You Confuse and Annoy Me

Rating: K+
Disclaimer: Copyright, DC
Notes: Whereupon which Ollie gets to rant about people's right and Question gets philosophical. Also – Q and poker is made of win and adorableness. Blame O'Neil's 90s Question comic run.

The Question watched silently as Oliver Queen pace about his cluttered room. He was sitting cross legged, hatless, and coat-less on the rumpled bed that Oliver had previously thought to have existed merely for aesthetic purposes, looking distractingly human. Oliver had prepared himself to have this confrontation with the standoffish personality he had gotten to know over the past few months, not some person who apparently had a hole in his left sock.

It was that hole that was throwing off Oliver's game. He had barged into the faceless detective's Watchtower quarters (Why such a paranoid man kept his room unlocked most of the time, Oliver had yet to figure out.), fully prepared to have it out with the other man, only to be blindsided by the sight of big toe peeking out of a holey sock. The sudden reminded that the Question just might be more then what the rumors made him out to be was like a slap in the face of Oliver's righteous anger.

So now Oliver found himself pacing, while Question stifled what sounded suspiciously like a yawn. "Queen?"

Damnit, he even sounded tired. Oliver was pissed that the Question could so easily dissolve the snit he had worked himself into by simply acting vaguely normal for once. It just wasn't fair.

He stopped pacing abruptly, taking a few steps to face Question's seated form. Question tilted his head back as the archer inadvertently loomed. "Have you been spying on Dinah?"

"Yes."

A short, almost involuntary bark of laughter. "I don't even know why I was hoping you were going to say no." Oliver was surprised he was even surprised, and surprised at the bitter disappointment he thought he had properly shielded himself from. But once he got started, his natural (and perhaps slightly overbearing) tendency to preach carried him forward with increasing momentum, and he found himself pacing once more.

"You follow people around, go through their personal life like its anything but personal, and for what? Why would you even do that? What reason could you possible have-" Oliver stopped, in mid-pace and mid-sentence, and swiped a hand through the air in a harsh, angry gesture. "No, don't answer that. You know what, I don't even want to know. And you want to know why? Because I trust her. Trust. You know. That thing shared between two people who like and respect one another. Do you even know how to trust, Question?"

Question shifted, sheets rustling, faceless mask cocked just slightly off-center from the blonde man's penetrating green gaze. "I... trust you to act true to your nature."

"My nature?" Oliver took those couple of steps necessary to loom once more. "My nature? What does that even mean?"

"You are who you are, Oliver Queen, and all your actions are in direct reaction to this. Your surroundings may change, what you view as reality may change, but you will always respond to what you currently believe to be fact with the core that makes Oliver Queen, Oliver Queen. This, I trust."

"And what if you're wrong about 'my nature'?"

Oliver was close enough to hear the breathe Question took. "...Humanity lies. Sometime inadvertently, and not always with ill-intent. But no one will ever tell you the complete truth. To know what is true-"

"You stalk people? Go through their trash? Hack their bank accounts?" Oliver punctuated each sentence with a swift poke of his index finger to the center of Question's partially unbuttoned shirt. "Scare the shit out of them while they're trying to sleep?"

Question flinched away from the physical contact. "Have to know what I'm seeing is real, Green Arrow."

Almost imperceptibly, Oliver's finger wavered in mid-air.

"I... have to know. Important."

"Yeah, well..." Oliver took a step backwards. Question leaned forward once more, regaining the ground he had lost. "It doesn't give you the right. It doesn't make you exempt. Society has rules, you know. People have rights, and you think you can go around stepping all over those rights whenever you feel like it because you're a little shaky on reality? That doesn't fly, mister. People get arrested for that shit."

Question didn't respond, but then again Oliver wasn't really expecting him to. The blank stare he was receiving only seemed to confirm what he was pretty sure they both already knew – Oliver was saying these words only for his own benefit. This viewpoint, this way of life was too embedded, too much a part of what made the Question who he was, to be swayed by a simple impassioned speech on Oliver's part.

"Aaaand, you don't care. Not one bit." Oliver sighed, planting his hands on his hips in the way that could simultaneously annoyed Dinah and make her smile. "How about this. Could you at least promise to quit spying on Dinah?"

The blonde took another step back, carefully taking in the whole that Question was currently presenting him with. Despite his previous talk about the apparent in-born need for humanity to lie, the Question was surprisingly honest. He was a master at answering in riddles, or straight out avoiding the question all together, but when asked boldly directly to his face, the answer one received was always based in truth.

Question tilted his head slightly to the side, and downward. His hands, which oddly enough were still covered by a well-worn set of gloves, clasped around a fold in his wrinkled pant leg in a gesture that could have been interpreted as subdued fidgeting.

"Damn." Oliver laughed without humor. "You and I are going to have some problems, then." He shook his head, took a step to his left, aborted the gesture with a strangled half-huff, took three steps to his right, then threw himself down on the bed with a release of frustrated air.

Question bounced only slightly with the transference of motion through the stiff mattress.

"I'm really angry with you at the moment."

"Understandable."

"Seriously. I think I might want to punch you right in your stupid lack of face."

"Wouldn't be the first person."

"Somehow, I don't doubt that."

"Huhm."

Oliver stared at the wall, hands dangling between his knees. Question wiggled his visible big toe.

"I should be more angry at you then what I am." Oliver stated this as simple fact, and not something up for debate. "But all I can think about right now is what the computer told me when I asked it about your whereabouts. It said you were in your room, and hadn't left it for three days." He turned just enough to make out Question's unruly mop of black hair out of the corner of his eye. "Why are you sleeping in the Watchtower, Question?"

For a long moment, it seemed like the other man wasn't going to respond, then- "Avoiding my landlady."

Oliver blinked. Opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

"Rent is due. Been busy with Cadmus. Haven't had the time to find a poker game to obtain this month's rent money."

"I'm... at a loss for words to even fully explain the confusion I'm feeling right now. So I think I'm going to leave and just tell Dinah that she's right in her assumption that your a sociopath and that she has my blessing to kick your ass the next time she sees you on or in her property." And so he did, on both accounts. And Question went back to the first batch of sleep he had remembered to take after a two day marathon of hacking.

Later that day, Oliver had an interesting argument with Dinah, wherein he agreed with everything she said yet still got yelled at. It left him feeling slightly guilty and a bit like a hypocrite for not feeling nearly as indignant on her behalf as his girlfriend thought he should be.