The sun has fully set when Roxanne steps off the elevator at her floor with four more of the massive flowers crammed into her purse. Likely she'll have a couple more before bedtime. Hopefully they'll hold off long enough for her to have dinner; Admiral Algae's expectorant is efficient but a definite appetite-killer.
She unlocks the door of her apartment and quietly closes and locks it behind her. Drops her keys in their bowl, drops her purse next to the bowl on the little table by her door. Turns on the lights, and then finally she stretches and turns around with a sigh, thinking of her pajamas waiting for her upstairs and the leftovers in her refrigerator and she needs to grab another bottle of expectorant out of the box from the Admiral, and—
stops
dead
in
her
tracks.
Megamind is sitting on her sofa.
His mantle and high collar are arranged on the back of her armchair with his cape and gloves. His boots are on the floor in front of him. Megamind is sitting on her sofa, sitting cross-legged there with his feet pulled up under him. They're bare, as are his hands.
His hands.
His hands which are cupped around one of the glowing lilies from Roxanne's bedroom.
He. Must have gone into her room looking for her.
Her mouth goes dry. I can explain, she wants to say, but all she can do is stand in shocked dismay. She should be upset with him, she should be angry, she should be anything but frozen…but here she is. Unprepared, still, despite all the months that have passed since this mess started.
"I don't understand," Megamind says, his voice quiet. He looks up at her. "It is me, isn't it."
Unable to speak, mortified, Roxanne just nods. Bites her lips together to stop them from trembling. She is not going to cry, she is not, she is not.
Her heart is screaming.
Megamind nods back and drops his gaze, frowns down at the flower in his lap. Strokes both thumbs down over its outer petals, slow and light, so carefully that they barely move at his touch.
Then he says, "Granted, I have been doing my absolute best to hide this, but I think perhaps I succeeded a little too well. Miss Ritchi, you…" He swallows hard. "How-how long, exactly," he says, voice cracking, "have you been operating under this—this insane misapprehension—that I could ever be anything but wildly, desperately in love with you?"
He lifts his eyes to meet hers again, looking lost.
That takes Roxanne a second to parse. And then she has to stop and try to think about it again, because it sounded like he was saying—
"What," she whispers.
Megamind takes a breath and seems to steel himself. He lays the water lily carefully down on Roxanne's coffee table. And then he gets to his feet and faces her with one hand flat on his chest and his other hand balled up white-knuckled at his side.
"I love you," he says, before she can gather herself. "Roxanne. I love you. I know—I know, of course, that with—without a flower, it is," he lifts his chin despite how his voice is shaking, "basically impossible for you to tell whether I'm lying. But. I love you.
"I have been plagued with dahlia flowers," he continues, as Roxanne stares at him with her heart hammering at her ribs like it's trying to escape, "for around two years, now. Which sounds like an absurd amount of time to hide it—really—but I, I swear to you. I swear, I—by all the water in me, by—all the salt of my blood," his voice is wobbling terribly, his eyes are suddenly swimming, "I love you, Roxanne Ritchi, and I am—so sorry; if I had known—" He glances down at the flower, it's enough to spill the tears down his cheeks— "if I had known, I—would have flown to you, thrown myself down at your feet, begged you to have me. Please. Believe me. I am—please—"
A thought seems to strike him, he sort of—starts—and suddenly his hands are fumbling at his belt and yanking his entire holster off his thigh, gun and all. He tosses the pile of buckles and straps and dehydration gun down on the table, leaving them to glow next to his alien flower, and then he stumbles forward a couple of steps. And looks back up at Roxanne, who is still just standing and staring at him and beginning, finally, to realize what he's saying.
"I am in love with you," he says, when she doesn't speak or move. "Hopelessly, entirely in love. I have been for an excruciatingly long time; apparently I'm—we are—both! a couple of complete idiots who have been suffering needlessly for…how, how long has it been, for you? How…please, Roxanne," she still hasn't moved and his voice breaks on her name; he looks like he's barely keeping from flying to pieces, "I…realized, Minion realized what it meant, and I—obviously didn't think this through very well," he gulps, "wasn't thinking really at all when I came, but I am—here, and I love you, I love you so much, please, just…please believe me?"
He lifts a badly-trembling hand toward her, wearing an expression of mingled hope and grief.
Oh—
She's, but she's—
Everything is spinning, everything sounds sort of far away and hollow, and—
—oh, and her knees have gone on strike, that's fun.
Roxanne staggers back against her door and slides down to sit in an ungraceful heap on her welcome mat, blinded with tears and unable to speak past the sobs hitching in her chest.
She can breathe. She's crying but she can breathe, for the first time in ages. There's no pain; the thickness in her throat is tears, she's choking on tears, not petals. She reaches for Megamind and he—gasps—and flies into her arms like a dove, falling to his knees in front of her and wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close. He folds her against his chest and holds her tight against him, shaking, as Roxanne presses her cheek to the strong arch of his neck and cries in huge, gulping sobs that take her by surprise, in the small part of her brain that's capable of being surprised.
Mostly she's just so dizzy with relief she can barely stand it. Megamind is here. He's here and he knows she loves him and he loves her back. Roxanne is done waking up choking on lily petals, done hiding in bathrooms and coughing quietly into tissues and signaling for commercial breaks and—he's so solid, he's so real.
"Love-love you," she gasps, clutching him and trying to bury her face between her shoulder and his neck. "Love you, Meg-Megamind, I—I'm—sorry, I'm—"
He shifts in her arms and she holds tighter with a sound of confused protest, but he's only moving to get his feet under him. "Come on," he says, voice thick. He slips an arm behind her knees and lifts her without any apparent effort. "Come on, sofa," and he carries her there and sits down with her legs across his lap and his arms around her and his nose and mouth shoved against her shoulder. And stops moving. Just holds on tight, hugs her tight against his narrow frame, and doesn't let go or relax.
Finally Roxanne is able to slow her gasps and swallow against her dry mouth and try for some degree of coherence.
"—God," she says, sniffing hard and gulping, "um. Sorry-sorry about that." Megamind doesn't move, only holds her tighter. "I don't—I don't know what that was."
"Release of stress," Megamind mumbles, "quite literally a venting of pressure. Human cortisol and other stress hormones are released from the body in tears." Then he gulps and finally sits back a little and looks at her, his expansive forehead rumpled with concern and his bright eyes scanning her. "Really, though, are you okay?" He brings his hands around to cup her face, holding her there the same way he held the flower and sweeping his thumbs over her wet cheeks the same way as well: far too gentle, his expression lost. Oh, he has tear-tracks dried all down his cheeks, Roxanne realizes. He's been crying, too. "Are you okay? This is okay?"
She gives him a wobbly smile and a slight nod. "Yeah," she whispers. She drags her fingertips against his leathers and tries to keep her face from crumpling back into tears. "Yeah, you're perfect."
His smile widens, firms, and his shoulders drop as he relaxes. "Oh, thank evil," he sighs, and he tips his head forward to rest against hers, his eyes slipping closed as he slides one arm around her back again and his other hand to rest on her shoulder. "That's. Okay. Good."
She had been expecting him to kiss her, but—this is nice, actually. Heads together, breathing their relief into the space between their mouths. Roxanne has wanted to be close to him this way for so long.
So maybe it's good that he didn't kiss her. This means she can—words—
"I've been in love with you for a little under a year," she tells him, low. "I can't imagine doing this for two." She sniffs again. "Do you need to cry? It's okay if you do."
"I cried a bit earlier," he replies, not moving. Megamind is not a tall man, but his arms are strong and close and everything she needs. "After the initial shock wore off. Then, you…do believe me. You do."
"Of course I do." Roxanne nods against him. "God, of course I believe you. You, you wouldn't lie to me, not about this. Not like this."
His mouth does a thing and he really does look like he might start crying at that, but all he does is take a quick breath and then sigh it out slowly, calming. He nods a little, breathes a soft "okay," almost to himself.
"Megamind," Roxanne says after a moment, lifting a hand to his cheek and brushing her knuckles over the soft skin there so he startles and opens his eyes. "How on earth did you manage to hide it that long? Two years?"
He finally sits back and looks at her again. "With difficulty," he says, sounding very tired but sending her a half-smile. "With difficulty, and breathing through my secondary respiratory system whenever I felt an attack coming on at an inconvenient time. It was…not fun! Very painful. But it worked."
She blinks. "Secondary…?"
His smile goes tense as his face goes wary. "I am an alien, Miss Ritchi."
"No, I know that, just…huh. Okay."
He swallows. "Yes. So. Maybe I can finally stop bleeding into my shirts, won't that be nice. Give my—um—my. Gills. A chance to heal."
"Gills?"
Her voice and expression go abjectly horrified. For one terrible moment, Megamind thinks oh no, okay, he'll have to hide the alien from her the same way he does from the general public.
But then she continues, "In air? Gills in air, breathing—you've been—jesus, Megamind! Yeah, I'll bet they've been bleeding! Is there—god, is there some kind of salve you can use? Moisturizer? Can I help?" Her eyes rove over his neck, her expression simultaneously appalled and questioning.
It catches him by such surprise that for a moment, all he can do is stare at her. And then his expression pinches and his eyes fill again. Dammit, he thought he was past this!
"Oh no," Roxanne says, sounding startled. She puts her arms back around his shoulders, hugs him. "Oh—are you okay? Hey," as he turns his head to hide his face against her and squeeze his fingers in her shirt, "Hey, are you okay? What's wrong?"
"Just wasn't expecting you to offer to help with that," he mumbles, embarrassed. "I'm fine, I'm—give me a moment. Really?" he adds, unable to stop himself. "You would—you're—okay with the gills?"
"I mean, yeah, except for the fact that they're bleeding, apparently," Roxanne says in a tone of bewildered exasperation. "Seriously, you're an alien, I get it. My last boyfriend had holes in his back; you are really not that weird. Where are they?"
"My sides," he tells her, shaky with relief all over again. Boy, that little flash of fear pulled him right into focus, didn't it? Everything he wanted was slipping away and then it slammed right back into confirmed reality with Roxanne in his lap offering help. "Between my ribs. And they're—quite sore, at the moment." He laughs a little.
"I bet," she says again, sounding troubled. "Okay, note to self, only hug you around the shoulders for now. Got it. So—"
"I would very much like to kiss you," he blurts, lifting his head.
Roxanne looks briefly startled, but then she lights up and suddenly one hand is on his jaw and the other is—oh—on the back of his head with her thumb resting softly behind his ear, just the way she touched him the day she gave him her eyeliner, and she's drawing him in and guiding him to tip his head and—
So that's how the noses go, Megamind thinks, just before all his thoughts dissolve into pink-tinted white noise.
Her lips are soft. Her hands are gentle. Megamind makes a high little sound in his throat and presses forward, and Roxanne hums and slides one hand down his neck to his shoulder as her lips move against his.
She didn't even hesitate, he thinks dizzily, tingling heat all down his side. She didn't—all he said was that he wanted a kiss, and she kissed him, held his face and pressed her lips to his. She wanted to kiss him. She must have. She's smiling.
"Well then," he breathes as they part, and he blinks at her for a moment before pulling her into another fierce hug. Her arms go around him just as tightly and his heart thrills.
"I love you," he says into the space behind her. Her arms go even tighter, and oh evil heavens, this is so good. This is the best.
"I love you, too," Roxanne says. She drags her fingers hard against his leathers. "I'm so sorry I didn't tell you. I wanted to. Every day."
His heart is so full it aches. A good ache, this time. "So did I! And if…no, Roxanne, no." She is in his arms and holding him; Megamind can't bring himself to regret any of the steps that led them to this point. "Don't be sorry. I could have said something, too."
She pulls back and looks at him, quizzical. "Why didn't you? You don't have to tell me," she adds when he sort of freezes. "I'm just. Curious. You wear your heart on your sleeve, or I thought you did. I thought I would have known."
He laughs a little. "Oh, I definitely do. But when I was with you, I wasn't thinking of Hanahaki. I was just in the moment, and…I really only hid it in the beginning. I've always been this way towards you, Miss Ritchi. But.
"I am a supervillain," he continues with a gentle shrug. "I'm a wanted man. Not to mention the whole alien thing. I'm not exactly the platonic ideal of…of a partner. Boyfriend?" He grimaces. "Frankly, even just the boy thing is up for debate. Jury's still out on that one. Being with me would be—will be—complicated and weird by all standards of the local culture. So…"
"You didn't think I would want to try," Roxanne murmurs.
"I didn't see how you possibly could!" He sighs. "And so, if I told you…well. I would still have Hanahaki, and I wouldn't be able to see you again without feeling horrendously guilty. And since I can't imagine knowing someone is choking on flowers for you is a good feeling…"
"You would stop kidnapping me."
He gives a small smile, a head-tilt. "Exactly. So." Then he tips his head the other way. "Why didn't you?"
It's Roxanne's turn to pull a face. "Similar reasons? I guess? I figured if I had a chance with you, you would have let me know ages ago. But you always seemed strictly professional. So I tried to keep it professional, too. And I—" She bites her lip, then rushes out, "I didn't want to stop seeing you. I didn't want to stop loving you! I mean, if you gave up kidnapping me, would I get over you eventually? Sure. But I didn't want that! You're fun and interesting and weirdly honorable and so charismatic, good lord. You sparkle. I don't know how else to say it. And I didn't want to lose you. But I did want to tell you," she adds, "I've been trying to figure out how. I just…hadn't worked up to it yet."
His ears are pink. He wrinkles his nose at her, blinking and starting to smile. "I sparkle?"
She flushes. "When you're excited about something? Yes. You have this smile and your eyes light up and—yeah, that one! It's like—" She breaks off, turning red under her freckles.
Megamind laughs, surprised and delighted. "Go on," he says, teasing, "by all means, continue telling me nice things about me. Stroke my ego."
Roxanne blinks once and then goes even redder, mumbles something like stroke your everywhere, then clears her throat. "Okay. Um. A few years back, my cousin was getting married in Brazil. Destination wedding. And we stayed at this place right on the beach."
Megamind squints at her. "We were talking about me."
She snorts. "You little egomaniac, be patient," she scolds, and the corners of Megamind's eyes crinkle with his laughing smile. "I've done kind of a lot of thinking on this. You know me."
His smile turns sly. "You have a whole 'pros and cons' list in a binder somewhere, don't you." And then, when Roxanne just makes a face at him to try and hide her grin and blushes harder, he cries, "Ha! I knew it! Is it color-coded? I bet it is. Are there tabs?"
She's laughing now, in spite of her embarrassment, and Megamind makes a pleased sound and squeezes her, drumming his feet on her rug at his ankles. "Ahahahah, you made a binder about meee," he sing-songs. "Do I get to see it?"
Roxanne shoves him gently, still laughing. "No! No, you don't, because it's the same one I started when you kidnapped me the second time and there are some very mean things in it. It just got a lot...bigger, with the Hanahaki thing."
"Mean things?"
She gives him a very frank look. "You drugged me and tied me to a chair. And various lasers. And you dangled me over a tank of robotic sharks."
"I'm a supervillain." He shrugs. "But you—love me anyway?"
"No," she says, and then hastily continues, "the word is and. Not but. You are a supervillain, and I love you. No 'anyway.'"
And then she kisses him again, long and sweet, to drive the point home. Because that was a flash of genuine shock and betrayed misery if Roxanne has ever seen one, and Megamind fell into it very quickly. Too quickly.
Thankfully he seems more or less okay when Roxanne slowly eases away from his mouth.
"Oh," he murmurs, as their lips part. "That. Makes sense."
Roxanne leaves one arm around his shoulders and rests her other hand flat on his chest. "You can see some of it," she promises. "Please don't go looking for the rest? A lot of it isn't even true anymore. But I'll show you the true things, someday."
He nods. "You have your privacy," he says. "I will not. Go digging. I promise. Pinky promise."
Roxanne chuckles and links fingers with him, and his face lights back up. "Oh!" he exclaims. "That is fun! Nobody's ever pinkied with me before."
"Pinkied—god, I love you." She shakes her head at him, still grinning. "Anyway. This is…one of the nicer things, I guess?" She had been journaling, listing everything she could think of that reminded her of him. But Megamind doesn't need to know that; it was still early in her affliction and he'll only want to know how long the list was. The answer to which is way, way longer than Roxanne would have expected had she not been writing things down. "It's a little bit of a story, though."
He cocks his head. "Brazil? Wedding? Your cousin?"
"Yeah, it was…like I said, right on the beach. And, and while I was there, there was this one night I couldn't sleep. My stomach was unhappy with me," she can't believe she's telling him this, what is she doing, "and so I was lying in bed, thinking about how much I wanted to sleep, when I heard a bunch of people all leaving the hotel at the same time. This was…oh, right about when the sky was getting light enough you knew it was going to be day soon."
"How long is this story?"
"Hush, you. So I poked my head out of my room and it was all these college kids. I'd actually met a couple of them the night before, we had a good time. Half of them were in pajamas—"
"The top half or the bottom half?"
"—and one of the guys I'd met saw me and went, 'you wanna come? We're gonna go sing on the beach.'"
"Where are you going with this?"
Roxanne dissolves into giggles. "You—you are so annoying! Ugh. I love you." Megamind hums at her. He hasn't taken his eyes off her face once; for all his teasing interruptions, he's obviously paying attention. "Anyway. So I go down to the beach with this—this choir, ohhhhh wait, wait no no no I just heard myself, this is going to be so corny." She groans, bending briefly down to push her face against his shoulder before sitting back up again. When she does, he's scowling so hard that she has to laugh again.
"Fully eighty-three percent of my schemes are terrible puns," he informs her. "You know I do not care about corny. "
She does know. Still bright red under her freckles, she sighs, nods. "Okay. Okay, right, I just…anyway. So I was on the beach with probably thirty or forty people, I had no real idea what was happening, I still kinda felt like I was going to be sick—"
"Now, with that being said, I really do not see how you potentially vomiting on a hermit crab translates to me being sparkly."
"—the sun still wasn't up but it was, you know, getting pretty light out. And I went all the way down to the waves with my kind-of-friends, and—"
She pauses then, her gaze going a little bit distant. "And they held hands," she says, and Megamind raises his eyebrows. "We all held hands. And…they sang. I actually tried to sing, too, a little; the piece was slow enough that I could kind of fake it with the person next to me, and I was too caught up in the moment to feel very sick anymore. So there we were, with…with the waves in front of us and the sand behind us and everybody singing, and…" She breathes for a moment, looking at something far away and years ago. "And it was…kind of peacefully intense? And then in the middle there was this sudden crescendo, just this sudden giant swell into a huge chord, everybody singing, and right when it crested—the basses came back in and the sopranos went high and the chord resolved—and the sun…" She smiles, still looking past him with her eyes misty and her smile wistful. "God. We hit the top of that chord just as the sun edged over the horizon and the sky went light and the clouds and the waves all lit up gold, and I was part of this giant singing thing with these people, and I…felt…"
She trails off, groping for words for a second before finally giving up. She blinks, sniffs, huffs an embarrassed laugh and refocuses on the present, dropping her gaze. "I think that was the closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had," she half-laughs, ears still pink. "Building to that with everyone singing, and the sun rising with us. I thought I'd never feel anything like that again. But I swear, that really is sort of what it's like," she finishes, still not looking at him, "being near you when you go sparkly. I get to be there with you for it; I even get to be part of it, sometimes. I look at you and you're lit up like the sun and so excited and…anyway, no, I did not want to risk losing that. I've been so scared of losing you."
Megamind doesn't say anything, and after a second she finally risks a look at his face.
He looks absolutely stricken, his green eyes flick-flicking around her expression, his hands stiff against her. "Oh god I want this to work out," he gasps before she can ask what the matter is. "Oh—holy fuck, that's—I don't think I can live up to—but—but I want this to work out so bad—"
"Live up…no no." Roxanne pulls up short, startled. "No, don't you understand? You've already lived up to it. This is already how you are."
He makes a kind of panicky scoffing sound. "Familiarity breeds contempt. And I'm—not—what is this even going to be? Dating me? Are we dating? I'm—I'm not even—"
"Breathe," Roxanne says. "Megamind, what is wrong?"
"Me! Everything! That's—I'm not—"
"I want this to work, too," she interrupts him, voice firm. "I am not interested in hacking up any more alien water lilies and I do not want you suffering through any more dahlias on my account."
"But what is this supposed to even look like?" he demands. "What are we supposed to do?"
"I don't know!" She shrugs once, hard and theatrical. "I don't know. I don't know what the future looks like, I just know I want to see it with you." She squeezes him a little and cocks her head at him, befuddled. "Sorry, I'll…try to stroke your ego a little less hard, next time."
"No no no that was beautiful," he says, "that was so—I just—I don't know what this is supposed to—"
"What do you want it to look like?" she interrupts. "Screw supposed. Screw Platonic ideals, Plato was an ass whose brain was shaped like another ass. What do you want?"
Megamind stares at her for a moment, barely breathing, and then says, "This? Like this? With you. Forever."
Roxanne's lips twitch. "Just this?"
He nods. His hands twitch where they're holding her.
"Hmmm." She puts her thoughtful face on. "I want this, of course, too. This, with you, forever. But also," she continues, "I want to know how to help with your gills. And your work. And your life. Whatever it looks like, I want to be in your life and I want you to be in mine. Whatever that means, I want it."
Megamind swallows hard. "You...you do? Really?"
"I do." Roxanne squeezes him into another hug and feels his arms tighten, feels him slowly curl his long fingers into her shirt. Yes, god yes, this is all she'll ever need. Megamind's arms around her, the cool, alive feel of him under her hands. "Yes, I want that. I want you. Hey, do you want something to drink? Coffee, tea? Something stronger?"
He's studying her face again as she pulls away and climbs off his lap to stand up. She slides her hand down his arm and catches hold of his fingers for a moment, not wanting to let him go. Megamind grips her gently, hopefully feeling the same.
But all he says is, "Coffee would be great."
She smiles—hesitates—quickly leans down for a kiss. "I'll go get that started. And we can chat about…this. Figure it out. Okay? Seriously," she adds, "you're a supergenius and I'm brilliant. We may have been a couple of idiots about this, okay, but…not anymore. We'll figure it out. We can do this."
Megamind nods. "We can do this," he echoes. Then he swallows, nods once, decisive if still somewhat boggled. "Yes. I want to do this. We can do this. Yes."
