Disclaimer: Nope. Still don't own it. (Of course.)

Taking His Time: Peculiarities, Needles, and Mental Transgression at Discovery of a Certain Bad Boy's secret

For the first time (in a rather long period of time, ever since he'd been a resident of this place), doubt formed in Hank McCoy's mind. His scientific (blast it) deductions and logic did not add up, and there he sat, puzzled by the scene before him.

It can't be.

He adjusted his glasses, took them off, and snatched up a cloth from his lab coat's pocket to clean them for good measure, as he waited for the squirming victim (not a product of an experiment conducted of his own accord) to steady his breaths.

He looked around the laboratory, glancing at the shelves, before letting his eyes fall on the teenager sitting directly opposite him. The laboratory was darkened, a sheltered cave whose only source of light was the lamp placed on the table between them. Hank would not have hesitated to tell the fellow mutant to hurry up so they could both attend the formal (sort of, well, since Professor Xavier strangely insisted on having "family" dinners for "bonding" and "team work" purposes every night), except for the unfolding look—the look he'd never expected to see on such a mischievous face.

The eyes never lie. They betray the feelings we try so hard to conceal, instead projecting them out for the public to see, so frustratingly clearly.

And that. Undeniably, is fear. Fear, mixed with anger, irritation, and gradually rising humiliation. Hank watched the mutant's cheeks turned pink, as the boy leaned away in a direction opposite him, refusing to meet his eyes.

Oh dear. A second longer of waiting, and he'd have to remind himself he was in the middle of a research stage of a scientific process the Professor had assigned to him, not an eye-staring challenge or a super awkward quasi date with the test specimen sitting before him. (No, he did not just include that word in his mental transgression. Clearly he did not think of this young man this way. Obviously. So obviously.)

He cast his eyes down to the teenager's toned, muscular arm (probably a result of his time in prison, he guessed. And gym? …Oh. Why? Why was he thinking about his exercise routines, even?) A left hand still held on firmly to his right arm, since the last ten minutes when he'd entered and Hank examined his arms, proclaiming the right one fit for the test.

Oh, get on with it.

Hank resisted rolling his eyes—an action rather out of character for his outer nerd appearance, but his thin patience was being tested—stretched too far. The inner wild side couldn't resist a temptation…This guy….with his mop of blonde hair who'd been torturing him, picking on him (alone! And he couldn't help wondering—why him? Why his pens? His scientific equipments? Or even, his little rendezvous with Raven?) from the moment their blue eyes met, now struck powerless in front of him. (He's still got those balls of fires—what Hank had coined fondly—What? Where did this word come from? Out! OUT!—"Hulahooping"—though. Not entirely powerless, if he were to rephrase his thoughts.)

He stifled a sigh, and thought back about the sequence of events that evening. He was—and is still, as of that moment (because a certain stubborn boy had refused to free them both from their seats. Hank didn't think it fair at all—he'd only been sitting here much longer)—doing blood tests.

Raven needn't come in—since he had (he would unashamedly admit, yet only in his mind) taken an early interest in her (because she was the first girl he had the pleasure to meet who didn't run away from his mutated features and had chosen instead to come closer to admire them) and took her blood sample a long time ago. He remembered liking her….then he took another look at the mutant before him…and his mind went astray. Muddled. In a way he thought futile to decipher.

The Professor and Erik were pieces of cake. Erik himself was so used to being a lab rat that he'd stretched his arm out to Hank soon as he entered and took his seat. It was a little creepy the way the ex-Nazi prisoner examined him during their minutes alone, as if the roles of the scientist and his victim were reversed. But he survived, thankfully. The rest—Angel, Sean, Darwin—passed easily and effortlessly. He remembered chatting with Sean, throwing a few jokes in, and watching Darwin watch him operate on him in return.

They're just blood tests.

At least, that's what he thought, until, after sounds of (what seemed to be) friendly shoves, a huffed grunt, and stumbling footsteps, that Alex Summers pushed open the laboratory doors and walked in to take his seat.

Alex had surveyed the surroundings (as if he'd never been here before to play those nasty pranks on him, Hank thought) as he took his steps gingerly. Rather un-Alex-like. That was the first peculiarity, the first observation that proposed a question in his mind, igniting his curiosity. The blonde reached the chair opposite Hank, unceremoniously plunking himself down. (now, that was rather Alex-like. Oh. God. Was he doing it again? When did he think it necessary in his mind to memorize what is and what is not or what is inclusive of Alex Summers's habits. Erase, Hank. Erase. He remembered some bits about Raven, perhaps. Like this? No? Why didn't he ever think of such things when he's around her? Why not? Why Alex?)

The second peculiarity of the evening occurred when Alex fell silent and (this maybe the third, but he clumped them altogether as one in his mind) did not stretch out his arm right away, as the boys before him did. Hank remembered staring at Alex's smirk, silently hating the boy for his (damn too much) pride of his bad-boy attitude. Did he think behaving differently from others was cool? Did he think behaving that way would gain Hank's attention? (But it did. Oh, but it did.)

So Hank mumbled a series of curses in his throat when Alex raised a challenging eyebrow at him.

"Your arm?" He finally asked aloud when he felt sufficiently calmed to converse with his fiend. "Let me have a look, so I'll know which one's fit for the test."

Alex shrugged at Hank's gesture for him to place his arm on the table, but wordlessly banged his arm onto the place Hank indicated.

His left.

"Let me see the right one?" Hank was unsatisfied. His eyes probed Alex's skin and reported back the arm was somewhat bruised from the boys' wrestling match just the afternoon.

Just think, what it'd feel like to touch the arms—no, to actually touch them—and to be held in—

What?

Where did these thoughts keep coming from exactly?

Worse, he noticed Alex—the devil—had caught him inspecting his arm a good deal too long (!), and, as he pulled his arm back, was flexing his muscles.

As if he needed another one of those shows, Summers.

"You interested, Bozo?"

The first sentence he'd spoken in the room—Hank didn't know how to label it. A tempting insult, perhaps? Tantalizing invitation tainted with disdain? Why did he even care to analyze the HoolaHoop Boy's words?—rendered Hank speechless, unable to respond.

He felt himself reddened, and chased away the blush, cursing under his breath, as he managed, "I am not a bozo, Alex. Now give me your arm."

Not his best comeback, he imagine. But it got them back on the track Alex was (without trying) quite successfully maneuvering them off. He'd attempted his best commander-deep voice, though. Somehow that had an effect.

The self-satisfied look vanished from Alex's face when he held out the right arm. Hank examined the arm, gave Alex a subtle half-smile, as if to say, "It's my turn," and proceeded to, with his own, lock Alex's arm firmly in place.

Alex said nothing. By this time his face remained expressionless, probably masking some sort of emotion Hank supposed could shatter his reputation and his impression of him (which up to that point isn't all that well enough).

He started to open his blood testing kit, pulling out a syringe (of course already neatly labeled, "Havok" in his handwriting) and connecting a needle to it. He saw from the corner of his eye Alex observing him cautiously—as if he was an approaching figure of authority—and couldn't help suppressing a grin, as he pressed his finger on Alex's arm, searching for a vein, a target for the needle.

"What, why're you grinning at me like that? Go make goo-goo eyes at Raven," the blonde retorted, his voice growing more suspicious to Hank.

Now one other thing happened—peculiarity number three (aka the peculiarity to top all peculiarities) of that evening. The unexpected movement was almost instantaneous. Alex jerked his arm back when Hank shortened the distance between him, the needle, and his arm. Hank sighed, thinking it to be another one of Alex's tricks to push the limits of his irritation, before grabbing Alex's arm and positioning it where it was on the table.

That was when he allowed himself to inspect Alex's eyes. And realized with a cold jolt of surprise, as he usually did when he discovered an unusual result in his experiments:

Needles.

Alex Summers was afraid of blood tests. Of needles.

The Alex Summers, bad boy extraordinaire, juvenile delinquent, who preferred to view him as a clown, fearing something Hank would never dream of he would…

Suddenly he understood, The looks the boy had been giving him. The awkwardness he must feel.

But at that second he felt no necessity to stop and consider facts or reason. Hank ignored the scientific and logical, and gave in to his instinctive impulses.

He laughed. Bursts of laughter filled the room.

Not only was that the right choice, the expression on Alex's face was so priceless Hank felt he could have endured more verbal insults any day.

Finally—tortuously long to Alex, he supposed—he stopped. Alex tried to resume his normal face expression, but traces of the startled cuteness that Hank had seen a minute ago were evident.

Alex lowered his voice. "So, um, you know?"

Hank nodded, still smiling. "I guessed. I'm a scientist, you know. Don't need to tell me twice."

Alex frowned. "Yeah, yeah. And you're smarter than me and all that, but you're still a big foot."

Hank chose not to answer his bitter comment, waiting for Alex to make the next move.

"Can you just—wait a bit, till I'm okay with this? Don't do it right away," Alex refused to meet his eyes.

Hank put down the syringe and assumed his seat. Time to talk to the patient.

"Did you, uh, had bad experiences with blood tests? I don't understand. It's just needles."

Alex's face contorted at Hank's assumption. "You don't. Of course you don't. And I have no reason to tell you why, except you're the one who's doing this to me today." He glanced at his arm, still resting upon the table. "When I was a kid—and they found out what was wrong (he spat out the word) with me—they took me to the hospital to do all kinds of tests. Worse than this. What's stuck in my memories is this test. They just slammed me down on a chair—you know, a little kid, five or six, I don't remember—and I sat there, clueless, till a nurse came, and without a warning jammed a needle—well, like the one you were holding—on my arm. I screamed—which kid wouldn't? Tough luck for me. She was a trainee." He rolled his eyes. "And got the wrong spot. So they did that to me a couple of times, but I was wriggling now that I knew what they were up to, my arm jerking away from the table. Hands forced me to my place. And because of the jerking, you can imagine, it's like after half a dozen of those that they got what they wanted and let me go."

Hank listened to the story silently. He did not say more than, "Unpleasant memory, huh?" feeling it to be a sort of a private account of Alex's shared to a few special people, he as one of them.

Alex chewed his lips but refrained from answering.

Hank put a hand on Alex's arm, stroking it gently. "Don't worry, hey. Look at me," he called, for Alex had now diverted his attention to the wall behind them. "It won't hurt. Not one bit," he said in the best coaxing voice he could manage. Why he was sympathetic to the boy and did not snatch up this moment as an opportunity for revenge remained a mystery to him.

"I'm an expert at this. Just a slight prick, and you're done, even Erik said I was good. And you know what that means." Hank closed his eyes, took a breath, and opened them to see Alex's blue ones hovering before his own.

"Dude, you're an expert at everything, as far as I know." There was a pause, before Alex continued, "So promise? Won't hurt?" Alex's voice became softer, a tone reminiscent of childish vulnerability, an emotion he thought the bad boy wasn't capable of feeling.

There were surprises left in the world.

"Promise. I promise," he assured the blonde, nodding.

"'Cause if not, you're gonna have to pay for this." Hank almost jumped at the conversation's abrupt change of tone. Damn him.

"Yeah, that'd hurt even more," he muttered, as he picked up the syringe. "We're going to have to do it, Alex. Everyone's waiting for us in the dining room. Now or never."

Alex let his head droop down. "Do it, but remember that I hate you."

"You do? Now that's interesting. I suggest you close your eyes."

Alex bobbed his head back up. "No, man, I gotta watch you. Anything goes wrong and—"

Hank chose that moment to cut Alex off, carefully injecting the needle into Alex's arm. A slight jerk from the boy, but that was all.

"Hey, it didn't hurt," Alex uttered, a relieved smile unfolding on his face.

Hank decided it to be far more precious than the startled/cute expression.

"Told you," was all he had to say, right then pulling the needle out.

Both of them had slightly off-beat, goofy smiles on their faces that they would claim (if they ever were asked) they knew nothing about. Without a word, Hank cleaned the scene, putting a bandage on Alex's arm and kept the syringe in his box.

The blonde had already got to his feet. "Remember, what happened in this room—"

"—laboratory—"

"—stays in this room."

Hank smiled. "Got it."

Alex walked away, suddenly stopping, hesitant, as if he had forgotten something, and turned.

"Thanks."

An even worse shock to Hank when he'd heard the word from Alex's lips. No insults. Just plain thanks.

"N-no problem," Hank mumbled, looking down and fumbling with his equipments as he pushed the table back into its place.

But Alex was gone.

"What were you guys doing in that lab for so long?" asked Raven the instant Hank settled in his seat beside her.

"We thought we'd never get to eat," joked Sean.

Hank licked his lips, "Nothing. Alex was just taking—"

He felt the glare and almost the heat of those hoolahooping fireballs directed at him from across the table.

"Taking what?" asked Angel, interested.

"Taking a little longer, that's all. I needed to locate his vein—didn't come up at first and…" he trailed off, distinctly (and thankfully) hearing Professor Xavier commanded from his end of the table. "That's enough, children, let Hank eat."

Relief.

Then unrest as he realized what the Professor would discover as he probe his mind.

Did he really have feelings for the bad boy?

A/N: I love them both too much XD.

Thanks to all readers, reviewers, and anyone who's clicked or stopped by,

More Alex/Hank one-shots coming up!

Loves,

Your Ever Humble Fanfic Writer :)