Archive of Our Own

The first time Lois hears Trinity, she’s at a function she calls, with strained humor, a WAG-fest. A not-JL JL-event, formal despite how intentionally informal a meeting of Earth’s heroes was meant to be.

Dinah corners her at the entrance, living, breathing proof of an attempt to undermine the WAG moniker. Undermined solely by the fact that her husband is also, coincidentally, a founding member of the Justice League.

“I didn’t think you’d make it,” Dinah says, lifting her beer to Lois in greeting. Like they do this routinely, and this isn’t the second time, full stop, she’s been invited to a non-function function like this.

“Clark was running late,” Lois supplies, letting Smallville take the heat for what isn’t, technically, the most truthful interpretation of their early afternoon. “I hope we didn’t miss the fun.”

“Oh wow,” Flash -- Barry Allen -- says as he appears at Dinah’s side, cutting into whatever dry, witty response Dinah had on deck. “Clark’s here. Hey Lois.”

“Clark is here,” Dinah says, raising her eyebrows just enough for it to be a warning. Barry nods, then settles his eyes somewhere north of Lois’ left cheekbone.

“Is Iris here?” Lois asks. Names are her forte, and she’s not above trying to build as much rapport as she can here.

“Couldn’t make it,” Barry says, shrugging. There’s more to the story, but Lois is too polite to pry. “You think B’s coming?”

The latter is directed at Dinah, who is too much of a professional to speculate. “Beats me.”

“Heh,” Hal says, coming up behind Barry. He claps a hand on Barry’s shoulder, tugging him close. “I think the Trinity is a little too good for Miller Lite.”

Dinah’s eyebrows twitch upward again. Barry glances, awkwardly, in Lois’ direction.

“Except Big Blue,” Hal says, reconsidering after a moment. He smiles, flashing pearly-white, California-perfect teeth in Lois’ direction. In any other context, it would be grimace. “Clark’s not too good for us.”

“Or for Miller Lite.”

Lois doesn’t startle as Clark’s body slots, neatly, against hers from behind. A hand wraps around her waist; in the other are two beer bottles, held precariously by the necks.

There’s a shift. A subtle, ever-so-slight change in their small group. Hal’s faux good mood disappears entirely; Barry’s eyes shift to Dinah, seeking reassurance. Dinah’s stance becomes, with an inexplicable shift of weight, formal. Just for a moment.

“Thanks,” Lois says, taking the bottle. She taps it against Clark’s, then Dinah’s. The clink of glass on glass is absurdly loud in the sudden silence.

“Bruce isn’t too good for Miller,” Clark adds after he takes a sip, all easy-going Kansan charm in the midst of a sudden gap in conversation. “For the record.”

“Right,” Hal says. And they leave it at that.

There’s a whole world and a half of internal Justice League slang -- enough for her to write a book, if not two -- and Clark is a magnanimous translator as she, slowly, gains her sea legs.

They walk back from the train station together, hand-in-hand. Along the river, so Lois can strain for the smudges of stars through the light pollution, and Clark can pretend to do the same.

“Trinity?” Lois prods, when the swing of their hands and their craned necks lulls them, comfortably, into silence.

Superman’s poker face is impenetrable. Clark Kent’s is utterly human. And so, she can see the moment the word pings through his concentration, fracturing across his face in a series of microexpressions her eyes are too weak to follow in realtime.

But it is a reaction. Even if she can’t read it.

“It’s nothing,” Clark says. And for a moment -- just for a moment -- Lois believes him.

“It bothers you,” Lois guesses, swinging their joined hands up to take the edge off the question. Clark snorts as her enthusiasm throws them wildly off track, nearly clipping his eye with her nails.

“Bruce doesn’t like it,” he explains, in that soft, strange voice he uses for things that are in between Clark Kent and Superman. It still shocks her to hear the name out loud. Bruce doesn’t like this. Bruce thinks we should resume diplomatic talks --

Lois plays along. “Why’s that?”

“Mostly because Diana pretends to like it,” Clark says. His eyes snap to hers, eager to share the in-joke. His lips stretch around an impossibly fond smile.

Lois falters. She’s missing the punch-line. And half of the setup.

“Why does Diana pretend to like it?”

“It’s…” Clark shakes his head. He swings their hands again, a paltry attempt that barely reaches Lois’ chin. “It’s a long story. Hal just likes to poke fun at Bruce when he can.”

“That, I got.”

Their hands swing together this time. Lois mulls on the word for the rest of the walk home.

Trinity.

“It’s a step above Founder,” Oliver Queen explains at the next not-function function. He scoffs, tossing back slightly overgrown bangs from his forehead like a horse. “You’ve got Junior Members, Senior Members, Field Leaders, Founders…real Founders,” Oliver stops to roll his eyes, projecting his distaste, “and then, yeah, the Trinity.”

Superman is a Founder. Lois can list off a few other obvious ones -- Batman, Flash. Martian Manhunter. Wonder Woman, who pops up in PR appearances more often than not.

“Tell me about that,” Lois says, switching into reporter mode as easily as she rolls her weight to one aching heel instead of the other aching heel.

“The things that you want to hear, I wouldn’t tell, and the things I’ll tell you, you don’t want to hear.”

It’s Dinah’s turn to roll her eyes as she steps into earshot. She has Lois’ gin and tonic in one hand, an old fashioned in the other for herself, and nothing, evidently, for Oliver.

“Thanks,” Lois says, taking the handed-off glass. Several nearby members are watching them with a degree of interest she can’t quite parse. Watching her, more specifically.

“You’re speaking in riddles again,” Dinah says to her husband, who makes sad grabby-hands at her glass that she completely ignores.

“That’s just how I talk,” Oliver says. He crosses his arms, stealing one last mournful glance at Dinah’s drink. “So, you’re here on your own?”

“Clark had a last-minute thing,” Lois says, wiggling her hand up in the air to indicate Superman. Oliver nods.

It’s beyond bizarre to spend time with people who don’t need the excuse. People who know what Clark is doing right now, at least in theory, somewhere halfway around the globe. Or in space.

“You were saying,” Lois says to Oliver, nodding at him to continue. Oliver eyes his wife, then shrugs.

“What do you want to know?”

Lois thinks about it for just a second. “Why does Batman not like the word?”

“He hates everything,” Oliver says immediately. Dinah’s lips press together. They are Founders, capital F. They know these things.

“Why does Wonder Woman like it, then?”

“Because Bruce doesn’t like it,” Oliver says, like it’s obvious. Lois supposes it is, if you’re used to League interpersonal dynamics.

“That’s just how they are,” Dinah says. She takes a sip from her glass, considering. “A triangle.”

“A really weird freaking triangle,” Oliver agrees.

Lois blinks. Things fall into place, one after the other. Big Blue. She’d assumed it was a codename for someone else, but now --

“Who’s the third person?”

Oliver and Dinah don’t need to say anything. There’s an identical expression on both of their faces that tells her exactly what she needs to know.

“I want to meet them.”

Much like the day she sprung the conversation of exclusivity on Clark, they’re lounging on her couch -- this time, sans a bottle of cab and with more of their clothing -- watching the TV. Clark’s knee is under her hand, bobbing up and down as Forensic Files proceeds at the narrator’s glacial pace.

“Meet who?” Clark asks. He reaches around her, snagging an egg roll from the container. He stuffs it, whole, into his mouth, and Lois is -- against her better nature -- charmed by the display.

The Trinity, Lois thinks, but doesn’t say. Clark doesn’t like the term. Two-thirds of them are in agreement.

“Bruce.” It’s still a trip to say the name, because it isn’t hers, but it is, by way of Clark. “Diana. Both of them.”

Clark abandons Forensic Files entirely, turning around in his seat. Her hand falls away from his knee. It’s vibrating in place, up and down and up and down, so fast it barely looks like it’s moving at all.

He looks at her with a kind of awe. One that had been only half as strong when she’d asked, with false confidence, for the exclusive. To be exclusive. A bad joke, and an even worse segue.

“I’d like that,” Clark says. His smile is -- everything, for just a moment. Like the birth of a new star, the warmth reaches her when his attention is already back on the TV.

Lois Lane has met Bruce Wayne, if met covers the bizarre half-conversations they’ve had in the wild when she was chasing down a story -- or, she realizes, when she was chasing down Clark. Before even she knew she was.

This man is nothing like Bruce Wayne, and she doesn’t expect him to be. She has only seen Wonder Woman -- Diana -- from afar. They are both strangers to her. And in that respect, their first meeting is easier.

Clark ushers her into a private backroom of an already-private restaurant. His hand vibrates against the small of her back, guiding her through the dimly-lit doorways that violate a million and one lighting codes and an extra one for good measure.

It’s not a surprise that their first meeting is in Gotham, under the Bat’s eye and at Bruce Wayne’s table. What is a surprise is how close their host -- hosts -- are seated in the corner booth.

Bruce Wayne and Diana Prince could be siblings, in the right light. In this light, they’re giving the word twins a run for its money. There are small differences, minute flaws in Bruce’s -- arguably still superhuman -- appearance. Diana’s skin is a little too perfect. Her hair is pitch black; Bruce’s is charcoal, shot through with a flinty grey at the temples that puts him on the wrong side of forty in the best of ways.

Diana’s gaze lifts from the table, a welcome in the flame-blue warmth of her eyes. Bruce’s eyes are a paler blue, almost grey. The weight of their attention is startling. There’s a moment, before Diana moves to stand in impressively tall heels and Bruce offers her a hand, where Lois sees something pass between them, a quick jump of electricity, some unknown emotion gone too soon.

Clark’s hand still at the small of her back, a flat heat against the knobs of her spine. She doesn’t need to look to feel the way he straightens up, losing some of Clark Kent and teetering, hesitantly, on the edge of Superman.

“You must be Lois,” Diana says, stepping around the booth with the assistance of Bruce’s hand. In head to toe sapphire chiffon, she is a goddess in every way Lois had envisioned. Her accent is deliciously hard to parse.

“In the flesh,” Lois says, with a smile she doesn’t quite feel. Diana holds out her free hand -- the one not still enclosed around Bruce’s fingers -- and they shake.

“A pleasure to see you again, Ms. Lane,” Bruce says, by way of introduction.

“Lois.”

“Lois,” Bruce agrees, taking the correction in stride. He holds out his hand as Diana shifts herself to his arm, perching herself on what would be an impressive bicep if her own were not of a similar size.

They shake as Lois, privately, marvels at how folded into himself one man can appear on the turn of a dime. Bruce has smile lines around the corners of his eyes; Lois has the distinct pleasure of seeing them in action as Diana’s burgundy-painted lips purse.

“Kal.”

“Hey guys,” Clark says, taking a step up to Lois’ left side. His smile is Midwestern rueful, through and through. “We interrupting?”

Bruce’s eyebrows lift, just enough for Lois to see the good humor underneath. “Not at all.”

“Sit,” Diana urges Lois. “Please.”

They sit.

Lois has been the New Girlfriend a handful of times in her life. Charming hesitant parents and long-term friends is an innate talent, one she put to practice with Ma and Pa Kent two months prior.

Dinner with the other two-thirds of the infamous Trinity is less of a polite, Midwestern interrogation, and more of a dizzying game of trying to catalogue an expression or movement before it disappears.

Bruce and Diana are polite enough to keep the conversation at a level she can follow without needing explanations peppered in. They know what she does for work. They know, to her surprise, how they met. Whether Clark shared that story with them, or it was just obvious -- that part isn’t clear to her. They know about Clark’s most recent byline, and hers.

The longer Bruce and Diana trade off in conversation, effortless weaving in questions, the more it becomes apparent to Lois that she knows nothing about them. Will know nothing about them without their express permission, even if this metaphorical hair letdown is invitation enough.

When Bruce stands to retrieve their wine bottle from the ice bucket, Lois gently clears her throat. Diana smiles at her, expectant.

“How did you three meet?” Lois asks. Flipping the script sits oddly with her, but the question feels like it’s hanging over every single word. “You and Clark, I mean. Before the League.”

That much, everyone seems to agree on -- the Trinity predates the League. Predates some Founders, even.

“We’ve been friends for a long time now,” Diana says. As Bruce reaches down with the bottle, she waves him off without looking up.

“Friends is a kind word,” Bruce adds under his breath. Clark makes an amused noise, accepting more of the rosé with a tilt of his glass.

“You were the unfriendly one.”

“I’m not arguing,” Bruce says, with just a hint of exasperation. When he sits back down, closer to Diana than he’d been before, Lois sees a glimpse of something he is trying, in this moment, not to be.

An arm wraps around Diana’s shoulders; Diana’s hand goes up to greet it, tugging idly at Bruce’s shirt cuff. After a moment, her slim hand closes around his wrist, holding him in place.

Lois can spot a display from a mile away. She sits back in her chair, eyebrows raised.

“So this is a double date?”

“Something like that,” Bruce says, flashing his teeth. Diana doesn’t roll her eyes, but she does something to him out of Lois’ sight that makes him exhale, unprompted.

Lois doesn’t envy him. A flick from Wonder Woman could probably send her through a wall. Even with Batman’s bulk, he’s playing a losing game by playing at all.

The good humor settles over them like a mirage, and Lois can, suddenly, understand what makes this dynamic so controversial from the outside. Equally desired and despised. She’s not quite in their orbit, but she’s not entirely removed from their gravity, either.

It takes her an embarrassingly long moment to realize the conversation has, in fact, stalled. Bruce’s heavy-lidded stare remains where it has landed, somewhere over Lois’ shoulder and near --

“Clark,” Lois prompts, digging an elbow into her boyfriend's rock-hard oblique.

“Right.” Clark clears his throat, looking away. “Bruce tried to put a grappling hook through my chest the first time he met me. It’s a bad joke.”

“Lined with Kryptonite,” Bruce amends. He doesn’t clarify how that might be interpreted as a joke, bad or otherwise.

“Clearly not enough,” Diana says, the voice of reason on this anecdote. Clark snorts.

They continue on like that, three directions of conversation, back and forth and back and forth, for only a moment more. Just long enough for Lois to catch the tempo underlying it all.

A triangle, she reminds herself.

“They like you.”

They’re not holding hands this time; Clark is too jittery for that. He’s usually better about staying in the moment, but she can tell he’s listening to a dozen different things. His eyes never quite focus on her.

“That quickly?” Lois asks.

“They already liked you. Before dinner.” Clark’s head tilts as he listens to something far-off. They come to a halt by the river’s edge.

“Because of my impressive bylines?” Lois teases.

Clark’s shoulders lift, just a fraction. His smile is -- wistful, in a way. He tugs her into his arms like it’s the easiest thing in the world, and maybe it is. Just for a moment.

They watch the stars together. After a moment, Lois reaches up, and -- without truly knowing why -- grips the arm Clark has around her chest the same way Diana had with Bruce.

Clark makes a strange noise into her hair. The arm in her grasp flexes, muscles twitching under her fingertips. He doesn’t pull away.

“Because,” he says, “You make me happy.”

Encapsulating the Justice League’s Trinity is an impossible challenge; impossible, not because of her skill, or access, but because it’s a piece that would never, through her own efforts, see the light of the day.

But it itches, somewhere deep in her brain. The need to know more. The need to understand something that seems, on its own, inexplicable.

A really weird freaking triangle, Lois scribbles on the first line of her notebook, hovering over it with her pen. Clark isn’t at his desk today, and even if he was, it would be hard for him to peek without her seeing.

Then, hesitantly, underneath: Something changed.

“They used to come to the hang-outs a lot more, yeah,” Barry says, chewing on the corner of his lip. “Bats was always a little bit more reserved, but they basically just dragged him along. We used to do barbecues and all of that. With the non-JL Bats too. That was cool.”

“Bats?” Lois clarifies the repeat word.

“B’s kids,” Barry says. He glances back over his shoulder at the clean-up efforts taking place in the distance. “You sure you shouldn’t be back behind the cordon? I know Big Blue is busy, and…”

Lois is standing in the one part of the rubble-strewn street where she still has a chance of remaining upright in heels. She will not give up ground without good reason.

“I’m fine,” she says, giving him a reassuring smile. “So what were they like? Before all that.”

“I mean,” Barry says, thinking it over. “Really tight. Like, really tight. But that’s just how they are. Even--”

“Even now?” Lois finishes for him. Barry nods, glancing over his shoulder a second time.

“Yeah. Sorta.”

Lois waits, one eyebrow raised. Barry’s teeth dig into his lip.

“It’s just different now. Not bad different. Just…different.”

“Look,” Hal says, leaning forward. His voice lowers, even though Clark isn’t in this room, much less the same solar system. “He brings you to these things because he’s trying. Don’t mess that up for him.”

Lois stares at him for a moment. Her mental notetaking stalls. “Trying to do what?”

Hal shrugs one shoulder, taking a swig from his beer. He swallows loudly, probably just because he can. His ring flickers; Lois imagines that, for most people, it would be enough of a distraction to put her off the conversation entirely.

“You’re the reporter, aren’t you?”

Clark comes back from his deep-space mission, according to the emergency message she receives from Bruce, in uncertain status and as entirely dead weight in Lantern Kyle Rayner’s arms.

Lois learns, on the way to a Zeta location in Metropolis, that she is two things: one, Clark’s emergency medical contact, and two, his emergency consent. The former is self-evident; the latter, she stews over on her first trip up to the Watchtower.

It becomes painfully obvious ten minutes later. The thrill of being on the Watchtower -- the Watchtower -- disappears. Even her trembling hands, a gift from the Zeta-tube, are immediately forgotten.

On the other side of the glass, Clark writhes against the medical bed. He’s flushed from head to toe, the only thing preserving his modesty a thin sheet flung across his thighs. In contrast to his reddened skin, the Kryptonite bindings at his wrists and ankles are a sickly, cool-toned green.

Lois takes in a shocked breath, leaning in. She can’t hear what Clark’s saying through the glass, but his lips are moving. His chest rapidly inflates, like he’s gasping for breath. The monitors and screens above his bed are gibberish to her from this distance, but even at twenty feet, she can tell the red numbers aren’t good.

“Ms. Lane.”

Lois looks away from the glass, startled. Her eyes skitter over Batman’s cowl, then over to Diana’s -- Wonder Woman’s -- neutral expression.

“Lois is fine,” Lois says in a voice that almost -- almost -- trembles. She’s already given permission to Bruce Wayne, but this is different. She knows it’s different, because Clark was the same way, at first. Not willing to trade those permissions, things like names, unless they were given to both.

“Lois,” Diana says, not without sympathy. Lois presses her lips together and thinks, hard, about not crying.

They explain to her, in the empty hallway outside of Clark’s private medical room, what transpired on the mission. Explain, in kind, simple terms, what her status allows her to do in a situation like this one.

The two of them trade off easily, a different kind of rhythm than the one she’d witnessed in Gotham, but no less dizzying. Bruce recounts the facts without bias; Diana speaks of paths forward and what feels right.

Lois listens. And when they’re done, she puts a hand to the glass, staring at the sliver of Clark’s chest she can see over her fingers. The rapid rise-and-fall of his pecs as he gasps for air, out of control in a way she has never seen him.

“He signed off on this?”

Bruce nods. He holds up a slim tablet for her, even though she already believes him. Lois scans the medical file anyway, passing over dozens of Clark’s notes to the box marked EMERGENCY CONSENT in all caps.

Lois Lane. 03/25/24.

Lois swallows, staring at Clark’s signature. The date only takes a moment to click in her head. March 25th was the night she’d asked to be exclusive. And Clark had clearly listened.

“So,” Lois takes a breath. “What do you need me to do?”

The only people watching are the Watchtower medical staff -- two people who, Lois is assured, are locked in NDAs tighter than any other on Earth -- but it still feels like Bruce and Diana’s eyes are on her.

That’s not fair, Lois thinks to herself as she enters the medical room barefoot and in a thin paper gown. Their expectations, you mean.

A few feet from the bed, the temperature rises noticeably. Lois crosses her arms, pasting on a smile she doesn’t feel as she approaches.

It’s Clark, even if the man writhing in the bed in front of her is a stranger. His curls spill out across the pillow, soaked with sweat. Those same hands had held her three days ago, bracketed gently around her hips as they’d had sex in his apartment.

Lois knows how to have sex with Clark. Knows how he likes to be gripped, rough and tight at the base of his cock. How to lock her legs around his lower back and hold him in her, winding her hands in his curls and pretending, for both of them, that she was calling the shots.

Sex pollen is a bit of a misnomer, she decides. This isn’t simply a desire to have sex, amplified tenfold. This is torture, a kind that just so happens to take the form of sex. Or lack thereof.

“Baby.”

Clark twitches toward the sound of her voice, jerking in the Kryptonite cuffs. Lois takes that as a good sign, creeping forward.

“I’m here,” she says, sitting down on the sliver of the bed Clark isn’t sprawled across. “Baby, I’m here.”

She doesn’t call him baby. Even in bed, the odd Smallville or a simply gooier-than-normal Clark is preferable. But that doesn’t seem right here. Teasing him doesn’t seem kind. Not now.

Clark’s eyelids flutter. His head rolls toward her hand, and she -- with a sucked-in breath -- lets him nuzzle her palm. His forehead is blisteringly hot, covered in a thin sheen of sweat he doesn’t typically produce.

“Hngh,” Clark says, desperately rubbing into the small point of contact. “Diana…”

A pit opens in Lois’ stomach. Instantly, her eyes go to the observation window, but Diana and Bruce are gone. They’re alone.

“Please,” Clark moans, rubbing his cheek against her palm. “...so hot…”

Lois locks it up in a mental for later box. Her hands are starting to shake again, and that won’t help any of this. She busies herself by reaching for the sheet covering Clark’s lower body, pulling it away from overheated skin as Clark twitches and hisses.

They called her as soon as they were on the Watchtower, Bruce had said. But Clark was dosed twelve hours before that moment, mere minutes before Kyle put him in a ship and hightailed it back to Earth. Even with perfect timing, Clark was -- at minimum -- twelve hours incoherent, with little awareness other than need.

“I’m going to touch you,” Lois says, eyeing the painfully-swollen cock that is too heavy to stand up between Clark’s sweaty thighs. Clark nods frantically, beyond words but clearly in agreement.

The first touch of her hand wrenches a sob from Clark’s chest. Lois leans in, getting her hand around the base of his cock and skimming the tops of his testicles. By the time her thumb touches the bottom of his cock, he’s already coming, a spurt of come spilling over the head and gushing over her hand.

As Clark comes and comes, eyes clenched shut, Lois rapidly reevaluates her plan of attack. She jerks up and down in a gentle, smooth motion, and is rewarded by another sob. There are tears pouring down Clark’s cheeks, down his temples and into his hair. His thighs twitch, clenching and unclenching as his entire body strains toward her.

When the orgasm finally tapers off, Lois presses her other hand to Clark’s overheated chest, pressing down. Clark moans, but it’s a painful sound. His head jerks from side-to-side. His eyes still won’t open.

Bruce had warned her, in blunt speech Diana’s formality couldn’t quite attempt, that sexual contact would be required to end the fever. A typical presentation required more than just mechanical stimulation. It required close contact.

It was the politest way someone had ever informed her that a handjob just wouldn’t cut it. She’d walked in here planning to sit down on Clark’s lap, stick him in her, and fuck him until he either got with the program or pushed her off. She’d used the medical lubrication in the bathroom to prepare herself and spent a good thirty seconds with her own fingers just trying to feel something.

There’s no way this works, Lois thinks, clenching down involuntarily. She’s too nervous, Clark isn’t even aware, and even if her head was in the game -- his cock is swollen beyond its already impressive size. The odds of it fitting into her without a fight are disastrously bad.

“Okay,” Lois says out loud, grounding herself. She presses down on Clark’s chest again, holding him in place. “Plan B it is.”

Close contact.

The moment her mouth slides around the head of his cock, Clark goes rigid against the bed. All at once, the fight seems to drain from him. He sinks back into the sweat-drenched sheets, a breathy moan spilling from his lips.

Lois closes her eyes, braces herself on her hands and knees, and goes as deep as she possibly -- physically -- can. Clark doesn’t let her blow him when they have sex, something about losing control and not wanting to hurt her, which is a waste. Because she’s good at this. Practiced, skilled, and stellar even when she’s a little bit rusty.

Clark’s cock slips deeper into her mouth, heavy against her tongue. Lois breathes through her nose, slipping her thumb under her fingers in a fist as she manually disengages her gag reflex. He’s barely halfway into her, but it must feel good, because his body shivers against hers.

“Oh my god,” Clark mumbles. He doesn’t thrust up into her, but it must be a close thing. Lois sneaks a glance up at him, but his eyes are clenched shut. His head tips back into the pillows, exposing the column of his throat as he swallows nothing but his own saliva.

Lois feels a spark of satisfaction. She resumes her task, letting him as deep into her mouth as she dares. Impossibly, he hardens even more in her mouth, and she can tell the end is near.

“God, I’m gonna--” Clark moans again, his cock jerking inside of her throat. “B, I’m gonna come…”

Self preservation kicks in before the shock does. Lois holds perfectly still, not breathing at all as Clark’s come spills into her mouth and throat. She swallows in strategic, practiced intervals, gently sucking around him as he cries and writhes above her head.

Clark’s awareness comes back in fits and starts. Lois blows him a half-dozen more times, until her jaw is aching, her throat raw, and Clark is coherent enough to tell she’d had enough.

They curl up on the cot together, now equally soaked in sweat and exhausted. Clark’s skin burns where it touches hers, but he isn’t begging anymore. His eyes are open. Heavy-lidded, hazy, but open.

“Do you,” Lois clears her throat, swallowing. It hurts, but she won’t ever tell him that. “Do you want me to call someone else?”

She doesn’t specify who. But Clark’s eyes instantly snap to the observation window, like he knows exactly what she’s thinking.

“I’m fine.”

It’s not the truth. But it’s close enough.

At 9:00 AM the next morning, Clark is at his desk at the Daily Planet looking no worse for wear.

If anything, there’s a new energy under his skin, possible remnants of the sex pollen he won’t admit to consciously. His leg bounces up and down underneath his desk; his fingers tap against his desk. His smile is slightly strained.

At lunch, he takes her to lunch at a nice Italian place around the corner. They’re led back to their table -- a reserved booth, of all things -- and Clark produces a bouquet of roses from behind his back. He hands them over as they sit.

The arrangement dwarfs the small booth. Lois supposes it adds to the ambience. They’re beautiful roses, but not something Clark would pick on his own. Not something he can afford outright on a reporter’s salary.

“What are you apologizing for?” Lois asks.

“Nothing,” Clark says, then reconsiders. His fingers tap against the table. “Well. For making you save my ass this time instead of the other way around?”

Lois thinks about all the times Clark has saved her -- as Superman, and just as a coworker luckily in the right place at the right time. Falling off buildings.Shielded from falling rubble. Pulled out of the path of a bullet at the last second by an arm around her waist, an outraged huff of air brushing the back of her neck as someone then decides to point the gun at Superman.

“Don’t make it a habit,” Lois banters back. Clark’s grin is rueful again.

“Yeah.”

There is a burning question, lodged deep in her throat. It refuses to take shape when she opens her mouth to ask it.

Clark isn’t a good liar, by nature and by practice. He tells her he has no memory of the incident. If he remembered the slip -- slips -- the evidence would be written out across his face, clear as day.

They have perfectly-tame sex that night. When Lois attempts to switch things up, her head hovering over Clark’s lap, he casually slides out of reach, tugging at her pants instead.

“Not really my thing,” he says with a wrinkled nose. And for a moment, Lois almost believes him.

Lois stops attending the League social events.

Clark goes, making her excuses in her stead. There’s a strange, unfounded anxiety in her chest that tells her that they know. All of them, from Hal to Dinah -- they know what happened, even if Bruce and Diana promised it would never leave the medical wing of the Watchtower.

Even if they don’t. Even if they don’t know, exactly, what Clark said in a moment of incoherent fever, there will be looks. And those looks had been present before, she recognizes. But she hadn’t clocked the pity and reserve for what they were, in the moment.

She is still an outsider to the League. And even the controversial Trinity is theirs, respected or loathed or anything in between. They won’t lead her to the answer, but she doesn’t need to be led.

It’s rare for her and Clark to work the same event. Rarer, still, for the event to keep them both late. They split a cab across the Bay to Gotham as Clark talks himself through pulling double duty and using the camera Jimmy left him for the night.

They split at the main entrance of the museum. Cat, stationed by the front door to grab faces and names for her column, coos and calls them a power couple as Clark blushes.

Lois is here on background, so she chats her way through a few circles, then winds her way through the major donors she recognizes on sight. Half of them can barely describe what Ancient Mediterranean art consists of, much less an applicable artist or collection, but they fumble through the attempts with very little self-consciousness. Lois tosses a few softballs their way, nods politely through the ensuing response, and moves on.

By the time she drifts into the main galleries and away from the throng of waiters circling the entrance, it’s almost midnight. The lights are dimmed in deference to the late hour, providing more than a few drunk VIPs the opportunity to steal time in the shadows without notice.

Lois follows a trio of very drunk twenty-somethings wearing a small country’s GDP in Van Cleef necklaces into the Ancient Mediterranean wing. She notes, with a quirk of her lips, the stylized Wayne at the top of the entrance.

For a new installation, it’s impressively on-theme. There are no blank white walls or cool-toned overhead puck lights. The four floors open into an enclosed skylight and rock garden. The railings consist of a fine-grained marble; Lois rests her aching body against one, shifting from foot to foot to relieve the pain of her heels.

A flash of movement above her on the third floor catches her eye. Lois raises an eyebrow at the distant sound of clothing being pushed aside, and then, the press of lips to bare skin.

It’s a romantic place to steal a moment with a partner. The other couples she’d seen stayed near the service hallways or bathrooms, simply to be entirely out of the flow of traffic. An open gallery is a riskier gamble, but she supposes that the majority of the attendees wouldn’t make it very far into the exhibition after three glasses of champagne.

For a moment, she imagines Clark’s arms closing around her from behind. Stealing a kiss against the curve of her neck, a low rumble in his chest as he turns her around against the marble column, kissing her so sweetly, she has no choice but to give way to that soft mouth.

Against her better instincts, Lois leans forward, trying to spy the lovebirds. She can’t quite make out their faces at the angle, but the woman’s dress stands out to her -- white, in the Greek style. Bustled fabric in hand, lifted aside by a man her brain recognizes even from behind.

Clark arrives just as Lois pulls back from the edge, Jimmy’s camera slung around his shoulder. He gives her an excited thumbs-up, entirely oblivious to her discovery.

“Hey, there you are. Do you wanna get something to eat before we head back? I was thinking we could…”

He trails off, head tilting as he listens to something beyond the capacity of Lois’ ears. This time, it’s not hard to guess what. But it isn’t shock, or surprise, that writes itself across his face.

Lois turns back to the balcony. Bruce and Diana aren’t intent on being seen -- at least, not by them. But anything that draws Clark’s attention has a gravity of its own.

Two floors up, she sees Bruce’s mouth lift from Diana’s shoulder, visibly reddened. Lois can’t hear what he says, not like Clark can, but she doesn’t need to. Bruce’s bruised lips shape the words clear as day, directed over his shoulder.

“Take her home, Kal.”

Diana says Kal with warmth for a friend she has known her entire life. Like Clark has always been Kal. In contrast, Bruce says Kal like he is invoking a god. And in a way, this is a prayer. A warning.

Clark’s arm wraps around her waist like an afterthought. Lois follows him to the exit, her heart beating wildly in her chest.

“Are you sleeping with them?”

“No. No. Lois.” Clark stares at her, wide-eyed. He seems startled by the question. So startled, the draft he was reviewing balls up in his hand, compressed into a lump of paper.

Forensic Files drones on in the background, oblivious to the sudden tension running through the room.

“But you were,” Lois says. It isn’t a question. Not really.

“We weren’t -- it wasn’t like that.” Clark stumbles over his words, more animated than she’s seen him in weeks. “That was Bruce and Diana’s thing. Sometimes I…yeah. But when I met you--”

“It stopped?”

“I stopped it. All of it.”

Lois believes him.

Flash brings her to the edge of what he calls the active zone. The battle itself is over, and has been for thirty minutes, but he’s careful with her. Cautious.

Lois had the distinct pleasure of seeing Lex Luthor cuffed and shoved on his ass in the rubble firsthand. She’d been planning on covering that arrest closely when Barry appeared next to her, lightning crackling up and down his suit.

“Big Blue,” is all he says. Lois’ heart kicks up in her chest. She nods.

Clark is down in the shadow of one of the large creatures. Kryptonite glitters in the debris around its body, guiding her toward him like a lighted path. If she isn’t mistaken, there’s even some Kryptonite embedded in the creature’s skin.

Like a bomb went off, she thinks as Flash helps her step through the mess in her heels. A Kryptonite bomb isn’t Lex Luthor’s style, but it’s not not his style, either.

She hears Clark before she can fully see him. When they round the creature’s leg, the situation is simultaneously better and worse than she expected.

For one, Clark is moving -- even with Bruce’s full weight on his hips, armor and all. Writhing against the ground as Diana pins him from the head and shoulders hard enough to fracture the concrete beneath them.

Flash leaves her, speeding away. Lois takes a shaky breath, stepping forward. Bruce’s attention snaps to her, then back to his task.

He’s pulling the Kryptonite shards from Clark’s chest, she realizes. Two-inch, three-inch pieces of the mineral. A fortune’s worth of Kryptronite embedded deep in Clark’s chest and neck. His arms, where he tried to shield his body at the last second before impact. He --

“We don’t have long before his body begins to close over the Kryptonite,” Bruce says. His modulator makes the statement emotionless, but Lois is certain even without it, his voice would not tremble. “I need your permission to give him a field dose of Kryptonite before that happens.”

Clark yells as Bruce’s gloved fingers plunge into the next wound, digging for the offending shard. Diana sets her jaw. The arms she has caged around Clark’s head flex, betraying the massive effort of holding even a depowered Superman down.

Lois blinks. Thinks through that phrasing for just a moment. “You want to give him more Kryptonite?”

Bruce nods. “To prevent his body from healing over and absorbing the fragments.”

“You’re taking them out,” Lois says, desperate. Diana’s expression is grim.

“Not fast enough,” she says in a low voice. “He needs a surgeon. Not field medicine.”

Lois falters. “Flash can’t pull them out?”

“He tried,” Diana says, “The pieces are too delicate. They shattered when he attempted to grasp them.”

Fuck. Lois takes a deep breath. Opens her mouth to speak, and --

“Kal,” Bruce says, voice sharp. Clark has his hand around Bruce’s wrist. Lois can’t tell if he’s trying to pull him closer, or push him away.

“B,” Clark says. His eyelids flutter, trying to open. “...p-please…”

Diana’s hands lift from the ground. She pulls Clark’s head into her lap, cradling him between her hands. Her thumbs press down on his eyelids.

“Shhh,” she says, soothing him. “Let him go, Kal.”

Clark’s hand drops from Bruce’s wrist. Bruce resumes his task, digging in as Clark again goes rigid in Diana’s lap.

“A dose of intramuscular Kryptonite would deplete his powers enough to stop the healing. Long enough for surgery. But it could kill him.” Bruce says, monotone. Like he hadn’t been moments away from losing his arm to a disoriented Kryptonian.

Lois stares at him. The moment stretches into something infinite, blurring at the edges. This is why she’s here. They have brought her here to make that call. Because Clark can’t.

“You want my permission?” Lois asks. Her voice shakes. Her hands shake. She can’t help it.

“You are his medical proxy,” Bruce says. His hands are moving faster now, pulling shards up and flinging them away at a breakneck pace. Every movement is self-assured. “We don’t want it, we need it.”

Clark sobs in Diana’s lap, his face pressed against her thigh. Diana’s fingers wipe the tears away as quickly as they appear, offering the only comfort she can.

“Do it,” Lois says quickly. She grips her own hands for lack of something to hold, watching her fingertips go white and bloodless. “Whatever you need to do, you do it.”

Bruce’s eyes lift to her face, a millisecond of acknowledgement for her decision. He sits back on Clark’s hips, thighs clenching to hold him down.

Diana moves, pulling Clark into a headlock at the same time Bruce reaches into his belt, pulling out a syringe. They move in perfect sync. Like they’ve practiced this before. LIke they’ve done this before.

Bruce jabs the syringe into the side of Clark’s upper thigh. The needle pushes through the suit and muscle easily; when Bruce depresses the plunger, Clark screams.

“I know,” Diana says, hushed, into Clark’s debris-flecked hair. “I know, αγάπη μου.”

When Clark finally goes limp, Bruce resumes his previous task. His fingers slide through the blood suddenly welling up through the cuts in Clark’s suit.

Diana raises her wrist comm to her mouth, calling for the emergency Zeta without needing to be told.

Clark spends twelve hours in surgery and three days straight under the Watchtower sun lamps. When he’s discharged to his apartment, Lois brings him flowers this time.

“You know,” Clark tells her as he examines the bouquet of sunflowers. “You’re the first person who hasn’t yelled at me.”

Lois can only imagine why that doesn’t, exactly, bring a smile to his face.

An older man -- please, call me Alfred -- escorts her through the winding hallways of Wayne Manor and down to the Cave as if she is an expected guest, and not an intruder. He calls her Miss Lane like he knows her, has known her, and smooths over the rudeness of her visit with a generous application of polite smalltalk.

He leaves her at the base of the stairs, retreating up to the daylight with a nod. His departure tells her everything she needs to know about how this encounter will go.

A braver reporter would spend hours walking around Batman’s Cave. Lois sets her shoulders, making a beeline for the platform Alfred had pointed out to her on the way down.

Bruce is halfway under a car -- not the car, but still black and impressive -- when she arrives. He’s shirtless, she realizes, a mechanic’s bodysuit folded over at the hips.

Lois waits to be acknowledged. It’s only polite, considering the other manners she’s disregarded in order to get down here. After a moment, Bruce’s tinkering stops. He slides out from under the car, balling up a greasy rag between his hands.

“Miss Lane,” he says. Lois waits until he’s upright to make eye contact, studiously avoiding the constellation of scars across his bare chest.

“I have a question for you,” Lois offers, instead of Lois, please. Bruce wipes his hands with the rag, his eyebrows lifting just at the edges.

“Alright.”

Diana is too kind to tell her outright. Clark won’t talk about it. Bruce is the other third of this triangle. He is also the only human, contrary to appearances he’d like to maintain.

Lois sits at his workshop table with folded hands. He doesn’t press her, doesn’t prompt her into speaking. He sits with her and waits for the inevitable to emerge.

She doesn’t ask the obvious questions. Do you love him? Were you together before me? Does he still love you? Is this my fault? Why won’t he talk about you?

The answers to those questions cycle through her mind. Lois settles on a new question.

“Do you hate me?”

Bruce stares at her. In a different world, she’d almost call the angle of his lips amused. His eyes are more honest than she’s ever seen them. They say more than he ever could out loud.

“When we had dinner,” Bruce starts. His eyes dart to her hands, then back up. “That was the first time Diana and I had seen Clark in months.”

“You work together.”

“Clark,” Bruce gently stresses for her. It takes her a second to understand.

“Oh,” Lois says. For a moment, there’s nothing to say at all. She took that from them, without even realizing. Without even knowing it had existed.

“You make him happy.”

Lois looks up from her hands, her heart freezing in her chest. For a moment, he sounds like Clark. They’re Clark’s words in Bruce’s voice. The same damn words.

You make me happy.

It is the only reason she is sitting here. Why her name is on Clark’s medical proxy documents. But when he needs -- when he is beyond words or conscious thought --

It isn’t her name Clark cries. And it isn’t her he cries for. Because, deep down, he isn’t the same person. As much as he might argue otherwise.

“So..?” Lois prompts. There’s still a question hanging over them both.

Bruce shakes his head.

“No.”

Something by her head beeps, insistent. Lois tries to slap at the alarm clock, but her hand only twitches. The beeping continues, and she realizes, sluggishly, that it isn’t her alarm clock at all.

The memory of hitting a wall -- hard -- comes back to her, hazy. It doesn’t hurt now, but she’d felt the way her leg had crumpled under her, taking the brunt of the hit. The sickly feeling, not of bones breaking, but of bones shattering in her leg. All of them, all at once.

Lois pries her eyes open, nauseated. She focuses on the blanket in front of her, then the outline of her right leg, then --

She sinks back into the pillow, relieved to see her left leg whole and encased in a cast. She can’t move it, but she can see the light pink of her toenail polish, and that’s more than enough.

It takes a moment for her drugged-up brain to realize that she isn’t, actually, in a Metropolis hospital. The window on the far wall isn’t a window, but rather a porthole. Into space. The sunlight dappling her sheets is as real as it gets. As close as she’ll ever get to the sun.

Clark must have taken me here, she thinks, closing her eyes. Bile rises up in the back of her throat. Another day, another fumbled investigation. Figures.

She doesn’t, consciously, fall asleep, but time passes. When her eyes open a second time, there’s a low hum under the high-pitched beeping of her medical equipment. Voices, purposefully lowered so as not to wake her.

For the first time, she is provided with an unencumbered view of the Trinity. Clark, folded into the armchair by her bed, has his laptop on his knees. Even though his body is pointed toward Lois, his attention is on the room’s other occupants.

Bruce and Diana are on the opposing loveseat. Diana has her feet in Bruce’s lap. Bruce’s hand strokes idly up her calf, tracing the outline of the muscle with two fingers.

They’re both in casual clothing, which is almost as much of a surprise as waking up on the Watchtower. Bruce is sporting entirely unstyled hair and a bloodstained bandage around his left bicep, half-hidden by the sleeve of his t-shirt. Diana’s simple leggings are accessorized with a Metropolis University sweatshirt that Lois knows, somehow, is from Clark’s closet.

“--saying you need to choose a different objective,” Clark says, brow furrowed. He clicks through something on his laptop. “If you want to avoid dealing with Hal throwing a shitfit again.”

It’s not a voice he uses with her. Not one she’s heard him use, full stop. It isn’t quite his Superman voice, but it isn’t Clark either. There’s a thread of authority running through it. Purpose.

“Hal was unhappy with Gardner,” Bruce says, “Not with the parameters of the mission.”

“Still,” Clark says. Across from him, Diana hums.

“He has both the right and the ability to call for a Founders meeting,” Diana says, thoughtful. Bruce’s thumb digs into her calf, gently massaging at something that makes a thin line appear between her eyebrows. “Where that overlaps with Oa’s guidance is less clear to me.”

“Guidance, sure,” Clark says, dubious. “Half the time I think they just make that up.”

“Only half?” Bruce asks. Diana’s lips curve into a smile.

“I’m reassigning Hal anyway,” Clark says, jabbing at the trackpad of his laptop. “He knows how to make a formal complaint.”

A triangle, Lois thinks. Even without context, it’s obvious how practiced this is. By the time one of them voices a question, the other two are already thinking through the possible solutions.

“You’re distracting me,” Diana says to Bruce. Lois realizes the hand kneading at her calf had drifted upward, skimming the inside of her thigh.

“Mhm,” Bruce says, unrepentant. Diana’s eyeroll is elegant as she turns back to Clark.

“Time?” she asks him. Clark doesn’t bother glancing down at his watch.

“Ten minutes, twenty seconds.”

Diana raises her eyebrows at Bruce, who sighs. “I’m fine.”

“If you don’t keep up with them--”

Bruce cuts off Clark. “--I’ll be--”

“Just fine?” Diana finishes for him. Bruce’s eyes narrow.

“Clark.”

“Busy,” Clark says, not looking away from his screen. “Hey, where are we putting Dick this week?”

“Thursday,” Diana and Bruce say at the same time. Clark nods, typing something one-handed.

It would almost be better, in a fucked-up way, if they were simply having sex. It’s a bizarre thought, but this is a bizarre kind of intimacy. Lois isn’t an intruder. She’s not even an afterthought. It’s like she isn’t in the room at all.

And Clark. This Clark, sitting between her and them, pulled in two directions at once. This Clark is lighter than any she’s seen in months. Beyond at ease. He is at home.

Lois’ next inhale is pained. The monitor beeps, recording the sudden spike in her heart rate and respiration. Clark’s head whips around, worry flashing across his face before their eyes lock.

“You’re awake.”

Clark stands up, taking unnecessary human steps across the room to reach her bedside. Behind him, Bruce and Diana draw closer on the loveseat; Diana leans her head against Bruce’s chest and, with a wince, Bruce’s arms hold her there.

Lois doesn’t respond fast enough. Concerned, Clark follows her gaze behind him and back over to the loveseat. And for a moment -- just a moment -- she can see something hungry in his eyes.

Hungry isn’t a good word, Lois thinks to herself as Clark turns back around, composing himself. Desperate.

It’s easy to blame disuse for the burning in her throat. Lois swallows, then swallows again, trying to find her voice.

“Hey, Smallville,” she croaks.