Chapter 30
"I'm getting married this week!" Diana thought as soon as her eyes opened on Monday morning.
The thought flooded her with a giddy excitement that propelled her out of bed and sent her scampering next door to Lex's bedroom. She barely remembered to knock and hardly waited for Lex's muffled 'come in' before she had flung the door open - not quite hard enough to knock it off its hinges, although it was close - and was barreling over the fluffy comforter on Lex's bed to snuggle up to the barely awake billionaire like an eager puppy.
"Diana!" Lex said in amused surprise, startled at the barely noticeable time lapse between the knocking and the door hinges rattling and a wriggling Diana throwing her arms around his still reposed body buried under layers of blankets.
"We're getting married this week!" Diana squealed into his face, bouncing so hard as she hugged him that she was making the bed shake in a somewhat alarming way.
Lex made himself a mental note to see about getting a reinforced bedframe and floor installed before Friday, grateful that his genius level brain could multitask because Diana was kissing him now with a barrage of fervent, affectionate kisses like he had whack-a-moles popping out of his mouth that she was trying to contain.
At least Diana was being a little more gentle with his lips than she had been with the poor moles on their amusement park date, but it had been more than worth paying the park for the irreparably damaged game to see Diana's childlike enthusiasm at beating the feisty critters to a pulp, determined as she was to not be bested by the mechanical beasts.
And Lex really had no complaints at all about the way she was kissing him. If she was this excited now… his morning wood got even harder thinking about their imminent wedding night, now only four days away since their impetuous decision to move up the ceremony. And subsequently, their intimacy.
"I love you so much," Diana panted when she finally took a breath.
"I love you, too," Lex said, feeling washed with a deeper sense of peace than he could ever before remember experiencing.
The Legion of Doom was ninety-nine percent behind bars, with only a few minor scallywags on the loose - nothing that the Justice League couldn't handle and no one capable of posing a lethal threat to Wonder Woman, especially when the League had her back.
Diana not only loved him, but she had agreed to marry him before the week was out and soon Lex would have her in his bed guilt free, a moral concept that had never before even occurred to him to consider but which now weighed heavily on his conscience - another construct to which he had thought himself invulnerable.
But if Lex was learning anything from being with Diana, it was how vulnerable loving her made him. A fact which should have terrified and repulsed him. And truthfully, it did scare him more than a little bit.
Yet instead of hardening his inner asshole and shoving Diana out of his life in order to keep himself safe and emotionally impenetrable, here he was taking baby steps forward, patiently figuring out how to navigate the new rocky waters of his heart with a rusty, once-broken moral compass that had suddenly found a north to pull towards in Diana.
And dear God, how he loved her.
"We have to go see my mother tonight," Diana said to him, snuggling herself up as close to him as she could get from on top of the blankets that he was under.
"Does she know yet that we're dating?" Lex asked her.
"We can't really talk long-distance," Diana said. "Amazons are a very low-tech people. Zeus had to send Hermes to me on the Watchtower with a hand-written message when they needed help with Hades. So, no," she sighed.
"It's going to be somewhat of a shock to her that I'm not only dating but getting married on Friday. I was planning to tell her about us tonight when we drop the nuclear codes off and I was assuming that she'd be willing to fly out to the jet with me to meet you."
"So it may be quite the first meeting, indeed," Lex said wryly.
"Yes," Diana groaned out slowly. "I'm sorry," she said regretfully.
"It's not your fault, baby," Lex said, pulling his arms out from the covers to stroke Diana's face.
"I'm the one who asked to move the wedding up to such a ridiculously short timeframe. She would have had plenty of time to get used to the idea if we weren't getting married until next year."
"But we're getting married on Friday!" Diana crowed, her eyes glowing with delight. "That's worth my mother being mad at me," she proclaimed.
Lex chuckled.
"So long as you protect me from her," he said.
"Always," Diana promised him, giving him more affectionate kisses.
"We have so much to do before Friday," she moaned a minute later. "I don't even know where to start."
"I do," Lex promised. "We are going to sit down with Tess first thing this morning and put this whole event into her astonishingly capable hands," he said. "All you'll have to do is tell her what you want and she'll organize the rest," he said.
"The only things you need to worry about are getting your friends to come and showing up to whatever dress fittings or cake tastings or flower pickings Tess tells you to be at," he said with a smile.
"Oh, that makes me feel so much better," Diana breathed out. "She'll have time to handle all that plus her normal work?" she asked him.
Lex nodded.
"I'm going to have her move all my meetings and put business on hold as much as possible for this week and next and bring an assistant up for her from a lower floor to handle the executive issues. More than one, if she needs them."
"Good," Diana said with relief. "Where should we hold the wedding?" she asked him.
"Well," Lex said thoughtfully, "how many people are you going to invite? The whole League?" he asked her.
Diana frowned, her bright spirits slightly dimming.
"I don't know how many of them would come," she said softly with her eyes downcast.
"Oh, Diana," Lex said sympathetically, pulling her into a hug. "I'm sorry," he said and she sighed a little bit.
"I'll invite the Founders, of course," she said. "But beyond that?" she said slowly.
Her fingers played with a wrinkle in Lex's mahogany colored duvet cover.
"Supergirl I think will come," she said. "Especially since Clark will be there. And I would normally have wanted to invite the Green Arrow and Black Canary, but those two, I don't think will want to attend. We were friendly before this; more so than I was with some of the other League members, but… " she trailed off.
Lex's eyes grew sad as he stroked back Diana's hair from her forehead.
"Invite them anyway," he said gently. "They can say no, but an invitation will show them that you still value their friendship."
"Ok," Diana murmured.
"I'm actually somewhat pleased at the thought of keeping the wedding small," Lex said tenderly with a hint of eager anticipation in his voice, "because I was thinking maybe you'd like to have it at the Feather and Quill club where we went after the dance."
"Yes!" Diana breathed out, her eyes starting to light up again. "Oh, that's a beautiful idea, Lex!" she said happily, wrapping her arm around his chest and crawling forward to lay her head on his shoulder.
"It's a special place for us," Lex agreed sweetly. "Although I was also considering Adventure Land if you wanted to invite the whole League," he said and Diana started laughing against him.
"We would have gotten some amazing photos there," she giggled. "Me in my wedding dress and you in your tux, zooming down a roller coaster with my veil flying out behind us."
Lex chuckled warmly and kissed her forehead.
"I love you so much, Diana Prince," he said and the look in his eyes backed his words up better than Diana's lasso of truth ever could have.
"Just a minute!" Lois called in response to the knock at the Wayne Manor guest bedroom door at ten a.m.
Clark was still sleeping, regenerating his strength under the lights of a half dozen solar lamps, and Lois had only gotten up a half hour ago; completely unusual behavior for her, since she normally thrived on as few hours of sleep as was humanly possible, but her stress and worry over Clark's near death the night before, plus the extra late hours before they had gotten him to bed in one of Bruce's guest rooms and Lois had ended up sleeping quite late for her.
She had only just emerged from the shower and gotten dressed, allowing herself the luxury of a slow and lazy start to her day, the remainder of which she was planning to spend on her laptop in bed next to Clark, working on her articles for The Daily Planet.
Clark, of course, was still stark naked as he soaked up his pseudo-sunrays, so Lois hurriedly threw a blanket over his lower half before moving to open the bedroom door.
"Oh! Alfred," Lois said upon seeing the butler standing outside her door carrying a silver tray laden with a large silver carafe which smelled like it was full of coffee, plus a full plate - of six! - huge, hot and doughy cinnamon rolls with thick vanilla icing literally dripping off of them.
Not to mention the flower vase with a pristine fresh lily in it. Which only happened to be Lois's favorite flower. A fact which she had no idea how Alfred had learned.
But Lois's reporter intuition suspected that the British butler was every bit as good a detective as Batman himself - and even sneakier than the Bat, when it came down to it, because Alfred didn't go around advertising the fact that finding out every single conceivable personal detail and preference of literally anyone on the planet was mere child's play to him.
Hell, he could probably dig up the dress sizes and favorite foods of more than a few off-world aliens, too, and cook the dishes to perfection.
One did not want to look the gift horse in the mouth that was Alfred Pennyworth.
"I have taken the liberty of preparing some breakfast for you, Miss Lois," Alfred said graciously, peering at her face quite intently for some strange reason as if searching for something.
"Thank you so much, Alfred!" Lois beamed. "Your cinnamon rolls are divine!"
Despite never being invited to Wayne Manor before, Lois had had the good fortune of sampling Alfred's baking during an interview that she had done with Bruce Wayne once at Wayne Enterprises for a piece on some of his philanthropic work.
An interview which had been graced with a welcome platter of cinnamon rolls. Which, while not at that time fresh out of the oven, were still so far superior to Cinnabon that there was really no fair comparison.
Alfred gave her a little smile and relaxed infinitesimally as he entered the bedroom with the tray, setting it on the marble credenza for her.
"You take your coffee black, I believe?" he asked her, pouring her a cup.
"Yes," Lois said, smiling to herself at his knowledge.
"I have provided cream and sugar for Master Clark, of course," Alfred said, "should he awake and desire a cup."
"That's very thoughtful of you, Alfred," Lois said, taking the steaming cup of coffee that he was offering her and inhaling the aroma with delight before taking a sip.
"Is this Arbuckles' Ariosa coffee?" Lois said, her eyes going wide, because she knew Alfred was good, but damn. This was next level. He'd barely had any warning that she would be an unexpected houseguest and this was a historical cowboy variety of coffee that Lois had been introduced to while covering a past story in Arizona .
"Indeed it is, Miss Lois," the butler said, the corner of his lip quirking with a hint of pride.
"Do you routinely keep this in the house?" Lois asked him suspiciously. "On the off chance that one day I might happen to come over?"
"Tt," said Alfred. "A butler never reveals his secrets, miss."
Lois wondered to herself just how many varieties of coffee Alfred might keep stashed away in a secret pantry that was no doubt hidden from guests just as carefully as the Batcave, which she had utterly failed to see, much to her great disappointment.
But here was Bruce, coming up behind Alfred hand in hand with Shayera - well that was strange to see, but awfully sweet - and now Lois had someone to bitch at who didn't bake her delicious treats and squirrel away rainy day emergency supplies of her favorite coffee in the universe.
"You're not getting any of my cinnamon rolls," Lois frowned at Batman and Hawk - no, the Gotham Gargoyle, was her new name.
"You knocked me out," Lois complained to Bruce. Again.
"I did," he said calmly.
"No cinnamon rolls for you," Lois retorted.
"I prefer Alfred's biscuits," Shayera smiled at Lois while Bruce just smirked.
"Which shall be ready in ten minutes time, Miss Shayera," Alfred beamed at her, patting her on the shoulder as he left the bedroom.
"I wouldn't dream of eating your cinnamon rolls," Bruce said to Lois with laughter in his eyes once the butler was gone. "Alfred would starve me for a year if I stole food from you."
"All right, then," Lois said with satisfaction, moving to pull one of the rolls off of the platter and taking a decadent bite before setting it down on the tinier china plate that Alfred had provided for her.
"What's up?" she asked the two superheroes, licking her fingers as she moved back to sit cross-legged on the bed next to the heavily slumbering Clark.
"We wanted to check on Superman before we went up to the Watchtower," Shayera said. "He's sleeping through all of us chattering?" she said in surprise. "With his super hearing?"
"His hearing's not so good after such a bad dose of kryptonite," Lois sighed. "Hopefully by tonight he'll be almost back to normal, though," she said, looking over at her exhausted man with a softer look than Bruce was used to seeing on her face.
"He should be fully recovered by tomorrow morning, I think," Bruce said comfortingly. "He's taken more shots at once from Metallo in past battles than he did last night," he said, frowning, "but never one at such close range."
Lois pursed her lips.
"He said Lex saved him," she said.
Bruce hesitated.
"I think," he said, glancing at Shayera before continuing. "I think Clark is very lucky that Lex did what he did."
Lois looked down at her hands.
"You were supposed to have a plan, Bruce," she said quietly.
"I know," he said gently, dropping down to sit in the armchair next to her bed.
"I did. We did," he said.
"The best tactical plans in the world can get upended in the heat of battle," Shayera said as she moved to sit on the bed at Lois's feet. "That's why strong teamwork is so vital. A soldier's life is only as safe as their fellow soldiers make it. And everyone has to be willing to do what's needed when it's needed, no matter the plan or the cost."
"And Clark's life was safe," Bruce pointed out.
"Because," he said, slowly rubbing his hand over his jaw, "as obnoxious and odd a concept as it is for all of us," he sighed, "Lex is apparently on our team, now. At least, he was last night," he amended with a slight grin, which Shayera returned, because of course her Bat wasn't about to start handing out carte blanche trust.
Hell, except for her, he didn't even fully trust the other members of the Justice League. He was Batman.
Lois sighed long and hard.
"I would have been quite content to hate that man for the rest of my life, you know," she muttered.
"Believe me, I know," Bruce said dryly.
"I'm not saying I don't still hate him," Lois quickly added.
"Of course not," Shayera said with a soft smile.
"Still," Lois sighed, looking over at her sleeping Clark and gently brushing the hair off of his forehead.
"Clark's alive," Bruce said for her and Lois nodded, tightening her jaw and refusing to let the tears start.
"At least you can drown your conflicting feelings in Alfred's cinnamon rolls," Shayera said comfortingly, reaching out to squeeze Lois's hand.
Lois gave her a little smile.
"At least there's that," she said.
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