Disclaimer: This is original non-profit fan work, intended solely for the entertainment of the readers, and in no way intends any infringement on any copyrights, trademarks, or licenses held by Dreamworks Animation SKG, Alan Schoolcroft, Brent Simons, or the holders of any other legal rights or licenses pertaining to Megamind.
Author's Note: Yes, this is the start of a new story, but no, I'm not stopping work on Legacy; that's continuing right along with this. But as folks know, Real Life is extremely stressful for me right now and will continue to be so for a while, and I felt that I should work on something a little more lighthearted and humorous, just to have something happier to work on when I'm starting to feel down. The idea for this came from a scribble of a drawing I did as practice for my iPad's new painting app back during the LiveJournal community's "Beat the Heat" theme weeks in late July/early August. It seemed like it could provide a laugh, so why not? Because there's really only one thread of a plot to the tale, it's not likely to be very long, but I hope it provides some chuckles to my readers. Enjoy!
Pin-Up Boy
Chapter One: Negotiations
"This is the most embarrassing thing anyone has ever asked me to do, and I am not going to do it!"
"But sir, it's for a good cause! All proceeds are going to the Police and Firefighter's Emergency Fund, and that mentoring program for abused kids that was set up just because you thought it would be a good idea."
"Then I'll give them as much money as they were hoping to raise out of my own pocket, but I am not, I repeat not doing this! It's demeaning, it's degrading, it's positively humiliating...!"
"Is this argument over the calendar?"
The interrupting question came from Roxanne as she climbed out of her car on the Lair's garage level, home from work. Megamind, in his full hero-at-work regalia, had returned from a meeting with the Fire and Police Commission half an hour earlier, and he was now pacing back and forth across the floor in his idea area while Minion and two brainbots worked on sorting and folding the laundry. The blue genius paused his pacing only for a moment when he heard his wife's voice, which sounded entirely too amused for his comfort.
"How do you know about that?" he demanded. "I haven't given them any answer, and they have no right to go spreading it around as if my cooperation is already sewn up!"
Roxanne both sighed and smiled as she surrendered her coat, purse, laptop case, and other work things to Pinky and the other household brainbots who'd come to greet her. A pecking order had been established among them soon after Roxanne had moved into the Lair, an order which had been refined and reinforced after Daddy had made her officially Mommy by marrying her.
Only Pinky was allowed to touch Mommy's purse, the Female Repository of All Important Items. Little Nipper, one of Minion's sewing assistants who had the job of seeing to any repairs Mommy's clothing required, was to handle her coat, hat, or other items of outerwear, if she had worn any that day. Buck, the bot in charge of the routine daily maintenance of all of Daddy's leatherware from boots to belts and gloves, was allowed to deal with any boots, shoes, gloves, or other such items Mommy might want to be rid of as soon as she arrived. Byte and Bit, the pair of bots who handled the sorting, cataloguing, and storage of computer supplies and equipment around the Lair, had the honor of taking her electronic devices and her briefcase up to her home office. Thanks to the Lair's security system and regional monitors, the five brainbots always knew when Mommy's arrival was imminent, and like a group of happy puppies were always there to greet her. Their happiness might be short-lived if Mommy emerged from her car in a foul mood, but still, they always did their best to please her and hopefully soothe her riled spirits.
Today, Roxanne was in a good mood, so the bots were all cheerful in both their greetings and in carrying out their tasks for her. She gladly surrendered her various bags, shrugged out of the light coat that was suitable for the early fall weather, and was glad to let Buck take her shoes for her, since she preferred to get out of her work shoes as soon as possible, a mental signal that the work day was over. The cement floor of the garage was cold, so she signaled Pinky to bring back her slippers as she gingerly made her way to the area where Megamind and Minion were having their lively "discussion."
"Nobody told me anything specific," she assured her husband after giving him a kiss of greeting that only did so much to improve his mood, a sure sign that he was pretty agitated. "But it's that time of year again, when some of the local charities and service groups start putting together things to sell as fund raisers that can double as Christmas presents. You've been doing such a good job this last year, both as the Defender of Metro City and an advocate for the schools and mentoring programs, I'd heard some talk that the fundraising group that puts out the local celebrity calendars was thinking they'd ask you to do this year's main one for them. It's not anything bad, sweetie, it's actually a compliment. It means they've accepted you as someone people should be proud of and look up to. Heck, I did a calendar for them five or six years ago, and it was a blast. Haven't you ever seen it?"
When her husband instantly blushed a strikingly brilliant fuchsia from his neck up, Minion laughed. "Oh, yes, he's seen it," the ichthyoid answered while he continued sorting the laundry into different baskets as Fluff and Fold handed the items to him. "He bought at least a dozen copies of it — you couldn't go anywhere in the Lair without seeing one. I think he was particularly fond of July, August, October, and—"
"MINION!" the indignant and mortified hero shrieked quite unheroically even as Roxanne unsuccessfully tried not to laugh. "You know I told you that in strictest confidence!"
The robotized fish shrugged. "Actually, sir, you never told me, I just figured it out when you kept copies of those pictures all over the Lair — especially in your... ah... thinking places."
Megamind looked as if he was torn between melting to death ala the Wicked Witch of the West, or going for his partner-in-crimefighting's real throat. He appeared to be leaning toward the latter option when one hand twitched, causing all the retracted spikes on his outfit to pop out, gleaming dangerously in the overhead lights.
Moving quickly, Roxanne prevented things from escalating by jumping in front of her spouse, carefully slipping one arm around his neck (inside the batwing collar, to avoid the bristling spikes) while using her free hand to tug one of his arms around her waist, cautiously positioning it so that the small spikes on the glove would hit her wide leather belt rather than poke through the cloth of her dress to her skin. Oh, yes, she'd learned the wisdom of how to dress defensively as the wife of a superhero.
"Claws in, tiger," she suggested with a sly smile. "Minion isn't telling me anything I don't already know. You still have a few of those pictures lying around, and I've come across 'em, once or twice. I'm flattered, sweetie, really. When I made that calendar, I was afraid it wouldn't sell very well, which would've been even more embarrassing than anything I was asked to do during the photoshoot. You probably made sure that didn't happen, all by yourself, buying all those copies." She kissed the tip of his nose. "And I'll admit, that photographer was good, he made me feel so relaxed that it was a lot of fun, even the shots that still make me blush when I think that I actually posed like that — and then let them publish the pictures in a calendar!"
Megamind relaxed just the tiniest bit, and politely retracted the spikes on his outfit to present less of a danger to his lady. "Really?" he squeaked. "You didn't feel... well, humiliated? Or slooty?"
She giggled, aware of what he was trying not to say in his deliberate mispronunciation, which came with a renewed flush across his cheeks. "Well, I did feel that way when the photographer first suggested some of the poses, but he made the whole thing a sort of game, and it felt really silly and fun while I was doing it. Afterwards, I was afraid that I'd made a huge mistake and would wind up looking like someone who belongs on the kinds of calendars you see hanging in fine garages and pool halls, but you've seen the pictures. Those three were suggestive and kind of playfully naughty, but nothing more than that. They weren't pornographic, or even all that sexy. It's all in the mind of the beholder, not their eyes. A good photographer can do that, and it's all in fun."
Oddly enough, the fuchsia blush deepened. "I thought they were sexy," Megamind admitted in a tiny whisper, just loud enough for her to hear. "I still do."
Her smile widened with affection as she wrapped both arms around his neck — properly, now that the spikes were retracted — and gave him a deep, loving kiss. She could feel him relax even more as his arms went around her waist to pull her closer. Minion busied himself with directing Fluff and Fold to take two of the baskets to their proper rooms upstairs, then did a little sorting and folding of his own while he waited for them to return, whistling to distract himself from his amorous friends.
"Thank you," Roxanne said most sincerely when they came up for air. She knew that she wasn't the perfect specimen of feminine beauty that Megamind saw in her, but the fact that he did see her that way never failed to make her feel as beautiful as he thought she was. "You are without a doubt the sweetest former supervillain in the universe. But it may surprise you to know, Mr. Incredibly Handsome, that there are a lot of women out there who actually agree with that title and think you're pretty hot stuff. I was just the lucky one who managed to get you all to myself."
The flattery brought a small, sheepish smile to his face, which was followed momentarily by puzzlement. "But then wouldn't it bother you if I did this, especially if some of the pictures turned out... well, a little like some of yours did?"
Her own smile turned impish. "I suppose if they tried to get you to do something that really qualified as pornographic and you went along with it and they published it, that would bother me, but stuff like they had in my calendar?" She blew a soft raspberry as she shook her head. "It wouldn't bother me at all. Other people might get to ogle a little more of your pretty blue skin in a more flattering light and get to see how handsome you really are, but they'll just get pictures, while I get the real thing. Let 'em eat their hearts out!"
That brought back his bright blush, but also caused the blue hero to bite his lower lip. "What if all it does is give people reasons to laugh at me?"
He didn't need to say more. Though there was no one in the world who could pull off a flamboyant, flashy, confident presentation better than Megamind, Roxanne understood that a lot of the flash and flair was designed to make people look at his clothes and his gadgetry and at most his face, not at the rest of him. He was all too aware that he was smaller and more slender than most Earth men, even when not measured against his disproportionately large head. The broad lower collar of his costume disguised the not so broad shoulders, the flowing cape made a more impressive — and harder to define — silhouette, the flaring upper collar somehow contrived to make him appear just a little taller than he actually was, spikes and studs and bright metals added an extra touch of danger and kept people from coming too close to get a better look. It was all a game of misdirection, smoke and mirrors, see this, not that, and between Minion's clever designs and Megamind's theatrical presentation, they had created a successful art out of making a man who was physically smaller than average be perceived as immensely larger than life.
Truthfully, Megamind didn't dislike his own appearance — not as he had when he was just a boy and desperately wanted to fit in — but he feared that if he did something like this celebrity calendar, something that was at least partially designed to draw attention to the body beneath the clothing, people would start to compare him to his very muscular predecessor and find him sorely wanting. If it would just be him taking the ridicule, he could live with it, but he hated how it might negatively affect Roxanne. He didn't want her to be taunted and teased over her choice of a husband any more than she'd already been.
But she wasn't the least bit worried. "If they do and I hear of it, they'll have to answer to both of us, not to mention the mayor and the emergency services and my network. You're a hero, you've been working your butt off for the last four years to make this city and a lot of the country a better place, and you've earned the right to be treated with respect. And if the calendar designers want you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable for any reason, just tell 'em the deal's off."
Megamind digested this for a bit. All of what she'd said was true, and he had to admit that the people who'd asked him to do this really hadn't said anything about any of the pictures needing to be the least bit racy or suggestive. He just knew from the examples he'd been shown of previous years' releases that a little of that sort of thing was pretty much expected, a standard part of the gimmick. If Roxanne had asked him to do a whole set of pictures like that just for her, he'd have no problem doing whatever she liked, but though he had a strong streak of vanity, he was equally shy and insecure about some things. Things like this: exposing more of himself to the public than he generally did, not to go swimming or because the weather was unbearably hot or something of that nature, but to show off for perfect strangers in a way that he felt should only be for his wife's enjoyment.
In some very weird yet understandable ways, Megamind could seem like a bit of a prude, though Roxanne (and others who knew him fairly well) could see that it wasn't prudishness, but a startlingly genuine innocence hiding behind an ego still sore from the beating it had taken early in life. It was one of the things that made him adorable to her, despite his villainous past.
And as she gave him that fond look that saw all that he truly was, inside and out... That was when his brilliant idea came to him. "Could you be the photographer? I wouldn't be nervous for you — much."
Roxanne blinked and gave a short laugh. "Me? Sweetie, I work in front of the cameras, not behind them."
"Yes, now, but you didn't always," he pointed out, warming to the idea. "And you're a brilliant photographer! Look at all the pictures you've taken when we've gone out of town to take time off, or when I'm in some big to-do and you're not covering it for work."
"Okay, they're not bad, but studio photography isn't the same..."
"Oh, pish-tosh!" he dismissed with an extravagant wave of both hands, becoming more animated as his excitement grew. "You know all about studio lighting and how it's set up — for that matter, so do I! We could set up a studio of our own right here, or we could go outside for some of it, do location shooting! You've done wonderful field photography — don't forget, that's what first brought us together, you scampering around the back alleys of Rustville and Gangland, trying to get pictures to prove I was a hoax! I've seen the shots you took that day before things went wrong, and they were marvelous!"
He spoke with such earnest and energetic enthusiasm, it was hard to disbelieve him. Even Minion chose to get into the act. "Oh, that's a wonderful idea, sir! You really are an excellent photographer, Mrs. Roxanne, I've always thought so, and you could even get Blinkie and some of the camerabots to help, if you wanted. They're great for catching unusual angles and freezing motion — and oh, if you needed help with things like set decoration, I could do that, I did it for Sir at least a hundred times over the years, preparing announcements to the city and setting the stage for some of Sir's more theatrical plans, stuff like that..."
"Minion, I haven't said I'd do it!" Roxanne protested. But glancing from the eager-to-help fish to her almost giddily excited husband, she didn't know how she'd manage to decline. "You're not going to let me say no, are you?" she asked her blue hero.
Megamind shook his head most emphatically. "Not a chance. If you won't, I won't, it's as simple as that. After all, you're the one who thinks this is a good idea. I still think the whole thing is more likely to blow up in my face, worse than my Typhoon Cheese project did on the first two hundred and ninety-nine tries! But I'm willing to at least give it a try — if you'll be my photographer. Is that really asking too much? It's for charity, after all."
The way he batted his big green eyes ever-so-innocently with that sweetly beguiling smile that just screamed, "I so know how to push all your buttons!" was more than Roxanne could take. It didn't help one bit that Minion chimed in with, "Oh, pleeeeze, Mrs. Roxanne, say you'll do it! It'll be so much fun!" From the corner of her eye, she could see the fish's big golden-brown eyes giving her the exact same look, though his huge toothy smile was more ingenuous and would've been just a tad more disturbing, if it hadn't been on Minion.
She sighed, the length of the exhalation all out of proportion to the capacity of any human lungs. "Let me talk to the people setting this up," she said, half-surrendering. "And then let me talk to my boss to see if I can get some time off to do it. The network owes me for turning our summer trip to London into me covering for their foreign correspondent, not just covering your visit with the Queen. Especially since Hank's 'injury' was a broken nose he got in a drunken brawl he started in a pub over a soccer match! If they both say it's okay and we can get all the right equipment, I guess I can give it a try."
Megamind clapped his hands together in glee before picking her up to twirl her about, then giving her a big thank-you kiss. "I'll make sure you have everything you need, just tell me what you want!" he promised happily. "With anyone else, I just wouldn't feel comfortable, but with you, it'll be so much fun! If I come up with any ideas, should I tell you, or do you want to do this all yourself? Will Minion and Blinkie be enough in the way of assistants? What kind of cameras and lighting equipment do you want? We already have a lot left over from the old evil days, but I can get you anything else you might want, newer, better, more sophisticated! Oh, and I suppose Minion's right about needing appropriate set decorations — and wardrobe!" He thrust one arm out, pointing dramatically to his piscine partner. "Minion! How could you forget that we'll need appropriate wardrobe? We—"
Roxanne giggled as she put one hand over his mouth, stilling him. "Relax, sweetie, I'm sure Minion didn't forget, and remember, it's still not definite. The fundraising group may already have signed contracts with professional photographers that they can't back out of, I still have to work out a time with Jack, and it might not be soon enough to meet the deadline for printing to release the calendar for this year."
Her very reasonable points left her husband looking positively crestfallen. "But it has to work out!" he insisted, his excitement suddenly crumbling back into nervous worry. "I — I couldn't do this for anyone but you, Roxanne. It know it's absurd, me, the Defender of Metrocity, a perfect subject for every camera known to Man..."
"You've never met one you couldn't cozy up to, that's for sure," she chuckled, as aware as he was that when the cameras were on, the ham inside him couldn't help but burst out.
But the way he looked at her right now, she was also aware that his inner ham was really the lonely little boy still inside him, desperate for attention and love. Even now, after years of acceptance by an ever-growing circle of supporters and fans and admirers, there was always a part of him that feared rejection, waiting for the inevitable time when he would be kicked in the face, laughed at, and told to slink back into the gutter where he belonged. He'd been quietly working with the prison therapist who had become his friend, trying to lay some of those powerful demons to rest, but even Phil DeVries admitted that some aspects of Mykaal's early life trauma might never be wholly resolved. The fears and the anger no longer ruled his life as they had during his years as a villain, but their ghosts still haunted him at times.
Like now, when he was being asked to put himself on display in a way he'd never done before. It wasn't really the possibility of having a few mildly suggestive fun photos taken of him that had him shaking in his boots; lord knew there were enough mortifying pictures of him plastered all over the Internet, taken by people who'd caught him at the beach with Roxanne or in some totally embarrassing moment while he was out on patrol or in combat. It was the gamble of presenting this small collection of photos all about him to a public who might reject him simply by refusing to buy it, never mind the bigots who would buy the calendar just to twist its images to their own ugly purposes. Roxanne understood both worries, and couldn't help but sympathize.
She caressed his face with a loving, soothing touch. "But you're afraid people won't like it no matter who takes the pictures," she finished for him. "So you need to have someone you trust implicitly taking the shots and making sure that nothing embarrassing slips through and gets printed, that you're presented in the best light possible. I understand, Mykaal, really I do. I felt the same way about my calendar shoot, and I didn't have some of your issues to deal with. I think maybe you're right, I should do this. It's good for me to remind my bosses that I have other talents, and it's good for you to take a step or two outside your usual comfort zone, just to prove to yourself that most people do like you. If I can help make it easier for you do that, I should. So I'll talk to the fundraisers tomorrow, tell them this is a condition of your agreement, and that you'll keep final approval of anything that goes to print or it's no deal. And I'll find a way to make Jack feel like a total heel if he doesn't give me the time off when I want it!"
Megamind's nervous worry diminished; his sadly sagged shoulders lifted as the light returned to his eyes. "You'd do that for me?" he said quietly, not doubting that she would, but loving her for all her understanding and her willingness to help him deal with these damnable insecurities that seemed impossible for him to completely overcome.
And she understood that as well. "I'd do anything for you, love, you know that." It was gratifying to her to see the spark of delight reignite within him. "And since this'll be good for both of us, I'm doing it for me, too. Minion's the only one who won't be getting anything out of it," she added with a teasing lilt that brought the happy grin back to her hero's face, and got a laugh from the fish in question.
"Oh, I'll get something from it, too, Mrs. Roxanne," Minion assured her most cheerfully. "The people at the Ichthyological Society have said things to me about wanting to do something like this for a fund raiser next year, so this'll give me a chance to see what kind of problems there might be so I can avoid them!"
And so what Roxanne would privately come to think of as Project Pin-Up Boy began.
To be continued...
