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The kryptonite caught Clark by surprise, as it always did. He knew better, at this point. He should just back away from any lead-shielded object and call for backup, in or out of costume. Bruce was right there, for pity's sake. It had been Bruce's idea to —
Bruce slammed him face-first into the open box. Clark gasped in shock. His forehead just bounced, but that wasn't the point. The point was Bruce's hand on the back of his neck, forcing him down. There was no visible glow, wait, there it was, buried in the thick curve of metal that Bruce was pulling around his throat. A lock clicked. Clark grabbed too late for his comm; Bruce had already lifted it.
The kryptonite nestled under his chin where he couldn't see, but he'd seen enough. A lead chamber was completely sealed inside the steel collar, with a mechanism to open and close one wall. The person with access to the mechanism could deliver a variable dose without getting in arm's reach.
The person with access . . . Clark looked up at Bruce in dull terror as he collapsed. Bruce picked him up by the armpits and dragged him toward the Batwing, heels dragging unceremoniously in the gravel.
He never lost consciousness, quite. He wished he had. The motion of the plane conspired with vertigo and a splitting headache to turn his stomach. "Batman," he mumbled. "Bruce. What are you doing?"
Bruce tapped a control. The collar clicked, and the pain doubled. Clark whimpered. Another tap and it went back down. He didn't try to talk again.
Bruce lowered the dose again when they got to the Batcave, enough for Clark to crawl, but not to walk. He crawled a few paces under his own power, then realized that the only way Bruce could punish him for refusing to move would make him even more inconvenient. He lay down on the floor and let it hurt. Eventually Bruce picked him up and hauled him. Clark was too sick to see where.
Clark's head cleared slowly. He had the nonsensical impression that he was under a deli heat lamp. More like a darkroom, really. Red light, everything was red, everything . . . Oh, no.
He flexed his hands. They felt normal enough. But the sound — The lack of sound. Deafening silence. He snapped his fingers to make sure he hadn't gone deaf. He hadn't. He looked up through the ceiling . . . and hit the ceiling.
He dug his thumbnail hard into the side of his index finger. The sharp feeling lingered instead of fading instantly. Just for a few seconds, but that was normal, right? That was baseline, for humans. The mark would stay red . . . How would he be able to tell, in this lighting? He had to stay calm.
"Welcome back."
Clark startled. Bruce was standing right there, on the other side of a glass wall. Something that looked like glass, anyway. He couldn't focus his vision in to find out what it was made of, he couldn't hear. Bruce was just standing there in full costume, as real as a ghost.
"If I ask what's going on," Clark said, "are you going to hurt me again?"
"No longer necessary. Enough power's drained off."
Clark felt around cautiously. He was on a bed, one side pushed up against the wall. The collar still felt heavy against his neck; he didn't touch it yet, in case that was taken as a challenge. He was wearing the jeans and casual button-down he'd worn to meet Bruce at the waterfront. To walk into Bruce's trap.
He sat up, letting his bare feet settle on the smooth concrete floor. Nothing hurt. His body was just so heavy. Heavy and locked in a prison cell, lit by a red sun.
"So. What's going on?"
"The multiverse periscope has turned up some interesting results." Bruce was speaking in the same calm, deep tone he used at league meetings.
Clark clenched his fists. "Where is he?"
"I'm right here, Clark. Nothing's passed through except data. A lot of data."
"Data which says . . ." He glanced around the cell.
"I've found eleven worlds so far where you took over. Scattered at first, but the last five all in a row."
"Took over as in?"
"The world. Minimum. Dictator, emperor, god-emperor . . . Complete subjugation of world governments. Sometimes you convince the Justice League to rule with you."
He tried to imagine it. "Why?"
"It varies. An attempt at order, usually. Enforcing world peace. Often grief. A couple of them were unclear. You just . . . turned on us."
"I see." He did see. It was hardly paranoia or xenophobia if there was hard evidence that it had happened, over and over. "Out of how many? What's your sample size?"
"What percent chance of world domination do you see as acceptable?"
Clark didn't have a ready answer for that one.
"About one in ten. I checked a hundred worlds before I took action."
"Independent action. You didn't have the league's backing, or you wouldn't have stolen my comm."
"We both know the league wouldn't support preemptive action."
"No, they wouldn't, and neither would your family. Any of them. Does anyone know I'm here?"
"No."
"I see." He took a minute to let it sink in. Bruce stood motionless, eerily silent. "Can I see the data?"
"So you can take notes? No."
"So I can try to fix it! Avoid it! Bruce, I know you assume the worst of people, but think about this. It's me. You know me."
"Eleven of me thought the same thing." Bruce turned and left. Clark didn't try to stop him.
Clark was tugging uselessly at the kryptonite collar again when a panel in the wall slid up. He startled. He hadn't heard movement, or anyone approaching. He couldn't get used to that. Or maybe he would, eventually. He did not want a chance to get used to that.
Pizza. A Meat Lover's from Nighthawks Pies, according to the greasy cardboard box. He started to pull it out of the hole in the wall, then paused and stuck his arm further in, feeling around in the compartment. The panel slammed down on his elbow.
"Ow!" He pulled his arm back with frantic haste. The hatch closed with the box on the other side. "Uh. Could I please have the pizza back?" Nothing happened. "Please?"
After a long stretch of seconds, Bruce walked into the observation area, still fully masked, carrying a collapsible chair and the pizza. He sat down and opened the box, folding a slice in half and picking it up with a gauntleted hand. "Not a promising start."
"You know I had to try," Clark said. "Never stop looking for options, never give up. You taught me that."
Bruce nodded and took a bite. The smell of sausage lingered from its brief presence in Clark's cell. He could almost taste it. This was a test.
"May I please have some?"
"Hungry?" Bruce took another bite, chewing slowly.
"Probably. I mean, I will be. Soon." He glanced up at the red lights. "Right?"
"Probably." Bruce finished the slice without saying more. Clark watched him. Whatever he was up to, he wouldn't be rushed.
Bruce rubbed his hands together to brush off the crumbs, then sat silently. It was a remarkably effective interrogation technique.
"Would you please say something?" Clark finally asked.
"What should I say?"
"How's the search for me going?"
"Not well," Bruce said. "You didn't make our rendezvous. Someone saw you buying a pretzel further down the waterfront, so that narrows the time and place, but scans can't find your communicator." His facial expression didn't change. He'd probably given the same report to the league within the last hour.
"This isn't the way."
"I've seen what happens when you choose the way."
"So . . . What now? I just live down here and wait for you to throw in pizza every couple of days?"
"I haven't decided yet."
Clark sighed in frustration. "What are the options?"
Bruce stood abruptly. The way he kept the pizza box balanced effortlessly in one hand did not make the motion less intimidating.
"Wait. Please. Sorry. Just. Could you stay? And talk? About anything."
"Why."
"Because you look like a cardboard cutout." Clark twisted the flimsy blanket in his hands. "Everything does. There's no depth, and I can't hear anything, and there's just . . . nothing in here."
Bruce's mouth twitched up at one corner. "I'll find you a coloring book."
Clark glared at his back as he left. A minute later, three slices of pizza appeared in the wall compartment. Clark took them without a fuss. His elbow was still sore.
Clark stopped fiddling with the collar so much when he realized he was scraping a sore spot into the side of his neck, where the hinge left a rough seam. He rubbed at the seam with his fingertips instead. The metal felt impossibly solid, with no potential of give or stretch.
He hummed the Avett Brothers, because Bruce hated them. He hummed Simon and Garfunkel, because his pa would hum them when he had something long and boring to do. He hummed The Song That Doesn't End out of spite, because ninety minutes of it had once broken the chaperones on a high school football trip.
He got thirsty. He drank water from the tiny sink, and he washed his face and hands; water tasted much more intense with actual thirst. The cold of it lingered on his skin. He wrapped the thin gray blanket around his shoulders like a cape. He tried not to think about Bruce's cameras when he eventually had to use the bare metal toilet.
He prayed, silently, to Rao a couple of times and to Jesus and Jehovah once, in case there was a jurisdiction issue. He was careful not to move his lips.
The next time Bruce visited, he was moving stiffly, slow to sit down. He was also still in the cowl, white lenses blank. Was he ever going to look Clark in the eye?
"Are you okay?"
"It's nothing. I do still have a city to protect."
Clark's restless anxiety found a focus. "If you go down, how long before someone finds me?"
Silence.
"Or do I just starve here?"
"You don't starve. There are safeguards."
"In which direction?"
Silence.
"Bruce. What do you want from me?"
Silence.
"Are you waiting to see if I start ranting about vengeance the first time I don't get my way? I won't. You want to know if I can be patient and do as I'm told? You've worked with me. You've run missions with me. Hell, you've met Ma."
"Her death, along with your father's, is the trigger for your megalomania in at least two worlds."
Clark sat with that. He felt sick. "Is it always? Any time they . . ." He couldn't say it.
"No."
He let out a shaky breath. "Good. If it was. If it was every time, I — I don't know. I'd give serious consideration to something like this. At least to having it prepared." As if he had any say in it. As if Bruce hadn't already had it prepared. Maybe for years.
Nothing.
"You want to see me humble? You want to know if I have it in me to beg?" Clark stood up. Bruce just watched him, unreadable. Clark walked to the glass and got down on his knees.
It was an incredibly clumsy movement at full gravity. The muscles in his legs were tight and didn't want to move that way. He lost his balance and slapped a hand against the glass to steady himself. When he hit the concrete, a blunt pain flared in his right knee. He gasped and lowered the left more carefully, but the floor still ground into his kneecap. There was no way to get his ankles comfortable.
"Ow," he said unnecessarily. "In stories, they never mention how hard floors are."
"Now I know what kind of stories you've been reading," Bruce said. His face didn't change, but his voice was amused.
Clark's face heated up. "I meant knights and things. King Arthur."
"Now is not a good time to start lying to me."
"Mostly knights and things." Clark looked at the floor. He did not want to discuss his pornography habits with someone who featured in his fantasies when he thought about men. Bruce standing over him, gauntlets tugging on his hair . . . This was really not the time. "Yes, that too. Please, Bruce."
"Please what."
"Please let me out. Please, wherever you're going with this . . . Get on with it. Get it over with. If there's something I'm supposed to do, some way I'm supposed to prove myself, some test I'm supposed to pass, please let me do it. Please don't leave me alone to rot. Please."
Bruce got to his feet. "You want me to stay with you?"
Clark bowed his head. A bad case of the jitters joined the pain in his knees. "Please."
"Stay there."
Clark stayed. When a door next to the food panel pushed open into the cell, he moved his head as little as possible to watch Bruce's boots approach him, stopping a pace away.
"Don't worry," Clark said. "I won't move."
"I'm not worried. You've never learned to fight like this. No matter how many times I offered. You've never let yourself be weak long enough to learn to compensate."
"No, I haven't. I'm sorry."
Bruce kicked him in the ribs, just under his arm. Clark was too startled to make a sound as it rocked him. He clutched at the spot, wrapping his arms around himself. The same spot again on his hand in an explosion of interconnected pains, a feeling like an electrical shock all down his arm. He was not as brave about this as he had hoped he'd be. "Please," he gasped.
Bruce pulled him up by the hair hard enough to take a little weight off of his knees, punched him behind one shoulder, and ground a boot down on his calf. Clark's body finally caught up and understood how it was supposed to react; he screamed and twisted, clawing at Bruce's wrist. Bruce slammed his cheek against the glass wall.
The pain was incomprehensible. His body moved without listening to him, losing all caution. He fought in the ways he never dared, decades of control forgotten, gripping hard enough to rend titanium. It was horrifying, imagining what he'd have done to Bruce by now if he weren't weakened. Arm shredded, fist through chest, his friend torn and broken . . .
His friend, beating him methodically. There was a brutal precision to it, Clark could tell even through the agony. Sharp numbing strikes on his arms, deep thumps into his ribs and the big muscles of his legs and glutes. Carefully placed jabs on his abdomen, avoid the kidneys, that was something people said, when they talked about fighting, about being careful not to kill people, stay away from the area just below the ribs, especially on the back. He mostly just tried not to punch people in the gut.
Bruce punched him in the gut. Clark collapsed to the floor, retching on nothing. He realized he could taste blood. He must have bitten something, but the rest of him hurt too much to sort it out. Bruce let him lie there for a minute.
"You still want me to stay?"
Clark sobbed and shivered.
"How far will you go to keep me near you?"
He didn't say anything. Bruce brushed a rough gauntlet across Clark's lips, then slowly unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.
"No," Clark whispered. "Please."
"You'd rather rot?" Another two buttons.
"Please, Bruce." He felt sick for reasons that had nothing to do with pain. "Not like this."
"Like what, then?"
When Clark didn't answer, Bruce stopped with the shirt and ran a hand slowly down his side and hip, past so many bruises that they all seemed to blur together. Clark whimpered.
"You want something else? Ask nicely and we'll see." Bruce hooked fingers into the waistband of Clark's jeans.
"No! Please, Bruce. Not like this."
"Feel free to clarify."
"If you —" It was so hard to think with his body screaming at him. "If you do this, it'll, it'll always have been this, you can't, you can't — Please!"
"What will always have been this?"
"Us. You and me, us doing anything, we can't, we wouldn't be able to — Bruce, if you wanted this, talk to me. Please. Don't make it this." Clark wanted to sink through the floor in misery and shame.
"You admit it, then."
"Admit?"
"That you already wanted me."
"Yes! Is that what this is about? Yes, I want you. It's not a deep dark secret, it's bad manners to sexually harass your coworkers. Especially when they're all wearing spandex and bustiers."
"We could all be dressed like monks and you could still look at us."
"Manners, Bruce, I'm not an animal." He couldn't quite believe he was having this argument while twitching with pain on a concrete floor.
"We all are. You just try harder to pretend, and then it's that much worse when you snap." Bruce scooped him up bodily and dumped him onto the bed.
Everything hurt all over again. Clark balled up and waited for something worse. He hadn't been able to hear his own heart since entering the cell, but now he could feel it pulsing in every injury. Had he been waiting very long? He couldn't tell. Maybe his heart was just racing.
He heard a scrape of metal against rock. He unscrunched his eyes enough to peek. Bruce had sat down in the observer chair again. A long silence.
"Thank you," Clark finally managed. "For not." He buttoned his shirt, which suddenly seemed more important than the battered nerves in his fingers.
"You are far too polite for your own good."
Clark found enough coordination to sit propped in the corner, knees hunched up. The thing people had about keeping their backs to walls was no longer academic for him. They watched each other.
"Every world where you seize power, you keep me close," Bruce said. "Unless I force your hand, make it a choice of survival. You prioritize my capture, you keep me alive, and you keep me close. Your unwilling general, your attack dog on a choke-chain, your trophy, your example, your . . ."
"Consort," Clark said in the waiting silence. "God-Emperor Kal-El and his consort, that's the one you're not saying."
Silence.
"We're talking about me here, my head. You think I can't imagine what I would get up to if I took all the brakes off? I hurt Diana, too. Don't I?"
"Less consistently," Bruce finally said. "Things go more smoothly if you keep her on your side, at least at first. She gives your atrocities a certain moral authority."
"I thought you weren't giving me notes."
"Unintentional security theater on my part. You seem to have managed repeatedly without them."
"And you're not telling me the parts that have surprised me enough to bring me down."
"Correct."
"Good. Keep it up."
"This is not the part where you give me orders."
"I wasn't —" Clark breathed too deeply and groaned. It was not an argument he could have won even on a good day.
"This is where it always breaks down. You think good intentions are enough. You can't see how easily you shake the earth. You can't comprehend what it's like to be on the other side of that."
Clark gestured around himself, moving his hands as little as possible. "This is a lesson?"
"This is a desperate attempt to govern the ungovernable. Because you haven't paid more than lip service to even momentarily experiencing a mortal body and everything that comes with it."
"If you'd just asked."
"I did ask. I asked you to train with me. I asked you to learn how to deal with being one of us, in case your powers weren't enough. I asked you to trust me with that, and you refused."
Clark hunched up further in the corner. "Yes. You're right." How could bruises hurt so much? They just kept hurting. "I was avoiding it. Pain hurts, okay? People avoid things that hurt." He remembered who he was talking to. "Most people."
"You don't have the luxury of being most people."
"No." Clark shifted, in case a different angle would make the bruises hurt less. It didn't, and the movement made him feel everything afresh again. "Point made. I need to do my homework. I need to trust you. But at this point . . . That has to start with trusting you to let me out."
He watched Bruce for clues. Nothing.
"Let me out, let me choose, and I will come back. We'll train, we'll . . . I'll heal as soon as you let me out in the sun. You think I need to know what a broken arm feels like? We'll do it. I'll trust you with that. Just trust me to choose."
Bruce's jaw tightened. It might be indecision.
"Please, Bruce."
"Not every lesson can be chosen," Bruce said quietly.
"Well, we've covered helpless." Clark leaned against the wall, making the collar shift on his neck. "We've covered locked in a cell and beaten. Touched without permission, rape threats. What else have you got?"
"If I let you out, what do you tell the league?"
Bullshit would not buy him freedom. "We should talk about that. I've been out of contact long enough that I'll have to tell them something. And I think you can appreciate that what you've pulled here is a security concern. But we can figure that out." The prospect of freedom had him antsy. They were so close.
"Or you can have me locked up for the rest of my life as a paranoid madman who was willing to assault Superman." Bruce was back to the terrible grim blank.
Honesty. "That's not my current plan."
"You haven't ruled it out."
"That'll depend on you. But if you're still the man I know, the man I've worked with and trusted, I still want you beside me." He realized too late what he'd said. "Not — You know what I meant."
"I know what you meant." Bruce stood and turned sharply away.
Clark's control broke. "Please! Please, just tell me what you want."
Bruce paused. "So you can tell me what I want to hear? You've already made your best guess." He left, shutting the thick outer door behind him.
Clark watched the door for a few minutes, then curled down onto his side, back to the wall, and tried to sleep through the incessant thrum-thrum-thrum of his heartbeat in the bruises.
He woke to his name. Bruce had opened the door without waking him and stood over him in his cell. He was out of costume, just a dark turtleneck. His face looked pale. "Clark. Get up."
Clark rubbed his eyes. "Yeah." He swung his feet to the floor, groaning. His muscles creaked in protest. "Ow. Gonna take me a second. Sorry." He reached out a hand. People did that. Bruce had done that when he wasn't steady, to get help up. Bruce didn't help. Bruce stood back and watched him.
"Uh, what are we doing?"
"I'm taking you outside." He did not make it sound like a cooperative activity.
"Care to take the collar off first?"
"No."
There was a flatness to it, a faraway tone that Clark associated with Bruce doing things he really, really hated doing. Don't jump to conclusions. "Why are we going outside?"
"Because not letting you see the sun again would be unnecessary cruelty."
Dread froze up Clark's attempt to stand. "And the necessary cruelty would be?"
"Get up." Bruce wasn't looking at him.
"Please, Bruce."
"I am offering you a little dignity, Clark." Bruce's voice was level. "Take it or leave it."
He took it. He got to his feet silently on aching legs. He followed Bruce through the cave and got into the passenger seat of the Batmobile. He was shaking. When he was safely seated, he heard the little click in his collar. A second later, the rush of weakness, sick vertigo, pain pain pain. He scrabbled uselessly, tugging at the steel, until his arms gave out and dropped to his sides. Click. The pain faded to a dull whisper.
Bruce got into the driver's seat, buckled up, and drove them out of the cave. He kept his eyes straight ahead. Clark supposed he should be looking around, appreciating his last chance to do so, but he couldn't look away from Bruce's face.
Sun, though. Weak, pale sunlight coming in through the tinted windows, tingling faintly on his hands and face, stirring something in his muscles even through the kryptonite fog.
They stopped in a field, not too far away. Maybe even still on Bruce's property. Bruce helped him stumble out of the car. Supported him for a short walk through dew-soaked grass. Mud squished between his toes. He was facing east. The sun was up, barely, shining through the usual Gotham haze. It was warm. He was warming up. Birdsong was getting sharper, Bruce's breath clearer in his ears.
Bruce was trying to ease him down to kneel on the ground. Clark fought it, clinging to Bruce to stay up.
"It'll be easier on your knees."
"Easier for who?"
Bruce didn't answer and didn't force him, just waited. Clark sagged, finally. He couldn't fight the kryptonite forever.
The bruises were fading, at least. He enjoyed a full breath without aching ribs. He smelled the air, listened to the rustle of animals a little further away, maybe up to a mile. Focused his eyes further out, further, drinking in the sun. Sunspots. Beautiful dancing corona. Bruce's heart and breath behind him, speeding up. Steeling himself.
"If this is you," Clark said, "if this is what you've decided to be, I'm sorry. If you're being forced, influenced, if this is anything temporary . . . I hope you can find your way back. I have faith that the Bruce I know wouldn't do this. If you can hear me in there, if you're just watching it happen . . . I know, all right? I know."
He blinked the tears from his eyes. He watched the sun. He heard all the tiny parts of the mechanism shift in the collar, clicking in slow motion. He let the last second draw out in his perception for as long as possible.
The nausea faded. A trick? He held still. If this was some last little cruelty, he wouldn't give up the peace of his position. He wouldn't make it clumsy. His senses were surging, though, his skin was itching, and he could feel the odd sensation he hadn't known to miss, low in his chest, that said that his center of gravity was wherever he wanted it to be.
Bruce walked up behind him, unlocked the collar, and lifted it away. He tossed a JL communicator onto the wet grass. Clark stared down at it in numb confusion.
"If that doesn't explain why I did it," Bruce said, "then nothing will. Do what you want with the knowledge. If you make yourself emperor to avoid ever feeling that helpless again, that's on my conscience. If everything you said in the last day was just to get free, I'd have done the same. Promises made under duress aren't binding."
Clark grabbed the communicator and retreated ten feet up and out, far enough from the collar, far enough from Bruce. He was still wobbly, couldn't go too far or fast or high, but far enough to be safe. He looked down. Bruce stood beside his ridiculous car, empty-handed. Small. Terrified.
Clark ran his thumb over the communicator. "Superman to Watchtower."
"Superman, this is Cyborg." Victor's voice was sharp. "Where are you?"
"Safe," Clark said. "I need to recharge, but safe. I'm with Batman. Call off the search. I'll explain later. Thank you." He thumbed it off again.
Bruce didn't make any large motions, but Clark's vision had recovered enough to see the hand tremors, the shudder in his breath, all the little muscle twitches he couldn't control. Clark considered what to say.
"I . . . am going to get an hour of sun, then meet you back at your place. To decide what to tell them. Which we will figure out together. Got it?"
Bruce nodded tightly. "Thank you."
Clark didn't wait to watch him leave. He weaved toward the nearest grove of deciduous trees, stripped off his dingy clothes, and draped the shirt and jeans across the canopy for a makeshift hammock. It wouldn't take his full weight, but it didn't have to. The fabric guided him to stay at a steady height, just a light, comfortable pressure to tell him where he was.
He dozed. The high drone of a hummingbird woke him. When he rolled to look at it, it zipped back to a safe distance. Like he had. He stretched, reaching his arms and legs out as wide as he could. The cell hadn't been that cramped, not really, but the instinct was still there.
He glanced at the sun. It had been almost two hours. Bruce would understand. No, that was a lie, Bruce would think he'd gone to the league and was coming back to drag Bruce to space prison forever. Clark sighed, dressed quickly enough to alarm the hummingbird again, and headed back to the manor for an uncomfortable conversation.
". . . revealed multiple tactical weaknesses," Clark concluded. "We're working on plans to address them. Starting with hand-to-hand training, which should also come in handy the next time another Kryptonian comes knocking."
The rest of the founding members stared at him. Barry stared at him while still shooting suspicious glances at Bruce several times per second.
"I accept the . . . reasoning behind not telling Superman your plan," Diana said. "But not why you kept it from the rest of us. If you thought it justified, you should have trusted another. His disappearance pulled our focus from other concerns, badly."
"I'm aware," Bruce said. "I'll be analyzing those weaknesses as well."
Barry and Hal sagged almost in unison. Arthur crossed his arms. Diana and J'onn just watched them.
"Lots to do," Clark said briskly. "Any other new business, while we're here?"
Diana said, "Assaulting and kidnapping a fellow league member, even with the best of intentions —"
"Should consider the context," Clark said, "and the feelings of the person who was attacked. I'm the one who was there. The information's valuable. Yes, we'll need to talk about guidelines, parameters for if someone feels the need for this kind of test again. But I am a walking extenuating circumstance. As a threat, I'm difficult to prepare for." He looked at J'onn, projecting his sincerity as openly as he knew how. "I think it was necessary, in several ways. I'll stand by him on this one."
"Coming in now," Clark said, five seconds before he hit the mouth of the cave. He heard the defenses powering down and rolling back, then humming to life again as he touched down behind Bruce's computer chair.
"You're late," Bruce said. He didn't look up.
"Sorry about that. There was a line."
"A line of what?"
Clark rattled the bag of take-out. "At that lunch counter in Hong Kong you liked."
Bruce turned to look at him, then the bag. Maybe this had been a bad idea.
Fortune favored the bold. "As the saying goes, 'Buy me dinner first'?" He held out the bag.
"I asked you here to train," Bruce said slowly.
"Which we will. Not trying to put that off. Just. After what happened, it's up to me to make the first move. If I'm interested. Which I am." He realized he might have backed Bruce into a corner. "Eating isn't committing to anything. The eggs won't stay runny." He set the bag down on the nearest flat surface and backed away. "If the room's already warmed up, I'll start burning off energy."
He retreated to the red-lit gym and changed into his workout clothes, then put on the sensor patches that let Bruce gather data on his reactions as he ran out of juice. His movements were already a little sluggish. By the time he'd done a thousand reps with the weight machine, he'd be down to Bruce's level. By the time Bruce had kicked his ass for an hour, he'd need help walking back to the yellow sun lamps.
"Don't forget the biometric gear," he heard Bruce say, then the shuffle of a take-out box.