xp_logs | Hank, Maddie, Thursday morning (Reply)

Backdated a little bit, Hank and Maddie take a short break from the medlab to loosen up a bit with some light sparring on Thursday morning. They have fun distracting each other by talking about entirely un-fight-related topics, including Carlie's taste in colours and Hank's flawless ogling-logic

Ugh. Stretching was better than it had been, but the physical activity of Tuesday and then the enforced lack of activity since hadn't done her any good. Madelyn bent and wrapped her arms around her legs, laying her forehead on her knees, or as close as she could manage, feeling the stretch in her hamstrings before straightening and then repeating the motion. She was wearing her usual training gear of sweatpants and a cropped tank top, hair tied in a pony tail out of the way - she was vaguely expecting Hank, but if he didn't show, she'd work on the bags instead.

Hank was a little late.. he was still feeling the tiniest bit sluggish, and had found himself having an impromptu nap instead of getting ready for the workout... but he was, he decided on peeking around the door, just fine with that. Really, quite fine with that. It meant he got to pause for a moment and watch Maddie stretching, and that was a very pleasant activity indeed. She was a beautiful woman, and he could see more of her than usual, and... well. He lingered a little longer, watching from the doorway, until she seemed about to turn towards him and catch him in his surreptitious ogling.

Then he ambled towards her, returning her smile of greeting. "Good morning," he said cheerfully. "Ready to give my manly ego a thorough drubbing?"

"Morning!" she said brightly, reaching one arm behind her back and pushing down on her elbow with her other hand, stretching out her shoulder. "Ready and raring to go. You?"

"Rather suspecting that my ego is about to be handed to me," he said solemnly, and then gave her a cheeky grin as he joined her to start stretching himself. "All bedazzled by your beauty as I am, I find myself at quite the disadvantage." And wishing, a little, that he'd made more of an effort himself - but the loose cotton shorts were what he usually wore to work out, and they were comfy.

Madelyn let go of the stretch, and shook her head at him. "This is all part of your plan to distract me with compliments so I don't kick your butt, is it?" she asked, chuckling a little, before stretching out the other arm the same way. "Won't work."

"No, it's part of my plan to be allowed to ogle you blatantly while we spar without you making me stop," he said, with absolute truth, knowing she'd probably take it for a joke. But if she thought he was making a joke of it, then he could look now and then without her guessing that he was really looking... "If you're determined not to let it bother you, then you can't smack my head for doing it. I'm ever so good at logic, you know."

"I think I've been out-logiced," Madelyn said ruefully, but still smiling at him. She wondered briefly if he was ever serious - the flirting was more and more outrageous, it seemed, if he could find her work out gear apparently attractive... Shaking out her hands and arms, and stretching her neck this way and that, she gave him an assessing look. "Ready?"

"Give me a moment...." He stretched quickly but thoroughly - he'd seen far too many examples of what insufficient preparation could do to the body to risk it. Then he joined her, grinning again. "So... did you have anything in mind today? Weapons? No weapons? A specific discipline, or perhaps a round of Anything We Can Think Of?"

"Well, I don't actually subscribe to any particular style - it's more the training the FBI hands out, plus whatever I've picked up from various people along the way... Anything goes?" she suggested. "Within limits, of course - I can't ask you to not use powers, but if we restrict you to feet on the floor, I might stand a remote chance."

"I'll fight fair," he agreed. "There's no point in trying to spar if I don't stay where you can reach me, after all." He grinned. "Although any time you want to jump out of a window with me..." There was a nice thought. He put it away for later and settled himself in the middle of the mat, leaning forward a little, knuckles resting lightly on the floor. "If you would care, fair lady, to attack me?"

Madelyn nodded, stepping forward onto the mat and taking up a basic fighting stance. The thing with Hank would be to avoid being grabbed - he out-massed her considerably, and even if he was playing fair, there was no way she'd be able to counter a grapple. Experimentally she threw a basic punch-punch-kick combination, to test his responses.

Hank blocked easily, demonstrating the distinct advantages of being able to block a kick to the ankle not only with a hand, but with the same arm that was blocking a punch further up. He threw a few punches himself, carefully pulled, and was pleased to notice that she dodged or blocked them just as easily, albeit raising an eyebrow at the lack of force behind them. "I'm not always good at pulling my blows just a bit," he explained, shifting aside and seeing if he could hook her knee with his foot. "I'd rather tap you too softly than inadvertently knock you down."

"Fair enough," Madelyn agreed, knowing Hank's issues with his personal strength. "I'd rather you didn't knock me down either - I'm rather fond of my ribs as they are." She lifted her leg out of the way of his hook, turning the move into a side kick that conected with his upper leg with a thwack.

Hank caught her foot before she could pull back, giving it a pull and twist that sent her staggering off balance. "I like your ribs as they are, as well. Intact, and visible." He gave her torso an admiring look. "Bare skin suits you. We should see more of it."

"Uh-huh," she deadpanned, taking advantage of his apparent (and inexplicable) distraction to twist her foot free, before jumping back in almost immediately to launch a flurry of blows at his face and solar plexus. "Somehow I don't think it would be a good idea to do the half-dressed thing around so many teenage boys. They have enough trouble concentrating as it is."

"They're going to have to learn to cope sooner or later," Hank pointed out, grinning as he successfully blocked all but one of her blows. "On the other hand, keeping the number of people who see you thus clad to a select few has its appeal." He directed a punch at her face, then tapped her solar plexus while she blocked the first blow. He was enjoying this quite a lot.

"If only so I don't cause a general panic and fleeing..." Madelyn swore briefly under her breath as the second hit connected: Hank was fast. Very unfair in someone so large. Time to take this to another level - ducking under his arm, she landed a couple of hits (pulled, of course, since he was probably still bruised from the mission) in his kidney area, before pushing into the back of his knee with her foot, hoping to push him down onto his knees on the mat.

"There most certainly would not be general panic. General drooling, possibly." Hank staggered and instinctively lurched forward, turning to face her again. "And I wouldn't recommend trying that manouvere on someone who will break your bones if he lands on you," he added, reaching out and taking advantage of his longer reach to grab her ankle and flip her onto her back. "I weigh a lot, and I cover a lot of ground when I land."

"Which is why I did it from behind you - you fall forward and I stomp on your head. Or at least, that was the plan." Madelyn lay still for a couple of minutes, apparently getting her breath back after the fall. "Well, not so much actual head stomping. Did I mention my training was sort of nasty?"

"I approve. One of the biggest obstacles in training people to be able to fight, I'm told, is overcoming their social conditioning to not hurt other people. It's amazing, for example, how many women will go to self-defense classes, do well in them, and then completely fail to use any of it against an attacker because they just can't bring themselves to hit as hard as they can." He stayed back until she got her breath back, even if her bare stomach did look awfully tickleable. "I know it's a problem that some X-Men have had, over the years... mostly female, since your social conditioning is still more slanted towards non-violent passivity than the male, but one or two men, as well. It takes time to unlearn lessons of such long standing."

Damn, he wasn't falling for the temporarily helpless thing and trying to help her up... Kurt would have, Madelyn reflected briefly, beginning to climb to her feet, lashing out at his knee again with a roundhouse kick. Hank's vulnerability was his joints, she figured. Body blows would do little against the mass of muscle. "I saw that in training too," she said, pressing the attack as he pulled away from the kick. Hard and fast, don't give him time to think. Sparring wasn't as natural to Hank as it was to Haroun - that was his other weakness. He had to think his way through. "Having a brother only a couple of years older meant I grew up used to rough-housing. And Joe and his buddies were much more interesting to play with than the insufferably polite little girls Mom kept introducing me to."

Hank winced as she almost clipped his knee... less massive than his other joints, his knees and ankles were weak points... and countered by swinging at her stomach and then sweeping a leg at her knee in turn."I can't imagine you as a polite little girl," he admitted. "Although I can clearly imagine you bludgeoning said brother to the ground so you could practice you bandaging and temperature-taking on him." He grinned, making a grab for one arm. Hitting he had to hold back on, but once he had hold of her he could judge the level of force he was using much more accurately.

Uh-oh, grabbing was bad... "Was Carlie telling tales?" she asked, twisting out of his grip - barely - and aiming another kick at him so he'd have to pull back. "Because it's all lies and slander. Well, except for the story about daring him into jumping off the garage roof by telling him I'd already done it."

"No, she was more interested in talking about current events... and whether or not you were seeing anyone." Hank grinned, poking her gently in the stomach as he pulled back. "I said 'not as far as I know'. But I can't imagine you as being a quiet, well-behaved little girl playing with Barbies and teasets, somehow... Operating on her toys and kicking her brother in the shins seems much more like you, somehow."

Madelyn rolled her eyes. "Carlie won't be satisfied until I'm living happily ever after - or at least happily ever longer than six months. Brat seems to have taken my love life on as a personal mission." She punctuated her words with a series of punches, most of which were blocked. It should be frustrating, not being able to land a hit, but she was actually enjoying this. And she was definitely working out the kinks. "An no, I wasn't. Dad used to joke he had two sons - I think Mom was more relieved than anything when Carlie was born and turned out to be the perfect little daughter." She snickered. "She'd wear pink all the time, only it clashes with her hair colour."

"It depends on the shade. A very pale pink can work with red hair," Hank said thoughtfully, then grumbled as his distraction earned her a hit on his ribs. "Ouch. Wench." He retaliated, his first few blows blocked before he managed a gentle strike to her cute nose. "And you must have been adorable as a child... your stubbornness and determination, as charming as it is now, would be positively adorable on a small, probably grubby child." He grinned. "My mother was cursed with a child who had to be watched every second lest he dismantle something or climb up to the top of the bookshelf looking for the books they didn't think he was ready for."

"You forgot the skinned knees," she told him with a grin, batting away his hand - normally she'd try a wrist lock, but considering she couldn't actually get her hand all the way around his wrist, that was probably a bad idea. "And I can imagine you were as much a holy terror in your own way as I was in mine."

"Oh, indeed I was. I was inquisitive to the point of suicide... My father barely prevented me, once, from climbing under the tractor while it was in motion to see what was going on." Hank shook his head, smiling reminiscently. "And once... oh, lord..." He laughed, remembering a day about twenty years ago. "On the day I discovered girls, I wound up needing stitches. Really, I did."

Madelyn blinked, and then ducked a swipe at her head at the very last minute. "Okay, that's a story I have to hear," she said, all curiosity now. "Break while you tell it? It's hard to focus when I'm trying to dodge."

Hank nodded and stepped back, grinning at the memory. "I haven't thought about it in years..." But now that he was Noticing Maddie, it had wandered back into his thoughts. "I was eleven, and her name was Amy Melville," he said, grinning. "We and a couple of other kids were climbing this big old tree while we waited to be picked up from school, and she and I got into a competition over who could climb higher. I would have won, had the heartless little deceiver not basely cheated by kissing me. I lost my grip on my branch and dropped like a ripe apple from the tree." He chuckled. "I landed on my feet, by the way - even then I was agile and very strong. But I cracked my head on the way down and wound up with a split scalp and a head full of fireworks... much more attributable to Amy than the branch. From then on, my interest in girls never wavered."

Madelyn laughed at the image, shaking her head at him. "Why doesn't that surprise me in the least?" she said, still chuckling. "Although lesser romantics would have been frightened off the whole concept after that - Pavlovian reaction and all that. Kiss a girl, fall out of a tree..." And if it wouldn't give him entirely the wrong message, she's be tempted to try the technique during a sparring session sometime... The thought surprised her.

"I said then, and I say now, it was entirely worth it." Hank grinned. "She broke my heart, of course... girls of that age are dreadfully fickle. But I remember her very fondly all the same." For all the times it had caused him pain, he'd never be able to give up his fascination with women, he just couldn't do it. "My mother was most annoyed, though.... I hadn't fallen from *anything* since I learned to walk, and she couldn't think why I'd picked right then to start. I didn't enlighten her... it didn't strike me as the sort of thing one discusses with one's mother, at least not right away."

"Probably not, no." The story was so typically Hank, Madelyn thought with a grin. "She'd probably be dragging it out at every opportunity still, telling it in the excrutiating way that only mothers have. The one where you can't do anything but sit there and wish for the earth to swallow you up." Cocking her head at him, she asked, speculatively. "Up for another round? Or have I worn you out already?"

"My dear, I'm not even breathing hard as yet." He grinned, crooking his finger at her. "I can keep this up for hours, I assure you." Especially when Madelyn was involved, because he was far too attracted to her and enjoyed spending time with her even more than he enjoyed watching her bounce around and get all breathless and sweaty.

Raising her eyebrow at him, she gave him an amused look. "You know, that sounds rather like a challenge."

"I can think of worse ways to spend hours," he grinned, giving her a blatantly admiring look. "Sadly, we will be needed in the Medlab eventually. But until then..." He lunged, only just missing grabbing her as she ducked away, laughing.