Fic: Shrink Rays

[entangled_now]

Title: Shrink Rays
Fandom: Dr Horrible
Pairing: Horrible/Hammer
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: In no way mine or anything to do with me. I own nothing.
Summary: The percentage of previous flawless plans that Captain Hammer had managed to derail into flames, mayhem and chaos was annoyingly high.


The plan had been flawless. Flawless.

Though the percentage of previous flawless plans that Captain Hammer had managed to derail into flames, mayhem and chaos was annoyingly high. Dr. Horrible was starting to suspect that there was some sort of mischievous, pan-dimensional-god-being who found screwing with his flawless plans too much fun to resist. He just wished that said pan-dimensional-god-being would stop using Captain Hammer as the engine of its destruction.

Anyway the plan! The plan had involved a complicated series of events, calculated down to the second, which would have eventually led Captain Hammer into the field of his new and, he was forced to conclude, utterly brilliant shrink ray. Thus leaving the do-gooding superhero three inches tall and utterly unable to defend himself against...oh say a size nine boot coming down on his irritating little head. Or possibly a lifetime inside a glass jar being tormented by the occasional insect that Dr Horrible found lurking in the eaves of his basement.

He hadn't quite decided which scenario he'd liked best. Both had their plus sides. Though the first was pretty much a one time deal. He'd been leaning towards the latter. It gave him future opportunities to torment his nemesis. He'd even done some preliminary calculation concerning Captain Hammer's strength scaled down to size, and whether it would be sufficient to keep him inside said jar. He'd laughed maniacally over those calculations for an hour.

Moist had been particularly impressed with his ability to use maniacal laughter while also doing advanced mathematics.

Even he'd been a little impressed.

It turned out a pickle jar should be fine, taking density and fracture analysis into account. He'd planned everything, every possible scenario, down to the second. Though obviously everything hadn't gone flawlessly. He hadn't calculated for Captain Hammer's epic and utterly random stupidity. Which seemed to, furiously, disobey particle physics.

Captain Hammer was annoyingly capable of being stupid in two places at the same time. He had, upon entering the laboratory specifically set up to 'trap and ensnare' him, promptly broken the shrink ray's carefully aligned mirrors. Which left a lot of reflective surfaces.

The shrink rays beam had bounced off of every single one. And the list of 'things that had been unexpectedly shrunk' now included Captain Hammer, three chairs, a stack of equipment, a bookshelf, a bowl of fruit, a sofa, a pair of tongs, the shrink ray itself and....

Him.

Three inches was not an appropriate height to be masterful and villainous. Three inches was not an appropriate height to be anything. Captain Hammer was still roughly the same size as him. Or as much the same size as he'd been before. Which hadn't been part of the plan.

Really none of this had been part of the plan. He was pretty much winging it from here.

Winging it currently involved choking. Which he had some experience with. Captain Hammer was disturbingly fond of choking.

"What did you do?" Captain Hammer said furiously.

Which was ridiculous as this was clearly all his fault.

"Why am I tiny? Captain Hammer is not tiny." There was something upset behind the furious, and Dr. Horrible would have felt triumphant at that indication that he'd rattled him yet again, but he was too busy trying to breathe. Trying and failing.

"You're going to fix this!"

Captain Hammer didn't seem to get that he couldn't do that. He couldn't explain his brilliant plan (or the fact that it had been derailed somewhat) and he couldn't explain the complicated science needed to undo these annoyingly unforeseen consequences. Because he couldn't speak, or breathe, or even make those desperate little choking noises. But Captain Hammer didn't get this because it turned out he was really, really bad at charades.

Dr Horrible could see spots, bright little spots that were gradually getting brighter and filling his field of vision in a quite alarming way. He decided that this would be a really undignified way to die.

***

He was no longer vertical when he woke up, and there was no way to convey how disorienting that was unless you'd actually experienced it. He blinked at the ceiling, which was...a very long way away. Then someone slapped him, hard.

"Ow!"

"Good you're not dead, I was starting to think I wouldn't get a chance to hurt you some more in the future."

Captain Hammer came into focus a foot above his head. Dr. Horrible thought he preferred the unconsciousness.

"I'm not dead," he told him, then regretted it when his throat protested violently. It felt like Captain Hammer had broken something. A few more millimetres of pressure and he might not have come back. Dr. Horrible was struck suddenly, bizarrely, to wondering if Captain Hammer had ever killed anyone by accident. It couldn’t have been easy growing up a superpowered mutant after all. And clearly no one had ever taught him not to break his toys.

Or his nemesises, nemesisis, nemeses? That one always got him.

"We're still tiny!" Captain Hammer said crossly.

"Obviously."

"I was hoping it would wear off."

"What's the point of a ray that wears off?" Dr. Horrible had learnt that lesson the hard way.

"What about if you accidentally do something gruesome to yourself?"

Dr. Horrible glared at him rather than admit that he didn't have an answer.

"Either way, I don't intend to stay a tiny man forever." Captain Hammer snagged a handful of Dr. Horrible's coat and used it to lift him off the ground, rubber boots squeaking on the floor. "How do I get back to normal size?"

He thought shaking would help? Really?

"Put me down," Dr. Horrible said stiffly.

"You don't give the orders around here."

"Put me down or I have no intention of telling you."

"I could always beat it out of you,"

"I think we've proved that's not going to work already."

"It would pass the time."

The shaking was starting to make him feel nauseous. Dr. Horrible thought he'd just go with honesty.

"Put me down or I'm going to be sick all over you."

Captain Hammer dropped him like he was on fire. Dr. Horrible took the opportunity to get his breath back, though he suspected there was still the possibility of a beating in his near-future.

"Did it ever occur to you, that the fact you're even considering mindless violence as the solution to all your problems is just a little -" Dr. Horrible made a wild gesture that managed beautifully to convey none of what he wanted it to.

Captain Hammer pointed a threatening rubber-clad finger at him. "Don't think because I'm very small that I can't currently hammer you into the ground.

"Ask me you giant moron."

Captain Hammer blinked at him stupidly.

"Just ask me like a normal human being," Dr. Horrible said slowly. His head hurt and his throat hurt and he didn't particularly want to get beaten up, or be three inches tall. Clearly today was a failure all round.

Captain Hammer frowned at him. "How do we get back to normal size?"

Dr. Horrible lifted a hand and jabbed it far above their heads, to the table. Where the shrink ray still rested on the wood.

"You think I didn't program a 'reverse field' into it?"

"I think you enjoy reckless science far too much," Captain Hammer said, in the kind of voice that suggested he thought he was a Public Service Announcement.

"We have to get up there," Dr. Horrible told him.

The table loomed above them, four feet had become a monumental tower of empty space to climb.

Captain Hammer glared, then frowned, then settled on looking annoyed.

"How?"

"I'm thinking," Dr. Horrible said quietly. Though technically his brain was still working on how surprisingly high four feet became when you were three inches tall, really, stupidly high, and Dr. Horrible had never been fond of heights.

"We need something to climb."

"Even I know that," Captain Hammer said fiercely.

"Well alright then, find something!"

"It's your evil lair, you find something." Hammer crossed his arms.

"It's not an evil lair, it's a laboratory!"

"So clearly finding things is your responsibility!"

Dr. Horrible decided that he was going to do exactly that. He left Captain Hammer staring into the middle distance like someone might, at any moment, come and take a photograph of him looking heroic.

And useless.

The dirt was a lot bigger close up. Dr. Horrible stepped over a crumb the size of a soup bowl and tried to ignore the trails of clean space his boots were making in the dust. The floor under the table held a scattering of pieces of paper, pins, nuts, paper-clips, bolts, a spoon, and a few screws of various sizes, but nothing remotely climbable. He took three turns just in case, only succeeded in stirring up enough dust to make himself cough and ending up with a grey hand print on the sleeve of his suit. He was going to be stuck on the floor of his lab with Captain Hammer eating giant mouldy crumbs of god knew what forever!

Maybe he'd have better luck looking for something that had rolled down the back of one of the equipment racks?

It took him a lot longer to get over there than it usually did. He'd thought the rack was fairly close to the wall but it turned out there was a narrow corridor of space just big enough for him to squeeze into if he wanted to. It was dark, and cold, and full of dust. Also probably spiders. Dr. Horrible hadn't been afraid of spiders yesterday. Yesterday he hadn't been three inches tall.

He could only really see vague outlines of the mess behind the wood but further along, resting between the boards and the wall he was fairly certain he could see a ball of string. It sat there in the dark luring him in a way that he should have recognised as too good to be true. Dr. Horrible put his arm in the gap, found the wall, slick and cold even through his gloves. He hoped desperately that that was just mildew, and not something more disturbing.

Very carefully he put a boot on the back edge of the equipment rack and, very reluctantly, slithered inside. The light disappeared almost immediately and he was left sidestepping through the freezing space, fingers sliding along the wall, breathing dust and cold damp air and thinking furiously to himself that the first thing he was going to do when he got back to normal size was move these damn things and clean behind them. Or possibly just leave some sort of 'accidental shrinkage' kit in an easily accessible place, for when things like this happened.

But then his brain derailed because he was fairly certain he'd just walked into a spider web. He made a noise that was...disturbingly high-pitched and scrubbed it off of his face, it immediately drifted off into the air like some sort of hideous insect-attracting flare!

He was even less happy about going any further now but he was damned if he was going to slither out like a miserable coward when another step and another stretch of his arm and he'd perhaps, maybe, be able to touch it.

"Hey!"

Dr. Horrible tried to move too fast, ended up slamming forty percent of himself into the wall.

"OW!" He twisted his head, which throbbed and protested violently, to find Captain Hammer peering in after him.

"What are you doing in there?" Captain Hammer called from the edge. Like he wasn't trying to find climbing equipment but attempting some sort of complex escape.

"I'm trying to get to that." Dr. Horrible pointed towards the dirty, misshapen ball of string.

Captain Hammer squinted, frowned over his head.

"Well, go on then."

"Thank you, thank you for that really."

Another few shuffling steps and Dr. Horrible could almost touch it, almost.

"It's a good job you're so scrawny."

"Shut up!"

His fingers brushed the edge of one loop of string, the dust was knee deep here and it was hard to breathe, face scraping against the wet side of the wall. His hand touched the hard edge of the string.

"I've got it!" The ball of string tipped, rolled ever so slightly.

Then two enormous black legs appeared over the top of it.

Followed closely by two more.

Dr. Horrible screamed and threw himself backwards, arms smashing into the walls and wood, half-tripping over his own coat, as the spider made its way over the string, long legs impossibly huge, head even bigger, dragging its body through the gap, in one quick, sliding movement.

Dr. Horrible caught an arm on a sharp piece of wood and didn't care, kept going, kept sliding, out, out, OUT! He slammed into Captain Hammer and tried to keep going, hands fisted in his t-shirt and coat flung up over his head and Captain Hammer was making noises that were half annoyed and half bewildered, reflexive panic. Though Dr. Horrible finally had an answer to the question of which would win super strength or hysterical panic. Hysterical panic came out on top.

They both ended up on a heap on the dusty floor. Dr. Horrible trying to get as far away from the gap in the wall as possible and Captain Hammer trying to do something which involved not having an armful of shrieking supervillain. Captain Hammer finally just dumped him on the floor, but Dr. Horrible was still moving backwards, rubber boots skid-sliding protestingly across the floorboards as the empty space between rack and wall was gradually invaded by the two thin black legs.

They tapped against the wall, and against the wood, as if feeling their way out of the dark and Dr. Horrible was entirely unsurprised to see Captain Hammer take a step back. The spider squeezed out from between the shelf and the wall effortlessly, limbs folding and collapsing around its body only for them to spread out again once it hit the floor, and all the air left Dr. Horrible's lungs in a pathetic wheezing noise because it was huge, it was HUGE! The kind of spider he'd brushed off his diagrams, blue prints and equipment a thousand times. Only not, in no way the same.

"Hammer," he said quietly, desperately, and the whole hero thing, the desperate desire for someone else to come and save you. In that one brief second when the spider shifted, on twitching legs the size of curtain rods he thought that maybe he got it.

He also knew why rabbits didn't run.

He was still backing up, Hammer not far behind, though Dr. Horrible liked him just fine where he was, between him and the spider.

"Hammer!"

The spider had apparently taken a liking to Hammer as well. It's little tapping dance towards him was getting quicker.

"You, this is your fault for making me tiny," Captain Hammer shouted over his shoulder.

Dr. Horrible was about to suggest that Captain Hammer could blame him later, after he'd killed the giant spider. Then he did something he was fairly sure you weren't supposed to do in the face of imminent peril. He shut his eyes. There was a thud, and something rolled on the floorboards, then another thud and terrible spidery noises. Dr. Horrible would admit that Captain Hammer wasn't his favourite person but he really, really didn't want to see him torn into little pieces.

Captain Hammer shouted something completely unintelligible. Something thumped into the wood again. Dr. Horrible couldn't help it, he opened an eye.

Captain Hammer was underneath the spider's huge arched body, and he had hold of a leg. The spider seemed to be quietly furious that it couldn't bite its way through him, to the soft squishy parts beneath. Thankfully Captain Hammer's stupidly impervious skin was protecting him from spider venom and spider fangs.

The leg came off in his hand, left the spider plucking at its seven remaining legs, trying to come down on Captain Hammer from above, fangs stabbing at his clothes and arms, only to find two more of its legs snatched in tiny rubber gloves.

It was making noise, spiders weren't supposed to make noise, thrashing in Captain Hammer's grip and trying vainly to dislodge him. Captain Hammer skidded on the floorboards but kept hold of his legs. Possibly through lack of anything better to do and the spider was coming apart under the pull of Captain Hammer's arms. Until it was falling to the floor, body weight knocking Captain Hammer sideways. Its legs were already curling in on themselves in little death throes-like twitches.

Captain Hammer heaved the body off of himself and stood up, torn shirt flapping, hair a mess of spider guts and dust. Dr. Horrible let Captain Hammer look smug for exactly a minute, before he had to stop looking at the twitching corpse.

"Ok, fine," Dr. Horrible said eventually. "That was...marginally more impressive than I was expecting."

"I was magnificent," Captain Hammer said breathlessly.

"You were not magnificent."

"You're only here to say that because I was magnificent."

"You killed a spider," Dr. Horrible thought it only fair to point out.

"A giant spider."

Dr. Horrible sighed.

"A giant spider that would have eaten you," Captain Hammer added.

"Spider's don't eat people, they drink people," Dr. Horrible grumbled under his breath, though Captain Hammer was too busy looking magnificent to hear him. Oh god he had been magnificent hadn't he.

"I hate you," Dr. Horrible added.

But by then Captain Hammer was close enough to fling an arm over his shoulders.

"Don't you have something to say to the man who protected you from the giant venomous spider?"

"I hate you," Dr. Horrible said through his teeth.

"Something else," Captain Hammer tightened his grip.

"Thank you," Dr. Horrible said, still through his teeth.

Captain Hammer clapped him on the shoulder hard enough to make his bones ache.

"Maybe you're not completely past being redeemed after all. I could make you my project."

Dr. Horrible thought up several inventive ways to kill him.

"Of course you still have work to do."

Dr. Horrible stared at him stupidly.

"You have to you go back in the creepy hole in the wall," Captain Hammer said helpfully.

Dr. Horrible's stomach plummeted into his boots. He swallowed something which wanted to be a whimper.

"Since my huge, magnificent chest won't fit."

***

Dr. Horrible did eventually get back out of the wall, dragging the ball of string with him. Cold, sweaty, and with enough fear-adrenaline in his system to fuel a jet plane. He's spent the whole time with his hand on the string having terrible spider flashbacks while Captain Hammer shouted encouragement. And occasionally yelled 'Spider!' just for amusement's sake at the entrance. He dumped the ball of string the moment he got out again, took his glove off and started rubbing some feeling back into his hand.

Captain Hammer magnanimously decided to drag the string back to the table. Then gave the impression that he wanted a cookie for doing it.

"Give it here."

"Why?"

"So I can tie knots in it."

Captain Hammer made a face.

"Why do we need knots?"

"Because it will be impossible to climb without knots."

"For you maybe," Captain Hammer said through a smug grin, he looked far too pleased with himself sat on the rest of the ball of string, arms thrown over his knees.

There was a rip in his t-shirt, making the hammer look as if it was listing to one side. There were still spider guts in his hair. Dr. Horrible started folding knots and tried not to look at them.

"Could you find a paperclip? I think I saw some under the table."

"Why?"

Dr. Horrible glared at him. "Are you going to ask questions about everything."

"A healthy amount of suspicion keeps a man alive."

"You're not a man, you're a super-powered mutant." Dr. Horrible pulled on both ends of the string and Captain Hammer frowned like he'd actually hit a nerve.

Then he got up and stomped off without a word.

Dr. Horrible made a vague calculation as to how much string they'd need, then added another ten feet, went back to knotting. He could hear Captain Hammer grumbling and kicking dust in the background.

Really, it was completely unfair that his nemesis had super strength, and invulnerability. It made the whole playing field uneven. He'd always thought he could be better, smarter, more ruthless if he could only find someone to go up against who was more into science than physical violence, someone he could match wits with in epic and endless mental battles

Maybe just so weekends didn't end with him spitting out his own teeth and spending half the night with a half melted packet of frozen peas on the left side of his face. How was he supposed to compete with unfairly distributed superpowers.

A paper-clip appeared in his field of vision, dusty but still shining in Captain Hammer's black glove.

"Do you think you could bend it into a hook for me?"

Captain Hammer did so, with what Dr. Horrible suspected was a completely unnecessary amount of flexing. Dr. Horrible pretended not to be paying attention, until he stopped. Then attached the paperclip/hook to his knotted rope chain.

"How do you know all this?" Captain Hammer asked curiously.

Dr. Horrible certainly didn't say that he'd once marathoned Land Of The Giants as a child.

"Because I'm significantly smarter than you."

"Doesn't stop me foiling your evil schemes every other weekend."

Dr. Horrible sighed and very carefully didn't comment on that.

"We want to throw the hook so it catches somewhere on the table, then we can climb up."

Captain Hammer tilted his head back so he could see up to where the shrink ray still rested high above them.

"Well clearly I'm going to do it, since your weedy little arms will never manage to throw it that high."

Dr. Horrible dumped the whole armful of rope and hook on Captain Hammer without another word.

"Right, stand back!"

Dr. Horrible took two steps to the side.

Captain Hammer drew back his arm and hurled the paperclip and knotted string upwards.

It hung in mid-air for a beat, then came straight back down again.

Captain Hammer took a step out of the way.

The paperclip hit the floorboards, bounced erratically a few times then came to a slightly bent stop.

"That was a practice throw," he said calmly.

Dr. Horrible wisely didn't comment.

Captain Hammer had six more practice throws, an accidental 'I wasn't ready' throw, and one throw for luck.

Dr. Horrible was now a good ten feet away from him.

Relatively speaking.

"I give up!" Captain Hammer said furiously, trailing string and metal like an angry child.

Dr. Horrible took it and started spooling it up for what felt like the twentieth time.

Which was exactly when the room was suddenly filled with sound, a vortex-like roar that made the floorboards shake and Dr. Horrible's head ring. He had a very bad feeling that he knew what the noise was.

"What the hell is that?" Captain Hammer demanded.

Dr. Horrible was already sliding further under the table.

"I may have set up the vacuum to go off automatically. To save time -"

The rest of it was drowned out by the sound of the world ending. Or of a vacuum cleaning roaring towards them both like an angry god. Dr. Horrible threw himself behind the table leg, rope and paperclip spinning off under the table, his back thumped into the wood as the vacuum thundered past in a swirl of vibration and hot air. The floorboards shuddered under his legs like they wanted to come apart.

A wail, barely audible over the incredible noise, was followed closely by a grating, sucking noise. Then the towering machine rumbled on.

Dr. Horrible very carefully uncurled an arm from around his head.

"Hammer?"

The space beside him was empty, and significantly cleaner than before.

"Hammer!"

He tipped his head past the edge of the table, where he could see the vacuum roaring across the floor by the door.

He pushed himself upright again, stared across the room, halfway between stunned and horrified. That was impossible, Captain Hammer couldn't have been - that was impossible, that had to be impossible.

The vacuum turned, one lurching movement that had never looked quite so menacing, before it trundled back the way it had come.

And Dr. Horrible could just make out a familiar shape inside it. Captain Hammer whirled among the dust, arms and legs flying every which way as the machine went about its floor-cleaning business. Occasionally he smacked against the plastic, only to whirl away again, a little tiny rapidly greying figure. Mouth open in a wail of torment.

Dr. Horrible was so busy gawping that he narrowly avoided the same fate. He clung to the chair leg as the vacuum flew past again, but the blast of air and sound still knocked him off his feet, rolled him further under the table and left him gasping in the dust.

He was fairly certain he wouldn't have survived being sucked up and subjected to those sort of forces, especially taking his current physiology into account. But he did need Captain Hammer back. Unfortunately.

He corrected the wild angle of his goggles and, after a quick check to see which way the thing was going next, he took off on unsteady legs for the far wall. The vacuum was designed to manoeuvre around its own lead, and Dr. Horrible thanked whichever strange gods were currently listening that he hadn't given it an internal power source, like he'd originally intended to.

Of course the plug hadn't been a problem when he was normal sized. Suddenly it was enormous, and it clung to the wall, resisting all his attempts to yank it out.

Dr. Horrible had to wrap both arms around it, fingers caught under the bold edge, and pull with everything he had. He really wasn't built for manual labour. He was a thinker he wasn't a 'brute force' sort of rescuer. He had to pull hard, really hard, and even then the two prongs came slowly, reluctantly, out of the wall while the roar in the background went on.

It took a ridiculous amount of effort to even get it halfway. His fingers had gone numb and he couldn’t breathe because his chest was being crushed by a chunk of plastic the size of a garden pond. But he kept pulling, rubber boots refusing to slip on the floorboards.

Until finally, finally, the plug jerked out of the wall, tumbling him down onto his ass with a grunt.

The roar from the vacuum very slowly droned to a stop.

Dr. Horrible could still barely breathe but he stumbled to his feet, pushed off across the room to where the monster now stood silent.

It took more effort than he expected to climb up onto the rim, to drag his way up until he could bang on the dust cylinder.

"Hammer?"

He couldn't see anything inside but dust, giant piles of dust.

"Hammer are you in there?"

The dust moved, a grey hand, missing a glove flailed feebly inside. Then the dust showered off as the thing dragged itself upright, wobbled, and fell sideways into the wall with a 'splat.' The movement dislodged most of the dust, and revealed Captain Hammer. He didn't appear to be broken, but he did not, in any way, look ok. Dr. Horrible climbed higher, found the 'cylinder release' and pushed it.

Pushed it harder. The whole thing shifted sideways, hit the floor with a 'smack' and rolled away, painting the floorboards with its carefully collected dust.

Dr. Horrible slid, ungracefully, back down to the floor and found Captain Hammer in the back, fallen against the plastic. His eyes were still rolling in his head.

Dr. Horrible very carefully eased him to a sit. He patted dust off of him, before very quickly deciding that that was a lost cause.

"Hammer," he said gently. "Are you...are you alright?" He chanced a hand on Hammer's arm, skin gritty with dust and dirt but warm.

Hammer was probably capable of standing.

Probably.

"I think maybe we should get out now." He pulled carefully but that didn't get him much more than temporary ownership of a heavy arm and a face full of dust.

He tried again with no more success.

"Ok," he said. "We can stay here for a bit." He made room in the dust and sat down next to him, the plastic was strangely warm. Dr. Horrible thought he could feel the ghostly echoes of its spin. And he hadn't even been the one who'd been inside it.

"Have I stopped moving?" Captain Hammer asked, voice a dusty croak.

"Yes, yes you've stopped moving. Everything else is your brain trying to stabilise itself."

Captain Hammer groaned.

"It'll go away in a minute," Dr. Horrible told him.

"Ok." Captain Hammer said quietly, then coughed, then coughed again. Then proceeded to cough like he was trying to remove all his own internal organs. At some point his bare hand had worked its way onto Dr. Horrible's sleeve, fingers crumpling the fabric.

After he'd finished punishing his, clearly not entirely indestructible, lungs Dr. Horrible very carefully helped him lean back against the plastic wall.

"No more shrinking things after today," Captain Hammer said.

"No more shrinking things," Dr. Horrible agreed quietly.

"If we were supposed to be small then everything else would be small too."

"That seems sensible," Dr. Horrible said, even though it really didn't.

Captain Hammer had somehow managed to end up leaning against him, all huge shoulder and bare arm slanted against his own. He could feel the warmth through his coat. Dr. Horrible didn't feel warm. He felt cold and thirsty, and exhausted.

They sat there for a while, Captain Hammer's warmth gradually seeping into Dr. Horrible's arm.

The dust stopped flying about and settled.

"No one's ever rescued me before," Captain Hammer said finally.

Dr. Horrible tipped his head sideways, came to a stop when his goggles hit the edge of Hammer's forehead.

"You probably just never needed rescuing before," he said awkwardly. He scratched under his sleeve where it felt like dust had gotten in. "You probably would have smashed your way out eventually."

Captain Hammer made a quiet noise.

"I didn't like the way it made me feel. Being helpless, needing to be rescued."

Dr. Horrible picked at the edge of his thumb with his teeth.

"No one does."

"But they always seem grateful, stupidly grateful, when I rescue them."

"People that are about to be run over by a bus are happy to see anyone. People are shallow selfish, vindictive creatures," Dr. Horrible toed through a pile of dust with his boot.

"Sometimes they're afraid of me," Captain Hammer said simply. "Sometimes I like that."

There was no smugness to the admission, just honesty.

"That's more human than anyone will admit." Dr. Horrible said simply. "You're strong, you break things, you break people. People are scared of you because you can, and because you do. More than you should."

"The people that I rescue don't seem to mind."

"People let you get away with it because they think you'll smash their teeth in."

"I'm not allowed to hit people unless they're up to no good, or I suspect them of being up to no good."

"Do you suspect that people are up to no good a lot?"

"I'm a superhero, it's my job to always be on the lookout for doers of no good."

"Uh huh."

"And their minions of evil."

"Uh huh."

Dr. Horrible stretched his legs out. There was a considering silence.

"You're not always very good at that you know."

Captain Hammer shrugged. "It's not like they give you a manual."

"You didn't get a manual?" Dr. Horrible asked curiously.

"No."

"I always just assumed you got a manual of some sort. Some sort of heroic rescuing A-Z or something."

"No, I use my own keen senses to decide on a plan of action."

"That explains a lot."

Captain Hammer shook his head, though Dr. Horrible couldn't have said what the gesture meant.

"The heroes do the rescuing, the villains are punished and the ordinary people - go about their ordinary people business, whatever that is."

"You have a very strange and narrow view of the world."

Captain Hammer was quiet for a moment.

"I don't like complicated, I'm not very good at complicated."

"Sometimes life has to be complicated."

Captain Hammer shook his head roughly. "I'm not complicated."

Dr. Horrible picked at the material of his sleeve.

"You could be, if you wanted to."

Captain Hammer didn't say anything, and Dr. Horrible honestly didn't know whether he understood or not.

"You're complicated."

Dr. Horrible shrugged rather than answer.

"Complicated never seems to be good," Captain Hammer added.

"Why do you think that?" Dr. Horrible asked curiously.

Captain Hammer frowned down at him, as if wondering whether he was allowed to say.

Dr. Horrible thought Hammer had been floundering in his own confusion for quite a while.

"My psychologist," Captain Hammer frowned, but then carried on "He says I'm a narcissist who lacks empathy for others. Apparently that's big among serial killers and sociopaths."

Dr. Horrible thought about that piece of information for a minute.

"Are you a serial killer?" He asked finally.

Captain Hammer frowned, like the idea had never occurred to him.

"No."

"Then you're probably doing ok," Dr. Horrible said grudgingly.

"You think so?"

Dr. Horrible grunted.

"And to be fair you probably had a unique upbringing."

"My mom used to leave me at construction sites," Captain Hammer offered.

Whatever else Dr. Horrible was going to say just didn't matter any more.

"What?"

"I thought it was a game," Captain Hammer said quietly. "But she was always so upset when I came home."

Dr. Horrible couldn't think of anything to say to that.

His own parents had mostly just ignored him.

"I always thought you would have been spoiled, a big superhero child given everything you wanted," Dr. Horrible ventured.

"I didn't get things when I was small, not until, not -" Captain Hammer stopped. There was something hanging in mid-air that Hammer clearly wanted to say. But it never came.

Dr. Horrible looked at him from under his dusty hair.

Captain Hammer shrugged.

"They gave me everything I asked for after that. Even the things I didn't really want."

Captain Hammer painted unintelligible things in the dusty plastic for a long moment and said nothing.

"You didn't used to hurt people," he said eventually, quiet and curious.

All the air lodged in Dr. Horrible's throat.

"No, I didn't."

"You had your nefarious schemes that I used to thwart and your clever science experiments that I used to crush into pieces. But you never - you didn't."

He floundered for something.

"Penny -" Captain Hammer started.

"Please don't."

For maybe the first time in Captain Hammer's life he didn't.

They sat in that long stretch of strange silence until Dr. Horrible's legs started to ache.

"We have to get back to the table," he said finally.

Captain Hammer grunted, which he was going to take as reluctant agreement. He passed over a hand without really thinking about it, and they took turns hauling each other to their feet. Captain Hammer did ninety percent of the hauling.

The dust cylinder rocked back and forth while they made their way out, and Captain Hammer knocked into the walls more than a few times, reflexively wincing every time.

Even after they'd gotten out he was still walking carefully, unsteadily, like he'd had his brain scrambled.

Dr. Horrible put out a hand to catch his waist without thinking about it. It sat there, feeling utterly wrong, but Captain Hammer had stopped weaving and was now just bumping into him every so often, so he left it there.

The string and the paperclip were where they'd left them, or rather lost them, strewn under the table. It took six tries before Captain Hammer hooked it round the edge of the desk lamp. Climbing up the desk was considerably easier on a knotted rope, something gym classes up and down the country might like to implement for the physically bewildered.

Dr. Horrible only fell off once. Luckily he was very near the ground at the time.

Captain Hammer hauled him over the edge when they got to the top. The table looked a lot higher when you were on it. The whole lab sprawled around them like some sort of urban metropolis full of shelves and benches, tables and bookshelves.

Captain Hammer had been distracted by something closer to home.

A giant ham sandwich. Which he was currently painting with tiny dusty fingerprints while he worked on tearing off a piece the size of a pool table.

Dr. Horrible couldn't resist the lure of giant food either and ended up sitting on the crust and pulling pieces out while he got his breath back.

Captain Hammer didn't look quite so wobbly once he was full of ham sandwich.

Dr. Horrible took his goggles off and cleaned them on the sleeve of his coat, big dusty circles on the fabric.

He thought the number one priority once he was normal-sized again was a shower.

No blogging.

This was an adventure he thought he'd keep quiet about.

He left Captain Hammer in sandwich heaven while he went to reconfigure the shrink ray, which, though it had tumbled sideways, was still easy enough to get to. It was just a question of prying open the cover and reversing the polarity.

"Hammer?" He called, only to jump when he appeared right behind him.

"Are you ready?"

Hammer made the last of his sandwich disappear and nodded.

Dr. Horrible hit the switch. There wasn't even time to take a breath.

Captain Hammer smacked his head on the ceiling, since the basement wasn't high enough to house two men standing on a table. It creaked unhappily under their new combined weight. Most of which was Captain Hammer.

"Ow," Captain Hammer climbed down, rubbing his head and complaining.

Dr. Horrible stepped off of it with a certain amount of wariness. He was fairly certain that choking would resume now they were back in their respective normal-sized bodies.

Captain Hammer stared at him, lifted a hand.

Dr. Horrible flinched, but nothing painful happened.

"I think my glove's still in your vacuum."

"Do you want me to resize it and get it back to you?"

"That'd be great."

Captain Hammer lifted a hand again, and really the flinch was just instinct. Captain Hammer frowned and touched him, rubbed at the edge of his jaw with fingers that felt strange. Fingers that weren't covered in rubber, or doing anything immediately painful. They were just...moving dirt from one side of his face to the other. It was a lazy, considering gesture and Dr. Horrible was left blinking in that strange moment. Trying vainly to think of something to say. Captain Hammer's hands folded round the balls of his shoulders, holding rather than dramatically crushing. Which was no excuse for not feeling trapped.

Then somehow there was leaning, which he hadn't been expecting, and Dr. Horrible said 'oh' right before Hammer kissed him.

It wasn't terrible.

Captain Hammer apparently did do something right. Dr. Horrible let him do it for a handful of seconds. Then just gave up and let him do it for as long as he wanted. He was more than a little embarrassed about that. But it had been a while.

When Captain Hammer drew back he was wearing that unbearably smug expression.

Dr. Horrible's mouth could still feel the after-echoes, and that was incredibly distracting. But when Hammer's fingers tightened just fractionally and tried for a pull Dr. Horrible slipped back out of his hands.

"What?" Captain Hammer asked. He looked rather too much like a child who'd had their sweets taken away.

Dr. Horrible folded his arms.

"It's weird," he said quietly.

Captain Hammer frowned. "Why?"

"You're kind of abusive."

"Only with villains."

"I'm a villain," Dr. Horrible reminded him.

Which seemed to put a frown in Captain Hammer's brain. Though he was nothing if not annoyingly persistent. He leaned over again, and Dr. Horrible flattened a hand in the centre of his chest.

"Last week you cracked three of my ribs, I'm not going to let you kiss me again."

Captain Hammer pouted.

"I'm a villain, that doesn't work on me."

"Because you've hardened your heart against the suffering of others."

Dr. Horrible snorted at the word 'suffering.'.

"No, because it makes you look like a fish."

Captain Hammer raised an eyebrow.

Dr. Horrible didn't retract the statement.

Eventually Hammer just smirked.

"Just because we were mutually co-operative in the face of imminent danger, when there was adrenaline and rescuing each other, that's no excuse to - to -" He waved a hand. "Do things we wouldn't."

"I would," Captain Hammer said helpfully.

Dr. Horrible sighed at him.

"If you could even go a month without doing me some sort of physical harm -"

"Deal," Captain Hammer said fiercely.

Dr. Horrible got the distinct feeling he'd just been outwitted.

Which stung furiously.

Captain Hammer prodded him in the arm.

"What's your name again?"

Dr. Horrible frowned.

"Why?"

"Just tell me."

"Billy," he said reluctantly, and then because it had honestly never occurred to him before, he asked. "What's yours?"

Captain Hammer told him.