Chapter 3

Steph was not expecting Lex to make love to her.

Not at all.

Sure, they'd cried and comforted each other earlier about the kid they'd each lost. And yeah, Lex had been very passionately excited about Steph's pregnancy. But - but -

Steph was expecting some hot sex more along the lines of how they'd fucked against the wall at the gala. Not for Lex to look at her all awestruck and soft and tender, and not for him to touch her like she was his most cherished possession, and definitely not for Lex to kiss her like he never wanted to let her go.

Oh, she was in trouble. T-R-O-U-B-L-E.

Because when Lex had intertwined their fingers as he fucked her slow and sweet, it wasn't to slam her hand down on the bed and dominate her. It was an offering of partnership, a "we're in this together and I'm so happy it's with you."

Yeah, Steph was screwed.

Because she couldn't help melting into those kinds of kisses, and sighing deep into her bones when their palms touched, and how could she keep from caressing Lex as sweetly as he was touching her? She could hear it in her voice when she came, how he was winning her over - the way she cried his name all soft and breathy and happy instead of urgent and loud and demanding.

Lex traced little circles on her back as he cuddled her in his arms afterwards, and Steph felt full of smiles from her pussy to her heart to her face, which made pressing little kisses into Lex's chest every few seconds seem like the world's most important task. She would figure out how to deal with the whole super-villain thing later, she tried to tell the temporarily-squashed-by-romantic-sex gnawing worry in her gut. It wasn't like she'd agreed to move in with him, or anything, after all.

So they'd had some soul-shattering sex that had made Steph feel more cared for by a sexual partner than she ever had before in her life. It was still just sex and Lex was still the Justice League's Enemy Number One and Steph was Batgirl, dammit. She could handle this.

She could.

"What type of birth control are you on?" Lex eventually asked her curiously when their mutual afterglow haze started to fade.

"The pill," Steph said. "One of them, anyway. I guess I shouldn't take it tonight," she said, slightly rolling off of Lex as she considered. "I don't want it to hurt the baby, or anything. I mean, I don't know if it would, but - fuck, I've been taking it every night like usual ever since we hooked up," she said, starting to get concerned. "I hope that wasn't bad."

"Do you have them with you?" Lex said. "I can look up what happens if you get pregnant on it."

"Yeah, I packed them," Steph said. "Habit, I guess? I'm always so scared to leave home without them. For all the good that's done me," she grumbled, getting up and going over to rummage in her suitcase. Lex sat up in bed and started tapping on his phone.

"It looks like you'll be fine," he said even before Steph pulled the pills out. "Minimal to no risk of birth defects in general with birth control pills, especially during the early stages of pregnancy."

He held up his hand for Steph's pills and raised an eyebrow when she threw the plastic container like a frisbee straight to him.

"Nice aim," he complimented, and Steph grinned as she climbed back in bed. God, it felt so easy to cuddle up next to Lex's arm to look over his shoulder as he looked up the specific brand.

"Nothing serious was reported," he announced, tilting the screen so she could see better, and Steph breathed out a sigh of relief. "We'll bring your pills and ask the doctor tomorrow, though, for extra reassurance," he said, turning his face and - oh, pressing a gentle kiss to Steph's forehead, so sweet it almost made tears start, so she wrapped her arms around Lex's bicep and buried her face in his shoulder instead, making him chuckle.

"You're so adorable, sweetheart," he said.

"Yeah?" Steph said, raising her head back up and giving him a sunny smile. Lex nodded.

"That was one of the things I liked about you at the gala," he said. "How playful you were. You reminded me of Conner, in a way," he said with such vulnerable openness that Steph's heart stuttered in shock.

"Not in a way that grossed you out, I guess," Steph said like an idiot, because she couldn't quite process the truth that Lex was freely handing out to her. Lex snorted.

"No," he laughed, leaning down and kissing her on the lips this time. "Decidedly not. Conner was outrageous," Lex sighed fondly, "and I'm well aware that he went out of his way to annoy me with his over-the-top antics," he said, "and to embarrass me at every turn, and yet - he amused me," Lex said more softly. "I never realized how dull and dreary my life had been without him in it until he was gone."

"Oh, Lex," Steph said sympathetically, swallowing back some tears as she hugged Lex's arm a little tighter.

"You made me laugh that night," Lex said, looking down at Steph. "For the first time since he died."

Yeah, Steph's tears were coming now, like it or not. She sniffed and wiggled her way under Lex's arm so she could hug him across his chest. His eyes were wet, too, but he smiled at her as he laid a hand on her belly.

"You'll give that playfulness to our baby," he said, "and it will make me feel like they have a piece of Conner in them." Steph sniffed and choked on a sob as Lex kept cradling her stomach.

"Are they moving right now?" he asked her. "Can you feel them? I don't feel anything."

"Oh," Steph said, clearing her throat and wiping her eyes, "I won't feel them moving for months yet."

"Oh," Lex said, sounding disappointed. "When will you start showing?" he asked her.

"Also months," Steph said. "We had sex what, three weeks ago? With my first baby I started showing around twelve weeks. And the baby starts moving anytime after sixteen weeks."

"Three more months?" Lex groaned.

"Or longer," Steph laughed. "It depends. I love how eager you are to feel them," she said, laying her hand down over Lex's on her tummy.

"Conner came to me already a teenager," Lex smiled. "It's - oddly radical, I suppose is the word, to know I'm going to witness our baby - my baby - growing inside of you. I can hardly believe it," he said. "So, yes. I'm very eager to feel them," he smiled at her. "And to see your body start to change."

Steph blinked, because - her last pregnancy? It had been her and her baby against the world. Her mom had wanted her to get an abortion. Tim had wanted her to give it up for adoption. And yeah, Tim had ended up becoming her boyfriend, and even gone to Lamaze with her and held her hand during the birth, but - he hadn't been excited with her over her baby. He'd been worried; anxious about Steph's own future, concerned about the baby's, and - it wasn't his baby.

As supportive as he was, he saw her pregnancy as a mistake, a burden, a problem to be solved one way or another. Nobody but Steph saw her baby as a blessing, a miracle, a gift of life growing inside of her to be awed and inspired by, and in the end Steph didn't even see her baby at all, once her little one had left her body.

So now? Having the father of her new baby next to her in bed, far more excited about her pregnancy than she was at the moment, and even more than that, happy that it was Steph who was his baby mama? Steph's heart was flashing danger signs at her, but she didn't know what she could do about it.

She didn't want to reject Lex's attention and care, and she didn't want to go through her second pregnancy alone, and while common- and Bat-sense alike dictated that keeping Lex at arm's length from now until forever would be the best policy for her to adopt - Steph didn't want to, dammit. Ok? She didn't.

This was nice. It was better than nice. It was almost everything she'd ever wanted her next pregnancy to be, and - look, she'd still find some excuse or another not to move in with him down the road. But for now? Being curled up in Lex's arms while he bubbled with happiness over their surprise baby felt damn good, and Steph was going to enjoy it.

"Thank you," she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek, "for being so excited about our baby."

Lex reached his hand up to caress Steph's face before kissing her again.

"I'm sorry that it's less exciting and more of an unwelcome accident for you," he said. "I don't mean to belittle how drastically your life is about to change in ways you didn't want."

"You're not," Steph protested. "I'm glad one of us is excited," she said, looking down guiltily. "I feel bad for the baby, with how I feel. Who wants to come into existence feeling unwanted, or like an inconvenient burden?" she said, her lips trembling a little.

"Sweetheart, you found out you were pregnant barely twelve hours ago," Lex said. "And I only have to look at how much you loved and still love your first, equally unexpected, even more inconveniently burdening child to know that you'll love this one just as much."

Steph sniffed.

"I - yeah. I guess so. Right now all I feel is panicked and angry at my goddamn birth control and the condom and - maybe some at myself, too," she muttered. "I told myself not to have random hook-ups after my first baby, because I barely knew Dean and he turned out to be a real jerk. And then I was with Tim for a long time, but after we broke up … I don't know," Steph mumbled.

"I kind of eventually figured if I was on birth control everything would be fine. I would've been open to another relationship, but nothing's worked out -" because she was Batgirl, she didn't say - "and hook-ups are fun," she groaned, not to mention they were way easier than trying to find a plausible excuse for an actual boyfriend about why she wouldn't ever be able to spend the whole night. "But now I feel like a damn idiot," Steph said.

"This could have happened in a relationship, too," Lex said reasonably. "Going purely by anecdotal evidence, I'd say at least a third of humans exist because of accidents," he smiled.

But I had an accident with a super-villain, Steph didn't say. And the super-villain part? That had definitely been preventable.

"And aren't I a better baby daddy than some broke, drunken frat boy already mired for life by student debt?" Lex was saying in a deliberately winsome tone, though.

Steph smiled, because he was expecting her to, but - honestly? She wasn't so sure. Seriously, though. After she got herself unenamored with Lex, she was going to be a lot more careful who she fucked, she promised herself (again).

If she was able to get emotionally detached from Lex, a little voice in her brain whispered, but Lex was asking her what she wanted for dinner and Steph pushed all rude, overly concerned voices in her head aside.

Lex would surely become an asshole at some point, because he was Lex Luthor. How could he not be? And then she'd get mad at him, and he'd regret trying to date her, and they'd become frostily polite co-parents who lived in two different cities like they were supposed to, and everything would not exactly be fine, because they'd still have a kid they had to share - but everything would be closer to fine.

It would. Steph was sure of it - because the alternative scared her too much.

A/N - Thanks for reading! Comments are much appreciated.

This story has more to go so don't forget to subscribe if you want to know when new chapters post. Btw, I know where this is going now, and there is going to be HEAVY ANGST later on. So, be prepared and/or quit while you're ahead if you think this won't be a good story for your mental health.

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