HWOAH HEY THERE LOOK AT THIS IT IS A CHAPTER
WHAAAAT
So taxes are the most awesome thing but they are also destroying my brain because like 70% of what comes out of my mouth now is tax-related.
The other 30% is either Megamind
or snoring.
I don't own anything please don't sue me. Thank you to KarenBJones, beta supreme!
And now, on with the show:
Chapter 16
Roxanne learned years ago that real-life collapsing buildings aren't nearly as exciting as buildings that collapse in Hollywood movies—in movies there's fire, there's explosions and smoke. This happens almost without exception, in much the same way that helicopters always seem to explode.
A portion of the building slumps backwards in on itself, collapsing drunkenly into a graceless heap of rubble. The acrid scent of chemicals precedes the displaced dust bubbling up from the settling ruin, making Roxanne's wide-open eyes water. She blinks rapidly and squints into the obscuring haze around the structure—closing her eyes isn't an option, she isn't sure she could stand not looking—but she can't see anything except a few bright electrical flashes which, miraculously, don't catch.
If this were a movie, those flashes would have ignited something and sent an impressive fireball ripping through the dust and debris. Possibly there would have been a shockwave to follow, but mercifully, no such pyrotechnics occur. When the dust clears, blown away by the strong wind off the ocean, there's only a pile of grey rubble, twisted metal, and open canisters of various compounds cradled between two mostly-standing walls—the other two were pulled to rest by the falling roof.
Roxanne doesn't scream. She doesn't move. She doesn't breathe.
Megamind, she thinks, and under that, a lower, desperate, not again. "Megamind," she says dully, and then she's running for the pile of debris—running for the second time in her life, and God, she cannot do this again, she can't, she can't.
This time she can't even see him and somehow that's worse than seeing him on the ground with the spike through his chest, because now she knows. Now she knows she loves him, she knows what life with him is like, knows how blissfully easy he is to get along with, knows how he molds to her when they squeeze against each other at night, knows the rhythms of his breathing and the meter of his heartbeat. She'd forgotten recently how fragile it all is, how fragile they both are, because frankly he makes her feel like she's on top of the world, she's flying—but now he's buried in the wreck.
She's aware of people shouting at her, calling for her to keep back, it's not safe, it's not stable, but she doesn't really hear them; she's too busy tearing her palms open on bricks and the broken-wood skeleton of the building as she tries to get into and across the pile. Hands on her shoulders pull at her, but she jabs back with her elbow and heel and connects with something soft. "Go, make sure you get her face, zoom in on her face," someone is saying, and someone else is still stubbornly trying to pull her away from the wreckage, but wild fury leaps up and she turns and shrieks, snaps her hands out with fingers curled like claws, teeth bared. Don't touch me!
The portly man stumbles back, three bright lines across his temple and four down his neck, and Roxanne reels back around and clambers back into the rubble, nearly falls on a loose shelf. She hesitates, aware of her precarious footing and the unstable wreckage around her, but—dammit—Megamind is in there somewhere and she's not leaving him in there to choke or suffocate!
Blood thumps in her ears and she gulps down air, her stomach flopping uncomfortably as she looks around, trying to decide where to begin and already stumbling up and across the mess. It wasn't a big warehouse but he could be anywhere—
She's almost to the middle when an ear-splitting squeal of metal on metal makes her jump and clap her hands to her ears, looking wildly around for the source of the noise. When the sheet-metal roof collapsed, it fell inward to tent against one of the walls that's still standing, and now one of the leaning corrugated metal sheets has started to shift.
And then his voice, rising to a furious, inarticulate shriek, cuts through the dust and fear and resolves into words. Roxanne breathes again and resumes fighting her way over the pile, relief washing through her and making her knees weak. She's going to freak out later, she just knows it, but for now we're okay, we're okay, he's okay I'm okay we're going to be okay and that's more than enough to keep her going for another couple hours, at least.
"—Fucking—damn—Je n'y crois pas! A fene egye meg! Fuck!" This is followed by more incoherent angry yelling, and after a few confused seconds a black-gloved hand shoves a sheet of reinforced metal away from where the east wall hasn't completely fallen down, throwing up another cloud. Megamind struggles to his feet, livid and covered in dust and swearing a streak as blue as his skin at the top of his lungs. Not all of it is in English; he's given up all pretense of restraint at this point so some of it is just straight-up yelling, no words, just noise accompanied by spastic flailing motions and small hops up and down.
Roxanne wobbles, grabs a protruding piece of broken-off two-by-four, and uses it to help her make it over the final few yards.
Megamind pauses, panting, his eyes ablaze and his lip curling. He glares at something near his feet with such pure hatred that it's a wonder it doesn't burst into flame. "If she's dead, I will kill you myself, you worthless piece of shit," he growls. Then he looks up and sees her.
His teeth clench. If he were less furious, he would have smiled, but as it is he's relieved but still absolutely livid and desperate to know that she really is okay. He doesn't have time to smile. Instead, he steps forward, staggers slightly on the pile, reaches for her at the same time she reaches for him and grabs her arms. He stabilizes first, and she leans on him to climb over the last remains of a particularly bent and twisted shelving unit.
Then she's on him, nearly falling against him, heedless of the spikes bruising into her skin; the dull ache that comes when Megamind hugs her close with studded arms has never been more welcome. Neither will remember who asked first if the other is all right, but a minute later, his hands are tangling in her hair and she is crushing her lips to his. He tastes like salt and plaster. She smells like sweat and fear. "You got out," he says softly into her ear a moment later. "Thank everything."
Something near their feet groans and Megamind breaks free, his relieved expression slamming back to wrath as he twists, jumps, and slams his boot into Vitre's solar plexus with all his strength and a hoarse shout, then reaches down and wraps his hand in the man's hair. His eyes are nearly glowing in the slanting evening sunlight, as poisonous green as anything the chemicals around them could create.
He grabs Roxanne's hand and presses her knuckles to his lips, squeezes tight and then turns, tugging her after him, stalking over the pile of debris with his teeth clenched, dragging Vitre's limp form behind him by the back of the shirt. As soon as they hit the parking lot, he drops Roxanne's hand and puts his arm around her waist instead, then hauls Vitre over to the first police officer he sees and drops him at his feet, heedless of the fact that he's just scraped Vitre's face along the ground for several yards.
The officer gapes at him. "I think this is yours," Megamind snaps, trembling with adrenaline and wrath. "He brought the building down on us, so it's not my fault if he dies. I wish he would. Maybe he will; he's got a nasty concussion and a broken knee and probably a bruised lung if I kicked him right.
"And, just a heads-up, because you don't know how I operate: I don't appear in court. Ever. So don't bother with a summons." Then he turns on his heel and marches back over to the reporters, Roxanne in tow. Somewhere along the way, he finally manages to lower his voice, and he mutters, "Next time I say I'm going to go check on something, stop me."
"Sure thing," she says shakily. Next time?
Megamind glances at the cameras, and she feels his hand tighten on her waist. "Lovely city," he says, sounding completely insincere. "You're all wonderful. Sorry about this."
The reporter smiles. "I'm sure we're all just glad there was a hero around to help in our time of need."
Megamind blinks at him. "Time of need?" he echoes, aghast. "Who says that? And I'm not a hero. I'm not. I was just in the right place at the right time. I seem to have a knack for that."
The reporter is unfazed. "Regardless, your actions were heroic. Now—"
"Why?" Megamind demands, baffled. Ordinarily he's better at picking up social cues, but he's tired and emotionally exhausted and he just doesn't care anymore. "I don't see why they were particularly heroic. Anyone could have done what I did. Roxanne's the one that slocked him, I just distracted him—"
"Megamind," Roxanne says loudly.
"What?"
She smiles sweetly in spite of her spinning head. "Only a true hero would deny the truth of his heroism."
Megamind sends her a look that says, very clearly, So help me, I will strangle you when we get home. But before he can actually say anything, the other reporter slips easily into the silence after her remark and says, "Very true, Miss Ritchi, and you would know better than anyone else the, hah, truth of that statement. Back to you, Danielle."
Megamind stares at him and, in the pause between when the cameras can change over, says, "I'm sorry, do you think you're clever?"
Before he can say anything else his phone, which has been periodically vibrating in his pocket, goes off again. This time Roxanne notices. "Your phone," she prompts. Minion has been tingling in the back of her mind for a while now, but there wasn't exactly a whole lot she was able to do about that—she'd been pretty tied up after Vitre confiscated her phone.
Megamind sighs and takes it from the hidden pocket in his cape. "Ollo," he answers, walking away from the reporters without a second glance.
"Sir! Thank evil! Where have you been? Are you okay? What happened? Don't tell me there's nothing wrong—"
"Minion!" he interrupts, then modulates his voice to reassure his aquatic compatriot that all is well, "It's okay. Everything's been taken care of, we're both safe. Now."
He can almost see the little ichthyoid fussing. "Something did happen, then. I knew it! I was getting all kinds of terror from you but then she didn't call and I thought maybe something happened to her and then of course that would put you into overdrive—" He lets out a tired little moan. "I tried to call the house but no one picked up. Ohhhh, I should have made you take some brainbots with you. What happened?"
Megamind smirks. "I let Roxanne out of my sight for half an hour and she managed to get herself kidnapped by another villain, which I think must be some kind of record. Ow!" he yelps as Roxanne smacks him on the back of his giant head and grabs the phone from him.
"Minion, ignore him. We had a run-in with Vitre, but it's over now. Megamind came." If she'd been feeling better, if she'd been feeling less frantic, she might have said something about how heroic it was—Megamind would glare and she would laugh, and Minion would feel a little better for it. "He came for me."
Megamind steals his phone back. "Minion, we are fine now, but we're surrounded by cops and reporters," which isn't precisely true since both were keeping their distance from the still-cranky alien. But they were still in the same parking lot, at least. "I'll tell you about it later."
"Okay, I understand, Sir," answers the relieved ichthyoid. "Later is fine. I'm just relieved you're okay."
"Believe me, so am I. Until later, mon petit poisson."
"Goodbye, Sir," his tone turns half-joking, "and don't call me poisson."
Megamind puts his phone back in his pocket and trades it for his car keys. Pushing the button on the fob, the car chirps and flashes its lights as it flickers back into visibility a few spaces away.
Roxanne crawls into the passenger seat and closes the door behind her, humming gratefully at the warmer air inside the car—the adrenaline is wearing off and she's still soaking wet, and Megamind's cape is clinging to his thin body.
He climbs silently in beside her and turns the key in the ignition. The car automatically goes invisible again, and for a moment, he just sits and stares straight ahead, resting his hands on the wheel.
Roxanne swallows and looks down at her hands. Blinks. The nail on her right little finger is missing. When did that happen? It doesn't even hurt, but it is bleeding.
"Band-Aids are in the glove box," Megamind says in a low voice, and puts the car in gear.
Roxanne looks up at him in surprise. "How did you—"
"Smelled it," he says shortly. Roxanne nods and pulls out the med kit. Band-aids her finger. Puts the kit away. By the time she's done they've reached the highway, and Megamind is weaving in and out of traffic with his usual reckless grace. It always leaves her a little bit breathless, never mind that she should be used to it by now.
"Headlights, love," she says quietly, and Megamind turns them on. The sun has sunk below the horizon, and twilight is coming on fast. Anyone watching would have the curious experience of seeing headlights shining out from thin air.
They get off the highway and drive in silence towards Linda's house until Roxanne says, in the same low voice, "Turn left here."
Megamind does so, with much squealing of tires. There's a playground at the end of the road with a small park beyond, and he parks the car next to a dark-colored minivan—he also flips the visibility back on, since he doesn't want the van's owner to accidentally clip the car backing out.
Roxanne gets out, walks over to the jungle gym and starts climbing. She reaches the top, turns around, and sits down. After a long minute, Megamind turns off the car and follows.
He starts to settle himself beside her, but she shakes her head and pushes his knees apart so she can sit between his legs with her back against his chest. Wordlessly, he wraps his arms around her and presses his face into her shoulder. It makes his cheek hurt—he's going to have a bruise later.
"You had me scared for a minute there," Roxanne says after a while.
"I had you scared?" he murmurs, and she feels him shake his head a little as he echoes her earlier thoughts, "Please. Please, I can't do that again." His breathing hitches once. "Look, you do realize that your mother is probably right and I am a terrible human being, right?"
"I don't think she's ever accused you of being human."
That makes him scoff. "Oh, thanks." Then his tone softens, heads back towards serious and pensive. "Honestly now, if your family felt like this every time I kidnapped you, I mean…that's. That's pretty bad." And not the kind of bad that he might think is good from his bad perception. No. It's just plain bad. Really bad. The sort of bad that, looked at from any angle, from any view, is just shamefully, unavoidably rotten. It's one thing to try to hurt Metro Man; the hero knew the game and knew how it worked, and Megamind doesn't believe the hero was ever really that frightened for anyone's safely. But Roxanne's family must have felt the way he did today, and they must have felt this way year after year and, at the time, he'd never even considered their feelings. "I was a horrible person," he moans, leaning forward and bumping his cheek against the side of her head.
"Maybe you were. A little," she admits. She doesn't want to lie and tell him it was all okay, because it wasn't. He'd spent years as a criminal, a true supervillain. Any way you looked at it that wasn't okay. He'd terrified people over the years…but the past is the past, even if she saw it again today. She believes in second chances and she knows there is so much good in him, she sees that on a daily basis. The man he is today, the man he chose to become, is the one she's been looking for her entire life. "I love you anyway," she says.
"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner. I didn't even realize anything was wrong for hours. I almost lost you. I was so scared." He crushes her to him fiercely, hugging her with both arms and thighs and pressing his forehead hard against the side of her head as well. "I almost lost you," he repeats.
The disadvantage to sitting like this is that Roxanne can't hug him back, but it doesn't matter. Right now he needs to hold rather than be held—which is good because she's enjoying being held for the time being—so she just leans back against him, her hands on his knees, rubbing gently with her thumbs. After a moment, he lifts his head and kisses her hair, exhales slowly, cool against her scalp.
"Listen to me," Roxanne says. Her tone is surprisingly level, considering she's fighting the urge to just scream and not stop until she passes out; but then she always used to feel like that after kidnappings—back before she trusted him, back when Carn-Evil took her, after Titan. She's pretty good at ignoring that feeling. And his holding her is helping, for now. "What happened tonight wasn't your fault. I was stupid. I wasn't paying attention to my surroundings or my gut. It won't happen again."
"Do you have any idea how lucky we were?" He almost can't believe it, himself. "If the stuff in those bags was anything else, you'd be dead now. If Vitre didn't mess up the acid, you'd be dead now."
"You would have found a way," Roxanne begins, but Megamind stiffens.
"Don't," he says quietly. "Don't lie to me—and don't lie to yourself, it's dangerous. For all I knew, it was acid. You were in danger of dying, you would have died, and I failed you."
"All right, fine," she snaps, irritated. He's not making not freaking out any easier. "Do you want me to scold you? Your fighting looked half-assed and you were late. You should have gotten there sooner. You should have taken him out with the de-gun. Would've been safer for both of us." He shoves his face back into her shoulder again, hands twisting in her shirt, and she thinks maybe she should apologize because that was needlessly cruel—but she's so not used to taking care of someone else after a battle like this! She knows about self-care, not self-care and making sure Megamind is okay too.
So what she says is, "But, listen. You came as quickly as you could, and that's all that matters. And you would have found another way—you knew you had leeway, the idiot said what he put into the acid and I know you, you knew he messed it up. If you didn't know that, you would have done something different."
"But," he says into her shoulder, "I didn't know for sure."
"You did," she insists, thumping a fist against his knee. "You knew you had time. You knew I wasn't in any immediate danger so stop being so dramatic. You came for me, you didn't fail me."
She's still shaky herself. When his arms around her tighten she wants nothing more than to somehow crawl inside his skin and press their hearts together. "Look, Megamind, please," she says, "please don't give me any bullshit tonight. Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he says, his voice muffled. "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Stop asking."
"Because it won't happen again," she says flatly. "It won't. It can't."
"Oh, yes it will," he snaps, audibly rolling his eyes. "We've gone public, remember. We're going to be under attack for the next year, mark my words. And he was going to kill you." He lets out a short, harsh laugh that sounds nothing like him and sits up a little, peels away from her back a bit. "What an auspiceeous beginning. Tell you what, you're right, I'm just going to hit him with the de-gun next time. It's faster. And more reliable."
"It was set on de-stroy," she points out, because really there's nothing else that could have brought the shelf down except a hit from the de-stroy setting. "The de-hydrate function wouldn't have brought the shelf down like that."
"I don't care," Megamind grits out. "Let him die."
There's no way for him to tell her this without sounding like a complete imbecile, but she really is the only human outside the prison who has ever been consistently there for him. Even when he was a villain, she was a constant, she was a rock, even when he was too busy ignoring himself to realize that. She, and maybe one or two of his teachers along the way, is the only person outside the prison who has ever asked him what he thought and sounded like she was interested in his answer, the only one who has made him feel like he might, possibly, be worth something more than a catchy headline.
And he knows that kind of thinking is unhealthy and incorrect, which is why he's never bothered to bring it up. But while Megamind is logically certain he'd be okay if she died or left him, at times like these he gets a nasty twisty feeling in the pit of his stomach that makes him wonder.
"Roxanne," he says quietly, shivering a little, half-wishing he had dry clothes to change into. "Roxanne?"
"Yeah."
"I'm—" He can't get further than that, and after a minute she twists around to look at him. "I just, I…"
"Oh," she says. He's not sure what she's seeing in his face, but whatever it is makes her say, "no, it's okay. I'm here, we're okay," and twist around to kiss the corner of his mouth before snuggling backwards into his chest and pulling his arms closer around her shoulders like a spiky coat.
He made it through once, he can do it again, but after a day like today his nerves are shot and he's emotionally strung-out and he feels like he just can't fight anymore. But he leans forward, leans against her, and does his best to breathe.
"I used to come here a lot when I was little," Roxanne says after a while. "Before we moved to Metro City. My best friend Nubia lived in that house right over there," she points, "and I'd sleep over a lot, and we'd come out here and watch the stars come out and catch lightning bugs. I was always jealous of her hair," she adds wistfully. "I wanted cornrows so badly. And all the little braids with pretty beads in them. She was the one I was going to meet this afternoon."
Megamind is quiet. Then he says slowly, "Sometimes, they'd let me come up to the front yard. In Washington," he adds, before Roxanne can ask. "It wasn't all bad. There was grass. More than I'd ever seen in one place before, that I'd been able to touch. Once, Henny let me go barefoot for a few minutes. It was warm and sort of prickly." He squirms a little bit and rouses himself—Roxanne isn't sure, but she thinks his strange quiet mood may have passed, and she's glad. "Can we get down?" Megamind asks, and pokes her in the thigh. "You have extra padding. I don't. And sitting up here is kind of uncomfortable with you leaning on me like that."
Roxanne slides down off the gym and turns to grin up at him. "Are you calling me fat?"
"No," Megamind says solemnly, "I'm saying that my skinny butt can't compete with your truly magnificent derriere." He hops lightly down from the jungle gym and swats playfully at her rear. She turns and tries to scowl at him, but can't quite manage it. Instead she laughs and gives chase, stalking him through the monkey bars and around the spring horses. He's quick, nimble, and devious. All-in-all, he is far superior to her merely human reflexes in this game. He teases her awhile, spinning and dodging just out of her reach. But, ultimately, he wants to be caught and eventually rounds on her taking control of the game and tagging her again on her backside.
"No fair!" she grouses. "I was it."
"But you were so bad at it," he mock-complains, "I thought I should show you how it's done."
"You're not supposed to tag my butt."
"But I like your butt."
She scoffs and walks away from him, then wonders if he's ogling her backside. She smiles and puts a little extra sway to her walk, just for him, and is rewarded by an appreciative "Mmm," from her man. She ends up leaning back against a picnic table, surveying the park and remembering the good times she'd had in it as a child. She's disappointed that she hadn't had a chance to see Nubia after all. It's been years and she does miss her estranged friend—she's fallen out of touch with so many people over the years. She wonders what she'd think of her and Megamind being together. It's sad, kind of, that she honestly has no idea whether Nubia would approve or not. It's been too long.
Really, there are so many people who she just doesn't have any what they'll say, and it's kind of a startling realization. Of course she'd known she didn't know, but it never really sank in.
She has a hard time believing any of her current friends would stop being friends with her because of Megamind, but then, she hadn't expected Trish to start avoiding her after Chad happened, either. It doesn't help that that situation was way more basic cut-and-dry than dating an ex-supervillain who is also an alien and oh, by the way, she was his main kidnappee for several years. Because that doesn't have the capacity to be severely messed-up at all.
Eventually, Megamind strolls over and leans against the picnic table beside her. "Can I have a hug?" she asks.
He beams and nods but goes for his gloves first instead of moving in; he unbuckles them and rolls them down his arms to the spikes before pulling them off one finger at a time. Then he reaches up and unclips his mantle, swirls his cape and shoulder array away and drapes it on a nearby metal spring horse.
He only steps forward and reaches for her after he's no longer covered in pointy things, and Roxanne immediately rounds her shoulders and rests her head on his shoulder, tucked half-under his chin. Megamind puts his arms around her upper torso, then locks them comfortably closed around her and hums a little at the close feeling when he feels her hands on the small of his back.
He's made something of a study of hugs. He did most of his 'research' earlier in the summer when he wasn't sure if this would last, back when he'd been almost certain that tomorrow all this would be gone. There are three basic positions for hugs: his arms around her shoulders, his arms around her lower back—in which case her arms would be around his shoulders—and one arm over her shoulder and one arm under. Due to their similarity in height, all of these are reasonably comfortable and interchangeable, though the over-under hugs are best for quick squeezes while the other two are better for long embraces.
Later, he'd started to recognize that hugs feel different depending on why they're given. Right now he's not sure why Roxanne is asking for one, so he decides that this is both a reassuring hug and an I'm-glad-you're-here hug, with a little bit of you-are-best thrown in there for good measure. So that means squeeze gently and hold.
And of course he's thinking through all this, so when Roxanne mumbles "You give good hugs" into his neck, he smiles and says, "I try."
"No, seriously. I don't think you were hugged a lot as a kid. Where'd you learn to give such good hugs."
He turns his face so his cheek is resting on the top of her head. "I had a good teacher," he says lightly, but she feels him grinning.
Roxanne smiles and fists her hands against his leathers but doesn't say anything for a while. The wind when it blows is cool, making her shiver.
Megamind gazes slowly around the darkening park, not really thinking about anything now, just looking around and enjoying being close to her. Distant stars are picking themselves out of the sky, most of them blotted out by the light from the nearby city. The brightest are clear. It really is a lovely evening.
"Can I keep you?" Roxanne asks quietly.
He frowns. That's an odd question, he doesn't say. Will you marry me, he doesn't say, although privately he thinks he's probably missing a pretty good opportunity here. What he says is, "I'm here for as long as you want me."
"Forever's a long time."
"Ninety-one quadrillion miles is a long way to travel, but here we are."
She pulls back and looks at his face, clearly uncertain whether he's joking or not. "Ninety-one quadrillion? Really?"
Megamind grins at her and brushes her bangs across her forehead, which makes her blink—he almost never reaches for her face anymore, not since she'd told him she was head-shy. "It's some unholy amount of zeros," he shrugs, "Even I don't feel like figuring it out right now." Then he whirls away and dashes to the edge of the playground, where the mulch ends, and he springs into the grass beyond with a whoop and all the long-legged gracelessness of a bullfrog.
He flops down and sprawls on the ground, wriggling around until he finds a spot he likes. The small park hasn't been mowed in a while so the grass is fairly long, and he lies there with his mind all whirligigs and greyish fuzz as the last dregs of adrenaline work their way out of his system. He works on taking off his boots without using his hands—he undoes the buckles first though because they would be impossible—which involves a lot of scuffling with his heels against the damp grass.
Laughing now, Roxanne walks over to him at a more reasonable pace, peers down at him. "You're a child," she tells him fondly. "And a goofball."
He slits his eyes open at her, his smile curling his lips in at the corners. "But you love me."
"I do," she agrees, and lies down so that their bodies make a line on the hill, with their heads side-by-side. He looks at her.
"You're upside-down," he informs her sternly, finally kicking his boots and socks off and wiggling his toes into the grass.
"Am I? How silly of me."
But Megamind shakes his head, rolling it from side to side. When he lies on his back like this, his head is always turned to one side or the other—the swell of his skull makes anything else extremely difficult unless he has something to support his neck and upper back. "You can't be the silly one," he says. "I'm the silly one. We can't both be silly."
Roxanne pretends to think about that for a moment. "Then you must be upside-down, and I must be right-side-up."
"I must be."
"You must."
After a moment, Megamind decides, "I like grass. And trees. I've been considering putting some sort of arboretum in the Lair—a courtyard and a greenhouse, maybe. Some gardens." He sounds almost embarrassed. "Minion and I had a lot of fun designing his pool. I wonder what building terrestrial gardens would be like. It can't be too different from building marine ones, right?"
"Only one way to find out," Roxanne says. "Or you could buy some actual land and have a normal garden somewhere."
He hums assent as he stretches an arm up over his head, groping around until she catches his hand and squeezes. "I like your mom's gardens. They look wild but they aren't. Do you think the pink-and-white ones, what'd'you call 'ems, the ones that look surprised…"
She snorts. She hadn't thought about it that way, but they do. "Bougainvillea?" she asks, tangling their fingers together and wondering when he'd been able to see Linda's gardens in bloom. Maybe when he was looking at pictures.
"Yes, those, d'you think they'd grow in Michigan?"
"You'd have to ask my mom." She stares up at the sky, watching an airplane blink slowly across the blue-black field as Megamind absently strokes her knuckles with his thumb. "I doubt it. I think those are a warm-weather plant."
"Oh." He sounds disappointed. "Pity. I like them. They're funny-looking."
There's a pause, and then he bursts out laughing. Roxanne rolls over and props herself up on her elbows. "What has gotten into you?" she exclaims, laughing a little bit herself, but he can only shake his head and laugh harder.
She sits up and dusts herself off while Megamind giggles on the ground behind her. She leans back on her hands and looks up at the sky again.
After a few minutes, he finally stops snickering and a cool, long-fingered hand closes around her wrist—she turns to find that he's rolled onto his side and is looking up at her out of those glowing eyes. His expression has turned pained. "It's laugh or cry," he says, so softly that she almost doesn't hear him. "I'm trying very hard not to think about what happened today. It's something straight out of my nightmares."
"Man, I thought we were done talking about this," she groans, and brushes the backs of her fingers lightly over his forehead, his cheek, his throat. Presses her hand in the center right of his chest, over his heart. "Come on, now. Let it go. I'm safe. You're safe. Everything'll be okay in the end, you'll see. We'll be okay."
He continues to look up at her for a long moment, struggling with everything he needs to say and everything he simply doesn't have words for. There's the bone-deep fear of losing her or Minion or even Wayne, and the depth with which he treasures these small moments. How much he loves her. How much he fears dying alone.
"Megamind?" She sounds worried, maybe a little sympathetic.
"So, what happens now?" he asks abruptly. "When we go back to the house, I mean. Your mother must have been watching the news, and I went full supervillain back there." He frowns—he's almost definitely ruined his chances with Linda now. But there's not a whole lot he can do about that anymore, and he resolves not to feel bad about it. Of course, that's easier said than done; a knot of guilt clenches in the pit of his stomach.
But Roxanne just shrugs. "We'll have to deal with her. We survived this, we survived Titan and Anderson." She half-smiles, nudges him a little. "I think we can survive my mom. It'll just be a lot of shouting again."
Megamind's expression is, for once, unreadable. "I don't know. Maybe."
Roxanne drums her fingers on his forehead, making him blink at her. "You're the best friend I've ever had," she says quietly. Strangely, it's not the first time she'd said that in this park—she really does need to look up her old friend. Maybe several of her old friends. "I'm not letting my mother ruin that. I'm not a kid anymore. She can't control who I associate with." She leans forward to plant a brief kiss on his forehead.
Then she stands and brushes herself off, grins up at the sky, and runs over to the swings. Megamind sits up to watch her go. "You're in your thirties," he calls after her. "You're too old for swings."
"Never too old for swings!" She's pushing herself back and forth with her toes when she hears his cell phone go off, hears him answer with the, "Yes?" that means he doesn't recognize the number. He shoves himself to his feet, frowning.
"Yes, this is he." There's a pause, and then his whole tone changes. "What? He what?"
She looks over at him. He's gone pale, his shoulders pulled tight with anxiety, and he's doing that thing where he slowly spins in place as he talks which means he's really not okay with standing still and not taking action. "O-oh-kay, yes, thank you for telling me. How did you get this number? Oh. Oh, I see. Thank you. Yes, I'll take care of it, but if you could contact Bad Horse and have him send someone—oh! Fantastic. I understand, I'll take care of it, but this really is his jurisdiction and frankly I don't have the containment necessary to…yeah, bye."
"Megamind?" she calls, worried. He slams the phone closed and wheels around, staring at her, momentarily dumbstruck before he finds his voice.
When he finds it, he blurts, "That son of a bitch is on his way to your house," and then he whips around again and he's all but flying towards the car.
Roxanne puts her feet flat on the ground and watches him wrench open the trunk. "Wh-what? Vitre is?"
"Yeah," he calls back to her. "He must have some capabilities I didn't know about; I guess he healed himself and escaped. He knows where your family lives," he snaps, strapping on the jet pack that had been hidden in the spare tire compartment under the unexpected broadsword. The pack roars to life at his touch. "Follow in the car," he shouts to her as he thumbs the controls and leaps into the air.
"Megamind!" she cries, already on her feet and running to him. "No, wait!"
"I can't wait; I need to get there now!" He whirls and zips away.
"Megamind!"
She watches the glow of the thrusters disappear into the night, biting her lip, fear leaping in her chest. So much for not freaking out tonight.
"Not again…"
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
He's just landed outside the house when her voice spits out of his watch, never mind that he hadn't turned it on. "Megamind you bastard don't you dare go in that house without backup."
"How did you do that?" he hisses. He doesn't bother trying the knob; with the door's glass panes smashed in, of course the door will be unlocked. He hovers on the porch in a half-panic. There's no way he can go up against Vitre andargue with Roxanne at the same time.
"It's a closed frequency, how do you think I did this? I'm serious, don't go in there. Please."
"I have to," he says in a low voice, thinking of Linda and Drew, now very glad that Orson is away at his meeting. "Vitre is a live wire right now, and your family—"
"You're my family too. I don't want you to be hurt either."
"On that point we agree, but I can't do nothing," he snaps, almost dancing with impatience. "Look, I'll try to stay on the line, just—don't distract me."
"Be careful."
"Be quiet," he hisses.
He bursts through the door with the de-gun drawn, slinging the jet pack to the floor without a second thought and looking wildly around. He takes a step, then lets out a shout of pain and jerks back, flailing and slamming his wrist painfully against the doorframe—there's glass in his foot; he'd taken off from the park without putting his boots back on and of course there's broken glass all over the floor. He's so rarely barefoot that he hadn't even thought about it. It figures that glass would be one of the few things that can cut him easily.
Well, there's no way around it. Gritting his teeth, he takes a few more crunching steps and lifts his aching wrist to his mouth. "Roxanne?" he whispers. "Roxanne?" The watch's face is cracked and dark. What perfectly inelegant timing, he thinks.
He swears under his breath and looks around just in time for Vitre to poke his head into the kitchen. "Yoo-hoo!"
Megamind whirls and fires, but the man ducks out of the way with a happy laugh. One of the decorative vases on the side table takes the majority of the hit—it's blasted out of existence in a flash of green light, leaving a comically vase-shaped blank space in the middle of a blackened patch on the wall behind where it was sitting.
"You made good time, I just beat you here," he laughs. "But where's your girlfriend? Left her behind? Smart move. Too bad I've got her brother cornered in here!"
Megamind leaps and lunges into the living room, tucking and rolling—Vitre's hand whishes where his head would have been if he'd run. A quick glance tells him the man was lying; Drew is nowhere to be seen. Neither is Linda.
"Oooh, springy," Vitre sneers. He's not doing a very good job of pretending to be upbeat anymore; clearly fleeing to Roxanne's house and finding it empty has put him in a foul mood. "Look, I can hop around too!"
Somersaults are not easy for Megamind due to the size of his head, and Vitre bulls into his side just as he starts to roll to his feet, smacks him in the arm. The de-gun goes flying and there's a plink-tinking sound as the leathers on Megamind's arm begin to harden.
Vitre grins, but Megamind snarls and cracks his arm against the wall, shattering his sleeve before the crystallization can spread to his hand. The spandex underneath his leathers is synthetic and protects his skin; the look on Vitre's scraped-up face is fantastic. But then it contorts with a wordless snarl to echo Megamind's as he lunges forward, bulling into the alien, grabbing him with both hands now and spinning him around.
With his hands occupied he tries to lean forward, but Megamind is having none of that. He twists his hands to grab Vitre's forearms and then drops onto his back on the floor, pulling the other man down with him. At that point, he plants both feet in Vitre's stomach and kicks him across the room before popping back to his feet in a spray of sparkling leather-glass shards. Vitre stumbles back, arms windmilling out to catch himself. The ficus in the corner will now spend the rest of its existence looking like it was hit with an extremely localized ice storm.
He glances around and his eyes light up in triumph; he drops to a crouch and slams his hand down in a patch of red. Blood, from the wounds on Megamind's feet. Glass splatters from his fingertips in a narrow trail towards his opponent.
Megamind leaps back. He almost trips when he lands—his feet hurt, but he doesn't have time to pay attention to that and the second wave of adrenaline is helping—and Vitre bulls into him again, driving him down to the floor for the second time. Luckily, Megamind is able to flip over and grab Vitre's wrists before his hands can touch him.
So now he's on his back, both blue hands gripping Vitre's clothed arms, trying to keep the other man's bare, sparkling fingers from touching his face and wondering just how in the hell did he recover from a busted knee and a concussion and a bruised lung. Vitre grunts and strains, Megamind seizes his lip between his teeth and shoves against him with all his might, but Vitre is larger and heavier—
But Megamind's knees are sharper, and the strike he manages to land makes the bigger man's eyes cross. Seizing his brief advantage, the alien heaves, trying to roll them over without much luck.
Suddenly there's a blur of movement, a noise like CLUD, and Vitre crumples. Drops like a stone.
Megamind shoves him off and to the side, hardly daring to believe it's over and staring wildly around for his unexpected ally. At first he assumes it must be Drew; Drew must have popped out from wherever he was hiding—
But it's Linda standing over him with her feet apart and her cardigan askew, holding the marble statue of a horse rampant in both fists like a crude baseball bat. Her chest is heaving with fury and exertion, and for a moment she and Megamind both stare at each other, and then she reaches down and grabs him by the hand, hauls him to his feet. "You okay?" she asks shortly. Stunned, he nods. She hefts the statue. "Can I hit him again?"
He lets out a startled bark of laughter. "I wouldn't recommend it."
"Oh, please."
"After all the head injuries he's sustained today? It could cause permanent brain damage!"
The old woman is nearly hopping with pent-up rage. "But I really want to hit him," she groans through gritted teeth.
So does Megamind, frankly. His smile is sharp. "I won't tell if you don't."
Linda doesn't hit Vitre so much as drop the statue on him. It's solid stone and it makes a very satisfying sound, then cracks down the middle. "Oops," she says.
Megamind raises his eyebrows, offering a clear excuse: "You're old, you can't be expected to…uh…"
"To keep control after such a traumatic and harrowing experience," she supplies, already turning away to go get a wastebasket and start straightening up.
"Yes," Megamind agrees, "yes, exactly." Then he sways and sits down hard on the couch.
Linda swings around, ready for anything, ready for battle, but there's nothing immediately wrong—just a thin blue alien on the sofa with his face in his hands. She wavers, tempted to just let him deal however he needs to. She resists the urge. "You okay, there?"
He nods mutely.
"You sure?" She regards him critically for a moment. "You look pale."
That's when he curls forward and puts his head between his knees. It's more of a wilting motion than anything else, and it's fairly unexpected—from what Linda has heard of this creature, he isn't particularly comfortable showing any kind of weakness in front of others. "Can I please have a glass of water?" he asks without looking up. "With ice?"
She stalks off without saying anything. Even mildly concerned, Linda is not an old lady who can be said to 'bustle.'
Megamind is almost too tired to register how oddly she's behaving towards him until he pulls his hands away from his face, looks at them, notices his outfit and remembers yet again that not only is he fully blue, but he's still wearing what's left of the main part of his uniform as well. And Roxanne's mother, who by all accounts hates him with a fiery passion, who should not be at all pleased about any reminders of his sordid past, just smacked another supervillain over the head with a marble statue to save his blue butt from—
Ah, yes. Vitre. He has a bad habit of not staying down for very long.
When Linda comes back in, she finds Megamind on his knees, reaching behind the gleaming ficus in the corner.
"Thought I told you to stay put."
He straightens and gets to his feet, but his eyes are unfocused and he's listing to one side. One of the plant's leaves tore a discomfortingly straight line in his sleeve when he was groping around behind it, but luckily, it doesn't seem to have broken his skin. "Had to get my gun," he says, holding it up and somehow managing to go even paler than he was previously.
She raises her eyebrows. "Good for you. Now sit down before you fall over—not on the couch! You're half-soaked."
"'Kay." He sinks onto the raised hearth instead and slouches there, elbows on his knees. He looks like he's about to pass out.
Shaking her head, Linda hands him the glass of water, only to draw back in surprise when he offers her the de-gun in return, grip first. "You want to do the honors?" he asks, cocking a sculpted eyebrow at her. "I bet you do."
Slowly, she takes the gun from him. "This is twice now you've handed me a weapon." He blinks at her, then sends her a tired, sparkling smile. She sighs, wondering vaguely what's going through his head. "I'll try to resist the urge to cause you severe bodily harm." She goes back over to where Vitre is sprawled over the carpet and takes aim, the unfamiliar gun held in a two-handed grip in case it kicks. It glows green and sparks as she touches the trigger and the barrel guards open like petals, which makes Megamind suddenly squawk and flail at her, slopping water everywhere.
"No! Wait! I forgot, it's still set on de-stroy; you'll oo-bliterate him!"
She looks back at him but doesn't lower the gun. "And that's bad?" At the look on his face, she sighs and looks down at the gun. Holding it in her left hand, she rolls the selector up one setting to de-hydrate. Megamind lets out a relieved breath as the gun's light turns the electric blue that indicates the proper setting. "Y'know, you could have just let me destroy him. Waited until it was just a little too late to stop me."
He blinks at her, stiffly offended and starkly ignoring what he'd said to Roxanne in the park barely fifteen minutes prior. "I don't kill people."
There's a flash of light and a noise that can only be described as "wittering," and Vitre's body is replaced by an unobtrusive blue cube.
Linda doesn't say anything in response to that, but she hears his muttered addition of, "Never intentionally." She sighs, passes him the gun grip-first, followed by the cube. He holsters his weapon as she sits laboriously down next to him, keeping a safe distance between them. "These old bones," she groans. "I tell you, it's a pain."
"Better than the alternative," he says, turning the cube over in his hands, "and old bones, nothing; you laid him out."
"Well, he was going to kill you, what else was I supposed to do?" She rubs her shoulder, grimacing. The gun has a stronger recoil than she'd expected from a ray gun. She's glad she fired it two-handed. "I'm going to regret it tomorrow. Where's Annie?"
He shrugs. "You could've let me die," he points out quietly, setting the cube down on the hearth next to him and leaning on his knees again. "Wouldn't've blamed you."
Linda glances at him, sitting there with no spikes or gloves or shoes, nothing to give his outline even a little bit of bulk. She's been thinking all week that he was smaller than she'd ever thought, and now, as tired as he is, his larger-than-life presence has collapsed in on itself and he's just—an exceptionally skinny person sitting on her hearth with blood on his hands and feet and shadows crawling under his eyes.
She lifts her hand without thinking; if he were human she'd reach out. It's too late now to pretend she wasn't going to, so she swallows her pride and bitterness and pats him very quickly on the shoulder before dropping her hand back into her lap.
Megamind doesn't say anything for a moment, and then he says, "You should grab some rubbing alcohol. You're gonna need to sterilize that hand."
Linda gives him a dirty look—she was trying to be nice—but then she sees the way his lips are twitching and she can't help but snort. And then he starts quietly laughing, and it's all so incredibly ridiculous. She's sitting next to the one man she's spent years hating more than anybody else in the world, they're both chuckling, her living room is in a shambles and there's blood all over her carpet, and neither of her children are anywhere to be seen.
"Seriously, where is she?" she finally asks, still grinning a little.
He shrugs. "On her way here with the car, I imagine. Jet pack only has room for one." Then he reaches up over his head to slide the cube onto the edge of the mantle, since his hands are kind of shaky and he doesn't want to accidentally splash more water and rehydrate Vitre. He needs to hold onto it until Bad Horse's representative gets there. It's common knowledge that the Evil League of Evil keeps close control over most of southern California—Megamind was just first responder.
"And since when do you care who kills me or not?" he adds, looking at her sharply, but she's frowning at the floor where he'd been fighting.
"Whose blood is that all over my carpet?"
He decides to let it go; he's not really feeling up to pushing his luck. Actually, right now he doesn't really feel up to standing. He's dealt with massive blood loss before and he knows it isn't pleasant—he also knows this isn't even remotely the worst he's ever had.
"Most of it's mine." He takes a sip of water, feels a little bit better, sips again and moves one of his feet, then blinks. Even as much as he knows he lucked out, there's a lot more blood than he'd expected to see soaking into the rug. He heaves a sigh, then brings his ankle up to rest it on his opposite knee. "There was glass on the floor in the entryway. Ow," he mutters, pulling a particularly large shard out of the bottom of his foot and grimacing. A fat drop of red blood the same color as a human's wells from the wound and rolls down his blue sole to drop off his heel and onto the carpet. He presses his finger to the wound—all he can think is "put pressure on it" despite the fact that his feet are a mess and he doesn't have enough fingers—but it only makes him wince as it puts pressure on another sliver still embedded in his skin.
Linda passes him a pair of tweezers and he glances up in surprise. "Did you just happen to have these, or do you have a really useless latent superpower I don't know about?"
"It's called Old Woman Over Sixty," she deadpans, pulling out her phone. "Guaranteed to have a pair of tweezers and nail clippers on my person at all times. Don't worry, they're clean."
He snorts. "It doesn't much matter if they are or not. My eemmune system is spectacular."
"It's 'immune,'" she tells him. "Hi, Annie. …Yes, he's here. No. No, I'm fine, he's hurt—not badly, he's just bleeding all over the…" she glances over at Megamind, whose foot is blood-slicked and now dripping steadily, "…everything. Can you pick up some antiseptic at the CVS on your way home?"
"If you have muriatic acid, she doesn't have to," he says, and she nods.
"Never mind about the CVS. Okay. No, he'll be fine, don't worry, he just stepped on some broken glass. Be careful when you come in the door." She listens for a few seconds, then rolls her eyes and offers Megamind the phone. "She wants to talk to you."
"I need more hands," he mutters; one of them is clutching a pair of tweezers and the other is carefully cupping a growing collection of red-shining splinters. Linda puts the phone against his ear.
"Roxanne?" He pauses, then grins. "Well, my feet are full of glass and I think I might be dehydrated, but other than that I'm okay," he says brightly. "Your mother beaned him with a statue, it was fantastic. I did almost nothing. …Don't worry about that. It's fine. I said, it's fine, don't worry about it, just come home, okay? Everything is good here," he states firmly, and then his face and voice soften slightly. "I know. I will. I love you too. Bye."
Linda hangs up the phone and watches him for a few seconds. He's frowning into nothing, his pupils contracted with nervousness. "What?"
"She sounded mad."
"Of course she sounded mad. Your conversation with her cut off in the middle of you screaming in pain."
"I did not scream," he protests, but she levels a glare at him that could curdle milk and he subsides. "Okay, okay, so I screamed, jeez. Picky."
Linda rolls her eyes and pushes herself to her feet. "I'll go get some paper towels."
He nods and resumes pulling slivers from his feet, biting the inside of his cheek so he doesn't whimper. "I-if you could also get the muriatic acid, some potassium iodide from Drew's room, some more water—ow—and either bleach or hydrogen peroxide, that would be great."
She sighs. She isn't going to say anything about him not being the only one in pain, here, or the fact that the more she pushes herself today the less she's going to be able to do tomorrow. The stairs right now are going to hurt.
"I'm, um, I'm sorry," says Megamind from behind her, and she turns and glances back at him. He looks uncomfortable. Apologizing is not his forte, but he belatedly remembers that she'd complained of discomfort from her old bones just a few minutes earlier. He's naturally rather self-involved, but it occurs to him that maybe he shouldn't have asked her to fetch so much for him. "I can wait until Roxanne gets back for it, if the stairs are too much for you. A few minutes won't make much difference, but I think I do need the paper towels, or maybe a clean rag now. Is that okay or…I'm sorry, I don't know how bad your mobility issues are." He can feel his ears beginning to get hot and knows he's blushing, but he can't seem to stop talking. "This morning you said the stairs were okay, but just now you were saying about just getting up and down and…I'm not sure…I'd get the stuff myself, but…I can't actually stand up."
Which is probably entirely true. Linda nods. It doesn't change anything, but it's nice to know he isn't completely discourteous. "I'll get the paper towels. We might have some iodine in the downstairs bathroom."
His eyebrows shoot skyward and he sits bolt upright. "Oh! If you have that then don't bother with the other stuff. I didn't think you had any."
"We used to. Wouldn't peroxide work?"
He does that wilting thing again and shakes his head. "N-no. It's alcohol-based and I'm allergic. Sorry."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
"Your feet are ridiculous." Linda is sitting in her chair, looking around at the damage and wondering if she shouldn't just push herself through and do some of her own post-battle maintenance to try and minimize the damage to her home, but…she's also interested in watching the proceedings by the dark fireplace.
Megamind hasn't moved from his seat on the hearth, but he has one foot up on his knee and he's prodding with the tweezers at one of his weirdly long toes. His feet are very narrow and they taper surprisingly quickly, so the ends are flattish and odd-looking. He hums agreement. "But, to be fair, most of me is ridiculous—at least by human standards." He winces and adds one final splinter to the small bowl of shards at his hip, then blots gingerly at his foot with a paper towel. "…I think that's the last of it. Thank you for getting all this." He looks over at her, making eye contact for a split second before quickly looking away again and rounding his shoulders. "You didn't have to."
"How difficult is all this going to be to clean up?" she wants to know. "Can I use cold water and peroxide, or does your blood have some weird property I don't know about?"
"My blood is fine. Very similar to yours, as a matter of fact." He pauses and takes a deep breath, trying to calm his still-jangling nerves and ignore the fire in the soles of his feet. With any luck he'll be able to hold off actually freaking out until he and Roxanne have gone to bed and she's asleep; the last thing he needs is for Linda to see him in one of his moods. "Hemoglobin is a requirement for survival in most of Earth's biomes." He steels himself and reaches first for the bleach, then the potassium compound.
"What are you doing?"
He swirls the two-cup measure, peering at the clear liquid inside until the iodide is fully suspended, then adds a generous helping of muriatic acid. The liquid turns dark brown almost immediately.
"I react badly to most alcohols, so iodine—"
He isn't given much of an opportunity to explain more than that; loud steps sound on the porch and the front door bursts open, crashes off the wall. Roxanne's voice slams into the house with equal force. "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING."
Megamind's head snaps up and Linda turns, then reaches forward and hastily relieves him of the homemade iodine solution before he can spill it; Roxanne has appeared in the doorway and is bearing down on him with her jaw clenched. Even from this distance and even with his caffeine pills he can nearly taste her rage; it's so strong that she's all but projecting it.
She looks angrier than he's ever seen her, pale, radiating tension, and he gulps. "What—in—hell—were you thinking—just bursting in here in your bare feet, going after him on your own, no backup at all, I don't know what was going through your thick skull—"
He's leaning away, pale, his eyes so wide the whites are visible all the way around; Roxanne has both hands planted on either side of his hips and is up in his face all but screaming, "That was careless! Stupid! You could have died! You could be glass right now, a blue glass statue, how would you like that?" She smacks her palms down on the stone of the hearth. "STUPID!"
"Yelling!" he shouts, wide-eyed, trying to put coherent words together, but overwhelmed by the foreign emotions assailing his senses. His last dose of caffeine was hours ago. "Yelling!" he repeats, then, "And I had it under control!"
"What, so I shouldn't have worried?" She recoils a little, sarcasm making her sharp, then snaps forward again, snarling, "You think you're the only one who gets to worry?" Megamind flinches; if he leans any farther back, he'll fall over. Roxanne doesn't appear to notice or care. "That's twice today you nearly died!" she cries. "Twice! You wanna try for a third time? 'Cause if anyone's going to kill you tonight, you bone-headed bird-brained blue alien freak," deep breath, "it's gonna be ME!"
"Will you stop! Yelling! At me!" he yells, then reaches up and pulls her down to her knees and into the most desperate hug Linda has ever seen. Roxanne reciprocates, grabs him against her, bundles him in and hooks her chin over his shoulder so she can clutch him with her jaw as well as with her arms, fingers dragging at his spandex and finding no purchase. Tears leak from her tight-shut eyes, chasing down her streaked face, and she doesn't look like she's breathing at all. Every ounce of her concentration is going towards holding onto Megamind like she'll never let him go.
His eyes are still very wide by comparison, and he's gasping like he's just run a marathon. He pushes his cheek against the side of her neck and tries to remember to exhale, tries not to count the racing heartbeats—it's not a panic attack this time, he's just upset, very upset, and he twists his hands in her shirt when he feels her throat working. A second later, she bites back a sob. Then another, and then she makes a very small, painful sound and starts shaking and he knows she's crying now. It's like a knife in his gut, it always is, and he wants to hold her closer but his arms are already as far around her as they'll go and as tight as they can be.
He grits his teeth as his own eyes fill. It's not fair. What do you do when the person you love best in the world is clinging to you and crying? This isn't the sort of problem he can provide a solution to. It's not even a problem, just an expression of emotion. What's he supposed to do? Finally, at his wits' end, he starts humming. He has no idea what song it is, or where he'd heard it first, only that it was at some point in his fuckup of a childhood and that he'd found it comforting at the time.
"Megamind," she manages. She wraps an arm up around the back of his head, almost cradling him into her shoulder, sobbing. "Megamind, f-for the love of God."
Dammit. "I know. I know." He squeezes his eyes closed and holds her as tight as he can, rocking slowly forward and back, forward and back. "I'm sorry, I know."
"I thought you were dead," she chokes out, and he suspects she would have said more, only her voice goes high at the end and breaks.
All he can say is, "I know."
"I was scared. I don't w-want to lose you."
"I know."
"I love you."
"I know." He turns his head and sticks his nose in her ear. "I love you too. So much. And I don't want to lose you either, and I thought—I thought maybe I was going to, tonight, and it was the most scared I've ever been." He swallows hard, manages with a herculean effort to keep himself from crying because Linda is there and he won't cry in front of her.
Linda isn't sure what to make of this exchange, honestly. She should probably say something like, what about all those war machines you used to threaten her with, what about those flamethrowers and alligators, but—incredibly—she doesn't really want to. Not right now, anyway. Roxanne isn't the only one who's pale and shaking, she isn't the only one with tears on her cheeks.
Even so, hugging is okay, but if they start kissing while she's watching she's not sure what she'll do. She'd leave the room, but her hips are killing her.
But sudden movement out of the corner of her eye makes her glance up again.
Roxanne does something strange: she slumps to her knees on the floor and buries her face in Megamind's lap, wrapping her arms around his calves and twisting her hands up to hold onto his thighs. And he puts both hands on the back of her head and then curls his long torso forward and down so that his considerable forehead is resting on the backs of his hands on the back of her head, and they both just sit like that until their breathing finally evens out.
Linda blinks, but after a few seconds' confusion, it starts to make sense. With a head that size and a brain to match, it's entirely possible that heads would hold some kind of emotional significance in a relationship like this, at least for Megamind. That explains all the strange forehead-to-forehead contact that's been going on. But this is slightly different, this is Roxanne putting her head entirely in his control of her own volition—this is her not only accepting comfort, but actively seeking it. This is him giving it.
Then he murmurs, "Although, in all seriousness, you do have more of a right to kill me than anybody else," and Roxanne's shoulders start shaking with sniffly giggles. He chuckles softly but doesn't move until she hums a little and sighs; then he rubs a hand down her back and straightens, smiling, and she lifts her head and rests her chin on his knee.
"Although, in all seriousness," she mimics, "if you ever do actually die, I will raise you from the dead and kill you myself."
"Deal," he replies, and she grins and sits back on her heels. "It'll be easier than you think, I have my consciousness backed up in one of the sublevels of the Lair. He's a couple of years out of date, too, so he won't think you wanting him dead is anything out of the ordinary."
"I'll make Wayne help me, it'd only be fair, considering the circumstances of his untimely demise." She offers a watery, wild-eyed grin when Megamind snorts. "How are your feet?"
He grimaces and gives his toes an experimental flex. "They hurt," he admits, "but I got the glass out, so I should be okay in a few days."
It's a totally honest response, which Linda hadn't expected, and he's got this gently happy smile on his face and in his eyes that looks…really difficult to fake. "You can hit me," he offers, "if it will make you feel better. One free shot."
Roxanne smiles at him and stands, takes him gently by the chin and tips his head back and brushes a kiss across his mouth instead. When she pulls away he's got the same star-struck look in his eyes, the same marveling, wondering smile.
"You do your iodine thing, I'm gonna get changed really quick and then I'll bring you some gauze," she tells him, and the smile goes wide and breaks over his face, all white teeth and shining eyes and relieved slumping shoulders and good lord, he looks tired.
"Thanks," he says, his eyes on her all the way to the door, and it really is incredible how much exhausted gratitude he's able to pack into that single word. "Огромное спасибо, солнышко моё." Roxanne turns and glances back at him, smiling at the unintelligible phrase before she disappears, and he smiles back, wide-eyed and thunderstruck.
Which is right about when comprehension smacks Linda upside the head like a sock full of lead shot. Fuck her. He's sincere. He's completely, genuinely sincere; it isn't an act anymore—if it ever was. He really is just totally open about everything, he really does just wear his heart on his sleeve. He's relaxing now that Roxanne is home and safe, he's letting his guard down, he's grateful that she's taking care of him. They take care of each other. They care for each other. Megamind actually cares.
"To hell with you," she bursts out. His head snaps around and he blinks at her, wounded and bewildered, the shining smile extinguished.
"Wh-what?"
"I—you just—agh, blood all over my floor—got that statue in Italy, now it's broken—glass everywhere—hope you're happy—" She grabs her cane and pushes herself to her feet; if she stays any longer she's going to go off, and it won't be pretty. She stumps off to the kitchen instead, still muttering under her breath.
As soon as she's out of the room he lets out a soft sigh and leans cautiously back until he's sort of propped against the wall and the stone hearth, at which point he flinches, adjusts, then goes boneless with exhaustion.
The crackle of plastic lets him know Roxanne is back, but he doesn't open his eyes, so he completely misses the way her expression is slowly going flat. "Long day, huh, sweetie?" she asks quietly as she arranges herself cross-legged on the floor near his feet with a roll of gauze bandages and the iodine, which he's still blotting onto his feet with the last of the roll of paper towels. "Here, let me."
"Mm," he says, then bolts upright with a startlingly feline yowl when she presses the brown-soaked cloth too hard against the bottom of his left foot.
She swats his knee. "Oh, stop."
He clenches his hands on the stone. "Hurtsssss. Not so hard."
"It's your own fault for not looking where you were going or putting on your shoes."
"Would a little sympathy be too much to—mmngf." This when she startles him with another kiss. He freezes, momentarily wide-eyed, then cards a hand into her hair and lets his eyes slide closed.
For Linda—who had returned, unnoticed, as soon as she heard him snarl—his body language really says it all. Every inch of him is straining towards Roxanne, his shoulders curling in, jaw jutting forward, arching his back. Not much, but enough, and when she breaks away he exhales and takes a second to open his eyes. It's like he's trying to pour himself into her rather than draw her into him, and that, unfortunately, is the sort of unconscious signal it's nearly impossible to feign and therefore extremely difficult to refute.
She stifles a growl and returns to the kitchen, where she waits, nursing a weak gin and tonic, until she hears her daughter say that she's going to go find him a pair of Drew's old slippers and then clean up a bit. She waits there until Roxanne is safely on her way up the stairs, and then she goes back into the living room. Megamind's feet are now bound in several layers of gauze.
"Should probably take you to a real hospital," she observes, and he looks up at her and shrugs.
"Not a huge fan of hospitals," he admits. "Too white. Too bright. I don't like needles, either."
She purses her lips and nods. "Let's get one thing straight right now," she says abruptly. "I'm an old woman and set in my ways. I don't like you, you're irritating. You bounce around too much, you have no restraint."
There's a pause. Finally Megamind says, "But…?"
Linda sighs and folds her arms over her chest. "But I know when I'm beaten. Judging by what I've seen here, today? You know exactly how lucky you are."
He swallows hard but doesn't say anything. Yes, he does, and every time he remembers, it makes his heart flip over in his chest. I should probably get that looked at.
"So this is me, talking to you face-to-face and telling you I think she's out of your league. But you're the one she wants, and I've seen enough to know it's probably time to throw in the towel."
His mouth falls open. "You're—giving up?" he blurts. She nods, scowling hard.
"I won't lie, I wondered a little today if you didn't orchestrate this whole thing with Vitre just to prove yourself to me. It all seemed a little too perfect." Megamind makes an outraged spluttering sound, and she holds up a hand. "But I don't think you'd cut the hell out of your feet just to do that, and Vitre sure looked madder than sin." She scowls harder. "So, truce."
He stares at her for a long moment, and then his face takes on a determined expression and he sticks out a hand.
She looks at it. He looks at her.
"You can't honestly think I'd—"
"No," he admits, "but it was worth a shot and I wouldn't take it personally if you washed your hands after."
She wrinkles her face at him and leaves; he shrugs and drops his hand back in his lap. It's a start.