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Conner wakes to the feel of a warm exhale on the top of his head, and he wakes fast.
“Ah!” He jolts upright with an undignified yelp, eyes open for a split second before his brain says nope, bad idea and he slams them shut again. The world is spinning. He sags forward, holding his forehead and hiding it from the sun blaring into his eyes. What the actual fuck. This is way too much stimulation for first thing in the morning.
Behind him, something is moving. Something bigger than him, he would guess from the height of the exhale, and he takes a deep breath to try to stabilize himself. He kind of wants to puke. That’s new and concerning. Last he remembers…
Oh.
“Tim,” he hisses through his teeth, unable to come up with an actual curse through the way his brain is trying to chisel its way out through his eyes, and sighs into his hands. His friend, his best friend whom he loves more than life itself, is the source of lots of good ideas and couple monumentally stupid ones, and this one counts as the latter. When Conner lightheartedly complains about not being able to get drunk, Tim is supposed to pat his shoulder, not engineer a solution to get him wasted alongside him. He’s pretty sure it included the tiniest bit of Kryptonite, which judging from the way his stomach is lurching might still be nearby.
He peels his eyes open and blinks down at himself. He’s still in his jeans—a win—and his legs are splayed out in front of him on a sea of green. When he exhales experimentally, it smells like freshly-cut grass and the distinctive smell of farm animals.
There’s another exhale on the top of his head. An experimental snuffling.
Conner braces himself and tilts backwards to blink up through the sunlight.
The cow looks just as confused as him when it tilts down to sniff his shoulder and try chewing on his sleeve. There are a couple more standing to the side, watching him with wide, judging eyes and debating whether to come closer.
Conner blinks back at them. “You’re not my cows.” That’s an important detail. If he was home and had passed out in the field in front of the house, it would make a lot more sense.
Nothing. A black and white cow tosses her head and meanders behind him, deciding he’s less interesting than the grass he was laying on.
“That’s fair.” His head is on the verge of exploding and the sun is bright. He squints his eyes shut and massages his temples, trying to get his bearings. Trying to remember anything. He literally doesn’t know where this is. Probably not close to home or he would have ended up there.
Which means this is going to be particularly unpleasant.
“Either chance one of you can just take me home instead?” he mutters.
Nothing but chewing. One of them flicks her tail and hits him in the head with it, which feels like a definitive answer. They’ll be no help.
Conner sighs and fishes around in his pocket. In equal parts, he hopes there will be something that will help, and that he has an excuse to just live here now.
--------------------------------
The phone call that Clark receives—at four in the morning, which is a concerning detail in and of itself, Conner is notoriously bad at waking up early enough for the farm like the rest of them—is a little scary, but mostly just hard to understand. Conner mumbles like he’s half-asleep still. It works out better for Clark to just listen to his heartbeat and hone in on it, following at a slow enough pace that he can figure out what to say along the way.
It turns out, though, that he won’t be saying much of anything. Conner doesn’t look like he’ll be able to process anything for a few more hours, from the way he’s squinting up at him.
Clark stifles a laugh that would definitely be mean. “Long night?”
“How’d you get here?” Conner mumbles. His eyes are squinted so much they might actually be closed, and he falls further back on his hands so he’s mostly laying down. “Thought you couldn’t understand me.”
“Followed your heartbeat.” Clark bites down on his grin. “Did you forget I can do that?”
“Li’l bit.” Conner groans, curling forward over his stomach instead with his head in his hands. “Where’s this?”
“Oklahoma.” Not even close to home. “Wanna tell me what you're doing in Oklahoma in the middle of a field?”
Conner waves a hand. “Was with Tim. It gets fuzzy after that.” He sighs, pulling his eyes open to stare at him blearily. “Oklahoma?”
“Oklahoma,” Clark confirms, and decides it’s safe to approach now. There are three cows sitting around him, and they blink at him with the same kind of I-guess-this-is-happening confusion as Conner. “At least you found some friends.”
“They’re chill.” Conner blinks at him again when he’s level with him, a smile tugging over his face when he sees that Clark isn’t mad. He hates messing up. “How much dirt is on me?”
“Not much, but you have a literal cowlick.” Clark smooths down the back of his hair where it sticks up. “Ready to go home?”
Conner just stares at him, weighing options. “Can I stay here for a little longer? I don’t wanna puke on you.”
More likely he doesn’t want to face Ma and Pa while he’s hungover, but Clark isn’t about to call him on it. He shrugs, sitting down next to him. The grass is cool and slightly wet with dew, and a brown cow sniffs his cape experimentally but doesn’t even sit up. “They’re pretty good company, huh?”
Conner’s head whips over to stare at him incredulously. “What—”
“You think you’re the first one to get drunk and end up in a field?”
“You got drunk?”
Clark grins, leaning back against the brown cow. She doesn’t even move. They’re perfectly content as long as they’re relaxing like this. “When your headache is a little better, I’ll tell you all about it.”
Conner tilts sideways, resting on his shoulder with an agonized groan. “Let me lie here and moan for a bit, please.”
“Sounds good.”
Conner’s breathing lapses into steady, rhythmic puffs against his shoulder as the sun slowly rises over the field, and Clark laughs a little and reaches behind him to pet the cow’s head. “Thanks for looking after him for me. He’s a bit of a handful, but I wouldn’t trade him for anything.”
It huffs at him, goes back to grazing without any sort of bother, and Clark settles in for the wait.