We're having more nice things for a few more chapters, because after drawing things out that long we DESERVE NICE SOFT THINGS, DAMMIT

Chapter 15

It goes without saying that Minion is ecstatic. He's already coming to meet the invisible car when Megamind parks it and gets out, and when he sees Roxanne, he lets out a cry of "oh, thank EVIL," drops to his knuckles, and gorilla-sprints the rest of the way and sweeps her up into a hug.

Megamind is beyond delighted to note that Roxanne puts both arms around Minion's dome and hugs him back. For a moment there, he had been afraid she would just freeze or take offense somehow.

"Oh Minion," she says, "you amazing wonderful henchfish. Megamind told me in the car. Thank you, thank you, you are a lifesaver."

"I wouldn't have to be if you two would just talk to each other," he says, his voice full of relief and reproach. "Please never do this again. Please. It's been awful."

"It really has," she agrees. "No, we're—we're going to talk. From here on out. Never doing this again, ever."

"Sir is not the best at communicating," Minion warns.

Megamind squawks at him, indignant. "Aaa! Kindly allow me to sabotage my own relationship, thank you! And I—I will learn, I—can communicate just fine! Minion!"

"We'll figure it out," Roxanne says, smiling at him as she slides down Minion's breastplate onto the floor. She takes Megamind's hand, nets their fingers, and his ears pink. "We will. I promise."

He beams down at her. "I'm ever so happy to hear it! Well. I'll…leave you two to chat! I'll go make a start on dinner, I doubt you've eaten."

But he pauses as he starts to turn away. "Oh. And, um…Miss Ritchi, if you ever have…questions? And, and Sir is—um." Metal fingers make a tink-tink noise when he taps them together. "If I can help," he finally says, "in any way. Please do say something."

"Oh—but—I don't want to go over his head," Roxanne begins slowly.

Megamind opens his mouth, but it's Minion who says, "I am his head. Part of it, anyway. And he's mine. Ah, that is—also worth noting," he adds, when Roxanne pulls back and blinks up at him. "If you were hoping for a moving-out-buying-house-with-just-Sir type of relationship, that's probably not—"

"No no no no no," Roxanne rushes out, "no no. Minion. That is not even remotely something I was planning on. No. You're fine. And, and if I need help, I will ask you, I promise."

She glances over at Megamind as she says it, though, so: "Yes, yes, Minion has the FAQs," Megamind drawls, waving the hand Roxanne isn't holding. "That's fine. And it's probably a good idea, honestly," he adds, as Minion nods and turns and heads away. "I will….try, I promise you I will. But. Old habits die hard."

Roxanne squeezes his hand, smiles at him. He isn't sure entirely what that means, but it doesn't feel like a bad thing.

So he takes a deep breath and changes the subject. "So," he says. "My gills are…I have a sort of moisturizing ointment I need to apply to them in order for them to really heal. But it is…painful to apply, and awkward. If you're willing to learn—they are—a very weird texture, and probably going to bleed on you. I have gloves you should wear, but—still. It's okay if you don't want…"

He trails off. Roxanne's expression has just gone very gentle and open at him.

"You would let me do that?" she asks softly. "Actually touch them? Really?"

Megamind swallows. Hoping he looks braver than he feels, he nods. "I'm—yes? What were you expecting?"

"Not that." Roxanne's smile widens and breaks over her face like a cresting wave, and she steps in close and touches his jaw with her free hand, tips her mouth to his and kisses him softly. "I am so happy to help," she whispers as she breaks away.

He nods, feeling—happy and nervous and dizzy with kissing and joyful and afraid.

"My quarters, then," he says lightly. "This way."


The turn of the hour finds Megamind lying half-twisted on his side on his bed, shirtless and trying not to think about what a terrible idea this might be as he waits for Roxanne to finish washing her hands and donning her sterile gloves in his bathroom. He has his jar of ointment open for her beside him on the folded towel he's lying on so she won't have to open it and contaminate her gloves.

There's blood dried on the threads of its lid. Blood on his sides, too.

He's well aware that his bare torso looks incredibly wrong by human standards. He has no navel, for one thing, and nothing a human would recognize as nipples. His muscles are wiry rather than bulky and the way they wrap around his sides makes his ribs look startlingly prominent away from his gill structures. Roxanne helped him out of his leathers—which was an experience, letting her help strip his armor away—but Megamind shrugged out of the top of his undersuit and tied the arms around his waist on his own while she was washing her hands, so she hasn't actually seen him half-naked yet.

She swore she would be okay with the alien stuff, Megamind tells himself savagely, willing his heart to stop pounding so hard. She promised.

(I have squandered my resistance for a pocketful of mumbles, such are promises—all lies and jests; still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest—)

No. No. Enough. Megamind will be fine. He'll—

Roxanne steps into his room with her hands held away from her shoulders and he starts talking immediately to cover his nerves.

"So—so as you can see, I have—four gill slits on either side. I don't, I don't have an operculum, so the actual gill tissue is fully internal, like—with sharks. I told you that already, ahaha. And I pull water over them via my—spiracles—in my supraclavicular fossae—um—and, and so the water enters at my shoulders and pumps over my gills before exiting via the gill slits in my chest—"

Roxanne crawls onto the bed and shuffles toward him on her knees. Megamind continues talking, frantically trying to keep himself from cringing away from her.

"—which is interesting because I've found most humans think about gills as pushing water back and forth like a diaphragm and lungs but that's not how it works at all the water only goes one way and so I—"

Roxanne settles next to him, her hips against his stomach. "Megamind," she says, "it's okay if you don't want to do this."

"—what?"

She smiles down at him, trying to look reassuring. His eyes are enormous and he's awfully pale. "We don't have to," she says. "If you'd rather just show me how, or even just wait to do this at all, that's absolutely okay. You can change your mind, I'm not going to push you."

He stares up at her. "But," he says, "you wanted to help…?"

"Not if it has you this worried!" She can't touch him, but she sort of leans against his stomach. "I can wait. I am happy to help, I am equally happy to wait."

He hesitates, then gulps. "Okay, um. I can just—show you, then? If, if that's okay?"

She nods, eyebrows up, still smiling.

He swallows. "Okay. I…thank you. Thanks. No, leave those on," when she starts to take off her gloves, "leave those on for now."

She makes him get up and wash his own hands despite his insistence that he'll probably be fine, but finally he clambers back onto his bed to arrange himself on his side again. Roxanne has a small but powerful flashlight (also sterilized) in one hand and she's wearing the focused, determined expression he's always loved so much.

"I'm sorry," Megamind blurts, scowling and humiliated as he lies back down on the folded towel and rubs an alcohol wipe savagely down over the skin of his gill flaps. It comes away pink with old blood. "I do—ah!—trust you. I really do, truly. I don't know why this is so—I don't know why I'm—"

"It's okay," Roxanne insists again. "Really! I really am just happy to be here."

Megamind is secretive; she's known this for years. And now Roxanne is on his bed, in his cluttered bedroom with his mismatched furniture and long black gloves draped over every surface and a cape partly obscuring the mirror and dahlia flowers strewn everywhere—the darkest red she's ever seen, blood or velvet red, nearly burgundy; she nearly cried again when she saw them—and Megamind is shirtless, and he's letting her watch and maybe learn to do something incredibly necessary and painful to take care of himself. The man is basically a hermit; he has no social life whatsoever outside of villainy. It's no wonder he's freaking out. All of his armor is gone.

Not only is it gone, he let Roxanne take it off. And all she wants to do now is drape herself over him and try to offer comfort, but...his gills need seeing to, and it's sort of a toss-up whether Megamind would be comforted or even more upset if she hugged him right now.

Either way, for him to include her in something like this feels…intimate. He barely even let her see his hands before; he must feel so naked right now.

"Now," Megamind says, sounding much braver than he feels, "if you lean down and shine your light, you should be able to see what I'm doing…if I just…ow, fuck." Pulling his elbow back to hold a gill slit open with his fingers stretches the skin of his side; he hisses through his teeth. He shifts a little, tries again, winces. It's an awkward angle for his arm.

"Here," says Roxanne, and he pauses. "Here, maybe if I…?"

She moves down on the bed and curls up behind his hips. Half-covers him with her body and puts her elbow behind his back, and—slowly, glancing up at him and pausing until he nods, that's nice of her—slips her gloved thumb and forefinger under the flap of skin that protects his topmost set of gills and lifts it for him

So instead of holding his shoulder full of tension, Megamind exhales and dares to rest his hand on Roxanne's back, gripping her shoulder. And she hums in response and looks up at him. "Like this?" she asks, voice full of hope. "Yes? I can see really well if I…"

She clicks on her flashlight with her free hand and then rests her cheek on his side, her head heavy and steadying in weight and warmth.

"Yes," Megamind says, surprised, heart fluttering. "Yes, this…works. This is. Nice, actually. Okay."

He takes a deep breath. His hand tightens on Roxanne's shoulder as he scoops the fingers of his free hand into his jar of moisturizing antiseptic ointment and then, carefully, slides them up under his gill flap.

"I'm going by feel," he says. "The gill flaps become the interbranchial septums further in, and the—the hemibranchs, the gills themselves—are above and below. See how I'm—hnng—ah—nnn. Hnn. Pressing up and aaa-haaghnnnfuckFUCK—down? A little? And back and aAAIGH forth? To get an even spread?"

"I see," Roxanne says softly, as Megamind jerks and twitches and whimpers with his lip between his teeth. "I do see."

"Good. Okay, and—and the next one—"

She slips her fingertips under and lifts the flap for him, watching how he scoops the gel and spreads it carefully on the fragile tissue. His gill flap is paper-thin near the edge—thick paper, but still—but further up there's a small pad of protective fat or muscle to let it hold its shape, which means she can only hold the slit open a little bit. There's not a lot of room to work with in there.

"Megamind," Roxanne says, peering up into his gill cavity as best she can while he hisses and swears, "what color are these supposed to be?"

"Red," he pants. "Dark—ah!—dark red. Like, like your dahlias, aha ha. Ow—"

She swallows. "They aren't supposed to be gray and crispy?"

He grimaces, winces. "No. No, that's because they're so dry. Dead edges, flaking off now. In—in the morning I'll—have to pour saline down through them and clear out the dead bits and ointment, and then—put more ointment on. And rinse them again in the evening, and so on. Until they heal." He grits his teeth again, hissing between them. "You can, ha, you can see why I haven't bothered in a while."

"Oh, love," Roxanne murmurs, watching the papery lines split under his fingers, watching blood rise and gather in the cracks, "I'm so sorry."

"I'm okay."

He's not. He's Roxanne's sweet supervillain, her alien sweetheart with probably no one else but Minion who really understands the way his body works. And he's still in such pain, and he doesn't deserve to be, especially now when so much of Roxanne's pain has faded. Her throat still stings and burns and it probably will for a while yet, but at least it hasn't bled.

She stops him when he finishes with the last set of gills on that side. "Wait," she whispers, heart aching. "Wait. Just…rest for a moment?"

He gulps and nods, panting and shivering. Both his hands are trembling and blood is gathering at the edges of his gill slits despite the ointment.

Trying not to contaminate her gloves, Roxanne hugs him as best she can, turning her face to press her mouth to his cool blue skin. "I'm so sorry," she whispers, lips moving against him. "Megamind—sweetheart—I'm so sorry you're hurt."

"Wh…oh…"

Slowly, he rolls onto his back. Roxanne thinks wistfully of kissing up the curve of his ribcage to his solar plexus, but refrains; now probably is not the time. But she is still sort of crouching over his legs and hips, and when she looks up, Megamind is gazing down at her with a flush of pink across his sharp cheekbones and up his ears, and she just…

She does kiss the soft dip at the bottom of his sternum, holding herself up on her elbows on either side of him.

He touches her lips with the tips of his fingers when she looks back up at his face. "You," he whispers. "I am yours, Roxanne. Entirely."

Her heart leaps, twists. She is never letting this man go. Not ever.

She catches his hand and kisses his fingertips before she can think, then the heel of his palm. "You are mine," she agrees, full of joy at the thought of it. "You are mine, and I'm yours. And I love you."

His mouth wobbles, but his voice is surprisingly steady when he asks, "Would you? Help me do the other side? I do want—I would—benefit from help. It's so much worse when my hands start shaking."

Roxanne beams at him. "Of course," she says. "Of course I will. And I'll be careful, I promise. I'll be careful."

Megamind blinks once and then his lips twitch. "Ooooo, be gentle with me," he says, voice teasing, "it's my first time."

Roxanne snorts. "You," she says, fond. "Okay, come here. Roll over."

She helps him get situated, and then she has to quickly go and get new gloves because she's touched his bed and some of his skin that wasn't sterilized. When she gets back, his eyes are closed and he's breathing slowly.

"Still okay?" she asks, shuffling over to him on her knees and then hesitating.

He opens his eyes and sends her a twitchy smile.

"I can breathe," he says. He still looks nervous and his gaze is jumpy, but he is trying to smile. "Every time I tried to do this for the past two years, I've had a Hanahaki attack either during or immediately afterwards. But now…" He shakes his head. "Nothing. No more flowers. You love me."

"I do," she agrees, heart aching and still somehow bursting with joy. "I do. I think you are incredible and I'm so happy we get to…to go into the future together."

He swallows. "And I'm a supervillain…?"

"You are," Roxanne agrees. "And I think you're very sweet. Shall we?" She nods at his ribs.

His expression sort of freezes, but, "Yes," he manages, "yes. Please."

God, he's brave, letting her do this. "Okay," Roxanne says, moving closer. Despite his request for her help, Megamind goes rigid. "Try to relax…"

It looks like he's already wiped down his skin on this side; the dried blood on him is damp. Roxanne gets another alcohol wipe, first, to try and get more of it off and maybe ease him into this a little. And she is gentle—she's sure she is—but he still flinches terribly and gasps when it touches him.

"You're okay," she murmurs. "You're all right."

He gulps, nods. Does not whimper or make any sounds of pain, which is...good? Maybe?

Then she bends down. She situates herself partway down his body, the same way she was before, and she puts the flashlight in her mouth so she can hold it and hopefully see some of what she's doing. Megamind's breathing is very shallow and quick, but he doesn't tell her to stop.

But she lifts the first gill flap—carefully, so carefully, just the tips of her fingers—and his whole body jerks.

"Wait! Wait wait—don't—nonono—"

She freezes. Megamind's eyes are squeezed closed and he's gasping, he's gone so stiff that he's shaking. He hasn't moved to stop her or get away, but Roxanne isn't sure if that's a good sign or if he's just frozen in panic.

She spits out the flashlight. It's fine, she'll try to go by feel; he's obviously in no state to remain calm on his own right now. She needs to talk to him, needs to walk through this with him instead of doing this to him.

But…what is she supposed to say? She casts frantically about for something to relate to, something…the gynecologist? Maybe? Feeling exposed and embarrassed and uncomfortable while someone pokes around in her? Okay, but she isn't dating her gynecologist and it isn't like she can try to distract Megamind by asking about his plans for the weekend. She needs him to be present, not distracted. She needs him to guide her.

Okay. So. She'll just…

Roxanne squeezes her lip between her teeth and withdraws, then places both gloved hands flat over all four gill slits, covering them, hoping he takes the gesture as protective. She speeds her breathing to match his, sees his face twitch when he realizes, and then deliberately slows her own breathing.

Megamind follows, lips parting on a shaky exhale, and Roxanne relaxes just a little. Maybe they really can do this.

"You're okay," she says softly, trying to sound as gentle as possible. "Megamind, sweetheart. It's okay. Look at me?" He just swallows hard, and she says again, "Look at me. Please? Look at my face."

He slits his eyes open and looks. Roxanne gives him a tentative smile. "Hey," she says. "I am not doing anything if you don't want me to, I promise."

He gulps. He looks like he might be trying to smile back, but it's more of a grimace. "I do want your help," he says, in a strangled sort of voice. "I just. I'm. I'm sorry, I'll—I'll shut up."

"No no, don't do that," Roxanne says immediately. "Don't—Megamind, I meant it when I said I don't want to push you. This—"

"You might have to. I'm very, ah, stubborn."

"No," Roxanne says again, firm. "Absolutely not. Not with something that could hurt you like this. Your fear is reasonable! It's okay to—"

"I'm not scared," Megamind scoffs, for a moment sounding like he always has.

Roxanne isn't going to call him on it. "Okay, well, I am," she says. "Megamind, I am so scared of hurting you. I—"

"It's going to hurt, I do know that—"

"Yeah, no shit," she says, sharp for a moment. "But I don't want to fuck you up. So I need you to tell me what you need. And if what you need is for me to be clear on the other side of the room right now, that is okay."

He looks down at her for a long moment, green eyes big and expression, for once, inscrutable.

Finally he says, "All right. Let's—let's try. I know you don't want to hurt me. I—love you, I love you."

"I love you too," she whispers, blinking hard and resting her cheek on him for a moment, squeezing his stomach and back with her elbows because it's the only way to safely hug him right now.

Megamind gulps again and nods. "Yes. Right. Carry, carry on."

"You sure?"

He hesitates.

"…Is it something specific?" Roxanne ventures, looking around and trying to think of ways to help. "Something I'm doing wrong, or…" Her roving gaze falls on her hands still resting on his gills. "Oh, is it the gloves? Could that be—your, um, your—doctors thing? The gloves?"

Megamind's face goes from poorly-concealed trepidation to contemplative as he considers that. "I don't know," he says finally. He does sound a bit steadier with the distraction, if uncertain. "I don't have a problem wearing them, myself, so…"

"But on someone else?" Roxanne says. "Seeing and wearing are two totally different things, so—here, just—"

She strips them off her hands and tosses them aside. "What about now?" She lays a bare palm down over his ribs. And Megamind—

—relaxes.

More specifically, he relaxes, then looks very startled, and then he scowls and snaps, "Well that's annoying!" Roxanne snorts and he throws up a hand in consternation. "I mean, fuck! Okay! I guess it was the fucking gloves! So that's something new we know about me. Great!"

Roxanne is laughing, she can't help it. "At least we know! Do you still want my help? I don't know if—"

"Yes," he says flatly, glaring, clearly still annoyed. "Yes I do. No, not with gloves on—just—oh, just go wash your hands again really well, it'll probably be fine. Try and get under your nails, there's a bristley brush behind the mirror."

Roxanne nods and rolls off the bed onto her feet.

"Gloves," Megamind mutters behind her, voice dripping with scorn. "Ugh, you've gotta be kidding me."


What does a supervillain keep in his medicine cabinet? Pretty normal stuff, it turns out. Nail clippers, eyeliner, cotton balls, q-tips. An orange pill bottle with the label removed and "RX, LOL" scribbled on it in Sharpie, full of safety pins. And a nail brush, which Roxanne uses to clean vigorously under her nails as she washes her hands more thoroughly than she ever has in her life. She soaps three times. Between her fingers, around her thumbs, up her wrists. When she finally turns the water off, her skin is tingling and her nails feel very strange from the rough treatment.

"Okay!" Megamind says when he sees her. "Let us try! this! again! And I am…sorry. To foist this on you."

"I offered to help," she says. She climbs back up onto the bed yet again and settles herself, hopefully for the last time. "You aren't foisting anything. Okay." She looks up at him. "Ready? It's okay if you need to do it yourself again."

He nods. He's pretty stiff, and Roxanne remembers how he looked at her in her kitchen before he said she could help, but he sounds determined. "I am ready. Yes."

"Try to keep looking at me. It's just me, here. You know me. It's just me."

She bends back down and lifts his gill flap, and Megamind takes a sharp breath and tenses—but not nearly as badly as last time. When he doesn't say anything, Roxanne carefully slips the two fingers covered in ointment up between his ribs.

Megamind lets her do it, this time.

For the last little while, Roxanne has been sort of dating a man with super strength. It's a stressful power to have; he's lamented it more than once. "I have to handle the world like it's made of cotton candy," he complained once. "Cotton candy and antique ornament glass." That's her plan for this. She isn't even going to touch him if she can avoid it, she wants to drag just the ointment over the fragile rows of feathery, brittle-dry tissue.

But it's going to take some practice.

"Oh," Megamind gasps, sounding very startled, "that's—not bad, actuallaaighNoStopStop!"

She freezes, glancing up at his face.

"Too deep," he pants. "That's. That was too deep."

"Okay." She nods, heart pounding, and gathers more ointment. "Okay. No, look at me," she adds when he starts to flinch away in anticipation. "Megamind, at me. Good. Keep looking at me, okay? Keep telling me if I do something wrong, tell me what you need me to do. Hold onto me. Can I try again?"

His eyes on her face, his lip between his teeth, he nods.

Roxanne takes a deep, steadying breath, and leans back down. Megamind's hand settles on her shoulder as she lifts his topmost gill flap again and slides her fingers into him, and she rests her head on his arm for support.

"—Ah," he says, breathing very shallowly. "Yes, like—that's okay—a little deeper, just—there! Don't go—ahhnnFUCK—any further than that—"

She can feel his ribs moving as he breathes, the painfully dry rasp of his fragile gills under her fingertips. It really is an odd texture, but not bad. And it hits her, suddenly, the full realization of what Megamind is letting her do to him. She had known this was important, known it was dangerous, it could hurt him badly…but holy fuck, she has her fingers between his ribs, literally between the bones of his ribcage. If she hooked her fingers and yanked, or stiffened them and shoved, she could do some serious damage, maybe even kill him.

She finishes with the first set of gills with her heart in her mouth, then scoots down a little and positions herself at the next gill flap. "Ready?"

Megamind nods, breathless. "You're. Doing great. Hnnn—ahg. You do need—but, but you need to actually push down a little in order to ow! Me cago tu puta madre e la porca madonna—no no keep going, you're aaaraghcockSUCKing motherFUCKászat kibaszott faszkalap, sonuva pissbathing cuntfelcher—"

Roxanne withdraws and presses her face to his side to muffle her startled giggles.

"Very glad—my pain—is so funny to you, Miss Ritchi," Megamind pants.

"I'm sorry," she wheezes, as Megamind slowly relaxes under her again, "I laugh when I'm nervous. I really—oh, my god. I forgot you grew up in a prison. I guess I pushed too hard? I'm so sorry."

"No. No, you—well, okay. A little, yes. But you're, you're doing great! Really. You're picking this up so quickly. I just, the swearing, it helps."

She turns her head and rests it on his side again to smile up at him, still half-laughing, and a smile tugs at his lips. "Now, that," he says, sounding momentarily steadier, "that is nice. I like that, do that more."

"What, put my head on you?"

He nods, ears pinking.

"Let's finish your gills first. Come on, only two more. You can swear at me all you want, it's okay."

"Not swearing at you," he grumbles. "Just swearing."

His hand squeezes her painfully tightly and he keeps a steady stream of expletives going in multiple languages as she works to get enough ointment into and onto his gills to actually help them start healing. At one point, Roxanne says, "Hey, leave my mother out of this," just to see what happens, and Megamind bursts into pained laughter, then bites off a yelp and releases another long string of what sounds like mostly Italian. A hollow sort of knocking sound in his chest starts up after that and keeps going, which makes her pause, but she remembers his little trill as he yawned at Christmas. If Megamind isn't worried about the noise, she won't mention it either.

Finally, finally it's over. Roxanne cleans her blood-smeared fingers with an alcohol wipe and Megamind rolls onto his back again, eyes closed and bare chest heaving, his pointed features tight with pain. He lies still but moves his arm to allow Roxanne to settle herself against his side, which she does after checking to make sure his gill flaps don't catch or tug on her shirt.

She rests her head on his shoulder and her hand on his sternum. "You okay?" He shakes his head. "Will you be okay?" That gets a nod, and Roxanne exhales. "Good. Hey, you did it! I'm…I'm proud of you!"

"I'm. Getting blood on you," he mumbles.

"I don't care." His skin is smooth and cool under her palm as she slides her hand up to grip his opposite shoulder at the top of his arm, making sure to avoid the cracked, angry skin around his spiracle. "You can bleed on me anytime. Just…please. Please never use your gills in the air again."

"I promise." He pats the back of her hand a couple times, swallows. "Do you…have any questions? About…"

"About what I'm seeing?" She smooths her hand over his chest again, feeling the topography of his muscles under his skin, the bone of his sternum. "I'm curious. But I sort of think you've been stared at enough for one night."

Megamind is quiet for a moment before he blurts, "I really love you," and slides his fingers into her hair to press her to his shoulder as his other arm squeezes around her back. "I—I really—you have no idea how much I—"

"I think I probably do," she murmurs, turning her face towards his chest and breathing in the leather-almond smell of his skin. "We have time, sweetheart. God, I…I don't want to let you go." She laughs a little and lifts herself up on one arm just in time to see water roll down over his temples in a pair of bright lines. "Oh—Megamind, hey, no," she whispers, reaching up to catch his tears and touch his cheeks. He jumps, then gives a damp laugh.

"I'm fine, no, I'm fine," he chokes out, "I'm—I just—this is all so—"

He sits up suddenly and turns away, shaking his head and reaching to pull his undersuit over his chest and get his arms into it, sort of scrubbing at his face at the same time.

"I'm fine," he says again. "I'm—fine. Um."

Roxanne sits up, too, more slowly. "You sure?"

"Very sure! Yes. I'm, I'm sure." He gets to his feet and goes to his bureau without looking back, pulls out...oh, huh. A pair of jeans? She wasn't expecting that.

Roxanne swallows and decides to just go for broke.

"Um, sort of...related to not wanting to let you go…is it okay if I stay here, tonight?" Megamind stops moving, and she quickly says, "It's okay if the answer is no! You can just take me home. That's fine too. I just…" She takes a deep breath and then says in a rush, "I've just spent so long being scared you'd find out and, and that you'd be nasty about it—or be nice, I honestly don't know which would be worse—but also wondering if maybe you'd be open to something with me. The idea that you might also be in love with me was—sort of just a happy fantasy and I still can't really believe I'm here with you. I'd like to stay, if I can. I just—I want to hold onto you."

"I have…felt the same way." He swallows, blinking at her with big eyes as he straightens. "That," he says, "might be…um. Ye-es? That…"

The undersuit and jeans combo really highlights how athletic he is, how active his lifestyle must be. They do come from very different worlds. While he was obviously joking before, it's entirely likely that Roxanne really is his first. Of course he's nervous.

"Or we could—if, if you wanted," Roxanne offers, "we could go back to my place. You could bring your things for tomorrow and we could sleep there, instead. If you wanted."

His heart leaps, he relaxes immediately. "Could we?" he asks with poorly-disguised relief. "That would be—better. Yes. Please. Sorry, I'm. Weird."

Far from looking upset with him, she looks almost relieved. "No, no, it's a lot! I don't expect you to be fully comfortable with me in your space right away." She stands up, comes forward. Takes his hand. "If we can both be comfortable in my space…let's just do that."

"I love you," he says, fervent. "I really—really do." He exhales, smiles back. Then nods. "Yes. Let's go tell Minion."

She grins. "That you love me?"

"Yes," he rolls his eyes, "let's go tell Minion that I love you, I'm sure he'll be shocked."

"Oh, definitely. Completely blindsided."

"Flabbergasted, even."

Roxanne laughs. "I still can't believe he's the one who realized!"

"Yes well I am very tired, Miss Ritchi," Megamind grouses, hunting around for his belt. "I have not exactly been at my best and brightest."

"But you're a genius!" Roxanne exclaims, stepping back and stretching. "And it's—it's obvious, it's the conclusion most people jump to!" She puts on a fake-surprised voice as Megamind goes aha! and bends over. "Whaaat? My friend has Hanahaki? But they've always been fine around me OH WAIT—"

"You! Be quiet! You be quiet!" He straightens and spins, points at her with his belt swinging from his hand, laughter in his voice. "You say that as though I should have considered myself in any way a viable partner—conceived the inconceivable! I mean really—"

"I mean really," she interrupts, fists on her hips, "doing the impossible is what you do for a living! How was this any different? What, just because it's you? I swear, as soon as your gills are healed, I am bending you backwards over my hip and kissing you until you pass out."

His eyebrows fly up his forehead and then lower playfully. "Oh, I like the sound of that," he purrs, smirking at her. "Promise? I warn you, I can hold my breath for a very long time."

"I have a few tricks up my sleeve that'll take your breath away." She grins. "It's a date. Bet on it."

He hums. "Inconceivable."

"Oh, shut up."