Roxanne begins by leaving the balcony door open.
It's a warm spring, and there's fresh air in the apartment every day, and, one day when she walks downstairs, there's Megamind, standing in the middle of her living room, with an unnecessary set of lock picks in his hand, looking faintly bewildered.
The rest of the kidnapping proceeds as usual.
Roxanne keeps leaving the balcony door open.
The open door seems to make him nervous. He's broken in and kidnapped her in every room of her apartment, save the bathroom and her bedroom, but when she starts leaving the door open, he doesn't seem to want to come any further inside than he has to. He's hesitant, even, to come and get her when she's in the kitchen; it takes him a noticeable moment of indecision before he does it, every time.
Roxanne starts spending more time in the living room.
She's eating dinner on the couch one night when she looks up and sees him. He's a few paces away, can of knockout spray upraised. His mouth opens, but before he can voice whichever evil laugh or ineffective threat he intends to make, Roxanne smiles at him.
He freezes.
"Hey," she says, voice calm, "are we in a hurry, or is it okay if I finish eating, first?"
Megamind stares at her, eyes too large.
"—is—I—what?" he manages to say.
"Is the evil plot time-sensitive?" Roxanne asks. She lifts up her bowl of soup, showing it to him. "I'm kind of hungry, but it can wait, if we're really in a hurry."
Again, a long moment in which Megamind stares at her.
"N-no," he says, sounding utterly lost, "it's not—it's not time-sensitive…"
"Thanks," Roxanne says, and goes back to eating her soup.
Megamind stands in the same place, shoulders up and drawn inwards, as if he's wary of some kind of attack.
"Why don't you sit down?" Roxanne asks, keeping her tone perfectly ordinary and conversational. "It's silly for you to have to stand while you wait."
She pats the couch next to her invitingly, and Megamind's eyes narrow in extreme suspicion.
Roxanne shrugs.
"You don't have to if you don't want to," she says, and takes another bite of soup.
She takes three more bites before Megamind stalks, with a kind of stiff grace, like an offended cat, to the sofa, and sits on the extreme far edge of it, well out of her reach.
"I," he declares, "am a supervillain! I don't have to do anything I don't want to, Miss Ritchi!"
Roxanne bites her lip against a smile and he glares at her, arms crossed defensively over his chest, his spine very straight.
"Of course," she murmurs, reaching for her glass of iced tea and taking a sip. "Do you want something to eat, too? I feel guilty eating in front of you like this."
Megamind tilts his head, expression of suspicion deepening.
"—are you trying to poison me?" he asks.
Roxanne rolls her eyes, puts down her glass, and stands up.
"Here," she says, handing her bowl to Megamind.
He takes it automatically, then makes a face like he's bit into a lemon, clearly annoyed with himself.
"You can have that one," Roxanne says, before he can say anything, "if you're really that worried about poison."
She moves around the couch towards the kitchen.
"What are you doing?" Megamind asks, voice rising. "I don't understand what you're doing!"
"I'm getting another bowl for me," she says, perfectly calm. "You can have that glass of tea, too."
When she brings her new bowl and glass back to the couch, Megamind is on his feet once more, the knockout spray in one hand again, de-gun in the other, now.
"Are you playing for time; is that what you're doing?" he asks, words rapped out fast and angry, "Is he coming over? Are you waiting for someone to show up?"
Roxanne sighs and sets the bowl and glass down on the coffee table.
"No," she says. "We can go now, if you're really bothered, Megamind."
Megamind growls under his breath.
"You're bluffing," he says.
"I'm not," Roxanne says, and walks to him. "It's okay," she says, when he doesn't move to spray her. "We can go, now, Megamind."
He growls again, angrier and more inhuman this time.
"Stop. That." he says.
"Stop what?" Roxanne asks.
He sprays her.
"She kept being nice at me, Minion!" Megamind gestures wildly. "She was—was—she was menacing me with kindness!"
Minion continues to fold the laundry.
"It doesn't sound menacing to me, Sir," he says. "Miss Ritchi has always been polite to me when I come get her."
"Of course she's polite to you! She likes you! What are you not getting about this?!"
Minion makes a wordless noise that manages to be sympathetic, soothing, and skeptical all at once.
"You're trying to intimidate me," Megamind says, three days later, glaring down at Roxanne as she eats a doughnut in her bathrobe. "I'm not intimidated!"
"You," Roxanne says, gesturing with the half-eaten doughnut, "have an unnecessarily suspicious mind, you know that?"
He sits down suddenly on the far end of the couch.
"I'm not intimidated!" he repeats defiantly.
"Okay," Roxanne says, and pushes the box of doughnuts over towards him. "You want a doughnut?"
"No!"
Roxanne laughs and licks powdered sugar from her fingers.
"Right," she says. "Well, you can have this coffee, at least. I'll go get another cup."
She sets the cup down in front of him and goes back to the kitchen. When she returns, the first cup is still on the coffee table in front of him. Megamind is glaring down at it as if it has personally insulted him in some way.
Roxanne sits down again and he looks up at her.
"I don't want it!" he says defensively.
"All right," Roxanne says, shrugging.
Megamind gives her a look that clearly indicates he'd like to smother her to death with a decorative throw pillow. He picks up the cup.
"I'm not intimidated," he mutters, and takes a sip of coffee.
Which he immediately and violently spits back out into the cup.
Roxanne, in the middle of taking a sip from her own cup, nearly chokes on coffee and shocked laughter.
"That is disgusting!" Megamind says, as she coughs.
His ears and cheekbones are absolutely burning pink as he sets the cup down sharply and shoves it away.
"S-sorry?" Roxanne says, trying not to laugh, and not really succeeding, "I mean—it's just coffee; what's wrong with it?"
"There isn't any cream! There isn't even any sugar! You cannot possibly drink coffee like that!"
"—I mean, sometimes I do," Roxanne says. "If I'm already eating something sweet—"
"Stop it!" Megamind jerks to his feet as if some kind of line that's been holding him in place has snapped. "Stop; just stop!"
"…stop drinking my coffee black?"
"Stop talking to me like—stop being—"
He takes a sharp breath through his nose, lets it out slowly, his teeth gritted.
Roxanne takes a bite of her second doughnut and waits for him to say something.
He doesn't, though, just continues to glare at her. Roxanne finishes the doughnut.
"Okay," she says, standing up from the couch, "I just have to get dressed, and then I'll be ready to go."
Megamind makes a discordant noise of frustration in the back of his throat.
Roxanne pats him on the arm as she passes and he actually flinches back from her as if she's struck him, his breath hissing through his teeth.
Back in his cell later that night, Megamind paces restlessly, rubbing his arm where she touched him.
There had been powdered sugar on her fingers; some of it had ended up on his shirt.
He hadn't been able to make himself brush the marks of her fingers from his arm, and had been forced to pretend, throughout the entire kidnapping, that he hadn't noticed them there.
The next time Megamind shows up at her apartment at breakfast time, Roxanne has made sure the coffee pot is already on the table, along with sugar, creamer, and an extra cup.
He watches warily as she adds sugar and cream to her cup, as she takes a sip, as she places the cup down on the coffee table within his reach. She pours herself another cup, drinks, takes a bite of toast.
Megamind snatches his cup up quickly, as if he's afraid she's going to slap his hand away, and then he cradles it in both hands, close to his chest.
Suspicious green eyes watch her over the rim of it as she takes another bite of toast.
For several minutes he just holds the cup as she continues to eat, and then finally, with quick, tense movements, he adds more cream and sugar to it.
Roxanne raises her eyebrows as the sixth spoonful of sugar goes into the cup.
"What?" Megamind snaps defensively, seeing her expression.
"You like your coffee really sweet, huh?" Roxanne says.
He glares at her like he suspects some kind of hidden mockery in the words.
"Just coffee?" Roxanne asks. "Or do you like sweet stuff in general?"
"Why?" Megamind asks, eyes narrow.
"I was just curious," Roxanne says gently.
He gives her that flat glare again, and Roxanne assumes he's not going to answer.
"Yes," he says.
Roxanne blinks in surprise.
"Yes, I like sweet things," he says, still sounding as if he suspects a trick.
Roxanne makes a humming noise of interest.
"Do you?" Megamind says, asking the question like he's throwing down a gauntlet, like he's not expecting her to answer.
"Oh! Yeah, but not as much as you," Roxanne says, unable to keep from smiling at him, "if your tastes in coffee are anything to go by. I like raspberry."
"Are you trying to delay things so that we don't get to the evil plot?" Megamind asks, watching Roxanne narrowly as he tears a dinner roll into tiny pieces.
She blinks at him, an expression of what appears to be honest surprise on her face.
"No," she says.
"It's taken me fifteen additional minutes each time to kidnap you on average, over the last month," Megamind says, not looking away from her face, watching for any shift in her expression that will tell him she's lying. "And the time spent at your apartment pre-kidnapping shows a gradual increase over the month, when charted out."
She blinks again.
"I mean, you can just come by earlier," she says, "if you're worried we're cutting in too much on the evil plots."
Megamind doesn't say anything to that, but his suspicions are instantly aroused. A trap? Ready to spring when he arrives early at the next kidnapping?
He shows up to her apartment hours early, the next time, while she's still at work, and after a brainbot patrol has reported Metro Man is at his own home.
Megamind will already be here in Roxanne's apartment, lying in wait, when they come to set their trap; they won't catch him off guard!
Nobody shows up until Miss Ritchi comes into the apartment after work.
She shuts her apartment door, and her keys jangle as she puts them back in her purse. She turns.
"Oh, hey," she says, looking surprised. "You're ho—here."
Her face flushes as she stumble on the last word—chagrin at the realization that he's seen through her plan? He stands up with a menacing flourish.
"Your attempt at entrapment has failed, Miss Ritchi! As you can see, I am already here!"
Her lips quiver and she throws him a glance that, if he didn't know better, he might read as amused affection. She tosses her purse down on the kitchen counter.
"Mm," she says, making a sound not unlike the one Minion makes when he's trying to be soothing but express skepticism all the same. "'Kay. You want anything special for dinner, sweet—ah—I—I was—thinking chinese. Um—sweet—sweet and sour chicken sounds good…"
Megamind chews his lip as he watches her take off her shoes.
She seems—slightly flustered, but not nearly as distressed at his foiling her scheme to trap him as he would have expected. Maybe that's not the actual scheme. Maybe it's something else; maybe the implication of a trap set early was a clever ruse—
"Only if we can order from the place with the good fortune cookies," he says. "And I make the phone call! I won't have you sneakily phoning for Mr. Goody-Two-Shoes!"
"The menu's in the drawer," Roxanne says.
"He's never here."
Roxanne looks over at him, a puzzled line between her brows.
"Who?" she asks.
Megamind grits his teeth.
Roxanne starts leaving food out on the counter.
It's sweet things, always—cookies, doughnuts, danishes.
Megamind suspects poison again, but Roxanne eats the things herself, in front of him. Maybe she has the location of the poisoned treats versus the non-poisoned ones on the plate memorized? He could switch them around to test that theory, but he's not going to risk her having dosed them with something that could prove dangerous to her.
He takes one home, instead, a chocolate chip cookie, and subjects it to the most rigorous scientific testing possible.
It's just a cookie.
"You're not dating him."
"Wh—oh," Roxanne says, taking a bite of pizza. "No, I'm not."
"You broke up with him."
Roxanne gives a little snort of laughter that has no right to be as endearing as he finds it. He bites the inside of his cheek.
"No," she says.
"He broke up with you?" Megamind bursts out, unable to keep the incredulous edge from his voice.
She gives another snort of laughter.
"No," she says again.
She has sugar cookies out, the next time he goes to kidnap her, and since he's feeling reckless and frustrated, he eats one.
Roxanne absolutely beams at him when he does, which makes him assume it really is poisoned, but he doesn't have any sort of strange reaction at all, and none of this makes any sense whatsoever.
She was never dating Metro Man?
Never?
The entire world has ceased to make sense.
Unless she's lying.
No, she's not lying; Metro Man really isn't ever there, and he would never have the attention span for any sort of long term plan like the one Roxanne's playing out, here, anyway.
Whatever plan it is she's playing out, here.
It's summer, by now, the air turning hot and sticky, and the first night Megamind lands on her balcony and finds the door closed, his stomach drops in a horrible and utterly inexplicable way.
It isn't—she was only doing it to—to unsettle him; he should be relieved she's given up on—
He sees the sign taped to the doorframe.
It's unlocked, Megamind.
—R
He stands there looking at it for a long time before finally opening the door and slipping inside.
If her plan is to unsettle him, it is definitely working, Megamind is forced to admit.
The more time he spends with her, in her apartment, the more unsettled he feels. He should just stop going there at all, he knows that, knows he should stick to picking her up from her office or the street, should stick to sending Minion to her apartment, but he can't, god, he can't.
"Why are you doing this?" Megamind asks, voice high and distressed.
Roxanne's lips twist.
"If I'd known being nice to you was all it took to get you this riled up," she says, putting down her fork, "I would have done it a lot sooner."
"You admit, then," he says, voice wavering, and he should be glad that he's finally tricked her into confirming his suspicions, but he feels, instead, as if he's going to fly into a million sharp edged pieces at any moment, "you admit that you're doing it to upset me—"
"No," Roxanne says.
She reaches out and wraps her fingers around his wrist and squeezes. Megamind stops breathing, goes utterly still beneath her hand.
"No," she says, "I would have been, before, but I'm not, now."
Megamind makes a low, unhappy noise of confusion and frustration and she lets go of his wrist.
"I'm not—" she says, voice soft, and for a moment she looks almost sad, "—I'm not very good at this being nice thing, am I?"
Megamind has no idea how to answer that. Roxanne sighs and pats his arm (again he goes startle-still) and then she gathers up the dishes and takes them to the sink.
He can't stay away from her.
He never could stay away from her, and now it's so much worse, the torment only increasing every time she lets him just a little bit closer.
She lets him sit on the couch with her and finish the movie she's watching.
She props her feet up in his lap.
She lets him ask what book it is she's reading.
She flips to the beginning of the book and reads the first chapter out loud to him, reads all the rest of the chapters out loud to him, a new chapter each kidnapping like she's playing at being Scheherazade, and every time he has to stand up and spray her and go through with the evil plot, it just gets harder to do.
Pretending that's all he wants.
Pretending he's ever really wanted that.
Pretending he doesn't want—
And yet he has to keep coming up with evil plot after evil plot, because how else is he supposed to keep seeing her? What other excuse could he have for coming to her?
There isn't one. There isn't any excuse for his presence.
There isn't any excuse for him.
"These are for you," Megamind says abruptly, and sets the box of chocolates on Roxanne's coffee table.
Roxanne's lips part, her eyes going wide, color flying to her cheeks, and Megamind thinks wildly that he would very much like to throw himself headfirst from the balcony right now.
"They're raspberry," he says in despair as she lifts the lid.
She reaches for one of the chocolates, her lips forming an O of anticipatory pleasure—they're extremely good quality chocolates, the best he could find, and—
"The third one has sleeping serum in it," Megamind blurts out, like the utter, hopeless, pathetic idiot he is.
Roxanne pauses with her hand hovering over the chocolates. She looks up at him.
And she—
—smiles.
"I guess I'll have to eat that one last, then," she says, and picks up a chocolate.
She bites into it without any hesitation, as if Megamind hasn't already admitted to drugging one of the chocolates, as if he's—
She picks up a second chocolate and offers it to him wordlessly. Megamind swallows and shakes his head as he sits down on the edge of the couch. Roxanne makes a noise that clearly indicates she would actually rather have the entire box to herself anyway.
And—god—Megamind would much, much rather watch her enjoying them.
Roxanne is—she's so—
The little humming noises of satisfaction she makes, and the way she licks her fingers, and the small smear of chocolate on her bottom lip, and—
(later, lying alone in bed with his stomach twisting with guilt and his hand between his legs, Megamind will bite his lip against a moan and come apart to the memory of her like this)
Finally, the box is empty, except for the third chocolate, the one he dosed and then warned her about.
She reaches for it.
"You don't have to."
Roxanne looks up at him, her hand poised over the box.
Her surprised eyes meet his and Megamind jerks to his feet, almost stumbling in his sudden haste to not be here, to not be doing this, to not be—
"You don't have to," he says again, "you don't—have to—I'll—I'll go; I can go; I'll just go—"
"You don't have to," Roxanne says, her eyes wide and her hand hovering, and Megamind makes a choked, panicked, alien noise in the back of his throat and flees.
He throws himself viciously into the construction of the next doomsday device, and the next, and the next.
Megamind manages to send Minion for her the next three kidnappings in a row, and he doesn't go to her apartment when she's there, and he doesn't go to her apartment when she's not there, and he doesn't sleep.
This last fact is not an important one, no matter what Minion might say, or the brainbots might hint.
Wanting to be with her is actually physically painful, the way that starvation is painful, that same kind of screaming, desperate emptiness, a hunger in his skin and his chest and his bones and his mind.
It's autumn now, the air cool and crisp. The balcony door is open. Megamind slips inside.
He's just going to stay for a moment, just a moment; he'll be long gone by the time she gets home from work; she'll never even know he was here. He's just—
He's crying, suddenly, too tired to stop himself, too tired to do it quietly. Too tired to do anything but collapse on Roxanne's couch and curl up into a ball and cry and cry and cry.
Misery and exhaustion bleed together in his mind.
He's still crying when he falls asleep.
Her apartment is dark when Roxanne finally makes it home. She switches on the light and locks the door behind herself. As she's putting her purse down on the counter, she hears a soft noise from the living room.
She glances over and sees—Megamind, sitting up from where he's been lying on her couch. He looks around, blinking, his eyes unfocused and his expression faintly bewildered.
Sleeping, Roxanne realizes, he was sleeping on her couch.
"Hey," she says softly, moving towards him.
He looks up at her, the back of the couch between them, and Roxanne reaches out without thinking and touches his head, strokes her palm over the curve of it.
"I didn't mean to wake you, sweetheart," she says.
And.
And there's a—a frozen kind of moment in which Roxanne realizes what she's said and what she's doing and she sees Megamind realize what she's said and what she's doing and then—
She sees something break in his eyes, and then he turns his head and presses his lips to her palm.
"—oh," Roxanne says, a breathless, almost silent sound.
"Why," he says, his voice cracking in the middle, "why would you call me—why are you being—Roxanne—I can't—please—please stop—it hurts too—"
"I'm sorry," Roxanne says, catching the other side of his face with her other hand. "I'm sorry, sweetheart; I'm sorry; I never wanted to hurt you, Megamind; I'm so sorry—"
He looks at her again, green eyes wide and tearful, and Roxanne presses a kiss to his forehead—then to his cheekbone, his temple, his jaw—
Megamind makes a soft, broken noise and turns his head, catching her mouth with his.
Roxanne gasps in surprise and he starts to pull back, but she dips her head and kisses him again and he melts into her.
He almost sobs into her mouth when she rubs her thumbs over his cheekbones, and when she hums soothingly against his lips, he moans and reaches up to grab her shoulders, arching up into her like he's afraid she's going to push him away at any moment.
Roxanne slides one of her hands to the back of his head and the other to the back of his neck, holds him in place as she kisses him.
(possession and reassurance in the pressure of her hands and the pressure of her lips)
He's trembling when she finally eases out of the kiss. She brushes her lips over his one last time and leans away to look at his face. His eyes meet hers for only a moment, and then he flinches, squeezing his eyes shut again.
"—please," he whispers, "please don't make me leave, Roxanne."
Roxanne gives a soft laugh, feeling tears rise to her eyes.
"Megamind," she says, "sweetheart—I've been trying this whole time to convince you to stay."
He opens his eyes and looks at her, his lips slightly parted, his eyes wide and green and astonished. Roxanne smiles at him a little tremulously, and then bends down to kiss him again.
"Roxanne—why—why didn't you just tell me?"
It's several weeks later; Megamind is sitting half curled up on her couch in his pajamas, watching her over the top of his cup of ridiculously over-sweet coffee.
Roxanne gives him a questioning look as she takes a sip of coffee.
"Why didn't you just tell me—what you were doing?" he asks. "With being nice to me. Why didn't you just tell me?"
Roxanne puts her cup of coffee down.
"I didn't think you'd believe me," she says. "I was afraid of scaring you off."
Megamind frowns and Roxanne smiles at him with gentle, wry affection.
"Sweetheart," she says, "you didn't even believe I meant it when I smiled at you. Megamind, honestly, if I had told you that I loved you, then, would you have believed me?"
Megamind makes a face.
"—probably not," he admits, putting down his own cup of coffee.
Roxanne laughs and shakes her head. Megamind wrinkles his nose at her and shifts to lie down with his head in her lap.
"You know I'm right," she tells him.
He makes a complaining, not-quite-human noise but doesn't argue. Roxanne drapes her arm over the curve of his head and closes her eyes, smiling.
"—do you?" Megamind asks.
"Hmm?" Roxanne opens her eyes and looks down at him. "Do I what?"
He curls his arm a little tighter around one of her knees.
"—do you love me?" he asks, voice soft and vulnerable.
Roxanne smiles down at him, her heart very full of happiness.
"Yes," she says. "Yes, I do."
Megamind makes a soft noise of contentment and settles his head more comfortably in her lap.
...the end.
Day sixteen of my Birthday Fic Month! And day five of the Megamind Valentine's Day event. Prompt used was 'home is you'.
The working title of this one was 'the feral cat story'. The actual title is from the lyrics of the song 'Sway'.