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It was kind of an open secret among the senior founding members of Justice League that the Dark Knight of Gotham and the Man of Steel had been, for the better part of eighteen months, engaged in an intensely devoted, deeply domestic, and occasionally nauseatingly romantic partnership.
Everyone on the Watchtower knew.
They knew because Batman, a creature who was ordinarily ninety-eight percent shadow, paranoia, and weaponized cynicism, softened his posture by precisely two degrees whenever Superman drifted into the orbital briefing room.
They knew because Superman, whose moral uprightness was usually legendary across seven star systems, could frequently be observed hovering six inches off the floor beside the tactical console, holding an insulated thermos of green tea with a small yellow sticky note stuck to the lid with hand-drawn smiley faces.
They had seen the way Batman allowed Superman’s fingers to brush against his armored forearm during mission debriefs, they had heard the terrifying, gravelly voice drop into a lower, suspiciously gentle frequency whenever Kal took a hit in the field, and they had all, at one point or another, walked into the secondary observation deck only to discover the two of them pressed flush against the reinforced quartz window, kissing.
There was only one tiny, minuscule, utterly catastrophic blind spot in the League’s collective awareness: not a single soul on the Watchtower had the faintest, foggiest idea who either of them was beneath the spandex and Kevlar.
To the League, Superman was a sun-god from the stars who lived in a fortress of ice, and Batman was an urban myth forged from the asphalt and misery of Gotham City. The idea that either of them had social security numbers, dental insurance, or mundane civilian responsibilities was a theoretical concept they preferred not to examine too closely.
Meanwhile, on the plane, in the glittering, champagne-soaked upper stratospheres of high society, a completely different, equally seismic public drama was unfolding.
Four months prior, at the prestigious Gotham Metropolitan Museum’s Annual Gala, Bruce Wayne, notorious billionaire playboy, international polo enthusiast, and patron saint of questionable tabloid headlines, had arrived not with a European supermodel or a French ballet dancer on his arm, but with a tall, broad-shouldered, slightly rumpled investigative reporter from the Daily Planet named Clark Kent.
The debut had sent the international press corps into a state of acute hysteria.
Clark had worn a perfectly fitting tuxedo, obviously made by one of Bruce’s tailors.
He had stumbled twice on the red carpet, he had adjusted his thick-rimmed glasses sixty-nine times before they reached the cocktail terrace.Bruce Wayne had spent the entire evening looking at the Kansas farm boy with the possessive, besotted adoration of a dragon that had just discovered its favorite mountain of gold.
When a society reporter from Vanity Fair had brazenly asked Bruce if the reporter was "simply a passing journalistic fascination," Bruce had turned to the cameras, wrapped a manicured, possessive arm around Clark’s broad waist and declared into six microphones:
"Clark is the only thing in this miserable world that makes waking up in the morning tolerable. If he will have me, I intend to keep him forever."
The photographs had broken the internet. The New York Times ran an analysis on the democratization of wealth. Vogue published a sixteen-page spread on Clark’s "Midwestern normcore chic"; and Gotham society had finally accepted that their most eligible bachelor had been entirely, irrevocably claimed by a dorky journalist with an encyclopedic knowledge of municipal sewage pipelines.
They were, in summary, the happiest, most stable couple on two distinct planes of existence.
Which made the catastrophic events of a rainy Thursday night in Gotham an act of sheer, unadulterated cosmic sabotage.
One of the tactical operation had concluded at approximately eleven-forty.
Clark, who had spent the evening covering a dull city council hearing across the river in Metropolis before taking flight, had landed in the rain-slicked alley behind the municipal warehouse to conduct what was supposed to have been a very brief, highly professional debrief with his partner.
He changed back to his civilian clothes when Batman had grabbed him by the front of his tweed coat, hauled him backward into the deep shadows beneath an iron fire escape, and kissed him like a man dying of thirst.
Clark’s glasses were pushed slightly askew against a sharp jawline, and there was Batman, groaning into the mouth of a mild-mannered reporter whose coat was rapidly soaking through with Gotham rainwater.
"Bruce," Clark murmured against his lips, breathless and smiling, his hands resting easily on the armored hips of the Bat-suit. "We're four blocks from the precinct. Anyone could look down this alley."
"Let them," Batman growled, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that sent a delicious, familiar shiver straight down Clark's spine as he nipped at Clark’s lower lip. "You smell like newsprint and bad diner coffee. I missed you."
"You saw me four hours ago at breakfast."
"Too long," Bruce rasped, pulling him back in for another deep, bruising, utterly indiscreet kiss.
Click.
Thirty feet away, perched upon the rusted metal railing of a second-story fire escape behind an industrial dumpster, was a twenty-two-year-old freelance paparazzo.
He possessed an eighty-thousand-dollar telephoto lens with military-grade low-light infrared sensors, a severe lack of personal survival instincts, and the absolute, breathtaking realization that he had just captured the journalistic scoop of the century.
Through the viewfinder, the image was crisp, flawless, and terrifyingly clear: the terrifying, mythic, unyielding Batman of Gotham, pinned against a brick wall, his cowl tilted upward, passionately, thoroughly, and enthusiastically locking lips with Clark Kent, the mild-mannered, bespectacled Daily Planet reporter who was currently the very public, very exclusive fiancé-equivalent of billionaire Bruce Wayne.
He uploaded the photo directly to the Gotham Gazette wire service at three in the morning with the headline:
THE CHEAT OF THE CENTURY: BRUCE WAYNE’S KANSAS SWEETHEART CAUGHT IN CLANDESTINE RENDEZVOUS WITH THE BAT OF GOTHAM!
The thermonuclear detonation occurred at precisely six-fifteen on Friday morning.
Clark Kent was sitting at his kitchen table in Metropolis, wearing flannel pajama pants and holding a mug of cacao, when his phone began to vibrate with such ferocious, continuous noise that it literally skittered off the wooden table and fell to the floor.
He picked it up. There were forty-two missed calls from Perry White, eighty-nine text messages from Lois Lane, sixteen emails from Wayne Enterprises legal counsel, and a news alert from TMZ featuring his face framed by red, flashing neon sirens.
Clark clicked the link.
He stared at the 4K, crystal-clear, horrifyingly romantic photo of Batman cupping his jaw in the alleyway.
"Oh," Clark whispered, the color draining entirely from his face until he looked like a glass of skim milk. "Oh, no."
Within forty-five minutes, the street outside Clark’s apartment building on Clinton Street had been transformed into an apocalyptic war zone of broadcast vans, telephoto lenses, and screaming television correspondents.
When Clark attempted to walk to work in his second-best suit, forty microphones were thrust into his face with the collective velocity of a firing squad.
"Mr. Kent! Did Mr. Wayne know about your nocturnal arrangements?!"
"Clark! Is it true you traded Gotham’s fortune for a vigilante’s favor?!"
"Mr. Kent, are you a serial gold-digger, or is this a targeted humiliation of the Wayne family?!"
"Hometowm froud!" an elderly woman shouted from the sidewalk, hurling an overripe, organic tomato that exploded with a wet, pulpy thud against Clark’s trench coat lapel.
Clark didn't dodge, he couldn't dodge without revealing that he could move at the speed of light, so he merely stood there, dripping red tomato seeds, blinking through his sauce-splattered glasses like a confused, traumatized golden retriever.
He arrived at the Daily Planet looking like a man who had survived a minor grenade explosion.
The newsroom was completely silent.
Every single head turned.
Jimmy Olsen looked at him with the tragic, heartbroken betrayal of a boy whose favorite dog had just bitten him. Perry White was standing in his doorway, his suspenders hanging loose, chomping through an unlit cigar with enough force to powder the tobacco, holding up the front page of the Gotham Gazette.
"Kent," Perry growled, his voice a low, vibrating rumble that made the linoleum tiles buzz. "My office. Now."
Before Clark could take two steps, Lois Lane rolled her desk chair directly across his path, kicked her feet up onto a stack of archives, took a slow sip of her espresso, and peered at him over her dark sunglasses.
"Well," Lois purred, her eyes dancing with an unholy, feral, and utterly terrifying glee. "If it isn't the Boy Scout from Bourbon County. You know, Smallville, when you told me you were dating Bruce Wayne, I thought: good for him, secure the bag, get that trust-fund money. But stepping out on the prince of Gotham with a guy who wears rubber ears in an alley? That’s not just messy, Clark. That’s an art form."
"Lois, please," Clark groaned, pulling out a handkerchief to wipe tomato pulp off his lapel, his face burning with a mortification so deep it could have powered a small municipal grid. "It’s- It’s not what it looks like."
"Really?" Lois smirked, clicking open her laptop. "Because it looks like you're currently trending number one on four continents under the hashtag #ClarkKentIsAWhore. The Gotham society pages have already declared you a persona non grata in three separate country clubs. There’s a Facebook group with two hundred thousand members demanding Bruce Wayne revoke your MetroCard."
"I don't have a MetroCard from Bruce!" Clark hissed frantically. "I buy my own transit passes!"
"Tell it to the mob, Casanova," Lois laughed, blowing him a kiss. "Perry’s waiting. Try not to break his heart too, you absolute savage."
Meanwhile, forty thousand kilometers above the blue curvature of the Earth, an entirely different, infinitely more dangerous kind of tribunal was convening on the Watchtower.
Batman was sitting in his command chair at the central tactical console, his cape drawn tight around his shoulders, reviewing satellite telemetry regarding a solar flare.
Behind him, standing in a tight, hostile semicircle, were Diana of Themyscira, the Flash, Green Lantern, and Oliver Queen.
None of them were looking at the monitors. All of them were looking at the back of Batman’s head with expressions ranging from profound theological disgust to active, violent homicidal intent.
"You disgust me," Hal Jordan said flatly, his power ring flickering with a dangerous, emerald-green glow.
Batman didn't move. "Jordan. The sector patrol for Vega is sixteen minutes overdue. Resume your post."
"Oh, I’m sorry, is my schedule inconveniencing you?" Oliver Queen snapped, slamming an un-feathered arrow onto the metal table with a deafening clang.
"We don't know who you are, but we know what you are. A back-alley, skirt-chasing, two-timing scumbag! Superman has been bringing you herbal tea on a space station for eighteen months! He hand-embroidered a fleece blanket for your command chair, you son of a bitch!"
"It was fleece-blend," Batman said calmly, his fingers typing an algorithm into the terminal. "And the tea was peppermint. It aids digestion."
"How can you be so cold?!" Barry Allen wailed, vibrating at half-speed, his hands clutching his cowl in pure, agonized heartbreak on behalf of his favorite alien. "He looks at you like you hung the moon, and you go down to Gotham and make out with a dorky reporter from the Daily Planet behind a dumpster?! A reporter with a bad haircut, Batman! The guy wears tweed! Have you no shame?!"
Diana stepped forward, her dark eyes flashing with an ancient, Amazonian fury that had toppled empires. She rested one heavy, golden-armored hand on the edge of the Batcomputer, leaning down until her face was inches from the cowl.
"Kal-El has not spoken for four hours, Batman," Diana whispered, each word weighted with the fury of Olympus. "He is currently sitting in the sun-lounge on Deck Four, staring at a blank wall with the wounded countenance of an abandoned dove. If you have broken his spirit, if you have brought dishonor to his heart for the sake of a mortal dalliance, I will personally drag you by your horns to Themyscira and cast you into the pit of Tartarus."
Batman slowly paused his typing.
He tilted his head upward, the white lenses of his cowl fixing upon Diana’s blazing gaze with an expression of such supreme, unbothered, and utterly psychotic calm that Oliver Queen took an instinctive step backward.
"Superman’s domestic equilibrium is not a League concern," Batman said, his vocal modulator dropping into its deepest, most terrifying gravel. "And my private engagements on the ground are outside your jurisdictional mandate. Dismissed."
"He's a monster," Hal whispered in horror, shaking his head. "A literal, soulless sociopath."
"I'm voting to kick him out," Oliver declared. "I'm calling an emergency meeting of the charter. We are taking the Bat-keys."
In the back of the room, unseen by the angry mob, Superman floated through the upper airlock, wearing his full suit, looking down at his armored partner with an expression that was seventy percent sheer, hysterical exhaustion and thirty percent intense desire to throw Bruce Wayne into the moon.
At eight o'clock that evening, Clark Kent sat on the floor of Bruce Wayne’s private penthouse in Gotham, wearing an oversized gray sweatshirt and holding an ice pack against his forehead where a rogue microphone had clipped him outside his office.
Beside him, lounging on a cream-colored silk sofa with a crystal glass of sparkling water, was Bruce Wayne.
"They threw an heirloom tomato at me, Bruce," Clark said, his voice flat, staring blankly at the roaring marble fireplace. "It was organic. It cost twelve dollars a pound. The woman told me that Jonathan and Martha Kent had clearly failed as parents to raise such an unprincipled harlot."
Bruce took a slow, delicate sip of his water, his lips twitching traitorously. "Alfred informed me that the Wayne Foundation received four hundred and twelve angry letters today from prominent Gotham debutantes offering to 'console me in my hour of tragic betrayal.' Mrs. Vanderbilt sent an entire fruit basket with a note that said: 'You were always too good for Kansas, darling.'"
"I am living in a nightmare," Clark groaned, dropping his head into his hands. "The League hates you, Bruce. Diana looked at you today like she was planning to sacrifice you to Hera. Oliver Queen spent three hours trying to figure out how to put a GPS tracker on your cape so they can catch you 'creeping around Metropolis.' And my own mother called me from Smallville to ask why I was kissing that scary man from the television instead of the billionaire who bought our church a new roof."
Bruce set his glass down. He slid off the sofa, settling onto the floor between Clark’s knees, his long, scarred fingers reaching up to gently remove the ice pack, tossing it onto the table.
He cupped Clark’s face in his hands, his thumbs softly tracing the cheekbones, his dark blue eyes dark and gleaming with a sudden, dangerous, and completely unhinged tactical brilliance.
"Then we escalate, Clark," Bruce murmured, his voice dropping into that rich, seductive purr that always dismantled Clark's rational thought processes.
Clark blinked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion behind his glasses. "What does that mean? What does 'escalate' mean in the context of an alleged double-cheating scandal involving four identities and two people?"
"Mutually Assured Destruction," Bruce smiled, a slow, terrifying, and utterly breathtaking grin that showed just a hint of teeth.
"Right now, the public narrative is asymmetric. Clark Kent is a villain who broke the noble prince’s heart, and Batman is an opportunistic predator who stole another man’s lover. It lacks balance. It lacks chaos. If we are going to be condemned, Clark, we should at least ensure the public’s confusion is total and irreversible."
Clark stared at him, horror and fascination warring in his chest. "What are you planning to do?"
"Tomorrow at noon," Bruce purred, leaning forward until his lips brushed against the corner of Clark’s jaw, "Wayne Enterprises is holding a public ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new solar pavilion in Centennial Park. In Metropolis. In broad daylight. With sixty live television networks present."
"Yes?"
"I want Superman to attend," Bruce whispered against his skin. "And I want Superman to kiss me like he’s trying to steal my soul."
Clark froze. His brain executed a rapid, terrifying calculation of the social, mathematical, and journalistic consequences.
"If Superman kisses Bruce Wayne on live television, while Clark Kent is currently being accused of kissing Batman-“
"Then the world will believe," Bruce chuckled, his hands sliding down to wrap around Clark’s broad shoulders, "that Clark Kent is cheating on Bruce Wayne with Batman, while Bruce Wayne is cheating on Clark Kent with Superman. A quadrangle of pure, exquisite, algorithmic madness. No one will know who to cancel. The internet will simply collapse under its own cognitive weight."
Clark stared at his partner for five long seconds.
Then, a slow, radiant, and equally unhinged grin broke aacross his face.
"You're a monster, Bruce Wayne," Clark laughed, pulling the billionaire down into his lap. "An absolute, psychotic genius."
"I am the World's Greatest Detective, Clark," Bruce smirked, pressing his lips to Clark’s neck. "Now take off your glasses. We have an operational counter-strike to plan."
The Centennial Park Solar Pavilion was, by all accounts, an architectural triumph. A sweeping canopy of reflective, gold-tinted photovoltaic glass overlooking the central lagoon, flanked by three hundred dignitaries, the mayor of Metropolis, and a press riser packed with forty camera crews.
Bruce Wayne stood at the central podium, wearing an immaculate, navy-blue double-breasted suit, his silk tie catching the noon sun, looking like the epitome of high-society aristocracy.
He had just finished a five-minute speech about clean energy and civic philanthropy, looking solemn, composed, and tragic: the perfect image of a billionaire who was stoically attempting to move on from the devastating public betrayal of his Kansas lover.
"And so," Bruce said, leaning toward the microphones, his voice rich and steady, "we must look toward the future, even when the present is clouded by personal uncertainty."
A collective, sympathetic sigh rippled through the front row of society reporters. And then, the air above the lagoon displaced with a soft, thunderous whump.
The ambient temperature rose five degrees in an instant. The midday sun seemed to double in brightness as a towering, magnificent shape dropped out of the azure sky like a fallen star.
Superman.
Camera shutters began to fire with the deafening, machine-gun roar of an infantry engagement.
Superman didn't land on the perimeter, he landed directly on the center of the wooden stage, his red boots striking the boards with a resounding, dramatic thud, his bright red cape billowing behind him in an invisible draft.
He looked magnificent, flawless, god-like, his broad chest gleaming beneath the golden 'S' shield, his blue eyes fixed upon Bruce Wayne with an expression of intense, unyielding, and utterly shameless hunger.
Bruce Wayne stopped speaking.
He stepped back from the podium, his eyes wide in theatrical, breathless shock. "Superman? What is the meaning of-“
Superman didn't give him the chance to finish.
In front of sixty-four live broadcast networks, four hundred socialites, and a global streaming audience of two hundred million people, Superman crossed the stage in a single, fluid stride, reached out with hand, caught Bruce Wayne by the back of his bespoke collar, dipped the billionaire backward over his forearm like a tango dancer, and kissed him with the concussive, breathless passion of a solar flare.
Bruce Wayne gasped against the alien’s mouth, his arms instantly flinging upward to wrap around Superman’s neck, his fingers sinking deep into the Kryptonian’s black hair, his tailored suit jacket pulling tight as he surrendered entirely to the public embrace.
The kiss went on for ten seconds.
Twenty seconds.
Thirty-five seconds.
The silence in Centennial Park was so profound that you could hear the ducks paddling in the lagoon two hundred yards away.
A camera operator from GBS News physically dropped his thirty-thousand-dollar shoulder rig onto the grass.
The Mayor of Metropolis stood with his mouth open so wide his reading glasses slipped off his nose and shattered on the stage.
Finally, Superman pulled back, his chest heaving, his blue eyes dark and heavy with affection as he looked down at the flushed, disheveled billionaire in his arms.
"You're a very difficult man to reach through official channels, Mr. Wayne," Superman rumbled, his voice carrying through the open microphones with crystal, terrifying clarity.
Bruce Wayne, still tilted backward over the hero's arm, looked up at the sun-god with a dazed, devastatingly radiant smile, his silk tie completely askew.
"I've been somewhat preoccupied, Superman," Bruce whispered breathlessly into the microphone.
Superman lifted Bruce back onto his feet with effortless grace, straightened the billionaire’s lapels with two gentle, lingering pats, offered the paralyzed press corps a charming, two-finger salute, and launched himself vertically into the stratosphere with a sonic boom that rattled the glass of three nearby skyscrapers.
Bruce Wayne stood on the stage alone, his lips swollen, his hair attractively ruined, staring up at the empty blue sky with an expression of absolute, unrepentant triumph.
He walked back to the podium, cleared his throat into the dead silence, adjusted his microphone, and said:
"As I was saying the solar tax credits will become effective on the first of next month. Thank you for your time."
If the previous week had been a localized scandal, the forty-eight hours that followed were a complete, multi-platform cognitive collapse.
The global internet did not merely break; it entered a state of terminal, looping delirium.
The front page of the Daily Planet featured a split-screen photo that was immediately framed in modern art museums: on the left, Batman aggressively making out with Clark Kent in a dirty alley; on the right, Superman dipping Bruce Wayne like a romantic lead on a sunny stage.
The headlines were works of desperate, unhinged poetry:
THE QUADRANGLE OF SHAME: IS ANYONE IN METROPOLIS OR GOTHAM ACTUALLY MONOGAMOUS?!
A TALE OF TWO CITIES AND FOUR CHEATERS: WHO IS SLEEPING WITH WHOM, AND WHY ARE THEY ALL SO BEAUTIFUL?
THE VENN DIAGRAM OF BETRAYAL: HOW A GOTHAM VIGILANTE AND A KANSAS REPORTER BROKE THE WORLD ORDER!
The public discourse was completely, hopelessly paralyzed.
A prominent university philosophy department published a forty-page white paper attempting to analyze whether Batman and Superman were engaged in a proxy war conducted through the medium of romantic cuckoldry.
Inside the Daily Planet, Clark Kent sat at his desk, his feet up, calmly drinking a cup of coffee while watching Perry White scream at three separate televisions simultaneously.
"I don’t understand the geometry!" Perry roared, tearing his hair out by the roots. "If Kent is with the Bat, than Bruce is with Superman? Does that mean, that Batman and Wayne are rivals?"
Lois Lane was lying face-down on her desk, her shoulders shaking with silent, uncontrollable sobs of pure, hysterical laughter, entirely unable to breathe.
That evening, Bruce Wayne appeared on a live, nationally televised broadcast from Wayne Manor, sitting in an armchair across from Vicki Vale.
He wore a soft, charcoal-gray sweater that made him look approachable, vulnerable, and completely composed. He looked into the lens with that trademark, melancholy blue gaze that had charmed the world for twenty years.
"Mr. Wayne," Vicki Vale began, her voice trembling with the journalistic weight of the century. "The world is- It’s confused. To put it mildly. Last week, your partner, Mr. Kent, was photographed in an intimate encounter with the Batman. Yesterday, you were publicly embraced by Superman. What is the status of your relationship? Is this an open arrangement? A revenge maneuver? An international incident?"
Bruce offered a soft, patient, slightly sad smile, a masterpiece of high-society diplomatic theatre.
"Vicki," Bruce said smoothly, his voice dropping into a gentle, reassuring baritone that reached seventy million households. "Relationships are complex, fragile ecosystems. When Clark and I began our journey together, we knew the pressures would be immense. Mistakes were made."
He paused, letting the dramatic weight settle over the nation.
"However," Bruce continued, his eyes twinkling with a private, unholy amusement, "Clark and I have sat down. We have had a very long, very thorough, and deeply communicative discussion behind closed doors. And we have agreed that love is larger than public speculation.
"I have forgiven Clark. And Clark has graciously forgiven me for my momentary lapse in solar judgment. We are together. We are happy. And we are moving forward as a united family."
Vicki Vale stared at him, her mouth opening and closing like a landed bass. "You- You forgave each other? Just like that? You're still together?"
"Of course," Bruce smiled beatifically into the camera. "After all, Vicki, who among us hasn't occasionally gotten their heroes crossed?"
The summons to the Watchtower command deck had been marked with a triple-red priority code—the kind of alert usually reserved for a multi-planetary armada crossing the orbit of Saturn.
When Superman drifted through the pneumatic doors into the central briefing amphitheater, he found the room arranged in a formal, military semicircle.
Every single founding member of the Justice League was present.
Diana stood in the center, her arms crossed, the Golden Lasso of Truth coiled and humming with divine energy at her hip.
To her right stood the Flash, his cowl pulled down, looking like a disappointed school principal.
To her left stood Hal Jordan, Oliver Queen, J'onn J'onzz, and Black Canary, all of them wearing expressions of grim, unyielding moral intervention.
And standing ten feet away, leaned casually against a secondary terminal with his cowl firmly in place, was Batman.
"Sit down, Kal-El," Diana commanded, her voice ringing off the titanium bulkheads like a temple bell.
Superman blinked, floating down until his boots touched the grating. "Diana? Is there a containment breach? Has Brainiac-"
"This is not about Brainiac," Oliver Queen barked, stepping forward, his goatee quivering with righteous fury. "This is about you! This is about the moral integrity of this team!"
Superman looked around the room, bewildered. "My moral integrity?"
"We know," Barry Allen whispered, his eyes wide and tragic, stepping forward with his hands raised like a hostage negotiator. "We know what happened, Superman. You don't have to put on a brave face anymore. We saw the news. We saw what happened on that stage in Metropolis yesterday."
Superman’s lips twitched. He fought down a sudden, terrifying urge to cough. "You- You saw the solar pavilion?"
"You were used!" Hal Jordan shouted, slamming a ring-construct fist onto the console. "You were emotionally manipulated by a predatory, narcissistic, overfunded Gotham parasite! Bruce Wayne was hurting because his boyfriend stepped out on him with this scumbag-" Hal jabbed a furious finger at Batman, who didn't even twitch, "- so Wayne used you as a rebound weapon to get back at him! He used the symbol of Earth’s hope to win a high-society spat on live television!"
"And you!" Diana turned on Batman, her eyes blazing with absolute divine wrath. "You are the architect of this misery! You dishonored our greatest champion by skulking in alleys with an innocent, bespectacled reporter, a mortal who writes about agriculture!
And now the entire world is laughing at the Justice League! You have turned our brotherhood into a circus of carnal betrayal!"
"It was very good tea," Batman remarked quietly from the shadows, his voice completely deadpan. "I fail to see the betrayal."
"How dare you!" Oliver Queen roared, lunging forward, only to be held back by J'onn J'onzz’s green hand on his shoulder. "Kal, he doesn’t care about you!"
Barry ran over to Superman, grabbing him by the red cape with both hands, looking up into his face with frantic, pleading eyes. "Superman, please. You have to break it off with him. Both of you! You can't stay with Batman after he cheated on you with Clark Kent! And you can't keep seeing Bruce Wayne! Wayne is a sleaze! He’s dating that same reporter! It’s a toxic, multi-city triangle of doom! You deserve better! You deserve someone who doesn't wear rubber ears or buy football teams!"
Superman stood in the center of the command deck. He looked at Barry’s terrified, sincere face.
He looked at Diana’s blazing, protective fury.
He looked at Oliver vibrating with rage, and Hal holding his ring like a stun gun.
Then, he looked across the room at Batman.
Batman slowly tilted his head. Beneath the white lenses of his cowl, his lips curved into that familiar, insufferable, and utterly devastating smirk.
Clark Kent finally broke.
A small, choked snort escaped his nose.
He clapped a large hand over his mouth, his shoulders beginning to shake violently as a deep, bubbling, uncontrollable laugh tore through his chest.
"Superman?" Barry asked, terrified. "Are you- Are you having a psychotic break? Is this trauma-induced hysterical shock?"
"No," Clark gasped, wiping a tear of pure, wheezing hilarity from the corner of his eye. "No, Barry, I’m- I'm really not."
Clark reached up with both hands.
With a slow, deliberate movement, he reached into the hidden pocket of his cape. He pulled out a pair of thick-rimmed, wire-framed reading glasses.
He slid them onto the bridge of his nose.
Then, with an effortless, theatrical sigh, Clark dropped his shoulders by two inches, hunched his back, let his jaw soften into a mild, slightly clumsy smile, and cleared his throat with a bumbling, nasal Midwestern cough.
"Actually, guys," Clark said, his voice instantly dropping from the booming majesty of the Man of Steel into the familiar, stammering cadence of the Daily Planet’s favorite farm boy. "I don't think Bruce is a sleaze at all. He’s actually very sweet once you get past the paranoia."
The command deck went completely, shockingly, and terrifyingly silent.
Barry Allen let go of the cape as if it had suddenly burst into flames. His mouth dropped open so wide his chin nearly hit his chest.
Hal Jordan’s power ring flickered out completely, the green glow vanishing.
Oliver Queen froze mid-sentence, his arrow slipping from his fingers and clattering to the floor.
"You-" Barry whispered, his voice cracking by four octaves. "You're the reporter?"
"Clark Kent," Clark offered helpfully, extending a large, friendly hand. "Senior correspondent for the Planet. I cover municipal infrastructure and occasional corn statistics."
Before anyone could scream, before Diana could even begin to process the theological collapse of her entire worldview, Batman stepped out from behind the console.
With two sharp, mechanical clicks, the Dark Knight reached behind his neck and disengaged the magnetic seal of his cowl.
He pulled the heavy black mask completely off his head, tossing it casually onto the tactical table where it skittered across the glass.
Bruce Wayne stood there in the harsh fluorescent light of the space station, wearing Batman’s Kevlar armor, his dark hair messy, his sharp aristocratic jaw bruised, his ocean-blue eyes dancing with pure, unholy, and utterly unrepentant triumph.
"And for the record, Jordan," Bruce purred, crossing his armored arms over his chest, "I didn't use him as a rebound weapon. He was the one who asked to be dipped."
The silence stretched for five seconds.
Ten seconds.
Fifteen seconds.
The Flash physically vibrated in place, his brain visibly attempting to calculate the social, physical, and romantic geometry of what he was looking at, before he slowly, gently sat down on the floor, holding his head in both hands.
"There were only two of you," Barry whispered to the deck plates, his voice hollow with existential ruin. "There were never four people. It was just two guys. Cheating on each other with themselves."
"Technically," Clark smiled, stepping over to Bruce and naturally, comfortably wrapping his arm around the armored waist of the billionaire, "it wasn't cheating at all. It was just an aggressive public relations strategy."
Diana stared at them at the world’s greatest hero wearing dorky glasses, leaning against the world’s most terrifying vigilante wearing a smirk.
Slowly, the Amazonian princess’s lips began to twitch.
A low, deep rumble of ancient, Olympian amusement started in her throat, rising up until she threw her head back and let out a booming, magnificent roar of laughter that shook the transparent quartz windows of the Watchtower.
"By the gods!" Diana howled, wiping tears from her eyes as she pointed an armored gauntlet at them. "You are both completely, magnificently mad! A quadrangle of two! Hera save me, this is the greatest trick played upon mortals since Prometheus stole fire!"
"I'm resigning," Oliver Queen said flatly, turning on his heel and walking toward the teleporter bay. "I'm retiring to Star City. I'm going to shoot targets in my basement and never look at a newspaper again."
"Wait, Ollie!" Hal yelled, running after him with his hands in the air. "Does this mean Bruce Wayne bought the Watchtower? Is Bruce Wayne our landlord?"
Bruce didn't look at them.
He leaned into Clark’s side, letting his head rest against Clark’s broad shoulder, his fingers casually slipping into the red fabric of Clark’s belt.
"Well, Kent," Bruce murmured softly, so quietly that only Clark’s super-hearing could catch the words above the chaotic shouting of the League. "I believe the operational objective has been achieved."
"You're a disaster, Bruce," Clark laughed, turning his head to press a soft, lingering kiss against the billionaire's dark hair. "A complete, unmitigated disaster."
Bruce smiled against his throat.
And as the Justice League continued to unravel in hysterical, bewildered bedlam around them, the sun broke over the curvature of the Earth, flooding the command deck with brilliant, golden light, shining upon the only two men in the universe who had managed to conquer the world simply by loving each other twice.