"Well, you know, I'm really just concentrating on my career right now," Roxanne says, cutting in on Great Aunt Dolores' speech about how she is—
"—going to regret this in ten years, you know! What you really need to do is find some nice man and settle down!"
Roxanne casts a pleading look in her mother's direction, but her mother is nodding along with Great Aunt Delores.
"You don't want to miss out on your chance," says Roxanne's cousin Joan, whose three children are running screaming around the room.
"Good looking gal like you—" her uncle Mike says.
"—but looks don't last forever—" Roxanne's mother puts in.
"—not as young as you used to be—" says Great Aunt Dolores.
"Yes, well, none of us are," Roxanne says brightly. They all jerk back, looking offended. "Excuse me! I need to go get something from my purse!"
And she escapes to the coat room.
In retrospect, she thinks, as she shuts to door and leans against it, telling her family that she's not actually dating Metro Man had definitely been a mistake. She just should have brought Wayne along to the family reunion and let them all come to their own incorrect conclusions, although she still would have had to deal with Great Aunt Delores pushing outdated bridal magazines at her.
Actually, scratch that, she decides as she picks up her purse up from the pile of coats and hats on the guest room bed and opens it, intending to waste some time by reapplying her lipstick.
She really just should have stayed in Metro City and not come to this hellish family reunion at all. Why couldn't she just get the flu this weekend? Why couldn't a big story come up at work?
Why couldn't Megamind kidnap her?
"Ollo, Miss Ritchi."
Roxanne whirls and throws her purse in the direction of his voice. She misses him entirely, purse bouncing harmlessly off the wall as Megamind steps out from the closet.
"What—how—what the hell are you doing here?" Roxanne asks. "We are in Wisconsin!"
"I'm kidnapping you," Megamind tells her, stepping forward, can of knock-out spray at the ready, "obviously."
He's wearing a different suit than usual, she notices, no cape, no spikes, and a smaller, more form-fitting collar. Why is he—
Roxanne dodges around the bed.
"How did you even get in here?" she asks. "We're six stories up!"
"I flew," Megamind says, which, huh, explains why he's not wearing his usual outfit—less wind resistance this way.
"Antigravity boots," he adds, "see?"
He gestures at his feet, and then lunges for her unexpectedly. Roxanne scrambles over the bed away from him. He leaps up on the bed.
"Stop that!" Roxanne says. "You are going to get shoe prints all over the bedspread!"
"Evil," Megamind says, and smirks at her, bouncing slightly on the bed.
Roxanne throws a pillow at him. Her aim is better this time; the pillow catches him in the face. He drops the spray and the canister rolls under the bed before Roxanne can bend down and snatch it up.
"You can't be here," Roxanne hisses. "My family is in the other room!"
"I know," Megamind says, tossing the pillow down and stepping from the bed. He moves towards her purposefully. "Maybe you should scream."
Again with the screaming thing?
"Maybe if you were actually scary, I would!" Roxanne says.
"I'll have you know, Miss Ritchi," says Megamind, still advancing on her, "that I am absolutely terrifying."
"Please," Roxanne says. "Your idea of evil is bouncing on someone else's bed with your shoes on. Reeeal scary Megamind. Little kids do that."
"Kettle and pot, pillow fight girl! Kettle and pot!"
"I was not—I threw a pillow at you; that's not how you—!"
"Yeah, it was really grown up," Megamind snickers.
"I—that's—you started it!"
Megamind laughs even harder, the bastard.
"You're such a mat-ure ah-dult, Miss Ritchi!" he says, sing-song and mocking.
"Ugh!" Roxanne says, and tries to run for the door.
Megamind grabs her, still chuckling, and Roxanne hates him even more for the way that she's close to laughter now, too. She tries to shove him away and he catches her wrists in one hand, holding them above her head, then, laughing evilly, he digs the fingers of his other hand into her ribs.
"St—stop that!" Roxanne says in shock, twisting away from the tickling.
"What, you don't like being tickled?" Megamind says. "I'll have to remember that! Tickling robots—ooh, tickling chair! Kidnappings are going to be fun from now on!"
"Stop!" Roxanne laughs, twisting harder.
"Scream for me and I will," Megamind tells her, redoubling his tickling efforts.
Roxanne gives a smothered shriek (she is not going to scream; she is not) and twists as hard as she can, throwing them both off balance.
She stumbles back, dragging Megamind along with herself. Her back hits the wall and—
—suddenly Megamind is very, very close, pressed flush against her, one of his hands still holding her wrists above her head; his other arm around her, hand cradling the back of her head, from when he stopped her head from slamming into the wall.
The smaller, softer collar on this suit means there's nothing keeping their faces apart; her cheek is pressed against Megamind's, skin to skin.
His grip on her wrists has gone slack; she could easily pull her hands from his grasp, push him away. But. Somehow she finds herself slipping her hands down and—
Lacing their fingers together instead.
What. What is she doing.
She can hear him breathing, feel his breath stirring her hair; their mouths are so close; if they both just tilted their heads they could slide together and—
Well, says a too-calm voice in Roxanne's head as the rest of her mind explodes into mental screaming, I guess we've figured out why you haven't settled down with some nice young man.
She should. Oh god. She should push him away. She should say something (kiss me? no, not that, Roxanne!) she should—he should step away; why isn't he stepping away?
Does he—does he feel the same—
In the doorway, someone screams.
Megamind jerks like he's been electrified and shoves himself away from her so fast that he winds up stumbling back and falling onto the bed (mental images mental images oh god oh god).
It's Great Aunt Delores in the doorway, standing clutching her heart with one hand and pointing at Megamind with the other, a look of horror on her face.
"Delores! What's happening?" Uncle Mike says, appearing in the doorway behind Great Aunt Delores, along with the entire rest of Roxanne's family jesus fucking christ.
"It's him!" Aunt Delores shrieks. "It's that alien that's always kidnapping her!"
"What's he doing on the bed?" asks Joan's middle child.
"Yes," Roxanne's mother says sharply, "what is he doing on the bed?"
"He fell, mother!" Roxanne snaps, feeling her cheeks flare crimson.
"Ohhhh, 'fell'," says Joan's oldest child, elbowing his sister in the ribs. Both of the smirk. Little brats.
"Ahahaha," says Megamind, a look of terror on his face. "Anyway—kidnapping's off for today!"
He bounces up, smoothly flipping the switches on the anti gravity boots, and then vaults out the bedroom window.
"Well," says cousin Joan, a wealth of meaning in her voice and her raised eyebrows.
"Yes," says Roxanne's mother, eyes narrowing.
How dare Megamind just leave her here like this?! It is simply not on, Roxanne decides.
So she does the one thing guaranteed to get his attention.
She screams.
She screams as loudly as she can, backing away towards the window, pointing dramatically behind her family with the most intense look of horror on her face that she can manage to summon. Her family turns to look over their shoulders at the new (entirely nonexistent threat) and—
Sure enough, Megamind appears at the window, looking frantic.
"What is it?" he asks, "What's wrong? I heard—oof—"
He cuts himself off as Roxanne throws herself out of the window at him.
He catches her, of course. Roxanne realizes, as she feels his arms tighten around her, that it never even occurred to her that he wouldn't.
"Is the building on fire?!" he asks, one arm around her waist, the other underneath one of her knees.
Roxanne's got the other leg hitched around his waist, both arms thrown around his neck, one hand curled around the back of his head. It's an awkward position, and one that is definitely more suggestive than the one that Great Aunt Delores found them in, more suggestive than Megamind half lying on the bed, looking up at her, the way the rest of her family found them.
He spins in the air, and over his shoulder Roxanne sees the flabbergasted faces of her family peering out the window at her.
"Kidnapping is back on for today!" Roxanne tells Megamind, half-hysterical laughter bubbling up inside of her. "Let's go!"
"But—"
"Go!"
He goes.
"Er—," he says, swooping in between apartment buildings and over streets, "I'm—you know, I'm fairly certain it doesn't count as a kidnapping if you come willingly?"
"Yeah, yeah," Roxanne says. "We can—" she wraps her other leg around his waist and Megamind makes really a rather interesting sound in response. "—argue semantics later."
"Uh," he says. "Um. Ah?" sounding as if she's just broken his ability to understand speech.
Sounding as if Roxanne wasn't the only one having thoughts when he had her pressed up against the wall like that.
So Roxanne turns her head and let their mouths slide together, like she'd imagined doing back in the coat room.
Megamind very nearly flies them into a tree.