A/N: Written for the intoabar crossover challenge on dreamwidth. John Young walks into a bar and meets Oliver Queen. While this story is based on the conceit established in "The Thickness of Blood"-namely that Oliver Queen and Stephen Jameson are cousins-and can be read as a sequel to it, it is a stand-alone work. Thanks to htbthomas for the beta. Spoilers for TTP s01e04. As always, questions, comments, concrit, and squee are all welcomed and appreciated.
The Ways of Hard-Knock School
by LadySilver
The club was packed thick with patrons who writhed and twisted to the pounding music that saturated the air and forced John's heart to pound in synchronization with its beat. He shoved through the masses, ignoring the heat and touches of those who might see him as a potential partner. He wasn't here for them.
A seat opened at the bar and he took it, pitching a ten on the counter to cover whatever drink the bartender placed in front of him.
His target stood a few feet away. In a gray suit with a steel blue tie, Oliver Queen looked every inch the successful club owner and business man. He was a big guy, his jacket doing little to disguise his muscles; the shape of his head and outline of his body bore such a strong resemblance to Stephen that in the dark and fog, John might have thought it was him, if he didn't know better.
Oliver was caught in conversation with a younger brunette woman who, dressed in a tailored black jacket and skirt, was clearly not at the club as a patron. She shouted something that was swallowed in the din of the room and waved a piece of paper in Oliver's face. From where he sat, the press of minds from the crowd made it hard for John to pick out any thought besides the crushing need to move, don't think, try to relax. Oliver responded to the woman, his finger jabbing at something on the paper. Unimpressed, the woman spun and stalked away.
John accepted the drink that appeared next to his hand and brought the bottle to his lips while keeping Oliver carefully in his sight. Anything he could learn beyond what he already knew could help him with his task. He had the memories Stephen had shared with him as a guide, but that only hinted at how much the man kept buried.
Glimpses of those depths appeared as John tracked Oliver's progress through the room: Lightning reflexes that caught a drunk dancer and redirected him before he tripped into a guardrail; an alertness that helped him intercept and break up an altercation before it became one; a gilded over discomfort at the back slaps and raucous hugs of people who thought they were friends.
Oliver's tours brought him twice past the bar. Each time his gaze passed over John a little slower.
John made no effort to look away, his interest in the man too important to turn down any detail. And how could two strangers have so much in common?
Though he presided over the club and its occupants with an air of casual interest, Oliver's expression showed the detachment of someone who couldn't connect to the world he lived in. John knew that look well.
The Tomorrow People had become his responsibility when he was barely out of his teens, and look what had happened to them under his watch. They'd survived, yes, but none of them were living, as Cara had so colorfully reminded him. To protect his charges from ULTRA and the company's depredations, John brought the youths to live in the subway tunnel under Manhattan with him. He took them from their homes, cut off from meaningful contact with the rest of the world, so that they could...what?...survive another day? That had gotten them through the last few years, but they all knew that it wasn't enough any more.
All the attacks they had suffered over the past few weeks—and all the casualties—had forced John to face the reality of their situation. They couldn't stay hidden away. There were too many, and too many new break outs to contend with. He was the Tomorrow People's leader, so it was on his shoulders to lead them back into the world that should be the theirs, anyway.
But he had to clear the way, first.
"Is there a problem?"
John blinked and pulled himself together, a soft grunt marking his disgust with letting himself get so distracted. He craned his head to see the asker of the question. It was Oliver. He loomed in what would be John's personal space, if personal space meant anything in a place like this.
"No. No problem," John answered, shouting over the pounding music. He took a swig of beer to demonstrate that he was using the bar for its intended purpose, and no other. The cool liquid chilled his core. "I'm just relaxing."
"Maybe you should relax somewhere else," Queen suggested, shouting back. He made a small gesture with his hand and John spotted a bouncer in the corner bring his attention to bear on them. A further command from his boss, and the bouncer would be expelling John from the club.
With a tip if his head, John acknowledged the threat. "I'm a friend of Stephen's," he countered. It was a risk. That confession alone could be what got him kicked out. Stephen was Oliver's cousin, but after what they'd been through together, Oliver might be looking to avoid entanglement with others like him.
"A friend of-" Oliver's eyes narrowed, confirming John's suspicion, and his triceps tensed tight under the lines of his jacket. The two cousins definitely had some unresolved difficulties. "Does he know you're here?"
"Not if I can help it," John answered. He ran a hand over the two day scruff on his face—a style that Oliver also seemed to favor, though John highly doubted that lack of access to comfortable shaving facilities was his reason—and stood up so that he was standing eye-to-eye with the other man. This close, John could see the wide pores in Oliver's skin and the flecks of black that marred his blue irises. John's own flaws were not so superficial. "I'm here to see you."
Oliver studied John, his gaze full of hard assessment. If it came to a fight between them, Oliver had the the physical advantages, and he knew it. While John kept himself fit and could hold his own in a fight, brawling was not his first choice for solving a problem. "Meet me in my office." He stepped back, opening a path for John to follow him.
John started forward and was stopped with a hand flat on his chest. The force behind the touch spoke to how easily Oliver believed he could take John down if he had to. Just a push, a twist of the wrist.
"Find your own way," Oliver suggested, driving the idea home with a flexing of his fingers that shifted John's center of gravity. The bar stool pressed into the back of John's legs, and only his well-developed sense of balance kept him from falling back onto it.
With a nod, John accepted the challenge for what it was. Oliver had no way to know who was really a friend of his cousin's and who claimed to be, but he did have one way of winnowing the pool. For whatever it was worth.
The security in the club was top-notch. From where he stood, John could make out a half dozen cameras secured to the walls and ceiling alone. The thin artificial fog that floated through the room would have to limit what the cameras could pick up, though. Green and blue laser light played off that fog, offering further ambiguity. Leaving his beer on the bar, John slipped into a darkened corner and, taking advantage of the sweep of the lasers and a little extra fog that he telekinetically brought with him, he vanished.
He reappeared in Oliver's office just before the door swung open. The timing was too tight for him to find a comfortable posture, so Oliver caught him standing in the middle of the room with the folds of his worn black leather jacket still swaying in the breeze that the teleporting's rupture in space created.
Oliver closed the door behind him, ran his hand over the back of his head. That John had arrived in his office before him didn't seem to be a surprise. "What are you doing here?" he asked, the question not about John's presence in the office. The no-nonsense attitude and subtle menace he'd displayed out front slipped into to a cautious weariness. He flipped on the light, stunning them both with the sudden brightness and settled into a wide, ready stance.
The office was cold and sparse with a desk, chair, and computer and very little else. Even the walls were bare of decoration. Since the only place to sit was the desk chair, John elected to lean on the edge of the desk. "I know Stephen told you about us. What he can do, I can do." Mostly, but the fact that Stephen had some additional powers wasn't relevant. How John differed from Stephen, however, probably would become so. He counted to himself, stretching the silence until it came near snapping, then dropped his bombshell: "What he knows, I know."
That was the danger—and advantage—of being a telepath among telepaths. Secrets had a way of becoming community property, if one didn't know how to protect against it. Though Stephen was learning, it was in training with John that he'd slipped and John had seen the solution to his dilemma.
Oliver crossed his arms. "I have a club to run. Are you going somewhere with this, or were you just looking to waste my time?"
Without straightening up, John mirrored Oliver's pose. The air conditioning kicked on, wafting cool air and the faint smell of fresh paint through the room. From through the walls came the muted thrumming of the music, driving home how isolated the two of them were from all the others in the club. Any cameras were well hidden. No one could hear them; no one was watching. "I need the Arrow to kill someone."
Oliver's arms tightened against his chest, his legs tensed. He said nothing, his expression and poise a wound up spring.
Wetting his lips, John cut his eyes to the hardwood floor, then brought his gaze to bear on Oliver's face. He'd practiced the conversation dozens of times already, anticipating Oliver's side of it as best he could based on Stephen's memories of his cousin. He hoped it would be enough. "Did Stephen tell you about ULTRA?" he asked. "About how they're hunting my kind in order to eradicate us from the planet?
"They've always had it out for us, and there was nothing they weren't willing to try. Nothing." John closed his eyes, forced his rising anger back down. The memories of what ULTRA had done to him during his time there never faded, and never ceased to hurt. "There's only one way to stop them. The guy in charge, the one who's calling the moves, he needs to be killed. I can help prepare you, I can get you close enough, but I can't be the one to do it."
Technically, John could be the one to kill the leader. He'd been trained; he'd killed before. But the leader had the Annex project in mind when he'd designed his personal security. He had defenses that John couldn't breach, and consequences—maybe even worse than death—if he so much as tried.
Save for the unreadable twitching of a muscle near his eye, Oliver's expression gave nothing away. His thoughts, on the other hand, were more transparent. [Stephen, you little asshole. You swore you wouldn't tell, and now your friends are mistaking me for some kind of mercenary.]
"The Arrow takes down people who embezzle and who poison people with drugs," John continued, both ignoring and addressing Oliver's internal diatribe. "If he'll do that, then certainly a genocidal monster is worth your time."
The music changed to an even faster beat and the door rattled slightly on its frame from the vibrations. "Why come to me?"
"Because you know about us. We have reason to believe that the leader is one of us."
Oliver regarded John for a long moment, nostrils flaring as he weighed John's words. At last, his arms dropped and he shook his head. "I'm sorry. I'm not that person anymore. I don't kill anymore. Stephen might be my cousin, but this isn't my fight."
John kept his mouth shut and brought the force of his stare on Oliver. Silence had a way of breaking people. Oliver countered with his own stubbornness, unwilling to move until John conceded that he was going to have to find another way to achieve his goals.
The impasse was broken with the door swinging open once again, bringing with it a pulsing wave of tempo. The brunette from earlier stuck her head in. From this close, John saw that she was young, probably Stephen's age. "Hey, Ollie, I-" She stopped on spotting John, frowned, and glanced back and forth between the two men. [What the hell? Why can't my brother just hang out like a normal person?] "Sorry," she said. "I'll just, uh, have you call the vendor back." Just as quickly as she came in, she pulled the door shut.
"Is that your sister?" John asked, tipping his chin toward the door. He straightened up from his perch against the desk and started toward the exit as if to follow her out. He had no reason to; their few seconds of interaction had revealed more than he could have imagined.
"Yes," Oliver bit out. A flare of protective anger propelled the single word.
John nodded to himself. For the first time in months, the knotted muscles in his neck and shoulders fractionally relaxed. The number of people he was responsible for grew every day, but in some ways that made the burden of leadership a little easier. And sometimes the right person came along just when needed. "When she starts hearing voices, call Stephen. He'll know what to do."
With that, he reached for the doorknob.
He'd barely closed his hand on the cool metal when Oliver interrupted. "Wait! I thought Stephen said that his powers came from his father. My uncle."
"He did," John admitted. The Tomorrow People genome was widespread, though, hardly limited to one family or ethnic group or country. "It looks like the genes are on your side of the family, too. A few more weeks, maybe, and she'll get to find out what that means. I hope you've taught her to defend herself."
A loud thwack resonated through the room, the sound of a fist hitting the wall. "I'll do it," Oliver stated, in the kind of voice that only came through grit teeth.
"I thought you said that this wasn't your fight?"
"Thea's my sister. It just became my fight."
Keeping his face turned away so that Oliver couldn't see it, John smiled. With Oliver converted to his cause, the Tomorrow People finally had a chance. They couldn't kill, and right now that was a species threatening weakness. In time, it could become their strength, even the world's salvation. If John resorting to the methods of the enemy bought them that time, then that's what he needed to do. "I'll come back tomorrow so we can get started," John answered. Without waiting for a response, or bothering with the door, he vanished.