Chapter Text
Francis paused in the doorway to his flat. The other Francis was sitting on his sofa and looked back at him.
„Ummm. Hello?“
His doppelgänger waved, opening their mouth and letting a mouthful of chewed cereal land in the bowl they were holding in their lap before turning suddenly, which caused the bowl to spill onto the sofa.
„Hello. Welcome to this flat. Mmm, yeah. Is it yours? I got it right, right?“
Francis nodded. „Who are you? Did the doorman let you in?“
Sofa Francis did something that looked like a cross between someone trying to get a herniated disk on purpose and a badly done imitation of a nod.
„They did, yes, I told them I was Francis Milkman the Mosses, and then they said my ID was good and my entry request looked normal and that I looked normal. I tried really hard so that’s good.“
Real Francis slowly put his hat on to a hook by the door without breaking eye contact.
He wasn’t sure if he should be running right now or if he was safe.
Those people in hazmat suits made a huge fuss about it, but he’d never seen a doppelgänger and they didn’t actually seem to do anything.
„Mmm. Good job?“
„Thank you! I’m really proud of myself. I learned numbers to do this! And I can read. Kind of. That’s difficult if you don’t have human school. Anyways, what am I supposed to do now?”
“What?”
The doppelgänger looked up at him with wide eyes.
“What should I do now? I got in. Why did I want to come in? I don’t know. I think it’s safe here? I’m not sure.”
“Mmm… You can sit on the sofa?”
“Hooray! Okay, I’ll be the best sofa sitting person you’ve ever had!”
Sofa Francis turned around again and sat in a relatively normal human-like manner (though not really a very Francis-like manner, given that they were patting their hands excitedly on the sofa next to them and jumping up and down a little).
Francis slowly shuffled behind the sofa towards the table where the telephone was, hoping that the doppelgänger was not going to suddenly grab him by the face and throttle him or something.
The doppelgänger only seemed mildly curious, but they almost immediately got distracted by the cereal they spat out earlier and started picking it off the sofa and out of the bowl and putting it in their mouth again with all the lint that came with it.
Francis quickly turned to grab the phone and dialled the front desk.
He waited awkwardly for a reply for about a minute (while glancing over at the confused looking doppelgänger every few seconds to make sure they were staying on the sofa ‘recycling’ the cereal).
The doorman must have left for the day right after letting Francis in.
Curse his bad luck.
Maybe the doorman was still packing and would still be there? It was worth a try.
Francis turned to the doppelgänger.
“I ummm… forgot one of my shoes downstairs. Stay here, I’m getting it.”
The doppelgänger showed him their middle finger, in a way that was so polite they clearly had intended to give Francis a thumbs up, and started chewing on a piece of the sofa that they had managed to rip off.
“Mmm. Yes. See you later.”
Francis rapidly exited the flat before running down the stairs as fast as he could, in his socks(he had lied about forgetting his shoes, then forgotten to put them on when leaving again. He did not really know why he had taken them off in the hallway instead of in his flat.)
He reached the door at the control room, which was locked for the curfew. The lights in the control room were out, and Francis couldn’t see anyone.
Well, darn.
Maybe Nacha would let him stay over so he could avoid going back to the doppelgänger.
He felt something a little wet under his sock and looked down. There was a small smear of blood on the dark floor, and he had stood right into it, or else he would not even have noticed.
He swallowed. He hoped that one of the other neighbours had just got a really bad nose bleed or something, or that new scarlet milk that was all the rage had been spilled.
But if he was completely honest, he knew that this probably had to do with a doppelgänger. Probably the one on his sofa, eating his cereal. And the blood was probably the doorman’s, judging by the fact that their jacket was lying on the floor in the control room.
How did the doppelgänger do it? The whole room was literally built as a safety measure against them, and Francis could see that the glass wasn’t broken. The door to the control room was even properly locked, as usual.
Francis knew that the doormen often changed (and probably died), but he had kind of never noticed that there was literally no way for the doppelgängers to enter the safe control room, even if they did manage to enter the building.
Maybe if the doorman had exited the room and got jumped, but then why would they have left their jacket? Could the doppelgängers phase through walls? Or were they able to shapeshift into something that would fit through the keyhole? Francis didn’t really want to think about it. He would not be able to get the doppelgänger out of his apartment, at least not for another 8 hours at least, if they had appointed a new doorman by then. They would almost definitely, the D.D.D. seemed to have a large lineup of replacements and were a bit too prepared.
He trudged back to the first two flights of stairs, still in his socks. Any small semblance of adrenaline he might’ve had was not doing its thing anymore, and he was feeling as exhausted as ever.
On the second floor, he paused, walking into the hall towards the last apartment and ringing the doorbell.
Anastacha answered the door with a glare.
“Mmm Francis? What are you doing awake, it’s 2 am. Who needs milk at 2 am? Mom is asleep. I don’t need a sibling, or whatever.”
Francis shook his head.
“No , no, I’m not here for that. Wait, what are you doing awake at 2 am?”
Anastacha turned red and looked down with a little pout.
“I was… I was eating my cheese wheel, okay? You know I need my 2 am cheese or whatever.”
“Mmm’yes… okay… Anastacha, there’s a doppelgänger in my apartment? Do you think I can stay here tonight while I wait for a doorman to come?”
His daughter looked up at him a little puzzled.
“Did you try throwing a bottle of milk at it?”
“I didn’t have any left. Please?”
Anastacha groaned but stepped to the side to let him in.
“You better not be the real evil Francis doppelgänger that doesn’t have shoes. You get the fluffy carpet, I need the sofa to store my cheese. Don’t you dare touch it.”
“Thank you so much Anastacha, I will absolutely do whatever fathers do to bond with their daughters with you if you want me to. What do fathers do to bond with their children?”
Anastacha shrugged. “Mmm… Baseball I think? But it’s okay, I wouldn’t just leave you to die even if I did actually hate you and didn’t just act rude as a way of expressing how my adolescent mind processes complicated emotions, relationships and puberty. Or whatever.”
Francis awkwardly patter her on the shoulder, before she shoved him into the living room(set up similarly to his, except a bit less sad and single-middle-aged-man-who-doesn’t-practice-self-care-y and more visually pleasing(apart from the hideous fluffy pink carpet of the kind that tries to pretend to be some animal fur and had a weird rounded shape. Nacha had got it for free somewhere as a teenager and never got rid of it.
He sat down on the carpet in a cross legged position and stared at the piles of cheese Anastacha had heaped onto the sofa. He cautiously pulled a sofa roll out from under a big block of Emmentaler, and placed it down on the carpet to be his pillow.
He lay down and stared into the darkness as he listened to Anastacha quietly sing something in an off time way, and wondering if the doppelgänger had caught on or if it was destroying his flat or something along those lines.
Not that he usually slept much, but he felt that he would not be getting much sleep tonight.