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Like, I need people outside the Daily Planet to understand the statistical impossibility of this man’s career, he is at EVERY crime scene before emergency services (he surpassed even Lane at that, honestly impressive) and is somehow connected to EVERY investigation in the damn city and not even as a journalist, because that man is a serial witness.

Warehouse explosion? Kent somehow standing three blocks away buying coffee. Gang shooting? He “heard yelling.” Someone dumps a body in the harbor? Kent just happened to be “taking a walk” nearby (at 3AM? Cmon now, mate).

Okay. Sure, maybe the guy is just unlucky (or really lucky, depending on how you look at it). It’s really not that rare in the journalist realm, god knows those damn bloodsuckers don’t have a single self-preserving bone in their entire bodies.

But then WHY, despite being in dire situations almost as much as the likes of Lane, Superman never helps him? which is very, VERY suspicious, Superman has rescued Lex Luthor more than once, why not Kent? It’s also worthy of note that despite Kent being noticeably favorable to vigilant activity (especially The Batman for some unfathomable reason) he is the only Daily Planet reporter who doesn’t share the Superman-loving sentiment.

Why has this random reporter (who was blacklisted by SUPERMAN of all people mind you) correctly predicted and/or been at the scene of raids, indictments, arrests, scandals, corporate leaks, gang hits, etc???

Lois Lane may be a household name, but Clark Kent sure is a precincthold name.

Clark likes Batman and may want to have have sexual relations with Bruce Wayne and Diana (scandalous thoughts! He’s torn, oh poor farm boy)

Diana likes Clark Kent (for some reason) and really, really wants to have intercourse with Bruce Wayne

His eyes are just a shade too blue, his face is too symmetrical, his mouth has too many teeth, and there’s just something wrong about him that sets everyone on edge. Lex Luthor has nightmares that Superman’s perfect jaw opens to reveal a carnivore monster with a three-meter tongue and four divided sets of different pieces of gums, each with their own multiple rows of teeth ready to attach to Alex’s bald head and suck his brains out (literally). The horror.

Everyone (except Luthor) still loves him, of course, he’s the Golden Boy of the world. But… he sure was made to be admired from a distance.

Clark Kent, on the other hand, is the most wholesome man on the planet no matter from which angle. Tho everyone does think it slightly weird how he is so attached to those glasses of his…

No one can comprehend why genius, egocentric, greedy, part-time villain Lex Luthor brightens up every time his business adversary—air-headed, philanthropic, full-blown alcoholic Brucie Wayne—is in the room. But he does.

An array of reporters are feebly dismissed without any parting words and left in stunned silence while Luthor swftly abandoned them to join the non-business crowd that was surrounding Wayne. His two latest pieces of eye-candy clung to either arm in outfits so revealing they bordered on indecent, yet somehow neither of them attracted more attention than Wayne himself.

Wayne’s clothes were, technically, far more conservative. The man was in an immaculate dark suit, though several buttons had been left carelessly undone at the throat to reveal the smudged bite marks and fading lipstick stains scattered along his neck. Very vulgar, on normal circumstances, but outright repulsive in a charity gala.

It wasn’t uncommon to be a “ladies’ man” in their monetary circle, but Wayne had crossed that border so far he was well into the “whore” area in the public’s eye (an impressive feat for a male).

He was exactly the kind of guy the poor and the gossip tabloids alike loved and men like Luthor hated.

Or at least should hate.

Luthor all but pushes the mayor of Star City out of the way to greet a clearly-tipsy Wayne with a (genuine?) smile on his face that shines almost as much as his bald head.

Bruce smoothly ignores Luthor.

Clark lifts an eyebrow and hides his smirk by sipping his glass of champagne. He decides that whatever persuasion/seduction/hypnosis meta ability Wayne has, the man wouldn’t do anything too bad with it. Whether that was because he was genuinely kind or simply not smart enough hardly mattered.

He decides to just leave Wayne be.

The first to realize this was—oddly enough—Jordan. Perhaps because he was the one who paid the most attention to the weirdly soft(?) and trusting way Batman treated his Robins, it stood out as an anomaly against the usual grumpy, asshole-ry way he treated just about everyone else (and Jordan in particular).

This, perhaps, made Hal more prone to paying attention whenever Batman and his little bat-clan interacted; eventually, he just sort of… assumed Batman was their father, and assumed everyone else had assumed the same thing as well.

Such assumptions were confirmed when Nightwing, during an extremely critical mission that had nearly gotten all of them killed, shouted “Dad!” at Batman in a moment of panic.

No one had really been concerned with that at the time (they had all been a little too busy not dying), but afterwards everyone had acted strange around the apparently new finding, as if they hadn’t already known that

He was confused on why everyone was being so weird about it, wasn’t it, like, obvious? That confusion lasted right up until Superman, sounding deeply concerned, asked Batman his age (he, naturally, only got a glare in return).

Then it downed on him: it had never really occurred to him prior to that moment to make the mental math… Batman looked, at most, mid to late thirties, while Nightwing was clearly in his mid twenties.

Oh.

Oh.

He’s been watching the man pretend to be drunk for about half an hour now, making a fool of himself for all the Elite to see. He had two beautiful models on each arm hanging off of him to serve as eye candy—or, as he tried to make it seem, being used to support his unsteady weight.

So far, in the night, Wayne had ingested a couple shrimps, water, five glasses of different juices and not a single drop of alcohol. When the man started to act out, speak sluggishly and lose balance, Clark had become slightly worried that someone had spiked his drink, but there was not a single chemical tang in any of the drinks—alcohol, sedatives, poison or otherwise—that Clark’s nose picked up on.

It was a bit disconcerting, to say the least, to know that the man that just ten minutes ago walked face-first into a (very big and very visible) marble pillar was stone-cold sober.

That alone meant Clark didn’t have such a high opinion of Wayne; this whole charade of his of playing dumb could just be a desperate cry for attention, or a business move to be underestimated by opponents. Whatever. It wasn’t any of Clark’s business what a billionaire playboy with no serious scandals did to have fun.

What really caught his attention, on the other hand, was how calm and controlled the man was even while lying through his teeth. There was no acceleration in heartbeat, no hitch in breath, no spike in cortisol or adrenaline scent, not even the minute fluctuations in temperature humans usually experienced when embarrassed, excited, angry, or put on the spot.

Clark refuses to use his X-ray vision to check if the man’s blood really was flowing to his downtown are as he led the women around him to believe he was as excited as he said.

A woman—not either of the models he was with—touched his chest flirtatiously and Wayne gave her a lazy smile that probably looked devastatingly charming to anyone without microscopic vision. No reaction. One of the few males surrounding Wayne insulted him jokingly to his face. No reaction. Bruce’s son (Clark had no idea which one, and it felt wrong to take on Lois’ advice on referring to Wayne’s many children as numbers) immediately jabbed a finger in the man’s chest to (very aggressively) defend his father’s honor, positively assassinating the good mood in a ten meter ratio as Wayne had to talk his ward into not escalating the situation even more. No. Reaction.

Clark frowned faintly into his champagne flute. It was kind of very creepy how even his heart was steady, Clark had honestly never seen such an unwavering blood flow in a human, not even Lex Luthor could pull off such bullshit without even the slightest change in his body as a giveaway.

Clark looked away after a while, suddenly uncomfortable with how long he’d been observing the man. He could almost hear Batman’s voice in the back of his mind telling him to stop sticking his nose in Gotham’s business. And he would comply to his friend’s wishes.

Clark was just watching the remains of the building that had collapsed when a sea of humans—his fellow reporters—came running toward him, despite their imbalance and comparative slowness, weaving around rubble in stiff shoes and heavy coats, clutching microphones and cameras to their chests.

They shouted his chosen name as they approached.

“Superman!”

“Superman, were there any fatalities?”

“Can the audience get a comment on the incident?”

“Superman, over here!”

He could not help smiling as he lowered himself the rest of the way to the ground.

Immediately they crowded around him in a dense, warm cluster of bodies and noise, each one trying to angle themselves nearest without actually touching him—though several did, briefly.

Clark’s smile widened.

Rao! They were adorable!

He could see every tiny movement inside them. The pull and release of tendons under soft, soft, soft skin. The frantic contractions of little hearts hammering away in narrow ribcages. Lungs filling and emptying and filling again.

He felt like he was drowning in kittens. Tiny baby kittens.

One of them shoved a microphone so close to his face it nearly bumped his chin. Clark went a little cross-eyed trying to focus on it before looking back down at the reporter holding it.

The man froze immediately under direct eye contact.

Clark has to hold himself back from squeezing his cheeks.

Batman was exhausted.

Most humans were exhausted all the time, he’d noticed. Their little bodies weren’t built well. Too much stress weakened them quickly. Bad sleep patterns. Poor nutrition. Everything hurt them.

Clark, naturally, lifted Batman to put him to rest in any nearby surface. He trashed in Clark’s arms initially but otherwise didn’t protest.

Batman was, to Clark, the equivalent of a particularly hostile alley cat. Tiny. Violent. Malnourished. Feral beyond belief.

And somehow convinced he could fight things thousands of times larger than himself.

Did Batman sometimes forgot that he was just as human and fragile as the villains in Gotham?

Well, no harm done. Clark was not interested in fighting Batman at all.

Hal squinted. “You made a powerpoint?”

Across the table, Superman shrugged. “I thought it would be clearer this way.”

On cue, Superman pressed his little remote and the image on the projector shifted to many, many pictures of Bruce Wayne at various galas kissing, hugging or hanging off of multiple different people.

Kal-el cleared his throat. “I’ve been observing a pattern. Bruce Wayne displays a consistent pattern of influence over individuals across political, economic, and social spheres that exceeds statistical probability.”

He clicks the remote again, and Hal squinted at the screen as bullet points appeared.

“Across multiple independent studies,” Superman said, “Wayne’s approval ratings remain abnormally high even following documented scandals. Incidents that would severely damage public figures instead result in negligible short-term impact.”

“That’s because he’s charming,” Arrow said, looking almost personally offended by supes’ (frankly very well-done) powerpoint, for some reason. “And rich. That doesn’t make him a metahuman, much less a threat.”

“Lex Luthor is also rich,” Superman replied.

A picture of Luthor’s shiny head appeared like a ghoul on the screen.

“Lex Luthor has aggressively undermined nearly every major competitor he’s had. Except Wayne Enterprises. Despite the serious market threat of the company. Individuals who are otherwise documented as disinterested, incompatible, or even antagonistic toward Wayne show rapid behavioral shifts after minimal interaction.”

Diana regards it all with a serious expression. “So, we’re dealing with a mind-altering metahuman?”

Superman bit his lip, as if considering her words, then continued: “I don’t know… things always seem to work out for him. All the incidents around his life are convenient, per se. He gets out of very dangerous situations by what seems to be pure luck. I just—“

“I just wanted the League to be aware,” he said.

Batman, who stood still as a statue throughout the whole meeting, whom everyone expected to say something dramatic along the lines of “do not spy the people of my city” and vehemently squash the absurd theory, finally stirred in his chair. “If there is an influence at play, it affects decision-making at the highest levels. Including ours. Well done, Superman, for bringing this to our attention.”