The Unforeseen Foreseeable
Fandom: Vamp! (Ryohgo Narita)
Summary: Doubs is up to his old tricks, as usual, and QAWSED aids him, as usual, and they are both utterly predictable. As usual.
Belated Birthday Gift For: @immicolia (I’m so sorry this is late; I started writing it a week before your birthday but real life holiday and academic obligations prevented it from being on time. You’re beautiful and a bastion of the fandom).
Characters: Doubs Hewley; QAWSED/Hackey Mouse; Original Characters
Word Count: Around 4800 words, give or take a few.
Notes: On AO3, mostly, but I’d like to reiterate is my first time writing Doubs and I’m so sorry if I butchered him. Also, happy Vampuary to all!
Read on AO3
Today 8:24 PM
<For the last time, take off your hat. I can see it poking outta the leaves it’s so goddamn tall. S’almost like ya want to be spotted.>
Doubs adjusted the scope of his binoculars, snapped off a few errant twigs obscuring his vision, and scanned the crowd once more for his current plaything with no luck. “And from what positively palatable perch are you peeking at me this time, QAWSED?”
<Security camera outside the surfer shop behind your spot. Seriously, how do y’manage to infiltrate anywhere with a hat and outfit like that? One of these days someone’s gonna take one look at you and call you an untrustworthy freak show on the spot, no intros needed.>
“Oh, that’s already happened,” Doubs said, breezily. He shifted back on his heels and hunched down further into the bush without looking to find the security camera. “Of course you’d see me from your veritable vantage point above my head – and everyone else, for that matter.”
<Yeah, well…> QAWSED trailed off, the volume on Doubs’ mobile phone decreasing automatically from where it sat nestled in his breast pocket. <Whoop, hang on, targets incoming by the wiener stand. They’re all wearing those brown leather jackets, just like ya said. Our guy has spotted them too.>
Doubs turned his binoculars back on the man he’d been spying on for the past ten minutes: a forty-seven year old named Olaf Sauer who’d spent those past ten minutes doing a worse job at blending in than Doubs had ever done even with his iridescent outfit and outrageous top hat. Olaf’s long, sagging face was an ill match for the garish-red baseball cap cocked on his head, and his spindly arms and knobby legs dangled out of his baggy shirt and billowing cargo shorts like bleached noodles. At best, he looked like a man going through one hell of a mid-life crisis.
“My, my, our Olaf’s looking magnificently out of sorts, don’t you think?” Doubs chortled his remark with what at best might have been called an unkind grin. A generous best. In reality, the grin was closer to malevolent.
<Why’d I agree to help you, again?> QAWSED’s question came out as an idle mutter, and though his voice remained tinny as ever, Doubs knew him well enough to know that there was no real bite to his words. This time, at least.
“Because you’re beatifically besotted with me, as all creatures are.” Doubs’ grin stretched wider, though there was no one there to see it. Through his binoculars, Olaf sipped Coca-Cola through a straw and fanned himself with a map in an attempt to look like a Harmless Tourist who was certainly not keeping a nervous eye on the jacket-clad group, No Sirree Bob.
An indignant talk show buzzer sounded off on Doubs’ phone, at a volume that only he could hear. <You wish,> QAWSED snorted. <Narcissist.>
Doubs did not deny this. He’d once attempted to convince QAWSED to play audio files of people applauding every time he entered a room during a week-long Organization meeting; QAWSED had agreed to a compromise where he’d play the soundbite every time Doubs entered a room that Caldimir inhabited. Caldimir had reached the end of his rope the first time it played, and Doubs had earned himself an appreciative high-five from Bridgestone and hours upon hours of amusement.
“Because you like to be entertained almost as much as I do,” Doubs amended, turning the binoculars back on the jacket-clad group. There were six men in the group in total, all younger than Olaf by fifteen to twenty years. Despite Olaf’s eye-catching cap, they’d failed to spot him. “Birds of a feather, as they say.”
Yesterday 7:00 PM
Olaf clutched the advertisement in both hands, looking Doubs up and down from a safe meter’s distance away. He’d been looking Doubs up and down for two minutes straight, ever since he’d first entered the abandoned shed. “You’re sure you’re Mr. Hewley of the Interim Investigators?”
“I surely am!” beamed Doubs, answering the question as enthusiastically as he had the first time Olaf had asked it. “Doubs Hewley, at your service. A positive pleasure, to be most assuredly sure.”
“Oh... Well…” Olaf’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down, his cheeks taking on a sickly green hue. “You…do know why I contacted your employers, yes?”
Doubs made a show of remembering, rubbing his chin and hemming and hawing until Olaf seemed near about to faint. “No,” he replied, shrugging. “Not a thing, I’m sorry to say.”
Underneath the green nausea, Olaf went grey. Doubs clapped his hands in delight. “Ha! Never fear – it was only a jejune jest, the most harmless of bandy banter. In truth, I was told that you require our protection services during an exchange tomorrow evening. Tell me, was I misled? Have I been bombastically bamboozled?”
Relief sent Olaf’s shoulders sagging, but his sickly pallor only further darkened. “That’s right,” he said, hurriedly, “Protection, yes, I need…I need…” His face twisted, eyes widening. “The Pincers, you know them, their reputation, you must know…”
Let it not be said that Doubs never did his research. He nodded.
“They – they want what I have, very, very badly,” Olaf muttered, hand drifting down to a bulging pocket. “I am doing them a favor. I am risking my life. They should be grateful–”
“Yes, yes,” Doubs interjected, waving a lazy hand, “How unhappily unfair of an affair, is it not? To fear for your life despite holding all the cards – tragic, of course, but naturally natural all the same. After all, they are an up-and-coming street gang. It was simply sensible of you to hire us, in such a situation as this.”
Oh, humans could be so easy. A little stroking of the ego was all he’d needed to nudge Olaf’s emotions in the desired direction. “Sensible, yes,” Olaf parroted, with a defiantly vigorous nod, “I planned for this, I’ve planned for weeks, now. You’ve got to have a plan, at my age. Thugs are thugs, but brains are where it counts.” Confidence bolstered, he held his head high and assumed a more commanding posture. “You’re only a precaution, really. All you’re going to do is watch from afar, and intervene only if I’m threatened. And then…” He smirked. “…You’re going to follow them.”
That last bit certainly hadn’t been in the initial job offer, but Doubs only matched Olaf’s smirk with one that was equally conspiratorial. “Of course. I am ever at your service.”
A little display of solidarity, a reinforcement of the employer-hired man relationship, and Olaf was preening like a peacock and putty in his hands. All that was left was to nip the last few doubts in the bud, and when a shifty, suspicious light entered Olaf’s eyes, Doubs was ready to counter it. “Hold on,” Olaf said, hand hovering protectively over his pocket, “You’re not going to ask me what I’m selling?”
Doubs cocked his head to the side, all innocence. “Our agency respects the discretion of its clients, Mr. Sauer. I will not pry – though, if the item could potentially endanger the agency, we may have a problem. Of course, you would have told me at the beginning if that were the case, so of course there aren’t any problems, mm?”
“…Yes. No problems,” Olaf agreed, after a lengthy pause. After a shorter pause, he added, “I’ll pay you half now, and half later, or not at all. Are we agreed?”
Doubs bowed, striking the ground with his cane for dramatic effect. “As if I could refuse.”
Olaf left the shed seventy-five euros lighter, and Doubs remained in the shed at Olaf’s request that they leave separately. A minute passed in silence. And then:
<No problems, he said. He’s got some nerve lying straight to your face, but then again, you were doing the exact same thing.>
“Listening in, QAWSED?” Doubs let out an affectionate chuckle, taking out his mobile phone from his pocket. “How nefariously naughty of you.”
<Look, you try playing ten chess matches with Caldimir in a row and not losing your frickin’ mind. He’s so desperate to win it’s physically painful, and I don’t even have a body. If anyone asks, you contacted me for an emergency job.>
Humans could be easy, and predictable, but so could vampires – even anomalies like QAWSED. And what was Doubs if not a perfect example of predictability? The sun would always rise in the East. Water was wet. Doubs would always, always betray his allies. Someone as predictable as Doubs really had no business eschewing the predictability of others, but the trouble with predictability was that it tended to be so dreadfully, abysmally boring. Tended to – but not always.
Doubs had expected that QAWSED would eavesdrop just as he had QAWSED’s excuse to tagalong, and this was a predictability that suited him fine. He genuinely enjoyed QAWSED’s company, more often than not, and that was that.
Keeping the mobile pressed to his left ear, Doubs pushed open the door of the shed with the tip of his cane. “Am I to assume you want ‘in’, then?”
He grinned at QAWSED’s answer before QAWSED so much as voiced it.
Today 8:27 PM
<Okay, okay, so maybe I get bored easily. Sue me. And, okay, yeah, this is way way way better than listening to Caldimir whine about how I keep – hey, heads up, Pinchers have spotted Olaf.>
QAWSED was right; the six men were now shouldering their way through the crowd, despite the fact that the crowd was already trying to move out of their way. Olaf shuffled his feet and tossed his half-finished Coke into the nearest trash can as the men came to a stop two meters away.
<Hey, can I ask ya somethin’?>
Fronting the group of Pinchers was Maxim Lejeune, twenty years Olaf’s junior and four inches taller and one of the up-and-coming members of the gang. The leather jacket suited him just as well as his confidence, and he was broad-shouldered and sturdy where Olaf was not, boasting a pearly smile and thick black hair where Olaf could only counter with wormy lips and thinning salt-and-pepper. As Olaf warily greeted Maxim, QAWSED went ahead and asked his question. <How come ya didn’t plant one of our bugs on Olaf? Normally y’always eavesdrop whenever possible.>
“Well…” Doubs trailed off deliberately, watching Olaf reach into his pocket, retrieve a drawstring bag, and open it just wide enough so that he could pull out three tall vials of ashy blood. As soon as Maxim stepped forward to take a closer look, Olaf dropped the vials back into the bag and held his hand, palm-side up.
“That normally is the case…”
A sheathed knife slid out of the sleeve of a blond Pincer, and the burly fellow to his left raised his hands so that the light from the nearby streetlamp reflected off his knuckledusters. Olaf took a step back, eyes flicking right and left, and his hand dipped toward one of his shorts’ pockets and withdrew a small pistol before the Pinchers could so much as act. The pistol was one of those ridiculously small makes designed to fit in a lady’s purse; but its size didn’t stop the nearest innocent passerby from screaming upon spotting it.
Just like that, anyone and everyone uninvolved with the confrontation took off in panic, a herd of gazelle fleeing from newly alarming predators. Olaf took aim at Maxim in the meantime, hands shaking, raised voice still inaudible from where Doubs crouched. Lights, camera...
“…But a little mystery now and then is ever so extraordinarily entertaining, wouldn’t you agree?”
Doubs let his binoculars fall against his chest as he snatched up the plastic bag next to him, shimmied out of the bush, and strode around and up to Olaf and Pinchers while twirling his cane in his hand. Other than those present, the area was now deserted.
“Salutations! Is this not the most redolently refreshing of evenings? The sea salted breeze, the aroma of sizzling meat, why…it makes me want something sweet to top it all off! Bonbon, anyone?” So saying, he took his usual bag of confections out from his pocket and offered it to both Maxim and Olaf.
Maxim was taller than Olaf, but Doubs was taller than them both, and they had to crane their necks to give him nonplussed stares. Olaf’s held a hint of confusion, despite him having hired Doubs in the first place, and he blurted, “Why are you covered in leaves?” before shaking his head and recovering his wits. “Never mind. These men refuse to pay. They drew first; my gun is drawn in self-defense.”
Doubs nodded along, and shook his bag of candy one more time. Again, no one moved.
“Well?” Olaf snapped, gun wavering in his hands, “What are you standing around for? Disarm them!”
A moment’s silence passed, and Maxim reached out and plucked a sweet out of Doubs’ bag. As Olaf frowned, Doubs returned his bag to his pocket and tipped his top hat his employer’s way. “My sincerest apologies, but I simply cannot comply.”
The hint of confusion in Olaf’s eyes not only returned, but strengthened tenfold. “What is this?”
“In fact,” continued Doubs, “I must ask you to hand over the vials at once. After all…” He reached into his plastic bag and, with a flourish, pulled out a brand-new leather jacket. “…How could I ever betray my colorful comrades so callously?”
Olaf’s jaw dropped. “You – you – you –”
Doubs tucked the jacket under his arm. “Mm? You have something to say to me, myself, and I? I will happily hear you out, in due time, but if you’ll allow me to impose myself – yes, excuse me! Please, excuse me!” So saying, he snatched the gun out of Olaf’s hand and crushed it between his palms. Olaf let out a small, strangled noise. “Now, if you please – hand it over. Mr. Sauer.”
The rage and humiliation warring on Olaf’s face rendered him immobile for several seconds, and his whole body tensed as if he were poised to make a break for it. Doubs dropped the mangled metal onto the ground and stepped on it, further crushing the pistol.
Slowly, reluctantly, Olaf’s hand slid into his pocket and retrieved the drawstring bag. He held it up so that it was level with his diaphragm, and when he hesitated Doubs bent forward and yanked it out of his grasp.
“Good work,” Maxim said, and the blond knife-wielder and the knuckleduster fellow relaxed their stances. One of the other men threw a confident smirk Olaf’s way. Though the reactions of the six men were varied, all of them belied a uniform hungry anticipation: in the way two of the men had leant subconsciously forward upon seeing the bag; in the greed burning in the knuckleduster fellow’s eyes; in the way the knife-wielder had licked his lips.
Even Maxim carried an air of expectancy, now that Doubs held the prize, and he raised his eyebrows meaningfully in Doubs’ direction. Doubs gave him a meaningless smile in return and took one of the vials out of the bag. Holding it up to the light of the streetlamp gave the blood a glimmering shine, and highlighted the ash and chunks of flesh swirling at the bottom of the vial.
“Tell me, Mr. Sauer, do you know what this is? Ah-ah-ah, the look on your face tells me you’re about to construct a most lurid lie, so don’t bother saying a word. How do I know? Why, it’s the same face you showed me during our little chat yesterday!”
It was all Olaf could do to splutter in response. That he hadn’t attempted to run away after all was entirely amusing, if not a little pitiful, because he seemed to think he still had a chance of gaining something from all this.
Doubs tossed the vial into the air for the sake of glimpsing the horror briefly flashing across the faces of those present, and caught it with ease. “The flesh and blood of a vampire…a most coveted commodity indeed. I wonder if your little bag contains the blood of one vampire, or three? Just one would make you a hefty profit, but three… Depending on who the vampires were, you could be looking at a small fortune. For that tantalizing tidbit of information just now, I expect a round of applause.”
Neither the Pinchers nor Olaf moved to applaud him, but a round of applause sounded off from Doubs’ mobile, still snug in his breast pocket. It was the same soundbite QAWSED had used to aggravate Caldimir, and Doubs dropped the vial back into the bag in order to clap along with self-congratulatory enthusiasm. Where the Pinchers rolled their eyes, Olaf looked downright unnerved.
“I must say,” Doubs added, after the applause died down, “It has been a pleasure conducting business with you, a positive pleasure. However, the time has come for me to bid you adieu.”
“The fuck?” exclaimed the knife-wielder. “No screwing around this time, man, give over already.”
Doubs promptly pocketed the bag in his other coat pocket and gave the knife-wielder an exaggerated shrug. “Some other time, perhaps.” The knife-wielder made to protest, but Doubs raised his voice and continued speaking over him. “Has it not occurred to you that our friend Mr. Sauer has been lying all along? A truly terrible possibility, yes, but one that we must certainly consider. How do you know if this blood really is that of a vampire? It could be anybody’s – and that’s why I propose that I have it tested in a lab to be doubly double sure of its authenticity.”
All the Pinchers looked at one another in doubt except for Maxim, who folded his arms and cast a thoughtful gaze Olaf’s way. Then, the shortest Pincher – who up until now had been perfectly silent – scratched his head and said, “Hold up. All we’d have to do is drink it, right? I mean, what’s the big deal?” His voice rose in his excitement, gesturing more broadly with his hands as his confidence grew. “If we drink it and it’s not their blood, then so what? Nothing bad’ll happen, right?”
“Oh, huh.”
“He’s right, let’s just drink it already.”
“Man, I feel so dumb right now.”
“Bet Doubs does too, haha…”
The Pincher’s chest swelled with pride at the murmurs of agreements from his comrades, and Doubs silently acknowledged that this was, in fact, a good point in its own right. However…
“Why, of course you could drink them this very instant, this very nanosecond – of course you could,” and the emphasis on the last word stopped the relief of the Pinchers’ in their tracks, “…But.” Doubs twirled his cane, struck the ground, and pointed its tip at the young Pincher. “Are you seriously suggesting that you would drink blood and ash unnecessarily? You might say that you are prepared to drink animal blood, yes, but what about human blood?”
He patted the pocket holding the bag, and the Pincher paled at the implication. His companions’ expressions fell simultaneously, but Maxim’s expression remained thoughtful. For a moment, Doubs almost felt as if the young man might step forward and say, “I am,” and a part of him was thrilled not only that Maxim might say such a thing, but also that he really had no idea as to whether or not Maxim would. It was for that reason that Doubs let the question hang in the air, thereby giving Maxim a clear chance to fill the ensuing silence.
When Maxim remained silent, Doubs let out a sigh half-theatrical and half-disappointed, and added, “And what if, perchance, the liquid in those vials were laced with poison? Did that not cross your minds? No? If not by Olaf, then by those who supplied him with the blood in the first place. There are those who would prefer to see street gangs eradicated, after all.”
The possibility of poison was one that typically sounded closer to conspiracy than anything else, but the Pinchers were just enough of a public menace that they’d experienced what it was like to be murder targets first hand. Members of a rival gang had beaten two of the Pinchers to death just two weeks ago, and two weeks before that someone had attempted and failed to send a truckload of logs crashing down on a parked and Pincher-occupied automobile. In that context, a poisoning attempt was not nearly as far-fetched as it would otherwise seem.
“Three days,” Doubs said, ducking his head with false modesty. “That’s all I ask.”
Maxim squared his jaw, and fixed Doubs with a long, hard look that Doubs met with gratuitous eyebrow-waggling, ceasing only when Maxim scrubbed a hand over his voice and said, “Doubs. If I say I want to meet you in three days time, at our place at six, will you do it?”
“Nine in the evening,” Doubs replied, without hesitation. He draped his brown jacket over his left forearm and held it out, bowing to his fellow Pinchers like he had Olaf the day before. “You have my word.”
“Okay.” Maxim’s expression didn’t change. “So what?”
Doubs’ pause this time was decidedly not for dramatic effect. “Hm?”
“So what?” Maxim repeated, flatly. “You could drink it yourself in that time, or sell it to someone else, or throw it away somewhere, or even break the vials completely by accident. Not going to happen. You’re not going anywhere without my say-so. Hand them over.”
“…” Doubs tugged his hat downward, and splayed the fingers of his right hand so that only the middle of his palm rested on the handle of his black cane. The cane rose up and into his palm; a smooth tingle of sensation that even now still sent a little pleased zing shooting up Doubs’ spine. “I’m afraid that’s not going to happen either,” he sneered, reveling in the dawning dismay on the Pinchers’ faces as he backpedaled until he was closer to the bush than he was to them.
Throwing the jacket over his shoulder, Doubs flung his arms out and sent several bats shooting through his jacket sleeves and out into the evening sky, eye-catching silhouettes against the streetlamp halos and waxing moon. Olaf staggered back, only to trip and fall against the curb behind him and fall gracelessly onto his rump in his haste to get away. Laughter bubbled in Doubs’ chest, light snickers which quickly gave way to deeper, ill-boding sounds as he prepared for his next trick.
Transforming into a flock of bats was one thing, but controlling the speed at which your body transformed was another. Decades and decades ago, Doubs had once been part of a traveling circus troupe in America, and what he was about to do had been one of the only vampiric routines he’d actually had to put any effort in during his time as a performer.
With nostalgia momentarily bolstering him, Doubs closed his eyes and flexed his fingers, feeling them turn to velvet skin and bumpy wing. Such sensation wasn’t totally tangible, but still more than what he normally felt now that he was concentrating on the rate of change. Thus it was that his hands and feet scattered into small flocks of bats entirely, and as his forearms and lower legs followed he widened his grin as far as he could and cried, “My most fervent farewells to you all! Should the police arrive and arrest you, you have my humblest apologies. It has been a most entertaining evening.”
“Doubs!” Maxim scrambled around his fellow Pinchers and skidded to a stop a meter or so away from where Doubs hovered (all praise telekinesis, vampires' truest friend). Doubs peered down at him, making a forcible effort to keep his consciousness contained within his head even as his arms and legs vanished completely. Distantly, he could feel his wings beating, his mouths opening and closing, movements tinged wild and free with only the barest semblance of control on his part.
“Doubs!” Maxim shouted, and Doubs hips were going, sheer telekinesis holding himself together, his consciousness was bleeding further, further, “Nine PM, at the hideout – I’ll be waiting.”
Oh. My, my. Doubs cocked his head – or rather, let it fall against his shoulder – and tried to remember how to speak, let his jaw hinge open and reminded himself that talking was his specialty while he still had lungs and his shoulders sprouted into bats, “Marvelous, Maxim! How magnificent!” and he was, really, this was all too dreadfully droll, why, to make such an offer–! “Just wait – and see!”
The last comment was directed at him just as much as it was to Maxim, but the smile he wore was for him alone in the seconds before it too faded into the night. Fully transformed, Doubs flapped his tens and tens of pairs of wings in irregular rhythms and swooped up and past the bush, past the surf shop and the security camera and did not reform until he was forty blocks away in a tiny, secluded park filled with flowering bushes and spruces and larches lining the perimeter.
It was under the boughs of one of the larger spruce trees that he reformed, with the last of the bats desynchronizing into the brown jacket over his shoulder (the plastic bag had long been forgotten, back on the boardwalk). There were so few people out and about in the park that he brought forth his cane without much in the way of discretion. Not that it would have particularly bothered him if they did, as long as their reactions were entertaining enough.
His mobile buzzed in his pocket. <Well, gee willikers,” QAWSED said, sarcasm dripping from a voice that couldn’t optimally convey it. <That went well. Had fun?>
“Stupendous!” Doubs tossed his cane up into the air, spun around, and caught it in the way he had so many times in front of crowd after crowd of circus goers. “To insist on a meeting with the very person who betrayed you… I never expected something like that from young Lejeune!” Ah, this was why he did the things he did, would betray everyone over and over again for the delight bubbling up inside him. Every new surprise, every flush of amusement – yes, all of it and more, more, that was all he wanted and perhaps had ever wanted.
<Right, right. Far be it from me to criticize ya getting your jollies from a double betrayal, I know it ain’t my place. God knows I’m like your partner-in-crime at this point, though honestly I’m glad I was for this one. Ain’t like I wanted to see more humans become Eaters. Hey, you did our kind a real favor, yanno? Though I’m not going to get my hopes up that your motives were as altruistic as all that.>
Doubs shrugged in lieu of giving him an actual reply, though there was no guarantee that QAWSED had a camera trained on him. QAWSED continued, <Anyway, y’gonna meet him in three days like he asked, or skip out?”
That was the question, wasn’t it. Mm. Doubs’ heart swelled with the sheer anticipation of it all. “Will I, won’t I, shall I, shan’t I – Why, I’m just as gaily giddy to know the answer as you, QAWSED. As I always say, ‘as long as it entertains me.’”
<…> Wind whispered in the foliage above him, filling QAWSED’s silence where the muted talk of distant passersby and the distant honking of horns could not. One second, two, and then QAWSED spoke. <…And will it entertain you?>
QAWSED’s delivery was somehow dryer than usual, and it didn’t take much to guess why. Doubs strode out from other the spruce’s canopy and toward the park’s gated entrance, briefly pausing by a large trash receptacle by the gate’s hinges. His left hand drifted up to the Pincher jacket still draped over his shoulder, fingers brushing cloth as he stared down at the receptacle – and then he moved on, letting his hand fall by his side.
Ah, Doubs dreaded predictability and welcomed it in equal measure. He loathed it, anticipated it, never-quite-celebrated it but could appreciate it all the same, he who was the most predictable and unpredictable vampire all at once. So he swept down the sidewalk with a spring in his step, doffed his hat to a passing child and transforming it into a flock of bats in a single movement all for the sake of seeing the child’s jaw drop, and opened his own mouth to give his friend an answer that he most assuredly, undoubtedly, without question knew from the beginning, and would know until the end of both their days.