Cuck Superman?

The alarms had been screaming for six minutes before the ceiling came apart.

Lex Luthor's private laboratory—buried three stories beneath a nondescript warehouse in the Hobbs Bay district—had been designed to withstand everything. Reinforced titanium walls. Electromagnetic shielding. Lead-lined barriers specifically calibrated to block Superman's X-ray vision. Every surface hummed with countermeasures that had cost billions and taken years to construct.

None of it mattered.

A column of red and blue smashed through the reinforced ceiling like a meteor, sending chunks of concrete and twisted rebar scattering across the sterile floor. Superman landed in a three-point crouch, his cape settling behind him, his jaw set with the particular grimness he reserved for finding Luthor's victims. Wonder Woman dropped through the hole a heartbeat later, her boots touching down silently despite the chaos, the Lasso of Truth already glowing gold in her hand.

You were strapped to a chair in the center of the room. Wires and tubes ran from your arms, your chest, the sides of your neck. The restraints were thick and industrial, designed for something more than human. Beneath your skin, faint veins of sickly green luminescence traced their way up your forearms and across your collarbones like cracks in porcelain filled with poison light. Your head hung forward. Your breathing was shallow.

Superman moved toward you and then stopped dead.

His hand went to his chest. His face contorted—not with effort, but with pain, sudden and debilitating. The green glow radiating from your body hit him like a physical wall. He staggered one step back, then another, his boots scraping against debris. A vein pulsed at his temple. His eyes, usually so steady and kind, squeezed shut against a wave of nausea so intense it bent him forward at the waist.

"Diana—"

His voice came out strained, thin, nothing like the calm baritone the world knew.

"Diana, I can't—"

Wonder Woman was already moving. She crossed the distance to Superman in two strides and caught his arm as he swayed.

"The Kryptonite," she said, her eyes darting between his pained expression and the green glow emanating from your restrained body. "It's inside them. Luthor didn't just expose them to it—he infused it."

Superman swallowed hard. Sweat had broken out across his forehead, something that almost never happened.

"Get them out," he managed, each word costing him visibly. "Take them far away from me. I can't even be in the same room—"

"You need to leave too," she said firmly.

"No." He straightened with visible effort, gritting his teeth. "I'll get distance. Clear the perimeter. Make sure Luthor doesn't have reinforcements waiting." He looked at her with those blue eyes, glassy with pain but still burning with the stubbornness that defined him. "Save them, Diana. Get them somewhere safe. Somewhere far from any Kryptonite sources. And keep them warm—whatever Luthor pumped into them, it's dropping their core temperature. I can see it."

Wonder Woman nodded once.

"Go," she said. "I have them."

Wonder Woman moved to your side immediately. She snapped the restraints like they were made of paper, one arm catching you before you could slide from the chair. You were limp. Cold. Dangerously cold. The green veins pulsed faintly beneath your skin, and your skin had taken on a grayish pallor that made her stomach tighten with concern.

"I have you," she murmured.

She pulled the tubes and wires from your arms and neck with careful, precise movements, discarding them on the floor. The tattered remains of Luthor's test subject uniform—a thin gray jumpsuit, little more than medical scrubs, designed for easy access to your body rather than comfort or protection—was damp with sweat and cold lab air. She could feel through the fabric how far your body temperature had dropped. Superman had been right. You were losing heat faster than your body could generate it.

She needed to get you away. Somewhere Luthor's satellites and drones and hidden cameras couldn't reach. Somewhere deep and natural and off the grid entirely.

She lifted you into her arms—one arm beneath your knees, the other supporting your back—and leaped through the hole in the ceiling, ascending into the freezing night sky above Metropolis. The wind hit immediately, and she felt you shudder against her chest. She angled her body to shield you, tucking your face against the warm hollow of her shoulder, and flew.

She flew fast and far. Past the city limits. Past the suburbs. Past the last flickering lights of civilization until the world below was nothing but dark forest and ancient mountain ranges. She found what she was looking for in the Cascades—a narrow cave carved into a cliff face by centuries of water, hidden behind a curtain of evergreen and accessible only by air. No roads. No trails. No cell signals. Luthor's reach ended here.

She set you down gently on the flat stone floor of the cave, your back against the smooth interior wall. Your shivering had worsened. The green glow had not faded. Your eyes were half-open, unfocused, struggling to track her movements.

"You are hypothermic," she said, her voice calm but urgent. She knelt in front of you and pressed the back of her hand to your cheek. Cold. Too cold. "Your body cannot regulate its temperature. The infusion Luthor gave you—it is burning through your energy reserves trying to sustain itself."

She made the decision without hesitation.

Her fingers went to the clasps of her armored bodice. The red-and-gold chest piece came away with a series of clicks, revealing the warm olive skin beneath. She set it aside on the stone. Then the bracers—gold, ancient, heavy with divine craftsmanship—she removed those too and placed them carefully beside the armor. The blue star-patterned skirt followed, folded neatly despite the urgency. She worked with the efficiency of a soldier and the composure of a diplomat, stripping down to nothing without a flicker of self-consciousness, because this was not about modesty. This was about survival.

She turned back to you and began removing the thin jumpsuit. The fabric was cold and clammy, clinging to your skin, and she peeled it away gently, easing it over your shoulders, down your arms, off your legs. The cold air of the cave hit your exposed skin and you flinched, a weak sound escaping your throat.

"I know," she said softly. "I know. Hold on."

She pulled you against her, wrapping her arms around your torso and drawing you flush against her body. Her skin was warm—Amazon physiology ran hotter than baseline human, a product of divine heritage and a lifetime of warrior training. She positioned herself so that your chest pressed against hers, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other spread flat against the bare skin of your lower back, pressing you closer. She angled her body so that the cave wall blocked the worst of the draft, creating a pocket of stillness and warmth.

For a long moment, neither of you moved. The only sounds were your ragged breathing and the distant whisper of wind through the trees outside.

The green glow pulsed faintly between your bodies, but it did not hurt her. She was not Kryptonian. She was not vulnerable to it. She could hold you without pain, without weakness, without the agony that had brought Superman to his knees. One of the few advantages of not being him.

"Clark could not have done this," she murmured against your hair, almost to herself. "The Kryptonite in your blood would have destroyed him. But I am not Kryptonian. I can hold you."

She tightened her arms fractionally. Her body heat bled into you slowly, methodically, fighting the deep chill that Luthor's experiments had carved into your bones.

"You are safe now," she whispered. "Luthor cannot find us here. No cameras. No satellites. Just the mountain and the trees."

She paused, her lips close to your temple.

"And me. You have me."

The apartment was small and unremarkable—exactly the kind of place you could disappear into. A walk-up in Suicide Slum, three floors above a bodega, with thin walls and a radiator that clanked like a prisoner rattling chains against iron bars. The carpet was stained in places you didn't want to think about. The kitchen was barely big enough for one person to stand in without pressing against the counter on both sides. The single window looked out onto an alley where stray cats fought over garbage at three in the morning.

It wasn't much. But it was off the books, paid in cash by someone whose name you never learned, invisible to the digital surveillance systems that Lex Luthor used to track his assets. And assets were what you were now—whether Luthor wanted you back or wanted you dead depended on which encrypted memo you believed.

You'd been here for nine days since the rescue. Nine days of your skin still faintly humming green in certain light, especially at night when the apartment was dark and you could see the faint bioluminescent veins tracing paths up your forearms and across your collarbones like subway maps drawn in poison. Nine days of nightmares that smelled like antiseptic and ozone. Nine days of jumping at every unexpected sound—the radiator kicking on, a car horn below, the bodega owner shouting at someone in Spanish at six in the morning. Nine days of wondering when the other shoe would drop, because in your experience it always did.

The Justice League had arranged the apartment through a network of contacts you didn't understand and probably never would. Clark had insisted on it personally. You remembered that much from the blur of the rescue—his voice strained and distant, the Kryptonite in your blood keeping him at a painful remove, but his words clear and certain. "Make sure they're safe. Make sure they have everything they need." Diana had agreed. You'd heard her voice too—closer, warmer, steadier.

But neither of them had visited until today.

You were on the couch when you heard the knock. Three measured raps on the door—firm but polite, almost formal, the kind of knock that someone gives when they're trying very hard not to startle the person on the other side. You froze mid-motion, the glass of water halfway to your mouth. Your free hand instinctively went to the oversized hoodie you wore, tugging the sleeves down over the faintly glowing veins in your forearms. Old habit now. Nine days old. You didn't want anyone to see what you'd become.

You set the glass down and crossed to the door on quiet feet. The peephole was slightly foggy, but you could make out the figure on the other side.

She was tall. Taller than most men you knew—five foot ten at least, with a presence that filled the hallway beyond what her physical frame should have allowed. She had thick dark hair, the kind that looked heavy and soft, pinned up in a loose bun with several strands escaping to frame her face. Her skin was warm olive, smooth, luminous even in the bad fluorescent hallway lighting. She wore a simple cream-colored knit sweater, fitted but not tight, the kind that looked soft enough to touch, tucked into high-waisted dark jeans that hugged the long lines of her legs. Simple ankle boots. A light leather jacket draped over one arm despite the mild weather—probably to conceal the golden bracers she usually wore, though today there was no trace of them. No tiara. No armor. No lasso hanging at her hip.

Just a woman.

You opened the door, and she looked at you with those pale blue-gray eyes, and something in her expression shifted from composed patience to quiet relief.

"May I come in?"

Her voice was the same as you remembered—warm, measured, carrying that quiet authority that never quite disappeared even when she tried to set it aside. But there was something softer about it today, a gentle cadence, as though she had consciously dialed down the regal composure by a few notches for your benefit.

You stepped aside, and she entered, moving through the narrow doorway with the careful grace of someone used to being much more conspicuous. She glanced around the apartment with those eyes, taking in the small space in a single sweep—the worn couch with the blanket bunched at one end where you'd clearly been sleeping poorly, the takeout containers stacked on the counter, the single lamp that provided the only real light, the bare walls with no decoration. Her expression didn't change, but something tightened subtly around her eyes, a flicker of concern she couldn't quite suppress.

"I wanted to check on you," she said, setting her jacket on the back of the single kitchen chair with careful precision. "Without drawing attention. The armor tends to attract a certain amount of notice. A tiara and a lasso do not exactly blend into a crowd."

She said it with the faintest trace of a smile—self-aware, almost amused at her own celebrity. She turned to face you fully, standing in the middle of your tiny living room like a masterpiece hung in the wrong frame, too beautiful and too present for the space she occupied. Even without the armor, even without the gold and the red and the divine radiance that accompanied her in battle, she was striking. Classically beautiful in a way that didn't need embellishment—strong brows, straight nose, full lips, the kind of face that belonged on ancient sculpture.

"Clark wanted to come," she continued, her voice dropping slightly. "He asks about you every day. Every single day. He has a list of questions he wants to ask—whether you are eating, whether you are sleeping, whether the glow has faded at all."

She paused, and a complicated expression crossed her face.

"But given what Luthor did—the Kryptonite infusion in your bloodstream—proximity is still difficult for him. Even now. He told me he tried to get within two blocks of this building last Thursday and had to stop. Said it felt like his bones were trying to liquefy."

Her jaw tightened briefly at that detail, protective instinct flickering across her features before she smoothed it away.

"How are you feeling?" she asked, her gaze settling on you with quiet, direct concern. "Truly. Not the answer you think I want to hear. Not the brave version. The real one."

Then something shifted in her expression. It was subtle—a slight softening around the mouth, a barely perceptible tilt of her head. She seemed to become suddenly aware of herself, of the way you were looking at her, of the domestic strangeness of standing in a rundown apartment in civilian clothes while the most powerful beings on Earth discussed your safety in encrypted channels. A faint flush crept across her cheekbones, warm pink against olive skin, and she tucked that loose strand of dark hair behind her ear.

"I know this is very different from what you are used to seeing," she said, gesturing vaguely at her own outfit—the cream sweater, the jeans, the unadorned skin and absence of divine regalia. "I have not worn civilian clothing in some time. There has not been much reason to. Between missions and diplomatic events and the various crises that seem to occur every other Tuesday..."

She trailed off. She looked down at herself, then back at you, and the blush deepened just slightly. It was the same flush she'd worn in Mxyzptlk's pocket dimension—surprising, human, completely at odds with the warrior princess the world knew.

"Do you like how I look?"

She asked it quietly, almost carefully, as though the question mattered more than she wanted it to. Her hands clasped loosely in front of her, fingers interlacing and releasing in a small unconscious gesture of vulnerability that seemed almost impossible from someone who had fought gods. But standing in your rundown apartment in a cream sweater and jeans with her dark hair falling around her face and her eyes soft with something unspoken, Wonder Woman looked less like a demigod and more like a woman who was hoping someone would tell her she was beautiful.

She held your gaze and waited.

The world had shifted in an instant. One moment you were walking through the streets of Metropolis, still dealing with the lingering effects of Lex Luthor's cruel experiments—the strange green energy that had been forcibly pumped into your veins, rewriting something fundamental in your DNA. You could feel it humming beneath your skin even now, a low radioactive warmth that never quite faded. The next moment, reality had folded in on itself like origami made of light, and you found yourself somewhere that shouldn't exist.

It was a room—if it could even be called that. The walls shimmered with iridescent colors that had no business existing in nature, shifting between violet and gold and impossible shades that made your eyes ache if you looked too long. The floor was solid but transparent, and below it swirled what appeared to be an entire cosmos of dying stars. There was no door. No window. No visible seam or crack that might offer even a theoretical escape. Just seamless, enchanted geometry that hummed with fifth-dimensional energy.

And you were not alone.

Wonder Woman stood a few feet away, her posture immediately shifting from confusion to combat readiness. Her blue-gray eyes swept the space with the practiced precision of a warrior who had faced a thousand impossible situations. The golden bracers on her wrists caught the strange light and gleamed. Her dark hair fell in waves around her shoulders, and even in this bizarre predicament, she carried herself with the quiet authority of someone who feared very little in any universe.

"Mxyzptlk," she said, her voice carrying a sharp edge of recognition and displeasure. She spoke the name like it tasted bitter. "Show yourself."

The air above you both rippled, and then he appeared—spilling into existence like a cartoon character drawn by a manic artist. Mister Mxyzptlk hovered cross-legged three feet off the ground, his diminutive frame dressed in a purple suit that seemed to change its cut every few seconds. His pointed hat sat at a jaunty angle atop his head, and his face wore a grin so wide it looked physically painful. His eyes sparkled with the particular glee of someone who had found a new way to torment the powerful.

"Diana! Princess of Themyscira! Warrior of Truth!" He clapped his tiny hands together with delight.

"And oh—who's your friend? Oh wait, I know! I know everything! That's the Luthor experiment! The Kryptonite Man! Well, not fully Kryptonite Man yet, but give old Lexy time, right?"

He giggled, a sound like glass breaking in a cathedral.

Wonder Woman stepped forward, placing herself slightly between you and the imp. It was an instinctive protective gesture, one she probably didn't even think about.

"Release us. Now."

Mxyzptlk held up his hands in mock surrender, his grin never faltering.

"Oh, I will! I absolutely will! You know me, Diana—I never overstay my welcome. Well, actually, I always do, but that's beside the point!"

He snapped his fingers, and a gilded scroll materialized in his hand with a puff of purple smoke.

"Here are the rules! Simple! Elegant! Very me!"

He unrolled the scroll dramatically, clearing his throat with theatrical importance.

"The great and magnificently handsome Mister Mxyzptlk has trapped the lovely Princess Diana and her radioactive companion in an inescapable pocket dimension! The only way out—the only way, the one and only way, no loopholes, I checked—is for the two of you to do the horizontal tango! The mattress mambo! The—well, you get it!"

The silence that followed was deafening.

Your stomach dropped. Whatever residual nausea the Kryptonite infusion had left you with returned with a vengeance. You looked at Wonder Woman, whose expression had undergone a complicated journey in the span of a heartbeat—shock, outrage, disbelief, and something else that flickered behind her eyes before being carefully controlled.

"You cannot be serious," Diana said, her voice low and dangerous.

"Oh, I'm very serious! Serious as a heart attack! Serious as taxes! Serious as—"

"Why?" Wonder Woman cut him off. Her jaw was tight. "What is the purpose of this?"

Mxyzptlk's grin shifted into something sharper, meaner, edged with genuine malice beneath the performance.

"Because it'll hurt Clark."

He said it simply, almost sweetly, like he was explaining why he preferred chocolate over vanilla.

"The great Superman! The boy scout! The Man of Steel with the glass heart! Can you imagine his face? His precious Diana, with some Kryptonite-infused nobody? Oh, it'll break him. It'll crack that wholesome image right down the middle. And breaking things is what I do best!"

He clapped again and began to fade.

"No time limit, per se, but I wouldn't wait too long! The walls close in a tiny bit every hour. Nothing lethal—just claustrophobic! Toodles!"

And then he was gone, leaving only the echo of his laughter and a profound, uncomfortable silence.

Wonder Woman stood perfectly still for a long moment. Her fists were clenched at her sides, and you could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her chest rose and fell with controlled breathing. She was processing. Calculating. Fighting.

Finally, she exhaled—long and slow—and some of the rigidity left her frame. She turned to face you fully, and you saw that her cheeks had taken on a faint but unmistakable flush of pink. It was startling to see on a woman who had faced down gods without flinching.

"I have faced Mxyzptlk before," she said quietly, her voice carrying a note of reluctant admission. "He is... a fifth-dimensional imp of nearly limitless power. Superman has struggled with him. I have struggled with him. The Justice League has struggled with him."

She paused, and the blush deepened fractionally.

"I do not say this lightly—he is simply too powerful to fight our way out of this. Not here. Not in a space he created and controls completely."

She looked at you with those pale blue-gray eyes, and there was no judgment there, only a careful, measured honesty.

"I do not know what Luthor did to you. I can sense something... different about you. But that does not make you less deserving of respect or choice in this matter."

Another pause. She tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear—an oddly human gesture that seemed almost out of place on her.

"If you do not wish to do this, I will find another way. I will spend days, weeks if I must, searching for a flaw in his design. But if you are... amenable..."

The word came out carefully, as if she were choosing it from a diplomatic lexicon.

"I would not be opposed."

Her blush burned brighter, and she looked away for just a moment before meeting your gaze again with characteristic directness.

"Clark would understand," she said softly, and there was something in her voice—warmth, conviction, and a thread of something private that you couldn't quite read. "He is the most compassionate man I have ever known. This is Mxy's cruelty, not ours. Clark would see that. He would not hold this against either of us."

She squared her shoulders, and despite the flush on her cheeks, her voice steadied into something resolute and gentle.

"So. I do not mind—if you do not mind. The choice is yours."

You didn't know what to expect when Diana told you to wear something nice.

She'd shown up at your apartment that evening in a fitted black dress that stopped mid-thigh, slit up one side, her dark hair down and loose and brushed to a high shine. Gold earrings. Heels that added two inches to her already commanding height. Minimal makeup—just enough to accent the strong lines of her brows and the full shape of her lips. She looked like she was attending a gala, except there was something mischievous in her eyes that didn't belong at galas.

"There is a place," she had said simply, leaning against your doorframe with her arms crossed. "Somewhere the women of our world can be themselves. No press. No Justice League business. No expectations. Just... a night."

You'd asked where.

She'd smiled.

Now you understood why.

The club had no sign. No name on the door. Just a nondescript entrance in the basement level of a building in Gotham's East End, flanked by two women you didn't recognize—though one had skin that shimmered faintly like polished copper, and the other's shadow didn't match her body. Diana nodded to them as she passed, and they stepped aside without a word.

The staircase descended into warmth and music and amber light. The bass hit you first—deep, rhythmic, pulsing through the floor and up through your legs. Then the heat. Then the sound of laughter and conversation layered over the music like a second melody. The space opened up into a wide, low-ceilinged room done in dark wood and deep red velvet, with curved booths lining the walls, a long polished bar along one side, and a raised stage at the far end complete with a gleaming chrome pole that caught the light and threw it back in fractured rainbows.

It was packed.

You recognized almost everyone.

Black Canary sat at the bar in a leather jacket and tight jeans, a glass of something amber in one hand, her blonde hair loose and tousled. She caught Diana's eye across the room and raised her drink with a grin that was equal parts welcome and challenge. Beside her, Poison Ivy reclined in a booth, barefoot as always, her red hair cascading like autumn leaves over the green-tinted skin of her shoulders. She wore a deep emerald dress that left her arms completely bare, and a small flowering vine had curled itself around her wine glass like a living coaster. She looked up at your entrance and her lips curved into something slow and appraising.

In another booth, Fire and Ice occupied opposite ends of the same seat, clearly mid-argument about something trivial. Fire—Beatriz—gesticulated wildly with a cocktail in hand, her bronzed skin glowing faintly with the internal heat she could never fully suppress. Ice—Tora—sat with her arms folded, her pale blue-white complexion serene and unbothered, a thin rime of frost creeping across the table surface near her fingers where her patience was evidently wearing thin. She glanced at you and Diana and gave a small, polite nod, as if to say rescue me from this woman.

And at the far end of the bar, dominating her space with the gravitational confidence of an actual queen, sat Maxima. She was impossible to miss—tall, powerfully built, with fiery red hair that fell past her shoulders and eyes that burned like molten gold. Her outfit was minimal and unapologetic, a deep crimson halter and fitted pants that did nothing to hide the warrior's physique beneath. She held a drink that looked comically small in her hand and watched the room with the lazy predatory attention of someone who knew she could bench-press the building.

She spotted Diana and her golden eyes moved to you. She studied you for a long moment. Then she smiled—not warmly, exactly, but with interest.

"Diana," Black Canary called from the bar, swiveling on her stool. "You actually brought him. I owe Tora twenty bucks."

"I told you she would," Ice said quietly, and the frost on the table thickened slightly.

Diana led you to a booth near the stage, one hand resting lightly on the small of your back. The gesture was casual—protective, possessive in a subtle way that most people wouldn't notice but that every woman in the room clocked immediately.

"How do you like it?" she asked, sliding into the booth and looking up at you with that same mischievous expression she'd worn at your door. "Not quite what you pictured when I said 'a night out,' I imagine."

She accepted a drink from a server—you didn't recognize the woman, but her eyes were entirely black, no whites, no irises, just depthless voids set in an otherwise normal face—and took a slow sip.

"The rules here are simple," Diana continued. "No real names unless you choose to share them. No photos. No recording. No League business. What happens here stays here."

She set the drink down and leaned toward you, her voice dropping low enough that only you could hear over the music.

"I have been practicing something," she said. The blush was back—that warm pink blooming across her cheekbones, the same one she'd worn in your apartment, the same one she'd worn in Mxyzptlk's dimension. But tonight it was paired with something else. A spark of daring. A willingness to be seen that had nothing to do with heroism and everything to do with desire. "A routine. On the stage. Black Canary has been... coaching me. She says I have natural talent but I take myself too seriously."

She glanced at the stage, then back at you, and the blush deepened.

"I want to do it for you. Not for anyone else. For you."

From across the room, Poison Ivy raised her glass in your direction with a knowing smirk. Fire had stopped arguing with Ice and was watching with undisguised interest. Maxima had shifted on her stool, her golden eyes fixed on the stage with the intensity of someone who appreciated physical excellence in all its forms.

The music shifted—slower, deeper, with a bassline that seemed designed to synchronize with heartbeats.

Diana stood. She smoothed the front of her black dress with both hands, took a breath that lifted her shoulders and straightened her spine, and looked at you one more time with those blue-gray eyes full of warmth and nervous courage and something that looked very much like love misdirected.

"Wish me luck," she murmured.

Then she walked toward the stage, every eye in the room following her.

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