Chapter Text
"So I've been getting a lot of fan mail recently asking about my backstory. I mean, all good villains, they have a reason they were drawn to evil, right? Not just that the costumes are badass - which, chyeah, take a look at mine right here and tell me this isn't a perk - but the real nitty-gritty stuff."
He leaned back in his chair, adjusted his goggles over his forehead, and grinned.
"We-hell. When I was just a boy in Gimmelshtump - "
"Dude?"
Doctor Horrible - nee Stiles Stilinski - slammed his hand onto the spacebar to stop the video recording.
Moist - nee Scott McCall - grinned and wiggled what looked like a sawed-off screwdriver at him. "Practicing my lock picking."
Stiles rolled his eyes. "Oh, and I thought the little scratchy noises were totally something different." He pushed back from the desk and smiled. "Thought I had another twenty minutes, though. You're getting better."
Scott wiggled like an excited puppy and hopped into the apartment. Only then did Stiles get a good glimpse of the outside of his doorknob.
"Dude. Dude! You didn't pick my lock, you mangled it! How the hell am I supposed to explain this to the landlady?"
Scott wiped his face on the hem of his t-shirt, giving Stiles a view of perfectly toned, perfectly disgusting ab muscles. Scott tended to spend a lot of time at the gym, where everyone sweated and towels were provided. "Dunno?" he mumbled, muffled by wet cloth. He went to sprawl out on Stiles' sofa and squeaked on the pleather as he went down.
"Dunno, he says," muttered Stiles, plopping back down into his chair. "Well, you're just in time anyway, I was about to vlog the backstory."
Scott's eyes widened. "Dude, no. Don't do it. That'll totally blow your secret identity! How many other sheriffs do you hear of that die in car fires?"
"It's a fake backstory," said Stiles sourly, his eyebrows drawing together. "I was raised by a heartless scientist and experimented on. The freckles are actually chemical burns, okay?"
"Oo," said Scott, blinking. "Hey, that's - totally not believable. They're still freckles."
"This is not an HD webcam. It'll fly."
Scott gave him a skeptical look, which on his squishy face was kind of like being stared down by a pug. Stiles groaned and scraped his hands through his hair before wheeling to turn back to the video.
"He-ey so false alarm, gonna edit that out somehow, Gimmelshtump has to wait. That blurry thing in the background is Moist, whose criminal lock-picking credentials have been upgraded from tectonically slow to faster-than-grandma. The crowd goes wild, leave your congratulations in the comments. "
Stiles ignored the pillow Scott winged at his head, primarily because it missed. Plus, it was cloth, and the further from Scott's overworked perspiratory glands it got, the faster it dried.
"So! On to - ah, how 'bout a few more e-mails." He adjusted the recording window and popped his e-mail client open, scanning through to the starred ones.
"Backstory, that's a nope, Doctor Horrible can you write me a prescription for - Xanax? No-ho, I only write prescriptions for pain, sorry. Pain and anarchy. May cause dizziness, please operate heavy machinery - oh! A friendly warning for all of you out there who don't already have a nemesis."
Stiles sat back and adjusted his goggles, deadpanning at the camera, "About a month ago, a mysterious meteor crash-landed in the middle of the desert in Nevada and a naked dude popped out. Creeptacular, right? Well, he's calling himself Starpower and he's looking for a nemesis. He's already spammed me for the past week, and even though I have sent him multiple polite denials, he persists."
He pressed forward, getting as close to the webcam as he could while it remained in focus. "Starpower, if - no, no, I'm sure you're already subscribed, so when you see this - I have a nemesis. Your power might be sexiness, but she's actually sexy, and plus, uh, babes before naked space-dudes. Perhaps you've heard of Kiss-Me-Kate? Seductress of good, shrew to the wicked? The dichotomy is muy caliente. Maybe you should take some lessons."
Stiles plopped back into his seat and pulled his collar away from his neck. "See this bruise? Totally a love-bite."
Scott snorted so hard he splashed.
Stiles rolled his eyes. "Alright, damn it, she tazed me. But! Not only does that count for her, I also got away with - this!"
He fumbled, then lifted a small folder to the view of the camera and wiggled it.
"You fools don't even know what it is. You have no clue. You couldn't comprehend the malevolence inside this file."
"What's in the folder?" asked Scott, rolling off the couch and bounding over.
"Keep it dry, keep it dry," mumbled Stiles, leaning away in his chair. He held the folder out of Scott's reach. "This, my friends, happens to be all ten thousand, six hundred and twenty-three signatures to request that Nickelback be included in the lineup for SummerFest. Usually I'm all for people fucking each other over, don't get me wrong - oh, hell, I'm going to get flagged for profanity."
He ran a hand over his face and hit the spacebar to stop the recording. He took a few deep breaths, then shoved Scott in the chest to get him to back up. "Dude. Electronics. Come on, man."
Scott wrinkled his nose. "What's so bad about Nickelback? You're becoming a mee-mee."
"Meem!" snapped Stiles. "It's pronounced meem." Stiles sighed. He hit the spacebar to start recording again. "Usually, children, I'm all for people ripping each other apart. Anarchy. Destruction. Everything that proves the status quo isn't working. But this - this is disgusting. It's why I'm a villain. Because I have to live in a world where ten thousand, six hundred and twenty-three people within mere miles of the place I sleep every night signed a petition to bring Nickelback to the Ampitheater."
He sat forward, holding the folder to his chest.
"What these people don't realize yet is that now I have their names and addresses. From there, extrapolating everything else I need to know is pitifully easy, even for someone without a Ph.D. But I'm Doctor Horrible. And I have already made copies."
Stiles broke into his best evil laugh - and he'd been practicing.
Scott hit the spacebar for him. "Are you, uh. Okay?"
Stiles' jaw snapped shut. "Yes, shut up."
"This is pretty weak, man," said Scott, plucking the folder out of Stiles' hands and flipping through the pages. "I mean, some of these girls have cute handwriting."
Stiles snatched the folder back. "I was going for the one on the new budget measure. You know, Eighty-four Bee?"
At Scott's blank look, he sighed, tucking the folder into his desk drawer. "Salary and pension cuts for the police force? Come on. Kate got to me, you know? And anyway it's just a stopgap until I get the freeze ray done."
Scott looked past him, to the pile of metal scraps on Stiles' worktable. The penny dropped. "Dude, you counted all of those signatures, didn't you."
"Adderall," said Stiles, knee bouncing as he went through the motions of editing his video. "And, you know. Laundry day."
"Oh. Laundry day." Scott waggled his eyebrows. "The tall, dark hottie you can't even get up the nerve to talk to."
Stiles shrugged one shoulder. "I'll do it. Today. Or next week." He looked up. "And anyway, you are so weaker than I am on that front. You just said that some of those signatures had cute handwriting."
Scott held up both hands in surrender. "What? Cute handwriting usually means cute girl. Especially if they dot their i's with hearts."
Stiles gagged, and then his phone alarm went off. He drummed his fingers on the desk before saying, "Laundry. Laundry time. Okay, I'll - I'll edit later. You, get the hell out - no! Buy me a new doorknob and you had better have put it in by the time I get back. Okay? Okay!"
As he raced into his bathroom to grab the duffel bag he used as a portable hamper, Scott called after him, "She's gonna notice if it looks different!"
"I'm gonna notice if I can't get back inside! You pick, Houdini." Stiles tore out of his lab coat and goggles, smoothing out the gray t-shirt underneath. "How do I look?"
Scott winced. "You've got the little red forehead circles again."
Stiles rubbed roughly at his forehead, willing the goggle marks to go away. "Damn it. Any looser and they'll fall off. Oh well, okay, no time. Laundry. Laundry, laundry." He grabbed up his duffel and the athletic sock he kept his quarters in, patted himself down for his wallet and threw his keys at Scott. "You, fix my door," he ordered, making a break for the stairs.
"Talk to her this time!" called Scott.
"Damn right!" cried Stiles, sliding down the banister.
It would have been a pretty awesome exit too, if it hadn't been for the girl in 1B chaining her bike to it.