him a nasty look, gave Angel an even worse one, and shuffled his cards.
"Lucky you have Collins to intervene for you, Ang," Mimi said, giggling. She was lying with her head in Roger's lap, playing with the last button on his shirt. Rolling his eyes, he slapped her hands away.
"Change the channel, Mo, Mimi's getting bored," he said to Maureen, who obligingly pressed the button. The cheesy soap opera was instantly replaced by a cooking show. Mimi squealed as she saw what was being sautéed.
"Ew, what are those things? They look like a dead baby's fingers," she said, sticking out her tongue. Joanne, who was reading beside Collins, glanced at the screen.
"I think they're shrimp," she said, which led Mimi to make fake-retching noises. Maureen snorted and flipped the channel again.
Outside, rain pounded down, clanging gently against the fire escape and pummeling any and all unhappy walkers. Joanne's apartment which, unlike the loft, was both warm and supplied with electricity ( Benny was evidently choosing random days to cut off their utilities, since both heat and power had been working yesterday) was where the group of friends had decided to converge that day.
The rain made the apartment seem cozier than normal and everyone had something to do, at least for the time being. Collins and Joanne were sitting on cushions that bad been arranged on the floor, both reading books that no one else in the group found either interesting or comprehensible. Angel and Mark were having a marathon session of Go Fish, and Mimi, Roger, and Maureen were flipping through pirated cable ( Collins took a bow for that) on Joanne's old TV. It was comfortable and enjoyable, with conversation drifting easily from topic to topic and interruptions rare.
"Hmm…nothing, nothing, nothing…there's nothing good on," Maureen complained, using her toes to push the channel buttons. Mimi and Roger peered intently at the set as each flow flashed on and off screen; then, as Maureen clicked onto yet another channel, Mimi gave a sudden yell and waved her arms.
"Wait! Wait! Go back, go back!" she shouted. Everyone looked over at her with curiosity, and Maureen used her toes to maneuver back to the channel Mimi wanted. It was the ending credits of an unidentifiable soap, with cheesy music playing and a somber black-white layout.
"What the hell is this?" Maureen asked skeptically. Mimi pointed frantically to the band that ran across the bottom of the screen: it had the title of the next show and a little photo from it. Maureen looked down at it, a smile growing on her face as she read what show was coming on next. All of a sudden, she whirled around and called, "Pookie! Pookie, what day is it?"
"Um…Thursday, why?" Joanne asked. Maureen gave a shout of laughter and, like Mimi, pointed at the screen.
"Law and Order's up next, and today's the day Lennie gets the new partner! I was hoping I could catch this one!"
"Wait, who gets what?" Angel asked, looking up from the card game. Maureen repeated her words and Angel grinned, dropping her cards and moving over to sit beside Maureen on the floor. "I have to see this, I need to know who's replacing that Curtis guy."
"I thought he was cute," Mimi said with a shrug. Roger gave her a look and she poked him in the chest.
"Not as cute as you, okay?"
"Hey, Angel, what about the game?" Mark asked, sitting down on the couch arm and glaring at Angel. She shrugged, her eyes never leaving the now quickly disappearing credits on the screen.
"I would've won anyway, I had three threes and I knew you had the last one." Angel deliberately ignored Mark's snort and his mumbled, "Cheating, freakin' holding out on the freakin' threes…"
"Pookie, Collins, get over here before it starts!" Maureen shrieked, waving her arms at them. Joanne rolled her eyes and marked her page, then got up and squeezed onto the couch between Mimi's legs and Mark on the arm. Collins followed, scooching in beside Maureen and pulling Angel into his lap.
"I've never seen this show before," he said thoughtfully as the last of the soap opera credits faded with a whistle of tinny music. Roger nodded.
"Me neither. What's it about?"
"NYPD detectives do all their cool crap and then state prosecutors do all their boring crap," Maureen explained, leaning against Collins's shoulder. Mark glanced at Joanne.
" Jo, are you really going to take that 'lawyers are boring' shit from her?" he asked. Joanne sighed and shrugged.
"I don't mind being a lawyer, but honestly…I gotta admit, it's boring as hell," she said as a disclaimer flashed on the screen. Mimi and Maureen shushed her as the disclaimer faded dramatically. A moment later, a loud male voice began speaking as some sort of logo zoomed away from the camera.
"In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate, yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories."
Mimi and Maureen both recited the lines along with the narrator. Mark, Roger, and Collins all simultaneously rolled their eyes, while Angel and Joanne exchanged amused glances. Finally, with a strange " chung-chung" sound, the Law & Order logo faded to be replaced with a park scene. Maureen and Mimi, who seemed to be extremely excited, said, "Shhh!" despite the fact that no one was speaking either on- or off-screen.
The show progressed with a burst of gunshots and lot of dead bodies. Roger winced as one of the "corpses" wiggled one finger slightly.
"Nice acting, that," he said, pointing it out. Mimi and Maureen scowled at him.
"Aaaaand…we have Briscoe," Angel said happily as an older white man in a suit and tie walked into the scene.
"He's the guy getting a new partner?" Mark asked. Maureen nodded.
"The new guys should be showing up any time now…look, that could be him!" she said suddenly, pointing at a small figure that was steadily coming nearer to the camera. For a moment, the focus panned away from him. A moment later, it swung back and caught him full in the face as he looked down at one of the bodies.
If anyone had been talking at the time, they would have shut up in true comedy freeze-style. As it was, every single pair of eyes that was watching the screen snapped wide open as the camera gave the audience a good look at the newest addition to the fictional police force.
Mimi broke the shocked silence that had descended upon the room. Gulping like a fish out of water, she slowly pointed at the screen yet again and croaked, "Who the hell cloned Collins?"
It was a very good question. The man on the screen was so obviously an exact mirror-image of Collins that there was no question of being mistaken that they really didn't look very frighteningly alike. Their facial hair was even the same, and though the other man did look slightly out of place without Collins's knit cap, he still could have easily been his identical twin.
"What the fuck is going on here?" Joanne asked faintly, still staring at the TV like the rest of them. Angel, who was sitting on Collins's lap, tore her eyes away to gaze at him with a kind of incredulous amazement.
"You…him…whaaaaat?" she said in a strangled voice. Collins furrowed his brow as he looked at the screen, his head tilted slightly to the side. Apart from all of them, he did not seem stunned or confused. He merely looked interested.
"Okay, this had better not be some weird drug trip or something…I mean, you guys are seeing this too, right?" Maureen asked, a slight plea in her voice. Roger nodded, his eyes tracking the faux-Collins's face on the screen.
"It's not just you. Collins, when exactly did you go and tape this show? To do it without us finding out is pretty impressive, but Jesus, give us some warning, won't you?" Roger said weakly. Collins gave him a somewhat condescending look.
"Hate to break it to you, Roger, but that's not me. Hey, the theme song's up, maybe we'll find out his name," he said casually, glancing back at the screen. Still unsteady from the distinct weirdness of the situation, they all watched the credits (thankfully, Maureen and Mimi did not sing along to the music). A few seconds in, the actor who played Lennie Briscoe flashed into sight, his name written underneath his picture. It was followed immediately by a picture of Collins—or rather, his doppelganger—and a name.
" Jesse L.—what? I didn't see the last name, what was it?" Mimi cried as the picture was replaced with one of a stoic-looking woman. No one answered her though: somehow, having a name other than Tom Collins put that extremely familiar face was an experience that pretty much rendered them temporarily speechless. They watched as the show progressed, followed the on-screen Collins with their disbelieving eyes as he walked and talked exactly like the off-screen one. Finally, commercials began to blare and it was possible to look away from the TV.
"Someone wanna explain that to me?" Mark asked. No one volunteered anything. All eyes were now gravitating towards Collins, who was thoughtfully surveying an ad for sleep medication.
"That was something I'm not going to forget for a while," he said conversationally. Maureen gave him a look.
"What, the ad for Nocto-Nite?"
"Uh, sure, what do you think?" he said, returning the favor. With a shrug, he got up ( Angel sliding off his lap) and wandered back over to the couch cushions. Plopping down where he'd been sitting earlier, Collins picked up his book and started to read again.
Everyone else exchanged glances. Joanne opened her mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. Slowly, as though they were actors moving to take their places for the start of a show, all the others went back to what they had been doing before the show started. Angel and Mark resumed their game of cards, Joanne drifted over to Collins and her book, and Maureen changed the channel to a Japanese cartoon as Mimi settled back into Roger's lap.
They did not speak of the show or the Collins doppelganger for a long time after.
I couldn't figure out how to END the damn thing! Ah, well. I love Jesse and Jerry as a team, they are my Broadway Boys. I missed Gunshow, which is Jesse's first show, and I shall now watch the L&O schedule obsessively until it shows up again.