Title: Putrid and Saccharine
Summary: They couldn't have started out liking each other less, but after a while they started needing each other more. Which is two parts disgusting and one part delightful. Steve Lombard/Ron Troupe. Wanna bet nobody has ever done this before?
Warning: This is the direct result of reading the Superman: Last Son of Krypton collective comic involving both Chris Kent and Brainiac… What does it say about me that the only characters I was interested in by the end were the new Daily Planet reporters? Also, this is slash because, well, I don't like Cat Grant. As blasphemous as it sounds, I don't much care for the Boy Scout, either, so mention of his activities will be minimal at best.
Dedication: Kirra kills, I suppose, since I kind of blew off doing a prompt of hers to write this piece inspired by a nightmarish, experimental, fluff saturated plot-bunny.
-:-
The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact.
-A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Something about Sunday night screams phone sex.
-Disney Texts from Last Night.
The color of your pants+
The last thing you ate or drank+
First word of the next song on your playlist=
Your Band Name!
-Tumblr.
i.
He couldn't see it before when they'd first met at the table waiting for Olsen (kid too young to be working at the Planet, too old to still be running errands like a gofer, too smart and shy and mindful, but Steve still was himself around the ginger when he'd complained about not getting his beer in the morning with his donuts) or after the Brainiac thing while tag-teaming to throw a robot out of a high floor window using a desk… but now he kinda noticed.
As high and mighty as he was, Ron Troupe was awful shy and desperate to seek approval from just about anyone. Probably came from the absolutely, impossibly high expectations of his father, but after a while of observing the man stay late at the planet (longer than the cleaning crew at any point, even when there was an attack on the paper and there were car fenders to be pried out of the walls) to get a story finished that involved things most normal, boring people couldn't be bothered about, Steve took it upon himself to make sure the guy loosened up. Just a little.
With baby steps.
He started doing things for Ron; things that went under the radar at first and after some months made Olsen more awkward around them and then made Cat act like more of a cougar than she already was; and then made Kent give the cowboy accented ginger a look Lombard think of geeks in high school he made fun of when his football teammates were looking but eyed in the shower room when he flicked them with a towel in simplistic, jock cerebral jest.
For instance, he stopped tossing his favorite football around Troupe's cubicle. He stopped ranting to Jimmy about getting him beer so that Ron wouldn't have reason to roll his eyes at him each time he brought up alcohol in the morning. He occasionally heckled the haters that stormed Ron en mass every time he came up with a report about things a lot of people didn't like (which he actually started loving, since most of the people that accosted Troupe were dumb as soup—especially those asshats in the KKK and those fucking right wing conservatives who constantly called the Planet preaching against essays Ron wrote about 'Homophobia: A Naturally Occurring Variant.' Steve loved answering their calls and then hanging up on them).
What surprised Steve was when the favors started being (very quietly, very discreetly) returned.
Ron stopped ranting at Steve about the dangers of a man Steve's age eating so many donuts in a single day—let alone a week. He started to technically listening to Steve about things in baseball and football and a lot of the other sports and entirely male oriented crap he couldn't care less about on any given day of the week. He started going over some of Lombard's notes and correcting obvious errors so Steve didn't look like a complete idiot when he took the paperwork to Mr. White to go over.
They didn't acknowledge their mutual 'helping each other tolerate each other' until Superman got in a fight with Bizarro and they both almost instinctively reacted to keep each other out of harm's way when debris smashed through the windows and into their usual work environment. Steve tackled Ron out of the way of a tire with tricked-out rims still attached that was headed for Troupe's entire upper body. When they stopped rolling across the floor with Steve wrapped around Ron's back and they came to a stop near the bullpen, Ron made to thank Steve, but ended up clicking his teeth shut so he could dislodge Lombard from his person and flip the nearest desk over to hide both of them as lead piping from the bathroom above them smashed through the ceiling and clattered above them, leaking and splashing water everywhere as Bizarro and Superman crashed through one wall and then disappeared through another.
They stayed under the desk (turned out it was Kent's and had to be replaced about the incident due to cracks in the wood made worse by toilet water treated with chemicals meant to destroy sewage) until the fight was over, hunched down together like hutch rabbits and foreheads touching in the most embarrassing way with them being sticky from sweat and dust flying around everywhere. When they left the building, the both of them avoided eye contact, pretended the last three hours hadn't happened and then went to a diner down at the docks that belonged to Bibbo Bibowski for a meal that included extremely fresh fish and practically butcher house raw steak.
Three days later… "I have some people to interview at the docks for the human trafficking story. I don't suppose anyone would be willing to go with me so I have a statistically lower probability of getting shot by a very large Russian or Serbian?"
When Cat Grant just snorted at the request, Jimmy looked lost and Perry White looked annoyed at Ron still standing at the meeting room's desk after being dismissed five seconds earlier, Steve decided to be the bigger man; he leaned forward in his chair until all legs were set firm to the ground and grabbed his jacket of the back of the seat.
"I'll do it. Women's swimming competitions start next week and it will be nice to get a first look in person at the condition those smoking hot, though scrawny-ass chicks will be competing in."
It said a lot when Ron didn't comment on Steve's derogatory comment on women athletes.
ii.
"So you finally got those hookers to talk to you about their pimps. Why did you feel the need to wake me up in the middle of the night about it?"
"Because," Ron's voice echoed from the other end of the phone while Steve got up from his bed, nothing but underwear (red boxers with two green smiley faces near his hips that he'd gotten from an ex-lay about two years before) outfitting him at four in the morning; his feet clenching on instinct when they touched the chilled carpet that had stains it would take bleach to remove from it as he made his way to the kitchen for something that would keep him awake through Troupe's much too dignified speech patterns, "One of those horrible human beings that hit these women to keep them in line for 'protection' from their clients happens to be one of those baseball players you will be interviewing tomorrow about their batting average and their 'heroic dedication' to their hometowns."
Steve didn't even slow his pace or misstep when Ron made this statement, but his left eyebrow did elevate to his hairline and his body showed immediate interest in the fact that Troupe actually seemed to care to inform him about this. He flicked the switch on his coffee maker and left his refrigerator door open so he wouldn't have to open one of his apartment window curtains or turn a light on that would make him regret it the minute his dark focus oriented pupils were exposed to such brightness. His tongue peeked out absently along the line of his mustache before he spoke back to Ron.
"…And you want me to surprise him in the interview tomorrow while he's spewing out the bullshit he's full of in front of his teammates and coach and manager, right?"
It shouldn't have been possible, but the ginger could actually feel Ron flinch at Steve's crass language and way of putting things in such common light. Made his sleepy-time, half-way-there morning wood all perky.
"Well, I, uh, would have—ahem—put that a different way, but…"
Steve cracked his spine against the counter and grinned fierce and strong before cutting the darker man off and grabbing his coffee as the last three fresh drops 'plipped' into his Xena the Warrior Princess (complete with ceramic breasts decorated in the leather brazier thing Lucy Lawless wore in practically every episode of the series) coffee mug, "I suppose this means we'll turning this into a joint investigative story for the Planet. How pissed do you think Lane'll be when she hears about it?"
iii.
"It was bad enough when you carried me like a princess down here, do you really have to do—Ow!"
Steve grinned quietly from the open end of the trunk of his truck, fingers kneading at the open, puss secreting wound along Ron's inner thigh that seemed to get worse every time the man blushed (which was getting easier and easier to provoke as Steve had forced him to take off his pants fifteen minutes ago to get better access to the wound; the olive colored briefs he was wearing making it easy to see why he tried to be less than noticeable –what they said was true; it's always the quiet ones that had the most to offer) at being touched not-quite against his will.
"Chill out. The paramedics will be here after Luthor and Superman finish with their usual witty banter and then you can get a set of scrubs or a new pair of pants to cover your bony ass."
The parking garage of the Daily Planet pinged around echoes of Steve's laughter at the look Ron gave him at that, but it got silenced almost as swiftly as it began when Ron leaned forward from his spot on the lowered seating of Lombard's truck and shut the ginger up with his mouth in a way… Well, not to sound too corny, even in his (their) head, but fantasy had been building up and Steve didn't mind the taste of the green tea Ron had downed an hour ago when he tried to look professional and not glare at Cat when the blonde was showing off yet another of her elective surgery results to the lead reporters of the newsroom, paying special attention to Steve.
Breaking apart to breathe (all that experience in high school with most of the cheerleading team was paying off in Steve's endurance,) Ron prevented Steve from saying anything snide or inconvenient by actually realizing what the hell he had just done and lying back down flat; hands flying to cover his face and stifle a deep groan that came up along with the dark blush in his cheeks and ears and-
Ron gave a little squeak at the feel of Steve's hands wandering up from his leg wound and he almost kicked the grinning cowboy right in his smug face.
It figured that a man like Lombard, who got more than enough action with the ladies, would have a thing for men as well. This sort of thing really gave credence to Troupe's theory about bisexuality.
When both of them opened their mouths after a few moments to try and lighten the air, both sort of vibrated when an explosion (probably Luthor, this late in the hour after such a fight started) made the garage groan and shudder in equal measure. The tremor set off some reaction in the cars—something electrical, Ron would think later, later, later—and both of the men flinched again when the last song in Steve's stereo started playing ("…Turn me on; Touch me, save my life, come on and turn me on…") at the highest decibel available.
And suddenly they were in the one-eighty position of Steve being embarrassed and Ron showing white teeth with a smile.