Cold Fusion: Twelve Days, Ch 2
A big thank you to Pitbulllady from the Megamind Livejournal community. She posted art a while back of Megamind and Roxanne watching the aurora borealis from Ludington State Park, noting that it was just north of where Metro City would have been in real life. Her note gave me a much more accurate idea of where to start this road trip and how long it would take!
Fun fact: The road trip was not originally part of the story. This idea happened as I was finishing Hallows' Eve and Megamind went off about how fun a trip would be. WELP. Here we go. The way Megs and Roxanne are going is about 2500 miles, and everywhere they stay is a real place along the route. I'm not going to give exact locations, but rest assured, they all exist. Except for the rest stops. Tracking down rest stops was hard, and then I figured that driving times are relative if you drive like Megs.
And thank god for voice activation software. E-Speaking for windows seven is miles beyond the last software I tried. So I guess I'll be trying voice dictation now! We'll see how it goes. Last time I tried this it didn't go so well; the way I write is more like reading through my hands, so speaking the words I want to read instead of typing them is pretty much alien to me, but I imagine I'll get used to it. The wrists are feeling a lot better now!
As always, if I made any glaring typographical errors or continuity plotholes, please let me know. This chapter is fairly short, but the next one will be longer. I own nothing!
Chapter 2
Megamind glances over at Roxanne as they head out of town. He's taking the first shift of driving for two reasons-the first is that it's barely five AM and Roxanne is grumpy; the second is so that he'll be able to look more at the scenery later on. He hasn't been out of Metro City at all, hardly, and he's looking forward to this trip more than he'd like to admit.
"We got everything?" he asks. "Cooler, suitcases, sunscreen?"
"Snow tires," she yawns. "Spare tire, jumper cables. You remember to get the presents?"
"Yep. Finished your mother's this morning."
Handmade gifts from Megamind are nothing to sneeze at, but Roxanne is too tired to be very enthused. "What'd you make her?"
"Crossword puzzle. It's gigantic, wait 'til you see."
"She'll like tha-a-at." She yawns again and puts her seat back, stuffs her pillow in between the seat and the window and pulls the blanket she had brought with her up to her chin. "Imma sleep for a bit, 'kay?"
"And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest."
"Didn't say I was gonna die," she mumbles, and then she's out like a light, her breathing falling into the slow rhythm he has come to know so well.
He doesn't mind that she's asleep. Even as dark as it is outside, this is still already amazing-the further he gets from the city, the less traffic he runs into. Not that there was much to begin with; five AM doesn't see many people out and about even in a city the size of Metro, but solitary headlights slicing through the dark is still a new experience.
Roxanne burrows down into the seat and snugs the blanket closer, twisting onto her side. The car rumbles around her, Megamind is humming under his breath to her left. Outside the air is like ice, but in the car it's in the comfortable mid-sixties. Since she's come to live with him, she's acclimated to a slightly cooler range of temperatures than she had been used to before.
She starts awake with Megamind's hand on her shoulder. "Muh?" She pokes her head out from under the blanket and gets hit in the face by a blast of wintery air. Her door is open. Why is her door open? "Flaah," she hisses, and throws the blanket back over her head.
"Sorry to wake you," he whispers. "But come and see." Clever fingers undo her seat belt. "C'mon," he says again. "Come and see."
"Don' wanna," Roxanne says, but she sits up anyway, fumbling for her coat. Megamind bundles the blanket around her instead and pulls her to her feet, leads her away from the car. Her feet crunch on gravel, then grass, then stone.
She sniffs and rubs at her eyes, blinking at him. "Time's it?"
"Nearly eight. The sunrise is gorgeous, look."
She turns around and has to squint. "Don't see what's so special about it. And where are we?"
"No," Megamind says patiently, turning her around to face the lake. "Look."
With the sunrise behind them, the sky in front is still a darker blue, the clouds pale grey. Lake Michigan is black, rolling against a beach lightly dusted with snow. "What?" Roxanne asks. "I'm sorry, I don't-"
"Close your eyes. We're at Grand Mere State Park."
Mystified and irritated, Roxanne does so. She starts counting heartbeats, loses track. Wind mumbles through pine trees behind her, water mutters a reply. She shivers.
"Now," Megamind says in her ear, "look again."
Roxanne sighs and opens her eyes, then has to catch her breath. The bottoms of the grey clouds have been painted over fiery pink and orange, their peaks curling every shade of blue against spatterings of bluer sky. The lake takes the burning panorama and reflects it upside-down, clouds like fingers straining into the depths.
"Okay," she says after a shocked few seconds. "Okay, that's. That's really something." The sun crests up behind them, then; a blinding gold highway opens up at Roxanne's feet and chases the horizon. She flinches in the sudden light, then looks at Megamind. "Okay, this is pretty cool."
He turns his head to look at her. When the sun hits his face from the side Roxanne nearly jumps away. "Holy shit your eyes are glowing."
He bursts into laughter, nodding. "Not really glowing, but they do reflect a bit when the light hits them at a sharp enough angle. Wanna go swimming?"
"I'm going to go with a great big 'hell no' on that one," she replies, shivering again. She can't stop staring at his eyes. 'Not really glowing,' indeed.
Megamind shrugs and shucks off his coat. In the early light, Pavel's skin is much paler than usual-there's almost a blue cast to it, or is she imagining things? "I'm going to."
Roxanne tucks her hands under her armpits. "You will freeze and die."
He laughs again, stripping down to his shorts in record time. "Polar bear plunge," he exclaims, "and no, I won't. I told you: I'm built for colder temperatures."
"Colder temperatures does not mean thirty-degree water!" Roxanne cries, but Megamind is already halfway down the beach and splashing into the silvering water. He lets out a whoop as his feet go out from under him, then disappears under the waves.
He comes up again half a second later, flailing back towards the beach with big windmilling motions, teeth bared and eyes panicky-wide. "Oh that was a bad idea, that was a bad idea."
"Gee, you think?" Roxanne rolls her eyes and opens the blanket, folds him in against her chest. He's shaking, but he hums happily and wraps his arms around her waist. "You're a moron."
"Y-yes I am."
"And you're wet."
"I'm th-that too."
"You're getting me wet."
"I regret nothing." Roxanne chuckles and pokes him in the side, making him jump. Megamind grins. "Back to the car?"
"Mm, I think so. 'S warmer in there, at least. Here, you take this." She hugs herself as Megamind draws the blanket like a toga around his thin frame, and only Megamind could manage to look regal in a tatty fleece blanket.
They turn, and then they freeze.
"Um," Roxanne says, just as Megamind draws himself up and says, "Ollo."
"Hello," she says reflexively, not looking away from the family of four who, judging by their expressions, are just as startled as they are.
"Yeah, but that's never gonna happen," he tells her, "so we're just going to go with, hi there, you're between me and the car and, heh," he laughs nervously, "I'm turning blue out here. So! Please excuse us!"
The little girl pulls away from her father and trots forward, picks up Megamind's sweater and trousers. "Did you go in the water?"
"Yes, I did. May I have those back? Thank you."
"Is it warm?"
"Not even a little bit." It's incredible, the way he lets his guard down around children. Talking to adult strangers is much easier now than it used to be, but usually he still has a hard time not falling back into the old villain persona. But kids are easy. "Listen, squirt, we've got a long drive ahead of us, so if you don't mind, we should probably get going."
"Um," says Roxanne again.
The little girl blinks solemnly up at Megamind. "You're a little bit blue."
"Told you I was." He winks, but his teeth are starting to chatter again. He grabs Roxanne by the hand and jogs towards the car, blanket flapping away from his skinny legs. The jog turns into more of a painful hopping dance when they hit the gravel parking lot.
Roxanne slams the car door behind her and Megamind turns the key in the ignition and throws it in gear, cranks up the heat. Roxanne cranks it back down again. "You should let the engine warm up first. It's an old car."
"It's also got entirely new internal workings," Megamind reminds her, and readjusts the heat. "Brrr, pass me my pants."
She does so, then toggles invisibility mode while he struggles into his pants-he has to lift off the seat, long body bowing out from ankles and shoulders as he tugs at the spandex to get it up over his hips-then wriggles into his shirt in a similar fashion. Megamind dressing without the help of brainbots is always a show.
"Are you good to keep driving for a while, or do you want me to take over?"
"Nng-umpf. I'm up for another few hours. We'll switch off when we need to stop for gas, does that sound good?"
"Sure. Where are we now?"
"Little less than three-quarters tank."
Roxanne shakes her head, exasperated. "You don't look at your watch, you don't need thermometers to tell how hot or cold it is, and now you don't even look at the dashboard?"
"And I have perfect pitch. But actually, I checked before we got out of the car." He looks over at her and smiles as he puts the car in gear.
"Perfect pitch, my left foot. I've heard you sing."
Megamind laughs. "Human vocalizations are not my forte."
She's always secretly delighted when he laughs like that-a real laugh. And before she really knows what she's saying, she says, "I love when you laugh."
Startled, he looks over at her, grinning in confusion and amusement. "Wh-what?"
She colors. "I mean…I don't know what I mean. Ignore me, I'm being silly."
"…All right." But he's still half-smiling to himself as they pull back onto the highway, the giddy little smile he wears when she's surprised him with something nice.
She supposes his laughter is something special because of how long it was before she heard him laugh for real. She still remembers the first time, a few years after he'd started kidnapping her. It had been the kidnapping after he had rescued her from Carn-Evil, the idiot clown who hadn't known what he had been getting into. Megamind had left her alone for nearly two weeks before snatching her from the library on her day off-she had expected him to pick her up the next day, maybe the one after that, catch her off guard, but he hadn't.
"Not hurt, are you?" he'd asked without looking over at her when she had woken up, and she remembers thinking that was weird, him asking if she was okay. "After I dropped you at your place I thought that maybe I had squeezed you when I picked you up. Thought it might be best if you had some time off from kidnappings." He kicked off in his chair, spinning and sliding over to another console. "You all right?"
"Thanks to you."
Megamind had hummed and made an adjustment. "I was kind of disappointed, to tell you the truth. I follow all the up-and-comings, I expected more from him."
"It wasn't even a good kidnapping," Roxanne had muttered. "'Roses are red, violets are blue, I have a gun, get in the van'? Who says that?"
He had turned to blink at her, then snorted and burst out laughing. Roxanne remembers being surprised at how wide and white his smile had been and how it had made his eyes crinkle at the corners. "I like you," he had observed when he'd stopped chuckling. "You make everything sound so funny."
It had been the very last time she'd ever feared him.
"Penny for your thoughts," he says now. So casual, so calm, as if driving down the highway with Roxanne unbound in the passenger seat is business as usual. And it is business as usual, finally.
She hums happily and leans back in her seat. "Just remembering stuff."
"I am sure we packed everything," he groans, exasperated. "Give Minion some credit."
"Not that kind of stuff," she says. "You and me kind of stuff. You really seem like you're doing better these days."
"Oh, that." He's definitely keeping an eye on traffic, but he's still so engaged. Smiling. Leaning back in his seat. He looks relaxed. "You know, I really feel better these days. Still super-nervous about your mom, though."
"I know. Me too." She peers at him. "But you know, whatever she says, it won't make or break us."
"We're more than that." He glances over and smiles, and Roxanne can't stand it-she reaches, pulls his right hand off the wheel and tangles their fingers together. Megamind laughs again.
"What?" Roxanne asks. "Why, what's funny?"
"You are!" He shakes his head, still grinning. "You're so touchy-feely lately, it's great, I love it."
"What are you talking about?"
"Ever since that last big fight you've been really…I don't know, cuddly. Comfortable with me."
She blinks, utterly confused. "I always cuddle with you."
"In bed, yes," he agrees. "But I mean like when we're sitting on the couch reading or watching a movie, or…okay, remember how last week, as an experiment, I came and sat on your lap while you were keeping Minion company in the laundry? You put your arm around me to keep me there!" He beams at her.
"That was an experiment?"
"A lot of what I do is experimental in some way or other. But you wouldn't have done that in September."
He's right. She wouldn't have. "Well, I'm…I'm just feeling a lot better about us, I guess." She hadn't noticed any difference in the way she acts towards him, but now that he's mentioned it, she has been a lot more comfortable lately.
Megamind chuckles. "It's okay, you don't need to explain." He squeezes her hand. "I know."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
She watches Megamind sprint a wide circle around the parking lot from where she stands by the gas pump. For all his slim frame and tightly-muscled limbs, he's not that fast. No faster than an average human. Somehow, she had expected him to be more of a runner; quick, sudden motions are part of how he moves.
He comes panting back to her, bright-eyed and grinning. "Breakfast?"
She replaces the nozzle. "You go ahead in, I'll park the car and meet you inside."
She clears her pockets of loose change into the battered paper cup proffered by the greybeard just outside the door of the rest area. It's Christmas, after all, or nearly. The old man mumbles a word and huddles deeper into his tattered coat, hunches back into the bench.
Roxanne hurries inside and finds her companion staring up at the menu, a perplexed frown camped on his features. "What's wrong?"
He purses his lips. "I don't know what's edible."
"I've eaten it before without dying. I'll just get you what I'm getting, okay?"
"Okay."
Roxanne is halfway through her egg-sausage muffin before she realizes he's just sitting and staring at his food. "What's wrong?" she says again.
Megamind doesn't look up. "I'm not actually sure if I'll be able to digest this," he says slowly. "This is, like, seventy percent corn. I can smell it."
She tilts her head, curious. "It's egg and sausage."
"And do you know what the chickens and pigs were fed? Corn. And it's all that high-fructose stuff. Eurgh." He picks up the Egg Thing and smells it-then gags and puts it down. "I can't. I can't eat this."
"Picky."
"I'm not picky. I can't eat it. It's not edible."
"Yes it is, look, I'm eating it and I'm fine." She swallows. "It's not good for you, but it is food."
Megamind lifts his head and stares at her, torn between amusement and exasperation. "Do you not understand the difference between can't and won't?" he asks, half-laughing. He glances down, then back up. "I can't eat this," he says again, slowly and clearly. "My body won't be able to break it down."
She starts to laugh, but stops when his face remains honest. There's no trace of a smirk; he's not joking. "You can't be serious."
He smiles and gives a helpless shrug. "Something about processed sugars just doesn't sit well with me."
Roxanne stares back, fascinated. "You can't process high fructose corn syrup?"
"Usually I can, but not in such high concentrations, not so early in the day. It'll line my gizzard and I'll…reject it." He's being delicate. "In small doses, I can store it in my crop for a while and then I'm fine, but then it leaves a weird taste in the back of my mouth." He shrugs. "It's why we never have fast food at the Lair. When we do, it's always Chinese."
"What's different about Chinese?"
He pushes his food towards her. "Monosodium glutamate. It reacts with the acids in my stomach and gizzard and neutralizes whatever makes the HFCS so difficult for me. There's MSG in this, but not enough."
Roxanne shakes her head. "You are one weird son of a gun. What about all the donuts you're so wild about?"
"We get them from Giorgio's. He uses real sugar." Megamind makes a motion towards the Egg Thing. "All yours."
She throws her head back and laughs. "Are you kidding? I'm not eating two of these!"
"You're just going to waste it?"
Roxanne looks at it guiltily. They really shouldn't waste food. "Well…" She cuts off when Megamind suddenly pulls it away from her and wraps it back up with deft motions.
"Wait right here," he says, then picks up the re-wrapped Egg Thing and trots back up to the counter. Mystified, Roxanne watches him order a coffee and pluck a few creamers and packets of sugar out of labeled bins, then run out the door.
He's back in under a minute, grinning from ear to ear as he slides into the seat across from her. Both coffee and Egg Thing have both mysteriously evaporated. "Mission accomplished."
"Where did you go?"
He smirks. "It's a secret."
As Roxanne pulls away from the rest area, Megamind seated comfortably beside her with a cup of fruit and yogurt, she glances in the rearview mirror. She could be wrong-he's pretty far away-but the grey-haired man with the tatty jacket seems to be drinking a cup of coffee. There's something else different, too, but Roxanne's not sure what it is.
It's not until Megamind is shrugging out of his coat a minute or so later that she thinks to ask, "Hey, what happened to your scarf?"
"Oh dear," he says, his tone too casual. "I seem to have misplaced it."
She looks over at him, unable to hide her smile. "You're a good man, Charlie Brown."
He sniffs loftily. "I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
"Look, there's three more. How many have we seen so far?"
Megamind doesn't even open his eyes. "Eighteen thousand, nine hundred and two."
"Not trees. Wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube men."
"Wasn't counting trees," he murmurs. "We haven't seen eighteen thousand of those. Was counting the posts on the guard rails."
Roxanne glances over at him. "You're not even looking!"
"Don't have to look," he says calmly. "I know proportions and measurements and my calculations are exact. So, like I said, nineteen thousand and twenty-seven."
She laughs. "You are so full of shit."
His eyes pop open and he grins at her. It's the old grin-one of the old grins-the secret one with dancing eyes. It's the one that says he's laughing at her. "You sound so certain." He sits up. "Where are we? This doesn't look like a highway."
"It isn't. We're going to Coralville Lake, we'll stop for a while and have lunch." She half-smiles. "Mom and Drew and me always used to stop here. Sometimes in the summers we'd bring our bathing suits and go swimming."
He scowls. "This throws off my measurements."
Roxanne shrugs. "You dragged me out to a lake. I figure this is only fair." She tries to sound flippant, but really this is important to her and they both know it. The detour will add time to the trip and the first day is the longest, but she can't resist. She has too many childhood memories around this lake for her to just pass it by.
She doesn't take him all the way onto the peninsula, even though there would be picnic tables at the end of the road. Instead, she turns down the road that says 'campground' and parks at the end of the drive. There are no campers at this time this year, and the ranger station is obviously closed, but she pulls over and gets out and stretches while Megamind gets their lunches from cooler and rehydrates them. Then she says, "Come on, follow me," and turns and heads into the woods without looking for a trailhead.
Megamind blinks but follows. The ground is frozen solid, which is good because otherwise they might have been walking through muck, but that's the only small victory-the brambles catch on his pants and he finds himself stumbling more than once. The third time this happens, he has to stop to disentangle himself and calls ahead to Roxanne, more than a little bit irritated. "How are you not getting caught?"
She backtracks, laughing. "I'm sorry, I forgot you've probably never been in a woods in your life, have you? It's easy, really; watch me." She lifts her foot higher than usual and pushes the brambles to the ground, stepping carefully until she's over them. "The really tall ones are a little bit trickier, but just use your hands to brush them to the side and you'll be fine."
Megamind frowns dubiously but does as she suggests, and Roxanne leans him away again, moving more slowly than before. The going is still rough, but easier than it was. This is nothing like walking through Metro City or even over Metro City-this is slower and more confusing. Still, he's a fast learner, and even though his motions are somewhat flaily when they reach the reservoir, he's keeping pace with Roxanne.
She lets out a long sigh. "Here we are."
Megamind looks at 'here,' trying to figure out why it might be special. It doesn't look special. It looks, he thinks, like a weed patch. The trees might have been pretty if they'd had leaves on, but it's the dead of winter right now and all he sees are brown trunks, brown shrubs, brown dirt, and a brownish semi-frozen lake. "There's nowhere to sit."
"Here." Roxanne beckons him over to a fallen log and sits down, straddling it and looking around. "Drew and I found this place ages ago. We were camping overnight and we were really bored, so we decided to go exploring. We'd had dinner already but it wasn't dark yet, and Drew made us a lean-to out of sticks. We ended up falling asleep out here. Scared the hell out of my parents." She looks up at him. "What kind of sandwiches?"
Megamind just stares at her for a moment, then jumps. "Oh! Um. Looks like…ham and cheese for you and peanut butter marshmallow for me." He hands her the sandwich and sits down facing her. He looks around. "It's so quiet. It's unnerving."
"You weren't bothered by the other lake being quiet."
"The other lake wasn't so far from the highway. I could still hear cars. What if there's a bear?"
The question is so unexpected that she has to laugh. "Megamind, all the bears are asleep."
"You think it's safe for me to take off the disguise generator?" he asks. "This place looks pretty deserted."
Roxanne looks uncomfortable. "It's probably safe, but you should really get used to keeping it on. I don't like it any more than you do, but…"
Privately, he's pretty sure she likes it even less than he does. He is used to the disguise generator, and although wearing it for extended periods makes him feel strange and out of sorts if he looks down at his hands too often, it does make him feel safe. "You're right. I'll just leave it on. Okay, what are we doing here?"
She cocks her head at him. "What do you mean?"
"We've gone out of our way to a remote patch of woods by a lake you haven't visited since you were, what, sixteen?" He quirks a smile. "Something's up."
"Nothing's up." The wind decides to make its presence known, and Roxanne pulls her coat tighter around her. "I just have a lot of happy memories here. It was one of the few places where I knew the family would be all together. You don't ever visit places from your childhood?"
"They aren't so much 'visits' as 'incarcerations.'" He sighs. "I guess I kind of know what you're talking about. Happy times. Mostly I just wish I could visit people."
"People?" She frowns. "What people?"
He shrugs. "Like Dan. He taught me to swim before he was transferred out. And Mitch and Guduza. I wish I knew what happened to Uncle Bill. Ty used to carry me along when he played basketball in the yard so I could slam dunk for him." His grin softens to a smile and he looks out at the lake. "Everybody knew that if I could make the shot, he could have made the shot. He's the current Duke of York now. And Poindexter, who used to check my math."
Roxanne is staring at him. He's still gazing at the lake. "There's a lot I wish I could take back," he admits. "I burned a lot of bridges when I decided to become a villain. But I had a good first few years."
She's quiet for a moment. What is this like, for him? She knows she'll never fully understand how strange his life right now must seem-he freely admits that he had given up on ever having a normal life, on ever settling down with somebody. Where was it going to end? It had to end someday. He's told her before that this is the first time he's done something right that kept being right, this is the first time it hasn't blown up in his face, but she can't understand what that means, not really.
She stands and takes a few steps towards the forest, then looks back. He sits, pale and dark-haired, in his dark coat and jeans and boots, on a brownish log, looking out at a frozen lake. His gloved hands loosely hold the waxed paper that had wrapped around his sandwich, and hair and paper move in a sudden wind. For a moment, very briefly, he looks like an old photograph. Are there pictures of him as a child? She has to wonder.
He hasn't gone empty-eyed and still on her like this in a while. It's surreal, really-he's usually so lively. But then, they haven't talked about his childhood in a while, either. This isn't going to be an easy trip in more ways than one, she realizes; it's going to bring a lot of things to light that he'd probably rather not think about. There's so much she still doesn't know about him.
Then he turns his head, looks at her, and smiles. Rises to his feet and stuffs the wax paper into his pocket.
He holds out a hand. "Shall we?"
She takes it. "We shall."
0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0
They pull into the hotel at around six thirty that evening, after nearly fifteen hours of driving. It's a Super 8 Motel, not exactly luxurious, but they both collapse on the bed as soon as they're in the door, exhausted.
"How," Megamind mutters after a few minutes of staring at the ceiling. "How can driving possibly be so strenuous?"
Roxanne groans. "Man was never meant to sit on his ass for that long."
"Yes, but what about me?"
She rolls her head to the side and blinks at him only to find that he is blinking seriously back at her. They look at each other for maybe two seconds before Megamind's lips curl up at the corners, which makes Roxanne snort, which sets him off, which sets her off, and before they know what's going on they're both laughing so hard they can barely breathe.
"Oh god," Roxanne gasps. "I am really tired."
"We are in the middle of nowhere," Megamind wheezes. "We're in the middle of nowhere, we had dinner two hours ago, and I'm hungry. We have done nothing all day; how can I possibly be hungry?" He's lying on his back, both arms spread out to either side. He scrubs one hand down his face, then lets his arm flop back onto the bedspread. "Where are we going to find somewhere to eat?"
Roxanne shrugs. "We can always eat tomorrow's launch out of the cooler," she suggests. "That would be safe." She is remembering breakfast.
"But we wouldn't have anything for lunch tomorrow," he points out, "unless we stopped on the way, and I don't know that I want to add an hour to driving the way we did today."
"On the other hand, I really don't feel like getting back into the car."
"Me either."
She sits up with a groan. Maybe they can skip lunch if the driving isn't too long. "Where are we sleeping tomorrow?"
"I am not your encyclopedia, you know."
"As if I would ask an encyclopedia where I'm sleeping tomorrow." She smirks at him and he rolls his eyes. "Somewhere in Colorado, right?"
"Yes, and I'm still not telling you where, so don't ask."
"I won't. How long will it take to get there?"
"Probably around eleven hours, if I drive most of the way," he tells her. "Seriously, though, I want to get there with some daylight left."
She nods slowly. "Okay. Then we should save the sandwiches until tomorrow. You think this hotel offers room service?" She doesn't sound very hopeful, and when Megamind wrinkles his nose, she laughs. "You know, we could just go hungry. Nothing wrong with being a little hungry for a night."
Megamind nods. "Yes. This is true." He rolls over with a groan and rests his cheek on his arms and closes his eyes. A few seconds later, he yawns. Then he smiles when he feels warm hands on his shoulders. "Mmm."
"Don't tell me the master of all villainy is sleepy," Roxanne smiles, slowly rubbing knots out of tight muscles. "And here I thought evil never sleeps."
"I think you're a bad influence on me," he mumbles. "The master of all villainy has got used to putting his head down once in a while. Lower, please. Yes. There."
Roxanne chuckles. "Okay."
A minute or so later, he sighs. "You are entirely too good to me."
"Don't be silly."
"I'm not," he says. He certainly sounds serious enough. "I'm not. If I could go back in time and tell myself fifteen years ago that this would happen-that the girl of my dreams would be driving across the country with me so that she can introduce me to her mother, and that someday I would be lying on a bed in a hotel room getting the best backrub of all time from the aforementioned dream girl-" Roxanne laughs at that, "-I'd never believe me." He pauses. "Even ten years ago. Even five."
Roxanne half-smiles. "How about two years ago?"
Megamind rolls over and lifts a hand to touch her cheek. "I've wasted so many years just-"
"Stop." She turns her head and quickly kisses his palm, then catches his hand in hers and squeezes. There will be time for this conversation, but not now. Not here, and not now. They are both too tired. "There's no guarantee that it would have worked out like this if we'd met earlier. If we went to the same school, who knows what our relationship would be? I might not have liked you at all. You had to put on a mask to get me to realize how much I trusted you already."
"I didn't have to," Megamind mutters. "That's just how it happened."
"I guess we'll never know, will we?" She curls up on the bedspread, lying halfway on top of him with her chin on her hands on his chest. "Don't say you've wasted your time. We're here now, aren't we? Nobody's ever told what would have happened."
His mouth tugs to the side and he points at her. "Don't you quote C.S. Lewis at me, young lady."
She smiles. "I'd do it all again, you know. You're my beautiful blue man and I wouldn't trade you for anything."
He closes his eyes and puts his arms around her with a sigh. She really does make him unutterably happy-so happy it hurts, when she smiles at him a certain way or laughs at something he says. Sometimes she looks at him and that old stone crawls into his throat and just refuses to move.
He remembers a not so long-ago day in the park, lying next to Roxanne and thinking, I'm going to miss this. It's funny, now he feels like he can't bear to lose it. Logically, rationally, he knows that's insane-how many men stay with the first women they date? How many women go home with the bad guy? How often do villains find happy endings? Logically, rationally, he knows there's no reason it should work-except that they've known each other for what feels like forever and so far have been compatible every way but physically, and even that isn't much of a barrier.
Logically, rationally, they shouldn't make sense-but they do. He's finally been able to stop feeling so desperate around her, he's finally letting himself settle in and get comfortable with her. It's wonderful and it's new and it's a little bit scary, because what if he gets hurt?
Well, and what if she does? She's taking the same risk.
And that's what love is, he thinks. It's taken him years, but he's finally beginning to understand: love is giving someone the tools to hurt you and trusting that they won't do it. It is wonderful and a little bit scary. It is the greatest thing he will ever learn.
He rouses himself. "Woman," he says, "you always settle in and get all comfy and then I have to make us move. Come on, up. If we're going to nap at seven o'clock, we're going to sleep for a while. PJs and teeth, gorgeous girl."
She raises her head. "I have an idea. How about we go to sleep, and then when you wake up four hours from now like you always do, you wake me up and we go to that IHOP we passed a few miles back for a midnight snack. Yeah? And then we'll brush our teeth and go to bed for real, okay?"
He smiles at her. "You have the best ideas."
Together they wriggle into the middle of the bed and under the covers. Megamind reaches over and turns out the light, and they fall against each other and down into exhausted sleep.
Back to Chapter 1
Top of the Page
Forward to Chapter 3 (Part 1)
Return to Master List