Young Justice: Under The Same Roof (Patreon)

“Geez, Conner!” Dinah cried, passing him in the hall.

“What? What’d I do?” Kon demanded. As far as he was concerned, he’d simply been minding his own business, walking through Mount Justice.

Dinah took a deep breath, much as it pained her with Kon smelling the way he did. But he was a teenager… a very needy, borderline traumatized teenager… and she was the adult. She had to act like it.

“Do you ever change those clothes? Your shirt still has a barbecue stain on it, you got that last week.”

“So?”

“Don’t you wash?” Dinah asked, trying to contain her exasperation.

Even for a teenage boy, this standard of hygiene was unacceptable. She didn’t expect him to be Superman and teach the entire world about sharing, but surely he had to be a little bit of a role model. Even a little body spray would be something.

“Sure. I go in the locker room, I get in the shower, I get out.”

Dinah frowned. “And your clothes?”

“They get clean too.”

“You don’t put them in the laundry?”

“What laundry?”

“Don’t tell me you just throw them out when you’re done wearing them?”

“Done… wearing them?”

Dinah took another deep breath and regretted it. Now the smell was starting to linger. She could feel it setting into her costume. “You take off your clothes. You put them in the washing machine, with detergent. You—Conner, stop undressing.”

Kon pulled his shirt back down. “I thought you wanted me to do something.”

“Yes! I want you to change clothes!”

“Why? These fit fine.”

“You can’t wear the same thing all the time!”

“But you do.”

“These are my work clothes, my costume. And I have more than one. I put on a different one when the one I’m wearing is dirty.”

“Oh,” Kon said. “When does that happen?”

“Usually after I’ve been wearing it a whole day.”

“Ah.”

“Do you have any other clothes?”

Kon shook his head. “Where would I put them?”

“In your room, obviously.”

“My… room?”

Dinah shut her eyes. She was so stupid. He was so stupid. The entire team was stupid. “Conner, where have you been sleeping?”

“I don’t know… couch, chair, floor, wherever.”

“You don’t have a bed?”

“What’s a bed?”

“Like those things you rest on in the medical bay.”

“I don’t like sleeping on those. The little sheet crinkles.”

“Do you have a room? A space that’s just your space?”

“There’s a closet I stash stuff in when I don’t want the robots to clean it up. And the refrigerator, of course. I have some food in there.”

“Okay, good, you’re not completely feral.” Dinah couldn’t believe it. The team had adopted a clone of Superman and they hadn’t bothered to… well, she hadn’t bothered to either. No one had bothered to.

Being Lawful Good as could be, Dinah didn’t even consider shirking the responsibility here. Kon needed help—she could give it. That was all there was to it.

“Listen, would you like to come with me? My place isn’t the most high-rent, but I have plenty of space and I’m anything but a hoarder. And I can explain to you how the washing machine works. And the dryer. And the bed, if you can’t figure that one out on your own.”

“You want me to live with you?”

Dinah took his face in her hands. “I want you to live like… a normal person who can enjoy the essentials of the modern world. Not like Tarzan.”

“But I like living here.”

“I know you do, sweetie, but this place isn’t a hotel. You need a bed and a closet and some actual adult supervision, not just being chucked out into the real world to make things up as you go along. Have often have you left the mountain?”

“Not a lot,” Kon admitted. “People keep asking me for money: I couldn’t get on the bus or have anything to eat… food’s free here! So is the jet and it’s much nicer than the bus…”

“Yeah, we’ll come back to that. Look, I think you need a lot of attention and a secret superhero headquarters packed with metahuman teens isn’t the right place for that. There’s a reason none of your teammates live here. Haven’t you noticed that?”

“They all go to places like yours?”

“Yes, that’s right, Conner. They have… lives.”

“And you want me to have a life?”

“Or at least to smell like you do. Come on, Conner, get your things, I’m moving you out of here.”

“What things?”

“You said you stashed some stuff where the robots couldn’t get it.”

“A sandwich, but then I ate it. And a cola, but I drank it.”

“Okay, let’s just go.”

“What about the others? What if they wonder where I am?”

“They should’ve been wondering already. We’ll leave a note for them.”

“Can M’Gann read?” Kon asked, concerned.

“Let’s hope so. At this point, I’m not taking anything for granted.”

***

Dinah would’ve thought that being taken in by her would make for an automatically better quality of life. Well, maybe it was just because she was paying so much attention to him now, but at dinner a few days later, Kon seemed depressed. He ate little and only spoke when spoken to. And then all she got out of him was monosyllabic answers.

It wasn’t like him. Or rather, it was, but she’d have thought regular meals, regular bathing, his own room, and a beautiful woman as a roommate would do something to improve his disposition. Instead, it was worse than ever. Or rather, Dinah was more worried about him than ever. The concern made Kon’s usual sullenness seem like a crisis.

When Kon refused dessert and rose from the table like he’d been sent into exile, it was too much for her. “What’s wrong, Conner? You’re so quiet. You don’t seem like yourself at all.”

“It’s nothing,” he said with eyes downcast, as though trying to hide something in them from her.

“But you act so… sad,” Dinah said with maternal concern. It was a weird note to strike, at least for her. She kept thinking of her own teenage years—not so far behind her—when a guy like Kon would’ve been an alpha jock, the kind of hardbody she hungered for.

She knew he wasn’t faking; Kon wasn’t capable of deceiving her when he’d only gotten away from Cadmus a couple of weeks ago. So why wasn’t he the kind of boisterous hot-blood someone with his looks and his youth should be?

“I’m not sad,” Kon practically growled, his deep voice was so heavy. “Just tired. I think I’ll go to my room, do some reading, get some sleep.”

He sounded like he was carrying the weight of the world on his broad shoulders as he disappeared into his room.

Dinah stared after him, wondering what could possibly be wrong—what she had done wrong. Thinking about it, she rose and cleared the table on autopilot. She’d just finished rinsing the dishes when something struck her about the odd way Kon had been acting.

He’d said he was going to get some reading done—Kon knew how to read, but she’d never known him to do it for pleasure. That was a habit he still hadn’t gotten into, despite her trying to foster literacy in him. So what was he up to, all alone?

I’d better go and check on him, she thought, leaving the dishes to soak while she went to his borrowed bedroom.

Dinah had never known Conner—or even Superman—to act so moodily. It was obvious something was troubling him. She supposed she had no more responsibility to find out what it was, to help him, than she’d had to take him in in the first place.

But she took great pride in being a hero. The least of that was not leaving a job half-done. She’d decided to help Kon and she would do that, however much help he needed.

Approaching Conner’s door, she heard heavy breathing. Worried he might be having some health issue—who knew what maladies a clone might be vulnerable to?—she forced the door open and walked into his bedroom without warning.

Then she stopped dead in her tracks, a startled gasp escaping her.

“Oh!” she cried in shock, her eyes jumping into wide whiteness as she truly comprehended what she was seeing.

Kon laid naked on the bed, his stiff cock up in the air above his loins. He wasn’t touching it, but it was fully erect—it had to be fully erect, with how sizable it was, thick and lengthy both. The sort of thing that Dinah had imagined the captain of the football team was packing, back in her teen years. And she both feared and was intrigued by it, even now.

As soon as he saw her, Kon grabbed his pillow and sat up, holding it in front of his chest and groin to hide as much of his nude body as he could from Dinah.

“I… I didn’t mean to intrude,” Dinah stammered—her shock progressing from the size and girth of Kon’s endowment to confusion over the swell of feelings moving through her. It was a big dick, but that shouldn’t affect her so much, should it? She wasn’t a teenager anymore…

But then, it wasn’t like you could grow out of liking big dicks. Wasn’t that what Ollie kept going on about with his campaign about gay cure camps?

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it do that. It just happened. I can’t help it. I want it to go down, but it won’t.”

Dinah squared her shoulders. She probably should’ve expected that, having sublet to a teenage boy, she’d be talking about penises. She hadn’t expected it to be so soon.

She moved closer to the bed—to Conner—and felt a twinge in her clit that told her it was engorged, ready to be caressed. She refused to let herself think that way, though. She sat down on the side of the bed and put a hand on Kon’s shoulder.

“Is that what you were troubled about, Conner, dear? Does that have anything to do with why you’ve been… bothered?” she asked, trying to make her voice as gentle and nonjudgmental as she could.

“Yeah,” Kon said softly.

“Are you upset because you think it’s wrong for your body to, uh… do what it’s doing?”