Popcorn, cotton candy, horse flesh and sweat; breathing in deeply Dick takes in the scents of his childhood. The sounds of screaming children and the excited chatter of patrons' washes over him, the light shining through the tent painted red and yellow dances on his face; Haley's is back in town.
Wally grabs his sleeve and leads him over to a hotdog vendor chatting happily about carnival food. Closing his eyes, Dick is swept away into his memories. Tumbling with the clowns, handstands on the horses as they race around the tent, and the amazing feeling of weightlessness when he flew with his parents. Wally waves a hotdog under his nose, calling him back from his past.
"You just want it plain?" the freckles on his cheeks scrunch up as he wrinkles his nose in disgust, "that's just wrong, dude. What kind of circus boy are you?" Shaking his head in displeasure he hands over Dick's hotdog, nose in the air and nostrils flaring like he smelled something foul.
Dick punches Wally in the arm, his hotdog going astray and getting mustard on his cheek. Laughing and pointing as Wally scowls and scrubbing his cheek with his sleeve, misses completely. "You're not even close," Dick says smugly as he takes a bite of his hotdog, chewing with a sense of vindication.
Wally makes a face and forgoing the mustard entirely eats three of his hotdogs in rapid succession. Dick scrunches his nose in disgust and turns around, steps to the side narrowly missing a squirt of ketchup that shoots from the bun of Wally's hotdog. It's because of this that he sees a little kid swiveling his head around, looking for someone. A wave of people crash over the child and he disappears in the masses.
Two small arms wrap around Dick's waist from behind. The same child clings to the soft cotton of his sweater.
"Mom?"
The kid scuttles back, tripping over his own feet when Dick turns around. Large tears roll down his face, in surprise at the fall. Dick kneels down offering the kid a hand as Wally laughs from behind his hotdog, "Hey kid, are you lost?"
Big blue eyes blink up at him, and lower lip quivers watching his reflection in Dick's shiny lenses. Pulling off his glasses, Dick sticks out his tongue, crosses his eyes and wiggles his ears surprising a laugh out of the child. "There you go, see you're fine," Dick says kindly, offering a hand that the boy eventually takes, his smaller hand dwarfed by Dick's larger one.
Licking the ketchup off his fingers Wally watches, the small stirring of jealousy squeezing his chest as Dick gently wipes the tears from the kid's face. "So what's your name?" he doesn't mean to say it as harshly as he did, and he even feels bad when the child flinches at the tone.
The little kid looks up at Wally, chubby cheeks set into the best impression of a serious face that they can. "I'm not supposed to talk to strangers.
He can't be more than eight years old, shooting a glare at Wally, Dick picks the boy up, smiling at the shriek of delight it gets him, the little camera around his neck bumping Dick's chest. "That's right, it's not safe to talk to strangers, but tell you what I'll tell you my name if you tell me yours." Dick smiles gently, his eyes soft and finger rubbing small circles into the pressed white shirt, adding wrinkles to the starch material.
"I already know your name," he puts emphasis on 'your' as if it should be obvious who Robin is. "I'm Tim and you're Dick."
Wally steps closer, face screwed up in suspicion, "Hey now, how do you know his name?"
Tim looks back at turns back to Dick and whispers something in his ear. Dick laughs, his dark eyes dancing as he answers, "That's right Timmy, he is a stranger better not get too close to him, who knows what kind of person he could be."
He says it as it's not completely suspicious that some random kid knows his name, huffing Wally eats another hotdog.
"Luckily I know this particular weirdo, and I can vouch for him," Dick smiles brightly, and Tim caught in its rays can only watch bright eyed and captivated, "So Tim, wanna tell me how you know me?"
Tim's cheeks flush and he leans his forehead onto Dick's shoulder when he says, "I saw you flying with your family once. "
Oh.
A sad smile crosses Dick's face, "Well then you're very lucky. My parents were some of the best flyers in the world."
Pulling his face from Dick's neck Tim looks up, mouth pressed into a serious line and a deep crinkle forming between his eyebrows. "You too. You can do a quadruple summersault, and you even took a picture with me even though I was just a baby back then."
Red blooms on Tim's cheeks as if he had revealed something he hadn't meant to. Laughing Dick puts Tim down, and takes his hand. Even if Tim is tiny, Dick isn't much bigger and he's heavy for something so small.
"Do you need some help finding your Mom?"
Shaking his head, the toy camera bouncing with the movement, Tim pulls his hand out of Dick's. "No, I know where she is."
Wally watches over Dick's shoulder, "So where is she?"
Dick nods encouragingly when Tim looks to him for confirmation that he can talk to the strange boy, Tim guessed that if Robin vouches for him than he can't be a bad guy. "She's at home," he plays with the camera, thumbing the controls, the lens makes a vrrhhh sound as it focuses in on Dick's and Wally's faces, "I just thought that maybe she saw me leave and came looking-" he slaps his hand over his mouth, cheeks squished high on his face at the movement. "I'm not supposed to leave the house," he said sheepishly, "But I really wanted to see Haley's again."
Dick smiles brightly at that, "Tell ya what Timmy, how about me and Wally take you home?" The kid's eyes practically pop out of his head, a small disbelieving smile on his face and the camera goes off accidentally.
"Really you mean it, Rob-Dick?"
Dick and Wally's eyes go wide at that. Looking at each other they communicate briefly through an intense session of eyebrow wiggling.
"Actually on second thought, Tim how would you like to see the Batcave?"
