She does look back.

Roxanne remembers her Bible lessons, and she knows the story of Lot's wife. A pillar of salt in the rain is about how she feels, burning and melting and bitter, bitter, bitter.

And he's standing there, in the rain, and behind him on the side of the building is the fucking poster that's all over the city. His face and NO YOU CAN'T and she is suddenly so furious she can't even see. It isn't only rain pouring over her face and she is, all of a sudden, entirely out of fucks to give.

She will do whatever the she wants to do and fuck that CAN'T. She storms back towards him.

"How much of it was a lie?"

Roxanne's voice like a sharp lash of lightning, striking too close, and Megamind startles at the sound, turns—

(again)

Blue eyes narrowed, sparking dangerously; bare arms folded over wet silk and cold hostility. Rain droplets beading on her skin and sliding downwards; wet hair clinging in tendrils to her cheeks, the back of her neck; pearl earrings glistening in water under streetlamps like she's just risen up from the ocean.

She looks beautiful and she looks like murder, and, looking at her, Megamind feels like someone has ripped his heart out and then forced him to eat it.

"How much of it," she says again, barely caged electric fury, "was a lie?"

A rain droplet slides down the curve of her cheek, a teardrop caress. Megamind swallows the leaden lump of heart caught in his throat.

"It wasn't a lie," he says, flat and inflectionless, "just...a mask to wear."

Tired, god he's so tired; why are they still talking about this; she's made her feelings on the matter inescapably plain—did you really think that I would ever be with you?—and he gets it, really, he does; he doesn't need her to explain any further, doesn't need her to detail all the ways in which she despises him.

Please, please just let this be over with already so he can hide himself in a dark corner somewhere and curl up around the ragged-edged hole of shame in his chest where his heart used to be, lie down in the gutter and let the dirty water wash over him while he closes his eyes and pretends there are stars somewhere up there beyond the rain and the city lights.

His blood hot in his wrists, his chest, welling up there as if in anticipation of a blade.

"Why?"

Roxanne takes two steps forward, face pale and pinched with anger, eyes still flaring like blue-hot flames. High heels stabbing into the sidewalk puddles.

Megamind closes his eyes, an instinctive flinch of pain, and then he draws in a breath, draws in—everything, every sharp-edged scrap of his soul, every fragment of feeling.

And he is shaking, all of him—his half-swallowed heavy heart shudders, his blood trembles unsteadily as it waits to be spilled. His soul wavers like a flickering candle as he stands in shivering rain. But—

He opens his eyes to Roxanne's, and—

(the world steadies itself, drawn into a single straight line like a steel cable between the two of them, and everything goes still.)

"Because I love you, Roxanne."

Stepping down off of the sidewalk, Roxanne's heart slides out from under her.

A swift, gaspy intake of breath, and she wobbles, unsteady in high heels on wet asphalt, and Megamind catches her arm, gloved hand gentle, steadying her.

Distance between their bodies suddenly measurable only by inches, kissing-close. Rain wet blue skin and luminous green eyes on hers, the expression in them swiftly flickering from dull pain to concern to the dawning of startled comprehension.

"Oh," she says, barely a breath of sound.

He doesn't let go of her arm, doesn't step away, just keeps looking at her with those eyes.

"Oh," she says again, in that same small, lost, little voice.

"You—you really didn't know," he says, watching her face.

She shakes her head mutely.

"—oh," he says.

Roxanne swallows hard. Megamind's gaze flicks down, following the movement of her throat, and then flicks back up again to her face.

The two of them hold their small silence together for a long moment, standing in their little puddle of golden light beneath the streetlamp, edged all around with silvery curtains of rain. Megamind never looks away from her face, and Roxanne is powerless to look away from his.

A crease appears between his brows and he tips his head slightly to one side, watching her expression as if he's trying to read something there—her heart, maybe.

And maybe he can read it, does read it, there, because he blinks dark wet eyelashes, raindrops sparkling like tears, and his lips part, thoughtful crease between his eyebrows disappearing as his eyes widen.

Gloved fingertips skim lightly over her skin as he slides his hand up her arm, and then his hand curves over her shoulder, holding her, and Roxanne closes her eyes, gritted teeth holding back tears but not her quiet, shuddery sound.

She feels his fingers tighten their grip on her shoulder, then another light touch—his other hand, tips of his fingers delicately placed on the side of her neck. The touch, the barest bit of pressure—like a chord struck on the perfectly tuned strings of an instrument, and she tilts her head up for him and—

Whisper-soft, lips brushing hers, and then she gives a ragged kind of gasp and he bends his head forward to press his lips more firmly to hers, captures her mouth with his own. Roxanne shivers and presses closer, melting into him, burning in the rain as he kisses her and kisses her and kisses her.