Chapter Text
The winter Dick Grayson is eleven years old, the other boy shows up for the first time. He’s small—can’t be more than ten years old - but there’s a curious intensity to him that makes him seem older, and that has Dick’s eyes flicking back and forth between his own textbook and where the boy seems to be burning a hole in his with a laser focus.
They’re at winter quarters in Florida, a borderless area in the middle of the state where traveling circuses and carnivals lay low during the cold and rainy months of October through March. A lot of the circus folk and carnies earn extra money during the off-season picking oranges in the vast acres of citrus groves that seem to go for miles in every direction.
There’s an old revival camp about a mile down the road from where the Graysons park their trailer, and in the center of it is a building that serves as the makeshift school when the carnies are there. The upper-halves of the walls on the six-sided structure are all wooden awnings that swing up from the bottom and are held open with long poles. Since there’s no electricity, they’re always open, rain or shine, so that the students can see what they’re supposed to be reading. They don’t have desks; instead they sit at picnic tables moved in from the grounds around the building.
Carnie kids don’t typically assimilate well at regular schools, and the schools are just as happy not to have them popping in and out for a few months of the year. It’s disruptive, they say. And most carnie kids are just as happy not to be subjected to the rigid structure of a traditional education. School in winter quarters is a looser thing. Their teacher isn’t really an actual teacher, just someone from one of the troupes whose maybe got more education than most. The various outfits all pool a little bit of money to pay them. It’s enough of a front that it keeps the authorities off their backs. This way works better for everyone.
School is only in the mornings, since being in winter quarters doesn’t mean there isn’t work to do or acts to practice. There are probably about 40 or 50 school-age carnie kids scattered throughout the area, but they attend erratically, so on any given day maybe 15 or 20 will appear at school. If it’s raining, fewer. The past few years it’s only been Dick, and Jenny Schmidt – a 16-year-old contortionist with the Lewis outfit – who are there every day. And this year, the new boy.
Dick doesn’t really need it – his parents keep up his education during the endless hours on the road and the long days of waiting for showtime – but he goes anyway. It’s a change of pace for him, and it’s fun to be with kids his age. But the new boy seems eager for it. Dick can see the way he hangs on every word, the way he concentrates on his reading, and takes care with his meager supplies.
The boy slips in at the last moment most mornings and is the first to bolt out the door at noon. During their morning recess/break, Dick looks for him outside but never spots him. He wants to seek him out, find where he disappears to, but the other kids clamor for him to join them, so he does, quickly getting caught up in whatever game is decided upon. But the boy’s complete anonymity has Dick’s curiosity piqued like crazy. He spends the entire first week trying to catch the boy’s eye, but he never looks around. So on Friday, Dick watches him at the end of the day and when he spies him slipping out the door a few minutes before the teacher is going to dismiss them, Dick is up like a shot, darting after him.
“Dick Grayson!” the teacher calls after him.
Dick smiles and gives her a salute as he’s halfway out the door. “See you next week, Miss Temple!”
Dick runs after him. “Hey,” he calls, and the boy turns, looks at him warily. “Hi,” Dick says when he catches up. “I haven’t seen you before.”
The boy’s eyes shift sideways quickly and then back. They are an unknowable color, changing from blue to green to grey with every slight movement of his head and change of angle.
“I’ve been at school all week.”
“Right. I mean, here in Florida. At winter quarters.”
The boy shrugs. “Haven’t been here before.” He starts walking again.
Dick hustles after him. “Um, I’m Dick Grayson. My family’s ‘The Flying Graysons’. We’re acrobats with Haly’s Circus.”
The boys nods. “I know.”
“Oh.” Dick has a vague awareness that his family is well known in the circus world, but he’s still surprised this new kid would know who he is. “So, what’s your name?”
He gives Dick a side-eye and hesitates for a few seconds before saying, “Clint Barton.”
“What outfit’re you with?” Dick asks.
Another hesitation. “Carson’s.”
He nods. “I’ve heard of them.” Not all good things, but Dick doesn’t say that. “What do you do? Are you in the act?”
Clint shrugs. “Back-yard boy, mostly. But they say if we work hard, me and my brother Barney could do more someday.”
Dick’s about to ask if he hopes to perform in an act, when they’re interrupted.
“Clint!” someone yells, and they both turn to see another boy, maybe a few years older than Dick. He’s got reddish-brown hair instead of Clint’s towhead, but with the same sharp eyes and cut of the jaw, there’s no mistaking them for anything but brothers. “Come on, you’re late!” he yells with an edge of impatience.
“I gotta go.”
“Sure. See you at school next week?”
Clint’s mercurial eyes study Dick for a few seconds before he says, “I’ll be here,” then turns and starts to trot away.
“Hey, Clint,” Dick calls after him, and the other boy stops and looks back. “How many oranges grow on a tree?”
Clint furrows his brow and glances at the grove of orange trees off to his left, then back at Dick. “Um…”
Dick grins. “All of them!”
It takes a second for Clint to catch on, and when he does, a smile starts to crack on his face before he quashes it, rolls his eyes, and turns back to follow his brother.
Dick laughs. “I saw you start to smile!” he yells, then heads home, still grinning and already looking forward to school the next week.
Clint isn't like other carnie kids Dick knows. Most circus workers know that no matter what your official job is, part of working in a circus is being something of a talker, selling the show at every opportunity, so most everyone Dick knows is kind of a showoff, easy with words, even if they aren’t saying much of anything. Clint, though, is different; he’s reserved and seems to want to fade into the background. He’s mysterious and interesting. But Dick makes friends with pretty much everyone he meets so he’s determined to make friends with Clint, too.
On Monday, Dick lingers outside the school, waiting for Clint to arrive. When Miss Temple rings the bell and calls the kids in, Dick starts to worry that Clint isn’t going to show, but then he appears out of nowhere. He looks surprised to see Dick waiting but doesn’t say anything as they slip in together just as the teacher is collecting homework. Dick settles next to him at a picnic table near the back. He’s determined to crack this nut and he looks for any opening for quiet conversation.
It’s doesn’t take very long, but it’s not Dick who initiates it. Clint’s good at math but sometimes Dick struggles with it for a while until things finally sink in. Math has been hard for him lately. Clint notices him struggling and quietly talks him through the word problems that Dick hasn’t yet been able to make sense of. He’s patient and kind about it, and Dick sticks to it doggedly until something clicks in his head and he finally gets it. He gives Clint a genuine thanks. The other boy smiles shyly in return, and Dick thinks maybe it’s a start.
Half-way through the morning when they’re all quietly reading, Dick pulls out the snack that his mom sends with him every day. Today it’s a small baggie of graham crackers. He nibbles on them and reads quietly. A few minutes later, when he looks up from his book, it’s to see Clint staring at the food.
“You want some?” Dick asks quietly, so he doesn’t disturb the other kids. He pokes the baggie in Clint’s direction.
Clint startles and looks up at Dick and his face flushes. He sticks his nose back into his geography book. “No.”
“It’s okay. I don’t need them all.”
“I’m not hungry,” he mumbles without looking back at Dick.
Dick watches for a moment, then shrugs and goes back to reading his own book and crunching on his crackers.
It turns out Clint isn’t ten, he’s a year older than Dick - so twelve - just slight for his age. And like Dick, he likes to climb. Dick had planned to coax Clint into joining them in whatever game commenced during recess, but instead, he follows Clint, who scales the tallest tree in the park. It’s an oak, a lone sentinel in the sea of surrounding orange trees. From here they can see and hear the other kids, who don’t seem to know they’re being watched.
Clint climbs to the tip-top, the highest branch bowing a little under his weight, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. Dick settles comfortably into the ‘V’ of two branches just below. “You’re not afraid of heights.”
“I like being up high.”
Dick can see his eyes scanning the horizon. “How come?”
Clint looks thoughtful before he replies. “From a distance, you can see things coming.”
Well, that’s true, but Dick isn’t sure why it matters or why Clint says it so seriously.
“Is this where you were all last week during recess?”
“Uh huh.”
It feels weird knowing that Clint may have been watching him every day without Dick realizing it. “How come?”
“Just getting the lay of the land.”
“Why?”
“So I know what to expect.”
“Whaddaya mean?”
“Well, like that kid in the orange shirt. He’s a bully, but he’s sly about it. He says things that make other kids feel bad in a round-about way, but then pretends he’s their friend. And the boy in the green shirt. He acts tough, but if it comes down to it, he always finds a reason not to fight someone. Or the girl in the red jacket. She’s way smarter than she lets on.”
Everything Clint said is right, Dick realizes, though he’d never really put the thoughts together in his head that way. But, “You could have learned the same things if you played with us last week instead of just watching.”
“I like to know what I’m walking into.”
Dick huffs. “You sound like you’re in a mafia movie or something.”
Clint shrugs unapologetically.
It takes several days, and some unsuccessful fits and starts, where Clint looks at him wary and suspicious, but eventually, Dick starts to think he and Clint are becoming friends. Clint always scales the tree at recess, and most of the time, Dick follows. Little by little, with careful questions and gentle prodding, Clint reveals bits and pieces of himself. Dick learns that he and Barney joined Carson’s late in the summer when the circus was passing through Iowa. Barney doesn’t go to school because he works in the orange groves in the mornings before he and Clint have to be back at the main Carson encampment to take care of the animals. The circus work earns them a spot in the bunkhouse, but unlike the summer season when the show is bringing in money and they eat communally, in winter quarters, the cookhouse is open, but if you want to eat there, you have to pay, so Barney picks oranges to earn money to feed them both.
A few days in, when Dick finally presses him about where Clint and Barney’s parents are, Clint looks away and tells him that they’re dead.
It’s awkward because Dick’s never known a kid whose parents have died and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say in that situation. He does his best with, “I’m sorry.” Clint doesn’t answer.
The conversation has made Dick sad and he doesn’t know what else to say, so they stop talking. Without his friend to focus on, Dick’s eyes and attention eventually drift toward the Beezus animal menagerie about a quarter mile down the road. The lion cages and elephant pen are visible, though just barely. Dick smiles to himself.
“Hey, Clint.”
“Yeah?” he answers absently.
“Why do you never see elephants hiding in trees?”
Clint gives him a curious look and starts to open his mouth to reply, when Dick cuts him off. “Because they’re so good at it!”
Clint blinks at him. “You have terrible jokes.”
“Come on, they’re funny!” Dick insists.
Clint rolls his eyes, but then a second later he huffs and Dick laughs and then Clint’s laughing, too.
Feeling happy that he made Clint laugh, when their teacher rings the bell and the two boys start their descent down the tree, Dick swings from one branch to another and then releases from several feet up and does a showoff-y flip before sticking a perfect landing.
A moment later, Clint’s by his side. “That was pretty smooth. You’re good.”
Dick beam; he loves what he does and loves when people appreciate it. “If you want, I could teach you.”
Clint freezes. “Really?” he asks cautiously.
“Yeah, sure.” Dick’s grinning and happy again to have cheered up his new friend.
“Why would you do that?”
The smiles fades from Dick’s face and he blinks. “Why wouldn’t I?” he asks, genuinely confused by Clint’s question.
Clint narrows his eyes at Dick and searches his face; it makes Dick feel squirmy and uncomfortable, but he holds his ground. He did mean it. After a long moment, Clint’s eyes flicker and he nods once. “Okay,” he says.
Miss Temple rings the bell again, this time pointed in their direction. “C’mon, we better go,” Dick says, nudging Clint’s shoulder with his own and grinning.
The smile he gets in return is guarded, but looks real enough, and Dick figures that’s something.
Dick likes Clint. He’s smart and funny, and once he breaks through his initial standoffishness, he’s friendly. By the end November, they’ve become fast friends and are largely inseparable at school. By the middle of December, he’s finally managed to redirect Clint away from the tree on some days and they’ve started playing football with the other kids.
Besides hanging around together at school, they start to spend their evenings together, often in one of the many Big Tops that’re set up on a nearby fairground. All of the acts use them to practice old and new routines alike during the off season, but there are enough of them that they can usually find one unoccupied. They strike an unspoken deal: Dick begins to teach Clint basic aerialist moves, and afterward, Clint teaches Dick how to work through the mystifying math problems.
Dick’s never seen anyone as determined as Clint is to learn (unless he throws himself into the mix), and he picks things up quickly. He’s also fearless, just like Dick. He watches Dick and then copies how he dives and tumbles and walks on his hands. And Clint’s starting to smile and laugh regularly, which makes Dick smile and laugh more, too. Sadly, Clint utterly fails at appreciating Dick’s fine sense of humor.
Clint doesn’t show up at school one Monday and Tuesday in January and Dick tells himself its nothing to worry about – he’s probably just sick or something. But still, he finds he’s hugely relieved when his friend slips in the door to class a half hour late on Wednesday. At recess, Clint scrambles up to the top of the tree before Dick can even say hello.
“Where you been?” Dick asks when he gets to his perch across from Clint. Clint had long ago moved down so they sat at the same level.
Clint just stares off into the distance. “Been trying to get hired on at the orange groves. They all say I’m too young or too small,” he says, his voice hard and frustrated.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Barney got in a fight with a townie on Friday night and got arrested. He’s in jail.” He bites the words out. They’re angry on the surface, but Dick thinks he hears something else underneath: fear.
“For how long?”
Clint wraps his arms around himself. “I don’t know. We don’t have any money so I can’t bail him out.” he answers grimly. “Mr. Carson says that since he’s only 16, they probably won’t hold him for more than a week, but it could be longer.”
This math is easy for Dick. If Barney was arrested on Friday, Clint probably hasn’t eaten a meal for at least three or four days. Unless someone at Carson’s helped out, but as a troupe they have a reputation for being more unfriendly than generous, so Dick doubts it. Plus, now that he’s looking, Clint is gaunt, the bones on his face standing out in sharper relief than usual. He probably hasn’t gone entirely hungry; Dick’s noticed how Clint can spot oranges that have been missed by the pickers and is always scrambling up a tree to glean them. Sometimes he tucks them away in his pocket, but sometimes he eats them immediately. Dick always thought Clint just really loved oranges. Now he’s beginning to wonder. An uncomfortable knot forms in the pit of Dick’s stomach.
“What’re you going to do?” Dick asks.
Clint blinks at him then looks away again. “Dunno.”
“You can eat with us.”
“I don’t need your handouts,” Clint snaps, turning to glare at him.
Dick scowls right back. “You’re my friend, Clint. It’s not a handout if we’re friends. It’s sharing.”
He can see Clint warring with himself about how to answer. Before he can come to a decision, Dick comes to one of his own, and he shoves his bagged snack at Clint.
“I told you, I don’t need—”
“It’s what friends do.” Dick says it firmly, with challenge in his voice.
Clint just stares at him, so Dick shakes the bag in his hand imperiously. He can read his friend’s reluctance so he feels smugly pleased when Clint finally reaches in the bag and grabs one of the celery stalks with peanut butter stuffed in the crevice.
Clint looks down at the snack in his hand for a long moment before mumbling, “Thanks,” and taking a bite.
A couple of hours later, Dick stops Clint with a hand to the arm after Miss Temple dismisses them for the day. “Come to our place for dinner.” When Clint seems to be trying to find a reason not to, Dick adds, “Please? This math is killing me. After dinner you could help me with it.” That may not be technically true. The module they’re working on right now is pretty simple, but Dick figures the white lie is okay if it will convince his friend to come.
Clint searches his face for a moment before relenting. “Okay.”
When Clint shows up at the Grayson’s trailer, Dick’s mom hands him a plate and tells him to take as much as he wants. He politely thanks her but only takes small amounts of everything, mumbling that he’s not very hungry.
He eats slowly and carefully, his eyes sharp and cautious. When Dick’s mom tries to push seconds on him, Clint politely declines, telling her he’s full, which Dick doesn’t understand, because he knows Clint hasn’t had a real meal for days and he only ate about half as much as Dick did. His mom gives his dad a ‘look’ over Clint’s head, but she doesn’t say anything.
After dinner, Clint quickly clears his plate and offers to wash the dishes. Dick opens his mouth to tell him he doesn’t have to, but his father catches his eye and gives a small shake of his head, just as his mom says, “Well, thank you, Clint. That would be very helpful.”
“Your parents are really nice,” Clint says later that evening as they’re doing homework at the table. Dick’s parents have gone to another camp to visit with friends.
Dick looks up from the math problems he’s been breezing through. “Uh, sure, I guess.” He shrugs. “I mean, aren’t all parents?” He taps the eraser end of his pencil lightly on the table.
Clint looks at him blankly. “No.”
“Oh.” Dick fidgets on the bench. He doesn’t know what to say, or what Clint’s point is, so he just goes back to his math. After a moment, Clint does, too.
Dick had told his parents about his new friend, but after Clint comes to dinner that first time and they finally meet him, they sit Dick down and ask him some questions. Dick can tell that there’s some unspoken communication going on between his parents during the conversation, but he has no idea what it’s about. He tells them what Clint has told him about his life, and when he’s done, his father says, “Dick, you tell Clint that he’s welcome at our dinner table any time he wants to come.”
Barney’s still in jail the next day so Dick makes sure Clint comes to dinner again. This time, Dick’s mom doesn’t give him the chance to take too little and serves him his food instead. She doesn’t pile it on like Dick would have expected, or how he would if it were him, instead she just adds a little more than the scrawny boy would have taken for himself. She still always asks if he wants seconds; he always declines. It’s not until maybe the tenth time he’s at their dinner table with them that Clint hesitantly agrees to taking seconds, but still only a small amount.
It feels a little like taming the wilder animals in their menagerie with tasty treats to get them to perform. But Clint’s not an animal and Dick doesn’t get why he’s so hesitant when he’s clearly hungry. Plus, there’s plenty of food, and his parents keep telling him he’s welcome to have more. Dick doesn’t fully understand his own sense of relief every time his friend is sitting at their dinner table, which eventually becomes every couple of days. It’s annoying though, that Clint always insists on clearing the table and washing the dishes in return, because it means Dick has to help since it would be weird for his friend to be working in Dick’s family’s kitchen while Dick just sits and watches.
Dick actually meets Barney – sort of, he sees him up-close, anyway - around mid-February when he and Clint are sucking on sodas and lurking around the tents, hoping the Varelli triplets will show up to practice their aerial routine. They’re both a little mesmerized by the older girls, who are pretty, but also fascinating in their identicalness. They like to try to figure out which is which. Not that either of them is brave enough to ask, so they never really know if they’re right or not.
Angry words slice through the air behind them. “Where the hell have you been, you little brat?”
When Dick looks, Barney has Clint’s arm in a vice-grip and he’s clearly pissed. “Ow! Barney, stop! It hurts!”
Barney releases Clint but then gives him a small but firm shove in the chest. “Where the hell were you last night?“
“I fell asleep at Dick’s. Whadda you care?”
It happens now and then. Clint stays for dinner, they do homework, then sometimes hang out on Dick’s bunk, playing cards or reading comics. Sometimes it gets late and Clint falls asleep there. It never seemed to matter; there was no one waiting at ‘home’ for Clint except Barney, and according to his friend, Barney spends more nights in the bed of one girl or another than in the bunk house trailer.
Barney turns slightly to throw a narrow-eyed glare at Dick, who does his best to subtly puff up his chest and stand as tall as he can. Clint shifts and moves between them. “What do you want, Barney?”
Barney’s focus turns back to Clint. “Trick Shot is asking around for help painting his trailer and we’re gonna do it.”
“That guy’s a jerk,” Clint mumbles, half under his breath. “You go help him if you want. I’m not interested.”
The grip on Clint’s arm is back and Dick sees his friend wince as strong fingers dig into muscle. “Shut your hole, you little shit. He’s my ticket to roustabout next season, and if I do a good job with that, he might apprentice me for his show, so you sure as hell are gonna get your ass over to Trick’s trailer to help.”
“Ow. Fine!” He tries to rip his arm away, but Barney’s grip is too tight. “Jeez Barney, let go! I’ll come help.”
Barney glares at his brother for a couple more seconds before releasing him. “Be there in ten minutes,” he says, before stalking away, never sparing Dick another glance.
Dick stares after the older Barton. “He’s a bully.”
Clint sighs. “He’s my brother.” It’s all he has to say on the matter. “Maybe I’ll see you later tonight.”
“Come for dinner,” Dick calls after him. He watches until his friend disappears in the maze of tents and trailers, thinks, if that’s what having a brother is like, he’s just as glad he’s an only child.
Dick turns 12 himself on the first day of spring. As usual, his mom made his favorite coconut cake, but Dick finds himself cringing when she brings it out to the table where Clint is eating with them. ‘Happy Birthday, Robin’, the cake says, like it does every year, but this is the first time he’s kind of wished it didn’t. It’s embarrassing.
Not surprisingly, Clint asks, “Who’s Robin?”
Dick grumbles under his breath as his mom tells Clint, “Dick was born on the first day of spring, the time of year when the robins come out, so it’s always been my nickname for him.”
Dick’s face heats up. He’s too old for that baby nickname; he braces himself for the inevitable teasing.
Clint blinks at Dick’s mom, then glances at Dick for a second before looking back at the cake. He gives a small nod. “That’s nice,” he says quietly.
Dick’s mom reaches over and ruffles his black locks. “Happy birthday, Sweetie,” she says, then bends close and kisses his cheek.
Clint watches the exchange closely, his sharp eyes taking it all in. But Dick can’t help notice that his face is carefully blanked.
‘Your parents are really nice.’ Dick recalls Clint’s words from a few months ago. They are. They really are, and it occurs to him for the first time in his adolescence how truly fortunate he is. Instead of brushing his mom off impatiently, he smiles at her and says, “Thanks.”
After cake, they spend the evening sprawled on Dick’s bed, reading the new Captain America comics his parents had given him. Dick’s got a pretty good comic book collection going, and the two of them pass new and old ones back and forth, stopping now and then to discuss plot points or show something to the other. It’s comfortable, and Dick thinks that this is what it could be like to have a brother, if your brother was your best friend, too, and not a jerk like Barney.
For six months, Dick and Clint run and tumble and laugh and joke around. They string a line a foot off the ground between two trees and Clint learns to walk it. Eventually Dick takes him up to the high platform and teaches Clint to fall so that he can always be safe. The winter ends before Clint makes it all the way across, but he's starting to get the hang of some of the easier tricks in Dick’s acrobatic repertoire. Best of all, by the time they part on April 1st, Clint is a lot less scrawny and Dick has been seeing his smile a lot more often.
Most springs, Dick’s got itchy feet and can’t wait to break camp and get back on the road. This year, as he waves after Carson’s caravan, Dick can’t wait to come back to winter quarters next fall.