Life on the farm pt 8 dog sitting is not for the faint of heart pt 1
Everyone celebrated Danny’s success in making portals, Conner on the other hand dreaded it. He only just got his big brother and now he’s leaving and he can’t even go with him to make sure he stays safe. Clark has really come around but he’s not Danny. Danny helped him realize that he will never be Superman and that’s okay, he can just be Conner and no one will be mad. He stood on the porch as Danny ran around the house packing. When the door opens he expects Danny to walk out and instead surprised to find Clark instead.
“It looks like a tornado has gone through the house.” He says with a laugh before sitting on the porch. The two sat in awkward silence for a moment before Conner tried to break the ice.
“What was it like… growing up on a farm?”
“Um, well there were a lot of cows…” he said awkwardly. Neither really sure how to interact away from league work and training.
——-
From inside Ma sees the interaction and sighs, turning to Danny “they’re trying so hard but they just can’t seem to click. Clark’s improved a bit but I think it’s still hard for him to disassociate Conner from the fact that he’s a clone.”
Danny pauses in his frenzy as he places a pie in a suitcase. “Hmmm, I think they just need a little push.” He stops for a moment before popping up and snapping his fingers. “I’ve got an idea.”
———-
The awkward silence was suffocating. When Danny came charging out of the house both of them nearly sighed in relief. “Alright everyone, I’ve gotten everything I need for the next few weeks together, called everyone to let them know they won’t be able to reach me, and gotten all my chores done for the week. I’ve only got one thing left to do before I leave.” Danny swings his bag around and pulls out an excited Cujo “Ma and Pa have a lot going on for the next week with the festival coming up and the last thing they need is Cujo underfoot. I’d take him with me except the observants hate him with a fiery passion because he made a mess of their lair. Unfortunately they are some of the main ghosts I have to deal with so he’s staying here… with the two of you.” The two of them looked at each other before looking back, ready to protest, but stop as Danny holds up a hand “I know you guys think you could probably handle him alone but trust me when I say… you can’t. So team work it is, I’m sure Conner could stay with you in metropolis and take care of him while youre at work.” Danny smiles while plopping Cujo in Clark’s hands “Make sure you take him to visit Wolf every now and again, he loves playing with his little buddy. Oh and don’t forget, he’s a ghost. You don’t need to feed him but it wouldn’t hurt to bring him around grave yards, he loves playing with young spirits.” Danny takes a deep breath and grins at the flabbergasted looks on his brothers’ faces “oh yeah your gonna do great.” He crouched down to look Cujo in the eye. “They’re idiots, but they’re our idiots so be a good boy, keep them safe okay?” Cujo perks up and gives him a loud bark “that’s my big boy!” Danny gives him some behind the ear scratches.
Ma and Pa join them outside as Danny rips open the portal, they stand side by side as Danny prepares to leave “You stay safe now son! Don’t let those Observant fellas push you around hear me” Pa yelled. Danny laughed before charging up the porch to give his parents a hug. He then turns to clark and Conner with a demented grin on his face.
“You didn’t think I was leaving without a hug did you?” He tackled his brothers into a hug, surprising the two heroes with his strength. “Okay guys I gotta head out but I’ll be back, and Ma I promise I won’t forget to get you that recipe!” She nodded at him
“See that you don’t” and with that he was gone.
———-
The next day
Conner sits on Clark’s couch in metropolis while he’s at work, staring at the forlorn dog plopped on the floor. He sighs “Cmon buddy he’s not gonna be gone long I promise.” Cujo gives him a whiny groan and curls in on himself. Looking around the apartment he sees a glowing leash sitting in the basket of supplies Ma and Pa provided for them. After a little digging he managed to locate the collar Zatanna enchanted to disguise wolf, he held the two items up and turned to cujo. “You feeling up to a walk buddy.” Cujo perked up wagging his tail. He gave a happy bark in the affirmative. After getting Cujo on the leash the two make their way to the park. Cujo seemed enamored with everything, he stopped at every fire hydrant to sniff and pounced at every group of pigeons. When they arrived they just took a normal path, just to get Cujo some exercise, this is when they encountered their first obstacle. About halfway through their walk they came upon a girl with a large Great Dane, Cujo had wandered a good distance on his extending leash when the girl approached Conner. With a smile she tucked some hair behind her ear.
“Is that your dog? Aww he’s sooo cute! What his name?” Conner looked over at the girl.
“His name is Cujo, he’s actually my brother’s we’re just dog sitting while he’s on a trip.” She moves to stand next to him, making him a little uncomfortable.
“That’s so sweet! This is Maximus, he’s my precious baby. Hey here’s a thought, we come through the park just about every morning. Maxi just has to have his exercise, how would you feel about joining us?” She asked batting her eyelashes
Conner hesitated. The girl seemed nice and Cujo seemed to be lonely with Danny gone. He’s just getting ready to agree when Cujo returns to his side, the friendly dog suddenly stepping between Conner and the girl. Maximus pins his ears back and starts to growl at the smaller dog. The girl starts trying to pull him back “I’m so sorry! He’s never like this!” Cujo takes a step towards the bigger dog and barks at the bigger dog.
Maximus’ tail goes between his legs and he starts whining. “What’s wrong baby? You’re not scared of that itty bitty thing are you?” Cujo starts to growl at the girl. Conner picks him up
“Sorry I don’t think Cujo likes Maximus too much, them hanging out would probably be a bad idea. She quickly turns around
“What? Why should that matter? They’ll get used to each other.” She tried to persuade him. Cujo barked again and Maximus started to pull her away.
“I don’t think they’re gonna get along. Sorry we should probably get going.” Conner quickly made his escape. Once they made it a good distance away Conner gave Cujo a sigh of relief. “Thanks buddy. She was weird, you wanna head over to the grave yard? You’ll probably find more friends over there.” Cujo bounced up and down and ran in an excited circle, Conner laughed at his antics. “I’ll take that as a yes” and so the two made their way to the nearest grave yard. When they arrived Cujo went crazy, he choked himself on the leash a few times before Conner let him off the leash. Conner slowly walked among the graves, trailing behind the graves.
While he couldn’t see what, or who, he was playing with Cujo ran around as though chasing someone. He was having the time of his afterlife. After awhile Conner noticed it was getting late and called Cujo back. He raced back and attempted to tackle Conner to the ground, unfortunately he was used to such behavior from wolf and so Cujo had little success. Conner laughed and put the leash back on the puppy “we gotta head back bud, Clark should be back soon.” Cujo gave Conner a happy bark “you like Clark huh? Can you keep a secret?” Cujo tilts his head “I like Clark too. I know we didn’t get off on the right foot but he’s everything I wanna be. I don’t me his powers, those are amazing but I’ve come to the understanding that I’ll never have those. I did at one point but, they cost me big time. I’d rather stay me than be Superman, Clark on the other hand? He seems to have everything figured out. I can barely walk through the park without getting mixed up!”conner sighed “what do you think buddy?” Cujo tilts his head in confusion “yeah it’s pretty weird huh? C’mon let’s get back, Clark said he might invite Lois over for dinner.”
———-
‘My idiots are weird.’ Cujo thought to himself as he escorts the child back to the den. Honestly they were ridiculous, that girl clearly wanted to mate with the child, but he is much too young for mating. Poor thing has no idea, Cujo made a promise to his Phantom. He would protect his idiots. The big one is the keeper of the den he’s staying at, it is a small den. Not like his Phantom’s den, his den is very big, with plenty of room to stretch and run. Nightmare calls it a castle but what does that stupid alicorn know anyway? He’s got flames in his head. The child says the loud story teller is coming for dinner. She’s fun, she will be a fine mate for his big idiot.
Cujo races up the steps checking behind him to make sure the child is following, silly child likes to wander. When they approach the den he hears voices from the inside. At first he plans to simply walk through the tree wall but the child hasn’t learned to do that yet, not like his phantom, so he waits for him to open the wall. The loud story teller is inside with the big idiot. She smells nice. He wanders over too her and she picks him up “Hey little guy, how have you been?” Cujo barks and give the loud story teller some welcome kisses. She needs to know she is welcome in the pack. After all his phantom has already approved.
————
“He’s such a sweetheart!” Lois exclaims before catching sight of his collar ‘Axiom labs’ there’s a frown on her face, Clark gives her a concerned look “later, for now let’s eat before the food gets cold. I worked hard to put that Chinese on the table.” She said with a smirk. Conner laughed as he finished setting the table (well trained from his visits to the farm).
Once they all sat down and started to eat Clark try to make conversation. “So what did you two get up to while we were at work?” He asked politely
“We went to the park for a bit, at least until Cujo here scared off this girls Great Dane.” He said with a grin. Lois suddenly looked interested “a girl?” She questioned
Conner shrugged “yeah, she was walking her dog in the park. She wanted Cujo to hang out with her dog but it seems not all alive dogs are big fans of ghost dogs. She was pretty weird though, she wouldn’t stop blinking.” Lois snorted her wine, laughing at the poor boy. Clark jumped up with a napkin
“Oh boy! You may not have been raised on that farm, but you are a farm boy through and through!” She said through her laughs. Clark looked confused.
“How so?” Lois looked back and forth between the two confused Kryptonians. She laughed even louder.
“Oh man smallville, you two are a class act you know that?” She tries to calm down “she didn’t care about the dog, she was flirting with you. Don’t worry Clark here took an entire year to realize I was flirting with him.” Conner blushed, embarrassed, and Clark wasn’t doing much better.
“We’ll then it’s a good thing Cujo was there. I don’t think M’gann would appreciate her hanging around.”
Clark perked up “how are things going between you two?” Conner shrug
“Okay I guess. When we’re at the mountain everything is fine…it’s just..” Clark nudged him
“What’s wrong?”
“M’gann has started to use her mind control on our enemies more and I don’t like it. I’ve tried talking to her about it but… she just doesn’t get it. I’ve been there before, I know what it’s like to not be in control. I hate it.” Conner accidentally crushes the chopsticks in his hands. He looks at the utensils angry that he lost control. Clark just passes him a new pair.
“Don’t worry, I always grab extras just incase. You know when I first started dating Lois she would insist on Chinese at least once a week. I went to the store and bought as many pairs of chopsticks as I could so I could practice not breaking them.” He laughed “I went through so many pairs of chopsticks, I used them to make a fire for marshmallows afterwards. That fire burned for over an hour.” Conner snorted his noodles. Clark smiled “as for M’gann, I know she comes from a different culture, but if she’s doing something that makes you uncomfortable you need to talk to her about it. I know it’s hard to hear but you shouldn’t be in a relationship with someone if they don’t respect your boundaries.” Lois smiled.
“I’ll admit I probably pushed those boundaries more than my fair share when we first started out.” Clark snorted
“Yeah, I think shooting me with blanks pushed a few boundaries” Conner looked at Lois in shock.
“I’m gonna need a little more context here.”
The two reporters dove into the story of the great identity reveal with gusto. The three ate and laughed until the food was gone.
——-
Cujo curled up in his bed, proud of his accomplishments. He enjoys his rest while his people eat, but soon enough the den goes quiet and Cujo gets bored.
———-
When Conner woke up the next morning Clark had already left for work. He eats his breakfast and gets to work on his summer reading list. After about an hour of that he goes looking for Cujo so he can take him for a walk. He searches the apartment, then he searches again. He frantically grabs the phone to call Clark, he picks up on the third ring. Before he can even greet Conner he’s interrupted
“IS CUJO WITH YOU?!?!” Clark jumps from his seat, surprising Jimmy, who was showing him pictures.
“No, I thought he was with you.” He can hear Conner searching the apartment through the phone. “I need you to calm down, I gotta talk to Perry and I’ll be there soon, we’re gonna find him.”
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