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"Bruce! Bruce! That was amazing! The way you punched that guy was pretty cool, but it was so awesome how you just looked at the other one and he just about pissed his pants."
"Robin," Batman chastised, and yeah, they were still in costume, but they were in the cave so surely he didn't have to keep the codenames up.
"Sorry, B. But you were totally awesomely amazing today," Dick said, bouncing on his toes.
"No, Dick, I won't teach you how to intimidate people like that. For one thing, it won't work. You're too small to be scary like the Batman is."
"I wasn't saying I wanna do it . I thought that I'd– I just wanted to tell you that it was really cool."
"Hmmm," Batman said, as he stripped off his cowl, and ran his fingers through his hair. "If you say so, chum. But you still aren't going to be getting any interrogation 101 lessons any time soon."
Dick shrugged, spinning his cape around to make it flash yellow-black-yellow as he went.
"I bet no one else has someone as cool as you for their guardian."
"I'll see if I can figure out a way for you to meet Speedy, Green Arrow's protégé. "
"Thanks, B, you're the best."
Dick came in for a hug, which was always a bit of a risky prospect even when B was in civvies. B patted him on the top of the head, and let Dick hug him around the waist.
"Go up and eat the snack Alfred left out for you."
"I drew him a thank you note in school. I haven't finished it yet, but it's got Thank You for the Awesome Snacks on it, and Mrs Ng thought it was very well done, and said that Alfred would like it."
"Sounds good," B said, settling down at the Batcomputer.
"Alfred's shortbread is the best in the whole world. I told Mrs Ng, and she asked if I could bring some in. Can I ask Alfred to make some for my class?"
"You can do that. But you haven't tasted a lot of shortbread yet, so it might not be the best ever."
"Well, it's the best I've ever tasted, so it's still true. And it's amazing and I bet it is the best ever because Alfie is really clever and reads a lot of cooking books, so he's probably got the best recipe anyway."
"Go to bed, Dick."
Dick shuffled his feet, right at the stairs. "You're good at being Bruce, as well as Batman," Dick said. "I'm glad you're both." Bruce looked over, and that was the Batglare. Dick ran up the stairs to bed, Alfred had left out some cold potato knishes in a bowl.
"Thank you, Agent A,
" Dick wrote on a spare bit of paper, "
these are almost as good as Tati Leah's knishes. Love from Dick.
"
Dick liked learning new things, but it had been a bit hard to get his tongue around English. He still said some things wrong, or used a German word or a French one or a Hungarian one when he couldn't think of the right one in English. Bruce was nice about it, since he knew a lot of languages as well, and was having Dick teach him Romani. Alfie listened in on those lessons too, so he could slip between languages just fine when he was at home.
It was at school that Dick had problems.
Mrs Ng was the nicest of the teachers, because she wasn't white like most of the kids, and she told him that she spoke Vietnamese with her parents, and French with her wife who was from Quebec. Dick really wanted to talk to the other Mrs Ng, because Cirque du Soleil was from Quebec, and he'd learnt French from Enrique (who was Spanish, but had been a fire eater for Cirque du Soleil before coming to Haly's). Dick didn't know what to do with the other kids. They were posh and white and American. He’d never been expected to hang around with kids like them before; he’d been chased away from them as a corrupting influence, more likely. But he knew how to make friends. Aside from the few other circus kids, he'd mostly been making short-term friends all his life. Boys who ran near the rivers they set up beside; girls who came every day to pet the horses; kids who ran off from their big siblings, wanting to explore the bits of the circus that Dick could lead them through.
Dick knew how to make kids trust him. He could say a few words about someone's pink hairband being pretty, or them being taller than him, or the cartoon character on their TV shirt and they were friends for life, or at least an afternoon (which was mostly what Dick got). Dick was good at making friends. He knew he was. Or Dick Grayson, circus kid had been good at making friends. Richard Grayson, unwanted orphan gypsy ward of Brucie Wayne... Richard hadn't quite figured out how to get people to like him.
"Your hair is so floofy," he'd said to one of the boys in his class, the first day there, gesturing over his head at the marvellous display of fluffy pale hair. "It looks really pretty," wondering as he said it if that was one of the weirdly gendered words which weren’t sensibly gendered like in French so you’d know which was which. The other kids laughed, and the one with the fluffy pale hair had pushed him back, so he was pressed against the bare brick of the classroom block.
"What'd you call me?" He growled, and Dick had no idea what he'd done wrong. He started apologizing, because this was like one of those situations where a whole gang came through the circus all at once, and you couldn't make friends with any of them because they're all still jostling for position among themselves so there's no room for an outsider except to choose as a unifying target.
F relling frackishery , Dick hadn't planned this properly.
Dick slipped into a few words of apologetic German, hoping that would distract them, looking a bit clueless and foreign, like he'd just messed up in English. "I didn't mean to offend you. I like your hair," he said, and hoped he looked suitably baffled. The floofy haired boy pushed him one more time, just to make sure Dick knew what was up, probably, and then turned back to his friends. The problem was that Dick really didn't know what he'd done wrong. The boy's hair was cool, but Gotham Academy didn't run by the same rules as the fairground, apparently, and Dick would have to figure them out.
He did, eventually. The way to be nice enough in the ways that Gotham Academic accepted, to not be completely left out. No compliments on hair or looks. No compliments on clothing was even possible, because no one was wearing an Iron Man shirt: just the uniform in various versions of slightly messy through extremely neat. Saying someone was better than you still worked. A little fawning, a little wide-eyed awe, and a comment about how strong or tall or clever someone was got the expected reaction of a pleased smile, and a lower level of threat. No wonder Bruce was so scary. If he'd grown up in schools like this, where no one would make proper friends, and being scary was the way to not be miserable. Not even the groups of friends were really friends with each other. No one helped each other out when they were behind on a maths problem, or if they didn't understand the book in English class.
Dick pretended his English was still terrible, and stayed silent.
He had one friend, Kevin, for almost six days. Kevin talked about how much he loved gymnastics, because he'd been doing it since he was five. Dick thought that was just right, the perfect kind of friend to have. They'd be friends, and Kevin could teach him the rules of formal gymnastics, because carny names and rules were probably different, and then they could climb fastest and farthest up the playground frames and keep out of the way of bullies, but together.
Kevin invited Dick to come to his gymnastics class, with Alfie sitting with a book in the bleachers to wait for him.
Kevin was pretty good. His tumbles were neat, and his spinny bits were fun, even if the names Dick had for them were in Russian so he probably couldn’t mention them.
Once Kevin had done the practice routine that the coach had asked for, Dick tumbled across the (almost) bare expanse of the floormats to him, a few flips and a back walkover to come up right next to him.
"You are really good, Kevin," Dick said, smiling up at him. Kevin was a bit taller than Dick, and maybe a year older. "You're able to get higher than me on your leap at the end." Which was true, because Kevin was taller than Dick. Kevin looked down at Dick, something a bit messy in his eyes. He looked over at the other side of the gym, where all the girls were practicing.
"Braggart," Kevin said.
Dick bounced on his toes, itching to have a go on the rings. "I don't know that word."
"Sure you don't. Brat. Go play with the girls. You're interrupting my practice time."
"You don't want me watching?" Dick understood that. Practice was different from performing, and sometimes it was better to not have anyone looking while you messed up. "Okay."
Dick ran across the gym to where a group of girls were gathered near the beam, getting instruction from the other coach. He looked back at Kevin, who was lifting his left leg out and to the side while talking to the coach. He was going to hurt himself if he did it like that. The girls were fun to play with, even though they were all littler than he was. But the girl’s coach let him do his own thing on the beam once he'd shown that he could do it on the low practice beam the girls were playing on. Dick joined back up with Kevin at the end of the lesson.
"Your cartwheel is really good. Very controlled," Dick offered, while they put on their shoes.
Kevin laughed. "At least I'm not only good at the girl bits." Dick laughed too, a little confused.
In the car on the way home, Alfie asked if he wanted to return to that gymnastics class again.
"Uh--I don't know. I don't think--why did Kevin call me a braggart. What does that mean?"
"Curious," Alfred said. "I don't think that is a very good epithet for you at all. A braggart is someone who boasts about themselves a lot."
"But I didn't! I wasn't. I was complimenting Kevin. I didn't have a lot of nice things to say, because he's not very good, but he's okay. So I found the bits which were good and said they were good."
Alfred looked back at Dick, catching his eyes in the rear view mirror. "If Bruce said that you were better than Batman at--I don't know, doing the Batman deep growl voice? What would you think?"
"That B had been taken over by a villain because B wouldn't say that." Alfie laughed, which was more like a sigh.
"What about if I said that you're better than me at cooking?"
"But I'm not very good. I'm learning, and I like learning with you. You're the best and you know how to make things that Tati Margarite doesn't know how to make. You're so precise when you're making something, which Tati never was."
"Perhaps Kevin felt like that. I think maybe he felt like you were lying, because you were better than him. So when you said he was good, he felt that you were pointing out how you were better than him."
"But I wasn't trying to do that at all. I was giving a compliment because compliments feel nice and they make people be your friend."
"Hmmm," Alfie said, thoughtfully, "there is nothing we can really do if someone isn't willing to hear what we actually say, because what they think we have said is louder."
"I was being nice. The girls liked me. Saskia had that awesome Ombre purple leotard and I said it looked awesome and I wanted one just like it. I made them laugh. And I showed Allie how to fix her cartwheel." Alfie was quiet for a moment, thinking. Alfie was very good at taking Dick seriously, and telling him wise things, because he thought about them first.
"Perhaps Kevin wasn't very good at seeing if you were sincere or not. But it might be best to not compliment someone on something that you do better than them, at least until they know you aren’t being insincere."
Dick didn't like that at all. It didn’t make sense. Why would anyone keep falling and hurting themselves if no one praised them for the effort of having tried, and crashed, and tried, and fallen, and hurt themselves all over again. If you waited until someone got a move right before you praised them, they’d never do anything. Once you’ve got it on the floor, you move up onto the beam, and then again at height. You’ve got to keep giving compliments all the way up, because otherwise no one will get to the high wire.
That’s what his Mama had told him.
But Alfred knows more about Gotham Academy boys than Dick does, so he'll listen, for now. Maybe Kevin will have forgiven Dick for complimenting him tomorrow. The next day Kevin told stories about how Dick wasn't even good at gymnastics, because he was stuck doing the girl bit, because only girls do things on the beam.
Maybe Alfred was right.
It wasn’t just the kids at school. Bruce kept the same rules. It was weird.
"Your muscles are so strong, Bruce. You work out so hard." Dick said, once Bruce had put away his weights.
"No, Dick, you're not allowed to increase your weight training. You're too young."
Dick walked on his hands up the stairs behind Bruce, flipping back to his feet on the landing.
"I really like the gravelly voice you do as Batman," Dick said, in his own imitation of it which cracked halfway through.
"Oh, chum," Bruce said, "stick to being Robin."
"I like that you're really tall," Dick tried out once when they were walking from training to dinner, wondering if he'd spotted the pattern.
"That's because I ate everything Alfred told me to do when I was a boy." Alfred looked at Bruce, and let the moment hang for just a bit too long. Alfred was clever with pauses. Dick wants Alfred to teach him how to do that too. Bruce obviously learnt it, and that’s how he’s so good at getting bad guys to spill everything without saying anything at all.
"Master Bruce is a cheeky liar, he never ate his brussels sprouts." Dick filled his mouth with broccoli, because Alfred really was very creative when it came to vegetables.
"You make the vegetables taste really good, Alfie."
Bruce laughed, spooning more gravy over his potatoes. "Sucking up to Alfred, Dickie?"
"It's because I use copious amounts of garlic, and make sure everything is still crisp when I serve it, Master Dick. I can teach you the recipe."
Dick helped Alfie in the kitchen with the tidying up after dinner, and set out his idea.
"Bruce doesn't like compliments, does he?"
Alfred paused, dish cloth in hand. "I think you're quite right, Master Dick."
"Why? Why doesn't he like it when I tell him I think he's done something impressive? Is it like Kevin, who thought I was lying?"
"Hmmm, I don't think so. He's gotten used to you, and knows you don't say things you don't mean."
That was good, at least, because Dick wasn’t a liar, no matter what the kids at school told each other. He didn’t tell the truth, but that’s because he was Robin, and the truth was a very complicated and dangerous beast anyway.
"Maybe,” Dick said slowly, “B doesn't like feeling nice things. Like how he doesn't like hugs."
"Perhaps that's closer to it. It can feel uncomfortable to be told nice things about yourself. Even confronting, because it means something is looking at you very closely."
"You're very clever, Alfie," Dick said.
"Thank you, Master Dick. You're an excellent help in the kitchen, and a good boy." Alfred held out his arms, and Dick pressed himself against the man in a hug, because Bruce was bad at taking compliments and hugs, but that's okay, because Alfie was good at both of those.
That would have been enough. Dick could maintain a careful balance of compliments and lies to stay on the right side of the bullies at school. Never being more clever, never looking much better than them, and keeping his comments bland and praising, like he was very impressed with them all. It kept the worst of the boys off his back, and Mrs Ng said that it was alright to lie to keep yourself safe (which Dick already knew, thanks very much, but it was nice to have an adult agree with him).
After patrol one night, when Dick was vibrating with excitement because they'd had an amazing night being Batman and Robin today. Dick had distracted the goons just right, and Batman had swooped in and got two of them with one move, and it had been amazing and fast and they’d been working so well together. It was like Dick knew what Batman was thinking, and could get there before B needed him, so they could get everyone in position just right.
They had dropped four goons off to Commish, and had new information to look into to figure out the Riddler's new plan so they could try to get ahead of him. It was a great night.
"You were so fast," Dick said. "It was amazing. They had no idea where you were coming from, and you were just everywhere at once."
"Hmm," B said, flicking through something on his grappling gun as they headed back to the Batmobile.
"Batman does really good work," Dick said. "That's--wow. Even if Commish is a bit grumpy with us sometimes."
"Robin, be professional."
Dick pursed his lips, and let go of some frustration in the next leap by adding in some extra spins. Maybe Kevin was right. Maybe Dick was a braggart, and a show off, and a stuck up outsider gypsy.
He was showing off and no one was even watching, except for B. Back in the car, when they were approaching the Batcave, B finally spoke. "I think we have a compliment problem."
"No, duh," Dick said, "you suck at them."
"No, chum. I think I've figured it out. You think you need to keep pleasing the people around you."
"That's called being nice."
"You like telling people what they like to hear."
Well, that was true for school, because he hadn't figured out a way to make American kids like him for him yet.
"You think that compliments are easier than honesty," B said, with a very serious voice.
"Yeah."
"You give people compliments when you can't think of anything else to say."
"No, I don't," Dick said, but he wasn't quite sure. Batman was very clever, and very good at figuring out why people did things in weird ways, even when the person had no idea what they’d done or why.
"Speaking in (mostly) English was difficult, but it's been getting easier. So you won't have to rely on giving compliments to keep conversations moving. You’ll need to pick up a new conversational hobby."
"I guess."
"I'm going to give you a budget."
"Like my clothes budget?"
"Yes, like the clothes budget. Not everything can have sequins on it, so you'll have to pick and choose. You can only give six compliments a day."
"Six?"
"Six sequinned compliments."
" Six ."
That didn't seem like very many at all. But Bruce didn't set unreasonable tests, and he was very good at figuring out how to make Dick better . A Better Robin, better at English, better at acting like a rich boy who deserved to be at Gotham Academy. Dick could savour his sequinned compliments. B ruce knew what he was doing. If Dick needed to not give people compliments, then he’d stop giving compliments.
Bruce probably regretted that restriction. Instead of praising people and giving out compliments to distract them, Dick started cultivating a repertoire of puns and Batman-related insults and swears. It was quite easy to make people laugh by swearing with, “ Superman’s dirty Y-fronts!” when he stubbed his toe.
Bruce was right, eventually. Dick almost managed to find a few friends when he was figuring out new puns and ways to swear. It was a fun game anyway, even if some of the ones about Robin’s scaly panties got a bit weird when he hit puberty.
Bruce never actually rescinded the order about only six compliments a day, but Dick figured that flirting didn’t quite count towards his tally. And he could do a lot of flirting just with body language and innuendo, if he wanted to stick below his limit. It was a game. Dick was very good at games.
Thirteen years later
Dick's first week working at the FBI White Collar office was eye-opening. Sure, Peter was treating him like a gold bar covered in joker toxin (worth coveting, but definitely dangerous) but otherwise he was having a good time. Being Neal Caffrey was fun . He could flirt and be sarcastic and be fanciful and wear whatever he wanted, and everyone would just put it down to 'Neal Caffrey'. The first time he had to go under at Nick Holden was a bit harder, since he'd created Nick out of the threadbare bones of himself, aged nine, attending school in English and just making himself a sponge of compliments and yes-mannery for other people's achievement to make them feel good about themselves.
He filled himself up with all the flirting he could do as Neal, throwing compliments about eyes and dresses and lipstick shades, until he tipped over from metrosexual to probably-gay in the minds of his mark. That was fun too. Being Neal was relaxing, after being Dick Grayson for so long. The FBI expected him to con them and flirt with everyone. They expected him to move quickly and fluidly from one situation to another without pause for consequences. They expected him to lie, and were baffled whenever he told the truth.
Once Diana came back Dick really found his rhythm. Flirting with Peter was fun, and flirting with Peter in front of El was even better. But flirting with Diana was amazing .
("You look like you could slay in those heels." "Watch out, Caffrey, I have before.")
Dick could lean over Diana's desk like one of the agents might try on other female agents who weren't as assertively queer as Diana was. Dick had a lean and a flirty eyebrow, a wicked smirk.
"Can I take you out to eat? I'm very good with my mouth," while Dick licked his lips.
"Did you fall from heaven? Because they definitely didn't deserve you." Which managed to make Diana smile for a fraction of a second.
"Have you thought about taking over the world? I'll apply for a concubine position. Or whatever position you want. I'm very flexible."
That one had actually made Diana laugh.
They shared terrible pick up lines, innuendos, and shared jokes until they both laughed and Diana had to pretend to look stern. It came to a head when Dick accidentally set Diana up as a prostitute, and then had to sweep in to save her the audition.
"You are gay, aren't you, Caffrey?" Diana asked in the middle of the night, as they lounged about in robes, and she tried to get at the strawberry at the bottom of her champagne flute.
"Not really. I've loved some women, some men. Pan, I suppose, if you want a label. I can probably fall in love with anyone sentient and interesting."
"Sentient is a new way to establish that limit. Do we have a better word for folks who'd bang Starfire? Xenophile? Species-flexible? Uh...a better word than pan, I mean."
"Who wouldn't bang Starfire? Come on. Aside from the Ace folk, anyone who likes women would have to at least think they'd give it a go."
"I'd do her," Diana said.
Dick grinned at Diana, flipping onto his side. "I have."
"Liar, Caffrey."
Dick grinned his best Caffrey-but-you-know-you’re-the-target grin: 120% charm, and 20% sincerity and the other 60% intensity.
"So why the flirting?” Diana asked.
“It’s a hobby.” Dick said with a shrug.
“I thought you flirted with me because it’s fun, and we were two queers flirting platonically."
"I like flirting. It's like--" Dick laughed, running a hand through his hair. "It's a way to—to keep people's attention focused on the right thing."
"On your dick?"
"No. I don’t flirt for sex. I flirt because it makes people feel good. The best con is when someone gives something up because they think they want to give it to you."
"And you choose flirting. You think that hurts less, for your marks?"
"I chose exaggerated flirting. Absurd flirting. Compliments and flattery. I never say anything I don't mean."
"Everyone says things they don't mean when they flirt. It's part of the game."
"I don't. My–when I was young, and my English wasn't very good, my guardian figured out that I used compliments to get out of conversations. I learnt a few compliments, and used them when I didn't know what to say."
"That's adorable. English is your second language?"
Dick winked, and ignored the question. "So B, my guardian, he gave me a compliment budget."
"What?" Diana said, sitting up to look at Dick properly. “A compliment budget ?”
"Yeah,” Dick said with an absent smile. “It was pretty funny. I was only allowed to give out six compliments a day, including at school. Once I hit puberty I figured that flirting didn't count, since it had different rules. Especially if it was play-flirting with people I wasn't actually interested in. Then I could just give them compliments without it being a big deal."
"Oh, Neal," Diana said. "That sounds--like a rather awkward way to grow up."
"I eventually figured out it was really because B was terrible at accepting compliments, but yeah. I was a compliment ninja. I'd sneak up and figure out ways to give not-quite-a-compliment to people I liked."
“And flirting is ninja-compliments?”
“Flirting is sort of a performance, more than a con. It’s to make someone feel good. I don’t really want anything out of it, though.” Diana made a low noise, something curious and questioning. Dick flopped back beside her.
“Can I keep flirting with you? Even though now you know I’m pan-xeno-Starfire-sexual?”
Diana looked over at him. “You don’t lie when you’re flirting?”
“I joke, but I don’t lie. Not with you.”
Diana nodded, and touched him on the cheek. “Do your worst, Caffrey.”