Disclaimer: Define "ownership".
Summary: Larkle and Rilaya-flavored screen actor au drabbles.
Netherverse
The other boy looks familiar.
As the night progresses it becomes apparent that not only is this not a figment of Farkle's imagination, but the other boy feels and tastes familiar. As though "stranger" is a euphemism 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 Farkle's throat) draws a hesitant thumb across the expanse of Farkle'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, Lucas is in Toronto/New York shooting, Farkle 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 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, or order the last white chocolate biscotti at the vegan place on lower 6th, 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 minorly 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 is a lot of effort to exert for a Tuesday, there is only one-borderline regrettable-option.
Lucas' last coherent thought is always that there are narcissistic acts and then there's this.
Farkle 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 Riley'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, Farkle thinks about unconsciously corresponding facial hair. The politely parted fuzz silently growing its own agenda on his upper lip waits an entire year to move oddly against the triangular patch Lucas harvests while doing press for that John Green movie Farkle 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 being established.)
(In the first version-his favorite-he stands with his back against the sink while Lucas traces the scars from the Scott Pilgrim Summer, when all of Farkle's friends receive handsome sums of money in exchange for beating his ass into the ground on camera.)