Title : Never
Summary : Megamind's hobby involves watching a certain fetching reporter
Rating : Maybe PG-13/T? There is some implied smuttiness at the end but nothing explicit
Notes : This is a short piece for the lovely rawrtiger over on LJ in honor of her birthday.
The first time he saw her, he couldn't take his eyes off her. He had tuned in to see this much-hyped interview with Metro Mahn, but when he saw her had to blink twice. She was stunning. Really. He was actually stunned by her.
She must have been wearing a light coat of makeup for the cameras but he was still drawn into her face, so warm and open. Her long brown hair was expertly styled but she didn't look like a plastic model. And she had these blazing blue eyes that seemed to look straight into him. They seemed to sparkle as she exchanged pleasantries with the hero and he felt something. Something that resembled the frenzied sensation of a new idea combined with the deep relaxation of just nodding off to sleep. And that was unexpected and new, all the feeling.
He didn't understand the purpose of the looped footage of them walking in what appeared to be the city botanical gardens, but it gave him the opportunity to look her up and down from head to toe. Her clothing was seared into his memory - a crisp tan suit with tight pencil skirt and a perfectly pressed white shirt. Not that he knew what a pencil skirt was, but he would soon come to recognize the signature style that hugged her curves.
And then there were the close ups where he could see those eyes again. He had never paid that much attention to human physical features, but hers were just so fascinating. Her face was so expressive while she questioned the hero and she was quick too, responding to his cues not merely reading off a list of pre-prepared questions. He wondered what her face would look like sleepy or angry. How her eyebrows would arch when she gave a full belly laugh.
What would it be like to touch –
No. He refused to let himself wonder about such things. He tried to ignore her and focus on the meaningless prattle coming out of the mouth of his rival.
Still, he started to record all her reports about his criminal mastery and her regular interviews with Metro Man. He saw the way she would smile at the hero and he would ache in a way he didn't understand. He must be something precious to her, for her to give a smile so freely in such a meaningful way.
Then he started saving the ones that had nothing to do with him. Reports on debt ceiling caps and cat fashion shows and interviews with minor political figures. And it was hard to know when she would be on, usually it was the 5 o'clock but sometimes it was the 10:30 and on occasion he had seen her on the morning show and scrambled to hit record before he lost any more of it. So he just started recording all KCMP news broadcasts and it became a daily ritual to fast-forward through them with his finger eagerly hovering over the play button in case he saw her face.
To his frustration, Minion didn't understand the importance of the footage at all. And the fish had helpfully pointed out that he could just as easily write a computer program with facial recognition software so he didn't have to do the fast-forwarding manually. But Megamind had quickly dismissed the idea as beneath his talent. In reality he simply didn't want to give up the anticipation and wonder of those little moments of discovery.
So he knew that Minion certainly wouldn't understand why he would sometimes sneak down late at night and rewatch them while the fish slept.
He told himself that it was about understanding his kidnappee, but that didn't explain why he would rewind the ones where she smiled over and over again. Or why he would long for something he couldn't even articulate and knew he could never actually have. Why his heart would feel so full every time she said his name on air. Or why he would get so hard watching her silly reports.
It didn't explain his weakness, longing for what he could never have. Or why knowing that incontrovertible never in his massively intelligent mind didn't just make the wanting go away. Or why he would have to slide his hand into his pants and relieve the throbbing.
Or why he allowed himself to believe, if only in the moment he came, that maybe he could live in a world of possibilities. A world where the word never didn't exist.