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The Watchtower’s monthly strategy meeting was supposed to be a paragon of superhero professionalism.
It was usually a meticulously orchestrated symphony of villain threat assessments, patrol schedule negotiations, and the perennial mystery of who kept neglecting to restock the premium Kryptonian-grade coffee beans. (Spoiler alert: it was always Hal Jordan, though team decorum demanded they maintain the polite fiction of collective ignorance.)
This particular Monday, however, chaos loomed, courtesy of Barry Allen, resident speedster, self-proclaimed tech guru, and walking, vibrating embodiment of Murphy’s Law wearing a red leather onesie.
When Barry volunteered to set up Bruce Wayne’s new sleek, suspiciously high-tech holographic projection system, the universe itself seemed to lean forward in its cosmic recliner, popcorn materializing in celestial hands, ready for the inevitable clusterfuck of epic proportions.
“I’ve got this totally under control!” Barry proclaimed with the reckless confidence of a man who had once accidentally created seventeen alternate timelines while trying to make toast.
His grin sparkled with the intensity of a thousand sunlamps, which should have been everyone’s first warning sign that disaster was not just approaching. It was barreling toward them in full sprint.
He then zipped around the Watchtower’s pristine conference room like a caffeinated hummingbird having an existential crisis, trailing cables in patterns. Sparks erupted from a hastily rewired junction box, painting brief, beautiful fireworks across the sterile white walls.
“Perfectly normal electrical discharge!” Barry chirped with the unbothered enthusiasm of someone who had clearly never met an OSHA regulation he couldn’t violate in under thirty seconds. He swatted out a small but enthusiastic fire with his bare hand, treating it like an overzealous birthday candle rather than a sign that maybe, just maybe, he should stop touching things.
Diana Prince sat with the kind of regal, battle-tested posture that suggested she had personally witnessed the fall of Troy, the rise of Rome, and at least three separate episodes of Hal Jordan trying to impress women with his ring constructs.
One perfectly sculpted eyebrow arched with the precision of a weapon forged by the gods—which, technically, it had been. Her fingers drummed against the polished conference table in a rhythm that somehow conveyed both infinite patience and her mental catalog of increasingly creative ways to weaponize her Lasso of Truth.
“Perhaps we should wait for Batman to arrive before attempting to operate his… equipment.”
The pause before ‘equipment’ was so loaded with implications.
“Nah, it’s totally fine!” Barry waved off her concern with a hand that was still slightly smoking from his impromptu fire-fighting duties. “Batman left really detailed instructions. I mean, how complicated can holographic projection technology possibly be? It’s just light and science and... okay, maybe some really advanced alien tech that he definitely didn’t steal from somewhere, but I’ve absolutely got this under control!”
His grin stretched wider, if that were physically possible, suggesting a complete and utter disregard for concepts like ‘hazard assessment’ or ‘basic self-preservation.’
Another spark flared from his latest “improvement”—a creative rewiring job that would have made Thomas Edison roll over in his grave and file a posthumous complaint. The instruction manual, a tome that rivaled War and Peace in both length and incomprehensibility, lay buried under a tangle of different cables and what appeared to be the smoldering remains of a power strip that had clearly given up on life.
This whole situation was, objectively speaking, the opposite of fine. It was so far from fine that fine was a distant memory, visible only through a very powerful telescope pointed in the wrong direction.
Hal Jordan, meanwhile, had achieved a slouch so profoundly committed. His Green Lantern ring flickered with the dim, halfhearted glow of someone whose willpower was currently focused entirely on staying conscious despite the crushing weight of his own boredom.
“Can we just use the old projector?” Hal groaned, his voice carrying all the enthusiasm of a deflated party balloon that had been left on the floor for three weeks. “I’ve got a date with Carol tonight, and if this meeting runs late again, she’s going to think I’ve been swallowed by another cosmic entity. Again. Do you have any idea how hard it is to explain that to someone? ‘Sorry, babe, got a little tied up with a sentient black hole, but hey, I’m fine now, want to grab dinner?’”
“The old projector met a rather traumatic end last week,” Arthur Curry interjected, his weathered, sea-salt face taking on a distinctly greenish tinge that had nothing to do with his Atlantean physiology and everything to do with psychological scarring. “J’onn decided to enlighten us all with a documentary about Martian cultural practices. Something called ‘The Mating Rituals of the Green Martians of Sector 7: A Comprehensive Study in Tentacle-Based Romance and Its Sociological Implications.’”
Arthur shuddered so violently that ripples spread across his coffee, tiny tsunamis of trauma disturbing the surface. “I’m still having nightmares. Tentacles, J’onn. Moving in ways that defy not only human anatomy but also several laws of physics and basic decency. I haven’t been able to look at calamari the same way since.”
J’onn J’onzz’s typically stoic facade cracked like ancient marble, his deep red eyes dimming with what could only be described as wounded intellectual pride.
“It was culturally significant,” he said, his voice carrying the hurt dignity of a scholar whose life’s work had just been dismissed by philistines. “The mating rituals of my people represent thousands of years of evolutionary development and social—”
“It was traumatizing,” Oliver Queen interrupted from his corner, where he’d been methodically sharpening an arrow. “I’m in therapy now. Dinah’s been very supportive, but she’s getting less enthusiastic about me waking up screaming about interspecies tentacle choreography at three in the morning.”
“The therapist says I’m making progress,” Oliver continued conversationally, testing the arrow’s point with his thumb, “but she also says I need to stop bringing visual aids to our sessions. Apparently, my interpretive drawings are ‘unnecessarily detailed’ and ‘why would you draw that, Mr. Queen, why would anyone draw that?’”
“MOVING ON,” Diana announced with the authoritative tone of someone who had once successfully negotiated a ceasefire between Zeus and Poseidon during their infamous “who can flood/lightning bolt more cities” competition. Her voice carried the promise that anyone who brought up Martian mating rituals again would find themselves personally acquainted with her sword.
High above the increasingly chaotic conference room, Clark Kent floated near the vaulted ceiling with the careful distance of someone trying to avoid getting involved in whatever fresh hell was unfolding below. His iconic red cape billowed dramatically in the recycled air because even during a crisis, Clark Kent couldn’t help but look like he’d stepped out of a propaganda poster about the nobility of farm boys made good.
He watched Barry’s technological terrorism unfold with the slow-building dread of a man witnessing a train wreck in real time. Well, if the train were on fire, loaded with fireworks, and being driven off a cliff by Barry Allen.
But it wasn’t just Barry’s reckless enthusiasm that unsettled him.
There was something about Bruce’s new holographic setup that tugged at Clark’s memory like a splinter lodged just beneath the surface. Persistent, maddening, impossible to ignore. The projectors, all obsidian-black and gleaming with a predatory sheen, were arranged in a precise pentagonal formation that felt… off. Not just wrong, but familiarly wrong.
“Barry,” Clark called down, his voice taking on the cautious tone he usually reserved for defusing bombs, negotiating with Lex Luthor, or explaining to Perry White why he’d missed another deadline, “maybe you should double-check those connections before you—”
“Supes, buddy, pal, light of my life, savior of my countless timeline screw-ups and the reason I haven’t been erased from existence at least fourteen times,” Barry interrupted with manic energy. “I’ve been handling advanced technology since before you figured out how to use a microwave without turning it into a modern art installation.”
Barry’s face immediately crumpled with instant regret. “That was harsh. I’m sorry. Your microwave skills have come a long way since the Great Appliance Meltdown of 2018. You’ve only destroyed two this year. But seriously, I’ve got this completely under control. What’s the worst that could possibly happen?”
Clark winced so hard it was visible from space.
In his extensive years of averting cosmic catastrophes, interdimensional incidents, and regular Monday afternoons with the Justice League, that particular phrase had become the unofficial harbinger of explosions, reality tears, and Barry accidentally time-traveling to fix problems he’d created while time-traveling to fix previous problems he’d created while time-traveling.
The conference room door suddenly slid open with a pneumatic hiss that somehow managed to sound ominous, admitting Bruce Wayne—Batman, cowl down but a presence of barely contained menace fully operational.
His piercing eyes swept the room with the systematic accuracy of a crime scene investigator, filing Barry’s cable spaghetti, the faint scorch marks decorating the walls like abstract art, and the lingering stench of burnt circuits. He was thirty-seven seconds later than his own impossible standard demanded, which for Bruce was about as unacceptable as the time he rewound Clark’s press conference three times just to analyze his… his posture.
It was about posture. Yes.
“Allen,” he said, his voice dropping to that particular register that could silence a Gotham City riot, stop a speeding bullet through sheer intimidation, and make hardened criminals voluntarily turn themselves in rather than face whatever punishment that tone implied. “Explain. Now. Why does my equipment look like the aftermath of a failed science experiment?”
“Brucie!” Barry chirped. “Just finished setting up your fancy new holographic system! Added some creative upgrades, rerouted the primary data feed for extra juice, boosted the power matrix, and implemented some efficiency improvements that I’m ninety percent sure won’t cause any dimensional rifts. Wanna see it in action?”
The phrase ‘ninety percent sure’ hung in the air like a toxic cloud.
Bruce’s jaw clenched with the force of tectonic plates shifting, and something that looked suspiciously like panic flickered behind his carefully controlled expression.
“Step. Away. From. The. Console. Now.”
But Barry Allen, blessed with superhuman speed and cursed with the survival instincts of a particularly optimistic lemming, had never met a big red button he didn’t interpret as a personal invitation. His face lit up with the joy of discovery as he spotted what was clearly labeled ‘EMERGENCY ACTIVATION - DO NOT TOUCH UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES - SERIOUSLY, DON’T.’
“Allen.”
Too late. Barry’s palm hit the gleaming activation button, and the universe paused for a moment, as if considering its options, then decided to embrace chaos with the enthusiasm of a toddler discovering finger paints.
The projectors hummed to life with a sound like reality clearing its throat before delivering very, very bad news.
The air above the conference table began to shimmer and fold, light coalescing with the kind of high-definition clarity that put IMAX to shame and suggested a budget that definitely hadn’t come from Wayne Enterprises’ quarterly reports.
Most importantly, the Justice League froze in a perfect tableau of impending horror.
There, rendered in excruciating, crystal-clear detail that captured every shadow, every gleam of sweat, every tremor of movement, was a very naked, very breathless, very obviously in the middle of fucking someone within an inch of their life younger Clark Kent.
And he was spectacular.
His usually coiffed Superman hair had been transformed into what could only be described as ‘absolutely and completely debauched’—dark curls standing up at angles that defied both gravity and any attempt at respectability. His iconic glasses sat crooked on his flushed face, one lens fogged over, somehow making him look both undone and impossibly beautiful. He looked like a fallen angel who had tasted sin and decided it was the most exquisite thing that had ever touched him.
His mouth was open in what was unmistakably a moan of pure, unadulterated bliss, the kind of sound that suggested he was experiencing transcendence on a molecular level.
From the angle of the projection—and oh God, there was clearly a very deliberate camera angle involved here—it was unmistakable: someone was straddling him, riding him with slow, relentless intent. Someone whose hands were visible at the edges of the frame, gripping Clark’s shoulders with the kind of possessive intensity that spoke of worship, ownership, and a complete disregard for tomorrow’s soreness.
The camera trembled slightly with the movements of whoever was holding it. Then, a voice emerged from the surround sound speakers with perfect audio clarity.
Bruce Wayne’s voice. Rough, breathless, completely wrecked with desire and unmistakably, irrefutably Bruce fucking Wayne.
“Shit, Clark, you’re perfect like this. So beautiful when you let go for me. So beautiful when you fuck me.”
Holographic Clark clearly enjoyed holographic Bruce Wayne’s dirty talk—his breathless “Bruce, please, I need—oh fuck, Bruce,” echoed through the conference room with such vulnerability that the air turned humid with secondhand shame.
It was, without question, the least appropriate soundtrack for a professional superhero meeting.
“COMPUTER!” Bruce lunged for the control panel with the desperate fury of a man watching his deepest secrets broadcast in surround sound to his coworkers.
His cape snapped behind him like a storm warning, and his voice rose to a controlled roar that somehow managed to be both terrifying and completely ineffective. “EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN! IMMEDIATELY! RIGHT NOW!”
“I apologize, Batman,” the AI intoned, its unsettling calm suggesting it had been coded by someone who’d never known mercy, “but the system is currently accessing your personal archive directory. Now playing: CLARK_DORM_2006.mov. I have detected forty-six additional files in this category. Would you prefer CLARK_KITCHEN_MORNING_2006.mov, CLARK_LIBRARY_STUDY_BREAK_2006.mov, or perhaps CLARK_SHOWER_SURPRISE_2006.mov?"
The silence that followed was so absolute it had its own gravitational field. It was broken only by the increasingly fervent noises coming from the hologram, now hurtling toward what was unmistakably going to be a very loud, very graphic climax. No one in the room was even remotely prepared to witness it, yet not a single person could look away.
The hologram zoomed in (why the hell was it zooming in?) on Clark’s face, eyes fluttering shut, lips parting around a desperate, “Bruce, please—I’m so close—can I come inside—” And then the camera jolted violently, as if Bruce had picked up the pace, bouncing harder on… whatever surface this scene had spiraled onto.
“Forty-seven videos?!” Hal’s voice cracked like a prepubescent teenager’s, shooting up approximately three octaves as his Green Lantern ring flared bright enough to signal passing alien civilizations. “Bats, what the actual—you’ve got a vault of you and Supes going at it like porn stars?!”
Barry had begun vibrating at a frequency that made him nearly invisible to the naked eye. “Oh God, oh God, I’m so sorry! I didn’t know Batman had a secret—a personal—a porn archive!”
“It’s not—” Bruce’s roar could have registered on seismic equipment, his hands stabbing at the control panel with increasingly desperate precision as he hunted for the shutdown commands that Barry had helpfully relocated. “It’s not pornography.”
“It’s artistic!” Clark yelped from his position near the ceiling, where he’d retreated in a futile attempt to disappear entirely. “It was artistic! We were young! It was art!”
“Art,” Diana repeated thoughtfully, as if she were considering this explanation for academic purposes. “Interesting artistic choice with the camera angle.”
After what felt like seventeen eternities but was probably only thirty seconds of Bruce channeling his inner caveman and attacking the control panel with increasing creativity and violence, the projection finally sputtered out with a dying electronic whine. Emergency lighting bathed the room in hellish red illumination, casting them all as participants in some sort of superhero support group meeting in the depths of purgatory.
The silence stretched like taffy, thick, uncomfortable, and inexplicably sticky (which, for the record, had nothing to do with the sex tape they’d just witnessed), until Hal Jordan—because of course it was Hal Jordan—shattered it.
“Well,” he said conversationally, as if they’d just finished reviewing quarterly budget reports instead of watching their team leaders’ greatest hits from their old sex life, “that was certainly educational! Makes J’onn’s tentacle documentary look like a Disney movie.”
“Hal,” Diana warned, but there was something in her voice that suggested she was fighting not to laugh.
“No one,” Bruce announced, “speaks of this. Ever. Not to anyone. Not to your significant others. Not in your sleep. Not to your therapists. Especially not to the press. I have seventeen different ways to make each of you disappear, and I’m feeling creative.”
Arthur leaned back in his chair. “You know, this actually explains a lot. The weird tension, the synchronized eye-rolling, the way you two communicate without talking...”
“Aquaman,” Bruce’s voice promised swift retribution involving fish-related humiliation.
“The way Superman always knows exactly where you are in a fight,” Oliver added helpfully, apparently deciding that if they were all going to die horribly, they might as well go down swinging. “The way Batman gets that specific look when Superman’s in danger—”
“Queen.”
“That look right there, actually,” Oliver continued with the fearless dedication of a man who had survived multiple near-death experiences and clearly felt invincible. “Very possessive. Very ‘that’s mine and you can’t have it.’”
Clark, still hovering near the ceiling like a very muscular, very embarrassed parade balloon, finally found his voice. “We should focus… on… on… the real issue here. This equipment clearly has serious security vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. Critical ones.”
“More critical than discovering our team leaders have a secret amateur pornography collection featuring themselves?” Hal asked. “I mean, you two were actually together? Like, romantically? With feelings and everything?”
“It wasn’t a relationship,” Bruce said. His voice was flat, controlled, and completely devoid of emotion—which, to anyone who knew Bruce Wayne, was a dead giveaway that he was feeling entirely too much. “It’s not happening now. It was college. People experiment in their youth. They do reckless things. Things they regret.”
Something flickered across Clark’s face, gone almost immediately, but Diana caught it with her warrior’s instincts for spotting weaknesses in an opponent’s armor. It was the look of someone who had just taken a knife between the ribs and was trying to pretend it was just a scratch.
“Batman is absolutely right,” Clark said, his voice carefully modulated into professional neutrality but carrying an odd undertone. “It was experimental. We were young, thought we were in love, but it was just physical. Poor judgment on both our parts.”
Now it was Bruce’s turn to flinch, a micro-expression that flashed across his face like lightning. But Diana saw it again, filed it away, and began to smile with the expression of someone who had just discovered a particularly interesting puzzle.
“Casual, then?” she pressed.
“Very casual,” Bruce confirmed. “Extremely casual. Completely meaningless.”
“Supremely casual. So casual it barely even happened. Like a handshake. A very naked, very athletic handshake,” Clark echoed.
J’onn tilted his head with the detached curiosity of a scientist observing a particularly fascinating specimen. “The emotional resonance in the recording suggested significant attachment. Genuine affection. The vocal patterns indicated—”
“Drop it,” Bruce and Clark snarled in perfect, synchronized harmony, their unison so perfect it would have been impressive if it weren’t completely undermining their claims of casual indifference.
They immediately glared at each other for the synchronized response, as if the other had personally orchestrated this moment of revealing coordination just to make them both look ridiculous.
Diana leaned forward with the interest of someone who had just caught the scent of a particularly juicy secret.
“Actually, let’s not drop it. This could impact team dynamics, and we deserve full disclosure. Bruce, if it was so meaningless and casual, why keep forty-seven meticulously organized and labeled videos for over fifteen years?”
Clark’s carefully maintained expression of professional neutrality cracked like a dam under pressure. He stared at Bruce with something that looked suspiciously like hope warring with old hurt, waiting for an answer that Bruce seemed physically incapable of providing.
Bruce’s jaw worked silently, his expression cycling through various stages of panic, calculation, and what appeared to be the emotional equivalent of a blue screen of death. “That’s... I... there are practical considerations...”
“Such as?” Diana prompted.
“I keep detailed records of all significant… of all significant—”
“Bruce,” Clark interrupted quietly. “It’s just me. You can drop the Batman voice and the strategic evasion tactics. We both know you don’t keep personal mementos. You don’t accidentally preserve sex tapes for fifteen years.”
For a moment, Bruce’s carefully constructed armor slipped, and everyone in the room caught a glimpse of something fragile and achingly human underneath all that calculated control.
Before anyone could process this moment of unprecedented Bruce Wayne emotional transparency, or before Diana could pounce on it, the Watchtower’s alarm system chose that exact moment to save them all from feelings with the subtle grace of a nuclear explosion.
Sirens wailed, and the computer’s voice cut through the tension with the kind of perfect timing that suggested the universe had a sense of dramatic irony.
“Priority alert: Major disturbance detected in Metropolis city center. Multiple meta-human signatures confirmed. Threat level: Class 5. Estimated casualties if left unchecked: significant. Justice League response requested immediately.”
“Saved by the bell,” Hal muttered, his relief so palpable it was practically visible. “Thank God for conveniently timed disasters.”
Bruce was already moving toward the exit. His cape billowed behind him like a storm front, and his voice carried the authority of someone who had just remembered he was Batman and Batman didn’t have to deal with feelings if he didn’t want to.
“League, we move out. This discussion is over. Permanently. Forever. Never to be revisited under any circumstances.”
“We’re absolutely not done here,” Diana called after him, her voice carrying the promise of someone who had just found a new favorite hobby and wasn’t going to let it go easily.
“Yes. We are,” Bruce shot back without breaking stride.
Clark shot toward the exit, a blur of red and blue trailing a faint sonic boom behind him. “Batman is right somehow. We should focus on the current crisis and absolutely, definitely, never speak of this again. Ever. To anyone. Including ourselves.”
His voice carried conviction, but the flicker of hesitation in his eyes said otherwise… like maybe, just maybe, he did want to talk about it.
As the team scrambled to address the crisis in Metropolis, Oliver shook his head with the expression of a man who had seen enough relationship drama to recognize the clear signs.
“Those two,” he announced to the remaining team members, “are so far from being over each other that ‘over it’ is in a different galaxy. That’s fifteen years of unresolved sexual tension—plus, apparently, forty-seven recorded sex tapes—wrapped in denial.”
“The psychological indicators were quite clear,” J’onn observed with the detachment of someone who had made a career of analyzing the emotional disasters of his teammates. “The vocal stress patterns, the synchronized defensive responses, the way they moved in perfect coordination while claiming indifference. These are classic symptoms of suppressed attachment.”
Arthur nodded sagely, stroking his beard like a sea-weathered relationship counselor. “Bruce kept forty-seven videos. You don’t archive that much footage of someone you’re over.”
“Maybe he just enjoys rewatching vintage Superman-Batman porn?” Hal offered, far too cheerfully. “Which is, y’know... porn of themselves.” He paused, as if that somehow made it better. “Strictly for, like, technique analysis. Obviously.”
The entire room turned to stare at him.
“What? I’m just saying!”
“Hal,” Diana interrupted, “please never talk again. Let’s go save Metropolis and let our emotionally constipated friends work out their feelings through violence and property damage like mature adults.”
The fight in Metropolis was everything a superhero battle should be: dramatic, destructive, and featuring enough explosions.
A group of meta-humans with more power than common sense had decided to redecorate downtown with some sort of experimental weapon that looked like it had been designed by someone who had consumed nothing but science fiction movies for six months straight.
The device itself was a marvel of impractical engineering—a giant crystalline structure that pulsed with ominous energy and seemed to exist for no purpose other than to make things explode in aesthetically pleasing patterns. It had already reduced three city blocks to modern art installations and was working on a fourth when the Justice League arrived like a very attractive, very violent cavalry charge.
It took the full team three hours to contain the damage, neutralize the threat, and convince the local news crews that no, they didn’t want to provide commentary on why Batman and Superman seemed to be having “communication difficulties” during the battle, and no, they couldn’t explain why Green Lantern kept making constructs that looked suspiciously like couples therapy couches.
Throughout the entire fight, Clark and Bruce worked together with their usual seamless coordination—the kind of perfect synchronization that came from years of fighting side by side and knowing each other’s moves better than their own. But there was an edge to their interactions.
“Superman, I need aerial reconnaissance on the eastern perimeter,” Bruce would command through the comm system.
“Already on it,” Clark would respond, launching into the sky before Bruce could finish sentences, like he was trying to win some sort of competition for Most Efficient Avoidance of Awkward Conversation.
When Bruce got thrown through a particularly expensive-looking office building, Clark was there in seconds, hovering with the kind of obvious concern that went way beyond standard teammate protocol.
“Status report,” Clark said, his voice carefully professional but his eyes betraying the kind of worry that suggested he’d stopped breathing the moment Bruce had disappeared through the building’s facade. “Any injuries? Structural damage to the suit? Concussion symptoms?”
“I’m functional,” Bruce replied curtly, brushing debris off his cape without making eye contact, as if maintaining visual contact might somehow make the last three hours of awkwardness spontaneously combust. “The building’s structural integrity is compromised. Civilian evacuation is complete.”
When Clark took a hit from the experimental weapon that sent him crashing through three city blocks like a Kryptonian wrecking ball, Bruce was moving before anyone else could even react, his voice tight with barely controlled panic cutting through the comm channels.
“Superman. Report your status immediately!”
“I’m operational,” Clark’s voice came through slightly breathless but attempting nonchalance, like getting launched through half of downtown was just a minor inconvenience. “Just taking the scenic route through Metropolis’s urban planning. The architecture down here is really quite interesting from this angle.”
Diana noticed the way Bruce’s hands clenched when Clark was in danger—not the normal tactical concern of a team leader, but the white-knuckled terror of someone watching the most important person in their world get hurt.
Hal noticed the way Clark’s entire body went rigid when Bruce was thrown through that building, and how he’d moved without conscious thought, like Bruce’s safety was hardwired into his nervous system.
Even Arthur, who was usually about as observant of interpersonal dynamics as a particularly dense rock, couldn’t miss the way they orbited each other during the fight—always positioning themselves to protect the other’s blind spots, moving in perfect harmony while maintaining maximum physical distance, like they were connected by invisible strings but trying very hard to pretend they weren’t.
“They’re being weird, right?” Barry whispered to Oliver during a brief lull while they waited for the meta-humans to finish their mandatory villain monologue about societal decay and the usual megalomaniac talking points. “Like, weirder than usual?”
“Weirder than normal,” Oliver confirmed, watching Bruce and Clark coordinate a pincer movement while maintaining enough distance between them to park a small aircraft. “And that’s saying something, considering normal involves Batman’s emotional constipation and Superman’s pathological need to save everyone, including people who actively want to murder him.”
“Think they’ll actually talk about it?” Barry asked hopefully.
Oliver and Barry turned to look at each other, then back at Bruce and Clark, then dissolved into the kind of laughter that suggested they both knew exactly how likely that conversation was to happen voluntarily.
“Right,” Oliver said, wiping tears from his eyes. “And I’m going to quit the Justice League and start a career in interpretive dance.”
…And yet, somehow, it actually happens.
Of their own free will. Sober. In this economy.
Back at the Watchtower, the team filed into the medical bay for their standard post-mission checkups, everyone sporting various degrees of property damage, wounded pride, and the satisfied exhaustion that came from a job well done.
The elephant in the room—or rather, the forty-seven elephants in the room, all of them high-definition and very naked—lurked in the corners like particularly awkward ghosts that everyone was determinedly ignoring.
“Excellent work today, everyone,” Diana announced, trying to restore some semblance of normalcy to a situation that had transcended normal and was now approaching the realm of ‘story we’ll be telling at Justice League Christmas parties for the next decade.’ “Standard debriefing in twenty minutes?”
“I need to review some tactical assessments first,” Bruce said, already moving toward the exit with the purposeful stride of someone who had suddenly remembered urgent business literally anywhere else.
“I should file my incident report,” Clark added, heading in the opposite direction. “…And check in with Perry about the damage to downtown. The Daily Planet’s insurance company is going to have questions.”
The rest of the team exchanged looks.
“They’re gonna talk? Like… actually talk?” Hal whispered, as if saying it too loud might shatter the spell.
“Twenty bucks says it happens within the hour,” Barry said, practically vibrating.
“You’re on,” Arthur grunted. “But I’m betting two hours minimum.”
They laughed, but only for a moment.
Then silence fell.
And the collective realization hit like a brick to the face.
Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent were going to talk.
About college.
About the sex tapes.
About the college sex tapes.
Or worse—about their deep, repressed, definitely-mutual-but-still-denied college love-love feelings.
Barry made a strangled, high-pitched noise. “Oh my god, they’re actually gonna do it.”
“Walking in opposite directions?” he added, eyes darting. “That’s classic fake-out. They’re totally meeting somewhere secret.”
“Conference Room B,” Diana said with the certainty of someone who had been watching human behavior for several millennia. “It’s smaller, more intimate, and has no holographic projection systems that Barry can accidentally activate.”
Everyone turned to stare at Barry, who held up his hands defensively. “I am never touching Bruce’s technology again. I promise.”
Conference Room B was indeed smaller and more intimate than the main briefing room, with comfortable chairs arranged around a circular table and, most importantly, absolutely no advanced technology, holographic projection capabilities, or anything that could be accidentally modified into an instrument of emotional destruction by well-meaning speedsters.
Clark paced back and forth across the small space like a caged animal who had recently discovered that his entire social circle had seen him naked and enthusiastic in high definition.
Bruce stood perfectly still by the window, staring out at the star field like it contained the answers to life, the universe, and how to survive the most mortifying experience in his superhero career.
Outside the conference room, the rest of the Justice League had gathered around the door like the world’s most powerful group of eavesdroppers, with Diana shushing everyone while simultaneously pressing her ear to the door with the dedication of someone conducting vital intelligence gathering.
“Can you hear anything?” Hal whispered.
“Shh!” Diana hissed. “Clark just stopped pacing.”
“That’s either very good or very bad,” Arthur observed quietly.
“With those two? Definitely very bad,” Oliver added.
Inside the room, the silence had grown so thick it was practically solid, like emotional concrete setting around both of them.
Clark had indeed stopped pacing and was now standing in the center of the room, his hands clenched at his sides, looking like he was trying to decide between flying away at supersonic speed or punching something.
Finally, Clark broke the silence with all the grace of someone ripping off a band-aid that had been attached to his soul.
“So,” he said, his voice carrying the kind of forced casualness that fooled absolutely no one, least of all Bruce Wayne, “that happened.”
“Yes,” Bruce replied.
“The entire Justice League just watched us having sex in your dorm room.”
“Correct.”
“Very enthusiastic sex. With excellent camera work and surprisingly good lighting.”
“Your point, Superman?”
Clark stopped trying to pretend this was a casual conversation and turned to face Bruce directly, his expression shifting from forced calm to something that looked suspiciously like hurt mixed with fifteen years of unresolved frustration.
“My point is that you kept the videos, Bruce. All of them. Forty-seven professionally organized, meticulously labeled videos of us together. For fifteen years.”
Bruce’s shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly, like someone had just poked a nerve with a cattle prod dipped in liquid awkwardness. “I maintain comprehensive records of all significant—”
“Bruce. You already said that,” Clark’s voice cut through the deflection. “I know you.”
Clark caught a glimpse of something vulnerable and uncertain and achingly familiar underneath Bruce. It was the same expression Bruce had worn that last night in college, when they’d both known Clark was leaving and neither of them had been brave enough to say what that really meant.
“What do you want me to say, Kent?” Bruce asked, his voice barely above a whisper but somehow carrying the weight of fifteen years of unspoken questions, unresolved arguments, and all the things they’d been too young and too scared to figure out the first time around.
“I want you to explain why you have forty-seven sex tapes of us from college in your personal computer with clearly labeled file names.”
Bruce turned away from the window, and when he met Clark’s eyes, there was something honest there that made Clark’s breath catch in his throat.
“Maybe I’m just really bad at file management,” Bruce offered weakly.
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Clark stepped closer, enough to notice that Bruce was holding himself with the kind of rigid control that implied he was about two seconds away from either kissing Clark or punching him.
“You don’t do ‘bad file management.’ You have a system for organizing your sock drawer. You have backup plans for your backup plans, and contingency protocols for situations that probably won’t exist for another fifty years. You don’t keep things by accident.”
“Maybe I wanted to delete them, but couldn’t find the right folder.”
“For fifteen years? Bruce, you built the world’s most advanced computer system. You could locate a specific grain of sand on a beach if you put your mind to it. You once hacked into Darkseid’s personal computer just to prove you could. Don’t tell me you couldn’t figure out how to delete some video files.”
Bruce was quiet for so long that Clark began to wonder if they were going to spend the rest of eternity standing in this room.
When Bruce finally spoke, his voice was rough with fifteen years of careful control finally developing stress fractures.
“Do you remember what you said? In that video—the one they saw?”
Clark frowned, his memory suddenly unreliable under the weight of Bruce’s intense stare and the growing realization that this conversation was about to go somewhere he wasn’t sure he was prepared for.
“I said a lot of things. Most of them were embarrassing and involving vocabulary I didn’t know I had access to.”
“You said you loved me.”
Oh.
Oh shit.
Clark felt his heart do something complicated and painful in his chest, like it was trying to remember how to beat properly while simultaneously attempting to escape through his throat.
The memory, when it surfaced, hit like a physical blow. He’d been young, desperate, and so completely gone for Bruce Wayne that it had felt like drowning in the best possible way. Like oxygen was overrated when he could survive on nothing but the way Bruce looked at him, as if he were something rare, precious, and impossible.
“Bruce...” Clark started, but his voice caught on the name like it was too heavy for his vocal cords to lift.
“You said you loved me, and then two weeks later, you transferred to Metropolis University. No explanation, no goodbye, no forwarding address. You just disappeared like you’d never existed, like what we had was something you needed to escape from.”
The pain in Bruce’s voice was carefully controlled, wrapped in emotional armor and deflection techniques, but it was there. Sharp and bright and exactly the same as it had been fifteen years ago when Clark had been too young and too terrified of his own feelings to handle loving someone that much.
“I transferred because I do love you.”
Bruce’s head snapped up, his eyes widening with surprise and something that looked suspiciously like longing before he caught himself and slammed his emotional defenses back into place.
“That’s the stupidest reason I’ve ever heard, and I once listened to you try to convince Lex Luthor that renewable energy was a sound business investment.”
Clark couldn’t help the small smile that tugged at his lips despite the minefield they were currently navigating.
“I was twenty-two, Bruce. I was an alien pretending to be human, falling in love with someone who was brilliant and beautiful and completely out of my league in every conceivable way. Do you have any idea how terrifying that was?”
“So you ran away.”
“So I ran away like a coward,” Clark confirmed, sitting down heavily in one of the conference chairs because suddenly his legs felt unreliable and his knees were staging a rebellion against the rest of his body. “I thought... I thought it would be easier. For both of us. I thought you’d move on and find someone better, someone who didn’t have to hide half of who they were, someone who could give you a normal life without the constant threat of alien invasions and secret identities and accidentally crushing you during intimate moments.”
“Someone better,” Bruce’s voice was flat.
“Someone human.”
“You’re an idiot,” Bruce said quietly, “because you know I wouldn’t care about that.”
“I know,” Clark murmured. “I was stupid.”
“No,” Bruce corrected. “You’re a colossal, galaxy-sized idiot.”
“I know.”
“A Pulitzer Prize-winning dumbass.”
“I know.”
“Clark Joseph Kent, what the actual fuck.”
“I know!”
“I spent the first two years thinking it was my fault. That I’d pushed you away somehow, that I’d been too intense or too demanding or not good enough to keep you interested. And then, for the years after that, I just got angry. Angry and tired of carrying the weight of losing you. So I buried it. Threw myself into anything that would keep me too busy to think about how you’d ripped my heart out and carried it off to Metropolis like a souvenir.”
Clark grimaced. “Bruce, I’m sorry. I was young and scared and—”
“And I spent those whole fifteen years telling myself I was over it,” Bruce continued, steamrolling over Clark’s apology with the determination of someone who had been waiting fifteen years to have this conversation and wasn’t going to be derailed by things like interruptions or basic conversational etiquette. “That it was just college experimentation, that what we had wasn’t real, that I’d built it up in my memory into something more significant than it actually was. That loving you had been a phase, like my brief period of thinking I wanted to be a marine biologist.”
“Are you? Over it?” Clark asked, his voice smaller than he’d intended, like he was afraid of the answer but needed to hear it anyway.
Bruce was quiet again, but this time it felt different—less like avoidance and more like someone choosing their words very carefully because they understood that what they said next would matter more than anything they’d ever said before.
“If I were over it,” Bruce said finally, his voice carrying the weight of a confession that had been fifteen years in the making, “would I have kept those videos? Would I still have a folder on my personal computer labeled Clark that I’ve never been able to delete?”
Clark felt something warm unfurl in his chest. “Maybe?”
“Clark.” Bruce stepped closer—and then knelt in front of him. Close enough that Clark could see the faint lines around his eyes, the silver threading through his dark hair, all the ways fifteen years had changed him from the young man Clark had fallen in love with into someone deeper, more complex, somehow even more beautiful.
Clark’s voice was barely above a whisper. “What’s in the folder? Besides our forty-seven sex tapes.”
Bruce gave a sharp, self-deprecating smile. “Other videos. Photos. That godawful poem you wrote me for my birthday. The spare key to your dorm. Your class syllabus.”
Clark’s breath caught. His heart did that familiar, maddening thing—skipping a beat, then fluttering back to life too full, too fast, like it didn’t know how to hold this much feeling at once.
“I kept them,” Bruce said quietly, “because I couldn’t forget. What I had. What I let go of. Why you didn’t come back. And what I’ve spent fifteen years pretending I didn’t still need.”
Clark felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes. Tears he hadn’t shed in years, tears for the time they’d lost, for the pain they’d both carried, for the love they’d been too young and too stupid and too scared to fight for when it mattered.
“I know it’s been fifteen years,” Bruce continued. “I know we’re different people now. I know you probably have someone else, a life in Metropolis, a dozen reasons why this is fifteen years too late and completely pointless—”
Clark was already kissing him before Bruce could finish the sentence. No room left for words, no patience for restraint. Whatever they’d been trying to say could wait. This couldn’t.
It was different from college. They were older now, more careful with each other, carrying fifteen years of history and hurt and hope between them like something fragile and precious that could shatter if they weren’t gentle enough. But underneath all of that—the uncertainty, the fear, the weight of everything that had gone wrong between them—it was still them.
Still Bruce melting into his arms like he belonged there, still that little sound he made when Clark’s hands found his face, still the way they fit together like they’d been designed for this exact moment.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, Bruce rested his forehead against Clark’s and laughed, soft and disbelieving and more beautiful than anything Clark had heard in fifteen years.
“So,” Bruce said, his voice still rough but carrying something lighter now, “I guess we should probably talk about what this means.”
“Probably,” Clark agreed, unable to stop smiling even though his face was wet with tears he absolutely didn’t remember shedding. “But maybe we could start with whether you’re planning to keep those videos.”
Bruce’s smile was wicked and familiar and exactly the same as it had been fifteen years ago when he’d been young and reckless and completely gone for a farmboy from Kansas who could fly.
“That depends,” Bruce said, his voice dropping into that register that had historically preceded very poor decision-making and very good memories. “Are we planning to make new ones?”
Outside the conference room, Diana pressed her ear harder against the door and grinned like someone who had just solved the most satisfying puzzle in the universe.
“I think they finally figured it out,” she announced, sounding far too pleased with herself—like the universe had just rewarded her lifelong commitment to meddling.
“About damn time,” Arthur muttered, arms crossed. “I was starting to think we’d have to lock them in a room with a romcom playlist and hope for the best.”
“Isn’t that basically what this was?” Oliver said, nodding sagely. “Minus the playlist. And somehow, they did it voluntarily. Shocking, really.”
“And public humiliation,” Barry offered.
“Right. Can’t forget that part,” Oliver added, deadpan.
“Should we, uh... give them some privacy?” Barry asked, even as he leaned in closer to the door.
“Of course,” Diana said, making absolutely no move to leave. “In just a few more minutes.”
“For the sake of their emotional healing,” J’onn added, hands clasped like this was a solemn ritual.
“Obviously,” Arthur agreed, straight-faced.
“Obviously,” Hal echoed, eyebrows waggling with no shame.
Ultimately, in Conference Room B, two of the world’s most powerful heroes were currently engaged in what could be called a tactical discussion about the future of their partnership. There were hands. There were definitely fewer clothes. And they were wholly unconcerned that their teammates were conducting a highly unauthorized intelligence-gathering mission just outside the door.
All that mattered was this: After fifteen years, they had finally, finally found their way back to each other.
Even if it had taken the single most mortifying event in superhero history—their very much still archived college sex tape—to get them there.