I know it's late, I'm sorry! But the lateness comes with a funny story… I literally fell asleep while writing my little note to you guys last night. I can't make this shit up. My little author's note ended with, "S oanywya i't s not like Megamind ca read her thgoughtsm it's more of a brai ns whare tahna anything elseoooooooooooooooooooooooooo" and the "oooo" went on for the rest of the page and a little bit more, where I guess my hand slipped off the keyboard? I don't know. The weirdest part is that it was only a little bit before midnight or so and I usually don't have any problems staying up that late!
Anyway, when I "woke up" a few minutes later I was still too asleep to actually fix my note and post the chapter, so…it's late and I'm sorry.
Here's the chapter! I'm trying something new, it's called "not writing every single little thing." xD So there's a lot of time passing and I'm just…kind of writing little scenes as they go along, so the scene changes may seem a little disjointed. Frankly I just don't have the time to dedicate a ton of time to exploring as much as I'd like to with this fic, so maybe someday I'll revisit this and flesh it out a bit? Eh.
(this chapter has been slightly edited from its original version because the italics were killing me)
Chapter 3
Nemo – Nightwish
Roxanne leaves for work before Megamind is out of bed. She glances in at him before she leaves just to make sure he's still there but she doesn't wake him up; one thing he'd mentioned twice last night was sleeping, where he could and couldn't sleep. She figures if he can sleep at all in her apartment, she should let him get on with it. He probably needs it.
But she isn't sure if she's going to come home from work that evening and find that Megamind's gone missing again. He doesn't seem like the sort of person to stay in one place too long if he's uncertain about his surroundings, and he'd certainly seemed unsure of himself last night. But he doesn't have anywhere else to go, that's for sure, and Roxanne is really hoping he'll be there in the evening.
She runs a quick errand on her way home, just in case. It turns out not to be fruitless, because Megamind is sitting on the sofa, expressionless, his hands still, when Roxanne walks in. "Hey," Roxanne exclaims. "You're still here!"
He flushes at that and stands up, and she sees he's wearing his ratty clothes again. His shoes are tied.
She could let him go, could let him walk right out the door and out of her life, and everything would go back to normal and Megamind probably wouldn't even be offended about it. Now's the chance for Roxanne to keep her quiet home life. He's a wanted criminal and they likely don't have a thing in common. He's not her responsibility.
I don't see why that matters. She tosses him the pack of underwear she'd picked up for him on her way home on the off chance that he'd still be there and asks, "What do you want for dinner?"
Megamind catches the underwear on reflex and blinks at her until he apparently remembers that he's supposed to respond. "Um. I'll. Have whatever you're having," he mumbles, and sits back down. He doesn't say much else for the rest of the night, but he hasn't left on Wednesday morning, and Roxanne figures that's the end of that.
Over the next few days, she starts to see small signs of what might be improvement. At first, Megamind mostly sits on her couch and stares into space, apparently lost in thought. But sometimes when she gets home from work, she finds things different from how she left them. The dishes are done, her laundry has been folded. Badly, but it's folded. Neither of those things strike her as particularly odd; she often leaves herself a short list of chores to take care of in the evening so she won't have to bother figuring out what to do, and 'dishes' and 'fold laundry' are both pretty standard items on the list.
But then her bedroom door stops squeaking, and the next day the drippy kitchen sink stops dripping. The soap scum in her shower disappears. The microwave oven is clean. Megamind is definitely finding things to do while Roxanne is out for the day, but the really incredible thing is that he seems to have an uncanny knack for finding things that Roxanne herself has thought about but hasn't had the time to focus on. Either they aren't part of her usual checklist or they're things she's not sure how to do, like the sink and the persistent whine in her freezer that Megamind somehow manages to fix after only a few days.
He just looks uncomfortably blank when she thanks him, so she eventually stops mentioning it, but she still tries to catch his eye when she notices something. She could get used to this.
But after about a week of being surprised at whatever small adjustments Megamind found, she comes home to a dark apartment. Megamind is nowhere to be seen—not in his bed or under it, not in Roxanne's room, not in the bathroom. Feeling silly, she even checks some of the kitchen cupboards and glances behind the television set in the corner, wondering if he's the sort to hide somewhere small when he's feeling particularly off. He's not there, either, but she does find one of her throw pillows behind the television, and the space is almost suspiciously free of dust.
She's sitting in her chair, holding the throw pillow and wondering for the millionth time why the heck she's even worrying, when her front doorknob rattles. She looks up, startled, and then there's a flurry of frantic knocks and she leaps for the door, slides back the three deadbolts and the chain (locks never seemed to bother him before, so what's his problem now?) and wrenches the door open. Megamind all but dives into her apartment, a stained duffel bag slung across his back.
"Where were you?" Roxanne asks, too relieved to bother thinking about hiding it. "I thought you disappeared again!"
Megamind turns and blinks at her, then shrugs his duffel a little. "My clothes," he says, then looks uncertain. "I can…still stay? Here?"
She gapes at him for a moment, then lets out a quiet sigh and rubs a hand down her neck. "Yes," she says, making a conscious effort to calm down. "Yes, you can stay, just don't scare me like that." She's expecting him to just nod and retreat to the sofa or behind his screen, but he actually takes a step forward.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't think…"
She waves at him, suddenly tired. "No, it's okay, you don't have to tell me where you're going. I'm not your mom. Just…"
"I went missing before." He stands like a stone, watching her. "You were worried."
"Yeah," Roxanne admits, "I was."
His great head tips to one side. "Why?" he asks, but all she can tell him is, "I don't know." Oddly enough, he seems satisfied with this answer.
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They start to build a rapport different from the one they used to have. Roxanne starts it by chatting absently to her silent roommate about work: news stories and office drama—who got the promotion and who's out for revenge and who got fired. She tells him about Hal, who still seems a little odd but mostly harmless. She talks to him about food while she cooks the same basic meals she always has (but more of them now, enough for two).
Food, at least, is easy to talk about. Roxanne tells him about what metals are good for cooking, why silver should be washed separately from stainless steel, why olive oil is good for sautéing but peanut oil is good for frying and coconut oil is good for everything if you don't mind your food tasting vaguely nutty. Tells him what her father taught her about how if the smells go together, the ingredients probably do, too. Tells him how to do vegetables in the oven with olive oil. Tells him again and again that he needs to eat.
She shows him the steps and, slowly, he begins to respond. He sticks with "whatever you're having" as his response to the dinner question, but he watches everything Roxanne does and he seems to be listening. He starts asking questions. He stirs the frying onions and peppers when Roxanne has to step away.
He stops leaving an empty chair between them when they sit down to eat.
He sits on the sofa and pays attention to the movies she watches, which is fun until the movie is District 9, which Megamind seems interested in for about five minutes. Then he works out the theme and inhales sharply, stands, and goes into the bathroom. A moment later, Roxanne hears the shower kick on.
Megamind doesn't come back for at least half an hour, by which point Roxanne has also figured out the direction the movie is going and has turned on America's Next Top Model instead, since Megamind occasionally seems to be interested in the clothes. "I'm so sorry," she says as soon as he pokes his head around her bedroom door. "I've never seen it before, I only heard it had aliens in it."
"'S okay," he says, sliding back onto the couch. A minute later, he's muttering about shoes and patterns, so Roxanne decides he's not too traumatized. Good.
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Metro Man texts her at work. How is he?
Not great, Roxanne sends back. I'm trying to get him out of his shell.
Yikes, Metro Man replies after a few minutes of nothing. Good luck.
"Oh, you're a big help," Roxanne mutters, and goes back to her job.
To be fair, she's not particularly forthcoming on the Megamind front, either. She calls Wayne every now and again to fill him in, but she never talks long and she rarely elaborates more than she has to. Talking about Megamind's emotional state with his arch-rival makes her uncomfortable, though probably not half as uncomfortable as Megamind would be if he knew.
To her surprise, though, Wayne seems more or less okay with the arrangement. He doesn't protest Megamind staying at the apartment and he doesn't insist that the villain move to the Manor. He sounds startled when Roxanne tells him Megamind will be staying with her for the foreseeable future, but he doesn't sound opposed, and that's the most important thing. Mostly he just seems glad to know the smaller alien is as on top of things as he can be and doesn't protest the lack of updates.
He doesn't say much when Roxanne tells him exactly what happened to Minion, but he sounds pensive and excuses himself from their phone conversation quickly after that. Roxanne's not sure what that means. Probably nothing, she decides, returning to her work.
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Megamind doesn't know how to make popcorn, a fact Roxanne privately thinks is hilarious. "It's easy," she says, glancing over her shoulder at him before returning her attention to the microwave. "You just wait until there's about two seconds between each pop, then take it out."
Megamind, who is standing with his hands on his elbows several feet behind her, doesn't say anything. He's not good at "about" or "roughly." He would wait until there were exactly two seconds between pops even though he already knows there will never be exactly two seconds. He knows because Minion has told him this same thing several times, and he's tried, and it doesn't work.
Roxanne pulls the microwave door open when the average time between popping noises is 2.09 seconds. Megamind presses his lips together.
"See? Most of it's popped, and none of it's burned," Roxanne says, leaning back as she tugs the bag open and lets the steam escape. "Pass the salt."
But now Megamind steps forward, pulls open the fridge with one hand and a cupboard with the other, takes out butter and a small glass bowl in almost the same movement. He puts the bowl on the counter and pulls out the knife drawer in the same motion.
Roxanne blinks at him, smiling curiously. After so much stillness, popcorn is what gets him to move? "What are you…"
"Wait," he says. He cuts off a chunk of butter and puts it in the bowl, dumps a bunch of salt in on top of the butter, puts it in the microwave.
Megamind can't make popcorn. He can, however, make extra butter.
Roxanne puts the hot bag gingerly down on the counter, then leans against the closed fridge to watch. Megamind glances over at her, then down at the popcorn bag, then goes back to staring at the microwave.
Something flashes near his chest, and Roxanne realizes he's absently twirling the knife he'd cut the butter with between the bare fingers of his left hand. She opens her mouth to warn him to be careful, then realizes how silly that would sound—he's a supervillain, or he was; he knows what he's doing.
He opens the microwave with several seconds left on the timer. This, he can do, because he can see when the butter needs to be taken out. No counting involved. He takes out the little bowl and swirls it a little to make sure the salt is fully dissolved, then tilts the popcorn bag up and jiggles it a bit while drizzling the butter in. That should keep the distribution even enough, but he still pinches the bag closed and gives it a few vigorous shakes anyway just to be sure.
When he turns, Roxanne is holding out a wooden bowl and grinning at him. "So," she says, "I make the popcorn, you make the butter, huh?" She takes a couple still-hot pieces as Megamind upends the bag into the bowl and crunches thoughtfully, then raises her eyebrows. "'S good," she exclaims. "Not too salty. It's always too salty when I mix the butter and salt in the same bowl."
He doesn't really smile, but his eyes crinkle at the corners. "See," he says, "I'm not totally hopeless."
She laughs. "I see! All right, c'mon. Back to pod racers and bad animation?"
"Star Wars," he agrees. "Yes."
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She comes home a few nights after that and he's gone again, but this time there's a note in the bowl by the door where she leaves her keys. Getting food, it says. Back soon. Roxanne leaves the door unlocked this time, even though she goes to bed before Megamind comes in, and in the morning when she peeks in the fridge it has all kinds of meats and vegetables and juices. Her cupboards have been restocked with cans and packets of instant soups.
That wasn't necessary, but…it's a nice gesture, she supposes. It seems the villain is willing to earn his keep, and it means he's getting out and about, so it can't be all bad. Still, she can't help but wonder where he'd gone.
She thanks him for the groceries when she gets home in the evening, and he nods. But all he says is, "We needed food."
Which, while accurate, isn't much of a conversation starter. Oh well. At least he's starting to talk. And there was a we in there.
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Sometimes she's not sure if any of this is helping. Megamind doesn't cry again, not that she sees. She doesn't know if that's good or not. But he stays, and that's something.
He's also not awful from a roommate standpoint, which is something else. He doesn't behave like an interloper and he doesn't just live his life separately from her but in the same space; he listens to her talk about her day. He listens to her talk about food. He cleans up after himself and hangs up his towel and he never forgets to put the cap back on the toothpaste.
It's weird. And it's…sort of nice. But otherwise, it seems like he's locked in his head half the time, content to just share his existence with her, not really doing anything of his own or expressing any preferences. Roxanne doesn't stop asking what he'd like to do that particular evening, but all she ever gets is a shrug.
And she wishes it wasn't because Minion is dead. She honestly can't think of another reason why he'd wind up living with her, but any other reason has got to be better than that one.
It's been nearly a year since the accident with Minion. Grief takes its own sweet time, Roxanne knows that well enough, but…it's different when you're watching it wreak its silent havoc on someone else instead of dealing with the storm yourself. Still, it hasn't been long since Megamind's had a safe place to sleep and spend his days. Roxanne suspects he's been in a holding pattern, so maybe he couldn't move forward—not move on, but at least forward—until now.
For her part, she resolves to just keep living her life. Hopefully, Megamind will eventually be able to find his own cut strings and pick them back up again.
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She comes home late and scowling halfway through the third week and hurls her keys into their usual bowl, then looks up to see Megamind eyeing her warily from the middle of the room. It's more alert than he's looked in a while. And, to her intense surprise, he clears his throat and asks, "Rough day?"
She scoffs. "Ugh. You have no idea. So, my boss, right?"
"Carl."
"Yeah, Carl. So, Carl gets this great idea today to tell me that the Faber interview is tomorrow morning instead of next Friday like I thought."
Megamind frowns. "Isn't that the…"
"Federal tax fraud case, yeah, so guess what Idid from five-thirty—when I was getting ready to go home—until nine?"
Megamind's lips twitch. "You read tax law," he guesses.
Roxanne flops backwards onto the couch and kicks off her heels. "Yeah. I read tax law. And way too many sections of actual tax code, too. Don't you want to know why?"
He tilts his head at her.
"Because it was five-thirty and summertime and all the accountants I know were already home for the evening, so I couldn't ask them for ideas. This stuff isn't exactly rocket science, so I need to come up with enough bullshit to generate twenty minutes of sound bites for tomorrow." At this, Megamind tips his head the other way. She glares at him. "What."
His mouth does a twitchy thing and his eyes are suspiciously sparkly. If Roxanne didn't know better, she'd say he was trying not to laugh at her. "Miss Ritchi," he says, "you could have asked me." Then, when Roxanne looks dubious, he spreads his hands. "It's simple. The question is whether principles are easier to violate than rules. Section 7201 is all about intent."
Roxanne stares at him. "What? You…"
"Make it about philosophy rather than fact, and you should be able to keep Faber talking as long as you need him to," Megamind says. Then he blinks and rounds his shoulders a little, pulls back into himself.
Roxanne stares harder. "So, wait…the key to getting you to talk," she says slowly, "is to bug you about taxes?"
Megamind looks away.
Roxanne snorts. "Pass," she mutters. "But thanks, I'll…keep that in mind. You, um, you pay your taxes?" she asks, hoping to get him talking a little more.
He nods fractionally. No luck.
"Oh, for the love of…" Roxanne breaks off, shaking her head and deciding not to finish her sentence. You're allowed to talk, she wants to say, you're allowed to live! Although I don't know if I'd call being able to cite specific code sections living, exactly… Instead, she stands up and goes over to her television, rummages in the little compartment underneath it. "Well, thanks for listening, anyway," she says, crouching to try and see in the dark space. "I feel better. Aha!" She holds up her prize and turns around brandishing two wheels, slightly dusty but still solid.
"So, Spaceman," she says, making Megamind blink and frown at her, "you know how to play MarioKart? Best thing for a bad mood."
An hour later, with Roxanne cussing him out between gritted teeth, Megamind asks, "The best thing for a bad mood is to make it worse?" He doesn't like Rainbow Road.
"Sometimes," Roxanne mutters, and chucks a red shell at him. Nobody likes Rainbow Road.
Some time after that, Megamind says, "I do my taxes. Minion paid and mailed them."
Roxanne glances over at him. "Really? I sort of figured he'd be the one doing the clerical stuff and you'd just…sign them, or whatever."
"Paying and mailing is clerical," he tells her. "But he doesn't…didn't know everything he would have needed to fill out the forms."
She swallows. "You guys were a good team."
Megamind nods. "I don't know what to do without him," he says, and runs her straight off the road while she's still blinking at how unusually frank he'd sounded.
"Son of a bitch," Roxanne exclaims, startled, but Megamind only smirks.
Then he asks, "Why do you leave notes?"
"Notes…oh, the chore lists? They remind me what I want to get done so I don't have to think about it," she says. "It keeps me from forgetting. And if I have a lot to do, it's easier to figure out what to do first if I have it all written down." She shrugs. "It's just easier in general, I think."
"I should try that," he murmurs.
Conversation lapses after that, but Roxanne goes to bed that night pleased with herself.
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And who knows? Maybe this is helping; Megamind does seem to be coming back into himself somewhat. He starts to talk more, he makes eye contact more often, and his silent spells are becoming less and less frequent.
A full month and a half after Roxanne finds him wet on the street, she walks in the door to see him darting at the stove with a fork. He's trying to turn pieces of chicken in a buttery pan before the hot butter spits at him, hissing swears at the hot pan when it splatters.
She claps a hand to her mouth to stifle her laugh, but Megamind hears anyway; he spins and stares at her, affronted, two bright spots of color high on his cheeks. "Does it do this when you do it?" he demands. "What am I doing wrong?"
"Are you cooking?" Roxanne, still laughing, drops her keys and shrugs her purse onto the table beside them. "Let me see. What are you using?"
"Butter," he tells her, skipping back at her approach. He still hasn't stopped flinching when she touches him, so Roxanne has mostly stopped trying. "Salt. Pepper."
She looks at the pan, then at her roommate, then at the note paper on the counter—it's not one of hers; it looks like Megamind has actually been writing down what Roxanne does to cook dinner and was following that. There's another list taped to the microwave door. "You did just right. Nothing wrong here."
"But it's biting," he insists, glaring at the pan.
Roxanne laughs again. "It bites me, too, Megamind. I'm just used to it. You've never been burned before?"
"Of course," he huffs. "Lots of times. But not with it…pinching like this."
Grinning, Roxanne shakes her head. "You'll be fine. I'm going to get changed out of this skirt. And then I've got something for you, too!"
His eyebrows shoot up but he doesn't ask, only watches her until she's into her bedroom and the door closed. By the time Roxanne is back, wearing an old pair of jeans instead of the pencil skirt and hose she's been trapped in all day, he's got the chicken on a plate, the broccoli in a bowl, and turn off oven crossed off on the door of the microwave.
(Checklists, he thinks. Tedious but useful. It's an extra step than he's used to and it's so boring, but…as far as knowing where to start and what to do next, turns out they work pretty well. There's also the fact that sometimes he feels almost okay in the back of his head again—sometimes he picks things up, a low hum that he's not sure if he's hearing or feeling—and that seems to be helping, too, but Megamind has his own ideas about that. Most of the ideas involve trying not to think about how Roxanne will kick him out for sure if the hum means what he hopes it doesn't.)
"Man, you really did cook," Roxanne says, impressed and oblivious to Megamind's mental struggles. "With the oven and everything, look at you go!"
"I got bored," he says quietly, but his ears are pink.
They eat at the island like they usually do, Roxanne telling Megamind everything from the office that day. He even manages to ask a couple questions about various people she'd mentioned on days prior.
She tells him about Hal again, too. "He invited me over to his place tonight," she says. "He's having another party, apparently. He has a lot of those."
Megamind looks at her, suddenly tongue-tied. Roxanne is getting used to that, but it's still a little strange when it happens. She waits, and Megamind finally asks, "Why…?"
"Why…didn't I go?" she says, then shrugs when he nods. "I don't know. Hal's nice enough, but…he acts like we're together." She rests her chin in her hand, elbow on the counter, and rolls her last piece of broccoli around on her plate with her fork. "I don't know how to tell him how off-putting it is. Not that I haven't tried. But I also had to stop at the shop on my way home!" she adds, hopping down from the tall chair. "Wait juuust a sec…"
She hurries over to her purse and comes back with a flat, brown box, which she hands to Megamind before climbing back into her seat, folding her hands in her lap and looking excited. "I found these while I was out shopping yesterday. I wasn't going to…well, but I had to. You'll see."
He blinks at her, mystified and almost smiling, and takes off the lid, brushes white tissue paper aside. Then he blinks again and pulls back. His eyebrows twist together and his eyes widen a little in uncertain surprise.
Gloves. She'd bought him gloves.
And they look like they'll actually fit, which is incredible; Megamind's measurements are fairly unique. They must be custom. They must have been terribly expensive. Why would she buy him these? What is she thinking?
Slowly, he takes them out of the box. They're dark gray and have reinforced stitching, intended to be worn during various daily activities, but they're short in the wrist rather than being the opera-length kind Megamind usually wears. They're nothing he would have been caught dead in, before, but now…
"Gloves," he murmurs. "Where did you…?"
"Never mind 'where,' how do they fit?" Roxanne asks.
Megamind swallows and slips one onto his hand, thumbing the snap closed around the ball of his wrist. He flexes his fingers, makes a fist, feels the new leather creak around his knuckles when he squeezes. God, he's missed this. "Like a glove," he says, putting the other one on and repeating the motion.
"Oh, good!" Roxanne smiles, looking relieved. "I mean, he said they would, but…I wasn't sure."
"He?" Megamind asks. This is more questions than he usually asks in one night, more questions than he usually feels able to ask, but…he doesn't usually get presents, let alone such thoughtful ones.
"David. At Caladan's Custom Leather Apparel. They make your gloves, I just found out. I was walking the other day and I saw their display, and…" Roxanne colors under her freckles. "Well, I thought of you. You've always worn gloves. So tonight, I went in to ask about a custom pair. I thought Dave would need measurements, but I guess he realized who I was talking about when I mentioned you have really long hands." She laughs a little. "I'm…still pretty known for being your old kidnappee. That probably helped with the deduction a little.
"So he brought these out. Said he'd made them a while ago on a whim, sort of for practice and sort of because he was thinking it might be nice to offer you some variety, but his boss said you'd hate them."
"They wouldn't have fit the uniform," Megamind says, still staring at his hands.
"Yeah, that's pretty much what Dave said. So I brought them home. I know they're not your usual, but…" She peers at him, looking nervous. "Do you like them?"
Megamind nods wordlessly. Yes, he likes them. He loves them. They're perfect. He can't wear them to cook with, of course, but…for everything else, these are his hands. The gloves he'd been wearing when he'd left the Lair had frozen and cracked back in January, when he'd been living behind the library up on Fourth Street, and his hands haven't felt right since. Too bare. He hasn't been bare-handed for more than a couple hours at a time since he was a teenager.
He looks up at her, thinking again that these must have been expensive. They're the only pieces of his old outfit that Minion ever needed to outsource, and Minion was always one to gripe about costs. Megamind's opera gloves, with their steel spikes and buckles and silk linings, easily ran over four hundred dollars a pair. "How much?" he finally asks. He fully intends to repay her, but Roxanne just scoffs and shakes her head.
"Don't worry about it," she starts to say, then stops, startled, when Megamind puts a hand over hers.
"No," he says, low and urgent, "how much? Gloves cost a lot. I know."
"Dave only charged me for the materials," she tells him, blinking. "Since he'd had them for so long and it wasn't like you were going to want to buy them."
Megamind's gaze slips sideways, then darts back to her face. "Sixty?" he asks. "Dark kid leather, unlined, shortie cut without embeleeeshments, steel snaps?"
"Yeah," Roxanne says. "You're good."
"I know my gloves." Megamind shakes his head, pulls his hand back and sits up a little. "That's…I'll add that to the rest I owe you."
Roxanne frowns and shakes her head. "I told you, it's fine."
"It's not." And there's that hum again—a warmth in the back of his skull where Minion used to tick with him, and Megamind's not completely sure what it is. He's felt it a few times over the past month or so, and it's starting to come in almost every day, now. Probably nothing to worry about, but it only happens when Roxanne is home, and something about that…bothers him. He has some suspicions—nothing solid, but none of his ideas are good.
He doesn't say anything about that, though. He just sticks with, "It's not," and waits.
Roxanne looks at him for a moment, then shrugs. "Okay. Whatever you're comfortable with. But you don't have to keep track, really."
Megamind doesn't argue, but he frowns. Seriously, who is she kidding? He sleeps in her home, he eats her food—though he's managing to find ways around that by doing after-hours shopping at the grocery several blocks away every week or so—he uses her hot water, and now she's spent way more than she should have on a pair of gloves for him, which is an entirely frivolous expense and he knows it.
Why is she being so nice? It's unsettling. He'd thought maybe if he cooked, maybe if he cleaned and fixed what he could find and did the things she wanted to get done, maybe that would balance the inequity somewhat, but now these gloves…
He flexes his fingers again, feels the comforting pull of leather over his joints. He shouldn't accept them. He should tell her no, take them back, he's fine without them. But…
"Thanks for dinner, by the way," Roxanne says, smiling at him. "Good job."
Megamind's heart turns over. I'm in trouble, he thinks.
Minion would have known what to do.
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He's gone again when Roxanne wakes up the next morning, and there's no note this time. His gloves are back in their box.
Well, that's okay, she supposes. It's fine, he's allowed to leave, it's fine, but…he's not back that night. Worry gnaws at Roxanne's stomach, but she banishes it with an effort. Megamind can come and go as he pleases. It's not her job to keep him.
Still, she remembers how he'd reacted to her spur-of-the-moment gift and she can't help but feel like she'd spooked him somehow. But why? He's always worn gloves and she'd thought he might like to have a pair again. Then again, the fact that he'd actually touched her—he'd reached out—once he'd had them on hadn't escaped her notice, so maybe they mean more than she'd thought.
Dinner is too quiet and there are too many leftovers and she can't focus on her book. She goes to bed early but doesn't sleep well. In the morning, she pokes her head around Megamind's screen, but he's still not in his bed.
She texts Metro Man that afternoon. Mmd missing again.
Her phone pings half an hour later. Something happen?
I got him a pair of gloves, Roxanne texts back, feeling immensely silly. Watch, Megamind will come back and the gloves will have nothing to do with his absence. U know why he'd run?
IDK. Gloves are kinda personal.
Really? she replies.
They have to be made specially for him, right?
Frustrated, she sends, Why does that make a difference?
Means you're willing to go to additional effort. You're already thinking about him even when he's not there and you're paying close enough attention to know he'd want them.
Roxanne grinds her teeth for a second. Still not seeing a problem.
He calls her instead of responding via text. "Roxie, you gave a personalized, custom gift to someone who's spent basically his whole life convinced he's not worth giving two shits about, and you're really not able to get why that might freak him out?" Metro Man sounds as annoyed as Roxanne feels.
She recoils, unsure where the rudeness is coming from. "Convinced is a little strong," she protests. "He's not that bad."
"Uhh, yeah, he is. Trust me, I know."
"How do you know?"
"Because I spent most of our childhood beating it into him," Metro Man snaps. "Me and pretty much everybody else." There's a pause while Roxanne gapes into the middle distance, blindsided by both his tone and the revelation. "Look, Roxie, I was a spoiled, jealous, mean little kid. I was in high school before I finally got some sense knocked into me. The damage was done, so yeah, I'd say he's pretty convinced. Okay?"
Roxanne blinks. "Are you…wait, are you serious?"
"Yeah. I bullied the hell out of him. Straight-up. Nobody cared enough to stop me."
"Why are you telling me this?" It's so abrupt that it leaves her head spinning. What on Earth?
"Oh, gee, Idon't know!" Metro Man says, sharp, and Roxanne's eyebrows fly up her forehead—sarcasm is not like him. "Definitely not because I feel responsible and I'm worried he's off having some kind of crazy meltdown somewhere because someone's finally giving him the time of day. Good gravy, Roxie, why do you think?"
Roxanne waits for a moment, then says quietly, "Wayne. Come on."
A tired-sounding scoffing sigh crackles over the line. "Sorry. Not fair to take it out on you." He sighs again. "Well, now you know."
Roxanne isn't sure how much of his "feeling responsible" is fair, since Metro Man feels responsible for pretty much everything. But then, maybe this is why. Guilt would explain why he's been so ready to help, and it would certainly explain why he'd always been so quick to defend Megamind when Roxanne tried to gripe to him about the villain in the past. She takes a deep breath. "So…what should I do?" she asks.
"Hell if I know. Just leave your door unlocked and hope he comes back. He probably will. But if Minion's dead, I don't know whether…" He trails off, then resumes with, "Anyway, he'll probably be back. Listen, I gotta go, I hear sirens."
Scowling, Roxanne hangs up. "Great," she mutters. No actual help from Metro Man's quarter, and that evening when she gets home she finds that her landlord had finally gotten around to sending her the second set of keys she'd requested more than a week ago. The keys only make her feel worse.
Is it true, though? Is that why Megamind asked again if he could stay when he'd brought his clothes home—he doesn't think she'd want him to stay as long as he needs to? What the hell? Surely, she thinks, there must have been someone besides Minion to tell him not to listen to the bullies at school. One of the guys at the prison must have cared. They must have.
But nobody who could have actually helped, she thinks.
But he's a hugely successful supervillain! He's wildly intelligent, he's witty, he's…athletic? He has good fashion sense? He's a good listener. He must know that whatever Metro Man said back then isn't true anymore, if any of it was true to begin with.
She bites her lip, staring at her phone, wondering if she'd accidentally caused some kind of existential crisis and hoping he'll be there when she gets home. He isn't, and she goes to work the next morning feeling like she's swallowed a bag of rocks. She's too nervous to eat lunch or focus much on what she's doing.
But that evening there's a knock on the door and Megamind is standing in the hall when Roxanne opens it, and she's so glad to see him that she can't even be upset. "Megamind!" she exclaims, and she's this close to hugging him—but then she remembers that he has issues with touch and maybe she'd better not. She settles for awkwardly patting his shoulder and then pulling him inside by the elbow.
Megamind stiffens when she starts towards him, but she looks relieved rather than angry and it throws him off. He'd expected yelling about being gone for three days with no word.
"You're back," Roxanne says as she closes the door behind him. She's smiling. Smiling and staring at him. This was not the response he'd anticipated. "Good, that's…good."
"I…" Megamind says, then clears his throat. "I can find somewhere else, if…I don't want to, um, I think the phrase is 'over stay my invitation?'"
But Roxanne shakes her head. "No, that's not what I meant. I…it's nice having you around, I'm used to the company now. It was too quiet with you gone." She swallows, changes the subject. "Where'd you go?"
"I needed to get…some things," he says in an odd sort of monotone. "S-sorry. I'm. Going to brush my teeth now."
Roxanne nods. "Okay, sure, whatever," she says, then collapses back into her orange armchair. Okay. He's back. He didn't go throw himself off a bridge. I didn't ruin everything. Her hands are shaking, so she puts her face in them. "Okay," she whispers into her palms, and sits, and tries to relax for a while.
"Miss Ritchi?"
She jumps. Back so soon? she thinks, and suppresses the desire to laugh. "Megamind, for goodness sake. You live here; I think we're on a first-name basis."
He colors. "Roxanne, then," he says. "I…picked this up while I was out. For you," and he ducks forward and puts a velveteen jewelry case on the arm of her chair before skipping back again.
Roxanne arches an eyebrow at him and opens the little magnet, moves the soft fabric away, then looks sharply up at Megamind. "You didn't have to."
It's a tennis bracelet, silver with pale green stones. Roxanne looks at it, then looks back up at Megamind for a long, long moment. He fidgets but doesn't say anything. This is to offset the gloves, Roxanne knows. Part of her wants to tell him he really shouldn't have, that the gloves were a gift, she doesn't need anything in return.
The rest of her knows he won't buy that.
Finally she says, "It's lovely. Is it okay if I hug you?" He looks taken aback at that one, but after a startled pause, he gives her a jerky nod. "Thanks," she says, and rises, steps close, pulls him in.
Megamind pats her on the back a few times with one hand, leaving his other arm handing stick-straight by his side. Roxanne nearly laughs; it's like he's never hugged anybody before. "Put your arms around me, doofus," she tells him with a little squeeze. Gingerly, Megamind obeys. He's not very good at this, Roxanne thinks, amused, and tries to ignore the little voice in the back of her head that whispers, But he'll learn.
She pulls back after only a couple seconds. Megamind looks vastly bewildered about this most recent turn of events, and Roxanne decides that as long as she's got him off-balance she might as well go all the way. "Hey, um, a little while ago, I asked my landlord for a spare set of keys. They sent them up yesterday, so…you don't have to knock anymore when you get back in." She reaches for the bowl, pulls out a ring of four keys and hands it to him. "Here."
Megamind takes the box because there's not much else for him to do, then stares at them. His gaze flicks to Roxanne and his brow furrows. "Miss Ritchi," he says, because that feels safer than calling her Roxanne, "why are you doing this?"
Roxanne pinches her lips together. She's been thinking about that a lot over the past couple days. "Well," she says slowly, "a few reasons. But I guess the main one is that life's boring without you in it and…you need a place to stay." She offers him a half-smile. "And if you can't go to your home, I want you to stay at mine."
Megamind blinks at her, then down at the keys in his hand, and feels more lost than ever. He had thought that cooking and doing chores and taking over the things Minion had done for him would make him feel balanced, but it didn't. So then he had thought that a gift like the bracelet would make him feel balanced, but that isn't working, either.
"You look like you want to say something," Roxanne tells him. "What's up?"
He raises his head. "I kidnap you," he says. "I aim guns and flamethrowers at you. You've nearly died at my hands. And you…" He trails off, feeling like his heart's about to leap into his throat. "You're giving me keys."
Roxanne frowns at him, looking like she doesn't understand. "Why does any of that mean I can't share my home with you?" she asks. "Where is that written?"
He regards her for a long moment, then says, "I'm a supervillain."
"You're my friend."
Megamind closes his mouth with a snap and stares at her, sure he's misheard. Roxanne stares right back. She's not smiling anymore but there's no guile in her face, and after a moment, she clenches her jaw and scowls. "You're my friend," she says again, "and I've been worried sick for three days, thinking I scared you off with those damn gloves. I just thought you'd like them, and I could afford it, and…and then you were gone. That's all. I called Metro Man," she adds, and his eyes narrow before he can stop them. "He wasn't even surprised you took off. Something about you being convinced you're not worth giving a shit about." She shakes her head and cocks her hips. Megamind pulls back a little but Roxanne doesn't wait for him to say anything. "Now, I don't know if that's true, but if it is…unless you're gonna stand there and, and tell me to my face that I'm wrong for wanting to do something nice for my friend…then you're just gonna have to wrap your head around the fact that somebody out there actually likes you. Okay? Can you do that?"
Megamind's lips twitch. "I can do that," he says in a low voice. And then, before he can tell himself not to, he takes three steps forward and pushes his forehead against Roxanne's for half a heartbeat before spinning on his heel and heading for the kitchen—partly to get a glass of water, mostly so he won't see the look on her face. He's not sure how she'll respond to that one.
"What…was that?" Roxanne asks after a couple seconds of confused silence.
"You're my friend too," Megamind tells her without turning around.
"Oh." There's another pause. "Good."
He busies himself at the tap. Hopefully, she'll never know how hard it was for him to come back here. Living here is…comfortable. Nice. It's warm and bright and she smiles at him, she talks to him like he's a person but she doesn't expect an answer, she acts like the answers he gives aren't halting and odd. Living here is wonderful.
Living here also freaks him out something fierce. He's waiting for the other shoe to drop and he doesn't know where he is without Minion. If Minion were here, Megamind could breathe easily. If Minion were here, Megamind wouldn't struggle to find the first step to standing up and doing something. And yes, he's starting to get the hang of it again but that comes and go with the humming in his mind; if Minion were here, Megamind wouldn't have lost track of himself to begin with.
Sleeping underground was safer, it was more familiar; it was lonely and dark and there were no expectations. As much as Roxanne hasn't mentioned any expectations, Megamind can't help but feel like they exist and he's missing them.
He almost wasn't going to come back. He almost fled back to the drainage system under Metro City, where it was cold and damp and lonely and he knew the score, he'd almost gathered up all his bedding and moved it to a secondary location deeper down where they wouldn't be able to find him even knowing he was in the storm drains. At least then he'd be safe. But…
But it was cold down there. And it was damp, and dark, and he missed having a bed more than he'd realized at first. And Roxanne had said he could stay, so…
He swallows. When the other shoe does finally drop, when Roxanne realizes he's only partly himself without his Minion, when she finally figures out he's an inarticulate, invasive buffoon and she kicks him out for good…that's when he'll go back below. He can go back anytime, anyway; he doesn't have to stay. But he does want to stay, so…as long as she lets him, he will. He'll bring groceries when he can. He'll bring her gifts. He'll do what he can to maintain the balance because right now balance is all he knows how to do.
He leans heavily on the sink with a gentle humming in his mind and not his ears, missing Minion.