Work Text:
It had never happened in 17 years.
Through no less than twenty rebuilds, eighteen hundred software updates, fifteen thousand programs run, never once - not once - had the Danger Room had the foresight to do what it had just done. It simply hadn’t done it, whether out of a sense of decency, a feeling that it was unfair, or because it outright hadn’t thought of it.
It had gummed Hank’s feet to one of the obstacle poles that he was meant to use to get around the course.
Looking up at it with much the same expression as one gives a piece of dog excrement on a new shoe, the blue furred mutant was tempted to reach up and manually disentangle his feet from the glob of sticky mess, but he knew that his paws would only get stuck and then he’d be hunched over the pole like a scared caterpillar. Not exactly ideal.
Swinging seemed to do nothing - he swung twenty times, back and forth, back and forth, pendulum motion making him feel slowly sicker and sicker until he stopped and conceded defeat.
He supposed he could have just asked the computer to disengage the pole, or discontinue the program entirely, but a sense of perverse and, he knew, foolish pride, prevented him from doing so, and so he was stuck there, staring up at the metal and his feet. Wondering what he was meant to do.
If this was a combat situation, he reasoned, he could simply ask a friend to pull him free, and he would entail only minor ribbing after the confrontation was over and done with. But what if he were alone, or if he were the one the entire team was relying on to get free in order to save the day? There had to be a way out of this, had to be some way of single-handedly escaping the clutches of that ghastly goop.
He was stuck like that for over half an hour before Abigail came looking for him.
“Hank, I was - ” The door slid all the way open, and the bizarre tableau expanded out in front of her like a mildly pornographic magazine that he had left on his bedside table. Hank jumped, waving frantically, and Abigail’s eyebrow raised with the same deliberate slowness as a shuttle bay door.
“Abigail! I, ah … good afternoon.”
She just kept looking at him.
“I was just doing some exercises.” He started to do pull-ups, his not inconsiderable abdomen working to pull him up towards the pole, and then relaxing so that he swung back down. Quite an impressive show of strength, really.
“You’re stuck, aren’t you?”
Hank looked at her, positively scandalized. “Stuck? Doctor Henry Philip McCoy, Professor and Deputy Headmaster of the Jean Grey School, Agent of SWORD, X-Man, Avenger, Secret Avenger, Defender, and Leader of the Illinois Star Trek Fan Club Chapter, does not get stuck.”
“You are really stuck.”
The blue furred mutant pouted as his lover advanced, dodging past the rather quaint flame-throwing apparatus that Hank had navigated at the start of the course with nonchalant ease. “This never happened before?” She pointed up at the glob of black goop that was still, after 34 minutes, binding his feet to the pole, and he sighed, looking up.
“Seventeen years and it’s never done that before.”
Abigail shook her head, entirely too amused, and Hank rolled his eyes. “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but this is not as easy as it looks, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t distract me.” Her brow quirked further, and she smiled smugly.
“Go on, shoo. You beastly, beastly woman.”
Further still, and that grin grew ever more smug.
“Craven hearted wench, be gone from my presence!”
She rolled her eyes and kissed him. He let out a surprised, but all together rather pleased, mrff, and he was quick to wrap his arms around her, pulling her closer and running his paws along the lean lines of her neck as they kissed.
For a kiss that had been meant only to shut him up, it last an awfully long and awfully pleasant time, and Hank’s tongue was only getting all the more eager when Abigail pulled out a gun and, with uncanny reflexes, shot the pole clean through, shearing it and sending Hank careening to the floor with a yelp. She smiled at him as he scowled back at her.
“Unstuck.” She offered him a hand, and he took it, grumbling as the goop finally disintegrated, allowing him to stand upright for the first time in over half an hour.
“… I apologize for calling you a wench.”
“Apology accepted. You know damn well you’re my wench.”