In the end, it was a fight that Mary lost. Her husband had been supportive and agreed to wait to start training the boys until they were older, but her own sons had forced Mary's hand.
Just last week she had found Dick three-fourths the way up the ladder to the trapeze, the week before John had found Danny swinging upside down from the pole over the fortune teller's both, and these weren't isolated incidents. They were only the latest installments in a set of ever more dangerous stunts the boys had gotten themselves into.
Sunday, after they had found the boys lowering themselves into the lions' cage with ropes that they had tied in the rafters, John and Mary sat down and had a long talk. After which it was decided that Dick and Danny needed to be taught the proper way to use the trapeze—for their own safety.
The hope was also that if the boys were taught to do the thing that they had always wanted to (flying with their parents) maybe they would spend less time using their acrobatic talents for other reasons (like breaking into lion cages.)
This was how only a few months after their third birthday Dick and Danny came to have their first lesson on the flying trapeze.
Dick was practically, ok actually, bouncing off the walls with excitement. His hands fluttered and his motions blurred with uncontainable energy.
He looked over and shared a smile with his brother. They had finally done it, months of hard work and long groundings had payed off, their parents had finally agreed to teach them how fly on the real trapeze like they did.
This was a moment that Dick had been waiting for his entire life, or well most of it—probably. Dick couldn't remember when he was a baby, but he was certain that even then he had still wanted to fly like his parents.
Dick adjusted the itchy harness at his waist. Mr. and Mrs. Fenton had set up a harness system connected to the trapeze that Dick and Danny could wear when they practiced. The harnesses were bulky and uncomfortable and the way they were set up was going to prevent Dick from doing some of the cool stunts that he wanted to try.
But they gave their parents peace of mind because they couldn't actually, you know, fall to the ground if they happened to slip. (Not that Dick was going to slip mind you, just try telling his parents that.) And their parents' peace of mind was a prerequisite for flying lessons.
John sat on the catch trapeze with his elbows wrapped around the cable for support. The catch trapeze had been moved closer to the starting platform for this lesson. Neither of these were standard procedure for the trapeze but John wasn't actually going to be catching his sons, just grabbing their ankles and sending them back to their mom.
Danny went first, much to Dick's chagrin.
Mary used a hooked pole to pull the fly bar to the starting platform. "Now Danny*, I want you to grip the bar hard, with your hands shoulder width apart.—Good. Now you're going to jump off and swing to your father, make sure to keep your legs together and here you go!"
Danny jumped from the board and for a moment, he seemed to hang in the air as if gravity had no sway on him. Then he was soaring through the air; those precious few seconds felt like the first time he had ever truly lived in his entire life.
John caught Danny's ankles at the top of his arc. He took a moment to drink in the look of combined fear and utter exhilaration on his son's face that only the trapeze could produce. Then he let go of Danny's ankles, giving him a good shove so that he would make it back to the board.
Mary grabbed her son as soon as he came in reach and pulled him close to her; she was so proud of how well Danny had done, but even the safety harness that he was wearing didn't stop the moment of pure terror that she had felt when her son jumped off the platform.
Dick didn't want to wait until his mother was done with Danny and pulled the fly bar back to him, that was going to take five-ever—which is even longer than four-ever. So, he took matters into his own hands.
He backed up to the end of the platform, took a running start, and flew.
His Dad had just enough time to yell, "No Dick! Don't!" Before his son launched himself into the air.
Technically speaking, Dick was in free fall, but the momentum from his run was still carrying him forward. The fly bar was still oscillating from Danny's swing; luckily, Dick managed to catch it on the top of the swing closest to him.
Dick's momentum was much greater than Danny's had been, so he soared toward his father at break neck speeds. Dick had wanted to flip off of the fly bar in a somersault like his parents did in shows, but both the harness and the position of the trapeze were preventing him from doing so.
In the end, John grabbed Dick before he could think of something to do instead of the somersault.
John decided that he couldn't trust Dick to swing back on his own. So he transitioned between the catch trapeze and the fly bar (a rather hard thing to do from his current position), hung upside down from the fly bar, and grabbed his son's wrists to carry him back to his mother.
By this time, Mary had noticed what Dick had done and was ready to catch him when John carried him back.
As John set the over eager boy in Mary's arms a thunderous applause erupted from below. Mary (and John once he had dismounted the trapeze) looked down to see the front few rows of stands packed with nearly everyone in the entire circus.
Startled by the unexpected company and needing to give Dick a stern talking to, John and Mary decided to end practice early. They carried their sons down the ladder and were mobbed by well-wishers once they reached the ground.
John gave Pop Haly an inquisitive look as he passed by, one that seemed to say— that was nice, but why did everyone show up to watch us?
Haly clapped John on the back and smiled, "It's not every day that you get to see a Graysons' first flight. That's a sight that many of us wouldn't have missed for the world."
"You've got a pair of natural flyers there John," Haly said ruffling the boys' hair. "Try not to punish Dick too much for doing the same thing you would have done in his shoes."
John nodded as Haly left and looked down at the boy in his arms. Dick couldn't even bother to look sheepish for his actions; in fact, both of his sons look like they couldn't wait to get back in the air.
His sons had just gotten their first taste of the most exhilarating, addicting thing in the world, and John couldn't have been more proud.
*In case you were wondering, whenever Mary speaks to the boys, she speaks in Russian. Whenever John speaks to them he speaks in Romani. And whenever the boys speak at all (unless specifically mentioned otherwise) its in a combination of both languages.
A/N: So this will probably be about how long it will normally take me to put chapters out for this story. Tell me whether or not you like how long the last scene was (in between line breaks is a 'scene'), I've been trying to write longer for you guys.