#superbatlex

Tim: *spit-taking* "You can't say that"

Conner: "What?"

Tim: "You are not..."

Conner: "Which one?"

Bruce: just grinning and turning away

Ot3 SuperBatLex of course, probably long ish bc I can't help myself with all these messy obsessive men

In an Au in which Lex & Bruce are childhood friends but lose touch with each other when their own personal tragedies happen. They reconnect at a party after highschool graduation... for reasons of pining mostly, they fake a sex scandal, each of them rationalizing it as doing it for their own personal strategic reasons.

Because they're both young, inexperienced with love, and emotionally useless they don't realize they have feelings for each other.

After a whirlwind summer of clubbing across Europe, sex, and not quite love declarations, Bruce leaves for some mysterious unavoidable trip he insists he has to take.

Lionel, sick to death of all the gay speculation gossip, sends Lex to the homophobia hinterlands in hopes that the good Christian Midwestern farm folks could succeed in giving Lex the shame, Metropolis and Gotham paparazzi had completely failed at.

Smallville specifically of course

On the way into town Lex hits a freshly 20 year old Clark Kent and sends them both off a bridge and into the river below, changing both their lives forever.

20 year old Clark has five years experience with his powers, he's told people and the world didn't end, he's a young adult learning about himself. He has a lot stronger opinions about his father's propensity for being both controlling and homophobic then he did when he was 15 and hopelessly isolated and sheltered.

He and Lex have immediate chemistry. Clark is old enough to know what he likes, to have gotten over his teenage longing for a false sense of safe normalcy.

His father and the patriarchal values he was raised with told him his ideal partner would be a woman who was soft, compliant, and would listen, always focused on his safety, his needs. But he was the strongest person in the world, how would that ever work? How could a relationship built on such uneven ground ever be fulfilling to either party?

No Clark had thought about it a lot, what a person would need to possess in order to survive or even thrive in a relationship with him. He knew what he found sexy and emotionally desirable, what he liked, what he needed. What they would need to be with him.

What he liked and needed was a partner with a sharp inquisitive mind, an implacable drive to achieve what they'd set their mind to, and the sort of slightly deranged self confident fearlessness that meant they wouldn't be afraid to challenge him, to be with him as a peer... even after they found out about his powers

Lex met the impossibility of their accident with a sort of sharp toothed curiosity that burned in Clark's veins.

Their relationship grew over the years, had its ups and down just like any relationship

Four years later chaos breaks out when relatively freshly minted Gotham vigilante Batman, shows up on Lex's private roof garden, in a one man hover plane, asking for Superman's help with a flood in Gotham.

Apparently Batman is Bruce Wayne? No really... And he knows Superman is Clark Kent, and and and he and Lex have history that's making them both extremely bitchy prickly defensive.

Call Clark an eternal optimist but he thinks there can be a way forward for all three of them if his boyfriend and his ex would stop trying to verbally scratch each other's eyes out...

But first there was the small problem of a huge flood to save the people of Gotham from, then he would convince Bruce and Lex to kiss and make up... and then hopefully, if destiny was on his side, and he did fundamentally believe it was, maybe he could even convince them both to kiss him

And he had so many filthy thoughts about what might happen next, if he could get these two brilliant traumatized defensive love starved men to see the light. There was more than enough of him to go around, he was powered by the sun after all. Love and sunlight were infinite resources.

Billionaires loved having resources right?

I want a reversed version of injustice, where BATMAN is the one to snap and become a tyrant, and Superman is the good guy. Because Evil!Superman is always really out of character for me (though hot), but Batman is always one step away from the edge, and if he ever falls over - there’s a reason the Dark Knights of the Metal Crossover are so terrifying.

Just picture it though - the Joker does to Batman what he did to Superman in injustice canon, and Bruce watches as his city explodes, with his kids and Gordon and Alfred all in it. He snaps, and kills the Joker - and then he plans.

Because this can never happen again.

He uses his brain and detective skills to figure out who would be open to helping him run the world properly (which would be a great way to bring in Lex Luthor), instead of the mess it is now, and makes overtures - those of the Justice League that wouldn’t (like Superman) are sent away on a wild goose chase in space, and Batman takes control of all the technology and weapons in the world, and sets his people - and possibly robots? - in place as a police force. When the other members get back - well, he has ways, non-lethal but hard hitting, of taking them down until they can see that he’s doing the right thing, and join him (he has no doubt that once Superman stops looking at so betrayed, he will join him.)

Superman in a krptonite collar, silent and hurting, staring at Bruce with big, betrayed blue eyes - and you’re working with Luthor, Bruce, really? Luthor!? - and Batman always standing a little to close, staring a little to hard at Superman’s mouth...Bruce is finally going to get everything he ever wanted.

(For bonus points, Luthor ALSO creeps on Collared!Superman, because I am a multishipper, and also really like the mental image of them sharing him.)

Eventually, Superman gets away and starts an insurgency - but he can’t out-think Batman.

and clark willingly does it, and lex is mortified at how much he enjoys it. but it was so much that at the end hes blissed out and says "never again"

except that, of course, it does happen again occasionally.

That was kind of what I was thinking for that elseworld of mine (a sea of honey) where they're together. Lex would never ask for it, but Bruce and Clark would offer it to him because they know how he's feeling and what he's holding back.