Partners.

They were partners. Clark Kent and Lois Lane, crack journalistic team. Superman and Lois Lane, out to stop corruption and crime. Clark and Lois, best friends. It was how it was.

Everyone knew that they were partners. People remarked on it, said that "those two always do everything together," and they certainly weren't wrong about that.

Clark had joined the Planet straight out of college and had been assigned to Lois straight off the bat. He'd been in a period of post-Lex depression, having just lost his best friend to the business world when LexCorp went global and Lex just didn't have time for him anymore. He hadn't had the energy to argue with her like he did back in Smallville, and they'd ended up remembering just how well they used to work together, when the situation called for it. Perfect match.

Better when Superman made his debut and Lois was the one person to look him dead in his glasses-free eyes and say, "Well, at least this explains your sense of style. I mean, come on, spandex?"

She covered for him when he did his superhero thing and she bullshitted so well that no one ever questioned her like they did him. He saved her when her reporter's nose led her too far into trouble. She was the mastermind with the nose of a bloodhound and the instincts of a psychic, and he wasn't always above using his powers to gather information based on her hunches. Between them there was comfort and familiarity, a million shared jokes and near-death experiences that made things easy. They worked together well.

They played together even better.

No one knew for sure that they were lovers, because superpowers made them very good at not getting caught. (The real fun was in trying to hide the fact that they lived together, just because they could, and actually succeeding.) But rumors abounded, and they definitely weren't wrong. Clark and Lois had fallen into bed the day she'd figured out his secret, and sometimes it felt like they hadn't fallen out since.

They weren't always alone. They liked to play, even if it was always for one-night-only, and experience made them a very good tag-team in bed. Clark was bi, though he'd never gotten the nerve to mention this to the person who made him aware of this fact before Lex had taken off for Tokyo, but Lois wasn't, so their third was always a man. Not that Clark minded. Quite the contrary.

The politically correct term was "open relationship." Clark just called it having fun. And it wasn't like they were doing anything wrong.

They were partners, after all. They did everything together.

Lex moved back to Metropolis for good, and it made the front page papers of all the newspapers, including the Daily Planet. Clark discovered something that he couldn't talk about with Lois, but she didn't need him to. He didn't tell her that he'd always been in love with Lex, but he didn't have to because she'd always known.

Neither of them ever put voice to it, but they loved each other. They weren't in love with each other, because who needed romance when you had the kind of partnership that they did? But Clark had always hopelessly longed after Lex, and Lois, well, she wasn't in the habit of letting Clark want something when she could give it to him.

"No," he told her when she brought it up, but she just sighed impatiently and wondered how long it would take for them to move past the pointless denial.

"Come on, Kent, don't even bother. You want him, it'll hardly be a chore for me if some of the rumors I've heard are true, and it's not like we've never done this before."

"Not like this," Clark insisted, his face oh-so-innocent. Lois was never sure how he managed it after all they'd done, but she was still after him to teach her. He always laughed and said it was natural talent- you either had it or you didn't.

"I beg to differ," she said, eyebrow raised. "I'm pretty sure we've done just about all at one point or another."

"Never with someone who mattered," Clark said, his head hanging puppy-dog low. "Lex does."

"How is that a problem?" Lois said, baffled. "Seems to me it'd just make it better."

"We do one-night fun," Clark said, refusing to look at her. "I don't think I can do just one-night with Lex."

Oh, that's what he was all worked up about. Some typically Clark-like problem. Figured. "I wasn't planning on it being one night," she said patiently. Well, sort of patiently. "Like Lex would ever let you go. I refuse to move into that penthouse, though- our place is much closer to the Planet."

Clark stared at her for a moment, then laughed and let of his silly worries and they started to plot.

Lex wasn't sure what sort of mutant Lois was, but she clearly had some sort of power, since she'd managed to get him to agree to an interview, with her and her partner, in his penthouse after dinner. Before she'd ambushed him with her hypnotism or whatever, he'd had every intention of staying clear of Clark Kent. He'd figured it would be harder with them in the same city instead of Lex carefully on the other side of the globe (psychological distance only when the other person could fly) but he hadn't realized that it would be this difficult.

They arrived around eight, Lois dressed in a slinky black dress and Clark darkly handsome in a black suit with a dark red shirt. Clearly, Lois had had a hand in revamping his wardrobe, because Lex doubted that Clark had changed enough in the past few years that he could dress himself like this.

"Thanks for agreeing to see us," Lois said cheerfully, and proceeded to grill him while Clark sat smilingly in the background, looking gorgeous as ever, supposedly taking notes. Lex doubted it, because even Clark must have trouble writing legibly when he wasn't even looking at the pad, staring as intently at Lex as he was.

Lex was so distracted by Clark's presence that he failed to notice that Lois had maneuvered closer to him during the interview (interrogations was more like it) till she was practically in his lap. When he did notice, he looked down at her with what must be a very clear expression of dismay because she laughed when she saw his face.

He looked frantically from her to Clark, who looked like he was trying to hold in laughter, and said cautiously, "I'd been given to understand that the two of you are together."

"Oh, we are," Lois said, setting her recorder aside and starting to unbutton his shirt.

"We're partners," Clark added, appearing on Lex's other side, one hand resting with casual possessiveness on the nape of Lois' neck and the other a heavy weight on his shoulder.

"We do everything together," Lois continued, finishing with his shirt. Dazed, he sat forward when she pulled and allowed Clark to pull it off.

"Including other men," Lex said, his legendarily quick brain not moving anywhere near the light speed at which these two moved. Lois grinned at him as she situated herself rather comfortably in his lap.

"Well, sure," she said. "We like to play."

"We're not playing with you, though," Clark said, and pulled him around that he was situated between Clark's splayed thighs before he realized it. When had Clark taken off his shoes? "We intend to be having fun with you for a very long time."

"How long?" Lex choked out, as Lois tongue played connect-the-dots with the freckles on his chest and Clark's cock rubbed against a very sensitive spot on the base of his spine.

"Forever," Lois said, and moved downwards.

"Forever," Clark echoed her, and did very good things with his fingers on Lex's nipples and his mouth on Lex's throat.

Lex's eyes rolled back into his skull, and his last thought was that sounded good to him.

Lounging in the afterglow in Lex's bed- Clark had levitated them there from the couch- Lois said sleepily, "I refuse to move."

"Me too," Clark said, and Lex made a sulky noise of protest before falling asleep.