Chapter Text
The one thing Roxanne needed and the one thing she hadn’t gotten was time.
She had needed time after discovering that Hal had apparently quit because he now had super powers. She started to have that time on her date, calming in Bernard’s company, but then it hadn’t been Bernard. It’d been Megamind, always Megamind, the whole time as she found her footing after Wayne’s death and gained a goal to work toward and somehow started to fall in love.
And it hadn’t stopped there. Even as she held onto the sharp edges of the betrayal to avoid thinking of the way her heart hurt, there had been more. Hal turned evil and was destroying the city. Wayne was alive . She had felt like she was living in a snowglobe, where all the pieces of her reality had been shaken and changed in an instant.
Since nothing made sense and nobody was being who she thought they were, Roxanne figured she might as well be the same. If nobody else was going to confront Hal, that just left her.
It hadn’t worked. But her plea to Megamind had.
Roxanne didn’t have a word for what she felt when he arrived, just as she was starting to accept that she would die there, trapped on that building. It had flooded her, a mix of wild joy and shock and relief and something else that made her heart feel constricted within her ribs.
The feeling hadn’t gone away. It lingered when she had thought he was dying, and when she had realized it wasn’t Wayne but Megamind chasing Hal from the city, and when he had rehydrated in the fountain and won.
It was still there now, increasingly heavy and insistent, as she watched him direct the brainbots in the initial cleanup efforts. That’s when Roxanne knew. She hadn’t had time to think before. She needed that time now, before she let her heart make decisions that would be painful to take back.
It wasn’t easy asking to be taken home, because strictly speaking it wasn’t what she wanted. Life threatening situations sure had a way of making things seem simple. But. The heart and the head needed to get on the same page. And that would require some time.
Megamind was surprisingly tactful about it when she managed to force out the words. He reeled in his effusive energy - at having survived and won and gotten the city’s thanks, on top of it - and gave her that cautious smile. “Of course, Ms. Ritchi,” he said, and, ah, she hadn’t realized how much it would ache to not just be Roxanne . “Perhaps it would be better if Minion took you?”
She wanted to say no on reflex, but time away was the point, wasn’t it? “If he doesn’t mind.”
He didn’t, and Roxanne found herself being driven home in the passenger seat of the invisible car. It still drove fine, regardless of the wind that whipped through the cab from the lack of a door. Still, aside from the noise, it was an improvement from her usual vantage point tied up in the backseat.
For most of the ride, Minion was silent. It was only when they neared her building that he drummed his mechanical fingers against the steering wheel and breached the obvious subject hanging in the air. “I haven’t gotten the full story of what happened,” he started slowly. “But the whole lie thing came out, didn’t it?”
She nodded. For the first time, she wondered how much Minion had been involved in that deception.
He heaved a sigh. “Sir had seemed oddly eager to address things away from the lair. I thought it was just that he finally had something to focus on, but once I found out exactly what that was… we had a fight about it. I even left.”
Roxanne risked a glance at him. She had witnessed plenty of moments of exasperation between Megamind and Minion, but it was impossible to imagine one without the other. “Must have been quite the disagreement,” she noted, hoping he would offer more.
“It was. He said a lot of things that were a shock.” At this, he looked back at her. “Like that he might not want to be the bad guy anymore.”
It was surprising, but she wasn’t willing to read anything into why Minion felt like sharing that detail. “Well,” she started with a lopsided smile, “I guess he’s got that going for him after today.”
Minion laughed, more than a little weary. “I guess that turned out okay, surprisingly. But Ms. Ritchi, you need to know that it was because of you.”
There was certainly something she should say, but the words escaped her.
Minion pushed forward before she could come up with something. “Not only because of you. I think this has been in the background for a long time. But being around you helped him start thinking it was possible.”
What should she say to that? “Sorry?” she tried.
“Oh no! That’s not it at all. I was surprised, but I don’t think it’s bad… not now at least. I’ll admit that I didn’t think the city would actually accept him.” He paused. “Or that you would, when you finally found out the truth.”
“I was really mad and hurt,” Roxanne agreed. “I still am, honestly.”
The silence stretched. He reached her apartment, stopping at the curb, but she made no move to leave.
He seemed to read into her silence. “But?”
That was the crux of it, wasn’t it. “I really like him, Minion,” she admitted. The fullness in her chest was still there with every heartbeat, calling her a liar. Like . As though that explained it. “But it’s just really complicated. There’s a lot of history between us, but it’s not all good. I don’t know what the right thing to do is.”
“Well, I have full confidence that you’ll figure it out,” he said with a toothy smile. “I didn’t mention any of this to push you one way or the other. I just thought you should know that you really did impact him. The face he used wasn’t real, but I think everything else was. Maybe even more so because he didn’t have an image to uphold.”
Roxanne had already considered that, in the brief few hours she’d had to herself in the whirlwind of the past day. She had already accepted that so much about Bernard had been comfortable because she had already become comfortable with those parts of Megamind. Regardless of how briefly he could reveal them before the showmanship was in place, she’d seen enough to enjoy that side of him.
She didn’t need Minion to tell her that most of it had been real. For a moment, Roxanne considered that confrontation in the rain, how he hadn’t made any attempt at all to keep his emotions from his face. It had been painfully easy to read the truth of what he felt for her. Even on that miserable walk home when she questioned everything that had passed between them, that had been one thing she knew had been true.
She took a deep breath, fingers knotted in her lap, before she let the words balanced on her tongue tumble out. “You should tell him to be here at 10:00 tomorrow morning. I’ll have coffee.”
Minion’s expression instantly brightened. This was clearly more than he had expected. “I’m sure he’ll be here at 10:00 sharp.”
Roxanne gave him a tight nod before slipping out of the car and up to her apartment. She stepped out of her ruined slippers as she walked to the couch and unceremoniously dumped herself upon it.
Well, she’d given her thinking time a deadline. And she knew a large reason for that was because she already knew what she wanted to do. How things ultimately played out would now depend on what Megamind had to say in the morning.
As for the rest… well. The hurt was still there. Wayne might be alive - and that was a whole separate issue that would need addressing - but that didn’t negate the fact that Megamind had initially been elated about his apparent success at killing him. And he had deceived her for weeks with seemingly no qualms about continuing the charade indefinitely.
Roxanne should have known.
She was a reporter, for heaven’s sake! Shouldn’t she have questioned how strange the situation was from the start? Walls and ceiling removed? Formal speed-walking? Hell, he had even asked her during that disastrous date if she would still enjoy his company if he was bald and had the complexion of a primary color! Could he have been less subtle? How could she have missed all the clues?
Roxanne stared up at the ceiling as the kinder part of herself tried to get heard. It had been because she hadn’t been looking. Because she finally found some comfortable foundation to steady herself on after the upheaval that followed Wayne’s death. She had been mourning, and while the vast majority of it had been for the loss of her friend, there had been the piece that had mourned the loss of her strange almost-friendship with Megamind.
Because they had been, in a way. She had somehow actually thought everything had been for show. Sure, he could sell the supervillain thing well enough to the masses, but she had always had front row seats. He had never hurt her. He had never come close to actually hurting Wayne. He had never done anything that actually resulted in civilian injuries.
Villains didn’t limit casualties. Villains didn’t glance at their captives to see if the corny pun of their current plot got an unwilling smile. Villains didn’t talk about life plans or musical preferences or help create job opportunities. For all his claims of being evil, Megamind had come to just be silly and annoying and clever and fun.
And she could enjoy his ridiculousness and their banter. That night he had saved her from that other kidnapping had shown her how much she had slid toward just enjoying him .
But then, not two months later, there had been the death ray. And the way she had started to feel had just made the fallout and the sense of betrayal worse.
What an absolute mess.
By the time Roxanne convinced herself to get up and shower before she fell asleep on the sofa, the soreness from everything had settled in her muscles. Her shower revealed that the bruises were starting to make their appearance, too, and by the time she stepped out and dried off she had no motivation to try to stay awake. She grabbed the closest bottle of painkillers, chasing a few down with water from the bathroom sink before turning off the lights and tumbling into bed.
Somehow, it was a blessedly dreamless sleep. She awoke when the sun tugged itself over the horizon; she had forgotten to shut any of her curtains or the door to her bedroom the night before. The apartment was flooded with light.
It danced between the notes of the replica thought cloud that still fluttered in her living room. She would have to take that down.
But first, Roxanne needed to prepare for the morning. It was already 9:00.
She washed up, only half-heartedly trying to tame the cowlick she had given herself after going to bed with wet hair. She considered what to wear as she brushed her teeth, trying to toe some nebulous line between too much effort and not enough. While she figured he would have enough on his mind, Megamind was well aware of the impact of appearance. Roxanne didn’t want to give him anything he could over-analyze.
She finished dressing and then poked around her fridge for any breakfast options. She knew she had just said coffee, but she had extra time and needed something to do with the nervous energy welling within her.
There had been a box of muffin mix in the pantry, and she had just finished cleaning the last of her mess from prepping them when the doorbell rang.
Again, Roxanne felt the strange way time had flooded by. It had been about a day since she last had Megamind outside her door. Only a day, and the world had spun a million new things into the air. Distantly, she wondered where all the pieces would land by this time tomorrow.
She took a breath and opened the door.
The shock of seeing him in street clothes nearly made it impossible to notice anything else. She’d only ever seen him in some sort of leather getup before, aside from the prison jumpsuit, though the style and the detailing had changed over the years. The outfit was all black, from the black jeans to the black button down shirt, sleeves rolled back to his elbows, but still. It was almost distracting enough that she didn’t notice the impossibly nervous expression he was wearing, too.
“It was Minion’s idea,” he said in a rush before any other comment. He shifted, which seemed to remind him of what he was carrying. He immediately held the bag out toward her. “This too! Because you said you’d have coffee, but it’s still early. So I should bring breakfast.”
Roxanne blinked, taking in his outfit and his stance and his expression, hovering uncomfortably between panicked and hopeful, and found herself laughing. It was horrible timing - she could tell even as he grimaced and clutched the bag back toward himself - but she couldn’t reel it in.
Because she knew she was done. She’d known since yesterday, honestly. And looking into his face then, as he tried to prod himself through the situation he was clearly anticipating with equal measures of dread and eagerness, she was sure. Even her head, with all its counterarguments and considerations, knew it was pointless.
He’d been part of her life for so long now. She didn’t want to think about him not being part of the rest.
She smiled through her laughter and reached out for his arm. “It looks good,” she said, ignoring the way he started at her touch and the way her own brain wanted to focus on that contact. “Minion has a good eye.”
Roxanne had to all but drag him into the apartment. It was nice to feel more certain, more confident; at least one of them would manage to push this particular meeting along. She tugged the bag from his hands. “What did you bring?”
“Donuts,” he said mechanically, still looking at her like he didn’t know what to make of her at all.
“Ah, and I started muffins.” She glanced at the oven, considering. “Should I make some eggs? Or something? This is a lot of carbs.”
There was a little thawing; Megamind snorted. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
“I don’t know about you, but I can’t live exclusively on sugar,” Roxanne said, smiling again as she took the box out and opened it. “These are better with coffee, though.”
“I know.” His tone softened. “You said other food is fine, but donuts are the only thing really worth having with coffee.”
She had said that; it was why she and Bernard always met at her favorite coffee shop, the one attached to the bakery that made the donuts in this box. She felt a little pinch in the fullness of her heart at the loss of that.
Only it wasn’t lost. Not really. It was standing with her in her apartment, looking fully unsure of what to do with himself.
“Guess you found out a lot of my secrets,” she said with a half smile. “I hope you know I expect you to even the score.”
“Roxanne, I--”
The oven timer went off.
“Ah, let me grab these. You don’t have to stop,” she said. Roxanne tugged on an oven mitt and reached for the muffins, half-hoping he would continue speaking while she wasn’t looking at him. It was easier to listen when she didn’t have the full force of his expressive face, too.
But he was silent, waiting until she reluctantly took off the mitt and looked back at him. Apparently he had used the time to steel himself; he looked determined now. “I want to apologize. For tricking you,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I may have… panicked, back at the museum. I just thought it would be the once. But then you found the lair, and I needed to get you out, and then you wanted to work together, and it all sort of--!” Megamind waved his hands in the air wordlessly, but she understood.
“Why didn’t you just say you didn’t want to work together? That would have taken care of it.”
“Because I did want to.” He gave her that resigned smile again. “You actually wanted to spend time with me, by choice! I mean, I knew you didn’t know it was me, but I was still… being me. And you were okay with it!”
Roxanne shook her head, exasperated. Again, so smart but so stupid. “What makes you think I wasn’t okay with just you as you anyway?”
Megamind looked like she had just related some basic fundamental rule of the universe incorrectly. “Because you always disapproved of my plans to destroy Metro Man and take over Metrocity,” he said, as though this were obvious. “You were never okay with villainy!”
“Yeah, with villainy,” Roxanne emphasized. “I didn’t like the plans or the villainy part, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like you.”
“But I was a villain!”
“Megamind,” she sighed, cocking a brow at him. “Can’t we both agree that maybe it was more nuanced than that?”
He swallowed, still looking puzzled. “Are you actually saying that… you liked me? Before?”
“If I didn’t like you, I would have just ignored you during the kidnappings.” She huffed a breath through her nose. “I definitely wouldn’t have flirted.”
Ah, the reaction was just as good as she had always thought it would be; it was worth her own embarrassment at admitting to it.
He steadied himself against the counter like she had just tipped the world’s axis. “That--! That was bantering!” His ears were lilac.
“See, that’s what I told Wayne too!” she said, feeling a little vindicated. “He didn’t buy it, though. I think maybe he and those tabloids were onto something about us before either of us were.”
Megamind was staring at her like he didn’t know which part of the conversation to follow first. “Maybe before you,” he finally said, looking away. “Not before me.”
Roxanne processed that. She had wondered what the order had been, if his time with her as Bernard had been when his feelings started or if the feelings had been there first. What he said earlier had already made it sound like the latter, but this… “Those rumors started going around years ago, though.”
“Yes, years and years ago,” he agreed. “When you were finishing college. I wanted to sabotage those offices, but Minion said that would probably just look suspicious and give them more fuel. So I didn’t.”
After trying to knock him off balance, she supposed it was fair for him to do the same to her. “And you’re saying… even before that…?”
“Yes,” Megamind admitted. “Which is why, when you actually wanted to work with me and spend time with me… saying no felt impossible.” He held his hands up in front of him suddenly, posture straightening. “Not that it’s an excuse! I know there’s no excuse for lying to you. It’s just an explanation. I really didn’t do it to be cruel.”
“So how long were you going to lie about it?” Roxanne wondered.
He folded his hands together. “I was working on it,” he said. “I thought maybe I could do enough good things that your opinion about me could change. And then maybe I could tell you. Eventually.”
“But you still would have killed Metro Man.”
Megamind grimaced even as he nodded. “Yes, that was something I couldn’t change. Even though I tried.”
“I know he’s alive… but we didn’t think he was. And you were so happy.”
“That was bad. Actually bad,” he acknowledged, looking at her briefly. That was sincere, at least. “I just couldn’t imagine it ever working. It wasn’t that I didn’t try, but failing was always the expectation. I’d never really thought about success in years, so when it happened… I was more focused on that than what success meant.”
He took a deep breath. “I am really sorry, Roxanne. For all the things I’ve done to this city, and to you. I want to do better.” Megamind paused, again gathering himself. Even with the apology on his face, he looked decided. “I’m going to do better. But that doesn’t mean you have to forgive me. I know yesterday… there was a lot going on. We could have died! It was a lot! So regardless of how things were then, I know that maybe they’re different today. I don’t expect anything from you. That you even wanted to see me at all is more than I could have asked for.”
When he could be so flamboyant and self-centered, this quiet understanding was almost strange to reconcile as being the same person. Then again, Roxanne had seen it plenty of times when he had been Bernard. Even if seeing Megamind acting like this was new, she had experienced enough to know that the behavior wasn’t.
Roxanne nodded before turning back to the counter. The coffee had finished ages ago, and the mugs were sitting beside the pot. She poured two cups, adding a little sugar to hers and an obscene amount to his before putting in the splash of creamer. She’d learned how he took it ages ago, back when she had still been cramming in college and they’d debated the best way to get the maximum benefits from a cup.
She nodded toward the couch. “Take the corner, please.”
Even though Megamind still looked tentative - she hadn’t given any actual reply to his apology - he did as she asked. She followed once he settled in, setting both mugs on the coffee table.
“I want to try something,” she said.
His gaze passed over her face, clearly trying to determine how to read this situation. “Okay?”
Roxanne figured that was close enough to permission. She sat down next to him, hip to hip, and pulled his arm around her shoulders. He was motionless as she did it, so it was easy to adjust, tucking her legs up under her and maneuvering until she had a comfortable position against his side.
She assessed. Megamind always looked so thin and angular; she had wondered what it would be like to snuggle up to him. Apparently what it felt like was right. Even when she turned her head, it was easy to tuck it into the crook of his neck.
She hummed, smiling. Good.
“Do you want your coffee?” she asked as she started to lean away.
The hand around her shoulder squeezed, pulling her back. “No.” His voice was tight.
Roxanne angled her head so that she could look at him. He was already watching her, those impossibly green eyes even more vibrant in the slanting rays of the late morning sun. Nobody had ever looked at her like that before. So close, the intensity and warmth of it was overwhelming.
“I’m still mad,” she cautioned, even as she felt the last edges of her anger lose their sharpness under the softness of that look. “It’s going to take a lot to make it up to me.”
“Anything,” he began, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “I would do anything for you, Roxanne.”
Her own smile threatened, and she tried to be cavalier even as her heart thundered. “Hm. I thought all this time you were trying to make me cave to your side, and yet here you are caving to mine.”
Megamind’s laugh spilled out before he could attempt to catch it, bright and pleased. He only hesitated for a moment when he lifted his other hand and touched her cheek. Oh dear , she thought distractedly, because if just having touched his hand that once had been a problem, the warmth of his fingers against her face now was a disaster.
But, she realized suddenly as he smiled at her, it didn’t have to be. Because he wasn’t going to be the villain. And she wasn’t going to be the damsel. They were just going to be two people moving forward together. And she could enjoy the gentle touch of his hand as much as she wanted.
“I’m still not entirely convinced how committed you are to being good, Ms. Ritchi,” he said, all teasing. “You have done your best to be a bad influence.”
“A good influence,” Roxanne corrected before turning to press a kiss to his palm. He did nothing to resist as she immediately hopped up to grab the donuts, and she was grateful for the chance to compose herself. Her giddiness felt ridiculous; it wasn’t like she hadn’t already actually kissed him once. She studiously kept her thoughts away from wondering when she could do that again.
Megamind cleared his throat. “So… I can expect to have to deal with this good influence in the future, too?”
Even without seeing him, the hope suffusing his words was obvious. “Looks that way, I’m afraid. At least for as long as you actually want it.”
“Forever,” he blurted before jumping up himself. He stretched his hands out as though he expected her to bolt. “I mean! That sounded really serious, didn’t it? Not that I’m not serious!”
Roxanne shook her head, laughing. She set the donuts on the coffee table with their mugs before taking his hands in hers. “Let’s start with today,” she said softly, squeezing.
Megamind relaxed instantly.
His thumb brushed against the back of her hand. For the first time, Roxanne felt a potential within the pain caused by his deception. She had held Bernard’s hand countless times by now, had felt the same soothing motion across her skin. But this was the first time she’d felt Megamind do it. There was suddenly an exciting backlog of firsts to experience now that he was there as himself.
His smile was blinding, promising that she would have every opportunity she wanted to experience those things. “Today,” he agreed.