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You're halfway through your first coffee when everyone in the crowd starts to scream.
It's the old "duck and cover" jingle, but you can't remember the last time anyone ducked, and nobody in Metropolis ever covers.
The barista beside you jerks her latte pitcher across the counter, milk frothing onto her sleeve. You swallow, and your reflection in the window looks back, unhelpful.
You blink hard, but the world doesn't reassemble as expected. There's only the open air, a rising chorus of screams from below, and then—like a hiccup in your vision—a hard emerald outline crackling around your entire body. You recognize this sensation with the same dull horror as watching yourself falling in a dream. Green Lantern's forcefields, which, according to last month's podcast interview, supposedly never, ever fail.
Six, seven, eight identical bubbles float beside you—some coffee customers, some courier, one unfortunate cyclist mid-pedal. To your left, a man missing half his tie, eyes bugged out in either fear or wonder. To your right, a small dog, its tongue lolling out of its mouth.
Above, the sky. Blood-warm and wet, punctuated by an asteroid the size of last year's LutherCorp Christmas float.
Then, like shotgunned pool balls, the bubbles scatter. Yours pivots midair, gets caught in a cross-current or a gravitational eddy or some quantum loophole. You drift up and north, towards the shadow of the LutherCorp tower, instead of down and safe.
You catch a final glimpse of the café, the open-mouthed crowd inside pressed to the shards of window that used to separate them from sky. The barista's the only one not looking up; she's looking at the empty spot beside her, mouth forming the smallest possible "fuck".
The forcefield vibrates with sudden pressure. A rubberized, shrill hum, like microwaving a fork. You're aware of the asteroid's approach more through the psychic panic of the city than through any physical sensation. Everything's so loud you assume your eardrums are about to pop. Suddenly, a green flash, and you're rocketing sideways, field and all, yanked like a bobber on a line. You almost black out. In fact, you have, for a fraction of a second. You come to with your cheek pressed against the slick green inside of the bubble and the vague awareness that you're now miles above where you started, staring down at Metropolis like it's a circuit-board with most of the power out. Flanking you, the other forcefields ignite, some spinning wildly, some already gliding towards the distant riverbank.
That's when yours stutters—not all the way, just a glitch—like a dying fluorescent bulb. Your bubble flickers. The world spins. The bottom drops out. You tumble, no safety net, just an afterimage of the Green Lantern's face—smiling, cocky, bowl-cut gleaming—as your only point of reference.
You manage a half-sob, half-scream, and gravity grabs it from your mouth.
Before you can finish your new trajectory, the forcefield winks back to life. Hard. Your nose flattens against the front, so violently you think for a second your brain's leaking out of your eyes. The bubble's smaller this time, maybe three feet in diameter, and you with it, curled like a shrimp, careening directly towards the Hudson.
The splatter's somehow both soft and cosmic. The field absorbs it, bounces once, and leaves you gently bobbing, green-lit, on the oily surface. You hear laughter—tinny, high, not at all cruel—but you're not sure if it's real or just echoing inside your skull.
You realize that the air tastes like metal and old pennies. You retch quietly, but manage not to pass out. It helps that the Green Lantern himself, in full parka-and-tights regalia, materializes on a raft of his own making. He floats closely, and taps the exterior of your confinement, which recedes like melting snow.
"You see?" he says brightly, like he's your swim instructor and you just aced the butterfly. "Not even close."
You nod, grateful for air, the taste of which you'll never again take for granted until you realize he means your head nearly pancaking on concrete, not your odds of escaping with a complete internal monologue. You fish a lump of snot from your nose with the back of your hand. He floats in that next-level casual way, the kind of charisma only childhood trauma or alien parenting could mint. There's a damp handshake of silence while you concentrate on not screaming 'fuck you' at the butt-end of his emerald raft.
He's waiting for you to say something. Maybe 'wow, thanks' or 'how's it hanging, Lantern?' as though you weren't seconds from being incinerated over an eight-dollar oat latte.
"You almost killed me," you finally manage, still dripping.
He doesn't flinch.
"Almost is just another way of saying mission accomplished, but with flair, honey."
His grin's a little wider than human credulity.
"I got you out, didn't I? I even included a little dog. I mean, I spoil my rescues."
You wipe lake-filth and a few microplastics off your cheek.
"You almost decapitated me, more like."
The Green Lantern bobs opposite, propping his chin atop a closed fist. He looks at you with a seriousness that feels, even in this altitude-less, oxygen-rich moment, like the worst kind of tease.
"Not all of us rescue like our Lord and Savior Superman," he says. "Some of us have style."
You lock eyes. It's the first time you've had a conversation with a Justice Gang member not mediated by a PR advisor or a wall of bulletproof plexi. He looks infuriatingly unbruised. There's something almost too healthy about him, like a children's cereal mascot. Hair so precisely bowl-cut that it doesn't move even as wind slams against your little floating platform.
"Superman would have caught me," you say.
"Superman would have hovered under you for five-hundred feet and ruined the ozone with his cape beats. Quaint! Classic."
Green Lantern's teeth are so white you could cut sheetrock with them. He steeples his fingers, like a therapist about to treat a chronic whiner.
"But super dull, don't you think?"
You look down. The water laps at your sneakers.
"I hope you brought a towel," you say.
He unspools a monogrammed Justice Gang gym towel from the air—emerald, naturally—and passes it over like you're some kind of rescue that needs coddling. He even makes a little show of wringing out the corner for you, like you're too delicate to handle the full saturation. The move is so pointedly performative that you consider hurling it into the river, but you clamp it between your knees instead.
"I've never seen you in this quadrant," he says, gesturing at the west end's dubious skyline. "You're usually traipsing around the lower city, right? With the other mole people?"
You sigh.
"I was getting coffee. This used to be a no-fly zone."
He shrugs.
"Blame LutherCorp. They built that panic tower in a day and forgot to run security on the upper windows. Some of us have to pick up the slack."
You rub your hands together for warmth—and to give yourself an excuse not to meet his eyes.
"Some of us have to get back to work. My boss will think I took an extra-long break because of the asteroid. She won't buy it."
He lifts an eyebrow.
"You work for the Daily Planet, right? Lane's section?"
"Features. Intern."
You bristle, unbidden, remembering why you loathe talking to heroes. Every detail in their Rolodex, every factoid in their super-brain, is a chance to play games with your life.
"Maybe you could punch me back to shore. Save both of us the cringe," you say.
He ignores the bait, flexes his forearm, and forms a footbridge of glowing light across the river. It arches at just the right angle to make you feel silly for doubting him even a little. You wobble upright, sopping, and he floats along beside you, hands behind his back, humming a tune at half-volume.
"You don't seem very grateful," he says, half-amused, half-resentful.
You keep moving, gaze lasered on the approaching bank.
"Is that required now? Gratitude? Is this some kind of—opinion piece I should be writing on you?"
"Oh, good, a journalist. You think I'm secretly streaming you for influencer points?"
Sucker punch, but you refuse to flinch.
"You're not? I'll see the TikTok in six hours," you bite back.
He almost smiles, but then looks at you like he's genuinely disappointed.
"I have better things to do than monitor the dopamine of three million followers."
He pauses.
"Honestly, I liked you better when you wrote about river otters."
You whirl. "You read that?"
He makes a spiral with his finger and the footbridge steadies.
"It's in my weekly bio digest."
He pantomimes a newspaper, then rolls it like a telescope.
"It was cute."
You flush for some reason. Maybe you're hypoxic, or maybe nobody in your life has ever properly acknowledged your otter piece, let alone the leader of the goddamn Justice Gang.
"It was an exposé," you say, but your voice is already drifting into the wind. "People should know how many city officials are trying to privatize a riverbank."
He shrugs.
"People should. But they don't." He slows as the light bridge begins to fade. "Want an embarrassing secret?"
You blink, not sure if you're supposed to say yes, or just listen.
"I'm not supposed to save anyone. Not unless it's an interplanetary threat," he says.
He grins, but there's no real joy in it.
"I just hate seeing people fall," he says.
You're close enough to shore to step onto gravel, but instead you pause, shivering, not ready to leave this moment—or maybe not ready to face what waits, the office, the 'intern' badge, the look Lois Lane gives you when you track mud onto her rug.
"So why the forcefield? Why not just—let me go?"
He runs a hand through his perfectly impractical hair.
"I don't know. I panicked. It's what I do."
He gestures at the skyline, ablaze with the city's never-ending power-waste, the flashes of emergency crew lights.
"I get a little overzealous sometimes," he says.
You remember the voiceover on the last Justice Gang special, the one you hate-watched after a week of deadline hell. Green Lantern. Reckless, resourceful, and wholly allergic to the bystander effect.
You realize, as he waits for your response, that you're not just his captive audience—you're his reflection, the only one in range who might treat him like a person. The thought makes you lightheaded, or maybe that's the adrenaline finally ebbing.
"I guess it worked," you say quietly.
The warmth stays with you the rest of the day.
You walk into the office wet and radiant, a flushed and slightly less cynical version of yourself. The bullpen's din is as predictable as ever—clicking keys, the hum of bad vent fans, Jimmy Olsen still dying by inches on his grape soda.
Most people ignore your sopping shoes, but Perry White barks, "Christ on a hoverboard, you're leaking on the intern iPads."
You sidestep, trailing droplets to your desk like a forensic trail.
It takes four attempts to log in, because your hands are still numb, and then another ten minutes to mop up the errant river from your workspace with a pyramid of paper towels. Lois Lane swings by your station, eyes sharp with predation. She sniffs you, literally.
"You look like you went swimming with the city council," she says. "Someone finally try to off you?"
"I wish," you tell her, stacking your ruined notepad on a pile of half-damp dailies. "Green Lantern. Tossed me in the Hudson like an emotional support goldfish."
Lois registers this, then leans against the divider and drops her voice.
"That's the one with the haircut, right?"
"You could land a plane on it," you say, and try to keep your face bored, neutral, unwounded.
Lois watches you a beat, then shrugs in a way that means, I see you, but will never say it. She picks up a sticky note by your elbow and slaps it gently onto your chest.
"You have an assignment."
She's already walking backwards, phone glued to her ear, mouthing, make it good.
You peel the note off your sternum. Two words, block letters.
HAWKGIRL. INTERVIEW.
You're not the kind of intern who gets the superhero pieces. Those go to embedded staffers, the ones with sources. You've written about public transit failures and the city's secret network of above-ground aqueducts, but never someone who can, in theory, tear you in half with a slow blink.
The elevator's still out from the impact, so you hoof it up five flights to the Justice Gang's preferred press deck. Floor-to-ceiling glass, but no chairs; just high tables and a metal sculpture of what your dad once insisted was Lex Luthor's brain melting.
You're practicing a question—something about collective bargaining for Justice Gang adjuncts—when you realize you're not alone.
It's Green Lantern. You nearly drop your phone, or maybe your brain just jumps a frame. He's standing—no, leaning—against the window, a silhouette etched with the pale slime-light of city sunrise. The same haircut, same zero-g intolerance for shame. No Hawkgirl. Just you, alone, with the single most flammable personality in the hemisphere.
He sees you looking. Of course he does. He cocks his head, and for an instant, you wonder if you're early or blown the invite and the real reporter's about to elbow you aside. But no. This moment's all yours, and you accidentally catch his eye for too long. You wonder what color your panic is from that distance—chartreuse, or a nice mauve?
"Rumor is," he says, "the Planet's sending their best."
He's smiling, gleefully, and you're suddenly conscious of how little of your foundation survived the Hudson.
"Must be a slow news cycle," he says.
You shrug.
"Budget cuts. The best is whoever's cheapest."
You fumble with the recorder app, thumb grazing every app but the right one, so he's treated to an accidental playlist of your first-year seminar notes and a brief, excruciating glimpse of the ones for today. He raises an eyebrow that you can't tell is real or reconstructed, and makes a point of not looking away while you fight with the tech.
"Lane said you'd be early," he says, "but not that you'd beat me here. That's some serious work ethic."
You bristle at the name-drop, but keep it locked down.
"I was told there'd be Hawkgirl," you say, glancing at the empty corner where a five-foot murder bird in gold would have been impossible to miss.
"Is this a solo interview?" you ask.
He checks his reflection in the window, smooths the bowl-cut, then turns back to you, eyes briefly dazzling.
"She's clocked today. Double shift. It's you and me, sweetheart. Hope you weren't banking on the wings."
"Guess I'll have to make do," you say, opening your notepad because the app still refuses to load.
You click a pen—real ink, which in this city is considered a weapon—and try to conjure your best on-record smile.
"Should we start with the softball, or do you prefer the hard stuff first?"
"Surprise me," he says, and makes a show of inspecting your badge. "But be gentle. The last reporter did a hit piece with a body language expert. Said I lack empathy."
"Do you?" you ask.
He cocks his head so the haircut angles towards you like a divining rod.
"Depends on the day."
The sentence hovers for a second, then lands, just off the mark, in a way you regret finding funny.
You scribble this in the margin. Lantern. Empathy. Pending.
You suspect that's the first honest answer you'll ever get from him, so you scribble a star next to it, pretending not to notice how close he's drifted to your personal space. He leans so far over your notepad there's a whiff of his deodorant—it's probably the kind that doubles as shrapnel repellent. The effect's less intimidation and more ... what, camaraderie? You're not sure he's capable of that, but it's not the worst guess.
"I wanted to ask," you say, after an awkward pause, "is the haircut a branding mandate? Or do you really think it works for your jawline?"
He grins. This is clearly the opening he wants.
"You'd be surprised. It's focus-tested. Kids trust a bowl cut, but not if you go full medieval pageboy. This—"
He gestures an imaginary hemisphere around his head. You note, with something like horror, that his hands are callused in ways you wouldn't expect from a guy who shapes reality out of willpower.
"—this is the happy medium. Last survey, I polled higher than the mayor."
"Was that before or after the skate park incident?" you ask, and he laughs—loud, full-bodied, no trace of embarrassment.
"After! See, you do your homework. Most people just ask if I'm dating a Teen Titan."
He scoots closer, all elbows and restless energy, like he can't help but colonize every inch of oxygen in the room.
"You want my hot take on it?" he asks.
You raise an eyebrow.
"I think the Titans are overrated. Too serious. Not enough comedy. Also, they have a height requirement. Discriminatory," he says.
You write that down, then underline it.
"You're, what, six-two? I don't think you'd have a problem," you say.
He makes a face, like you've mismeasured him by a metric mile.
"Six even," he corrects, "but my ego's six-four. I can't compete with Nightwing. Nobody can."
His voice slips into a pitch-perfect impression of Nightwing's 'public service' tone.
"Brooding is not a personality," he mimics.
He drops it, then stares at you, unblinking.
"Wouldn't you agree?"
You pause, pen uncapped and bobbing above the pad, and weigh your next move. It's a clear, unambiguous invitation to escalate this interaction into something more—the way he's cocked his head, the slow, predatory tick of his smile. If you want, you can make this a real interview. But you can't help yourself.
"I used to have a crush on Nightwing," you say, as if discussing the weather, scribbling a doodle in the margin.
"But I'm more into the difficult ones now. The mutants, or the ones who can't finish a sentence without starting three more."
He watches you intently, something bright and overlarge growing behind his gaze.
"You want difficult, you should try dating in the Lantern barracks," he says, his voice suddenly lower. "You ever dated someone with a power ring?"
You look up and realize he's entirely too close—he's not just reading your notes; he's reading the way you breathe, the way your lips keep twitching after every joke.
"You guys aren't supposed to date civilians," you say, but it comes out a little breathless.
He leans in, stretching the boundary of professionalism so thin it could be cut with a snapped pencil. His fingers drum the glass table, each tap the sound of callus on steel; you catch the faint, electric ozone of him, the synthetic-musky top note trailing under.
"We're not supposed to do a lot of things," he says, "but you strike me as someone who's not big on policy."
You scoff, loud enough to raise the ghosts of a dozen dead interviews, but you don't back up.
"Do you come on to all your reporters like this? Or just the ones who almost die on your watch?"
He's quiet for just a beat, then licks his lips—a surprisingly human gesture, as if he needs to check they still work.
"Just the ones who hold their own on the way down," he says. "I'm a sucker for death wish humor. Also, you have a thing on your eyebrow."
You blink, and he reaches out—slow enough to let you slap him away, but you don't. His thumb brushes a fleck of city ash from your skin, lingering long enough to spark a chemical reaction you'll have to analyze later, when you're alone.
"The ring," you say, voice barely a suggestion. "Does it, I don't know, glow when you're—?"
He doesn't let you finish.
"You want a demonstration?"
You get up—just enough to break the line-of-sight, the blood hammering in your neck so obvious that you're sure his ring could track your pulse from orbit. The skyline's still weirdly beautiful, spines of glass all limned in sunrise, and nowhere in sight is the planet-ending asteroid they all said would wipe Metropolis off the grid. You'd almost trade every future Pulitzer to not be standing here exposed, every cell in your body auditioning for some dumb viral supercut.
Behind you, Green Lantern doesn't lose interest. If anything, the silence excites him.
"You're blushing," he says, matter-of-fact.
"I don't blush," you correct, knowing full well that's a lie. Lois Lane once referred to your face as "a human mood ring".
You press your forehead against the cool of the window and consider whether it's possible to ghost a superhero.
"It's an allergy," you try, "to being uppercased by a space cop."
You don't notice him close the gap until his finger—callused, warm, a little rough for someone whose primary tool is willpower—hooks under your jaw, lifting your chin just enough that your lips can't help but part. The air between you crackles green, a low halo that pulses in time with your pulse, and every inch you give him in this glass-walled perch is another inch of your old life incinerated.
"Show me the ring," you say, or maybe just think it, but either way he hears.
He obliges, and the force that first held you over the river now cradles your ribs and lifts your feet off the floor. You gasp, but the sound's caught, batted down by the gloved hand braced at the back of your head, threading through the wet tangle of your hair.
A table appears—no, it was already there; the ring summons a second, joined directly to the first, emerald and trembling in the morning light. He sits you on its translucent edge, knees caged between his thighs, and when he kisses you, it's not a junior-high smash of lips but a calculated, gliding act of scientific inquiry. You feel him control the pressure, the split-second calibrations—how much you'll allow, how much you'll want—before he pulls back, just enough to see if you're still with him.
Green Lantern grins—teeth white and squared like a stadium light—and you're aware that this is a thoroughly inappropriate escalation for a press junket. The air in the room is thick with electrostatic, or maybe just pheromones, or maybe the ozone off his ring, which is now silent but not idle: a tiny green filament pulses at the base of his finger, and when he lifts your chin again, thumb presses gentle against your lower lip, you open without thinking.
He tastes, impossibly, like wintergreen and burnt sugar, and you know with certainty that every inch of this is calculated, intentionally built, focus-grouped for impact and sensation. He knows exactly what he's doing, and maybe you should care, but your mind's a blank green-white supernova right now.
Then, he breaks the kiss with an audible, almost performative pop, then makes a face like, didn't expect that to work.
His hand sweeps back through his hair.
"You want to?" he asks, "or is this a Me Too moment?"
For a second you want to punch him, but it's drowned out by the pounding in your chest and, if you're honest, somewhere lower.
"You're an incredible asshole," you say, breath hot in your throat.
He nods, solemn, like he's just received an award.
"It's a branding thing."
He's bracketed between your knees and you're not quite sure when your pelvis started arching towards him instead of away. His fingers keep working through your hair, cradling your skull, the other hand supporting your lower back as he bounces you further up onto the table—onto the surface, not just the edge, so your butt bounces slightly, the gravity negated just enough to make every little movement a shock to your nervous system.
You glance at the glass wall, knowing the angle is visible to anyone who cares enough to look up from the fifth avenue chaos. All of Metropolis, theoretically, could see you. Certainly the building security cams are running. The thought should mortify you, does mortify you, but it's overruled by something old and pelagic, something that says, fuck it, he saved your life, he can have you.
"I had questions," you manage, in between the way he kisses down your jaw, slow and open-mouthed, like he's trying to memorize it. "I was going to ask about off-planet arbitration, and the ambassador thing, and—"
He hums into your neck, lips vibrating above your pulse. You feel the ring slide up to your throat, cupping your jaw with a cool, flexible band of energy.
"You're never going to write this up," he says. "You're going to sit here, and you're going to smile politely, and pretend like it's still just an interview, and I'm going to tell you anything you want," he whispers.
He tugs your hips closer—no, the ring does, a splint of green energy circling your waist and cinching, just for a second, the world's gentlest restraint.
You shudder. You can't help it. There's a moment, a single ringing second, where you're aware the recorders are still running on the table between you, and then his palm tips your chin up and the second kiss is less of an experiment and more of a claim. Your thighs bracket his waist; you're sitting higher than him, so he leans in and pulls you down into his lap. The table doesn't so much as creak.
You shift in his lap and feel the hard line of his cock through the bodysuit, the power ring burning like a sun at your skin. His lips smirk against the shell of your ear.
"Don't stop me if I'm reading this wrong, but you're insanely kissable for someone who cites river privatization in casual conversation."
You give a sound somewhere between a protest and a gasp, but your thighs squeeze his hips, and the cold pulse of the forcefield bands around your knees and hooks you steady.
The table is still glass, functional, just wide enough. He smooths you back onto it, an arm cradling your ribs as he lays you flat. There's another wet little pop as your coat slides off, and you think, fleetingly, of the stain it will leave on the surface. His hands are everywhere—scattering pens and notepads, pressing you up against the cool, thrumming slab of energy and, by extension, the world.
"Fuck," he whispers into your mouth, soft consonants vibrating against your teeth, "oh my God, you're an actual fucking superhero groupie, aren't you?"
Your knee clocks into his hip, and he laughs, delighted at the way you try to knee him off even as your hands clench the armor at his shoulders, hauling him closer.
"You're a literal child," you hiss at him, or try to, except he swallows the insult against your lips, one hand sliding down your ribs, over the damp blouse, finding the line of your jeans and the button at the center.
The second your brain computes what's happening, he's already popped it—casual, practiced, the work of a man who's handled a thousand pairs of pants and never once had to say sorry.
"Is it the uniform?" he asks, nosing down your neck while his fingers work the zipper with two, three, four deft flicks.
"The haircut? Is it the way I almost let you die and then caught you at the last possible second, because I absolutely did that on purpose."
His tongue's in your ear, breath hot as a steam leak.
"You want to know how deep I can go? Or how fast."
He's got your jeans loose and peeled halfway down your hips, each motion just controlled enough not to tear them off, not to snag a thread until his callused fingers want it gone. Then he has them off in an instant, clean and decisive, running a knuckle down your inner thigh, banding both legs apart with a suggestive nudge of his own knee. His breath's a weather system, warm and ozone-bright against your pulse.
The ring, you realize, is watching—no, it's more accurate to say it's participating, trilling faintly against your skin wherever you're most exposed, a hummingbird's insistence at the bite of your clavicle, the soft terrain between your thighs. It's as if every nerve in your body has been appointed a dedicated signal relay, all wired up to pulse green in anticipation.
You want to say something witty, at bare minimum a disclaimer about journalistic objectivity, but he's suckling a constellation of bruises onto your neck with the focus of a dendrologist, mapping every square centimeter for later study. His hand splays over your stomach, and his pinky's so cold, so star-bright with kinetic energy, that you gasp and pinwheel your heel against his back. He laughs, animal and delighted.
"Never been fucked on a press table?"
He asks it like he's offering a business card. You try to arch up, to lever him off with the ball of your foot, but he's immovable. Your blouse is soaked and clinging, your bra already adrift somewhere above your shoulders—did he unhook it hydrodynamically—and you decide, in the flickering pulse between his tongue at your throat and his hand grinding up your inner thigh, that you would like to see him try.
Green Lantern tastes the words off your lips, laughing as he hooks two fingers through your waistband, and says, "God, you're actually going to do this."
His voice isn't shocked, it's reverent—a collector's moment. He slips both hands under your thighs and lifts your ass in one smooth movement, splaying you open to the cold glass and the bleary, predawn city.
You open your mouth to say, "wait," and he's already there, kissing you deep and with the intent of reversing every chemical imbalance in your system. His tongue is clever, but it's the edge of his teeth that makes you whimper, the way he takes your bottom lip between them and tugs until you almost forget your own name.
"I'll tell you a secret," he purrs, "but you can't put it in the article."
He punctuates each word by tapping the power ring at the base of your thigh.
"I get off on being watched."
You twist on the table, angling for even a tiny advantage, but all you do is give him a better opening. He pulls your hips towards him, scraping your ass against the frictionless green light, and buries his face between your legs like a diver hunting for pearls. The forcefield is so thin you can feel the drag of his breath on your barest skin, his tongue everywhere and nowhere, refusing to settle until you squirm, hands flat on the glowing table, nails dragging new constellations into its membrane.
He teases. He laps and blows and draws you out until your whole lower half is trembling like it remembers how to fall. He edges you with a patience that would be sadistic, if not for the way he cuts the tension, up here in the open, calling out your reactions like a game of high-stakes pinball.
"God, listen to you," he says, lifting his head just enough to see your face, glazed and flushed, mouth open on a sharp intake of air. His cheekbones are cut from glass, his jaw stubbled and slick with whatever you're making for him. "You're so fucking loud."
You try to bite down, but he slips two fingers inside you with surgical ease, cocky like he's reaching for a winning lottery ticket. You choke on the noise that follows. His palm covers your whole pelvis, and when his thumb makes first contact with your clit, you nearly dislocate the table.
"Is that it?" he murmurs, mouth back on your inner thigh, nosing up until he's licking languid circles right where you need it. "Thought you'd be tougher."
You dig your heel into his back, but he's already set on a rhythm, fingers curling up and in and around until you can't tell which is him and which is the ring, which is wet and which is just pure force. Every time you threaten to lose it, he backs off just a hair, dragging you cruelly back from the edge for another bite, another lick, another circuit up the length of your spine.
After some endless, whimper-thin interval; he wants to see if you'll beg. You refuse him for as long as you can, twisting and arching and grabbing at his hair until he grins up at you, bowl cut wild for the first time in history.
"Say it," he says, the voice just above a whisper, the words so close to the building's security mics you almost panic. "Ask me nicely."
You're not sure what you actually say—you think it's "please", but it sounds more like a gasp, a plea soldered to the back of your teeth. He groans, a low, shivery sound, and re-doubles his work, tongue and hand in perfect sync, thumb insistent and clever. The rest of the world goes overexposed. Your body goes first, then your vision, then the last shreds of professionalism you intended to maintain.
You come so hard you almost black out, the entire surface of the table flexing and warping green where your fists clench for purchase. He does not stop until you are trembling, spent, and dabbing tears of exertion from the corners of your eyes. Only then does he slow, kissing the inside of your knee with a quiet, almost chaste affection.
He licks his lips, surveys the aftermath, and says, "I love a woman who overpowers her own nervous system."
You want to punch him, and might have tried, except he's already up, suit peeled to the waist, cock out and leaking. A quick swipe of the ring and your destroyed jeans are a memory, green wisps carrying the last of your modesty down to your knees. You scoff, "show off", so breathless it's barely more than a wet consonant, but he just smirks and leverages himself between your thighs, lining up as if there's nothing in the world worth pausing for now but this.
"Oh, you want showing off?" he asks, kneecapping your sarcasm with one languid, showboaty-thick inch.
You think he's teasing, but then he's in you, all of him, no break for drama or affirmation, holding your ass up perfectly tilted so gravity doubles the effect. You make an impossible, embarrassing noise, and he glories in it, rolling his hips till glass squeaks beneath you and the forcefields pulse tight enough to vibrate your teeth.
He presses you into the cold table, weightless in the forcefield's cradle, and fucks you harder than anyone ever has—deliberate, relentless, the kind of sex you assumed was marketing until it landed in your lap. Each thrust rattles your spine, wipes out syllables, and leaves nothing but exclamation points in your bloodstream. You brace against the green-lit edge of the world, knuckles whitening, and the glass doesn't so much as rattle; the forcefield suspends every ounce of impact, letting him pound into you without so much as a decibel for the outside world.
"Metropolis is watching," he gasps in your ear, a smoky, ribald confession. "You want to wave to the mayor? Or just the entire east side?"
His cock is so thick, so perfectly calibrated to your body, that you find yourself pushing back just to defy him, just to claw a little of the narrative away from his pace. It antagonizes him, which you sense is a public service, so you wrap your legs tighter and grit, "you're barely a headline in the morning edition."
He laughs, wild, delighted, and jackhammers you until there's no air left in your chest.
"Keep talking," he growls, "I want to hear you run out of jokes."
The table glosses you in a heat-mirage reflection—your splayed thighs, the white pop of your panties caught at your knee, the dark flush around his cock as he drives deeper with every rutting snap. You're not a control freak, but you realize now that you have a pathological need to ruin him: to watch him lose composure, to see even one nanometer of the self-mastery fracture under your hand.
He helps himself, bracing both hands on your hips and tilting you up so every piston hits your g-spot dead-on, and you match him, gripping the slick of his suit at the small of his back, using the leverage to fuck him back just as hard.
The ring brackets your neck, safe but insistent, tipping your head back until all you can see is the kaleidoscopic green of the ceiling lights. He huffs, kisses you full and open-mouthed, tongue prodding as if there's more of you to explore, as if every inch not catalogued is an affront to the Green fucking Lantern Corps.
"God, you're perfect," he moans.
His sweat's hypersaline, almost sweet, and he laps up the film of it off your throat while slamming home, over and over, until your vision whites out and you forget every word except "yes" repeated like a failing machine.
He brings you off again with only the flex of his cock and the ring's chilling grip on your clit, a shudder that leaves you half-paralyzed and leaking down the transparent table, your ass glued in a smear of your own mess. Even then, he doesn't quit. He wants to force another out of you, and another after that, as if collecting them for some interplanetary evidence locker.
When you whine, "I can't", all he does is redouble his pace, he surges forward, hand on your throat, the other cinched at the base of your ass, and pounds so deep you yelp, a wet, helpless sound that's answered by his teeth in your collarbone.
"You're fucking unstoppable," he pants, "no wonder Lane sent you up here, I bet she knew you'd eat me alive."
His hand smacks your thigh, hard enough to leave a print, and you bite the urge to yell, collapse your voice into a hot, whispered, "fuck, yes, keep going—"
He watches your face as you go, drinking you in like whatever wild, undignified noise comes out of you is the single most delicious thing the universe ever cooked up. When you scrabble at his hair, trying to make him stop, he just puts his mouth over yours, swallowing the protests and replacing them with his own filthy encouragements.
"Fuck, you're greedy. Never seen a civilian suck me in like that. Can you feel it? How you're pulling every last drop?"
The words hit you harder than his cock, and you clench up again, involuntary, another half-orgasm wrung out of you by the wet and the pressure and his goddamn voice.
"You like this, huh? Thought the Planet only sent up the hardasses, but you're just a little slut for superheroes, aren't you?"
Each punctuated thrust is a stuttering punctuation; your answer melted to breath and the high keen of your nails scraping the hologlass.
"C'mon. Say it. Say you love it. Say you want more."
You're not sure where the will to answer comes from, but your lower lip splits and, shameless, desperate, "more. Please. Fuck, don't stop—" rips out of you, as pure as the word gets.
He angles his hips, cock thick and slicker now, grinding deep with every rut.
"That's it."
His thumb rides your clit, two-point pressure: the chill of the ring, the heat of his skin.
"You gonna come again? You're so fuckin' tight—squeezing like you don't want to let go. Is that what you want? Want me to watch you lose it on my cock?"
The intensity unmoors you. Your body arches, heels locking around his waist, and the table bends, the world cracking along a line of green-white pleasure. He rides it out with you, barely giving you a breath between, intent on wringing you dry. His mouth bites at your neck, tongue painting the shudder of your artery, and he says, "God, I could fuck you through the panel, leave you screaming so hard they'd hear you in Central."
You don't have enough oxygen to laugh in his face—he's already bruising your insides with every stroke, the table keeping you pasted and helpless while the forcefield jelly-molds you to shape. You want to tell him to shut up, but you want to hear what he'll say even more. His pace is devastating, but the running commentary is worse:
"Yeah, that's it, you take it. You said you wanted more. Look at you, already sloppy for me, fucking shaking. Good thing you're not streaming this, huh? I'd get banned for turning a Planet intern into a scream queen."
He runs two fingers up your cheek, smearing spit and sweat, then hooks them in your mouth so your whimper is sucked straight to the back of your throat.
You're so wet it's obscene, the table lacquered in sweat and slick, the cold of the glass a perfect frame for the near-combustion happening above. He loves it, you can tell; his rhythm gets wild, ragged, and for the first time it's not practiced, it's animal, his cock pounding into you with all the finesse of a meteor.
"Fuck, I'm gonna bust," he growls, "you're gonna milk me dry, aren't you? Good little groupie, suck the Lantern's cock and tell all your friends."
He punctuates each word with a savage drive, splitting you wide, until you lose the ability to process language and everything is just vowels and thick arcs of ring-light streaking across your screwed-shut eyes.
He pulls out to the tip, slaps his cockhead against your clit just to see you nearly levitate, then plunges back in slow but iron-hard.
"You feel that, baby?" he pants, holding himself in the root so you can process the obscene stretch. "Feel how your pussy grabs me? Bet you've never had anyone fill you up this good. Bet you'll think about this every time you look out your precious little office window. Don't pretend you don't fucking love it."
You whine, the sound a full-body spasm, and he pushes your knees to your chest, folding you flat on the table. Every inch is exposed to the rising madness of the city, your ass entirely off the edge, every snap making the glass vibrate in patterns only visible in the periphery. There's nothing to do but hang on, and so you do, hands braced above your head, wrists caught by a sudden spike of forcefield until both arms are pinned. Your heart hammers in your throat as he fucks you, eyes locked on yours, relentless.
"Good girl," he croons, "that's a good fucking girl. Open for me—all the way. Christ, look at you, look how you take it. Never seen anyone so desperate for it. You gonna fucking scream for me again?"
His tongue laps the pulse at your throat, and the ring flexes around your wrists, just tight enough to make your breath catch.
"Should I dial it down, baby? Or you want it rougher?"
A brutal thrust knocks the wind from you, and you squirm, but the grip stays gentle, implacable. He laughs, a bright, insane bark.
"That's it. Fuck, squeeze me. C'mon, you can do it. Let go. I want to feel you lose it on me."
You don't exactly have a choice. The third orgasm's a lightning strike, hot and wild, your spine arching so hard you nearly snap his hold. He pounds through it, losing composure at last, breathing rough, every thrust more ragged than the last.
"Shit, that's so fucking good—oh God, fuck—" The power ring stutters, the light crescendoing, and then he grits, "I'm gonna come—gonna fill you so deep you remember me every time you fuck any other loser for the rest of your life."
He pulls your wrists higher, the forcefield flexing so your elbows nearly touch the glass, and the cold bite of it sends terror and bliss in equal measure straight into your skull.
"That's it, baby," he pants, "let the whole city hear you. You're so fucking good, you know that? Take every inch, just like that. Oh, fuck, you were made for this."
He drives in, splits you on the length of him, so thick you feel the edges in your molars and the base of your brain. You're beyond language, but the ring isn't; it hums through every nerve, a battery of data points logging your pulse, the dilation of your pupils, the precise volume of cunt-drag with every slam. He studies you as if he's prepping for a thesis defense, and you almost hate the part of yourself that wants to impress him. Almost.
"Holy shit, you're choking me," he moans, wild with it, hips stuttering at the impossible grip your body gives back. "You're gonna milk every drop out of me, aren't you? Fuck, yes—fuck, that's so goddamn tight—"
He bows over you, forehead to yours, and the sweat rivers off his brow, hot and sour and laced with pheromones.
"C'mon. Milk it. Make me lose control. Make me fill you so deep you can't walk straight for a week."
He devours your lips one last time, and with a slow, brutal torque of his hips, he slams in and freezes, cock pulsing, locked all the way to the root inside you. The ring shudders at your clit, a supernova at the end of your world, and you detonate—voice cracking, release convulsing up from your toes to your skull, every muscle wringing him until he's the one gasping for air.
His hands fist the glass, the rest of his body flexing so hard you feel the aftershock in your bone marrow. He shakes, whole-body, eyes glazed and mouth working around some untranslatable word. He's still in you, still twitching, laying over you with a spent, shuddering groan. For a split-second you think you might die, and you almost don't mind.
He collapses forward, forehead pressed to yours, still buried, still pulsing, the forcefield around your wrists melting away with a gentle sigh.
"Goddamn," he mutters, voice thick. "You really, really should not have let me do that."
He swipes your ruined panties—at this point, basically a suggestion of underwear—from your knee and tucks them deftly into the pocket of his bodysuit. You're about to protest, but then you decide, on balance, it's the least weird thing you did today.
"Lane says you're the best," Green Lantern murmurs, mopping your forehead with a fold of his jacket.
His hand steadies your skull, thumb gentle at the temple.
"And I checked. She lied about the Hawkgirl interview. She just wanted me distracted for an hour."
You find your laugh, finally, ragged and sour but real.
"She owes you a case of Gatorade."
You swat at him with the back of your hand, but it's mostly for effect. The transparency of the window catches your reflection—hair wild, face bruised with flush, eyes lit to bursting—and it almost doesn't look like you. For a second, you wonder if this is how they get you, if this is the secret deep game behind superheroes and their PR. To make you want them so bad that ethics go out the window.
He's still inside you, more or less, as he helps you slide off the table. Your knees almost buckle. Instead of the humiliating collapse you dread, he lifts you steady, suit re-sealing around his hips with a hiss so subtle you wonder if it auto-wicks sweat and bodily fluids. He smirks, pinching your chin, the gesture unexpectedly tender.
"You wanna catch your breath, or are you up for round two?" he asks.
You tongue your split lip, taste blood and mascara, then snort.
"God, I have a job," you say, "and a byline. Unlike some people."
But you're not angry. The words are keys in a lock, a routine made new. He tugs your ruined underwear out of his pocket and offers them back, but when you move to take them, he pulls them back at the last instant with a shit-eating smile.
"My trophy," he says.
"Pervert," you say, softer, and let him have it.
You're back on the bullpen floor with maybe the worst walk of shame since college.
Hair finger-brushed, tights inside-out, blouse buttoned one off at the wrist. If you could walk without friction, you would, but instead every step is its own kind of agony, your thighs singing in harmony with your overwhelming embarrassment. You try to channel composure, but your knees threaten betrayal.
You try to make a straight shot for your cubicle, but you have to pass through the bullpen's gauntlet of caffeine addicts and permanent freelancers. Of course, you even rehearse the lines in your head—early morning, forgot my umbrella, classic Metropolis—but you get sideswiped by the world's slowest traffic cone.
Clark Kent, glasses fogged up, tie in the grips of a strawberry jelly donut, single hair curl as immaculate as ever.
He looks up just as you clear the printers, and his eyes do a weird telescope-zoom thing. You watch the bifocals refract the moment—sodden hair, wild flush, the collar of your coat flashing pink above a blouse that even now clings with a wet-plaster intimacy.
There's a full two seconds of wordless, cosmic pause, then Clark chokes violently on his coffee, spraying a constellation of brown onto his yellow legal pad.
"Sorry," Clark blurts, hand scrabbling for a napkin that isn't there.
He's beet-red, the kind of red you only see on the sides of fire trucks or in the last seconds of a siren.
"Uh, rough morning?"
You try to match his sheepish energy, but feel the vibration of Lantern's fingerprints still radiating from your skin.
"M—metropolis," you say, aiming for wry. "Never a dull commute."
He tries to get the coffee stain off his shirt with the back of his wrist, then immediately starts blotting his face instead, like you just squirted him with a hose. You try not to stare too long at the spread of pink on the backs of his ears.
"No damage," he says, but the brown circles on his shirtfront beg to differ.
"Clark," you deadpan.
"Hm?" he hums, glancing up.
"We will never speak of this again."