I'm In Love With A Supervillainess

Sam was looking straight into the eyes of one of the greatest superheroes in the world. A man he had been a fan of ever since he was a little kid. He used to have pyjamas with his face all over them, and whenever the hero’s television show was on, Sam would sit as close to the TV-set as possible, so that he wouldn’t miss a single moment. And while he enjoyed all the superhero antics from the show, all based on real happenings from the man’s life, he most remembered the closing moments of the programme. The face of the hero would be shown in close-up, and he would divulge one of his many wisdoms. Like: You always have to be nice to your parents. Or: Be kind to animals. Or: Help old people cross the street. And the parting line, always the same, would always scare Sam a little bit. Because just before the credits rolled, the hero would always say: “Remember, I will be keeping an eye on you. If you are a good citizen, you can always count on me. Cross the line, and you can count on me to come and get you.”

Sam’s father would always snort from behind his newspaper at that line, mumbling something about the show being ‘fascist nonsense’, and Sam always hoped that the hero didn’t hear what his father had just said. Because there weren’t many people in the world more powerful than him, and he was pretty sure his father wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight if the hero was going to come and get him. Sam would love to meet his hero someday, but there was always the slightest worry that the hero would know Sam had stolen an apple from the greengrocers, or that he had teased his little sister. And even though, as he grew up, Sam realised that this was nonsense, and that superheroes have better things to do than beat up kids who have been a little bit naughty, there was always a pang of that same old fear whenever he caught those closing lines somewhere.

So you can understand how Sam was feeling now, his face only inches away from that of his hero. And his hero looked mightily pissed.

His teeth were gritted, his intense blue eyes so cold they could have frozen a polar bear, and the hands gripping Sam by the shoulders felt like they could snap him in half before Sam could blink his eyes.

Now you are probably wondering what on earth Sam had done to anger this great hero, who was here to make all his worst childhood fears come true? Honestly, it wasn’t really Sam’s fault. Love, as they say, is blind, and when Sam fell in love with that cute girl living four houses away, he had no idea she was actually one of the world’s most hated supervillains. How could he have known? When he met her for the first time, as they were standing at the busstop, and he invited her to come stand under his umbrella, she had smiled at him so sweetly that his heart melted instantly. Of course, at that moment she wasn’t wearing her supervillain costume, and without that costume she just looked like your regular pretty girl from around the way.

The next time he met her at the busstop, they had gotten into a conversation about Disney movies, for which it turned out they shared a love (though he had at time already wondered why she seemed so fond of the villains, and disliked the heroes), and the time after that they even sat next to each other on the bus, chatting away, Sam slowly falling in love with her. A few weeks later, she had brought cookes, which she had baked herself and which tasted horrible, but now Sam realized that when you are a supervillain, you don’t really have the time to bake good cookies. Come to think of it, she had probably not even baked the cookies herself, instead letting one of her evil henchmen do it. Still, he had claimed the cookies were great, and she looked so happy about his approval that her face lit up in a way that Sam found to be most striking.

Thinking back to this moment, Sam couldn’t suppress a smile. That was a mistake.

“Are you smiling at me?” The hero yelled in Sam’s face, and the force of the hero’s booming voice immediately brought Sam back to the present tense.
“No sir,” he stuttered, thinking of something else to add to lighten the mood a little bit. Then again, how do you lighten the mood when one of the strongest men in the world is mad at you? Wisely, Sam decided to not say anything else, pushing away any nice thoughts he had of her to the back of his mind.
“Good!” the hero yelled. “Because I ain’t smiling either!”
The hero’s grip on Sam’s shoulders tightened, and for a second Sam was afraid they would break right there and then, but it seemed that the hero had more than enough experience making people feel extremely uncomfortable without actually hurting them.

The hero then did some more yelling.

“Where is she?” Sam had heard this question already several times, but as many times, he just didn’t have the answer. He did not know where his girlfriend was, who sometimes dissappeared to wherever she was next planning to act the evil supervillainess, and he was pretty sure that if he did know, he wouldn’t tell the hero anyway. Sure, she might be a evil, but he still loved her, even though he admitted being uncomfortable with the fact that she had committed so many crimes, and that she once violently tried to take over the entire world. Then again, every couple has their misunderstandings, and Sam remembered how cute his girlfriend looked when she appologised to him for all this. The puppy dog look on her face had made all the anger he had felt when she admitted to her crimes fade away, and he had given her a big hug and told her it was okay. After all, his girlfriend may have been a supervillainess, she was also known for doing her best not to hurt anybody (she mostly left that to her henchmen), and the kiss she had given him after the hug had blown away any doubts Sam might have had. Ah, she was a great kisser. Sam smiled at the thought of their kisses.

And regretted it instantly.

“What!? More smiling?!” For a second, Sam wondered if the hero’s head was going to explode, as it turned a shade of purple you normally see on grapes, not on faces, and in turn the hero seemed to be speechless at Sam’s nerve.
“Why don’t we just kill this clown, it’s obvious he doesn’t know anything, and he’s only aggravating us. Maybe it will bring her straight to us?”
The nasal voice spouting those hateful words belonged to the hero’s young sidekick, the latest in a long line of sidekicks working for the hero. Back when he was still a kid, Sam had always dreamed of being the sidekick himself, though now he only wished he could break free from the hero’s grip and slap some sense into this scrawny little bastard, who from the start had only seemed to be more bloodthirsty than the worst villains roaming the world.
The hero’s anger seemed to deflate as he heard his young aide’s comment.
“Billy, how many times have I told you that we don’t kill people? We’re the good guys!”
For a split second, Sam remembered why he had always been a fan of the hero. The sidekick sulked and turned around, sitting with his back to them for the rest of their conversation. The hero, in turn, turned back to Sam, and he still looked as angry as ten minutes ago, when he had come slamming through the window of Sam’s bedroom, dragging him out of bed and beginning his yelling. In those ten minutes, Sam had felt his fear and guilt turn into anger.

Sure, he was still afraid, but the guilt he had felt for having a relationship with a supervillainess and not reporting her to the authorities after he had found out who she really was, had slowly disappeared. He could still remember that moment when she had admitted to him who she was. It was at night, when they were in bed together and had just shared a tender moment. She had crawled close to him and spoke the words: “I have to tell you something”. Immediately, Sam had felt a fear crawl over him, and he dreaded what was going to come next. Of course, he had expected her to tell him she was in love with somebody else, and that she was going to leave him, and not that she would admit to being one of the most hated people in the world. When she had told him the truth, he had laughed at first. How could this sweet girl whom he had shared so many special moments with be a feared villainess? And after she had disappeared for a few moments to change into the supervillainesses sexy and revealing costume, he had thought for a second that she was only doing this to please him. But when she put on those special glasses and blasted the door straight out of the wall, angry at him for not believing him, he scratched his head and understood that his parents might not be as happy with his choice of girl after all.

The next few days, he had wondered if he should have told the authorities about this, and do the right thing, but apart from the fact that she knew where he lived and could have killed him just by looking at him, he was also still in love with her. And honestly, a tiny part of him even thought it was cool that his girlfriend was not the same as every other girl out there, and that she had so much power. He even dreamed for a second about becoming her partner in crime, but when he realised that his only special power was to bore people to tears, and that his mother would probably be very cross with him, he decided against becoming a criminal mastermind himself. He just wanted to be with his girlfriend, and in a way he was relieved that those men she travelling all over the world with were not secret lovers after all, but just her lackeys. Heavily armed and very dangerous lackeys, but no threat to his romantic situation nonetheless. And when he thought of her in her supervillainess costume, waiting for him and ready for some intimate contact whenever they pleased, he was sold.

He did ask her why she was in love with him, out of all people, and not with one of her supervillain buddies, but then she had just shrugged and told him that she didn’t like to mix work and pleasure, and that she liked to have a normal, stable factor in her life, that his smile made her knees weak and that she liked it that he was always so funny and nerdy. Most of the times when she had conversations with the other supervillains, conversation tended to focus on evil stuff a bit, and even though most of her was as evil as her cronies, she still had a little part inside her that wanted to stay connected to the real world, to feel for a second that she was still a regular human being.

Thinking back to this, and the way that she had described him as nerdy and funny, Sam couldn’t help but smile. And this time, the hero was done with using words.

Before Sam could realise his grave mistake, the hero had swung at him, and even though the man had only meant to slap some sense into him, Sam felt like a train had hit him. He crashed to the floor and could immediately feel the blood streaming from his nose. This lasted only a few seconds though, as he rapidly lost conscious, and for a second wondered if this was it for him. The last thing he heard was the sidekick yelling: “Holy crap, you killed him!”, after which there was nothing but darkness.

Sam didn’t have time for a final thought, and there was also no highlight reel of his life, which made Sam subconsciously realise that maybe he wasn’t dead after all. So after a little while, after the ringing in his ears had subsided, Sam slowly started to realise that somebody was shaking him, patting his face and calling his name. He didn’t want to open his eyes, for fear of looking into the eyes of his old hero again, but his nose told him it was safe to do so anyway. For he didn’t smell that mix of Old Spice and sweat that had hung around his hero, but instead something far more agreeable, like roses mixed with cinnamon.

Her smell.

His eyes popped open and there she was, staring at him worriedly, clearly wondering if he was okay or not. When she saw him opening his eyes, her worried expression turned into a huge smile, the type of smile responsible for him still being in love with her so much. He saw tears roll down her cheeks, and then felt her hug him tight, though not as tight as the hero’s grip had been earlier on.

“I thought you were dead,” she told him in between sobs, and the love pouring from her was so thick that for a second he felt like the happiest man in the world. That is, at least, until he saw the bodies of his old hero and his sidekick lying on the floor two feet away from them, twisted in unnatural angles. For a split second he was reminded of the fact that his sweet, loving girlfriend was also a notorious criminal.

“Are they dead?”, he asked her, but she took his face in her hands and kissed him with more passion than she had ever done before. It so overwhelmed him that for a minute he thought the passion was going to have another go at killing him, but just as he was about to faint for the second time that day she let go.

“Of course they are not dead.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Crippled, maybe, but not dead. I arrived just as I saw that old bastard hit you in the face, and when I saw all that blood, and you falling onto the floor and not moving anymore, I lost it for a second. But they’re not dead, only mangled a little bit.” She paused. “Okay, at least I’m sure the big one is not dead, not so sure about the small one, but I think that cracking noise was only his spine breaking.” She made another little shrug. “Hey, he’s a superhero, it comes with the job.”

Sam made a mental note never to get into a fight with his girlfriend, and then also shrugged. This time he leaned forward and kissed her, and even though he wasn’t as good a kisser as she was, it still felt great to have their lips locked, and to be this close to the woman he loved so much. His mind told him: “If these means I’m a criminal too, so be it,” and the kiss could have lasted forever, if it wasn’t for the fact, that he was tapped on the shoulder.

“Look, all that kissy kissy stuff is nice and all, but don’t you two think we should hit the road, before this guy’s superhero buddies show up to save the day?” Sam only now realised that several of his girlfriend’s henchmen were in the room with them, either eyeing them nervously, or winking at Sam and giving him the thumbs up sign. He grinned, and then felt how his girlfriend picked him up like he was no heavier than a big pillow, and held him in her arms like he had seen Superman do with Lois Lane so many times.
“Cool!” Was all he could think of to say, and with another smile, she lifted him out the window and flew away.

With a pang of sadness he realised that this would be the end of his old, relatively carefree life, but he also welcomed the idea of his days becoming a bit more dangerous.
“Are you ready for a life of supervillainy?” she asked him, smiling her sweetest smile, and Sam nodded, feeling great for finally paying back his old hero, who never wrote him back whenever he wrote him a letter to ask if he could become his next sidekick.