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It starts when Roxanne is attempting (unsuccessfully) to repair her kitchen sink and Megamind comes to kidnap her. There is water all over the floor and water all over Roxanne and when she hears him say—
“Miss Ritchi! We meet—”
—she jumps in surprise and nearly knocks herself out on the pipe above her head.
“Fuck,” she hisses, with great feeling.
She’s going to have a bruise tomorrow; she can just tell and this sink is still nowhere near being fixed. God, she should have just called a plumber, but she really can’t afford one right now.
This new apartment wasn’t exactly in her price range but she just hadn’t been able to resist the lure of the balcony and the windows and the beautiful high ceiling. Unfortunately, her landlord is kind of a dick who doesn’t answer his renters’ increasingly frantic phone messages for three weeks about the leak in their kitchen sink—probably so he won’t have to pay to get it fixed.
And now Megamind is here and her whole kitchen is probably going to be flooded by the time the evil plot gets foiled and she manages to get back to her apartment.
She shoves herself out from under the sink.
Megamind is standing above her, looking down at her curiously. She glares at him, wet hair sticking to her face.
“What are you doing?” he asks, tilting his head.
“I am trying,” Roxanne snarls, “to fix this damn sink!”
As if on cue, something else in the pipes goes ping and the water begins gushing out at an even swifter rate.
Roxanne wants to scream.
“Okay, that’s not—” Megamind says, and then he’s crouching down on the floor, taking off his cape and tossing it aside. “—move over, let me see.”
Roxanne, blinking in shock—the hell?—moves over. Megamind peers at the pipes, head halfway in the cabinet.
“Hand me that wrench,” he says, holding out his hand.
Roxanne, still baffled but willing to go along with anything that makes her sink stop behaving like it thinks it’s Niagara Falls, hands him the wrench.
The next time happens about a week later, when Roxanne wakes up from being hit with a dose of knock-out spray to find that she’s lying tied up on her own couch.
“What are we still doing here?” she asks, sitting up.
“Miss Ritchi!” Megamind says sternly from where he’s perched atop a ladder. “You have to actually replace the batteries in your smoke alarms when they stop working! Fire safety is not optional!”
He tightens the screw in the smoke alarm.
“Wh—?” Roxanne says. “Uh. Sorry?”
He clicks his tongue at her disapprovingly.
Megamind raises the can of knock-out spray.
“Could you take a look at my stove before we go?” Roxanne asks in a rush, feeling a little strange, but—her landlord still isn’t returning her calls and she’s getting tired of not being able to use her stove. “The burners don’t want to light.”
Megamind lowers the can.
“That should do it,” Megamind says, pushing her dryer back into place and putting the wrench down on top of it.
“Thanks,” Roxanne says, leaning in the doorway. He didn’t even bother to tie her up this time before he started working; she totally could have escaped. Somehow, though, that hadn’t seemed fair. “So do you want to—?” she holds out her wrists.
“Ah,” says Megamind, looking awkward. “I think—maybe—just the spray? This time?”
“Okay,” Roxanne says.
“Today, Miss Ritchi,” Megamind proclaims, gesturing dramatically as Roxanne dodges around the sofa away from him, “is the day that I—” he stops, tilting his head, frowning. “—do you hear that?”
Roxanne, who had been getting ready to make a break for the stairs, stops, too.
“Hear what?” she asks, wondering if this is one of Megamind’s ‘oldest evil trick in the book’ things that he pulls sometimes. But—no, he’s not trying to grab her; he’s still frowning, looking up at her ceiling now.
“Your lights,” he said. “They keep making this high-pitched—you don’t hear that? Must be a human—they haven’t been—flickering—a lot lately, have they?”
“Um,” Roxanne says, “yes? Why?”
“I’m—well, I’m fairly certain you need to replace your wiring, then?” he says.
Megamind manages to rewire her apartment over a three-day weekend, though matters are somewhat complicated by the fact that he insists on rewiring the entire rest of the building as well, for safety reasons.
“I’m pretty sure this is overkill,” Roxanne comments, to Megamind, who is checking the straps of his harness, getting ready to rappel over the edge of the balcony to the apartment beneath hers.
“Overkill,” Megamind scoffs. “One would think you wanted to be killed, Miss Ritchi, what with your casual approach to personal safety!”
“Wow,” Roxanne says, “hypocrisy there much, adrenaline-junkie-in-a-mountain-climbing-harness?”
“Fire safety,” Megamind says primly, “is—”
“—not optional,” Roxanne says, rolling her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I know. You want coffee? I’m going to make some. Should be ready by the time you come back up.”
“Ooh, coffee! Yes to the coffee,” Megamind says, and throws himself backwards over her balcony.
Roxanne grins to herself and goes inside to start the coffee.
She winds up making pancakes and eggs to go with the coffee, and the two of them sit on her living room floor and eat, the television on in the background (Roxanne couldn’t get the volume to work right for a week; Megamind fiddled with it and now it picks up so many channels she’s sure it can’t be legal but she is carefully not asking about that).
“Sorry,” Roxanne says, as Megamind pours a truly appalling amount of syrup over his pancakes. “They’re kind of burnt. I’m not really very good at cooking.”
“These are delicious!” Megamind says. “Do not even worry about—I once set the entire kitchen on fire trying to boil water; Minion was so mad—these are not even close to burnt, trust me!”
Roxanne snickers, leaning back against the couch.
Megamind, licking syrup off of his fingers, looks at her, an uncertain smile playing around the edges of his mouth.
“What?” he asks.
“Fire safety, Miss Ritchi,” Roxanne says, in the best imitation of his voice that she can manage while still laughing, “is not optional!”
Megamind laughs, too.
“Yes,” he says, “but—where did you think that concept came from?”
“Roxanne, dear,” Roxanne’s mother says, coming into the living room from the guest bathroom. “I can’t seem to get the shower head to work.”
“Oh,” Roxanne says, absently, typing on her laptop. “You can go ahead and use the shower in my bathroom.”
“I hope you’re going to call your landlord about it,” her mother says, in that special disapproving tone that only Roxanne’s mother seems to be able to manage, the one that makes Roxanne feel like she’s twelve years old again.
“No,” Roxanne says, still typing, “I’ll just have M—” she stops herself just in time.
That’s. That’s probably a weird thing. To mention. That Megamind fixes things around her apartment for her. It’s weird, right?
“—m—my—my boyfriend,” she finishes quickly, since her mother’s looking at her inquiringly and fuck why would she say that? “I’ll just have—my boyfriend—take a look at it. The—next time he comes over.”
“I thought you said you weren’t dating that nice Wayne boy,” her mother says, frowning.
“I’m not!” Roxanne says, slamming her laptop closed. “It’s—I’m not dating him! It’s—someone else! That I’m dating! Aren’t you going to go take your shower now?”
“Do I get to meet this mysterious boyfriend?” her mother asks, as Roxanne herds her out of the room.
“Ahahaha!” Roxanne says, picturing her mother in the same room with Megamind, thinking that Megamind is Roxanne’s boyfriend oh god oh no, “—maybe next time you come to visit! Have a nice shower, okay, yep, there you go!”
“The shower in the guest room is broken,” Roxanne says in a rush.
Shit; shit; this is weird, isn’t it? This is way weirder than she thought. How the hell did she not notice how weird this is?
“All right,” Megamind says, following her to the bathroom. “Um, are you—are you okay?”
“Fine!” Roxanne says.
“Oookay,” Megamind says, slipping off his cape. “Are you—are you sure? You seem a little—”
“Everything is fine!” Roxanne says. “Totally normal! Not weird at all!”
“If you say so,” Megamind says, sitting on the edge of the bathtub and taking off his shoes.
“Yep!” Roxanne says. “Very normal!”
“…right,” Megamind says, and pulls off his gloves.
“Uh,” Roxanne says because—
—hands his hands Megamind licking syrup from his fingertips Megamind looking at her and smiling uncertainly and the easy way he handled a wrench and Megamind stripping his gloves from his hands and—
“Tools are on the shelf in the shower!” Roxanne blurts, heat flooding her cheeks. “Do you want coffee? I want coffee! I’m gonna go make coffee!”
“Are you sure you’re—” Megamind begins.
Roxanne bolts from the room.
She starts the coffee maker and clutches the edge of the counter, trying not to hyperventilate.
My boyfriend, she’d said, and why—the hell—was that the first thing that came to her mind?
Too soon, the coffee’s done. She pours it into two mugs, forcing her hands to stay steady, and then adds six spoonfuls of sugar and a ridiculous amount of cream to Megamind’s cup.
She—she knows how Megamind takes his coffee. She knows how he takes his coffee and she just. Made it for him. Without even thinking about it—
It’s fine! Everything is fine! Everything is totally fine and normal and not weird in any way!
The shower kicks on as Roxanne steps through the doorway and into the bathroom again.
“Ha!” she hears Megamind say. “Fixed it!”
And then the shower door opens and he leans out, one forearm braced on the shower one, the other hand on the shower door, smiling in triumph.
Roxanne freezes.
He’s—there’s water, running down his skin, droplets slipping down his face and neck towards the exposed line of his collar bones.
He’s all wet blue skin and—that unconsciously provocative pose, braced in the shower doorway like that, smiling at her—
“Tell me who’s good,” he says, voice dropping into a purr, smile changing to a smirk.
Roxanne’s mind goes a bit blank.
“Oh,” she says.
She puts the two cups of coffee down on the counter and Megamind looks at her curiously, and then she’s stepping towards him, pushing him back into the shower, following him under the spray of water, her hands on his chest.
“Uh?” Megamind says, looking confused.
“You,” Roxanne says, and kisses him.
Later, when the water has gone cold and they’ve moved to Roxanne’s couch, Roxanne lying half on top of Megamind, his fingers stroking her wet hair, she says, “So my mother wants to meet you.”
“What?” Megamind says, hand going still. “I mean—why?”
“Because I think we might kind of be dating,” Roxanne says.
Megamind is silent for a long moment, so long that Roxanne starts to worry, and then—
“Oh,” Megamind says, as though she’s just given him everything he’s ever wanted and never expected. “That is—is that what—I would love to—”
Roxanne hides her smile against his shoulder.