Work Text:
“Just so we’re clear,” Kara says under her breath, “He gets this from you.”
Conner makes a muffled sound like he’s trying desperately to keep from bursting out laughing. “Oh my god,” he mutters in a high-pitched whisper, “Oh my god he’s so precious. How do you not find this funny?”
“Kon,” Kara hisses, glancing to make sure Jon can’t hear her. Fortunately, he doesn’t seem to be paying her any attention. Unfortunately, it’s because his attention is entirely taken up by the ten-foot-tall, two-headed… fire… dog… thing. It might be an actual hellspawn, from its appearance, but it acts more like a little golden retriever as its two heads fight over the tree limb that Jon throws for it to catch. Which promptly catches on fire, making him laugh and fly out of reach of the smoke.
This is not a normal babysitting problem.
“Where did he get it from?” she asks quietly. “Did you see?”
Conner gives her a quick look, brow furrowed. “Nuh-uh. Don’t pin this on me. You said you had him—”
“Fifteen minutes ago! You said you’d be back in ten!”
“It breaks the golden rules of babysitting to not actually make sure I’m back before you leave!”
Damn it, he might have her there. She sighs, grimacing as the fire-dog-demon-thing leaps forward and snaps for Jon’s cape when he flies away. Maybe they should intervene? No, Jon is laughing, not looking scared at all. He’s pretty fireproof. It’s probably fine. “So we don’t know where he got it?”
Conner shrugs. “Hey, Jon!” he calls. “Did you steal your new… friend… from anywhere we should be worried about?”
“Yep!” Jon says brightly, but he has that indignant little crease between his eyebrows that betrays his annoyance. It makes him look exactly like Clark. “There was a place that was keeping him in a cage, and I heard them say they were going to sell him! So I broke him out!”
“Damn it,” Conner says quietly, but immediately raises his voice and calls, “So you rescued him?”
“Yeah!” Jon laughs when one of the heads grabs his cape and hauls him backward, which lets the other one plant a long lick up the side of his cheek. It pulls the side of his hair up, and the end of it smokes from the heat, but he just grins back at them. “Can we keep him? Please?”
“Not up to us,” Kara says. “You know that. You’re going to have to talk to your parents.”
He sighs, long-suffering as only a pre-teen can be, and pets both heads at once. “Mom never lets me keep any of the pets I find.” He thinks a second, and then jumps up. “Wait! Can you keep him?”
“I have the same parents you do, bud,” Conner says, putting his hands up. “None of them will be okay with a fire-breathing dog the size of a truck.”
“Don’t forget the two-headed part,” Kara says blandly. “Twice as much food to go through, I’m guessing.”
“Exactly.”
“Please?” Jon persists, hugging it around its giant neck, aiming the biggest eyes in their direction. “He’s all alone! We can’t just kick him out! We have to help him, and where else would he be safe?”
She does have to admit she can’t think of anywhere else, even with all the League resources. Maybe the Fortress? Clark has a variety of animals, some of them dangerous, and they’re protected and happy and not able to hurt anyone by accident. Jon could be convinced to leave him there.
The issue, though, is that Clark is the one who sets up the exhibits, so he would have to know. And if Clark knows that Jon ended up with a two-headed fire dog while they were supposed to be watching him, so will Lois. And she doesn’t feel like fighting that particular battle. No one ever really wins against Lois Lane.
“You’re making a face,” Conner whispers out of the corner of his mouth. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Are you thinking that we make terrible babysitters and they should have figured that out by now?”
He snorts. “Kind of. But also… the Fortress.”
“Yeah. But how do we get it there?”
“You mean without ending up grounded?”
“I mean, technically we can’t be grounded anymore…”
“They’ll find a way,” Conner says solemnly, with a shudder that means he speaks from experience. “Okay. So. Hiding it. We can do that.”
The fire-dog belches fire and sets a new tree branch that Jon has found ablaze. Jon yelps, spinning around. “Conner! I can’t breathe ice yet!”
“Coming!” he calls, glancing at her with a smile. “How hard can this be?”
Kara sighs. “I used to be the responsible one, you know. I used to be trustworthy. And then you and Jon rubbed off on me.”
“You mean we made you fun.” Conner flies forward. “Okay, I’ve got the branch, if you can move him far enough away I don’t accidentally hurt him when I do.”
“I got it, I got it—wait! Drop it, drop it, drop it!”
The two-headed fire dog—like a normal dog—has apparently interpreted Jon trying to take the branch as starting a game of keep-away. It takes off with the flaming branch into the tall grass, which immediately lights too.
“Conner!”
“I got it, don’t panic, I got it—no, no, no, other way, other way, no, bad dog—Kara!”
“Yeah,” Kara mutters, “We’re definitely stealthy. We can definitely pull this off without getting caught. I see no way this plan can go wrong.”
This is going to be an interesting one to explain.