Declaration of Interdependence
Author: ubiquirk
Fandom: Dr. Horrible
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~1150
Characters: Fake Thomas Jefferson, Bad Horse
Genre: Humor
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Set a good year or so before the musical. Written for still_grrr and posted there. Prompt friendship.
Summary: The first time Fake Thomas Jefferson meets Bad Horse, he tries to ride him.
Award winner - details here.
The first time Fake Thomas Jefferson meets Bad Horse, he tries to ride him.
~~~
When he wakes from a nightmarish swirl of hooves and pain and echoing whinnies, he learns he’s been in a coma for three weeks.
“You’re dead lucky, you tosser,” Dead Bowie says from the chair beside the hospital bed, affecting an artificially bored voice while picking at the sparkly green polish on his nails.
“Mumph” is about as much as Fake Thomas Jefferson can get out through a wired jaw.
“Bad Horse usually doesn’t leave anyone who insults him alive.”
Bad Horse?! He sits forward, trying to mumble ‘oh shit,’ “oor shhhh” emerging.
“Whatever were you thinking?”
That the rumors of Bad Horse moving to LA from Chicago were just that - rumors. That a henchman had decided to surprise him by giving him a horse to take his evil persona to the next level. That that meant he had henchmen, a clear sign he’d finally made it as Evil.
A few undignified grunts confirm that he won’t be able to convey any of this, so he falls back against the pillows.
Ironically, whimpers of pain seem to have no trouble emerging clearly as what they are.
Dead Bowie smirks and starts humming “Space Oddity.”
~~~
The next few months after he’s let out of the hospital are strained. Fake Thomas Jefferson can’t completely toady to Bad Horse without losing the respect of their colleagues, but he also realizes he needs to do what he can to make amends.
~
When Bad Horse paws the floor insistently, arguing that The Evil League of Evil is the only name he finds acceptable for their group, Fake agrees, putting his bedridden study of Thomas Jefferson’s speeches to use: “Names like ‘Evil Ivy League’ and ‘Diamond Dogs of Despair’ do have a ring to them,” he nods to their proponents in turn, “but can anything else capture the grandeur of such a fine collection of evil-doers coming together as ‘The Evil League of Evil’? Can anything else call to mind the depths we will readily plumb to obtain our evil goals? I think not.”
Bad Horse just stares at him, neck stretched to a regal height, large brown eyes dark and cold and completely ambiguous. But there are no more death whinnies.
~
He makes sure to disagree every so often with Bad Horse, but only on small things: how to distribute evil coffee duties when no one will clean the pot (well, they are all evil), what type of stationary looks most menacing yet tastefully so (Fake doesn’t find nooses subtle enough for day-to-day correspondence), etc.
In the mirror, he finds himself practicing that same proud tilt of head, that sneer of lip, he sees Bad Horse wear.
~
When Major Mischief retires from leading the LA group, she leaves a power vacuum that Fake knows just how to fill. “I nominate Bad Horse. He’s clearly the only one of us who …” He looks over at the large presence, his brain belatedly realizing that the phrases ‘who looks like he could kick anyone’s ass easily’ or ‘who is scary as shit’ probably aren’t up to the rhetorical standards he’s set himself with this persona. He clears his throat. “The only one of us with the presence to command fear and respect from both our foes and the general population.”
After the vote goes his way, Bad Horse dips his head towards Fake Thomas Jefferson. A small move that perhaps no one else sees, it’s enough to loosen the tight band of anxiety that had rested beneath his ribs since waking in the hospital.
~
Slowly, he becomes the official spokesperson for Bad Horse, the one to put the agenda into grand terms and fancy flights of speech-making during League meetings. He even collects and trains henchmen to act as Bad Horse’s public voice.
They make quite the team, his words backed by Bad Horse’s cold intimidation. But whenever Fake catches those dark eyes watching him, he’s never quite sure if he’s anything more than a convenient tool.
~~~
The Doogen Heights heist goes unexpectedly and spectacularly wrong, the rest of the League already running out the exits as Princess Petalina sets off their bomb early.
(And could there be a more goody do-gooder name than hers? The pink spandex with sequins is bad enough.)
Fake Thomas Jefferson’s laugh turns into a cough as smoke fills his lungs, and he falls to the floor thinking his brain is a funny, funny place if his dying thoughts are going to be a critique of old Pink Pants.
Hooves clatter on the marble, and the whinny that fills the air no longer sounds of death. A nose shoves at his shoulder, trying to lift him, and Fake grabs hold of thick mane and lets it lift him to his feet as Bad Horse straightens. Then that back, that proud, high back, is somehow lower, and Fake slings himself across it, holding on with all four limbs.
Outside, they’ve been left. Both Bad Horse’s trailer and Professor Normal’s stealth minivan are missing from the curb, and Princess Petalina spins around the building toward them in a confusing whirl of pink and taffeta.
(He’s tried for years to see the newspapers’ description of her as the Tasmanian Devil, but all he ever thinks is ‘Princess Barbie in a blender.’)
She’s fast, and the reason newspapers write about her is she’s also good - and not just in some arbitrary moral compass kind of way. Old Pinky catches a lot of evil doers. Serious Moxie, Punk’s Not Dead, Lecherous Ben Franklin - cool and rebellious persona after persona has fallen to her Middle-America pink and her bleached-blond curls.
Fake doesn’t want to be added to the list. “What are we -”
Before he can finish, Bad Horse turns, cantering away from her approaching pinkness and the wail of oncoming sirens.
Legs scrambling in the air like someone riding an invisible bicycle, Fake fights to stay on without saddle or stirrups, slow to realize that Bad Horse makes every effort not to throw him.
Gate smooth, the muscles underneath him bunch and release, bunch and release, carrying them past any sounds of pursuit.
When Bad Horse finally stops a few miles away at a small park, Fake tumbles off to lie wheezing on the soft grass. He looks up into brown eyes that now seem friendly, his smile met by an explosive whuff of breath that sounds amused.
Thoughts of advancement and power never far from the front of any true evil doer’s mind, Fake Thomas Jefferson considers how reputations could be made (his) and ruined (Bad Horse’s) by what just happened.
Instead, he laughs at the escape, at the absurd picture they must have made, two evil masterminds fleeing through the streets at a gallop like a little piece of history flung across time, all the while chased by a tornado of sparkly pink.
He’ll never tell anyone Bad Horse let him ride him.
Fandom: Dr. Horrible
Rating: PG13
Word Count: ~1150
Characters: Fake Thomas Jefferson, Bad Horse
Genre: Humor
Disclaimer: Not mine; no money.
AN: Set a good year or so before the musical. Written for still_grrr and posted there. Prompt friendship.
Summary: The first time Fake Thomas Jefferson meets Bad Horse, he tries to ride him.
Award winner - details here.
The first time Fake Thomas Jefferson meets Bad Horse, he tries to ride him.
~~~
When he wakes from a nightmarish swirl of hooves and pain and echoing whinnies, he learns he’s been in a coma for three weeks.
“You’re dead lucky, you tosser,” Dead Bowie says from the chair beside the hospital bed, affecting an artificially bored voice while picking at the sparkly green polish on his nails.
“Mumph” is about as much as Fake Thomas Jefferson can get out through a wired jaw.
“Bad Horse usually doesn’t leave anyone who insults him alive.”
Bad Horse?! He sits forward, trying to mumble ‘oh shit,’ “oor shhhh” emerging.
“Whatever were you thinking?”
That the rumors of Bad Horse moving to LA from Chicago were just that - rumors. That a henchman had decided to surprise him by giving him a horse to take his evil persona to the next level. That that meant he had henchmen, a clear sign he’d finally made it as Evil.
A few undignified grunts confirm that he won’t be able to convey any of this, so he falls back against the pillows.
Ironically, whimpers of pain seem to have no trouble emerging clearly as what they are.
Dead Bowie smirks and starts humming “Space Oddity.”
~~~
The next few months after he’s let out of the hospital are strained. Fake Thomas Jefferson can’t completely toady to Bad Horse without losing the respect of their colleagues, but he also realizes he needs to do what he can to make amends.
~
When Bad Horse paws the floor insistently, arguing that The Evil League of Evil is the only name he finds acceptable for their group, Fake agrees, putting his bedridden study of Thomas Jefferson’s speeches to use: “Names like ‘Evil Ivy League’ and ‘Diamond Dogs of Despair’ do have a ring to them,” he nods to their proponents in turn, “but can anything else capture the grandeur of such a fine collection of evil-doers coming together as ‘The Evil League of Evil’? Can anything else call to mind the depths we will readily plumb to obtain our evil goals? I think not.”
Bad Horse just stares at him, neck stretched to a regal height, large brown eyes dark and cold and completely ambiguous. But there are no more death whinnies.
~
He makes sure to disagree every so often with Bad Horse, but only on small things: how to distribute evil coffee duties when no one will clean the pot (well, they are all evil), what type of stationary looks most menacing yet tastefully so (Fake doesn’t find nooses subtle enough for day-to-day correspondence), etc.
In the mirror, he finds himself practicing that same proud tilt of head, that sneer of lip, he sees Bad Horse wear.
~
When Major Mischief retires from leading the LA group, she leaves a power vacuum that Fake knows just how to fill. “I nominate Bad Horse. He’s clearly the only one of us who …” He looks over at the large presence, his brain belatedly realizing that the phrases ‘who looks like he could kick anyone’s ass easily’ or ‘who is scary as shit’ probably aren’t up to the rhetorical standards he’s set himself with this persona. He clears his throat. “The only one of us with the presence to command fear and respect from both our foes and the general population.”
After the vote goes his way, Bad Horse dips his head towards Fake Thomas Jefferson. A small move that perhaps no one else sees, it’s enough to loosen the tight band of anxiety that had rested beneath his ribs since waking in the hospital.
~
Slowly, he becomes the official spokesperson for Bad Horse, the one to put the agenda into grand terms and fancy flights of speech-making during League meetings. He even collects and trains henchmen to act as Bad Horse’s public voice.
They make quite the team, his words backed by Bad Horse’s cold intimidation. But whenever Fake catches those dark eyes watching him, he’s never quite sure if he’s anything more than a convenient tool.
~~~
The Doogen Heights heist goes unexpectedly and spectacularly wrong, the rest of the League already running out the exits as Princess Petalina sets off their bomb early.
(And could there be a more goody do-gooder name than hers? The pink spandex with sequins is bad enough.)
Fake Thomas Jefferson’s laugh turns into a cough as smoke fills his lungs, and he falls to the floor thinking his brain is a funny, funny place if his dying thoughts are going to be a critique of old Pink Pants.
Hooves clatter on the marble, and the whinny that fills the air no longer sounds of death. A nose shoves at his shoulder, trying to lift him, and Fake grabs hold of thick mane and lets it lift him to his feet as Bad Horse straightens. Then that back, that proud, high back, is somehow lower, and Fake slings himself across it, holding on with all four limbs.
Outside, they’ve been left. Both Bad Horse’s trailer and Professor Normal’s stealth minivan are missing from the curb, and Princess Petalina spins around the building toward them in a confusing whirl of pink and taffeta.
(He’s tried for years to see the newspapers’ description of her as the Tasmanian Devil, but all he ever thinks is ‘Princess Barbie in a blender.’)
She’s fast, and the reason newspapers write about her is she’s also good - and not just in some arbitrary moral compass kind of way. Old Pinky catches a lot of evil doers. Serious Moxie, Punk’s Not Dead, Lecherous Ben Franklin - cool and rebellious persona after persona has fallen to her Middle-America pink and her bleached-blond curls.
Fake doesn’t want to be added to the list. “What are we -”
Before he can finish, Bad Horse turns, cantering away from her approaching pinkness and the wail of oncoming sirens.
Legs scrambling in the air like someone riding an invisible bicycle, Fake fights to stay on without saddle or stirrups, slow to realize that Bad Horse makes every effort not to throw him.
Gate smooth, the muscles underneath him bunch and release, bunch and release, carrying them past any sounds of pursuit.
When Bad Horse finally stops a few miles away at a small park, Fake tumbles off to lie wheezing on the soft grass. He looks up into brown eyes that now seem friendly, his smile met by an explosive whuff of breath that sounds amused.
Thoughts of advancement and power never far from the front of any true evil doer’s mind, Fake Thomas Jefferson considers how reputations could be made (his) and ruined (Bad Horse’s) by what just happened.
Instead, he laughs at the escape, at the absurd picture they must have made, two evil masterminds fleeing through the streets at a gallop like a little piece of history flung across time, all the while chased by a tornado of sparkly pink.
He’ll never tell anyone Bad Horse let him ride him.